The ethics of the Old Testament

THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

" THE OLD TESTAMENT will still be a New Testament to him
who comes with a fresh desire of information."

— FULLER.

THE ETHICS

THE OLD TESTAMENT

DY

W. S. BRUCE, M.A., D.D.

AUTHOR OF "TUB FORMATION OF CHRISTIAN CHARACTER'

"OCR 11ER1TAOE, INDIVIDUAL, SOCIAL, H ELIOIOUB "

"SOCIAL ASPECTS OF CHRISTIAN MORALITY "

ETC. ETC.

SECOND EDITION, ENLARGED

'

EDINBURGH
T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET

PRINTED IN ORKAT BRITAIN BY
MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITKD

FOR

T. <t T. CLARK, EDINBURGH
NEW YORK : CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

SECOND EDITION . . . 1909
LATEST REPRINT . . I960

PREFATORY NOTE TO SECOND EDITION

THE demand for a new edition affords the
author a welcome opportunity of bringing the
hook up to date. Much has been written on
the Ethics of the Old Testament in these
fourteen years since it was first published,
to which ample reference will be found in
the footnotes. Several chapters have been
enlarged ; and certain portions have been
rewritten in deference to criticisms in British
and American Journals. It is hoped that in
its enlarged form the volume will be worthy
of the very kind reception which it has met in
this and in other lands.

BANFF, November 1909.

CONTEXTS

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

PAGES

Nature of Old Testament Ethics — Without scientific
form, yet progressive — An almost untrodden
field — Gains from scientific study of Old Testa
ment — Moral difficulties — Their solution im-
](ossible apart from general presentation of Old
Testament Ethics — Every science should be set
in its own light — Different aims of Theology and
Ethics of Old Testament : (1) CONTRAST BE
TWEEN THE ETHICS OF OLD TESTAMENT AND
ETHICS OF PAGAN ANTIQUITY— Plato — Aristotle
— Absence of knowledge of sin ; (2) FUNDA
MENTAL PRINCIPLES OF OLD TESTAMENT ETHICS
— The Supreme Good — It is thrown forward
into the future of Messianic hope — Establish
ment of a kingdom of righteousness the goal —
Never an individual good, but a social one —
Doctrine of Virtue The will of God, not moral
consciousness, the basis — The subjective prin
ciple a free, loving obedience .... 1-31

CHAPTER II

THE ETHICAL CHARACTER OF THE OLD
TESTAMENT REVELATION

The ethics connected with the history of Israel — A
natural and theistic basis — Doctrine of evolu-

CONTENTS

tion applied to Israel's religion — The Hegelian
school — Theory of Graf and Wellhausen — Re
ligion merely an outcome of the Semitic genius
— Ethical view of life emerges from Israel's per
sonal relationship to a holy God —Their ethical
superiority over other races ....

CHAPTER III

THE DETERMINATIVE PRINCIPLE OF MORALITY
THE OLD TESTAMENT

A positive principle in every code of morals —
Foundation of virtue not found in the Old
Testament in man's moral nature — Not a power
less empiricism — Hebrew morality has a re
ligious basis — Apprehension of moral law runs
parallel with conception of ethical character of
Jehovah — Elohim, El Shatldai, Jahveh, Adonai,
merciful and gracious, but full of resentment to
sin. Theophanies — God no mere cosmic force,
but the living and the Holy One — This relation
ship at the foundation of the Law — Important
moral results from this, shaping life and con
duct in Israel — Aid derived here from science
of comparative religion — These facts constitute
an ethical doctrine of God 41-61

CHAPTER IV

ISRAEL THE PEOPLE OF GOD'S POSSESSION

The Law based on this relationship — Separation and
consecration of the nation for lofty ethical ends
— An election to service, pervaded by a social
teleology — Progressive ethicising of this rela
tionship—The truth of individualism not yet
acknowledged, but the family comes first in im
portance — Birth into Israelite family reckoned

CONTENTS XI

PAGES

as entrance into kingdom of God — But within
this particularism lay the kernel of a universal
religion 62-73

CHAPTER V
ISRAEL'S CODE OF DUTY

(1) RIGHTEOUSNESS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT — This
not equivalent to sinlessness — Use of the word
by Psalmists — The apprehension of sin not so
profound and ethical as in New Testament —
Rather a legal status than an ethical attainment
indicated — Yet not legalism. (2) THE GIVING OP
THE LAW — Given through Moses and accepted by
Israel — Grace as well as command in it — Two
different views of its purpose —A pedagogic
aspect and an aspect of grace — Primarily, the
Law was a distinguishing mark of God's favour
to His people ; secondarily, a commandment to
check trangression — Romans vii. a bit of auto
biography — View of it in Gospels and Epistle
to Hebrews 74-93

CHAPTER VI
THE LAW OF THE TEX WORDS

Character of the Decalogue— Does it, together with
the civil and ceremonial laws, constitute one
legislative code ? or are there two codes ?— The
Law makes no distinction within itself into per
manent and transitory precepts — The Decalogue
cast in an archaic mould — Its different forms —
The two Tables — Apparent gradation in its com
mands — Its preface speaks of grace . . . 04-108

CHAPTER VII

THE FIRST TABLE

Our concern is with the original purport of the
Commandments — Not to translate them in terms

Xll CONTENTS

PAGES

of a Christian's duty. The First Commandment
— Obedience rested on faith, and morality on
religion — Exclusion of the evils of polytheism.
The Second Commandment — Proclaims God's
spirituality — Danger of Israel falling into
idolatry — Worship of Egypt — It prohibited also
human sacrifices — Reason annexed. The Third
Commandment — The correct rendering of the
words — Forbids profanity generally, and espe
cially one form of it, perjury. The Fourth
Commandment — A twofold law, commanding
labour and also enjoining rest — Jewish Sabbath
a day of rest. The Fifth Commandment — Im
portance of the family in Israel opposed to
modern conception of individualism . . . 109-147

CHAPTER VIII

THE SECOND TABLE

The Sixth Commandment — Duties to our fellow-
creatures — A man's life his most valued posses
sion — Capital punishment — The land counted
polluted — The jus talionis — Only the highest
form of each crime specified. The Seventh
Commandment — The sanctity of home— A wife
regarded from the standpoint of goods — Mor
ality based on the family — Ethics of divorce —
The water of jealousy — Woman in the Wisdom
Literature. The Eiyhth Commandment — Ethics
of property — Law of inheritance — Poor-Laws.
Ninth Commandment — A man's goods and his
good name — Courts of judgment — Perjury and
slander. Tenth Commandment — Rightly ends
the precepts of probity — Proves the Decalogue
to be not merely a criminal code — Enters the
region of motive — The prohibitory form of the
Law — The Decalogue not an evolution of Hebrew
thought 148-190

CONTENTS Xlll

CHAPTER IX

OLD TESTAMENT LEGISLATION

PAGES

(1) IN RELATION TO NATURE — Ethical view of man's
relation to the land and to cattle. (2) LEGIS
LATION IN RESPECT OF MAN — Rights of freedom
— Bondmen in Greece and Canaan — Temple
servants — War captives. (3) THE MOSAIC LAW
IN REFERENCE TO SANITATION par excellence A
SANITARY MORALITY — Uncleanness and disease
— Comparison with other nations . . . 191-208

CHAPTER X

MOSAIC LEGISLATION — CONTINUED

(1) LAWS REGARDING THE POOR — Provision made
for all — Produce of seventh year — Kindness
towards the poor and the stranger. (2) LAWS
CONCERNING WOMEN AND CHILDREN — Treatment
of woman a moral test of legislation — Educa
tion of children in Pentateuch and Proverbs —
A high moral ideal presented. (3) LAWS RE
LATING TO WORSHIP — Condemnation of Moloch
offerings — " As is the God, so is the religion "-
Jehovah a moral Deity. (4) LAWS RELATING TO
SACRIFICE — Ethical meaning of offerings and
atonement — Laws of purification — A moral idea
at the root of all 209-227

CHAPTER XI

OLD TESTAMENT VIEW OF A FUTURE LIFE

Absence of other-worldliness a feature— Contrast
with the religion of Egypt — " Book of the
Dead " — Doctrine of immortality rooted in pre
cedent beliefs — The foundation of the hope laid

XIV CONTENTS

PAOKS

in communion with God here — The saints feel
it must be unending — More clearly developed
by prophetism — Question of future rewards and
punishments — Piety brings prosperity here —
Yet not unmitigated eudoemonism — Prosperity
plus God's blessing the end to be sought — The
principle of fitness to the stage of moral pro
gress here applicable 228-239

CHAPTER XII

ADVANCE AND DEVELOPMENT

A great pedagogic intent at the centre of the move
ment — Progress the mark of Old Testament
ethics — Contrast with ethnic religions— Early
ethical environment of Israel — The outer must
become the inner — Morality in the Pentateuch
— (1) In Hosea, Amos, Jeremiah, pre-Exilic and
post-Exilic Psalms — The worthlessness of the
opus operatum affirmed — Do Ezekiel and Daniel
encourage a legal externalism ? — Ethical mono
theism — The golden age of protestants and
reformers of Israel. (2) THE WISDOM LITERA
TURE — Proof that the rudimentary stage was
passing away — Finds a divine teleology at work
— Its subjective principle the fear of the Lord
—This the spring of all virtues — The wise man
not a utilitarian .... . 240-260

CHAPTER XIII

ETHICS OF THE LATER JUDAISM

Reactionary tendencies — Return of Ezra and re
formation of morals — Scribism and the Talmud
— Synagogues and their influence — Lapse into

CONTENTS XV

I'AORS

legalism — Ethical quibbles — Germs of pharisa-
ism — Development in the Greek period — Lines
of cleavage in the Asmonean period — Ethics
become utilitarian 261-271

CHAPTER XIV

MOKAL DIFFICULTIES OK OLD TESTAMENT

Old Testament not to be judged from the polemical
platform of to-day — Laws may be given which
are not absolutely perfect — May be but stages in
a disciplinary process — Misunderstandings —
Some general im perfections alleged : (a) Ab
sence of systematic form in ethics — Objection
answered ; (6) Ethics marred by a narrow par
ticularism — Answer. Three classes of difficulties :
FIRST CLASS OF DIFFICULTIES— Difficulties con
nected with the manner in which the character
or action of God is presented — Felt in Augus
tine's time — Destruction of Canaanites — -The
sentence clearly a judicial one — A drastic pro
cess, but moral surgery sometimes needed — Such
a war of extermination nowadays impossible —
Another objection : Does God employ evil
spirits as His agents ? — The question one of
exegesis — Anthropomorphisms — Must not create
ethical problems out of Orientalisms . . . 272-295

CHAPTER XV

SECOND CLASS OF DIFFICULTIES

(1) The imperfect character of some numbered
among Old Testament saints and heroes — The
real question, Does God demand only perfect
agents ? — These men had virtues that God could
make use of : Jacob — Moses — David — The
Judges : Ehud and Deborah — Gideon and Sam-

xvi CONTENTS

FAOKS

son. (2) Charges of a spirit of revenge and of
worldliness — The imprecatory psalms —The
alleged eudaemonism of Wisdom Literature.
THIRD CLASS OF DIFFICULTIES— Difficulties aris
ing from alleged moral defects of the laws —
Especially as to slavery and law of the Goel —
These laws wrought for freedom and righteous
ness — Concluding Remarks .... 296-317

THE

ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

INTRODUCTION

OOR aim in this volume is to exhibit in short
compass the Ethics of the Old Testament in
its historic growth and development. It is
desirable that we should know what were the
sources of moral activity in Israel, and what
is the correct interpretation of the life that
was lived under the Mosaic Law. We shall
try to discover what good men in those days
thought of duty, on what grounds they based
obligation, and how they endeavoured to ful
fil the great end of life.

The ethics of the Old Testament does not
start with any abstract theory of virtue.
We need not expect to find in it anything
approaching scientific method. It was not
given in a form that claimed perfection ; and
it bears the marks of incompleteness on its
face. It is a morality designed by God for
a people at a rudimentary stage of reli-

2 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

gious education. Its fulfilment is to be found
in a higher ethics, of which it is prophetic.
It ran its race through that early dispensa
tion looking unto Jesus, in whom it blossomed
into perfection, and emerged from the stage of
hope into one of ever-deepening reality.

But although scientific form be wanting,
we shall find, as we examine the history of
Israel's growth, that there is a progress from
the external to the internal, from the form to
the substance, of true morality. Even when,
after the Exile, a serious declension from a
lofty ethical attitude takes place, the lapse
only helps to exhibit the deficiency of the
prevalent legalism, and in reality serves a
highly educative purpose.

At the present time this subject is one of
growing importance. Of recent years a great
revival of Biblical study has taken place.
The Scriptures of the Old Testament have
been invested for all Christian minds with
unusual interest,, and therefore constitute a
peculiarly inviting field of research. The
richness of their material, the variety of their
forms, the antiquity of their origin, and the
unity in which that wonderful variety of topic
and treatment is harmoniously blended, have
all combined to render this study attractive.
To many minds that old book is becoming a
new book, standing in new relations, enriched
with new contents, and filled with spiritual
meaning. And at the heart of its great

INTRODUCTION 3

historical movement we see a -Power, not our
selves, making for morality. The ethics of
the Old and that of the New Testament are
linked into a solidarity of life and interest.
The historical method has helped us, as from
a mountain top, to distinguish the trend of
the great moral purpose which runs from the
first chapter of Genesis to the last chapter of
the Revelation of St. John. We understand
more clearly the significance of St. Augus
tine's words : Novum testamcntvm in vet ere
latet: vctus e novo patct.

The battle of the critics regarding the
authenticity and literary features of these
ancient writings is not yet ended. The grain
is still upon the threshing-floor of Araunah
the Jebusite, and vigorous arms ply the flail.
But we are confident that the inspired word
will yet be victorious, and that this threshing-
floor "will be purchased for an altar to Jehovah
(2 Sam. xxiv. 21). We have not, however,
felt it necessary to the discussion of our main
theme to enter into historical details or to
determine anything as to the manner in which
the Pentateuch was composed. It has been
sufficient for otir immediate purpose to be able
to trace a clear development of ethical truth
parallel with the growth of Revelation, and to
note the well-marked stages of this advance.1

1 Cf. Flint's Theism, p. 258 ; Oettli, Der gegenwdrtige Kartipf,
p. 11 ; Konig, Religious History of Israel, chap. xi. ; A. B. Bruce
Chief End of Revelation, p. 110 ff.

4 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Of such ethical progress the evidence is ample,
and is but little affected by questions of
historical criticism. If we should ultimately
have to give up some old and revered tradi
tions that have come down to us regarding
the growth of the Canon of the Old Testa
ment, yet the laying aside of these will only
the more reveal the intrinsic beauty and
perennial freshness of the Scriptures. The
loss will prove a gain. The soil will be
the better for the critics' sifting, and where
weeds once stood, flowers and fruit will
grow.1

One gain we have already reaped. The
results of the thorough methods of study
applied to these sacred writings have now
been gathered up into a very helpful Biblical
Theology of the Old Testament. That theo
logy has arranged the varied material in
accordance with its historical development
and its relative value, giving each part its
proper setting in the organic whole. It has
distinguished for us a theology of authors and
periods, of law and prophets, of Wisdom
Literature and Psalms. It has found types
of doctrine in the Old Testament as clearly
defined as the Petrine, Pauline, and Johannine
types in the New. And by a synthetic pro
cess it has sought so to combine all these
together as to present the theology of the Old
Testament in a unity ; while each portion

1 Schultz, Old Testament Theology, vol. ii. p. 62.

MORAL DIFFICULTIES 5

finds its due place in the advancing history
of Revelation, and conduces to its organic
completeness.

We mention this science because it has a
very close connection with our subject. But
we need scarcely add that every other part
of the encyclopaedia of theology has shared
in the benefit and received new life and
vigour.

This revived interest in the Old Testament
Scriptures will certainly awaken in many
minds a deeper concern in the solution of
those moral difficulties that connect them
selves with that dispensation. Those difficul
ties are not few, and have brought perplexity
to many a tender Christian conscience. That
perplexity has been increased rather than
diminished by some of the methods employed
in solving them. Deeds of very doubtful
morality have been excused in a manner that
could give little satisfaction to a thoughtful
mind. The real difference between the old
and new Covenants has been ignored or mis
understood. We are convinced that it is only
in connection with a general presentation of
Old Testament ethics that these difficult
passages can be satisfactorily explained. The
force of the argument drawn from them
vanishes as soon as the course of ethical
education in Israel is understood. No solu
tion of any value can be offered until
we have comprehended the disciplinary

6 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

method of Revelation in the Law and the
Prophets.1 It will be found impossible to
explain the treachery of a Jael, or the blood-
vengeance of a Gideon, or the employment, as
instruments of God's revealing grace, of
morally defective agents, unless we have
first grasped the pedagogical purport of the
Law, and apprehended the correct relation
ship of Jehovah to His people.

Of old time God spake to the fathers " by
divers portions and in divers manners." This
was necessarily so ; for their moral training
began at the very lowest stage. It was a
long curriculum of education, by slow yet
sure gradation,* from those early days of
ignorance, " which God winked at," up to the
fulness of time when Jesus Christ appeared.
And it is absolutely necessary that we should
learn to judge of the conduct of these men in
relation to their moral environment and the
stage of ethical advancement that they had
reached. If wisely and rigidly carried out,
this broad principle will go far to modify, if
not remove, those difficulties we have men
tioned. Individual cases may remain to be
estimated on their own merits and in their
historical connection. But once we have

1 Cf. Ottley, Aspects of Old' Testament, p. 181 ; Montefiore'a
Hibbert Lectures, App. I. ; Mozley, Ruling Ideas in Early Ages,
p. 235.

2 Prof. A. B. Bruce, Chief End of Revelation : " Grace sub
mitting to delay is only love consenting to be guided by
wisdom," p. 112.

SCRIPTURE AN ORGANIC WHOLE 7

grasped the unifying divine purpose that
threads all the parts of the Old Testament on
its one string, and have learned to regard
these parts in their relation to the whole
historical development, we shall not fail to
see " that the justification of the Old Testa
ment method lies, not in itself at any particular
stage, but in its result as a whole." 1

It is a fundamental canon of literature that,
before we presume to pass judgment on any
literary structure, we must know it not only in
its parts but in its totality. Partial views are
invariably mistaken views ; partial statements
always give an imperfect representation.
Critics will easily find difficulties in the Old
Testament that " violate every canon of con
science " if they do not make an effort to
understand the method of Revelation and the
divine purpose of grace that runs like a
golden thread through Hebrew history from
its beginning to its end.2 Let them be content
to glance only at portions of it, without seek
ing to comprehend the grandeur of its propor
tions and the purity and benevolence of its
aim as a whole, and it need not be to us a
matter of any wonder that they should miss
its true meaning. Just because they have not
looked at the morality of the Old Testament
in the light of the nation's strange history

1 Lux Mundi, p.. 329.

2 Cf. Kohler, Uber Bercchtigung der Kritik des Alt. Test.
p. 14.

8 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

and environment, they will blunder over the
incompleteness of its ethics, its rudimentary
legislation, and its defective sense of indi
vidual rights. But let us first regard these
Scriptures as a living organism ; l let us ascer
tain the genesis and the laws of the development
of the ethics that they teach ; let us under
stand the determining principle out of which
all originate, and to which they again yield a
rich return ; let us think ourselves back to the
exact circumstances of the time — and then we
shall see these moral truths in their correct
relation and perspective. And, in the light of
the whole, we shall estimate aright the relation
and significance of the various parts.

Many books and pamphlets have been
written on the moral difficulties of the Old
Testament ; but with the exception of a few,
they have dealt with them apart from the
ethical principles that underlie the structure
of the Old Testament Revelation. Need we,
then, wonder that the solutions and explana
tions have been almost as many as the
authors, and that scarcely one agrees with
another ? We have spent some time in read
ing through a number of these pamphlets and
books, and we have come from the study of
them with the conviction that until the
fundamental principles of Old Testament
ethics have first been established, it is worse
than useless to attempt the solution of these

1 Darmesteter, Les Prophets tf Israel, p. 11.

RELATION TO OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 9

problems. They can be explained, and the
justice and force of the explanation can be
appreciated, only in the combined light of the
progressive education of Israel and of the
character of that early dispensation. We
shall then see that the end is the test of a
progressive revelation, and that Jehovah, in
carrying out His moral purpose, was long-
suffering and gracious, and content for the sake
of ethical ends to " take Israel by the hand,"
and to lead him even as a nurse leads a child.
In addition to the advantages of such a
treatment, in relation to these moral problems,
other benefits will be apparent. Every science
is the better for being set in its own light,
and having its parts distributed according to
their organic connection. Christian ethics is
now being cultivated apart from the theology
of the New Testament, to the advantage of
the science, and with enormous benefit to
every student of Scripture, and every preacher
of divine truth. In like manner, it will be
found useful to give the ethics of the Old
Testament a separate treatment. Between
this science and Old Testament theology there
is a more intimate relation than between New
Testament theology and Christian ethics. For
the latter does not confine itself to the ethical
material given in the Gospels and Epistles,
else it should be called the ethics of the New
Testament. Its duty is to give due interpre
tation to the Christian consciousness of to-day,

10 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

as well as to that of the apostles. The spirit
of Christ still dwells in Christians and brings
forth the fruit of righteous character and holy
living. Christian ethics is therefore " the
science of the moral life determined by the
Spirit of God." l On the other hand, the
Ethics of the Old Testament is in its origin
and method historical. In no sense of the
word can it be called a speculative science. It
springs from an historical revelation, and it
must consistently pursue the historical method.

We fully grant to Old Testament theology
the right to deal with "the religious and the
moral life of Israel as a connected whole. "2 But
in this connection the ethics can receive only
a very incidental and subsidiary treatment.
We believe it will be found useful to remove
it from that subordinate position, and to give
it a treatment by itself. It has its own
ground, its own essence, and its own great
end. And these can be rightly set forth only
when it is exhibited in its integrity and his
torical development.

The two sciences have much in common,
but the aim of each will determine its method.
Biblical theology deals with the objective
revelation contained in the Old Testament.
Ethics looks at that revelation as the rule to
which Israel must subjectively rise. The

1 Rabiccr, Tlieol. Ency. § 43.

2 Sdhult/, Old Testament Theology, chap. i. (T. & T. Clark's
trans.) ; A. B. Bruce, op. cit. 308, 329.

AN ETHICS OF HOPE 11

former will unfold that wonderful organism of
divine deeds and testimonies which begins
with the creation, and advances towards its
completion in the Person and Work of Christ
The latter will show how Israel was to co
operate in this purpose of grace as a free
agent, and how that purpose met and satisfied
ethical wants. The goal of Old Testament
theology is Jesus Christ, the mystery hid from
ages, but revealed in the fulness of time ; the
goal of ethics is the moral perfection of Israel,
and, through Israel, the realisation of the
world-wide kingdom of God. Hence it is that
we must speak of Old Testament ethics as an
ethics of hope. The full reconciliation of man
with God, the total removal of the terrible
discord that divides them in the Old Testa
ment, is yet to come. The perfect morality lies
in the future.1 Its complete realisation is to be
found in the world-embracing kingdom of God.
This contrast will be referred to again in
suceeding chapters ; but unless it be firmly
grasped at the outset, the ethics of the Old
Testament will be burdened with unnecessary
difficulties. In Christianity alone does morality
reach its perfection, since there alone man has
attained to a full consciousness of sin, and has
risen through redemption to moral freedom.

1 Heb. viii. 13 : "That which is becoming old and waxeth
aged is nigh unto vanishing away/' A. B. Bruce, Apologetics,
p. 323. Of. the language of Gal. iii. 23 : " Before faith came,
we were being kept in ward, shut up under the law unto
the faith which should afterwards be revealed."

12 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

But in the Old Testament man is only a pupil,
to be educated by a wholesome discipline of
law into a knowledge of his sinfulness and of
his need of deliverance from sin's yoke. Not
yet has God Himself, the objective ground of
ethics, been personally and historically re
vealed by the Incarnate Son. Not yet has
the Divine Spirit written His Law upon the
heart of His people. The Israelite is still
conscious of an antithesis subsisting betwixt
him and Jehovah, and lives only in a hope,
sustained and fed by sacrifice and symbol, of
a coming reconciliation. Still is his adoption
into true sonship distant, though he is encour
aged in many ways to strive to realise it. The
command to him is an outward thing, a yoke
and a burden. If a faithful son of Abraham,
he will give to it the obedience of a true
servant ; but he cannot dare to rise up into
the assured communion and frankness of one
that is a freeborn son. He is still subject to
the divine pedagogic spoken of by St. Paul
in Gal. iii. 19 : "Wherefore then serveth the
law ? It was added because of transgressions
till the seed should come to whom the pro
mise was made. ... 24. Wherefore the law
was our schoolmaster (tutor) to brine: us to
Christ"1

1 Oebler's Old Testament Theology, § 5 (T. & T. Clark) ;
Ewald'a Lehre der Bibel von Gott, chap. i. If.; Dalman, Das
Alte Testament ein Wort Gottes, p. 9.

ETHICS OF PAGAN ANTIQUITY 13

I. CONTRAST BETWEEN THE ETHICS OF THE
OLD TESTAMENT AND THE ETHICS OF
PAGAN ANTIQUITY

Between the ethics of pagan antiquity and
that of the Old Testament there is a difference
of the widest and most radical kind. There
is no trace of gradual transition from the one
to the other. That difference is first seen in
the pagan conception of God and of man's
ethical relationship to Him. When God is
conceived of as a great nature power, it is im
possible for man to stand in free relationship
to such a deity. If God is but another name
for the cosmos, which is clothed with all the
attributes of deity, then personal relations
with such a divinity are out of the question,
and morality becomes but a calculus of pru
dential obedience and adjustment to a power
greater than man. Now, as distinguished from
the ethics of the Old Testament, where the
relations of man to God are all-important,
we find that the attention of heathendom is
directed mainly, if not altogether, to man's
relations to the natural world, or to the
supersensible world of abstract being. But
since to paganism the deity was only another
name for the cosmos, or (as Plotinus would
have said) for the highest kind of abstract
being, the result was that the Greek and
the Alexandrian never realised their personal

14 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

relationship to God. In fact they could not,
from their ethical point of view, rise beyond
the morality of the state, or that morality
which would realise its ideal by abstraction
from all that is earthly and sensuous. But
where morality is merged in politics, or where
the ethical life is conceived of as deliverance
from the defilements of corporeal life, or as
a mystical elevation to some supersensuous
sphere, it is clear that no progress in ethics is
possible. We need not wonder, therefore, if
in Greece and Home the sphere of morals did
not stretch beyond the narrow limits of nature,
and was never regarded as including anything
more than national and tribal law. It follows
from this that it was essentially a morality
between man and man. For where man's
relation to a personal God is not apprehended,
anything approaching an universal ethic is
impossible, and only individual virtues can be
manifested. Ethics was thus deprived of its
unity. An individual might be esteemed for
his generosity though lacking in the counter
balancing virtue of thrift ; or the sin of un-
chastity might be glossed over by the offender's
patriotism. Morality became but a catalogue
of separate virtues, and was deprived of that
penetrating bond of union which it receives
when the realm of human personalities is
bound by innumerable links to the great
central personality, God.

Even as between man and man, this

ETHICS OF PAGAN ANTIQUITY 15

morality was not unlimited. Plato could not
speak of it as valid for the slaves, without
whose help, notwithstanding, he believed
society was unable to exist. Regarding
virtue as right insight into life, as simply
knowledge of a superior kind, he was con
vinced such knowledge could not be mastered
by slaves. The path to virtue was conse
quently a royal road, open only to the elite
of mankind — the philosophers, who were able
to take high flights of thought beyond this
earth's horizon into that spiritual ether where
God dwelt. The cultivation of ethical truth
was not for slaves and such-like ; it was the
proper task and privilege of the aristocracy of
talent. This is a view which contradicts the
essential idea of morality, and differs toto
ccelo from that of the Old Testament. Plato
has, no doubt, an apprehension of man being
made in the image of God, since he urges his
pupils to aim at likeness to God as the highest
good, and affirms that mundane life should be
shaped after the model of the divine ideas.
But this likeness to God is never spoken of
with any assurance. And to Plato the real
relation of mankind in general to God remains
an uncertainty.

Any bond that the philosophy of the
Academy sought to weave between morality
and religion was entirely dissolved by Aris
totle. According to the latter, conduct has
no relation to the supramundane realm, but

10 THE ETHICS OK THE OLD TESTAMENT

only to the state. Obedience to God is out of
the question, since He has no ethical relation
to man. Morality springs entirely from our
rational nature ; and being confined in the
sphere of its action to the state, it assumes of
necessity a political aspect. And hence it
came about in the life of the Greeks that
religion and morality were totally dissevered,
and we find at last in that country the lament
able resultant of an irreligious morality and
an immoral religion.

How different all this is from the conception
of ethics prevalent throughout the Old Testa
ment ! There the personal, living God is set
forth as the ground of morals, and all good
is absolutely referred to His will.1 Morality
revolves around Him as the planets around
the sun. He is the sublime prototype, the
personally holy pattern after which man's life
must be shaped. And He rules this world for
the good of all His creatures, alike the free
man and the slave, the barbarian and the
Greek. That antagonism between moral ex
istence and a non-moral fate, which was such a
standing riddle to the Greek mind, finds its
ready solution in the divine goodness, which
is ever ruling the world and guiding it on to
its future goal. The starting-point is the
infinitely holy God ; and the end of it all is

1 Cf. Prof. W. R. Smith, Prophets, pp. 10-14 ; Ladd, Doctrine
of Sacred Scripture, i. p. 737 ff. On the other side, cf. Schultz,
Old Testament Theology, i. pp. 17-23.

ETHICS OF PAGAN ANTIQUITY 17

the perfection of man living in communion
with that same Divine Father, and in a life of
true moral freedom.1

But the radical defect in ancient ethics is
the absence of the knowledge of sin. To
whatever moral height Greek philosophers
attain, it is here that they all come short.
When the ground principle of morals was
the vow, it was impossible to bring the
/MfTavota within the sphere of obligation, far
less to feel that deep penitence which breathes
in the fifty-first psalm. Pagan ethics spoke
of evil ; and the problem of suffering caused
by that evil lay heavily on its heart. But it
thought of it as something isolated, or else as
a necessity of things lying behind all human
guilt. The Old Testament, on the other
hand, opens with the story of man's fall from
purity, and speaks of sin as originating in
man's free choice. Sin is direct antagonism

O

to the will of a holy and just God. Paganism,
looking to man's relationship to the powers of
nature, saw only the inevitable suffering that
must ensue. But the Old Testament, looking
to man's personal relationship to God, saw the
foulness of his sin as it issued forth from his
own guilty heart.2 It is injustice, it is un-

1 Of. Kirkpatrick, Doctrine of the Prophets, p. 175 ff. ; Jukes,
Naines of God, pp. 138-140 ; Riehni, Alt. Theologie, p. 61 ;
Prof. Robertson, Early Religion of Israel, p. 298.

8 " To the ancient Jew, man is pre-eminently an ethical
being, and his speculative ability is quite secondary. Heb
raism is further unique in this respect, that it clearly sees that

3

18 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

merited suffering, it is evil, that is known to
Greek and Latin poetry ; it is personal trans
gression, it is sin, that is the burden of the
prophets of Israel.1 Accordingly, to Plato
evil seems inherent in this world of sense and
corporeity, and there is no possibility of van
quishing it ; the highest good is to transcend
it by a flight into the world of supersensuous
ideas. But in Israel there is an expectation of
deliverance from sin. A great hope is set
before it of a Messiah, a Servant of God. who
will break the spell of evil and will inaugurate
a world-wide reign of righteousness.

II. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF OLD
TESTAMENT ETHICS

It is advisable, before entering on historical
details, to present to our readers, at the begin
ning, the general characteristics of this science.
Principles are apt to be lost sight of amid a
multitude of details. It will give the reader a
better grasp of the subject if at this point we
briefly sketch the ethical view of life and of
history found in the Old Testament. As was
said, there is no such thing as scientific form

o

the disorder in man's nature is deeper than any intellectual
impotence, deeper, too, than the opposition of the appetites
and the reason ; that it is a breach in his being, caused by his
own self-will." W. L. Davidson, Theism «n<l Human Nature,
p. 52. Burnett Lectures.

1 Cf. Riehm, Einleitung in das A. T. i. p. 351 ; Ottley,
Aspects of the Oil Testament, pp. 233-235.

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 19

attaching to this subject. Yet it must not
be supposed that it is devoid of consistency,
or that a doctrine of Supreme Good does
not pervade it. Unsystematic though it
may seem at first, we shall discover that
a great moral purpose runs through the
whole of the history of Israel, and that its
ethics has a distinct doctrine of Good and
of Duty.

Now, in the Old Testament, the Supreme
Good is nothing less for Adam than the
realisation of the divine image in himself.
Man as created and coming from the plastic
hands of God is made to complete in his own
nature his likeness to God. He is designed to
live a free personal life in communion with his
Maker, and evermore to grow up into God-
likeness. Man is the masterpiece of Creation,
and is therefore to have dominion over all the
other creatures. He is their chorsegus and
master, giving voice to their inarticulate cries,
and expression to their needs.

Pagan ethics usually spoke of man as
mastered by nature, as its slave and victim.
But the Old Testament opens with the story ol
man standing with his foot over nature, and in
the enjoyment of personal liberty. Adam's
superiority over the animal is shown by his
giving names, at God's command, to all the
beasts of the field and the fowls of heaven.
Language is the manifestation of man's domi
nant power ; he who can name the lower

20 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

animals has by his free intelligence risen above
that sphere in which they move.1

But this ideal state does not long continue.
A Fall takes place, and all is changed.
What was a blessing becomes a curse, and the
Highest Good is thrown forward into the far
distant future of a Messianic hope. Old
Testament ethics does not linger in the realm
of the ideal. It at once recognises the fact
that man no longer lives in a state of moral
innocency, and that the capacity of virtue
implies the possibility of falling from it. Sin
has become an actualised fact. And so there
arises on the part of man a long struggle
against evil, constituting a history which we
know to have been shaped by God to higher
ends.

The Messianic hope begins to brighten
upon man's vision, and henceforward the
Highest Good becomes a great world-historical
goal. God now separates to Himself from
surrounding peoples the man of faith and his
family ; he who gives God unconditional
obedience, who trusts Him implicitly, becomes
the father of a nation through whom all the
world is to be blessed. The Supreme Good is

1 A discussion regarding the sources or scientific value of the
"Narrative of the Origins" is here irrelevant or only of
secondary importance. The narrative is essentially poetical in
form ; and this form was a very suitable medium for expressing
the fundamental thought of true religion. Scientific interest,
if it existed then at all, had an entirely subordinate place in
the religious thought of an Israelite.

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 21

not to be realised in any narrow particularism
that would limit the divine favour to one
family or one land. For a time, till the seed
should come to whom the promise was made,
it may be so. But the ultimate goal,1 to
which the whole Old Testament moves, is the
establishment of a kingdom of righteousness,
in which all shall share in the blessings pro
mised to the faithful patriarch ; and they
shall be called Abraham's children who have
Abraham's faith.

As we shall afterwards see, at certain times
Israel lost sight of this goal, and proved un
worthy of the divine election. But their seers
and prophets ever set it before them ; they
dwell upon it with much eloquence as the
grand consummation of their national history.
Through Law and Prophets, through Psalms
and Wisdom Literature, this fundamental con
ception of the chief end of Israel's existence
has a continuous, unhesitating development.
The most strenuous moral effort of the nation
is to be directed to making their land God's
land, to realise in their home in Palestine " a

1 All Hebrew history is dominated by this purpose of grace,
and there is too little recognition of this divine teleology in the
writers of the Graf-Wellhausen school, while at the same time
they frankly recognise the unique and the extraordinary in
Old Testament history. But the abiding value of the Old
Testament lies mainly in the fact " that it guarantees to us
with absolute certainty the fact and purpose of a divine plan
and way of salvation which found its conclusion and fulfil
ment in the New Covenant, in the Person and Work of Jesus
Christ." Kautzsch on Halle's Lecture, Du Bleibende Bedeutuny
des Alt. Test. p. 28.

22 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

symbol of the eternal home, a shadow of the
Supreme Good."

It is true that, in the course of this ethical
education of Israel, earthly goods are spoken of
in themselves as an end of man's moral effort,
and as a mark of the divine approbation of
obedience. The idea of the Highest Good at
first is the enjoyment in Canaan of those
material blessings that the heart of man de
lights in. The reward of righteous service
shall be unblighted oliveyards and vineyards,
springs of water and flocks of cattle, and all
that can add to the material prosperity of a
nation. The wife shall be as a fruitful vine,
the children as olive plants ; there shall be
peace in the borders, and plenty in the home,
long life, and lasting posterity. But it will be
found that, in the interpretation of the Cove
nant given by the prophets, this thought of
the good is enriched with ethical contents, and
becomes ultimately the sum of all earthly
goods crowned with the blessing of fellowship
with God. So that the ethics of the Old
Testament cannot be charged with eudaemou-
ism, nor with filling out its conception of
moral good by means of utilities alone. It
does allow room for these utilitarian values ;
but the external blessings are of worth only
when they are conjoined with the higher
blessings of God's favour and presence.

The prophets indeed teach that it may yet
happen that these temporal goods shall vanish,

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 23

and that the very land and homestead in
Israel may be reft from the family to whom for
generations it belonged. But amid such de
privation of earthly goods, God Himself shall
become their greater treasure. Habakkuk
gives voice to this conviction of a rich inherit
ance in Jehovah : — " For though the fig-tree
shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the
vines ; the labour of the olive shall fail, and
the fields shall yield no meat ; the flock shall
be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no
herd in the stalls : yet I will rejoice in the
Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation "
(Hab. iii. 17, 18).

It is to be observed that this conception of
the Highest Good in Israel is never that of an
individual good. The modern theory of in
dividualism, which has been one of the ruling
ideas of the clay, had not taken possession of
the Hebrew mind. The truth of a personal
immortality had not yet been brought to light.
Rather that conception of collectivism, which
appears to be rising on the political horizon
of to-day, dominates the Old Testament.
Morality is based, not upon the individual
conscience, but upon the collective conscience
of the nation. It is the people of Israel, and
not the individual Israelite, that the prophets
know as Jehovah's elect one. The servant in
Isaiah to whom the blessings are promised is
the nation of Israel. The Messianic thought
that is embedded in this phrase is constantly

24 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

expanding throughout the Old Testament ;
and it tends to keep the interests of the
individual out of sight. The hope of the
saints was for a great national Deliverer
rather than for a personal Redeemer.1 Even
when in the Psalms we hear the cry of some
lonely penitent heart after purity, along with
it the voice of righteous indignation against
God's enemies is also heard, speaking rather in
national than in individual tones. Indeed, it
is impossible to explain the intense yearning
for vengeance on the foes of Israel, found in
the Psalms, except on the ground that the
writers feel they are but voicing a national
sentiment.

The distribution of the task of Ethics re
quires us also to notice the mode in which this
Highest Good is to be realised, that is, the Old
Testament doctrine of virtue. And here that
doctrine assumes the very simplest form. The
objective principle of Old Testament morality
is just the will and the character of God, as
revealed to man. The basis of Ethics is not
found in the moral consciousness, since sin has
defaced the image of God in man, and the
human spirit requires to be awakened to its
deepest needs. God speaks and man must

1This is not inconsistent with the fact that the sense of
individuality tended to grow with the growing experience of
elect souls. In the Captivity, personal religion became the
stay of the lonely. It was to souls capable of such yearnings
that there came the hope of an undying life. Pss. xvi. 10,
lix. 15.

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES '25

obey. The will of Jehovah is the one ethically
good thing for Israel, for it is the will of the
covenant God, who has chosen them to be
"the people of His own possession. " By divers
portions and in divers manners was it revealed
unto the fathers by the prophets.1 Sometimes
by the giving at a critical turning-point of
history of a name, which conveyed a con
ception of God's character, such as Israel at
that moment pre-eminently required. Some
times by direct communications of His mind
to the men of faith, whose prompt obedience
had rendered them fit instruments for His use.
Sometimes through neither patriarchs, nor
prophets, nor godly women, but in deeds of
wondrous grace and condescending love ;
deeds which, when taken in their right con
nection, constituted a history that presented

>s, in many parts : for it was a process occupying
many stages, in each of which the progressive continuity of
revelation was affirmed. This implies that the Writer of the
Epistle to the Hebrews recognises that Christianity is rooted
in the preceding dispensation, and that each epoch in Israel's
history was a preparation for the next. Therefore at no time
in the Old Testament was the evolving purpose of God
discerned in its completeness. The Old Testament supplies a
rule that is ever improving on itself. iroXvrpoTroir, by various
methods ; so we must not confound law with prophecy, nor
poetry with history. Therefore literary creations may have
been used as well as theophanies to teach men of God. The
dramatic poem of the Book of Job is written with a lofty
didactic purpose. Jehovah might condescend to an allegorical
narrative to foreshadow a coming Messiah. A large latitude
of interpretation is here very desirable. The Oriental and
not the Occidental mind should be the standard of what is

Srobable in the methods of Old Testament revelation. Cf.
ttley, Aspects of Old Testament, p. 162.

26 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

unquestionable marks of being divinely shaped
and moulded. It must not be forgotten that
Revelation is not of necessity tied down to
the prophetical record, and that it may be
given in the form of a national history of
wondrous deliverances, no less than in the
shape of a book.1 At the heart of Israel's
history, behind the many miraculous deeds
wrought by Jehovah in defence of His people,
lay the manifestation of His loving will and
gracious purpose. The plagues sent on Egypt
were designed, not less to be a punishment for
Pharaoh's hard-heartedness, than a revelation
of God's love, and an encouragement to Moses
to continue in the path of simple obedience to
the divine behest. The acts no less than the
words of Jehovah declared His will ; and it
was this that gave these acts their special
form and significance.2

And when Israel had been led out of Egypt,
and found itself a nation, with need of govern
ment and worship, then did Jehovah reveal
His will in that law which was not only a
1/0/405 TMV evro\(t)v (Eph. ii. 15), a law that both
commands and demands, but was also a reve
lation of the gracious relationship in which
He stood to His people. Though it was given

1 Cf.Rothe, Zur Dogmatik, p. 78 ; Prof. Bruce, The Chief Design
of Revelation, chap. i. ; Orr, Problem of Old Testament, p. 63.

* The whole history of Israel is dominated by the idea of
a divine purpose. Its teleological character gives unity to all
the books which contain it. Cf. Dorner, Syst. of Doct. i. p.
274 : " Israel ha? the idea of teleology as a kind of soul."

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 27

in flaming fire from Sinai's thundering top,
aiid beard by Israel with awestruck counte
nance, yet it was a revelation of a loving will
and not of an offended Sovereign Justice.
" Did ever people hear the voice of. God
speaking out of the midst of the fire, us thou
hast heard, and live ? Or hath God assayed to
go and take Him a nation from the midst of
another nation, by signs, and wonders, and
war, and by a mighty hand, . . . according to
all that the Lord your God hath done for
you in Egypt before your eyes?" (Deut. iv.
32, 33). In that Law the Divine Will was
explicitly laid down in commandments which
were to regulate the order of the whole
commonwealth, in all its social, religious, and
political relations, and to shape the daily life
of the people, so that they might always live
in loving communion with God.1

On the other hand, the subjective principle
of Old Testament morality is a free, loving
obedience to this holy will of God. Every
where in these Scriptures is obedience, un
hesitating, implicit, trustful, commended as
the primary virtue of the faithful. No analysis
of man's consciousness, to find a ground for
morals, is ever attempted. Has God spoken ?
If so, it is enough. Or has He revealed His
will by deeds and miraculous providences?

1 Ottley, op. cit. p. 75 ; Riehm, Alt. Theologie, p. 35, says :
" Im alten Bunde eine Erlosung des Volkes von ausserlicher
Knechtschaft, im neuen eine Erlosung aller einzelnen von
geistlicher Knechtschaft."

28 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Then no more is needed to induce Israel to
obey. Still we shall find that during the
ethical progress which is made by the nation,
the motives to such obedience become in
creasingly moralised, and that the obedience
of the faithful servant tends to develop into
the joyful communion of the loving child.
This obedience to God is by the prophets
enriched with new moral contents, and the
fear of God is united with the love of God.
The Psalms of the post-exilic period speak of
the Law as an object of constant meditation
and of love ; while the Wisdom Literature
throughout regards it with the deepest rever
ence, and all individual action is regulated by
the principles of fidelity and righteousness.1

But there was another aspect than that of
grace in the Sinaitic Law. The command
ment at first was outward and positive, uncon
genial to man's inner nature. Its definite
purpose, under this aspect, was to bring an
indictment against the life, and to work only
wrath (Rom. iv. 15). " The law came in
beside, that the trespass might abound." "I
had not known sin except through the law."
It was a yoke, and not an inner principle at
one with man's personality. Whence it is

1 " Alles ein/elne Handeln regelt sich nach den Grundsatzen
der Treue gegen diesen Zweck der Gerechtigkeit, Zuver-
lassigkeit, und Gute. Daa ausserliche und das kultische
Handeln treten zuriick, oder ordnen sich in die Treue gegen
Gottes Zweck in Israel ein." Schultz, Studien und Kritiken,
1890, Ites Heft, S. 57.

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 29

clear that the motive of the moral life at first
was not love but simple compliance with the
will of Jehovah, whose one desire was the
good of Israel. But this obedience is to be
one of faith, a trust unhesitating and un
qualified. And this obedient faith, as exhibited
in such saints as Abraham, Moses, Caleb,
Joshua, brings with it every Old Testament
blessing, whilst its absence is equally marked
in the king whose disobedience caused the
Spirit of the Lord to depart from him.

As simple obedience to God's command is
virtue, so disobedience is sin. In the instance
quoted above, Saul might have had good
reasons for refusing to delay any longer. Yet
Samuel has no hesitation in declaring his disobe
dience a sin of such magnitude that it would
cost him his kingdom. It was rebellion against
the will of God on the part of God's chief
minister, and that was enough. In the strik
ing language of that prophet, " rebellion is as
the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as
idolatry and teraphim. Because thou hast
rejected the word of the Lord, He has also
rejected thee from being king " (1 Sam. xv. 23).
It follows from this that the sin of sins, in the
Old Testament that which in the Decalogue is
first condemned, because it cuts the very roots
of obedience, is the sin of apostatising from
God, and falling into idolatry.1

1 Wellhausen and Montetiore (in his Hibbert Lectures)
question the authenticity of the second commandment because

30 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

From this brief statement of the Funda
mental Principles of Old Testament Ethics it
will be see that it is a preparatory Ethics.
Much training had to be done by it before
Israel was redeemed from the grossness of the
life of Egypt, and the stubbornness of the
wilderness, and converted into " vessels meet
for the Master's use." It is a morality in
which stages of progress can be traced through
the patriarchal period, through Mosaism and
prophetism ; and in which we shall find a con
stant deepening of the sense of sinfulness. It
was intended to prepare the chosen people for
that time when, what was lacking in the
Decalogue should be supplied, and the
power td make men keep God's Law should
be given in the God-man Jesus Christ, " who
in His true manhood presents the Law in
living form, who is personal Virtue, and who
for this very reason becomes also the prime
source of the realisation of the End for which

its observance " seems to have been unknown throughout the
older period of history." But even in the time of the prophets
the people lapsed again and again. And the analogy of the
later times makes it quite credible that a spiritual worship
was enjoined as an ideal in the Pentateuch, though it did not
prevent occasional declensions to a lower standard. This
account of the lapses in the Wilderness is surely much more
probable than the other, that the second commandment is a
late addition to the first kernel of the Decalogue document.
The whole language of the Prophets implies that Mosaism
had laid the foundations of Israel's polity in a lofty concep
tion of God's holiness as the essential element in acceptable
worship. Cf. A. B. Bruce, Apologetics, 212 ; Ottley, op. cit. p.
172.

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 31

the world was made, that is, of the king
dom of God, ... in which Law, Virtue,
and the Highest Good have become united
and blended."

1 Dorner, System of Christian Ethicx, p. 53 (Clark's trans
lation).

CHAPTER II

THE ETHICAL CHARACTER OF THE OLD
TESTAMENT REVELATION

THE moral and religious teaching of the Old
Testament is given in connection with the
history of God's chosen people. Israel's his
tory is more than the history of Egypt, or of
Palestine. It embodies, and is meant to
embody, a divine Revelation. Israel is a
people selected by God for the purpose of
realising in its religion the salvation of the
whole race. Without any false supernatural-
ism being introduced, the nation in its historic
growth becomes the instrument through which
is mediated to mankind a revelation of grace.
Consequently the religion and the ethics of
the Old Testament are always set forth in a
natural form. They grow with the people's
growth and strengthen with the people's
strength. The divine power works at the
heart of the history, yet there is nothing
violently unnatural about it. The people
realise that they stand in personal and moral
relations to a personal and moral Deity, and

ETHICS OF OLD TESTAMENT REVELATION 33

therefore the ethics of the Old Testament has
both a theistic and a naturalistic basis.

Before going further, it is necessary to
notice here the attempt made by some critics,
in adjusting the religion and morals of Israel
to the modern doctrine of evolution, to derive
the ethical monotheism of the Old Testament
from purely natural sources. Since the time of
Hegel it has been customary, in one school of
philosophy, to speak of the idea of Jehovah as
having sprung out of the worship of nature.
The religion of Israel is represented as one of
the necessary stadia in the course of the jour
ney which primeval man had to make between
the religion of nature and that of spirit. It
is one of the moments, just as were the reli
gions of Greece and Rome, in the development
of monotheism out of heathen polytheism.
Of the three religions, indeed, it is spoken of
by Hegel as being far from the highest. So
far from bringing God and man into closer
relations, the Old Testament religion seemed
to him to make their separation more complete
than ever, and to remove the Godhead to a re
moteness of sublimity that rendered faith next
to impossible. In the later Hegelian school
of the left, however, there is recognition made
of Judaism as an intermediate stage between
the pagan religions and that of the New Testa
ment, the stage of authority and law, as con
trasted with Christianity, the stage of reason.

The recent theory of Graf and Wellhausen

4

34 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

is neither so meagre nor so mistaken as these,
although it is impossible to reconcile it with
some positive statements made in the Old
Testament, and with a number of salient facts
occurring in the history. This view represents
the religion of Israel, not as originating in a
divine act or acts of grace, but as springing
from a purely natural source. Jehovah, the
God of Israel, is spoken of as if He were
developed out of a family, or tribal deity.
The conception of the great " I Am " is the
genuine outcome, is the legitimate product, of
nature worship ; 1 and no other origin is
admitted. In this way the distinctive charac
teristics of Old Testament Revelation and of
Israel's history are obliterated. The conscious
ness which Israel possesses, and which the
prophets repeatedly express, of being called
of God by acts of divine power to a special
mission , is very largely ignored. And attempts
are made so to accentuate the resemblances, and
minimise the differences, between the religion
of Israel and that of surrounding heathen
nations, as that the differentia of the elect
people shall no longer be visible. Everything
in its history comes into it from natural
sources. No theocratic element can be per
mitted to be introduced ab extra. Such an
element is there ; but it, too, is a growth from
a natural basis. The genius of Israel will

1 Vide Wellhausen's History of Israel, p. 433, and Kuenec'i
Prophet* and Prophecy in Israel,

ETHICS OF OLD TESTAMENT REVELATION 35

sufficiently account for what Kuenen called its
ethical monotheism.

But we have good reason for refusing to
admit that this ethical monotheism is a
natural upward growth from a previous poly
theism. So far from its being such, it was
directly opposed to the ancient beliefs of the
Semitic peoples. These races were unable to
rise to the conception of a holy and moral
Deity, exalted above nature, and with power to
control it for ethical ends.1 They were content
to rest in a belief in a plurality of gods
governing the world of which they themselves
formed an integral portion. The monotheism
of Israel was entirely opposed to the idea,
cherished on both political and religious
grounds by the nations contemporary with
the chosen people, that each people, and even
each tribe, possessed its own peculiar deity,
whose worship secured the return of reciprocal
benefits, and laid upon them corresponding
obligations. Indeed we know, from the
historical record of the Old Testament, that
this opinion often asserted itself with great
strength among the Hebrews. It was nothing
else than this that led them to those frequent
lapses into idolatry, which would otherwise, in
view of their unique history, be inexplicable.

1 Prof. Orr says : " While recognising higher elements in
these religions, ever, however, becoming dimmer as we recede
from their source, we find them one and all, in historical times,
grossly, growingly, and incurably polytheistic and corrupt."
Problem of Old Testament, p. 41.

36 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

But those lapses only go to prove that the
natural element was all the while present in
Israel, and that ethical monotheism was not
the natural outcome of Semitic genius. If
the religion of Israel had only nature as its
basis, then the difficulty arises, How could the
idea of God, the Holy One, who hates all sin,
be developed out of nature-worship ? And if,
for the moment, we admit the possibility of
such a development, where are the historical
facts that go to support it ? The characteristic
marks of the Jehovah religion are found not in
points of similarity, but in features of positive
difference from the other Semitic religions.

From the bare monolatry of which men
like Kuenen and Stade speak, it would have
been morally impossible for Israel to climb up
by natural steps to the ethical monotheism of
the prophets, which regards Jehovah as the
only true God, and as the Ruler, not of one
nation, but of the whole earth.1 In these
features of it, the religion of Israel presents
points of sharpest antagonism to the beliefs
of contiguous races. In its most essential and
characteristic elements it is opposed to them.
In their first conception of it, the character
of Jehovah appeared to His people a moral
character.2 From the very beginning of their

1 Vide Kuenen, Nat. Religions, pp. 113, 118; Stade,
Geschichte, Bd. i. pp. 430, 439.

2 The Book of Genesis is throughout monotheistic, God
being Creator of the world and of man ; Who also sends the
Flood on the ungodly, and Whose hand is at work in Meso^

ETHICS OF OLD TESTAMENT REVELATION 37

national career, the idea of holiness was
present. This central attribute, since it was
not a development of the national spirit, must
therefore have been revealed. The Israelite
mind was ever too prone to dwell upon the
mere attribute of strength in Jehovah, and to
rely on this as their sure defence against their
enemies. They believed the divine might
was so pledged to their side that God must
support their battalions, even though it were
at the expense of His righteousness.1 But
the prophetical teaching contradicts this
popular idea, and reiterates the truth, that the
very sufferings that come on the nation, come
from the righteous hand of the Lord, whose
hatred of sin is such that, He will severely
punish His own people that offend, and will
rather let them be vanquished than aid them
in a wrong cause. It was quite within the
scope of His educative purpose to permit a
national disaster, such as captivity, to befall
Israel, with a view to their purification by
such painful discipline, and to the strengthen
ing of their moral and spiritual fibre. This
is admitted by all the best representatives
of the religious consciousness in the nation.

potamia and Egypt as much as in Palestine. And that book,
at least in its JE parts, originated " in the pre-prophetic age."
In the other Pentateuchal books there is always drawn a
sharp contrast between Jehovah and the " gods of Egypt." In
these books there is at the same time a deepening and
purifying of the conception of God's character.
1 Of. Lux Mundi, pp. 161, 162.

38 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

The prophets invariably ascribe such a moral
purpose to Jehovah. But since this contra
dicted the popular creed, and in many
instances went right against the grain of
Israel, it is evident that it was the result of
direct revelation from Heaven, and not a
natural product of the people.1

From Israel's personal relationship to this
wise and holy God emerges the ethical view
of life which is common to the Old Testament.
Such a view was not gained through a process
of reflection on man's moral nature, but was
certified to the people by much discipline,
and by direct teaching on the part of God's
servants. Throughout the whole history of
Abraham and his descendants, this assurance
of their being set apart, and called to live a
moral life, asserts itself. Abraham's nephew,
dwelling in polluted Sodom, is conscious of
his ethical superiority to its inhabitants, and
his righteous soul is vexed with their filthy
conversation. The feeling of intense revul-

1 Evolution rather than revelation is the guiding idea of
the Critical School. If it is a God-guided evolution and not
a naturalistic process, it is really a divine revelation. That
Abraham and Moses believed it to be God-guided is clear ;
while the very function of Prophecy was to show that what
looks at first like a purely naturalistic process is to believing
eye» transfigured into divine guidance. And even when this
controlling hand of God in history was not consciously
realised by the men of the age, yet to some extent it moulded
their thought and directed their acts. If we speak of evolu
tion, we must take care that we never forget the great
principle that the end explains the beginning and the con
summation interprets the process.

ETHICS OP OLD TESTAMENT REVELATION 39

sion to the crime produced throughout the
land by the story of the Levite and his con
cubine (Judg. xx.), is a proof that the people
felt they occupied a level of morality far
superior to that of the Canaanitish races. In
the Levitical code this finds very clear expres
sion : " After the doings of the laud of Egypt,
wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do ; and after
the doings of the laud of Canaan whither I
bring you, shall ye not do : neither shall ye
walk in their ordinances" (Lev. xviii. 3).
After detailing the crimes and immoralities
which they are forbidden to commit, it con
tinues (vers. 26, 27) : " For all these abomina
tions have the men of the land done which
were before you, and the land is defiled ; but
ye shall keep my statutes and my judgments,
and shall not commit any of these abomina
tions : I am the Lord your God."

The subject is one that might be discussed
at great length. But so much we have felt
bound to say as essential to the purpose of
this volume. No proof, worthy of the name
of evidence, has yet been adduced to show
that this consciousness of Israel's personal
relation to a moral Ruler, and of their ethical
superiority over other races, was reached by
philosophic thought, or by a train of
reasoning.1 It springs out of that historic

1 If the historicity of the leading events in the life of Moses
be accepted as given in what is now called the Triple
Tradition of the Exodus, then it is undeniable that Israel

40 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

covenant relationship which was established
by God between Himself and the people of
His choice. Through this relation Israel
attained to its conception of one holy and
true God, a God who has His people's moral
good so much at heart that, to perfect it, He
will not spare them many bitter trials.

received through him a revelation which implied nothing less
than Ethical Monotheism. All the ritual of ceremonial in
stitutions is but a scaffolding to protect this ethical core
from harm. When it is said that the Prophets were " the
Creators of ethical monotheism," it cannot be maintained
that this was merely the result of reflection or of higher
culture. This doctrine was not new to the prophets ; but
it is true that they proclaimed it with such tremendous
emphasis that it came to the nation with the force of practi
cally a new truth, and under conditions of distress that made
it a most helpful doctrine to all earnest souls ; then for the
first time the common people, as distinct -from elect minds,
grasped this truth and believed the God of Israel to be indeed
a God of righteousness. But the belief had been the implicit
faith of all the saints in Pentateuchal times. Cf. A. B. Bruce,
Apologetics, p. 176 ; Ottley, Aspects of Old Teslam-ent, chap. vi.
" The idea of Revelation cannot be regarded as a mere
Hebrew conception which, translated into modern thought,
means nothing but the natural operations of the mind in the
sphere of religion. Such a view leaves unexplained the con
sciousness of the prophets, the contents of their prophecies,
and the religious life which they manifested. . . . The O.T.
conception of God is that of a Person with ethical attributes."
Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible, vol. ii. p. 197.

CHAPTER III

THE DETERMINATIVE PRINCIPLE OF MORALITY
IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

IN every code of morals the essential thing is
to bring some quickening positive principle
into vital touch with human life. If, on the
one hand, the task set before us be to realise
a good so transcendental that it can have no
practical contact with the common life of the
busy world, it may be a morality for dreamers
and sentimentalists, but it is powerless to
shape the life of the mass of mankind. If, on
the other hand, pleasure is the sole end of life
and the measure of the good, then man's
moral life-task is degraded into a doctrine of
prudent calculus, guided by the principle of
self-love. While again, if a dualism be main
tained between matter and spirit, and the
life-aim be to reach a Stoic indifference to
everything but virtue, and to maintain a
constant contest of the spirit with our physical
nature, virtue is apt to develop into a proud
self-sufficiency or into a suicidal contempt of
the earthly life ; and man himself becomes the
measure of all things.

42 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Among the people of God in the Old Testa
ment, religion escaped these extremes. They
did not dream of making themselves the
judges of virtue. The foundation of virtue
was not laid in any study of man's moral
nature and capacities. But in the ethical
conception of God, whose character and will
had been made known to them both in words
and deeds of grace, they found the one grand
and positive principle of all moral life.1 It
was owing to this cause that Hebrew ethics
never fell away into a powerless empiricism,
or a dreamy, unpractical philosophy of virtue.
And if, in the later days of the Essene asceti
cism, a form of monastic morality took pos
session of certain Jewish communities, yet
this was done not from any stoical indifference
or pride, but from a purely religious motive ;
and the mistake was one rather regarding the
meaning of religion than the rule of morality.

In Israel, God Himself, the all-wise, holy,
and good, is the prototype of all moral life
and conduct. Though existing from eternity
in complete blessedness, He is revealed as one
who is willing to become the centre of the
entire realm of human personalities. Of His
free love and condescension He stoops down
from His throne in the heavens, and deigns
to dwell among His people. In spite of their
ignorance and degradation, He is desirous to
associate them with Himself in the carrying

1 Ex. xvii. 15 ; Judg. vi. 24 ; E/ek. xlviii. 35 ; Jer. xxiii. 6.

THE PROTOTYPE OF MORAL LIFE 43

out of a great purpose of love towards the
whole world. They necessarily conceive of
Him as a vital moral Force, aiming at their
truest good, and for the sake of this end
separating them for the time being from all
contiguous idolatry. As has been often re
marked, it is the personal character of
Jehovah that gives to the worship of Israel
its feature of separateness. He was not like
the gods of Moab and Ammon. He was
immanent in the world, yet transcended it.
The world was not the cause but an effect of
God. He was distinct from it, a Spirit freed
of all corporeal matter, a spiritual Force,
making for morality, and ruling in righteous
ness. All this is far away from the heathen
mode of contemplating Deity. It explains
also the religious character of the Hebrew
morality. The religious beliefs and the
ethical life of Israel are so intimately con
nected by this fundamental conception of the
character of God that they cannot be separ
ated. " Here Jewish ethics joins on to
theology ; but the theology itself is essenti
ally ethical."1 In this respect it does not
differ from the morality of other primitive
nations. In the initial stages of a nation's
existence the borderland of ethics and religion
is always unsettled. They coalesce at many
points. It is only in later times, when

1 Professor W. L. Davidson, Theism and Huitum Nature,
p. 53 (Burnett Lectures).

44 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

thought has strengthened and time has been
given for much meditation, that the lines of
demarcation are evenly drawn, and they
stand apart. Other nations had also a
religious ethics. But Israel alone had a clear
and certain consciousness of one God, pure
and holy, above the world, and not deistically
shut up in it, Lord of the world of nature and
of men, a spirit dwelling in freedom, supra-
mundane and personal.

It is therefore natural that in Israel the
apprehension of moral law should run parallel
with their progressive apprehension of the
ethical character of Jehovah. At first this
character is revealed mainly in designations
or names of the Deity, by means of which an
advancing series of revelations is given, and
the true idea of His nature is bodied forth.
Those names occur at important critical junc
tures in the history of the chosen people, and
they are evidently designed to convey all the
religious comfort and ethical truth that lie in
the name. Kuenen points out x how, at every
turning-point in Israel's later history, there
stands a prophet who is commissioned to bring
some word of God to the people. What the
prophet did in later days was effected in
earlier times by the giving of a new name,
representing some new ethical feature in the
Divine Nature. And, let it be observed, the
revelation lay not alone in the name, the

1 Hibbert Lectures, 1882, p. 231.

NAMES OF GOD 45

mere word, but in the adaptation of the name
to the occasion that called it forth. The
name set forth an aspect of the Divine Nature
that met and satisfied Israel's deepest need.
It was a word of cheer for their time of
despondency, a word of courage for their
cowardice, a revelation of grace for their
worthlessness, or of forgiveness for their trans
gression.

The Book of Genesis, opening with the
story of the Creation, sets forth God as the
One who is before and above all that He has
made, the God of power and majesty. Accord
ingly, the names made use of in this Book
are expressive of those features of His char
acter. In the first chapter He is Elohim,
the God of power, the plural form connoting
His unlimited greatness, the plural of majesty.
Again, in His communings with Abraham,
who amid heathen surroundings deeply felt
the need of a Helper, He is El Shaddai, the
all-powerful, all-sufficient One,1 who against
all appearances of sense will yet make the
childless patriarch (Gen. xvii. 4) the progenitor
of a race as numerous as the sands of the sea
shore, and will establish him in possession of
the land in which he is a stranger. By the
same name He declares Himself to Jacob re
turning after many wanderings to Bethel, and

1 Cf. Fred. Delitzsch, Prolegomena, 95, who refers the word
to the Assyrian Shadu, ' mountain,' suggesting that God is
" the mountain, the Most High."

46 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

wearied of the troubles caused by his cruel
sons. "I am El Shaddai ; a nation, and a
company of nations, shall be of thee, and
kings shall come out of thy loins" (Gen.
xxxv. 11). And so His Omnipotence shines
out on the background of Jacob's weakness,
and lets the perturbed patriarch know that
God will be sufficient for all his needs.

But the name by which, above all others in
the Old Testament, the moral attributes and
personality of God are declared, is the famous
tetragrammaton, Jehovah or Yahweh. The
full theological import of the name will be
found very fully discussed in the various
works on the theology of the Old Testament.1
What concerns us, with respect to ethics, is to
point out that the name connotes moral attri
butes, and contains a strong affirmation of the
self-existence of God, and consequently of His
personality. The absolute Being is the most
perfect of all Beings. Jehovah is "He who
is " self-determined in all His acts. His is a
continuous and consistent activity throughout
all the changes of Hebrew history. The name
was given to Moses that he might thereby
carry to his brethren, enslaved in Egypt, an
assurance of God's personal interest in their
well-being and a promise of effective help.

1 For an account of the origin of the name, and its bearing
on Old Testament religion, vide Robertson's Early Religion
of Israel, chap. xi. ; Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, vol. ii.
p. 199 ; Driver, ' The Tetragrammaton,1 in Studia Biblica,
1885.

NAMES OF GOD 47

Thus the name, revealed at this turning-point
of the nation's history, spoke of the free
personality of God, of His absolute independ
ence and invariable faithfulness. Here is a
great advance in the ethical idea of the God
head. It is a revelation calling forth Israel's
trust in and obedience to One who is a self-
existent Personality, and with whom they
may continually have personal (i.e. ethical)
relations.1 Jehovah has a purpose of His own
which He will faithfully carry out with un
erring constancy to a great ethical end. His
divine activity, He says to Moses, will be
made manifest in order to lead His people out
of slavery into liberty, and especially into a
bond of fellowship with Himself constituting
a moral relationship of the most enduring
kind. And when this revelation of His nature
was followed by deeds of saving power, by
that wonderful deliverance from Egypt in
which the nation first realised its existence,
and to which it never ceased to look back with
triumphant assurance of God's moral intentions
toward it, still more deeply was the ethical
personality of God wrought into the conscious
ness of Israel. To know Jehovah, to serve

1 The Anthropomorphisms of the Old Testament suggest,
first, the personality of God. He makes bare His arm : His
eyes are upon His people : He lays His hand upon His
prophet. Secondly, they suggest the ethical in connection
with, the person. He grieves : He is angry, jealous, gracious :
He loves, He hates. AH human emotions are reflected in
Jehovah.

48 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Him, and to give Him the glad response of a
faithful obedience, became the aim of that
people. The struggle involved an effort
which braced their better nature, and ended
by elevating them in the scale of morals far
above surrounding nations.

The ethical idea of God conveyed by means
of these names is afterwards more fully de
veloped throughout the history of Israel. To
the heart of the earnest Israelite He becomes
known as Adonai, " my Lord," a term ex
pressive of loving confidence in a Sovereign
Master. There is connected with the original
signification of this word the sense of God's
proprietorship in His people as well as of His
sovereignty over them.1 In this was couched
a strong ethical motive, which becomes in
fluential in Christian ethics, being accentuated
especially in the Pauline theology. As the
Apostle of the Gentiles found strong consola
tion, in the raging sea-tempest, from the
vision granted him by the Lord, " Whose I am
and whom I serve," so the Old Testament
saint delighted to call God by the name that
helped him to realise that he was both the
subject and the property of his Lord. He
need not fear the wicked man : he would do
righteously and speak truthfully, for Adonai
owned him and would take care of His own.
Being His, he and his household would lack no
good thing. Being His, they must also walk

1 Ex. iii. 7, v. 1, x. 3 ; Lev. xxvi. 12 ; Jer. xi. 4 and xviii. 15.

A GOD OF MERCY 49

in a way that was worthy of their Lord, and
that would bring no dishonour upon His
name.

Closely connected with this view of God's
nature is that other description of Him as a
God of mercy and of condescending gracious-
ness.1 The very fact of His making known
through Moses His concern in Israel's deliver
ance, and His determination to lead them into
liberty, is a proof of His condescending love.
The philosopher's God is all-sufficient to Him
self and beyond emotion ; but the God of the
Old Testament " delighteth in mercy " : He
is "long-suffering and gracious." There is
infinite moral beauty and consolation in this
conception of God. He is not a heartless
Jupiter, nor a frigid, relentless force, like the
law of gravitation. But He comes out of the
dread silences to work for His people's salva
tion and to purify their lives with His loving
fellowship. Rude and uncultured as the
Israelites were,2 this idea of God was brought
home to their heart in those names that reveal
His nature, and proved a strong factor in their
moral education. They knew that He was
not at rest in His own boundless perfections,

1 Ex. xxii. 27, xxxiii. 19, xxxiv. 6 ; Ps. Ixxvii. 9 ; Isa. xxx.
18 ; Amos v. 15.

2 To the rude popular mind Jehovah was at first mainly a
national God, giver of corn and wine ; but all the great
prophets and teachers declared His ethical character and
His righteous rule. Both the earlier and the canonical
prophets affirm that the idolatry of the people made a breach
between Jehovah and them. 1 Kings xxii.

5

50 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

but delighted to come into loving and personal
relationship with His people. In that most
glorious of all the theophanies, which is
recorded in Ex. xxxiv., this feature of His
character is emphasised : " And the Lord
passed by before him and proclaimed, the
Lord, the Lord, a God full of compassion and
gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy
and truth ; keeping mercy for thousands,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin,
and that will by no means clear the guilty "
(R.V.). The merciful side of Jehovah is here
exhibited in ail its fulness, while at the same
time it stands alongside of His justice.
Mercy is His delight, and judgment is His
strange work. From the standpoint of
Exodus this is a very striking statement,
and is, in fact, an early anticipation of the
doctrine of the Epistle to the Romans, that
" where sin abounded grace did much more
abound." l

Yet though His mercy save men from sin,
He will not acquit them in it. The guilty
will not be "cleared" by a love exercised at
the expense of justice. The divine mercy
has an element of resentment as well as of
pitiful kindness. Jehovah is a just God and a
Saviour : and man's justice must correspond to
God's. The thought of the divine justice

1 Cf. the Old Testament Theologies of Oehler, Schultz, and
Riehm on these names of God. Also Luthardt, History of
Christian Ethics, § 11 (T. & T. Clark).

A GOD OF MERCY 51

penetrates all the moral and religious views of
the prophets. It gives them assurance that,
on the one hand, God will vanquish wicked
ness and will smite it with condign punishment ;
and that, on the other hand, though the
afflictions of the righteous are many, He will
deliver them out of them all. It is this
quality in God which, when reflected in man,
draws the sharp lines of division between the
righteous and the godless. It also explains
the peculiarity of the -righteous Israelite asking
to be judged " according to his righteousness, '
while he prays to be kept back from pre
sumptuous sins and confesses their dominion
over him ; a peculiarity that is very puzzling
until the ethics of the old covenant be correctly
understood.

Another aspect of this justice is expressed
in the theophany of Ex. xxxiv. God is one
who will " visit the iniquities of the fathers
upon the children and upon the children's chil
dren, upon the third and upon the fourth
generation." In His government of the world,
the great law holds that as a man sows, so he
shall reap. Though mercy is granted to the
sinner, the mental and physical effects of
his wrongdoing remain and descend. God's
anger goes down to even a fourth generation
with its inheritance of unrighteousness. By
the grace of God good may come out of this
heritage of suffering ; but all the same the
truth holds that no sin stands alone, that the

52 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

influence of the past will be felt upon the
future ; and that in the principle of heredity,
the hand of a righteous ruler may be seen
at work.

Inasmuch as God manifests Himself by
many works of active power and unceasing
operation, He is known to Israel as the living
God. By this revealed feature of His charac
ter a real ethical purpose is served.1 It is in
communion with the living God, as contrasted
with the dead idols of heathendom, which can
do nothing for their votaries, that faithful men
are to find help in every necessity. The God
of the Hebrews is no mere cosmic force, a
Natura naturans, with no ear to hear, no
hand to help. But He is a living Spirit, a
personal God, interested in His people's well-
being. That this is the significance of the term
is clear from the first instance in which it is used.
God interferes for the preservation of Hagar's
life, and she calls the well Beer-lahai-roi, i.e.
the well of the living One who sees me.2 In
the prophetical books and in the Psalms this
name of God is much used in a way that is
full of ethical import. The earnest Israelite
felt his God was One he could lean upon and
live by. No accumulation of the world's
goods, neither cattle, nor oliveyards, nor
storehouses, could be a man's life. Love

1 1 Sain. xxv. 34 ; 2 Sam. xxii. 47 ; Jer. xxiii. 7 and 8 ;
Zeph. ii. 9.

* Keil differs in his interpretation. But see Oehler, vol. i.
149, op. dt.

THE HOLY ONE 53

must meet love, and heart meet heart, and
God must be a veritable, ethical Personality.
Otherwise, in the midst of the plenty of a
land flowing with milk and honey, man will
be unable to accomplish his life-task. As a
moral being he can serve no power that is not
a living God.1

We come now to that conception of God
which is peculiarly characteristic of the God
of Israel, and which helped that people to
attain a degree of enlightenment in religion
that made them the religious teachers of their
day. Jehovah is the Holy One. "Who is
like unto Thee, 0 Lord among the gods ? who
is like Thee, glorious in holiness ? " Here we
shall see how the apprehension of moral law
in Israel runs parallel with the progressive
apprehension of the divine character, and how
the nature of its morality is determined by
the contents of its belief. Jehovah is essenti
ally the God of Holiness : and for the entire
realm of human personality, as well as for
Himself, holiness is the absolute law. The
term is met with at the very commencement
of Israel's existence as a nation, and in con
nection with their deliverance from the perils
of the Red Sea. Throughout the whole Old
Testament " the Hoty One of Israel " is a
frequent form of address. The primary mean
ing of the word seems to be unapproachableness

1 Ps. xxii. 26, xlix. 9, cxix. 144; Prov. iv. 4 ; Isa. xxvi.
19

54 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

and freedom from all impurity.1 To sanctify
is to cleanse ; to be morally and religiously
clean is to be holy. But this negative idea of
separation from ivhat is impure does not
exhaust the meaning of the word. Had
God been thought of only in His absolute
transcendence, dwelling apart in infinite
purity from all sinful men, this conception
of His aloofness from mundane matters might
have exercised its influence on the more
thoughtful minds, but it could have had no
ethical influence on the illiterate multitude.
But in the giving of His law to Israel He
oversteps the limits of this absolute transcend
ence, and makes known to His people His
holy will. Thereby He raises them above the
sphere of natural life into an ethical common
wealth in which He, the Holy One, dwells.
"He inhabiteth the praises of Israel." He
abides among them, the centre of all their
moral and religious life.

This relationship lies at the foundation of
the Law, and forms the ground of Jehovah's
claim to Israel's obedience. His will was a
holy law, by which they must shape their
conduct.2 He is an ever-present God, who
cares for their wants and desires to rule all

1 " Holiness in this sense (of separation from impurity) is
the ruling principle of the Levitical legislation, just as
ethical righteousness is the supreme idea of prophecy."
Professor Skinner in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, vol. ii.
p. 397.

2 Cf. Lev. xi. 44, and xxii.-xxvi.

THE HOLY ONE 55

their life for holy ends. So that at the very
foundation of the theocracy this ethical idea
of God took possession of the mind of the
nation, and wrought in them a sense of their
high privileges and of their obligations to
walk in the way of His commandments.
They were bound to be a holy nation and a
kingdom of priests. They were the people of
His inheritance, and the fundamental law of
their whole existence was found in the in
junction, " Be ye holy, for I am holy."

This idea of God is not correctly represented
as the outcome of the later conception of the
divine character by the prophets. On the
other hand, a careful examination of Amos
and Hosea will show that, according to their
own representation at least, they struggled,
not so much to present a new idea of God, as
to prevent the conception which Israel already
had from being obscured and lost. They were
not preachers of a new ethical monotheism,
but they desired to call the people back to the
old paths, and away from alliances with other
races, whose religions were distinguished only
by their baseness. Never do we find the
prophets professing to be pioneers in the
teaching of piety. They constantly speak as
" restorers of the paths " and " repairers of the

1 Cf. Professor Robertson Smith, Old Testament in the
Jewish Church, p. 332 : "An ethical conception of deity
formed the starting-point of Israel's religion. Holiness
was declared to be at once the rule of divine action and a
law for human conduct." Ottley, op. cit. p. 171.

56 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

breach" (Isa. Iviii. 12). The ideal which they
set before the people is upheld on the ground
that it came down from Mosaic times. " This
view harmonises with the fact that the Old
Testament uniformly ascribes to Moses a
prophetic character " * In that great pro
gressive religious movement which the prophets
headed, the holiness of God is ever one with
His abhorrence of all unrighteous conduct.
It is in this connection that we find the
essential contribution of Prophetism to the
advancement of ethical practice in Israel.2
Prophecy contains the true interpretation of
Israel's history, and shows how the concep
tions of Old Testament theology are always
developed and evolved in close connection with
national life.

This profoundly ethical view of the divine
character had important moral results. The
will of this holy God was to be done on earth ;
and it was to be realised in a holy nation of
His own possession. It found expression in
that Law which He gave to Israel, and which
was not only to mould the external life of the
community, but to be a symbol of the will of
God in the community. It was to embrace
the family and the national life, the days of
work and the days of festival, the field
and the temple and the tent. Everything
should bear the mark and signature of holiness.

It is needful to emphasise this point, in

1 Ottley, op. cit. p. 173. 8 Bruce, Apologetics, p. 212.

THE CHARACTER OF JEHOVAH 57

order to show that the holiness of God was
regarded by the Hebrews, not as merely one
of His attributes, but as the character of God
that must shape their laws and lives, and work
as an ethical force in their practical everyday
life. In later times the prophets thoroughly
comprehended this. It was the main theme
of their impassioned preaching, and became in
them a burning passion for righteousness in
the heart and life. In the prophecies of
Ezekiel, especially in the closing chapters, the
subject receives great prominence.1

We have deemed it right to treat this
subject at some length, so that it may be
clear that the standard of right living in
Israel found its ultimate sanction in the re
vealed will and character of God. " The
righteous Lord loveth righteousness," and
His people every day must exhibit it. As He
is, 'they ought to be. Their national pros
perity will depend upon their obedience to
His will, or, in other words, on their right-

doinff. Righteousness in Old Testament

. .
ethics is right conduct, and has not acquired

the theological significance attached to it in
the Pauline writings. In that sense of the
word Israel must be righteous as God is
righteous, and holy as God is holy. With

1 In that remarkable body of laws in Leviticus, contained
in chaps, xvii.-xx vi., the whole of the commands are marked by
the distinctive character of holiness. See Driver, Introduction
to Literature of Old Testament, pp. 43 and 276 ; Wellhausen,
Prolegomena to History, pp. 357 and 378.

58 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

our modern enlightenment we may deem this
a matter of course and a trite commonplace.
We never suppose that any but a good .man,
a man of right conduct and integrity, could
lay claim to being a religious man. But how
have we come so universally to this con
clusion ? Why is this such an ethical
commonplace with us ? It is the result of
centuries of Christian thought. But among
the ethnic religions of Moses' time no such
doctrine was inculcated. No Greek enter
tained such a belief. Zeus was an adulterer ;
Aphrodite was personified voluptuousness, and
her worship was designed to lend a religious
sanction to sensuality. Whereas Jehovah is
One who has both made the world and rules
it in righteousness. He is a moral Power,
everywhere making for righteousness and
against unrighteousness, making for holiness
and against sin. In this character He was
pre-eminently elevated above the deities of
the pagan Semites. Their gods were their
shame. They were immoral divinities, whose
worship was so surrounded and bound up with
everything that was foul and immodest that
it was a shame to speak of them. Theirs
was a religion in which " lust dwelt hard by
hate," and all the moralities of life were out
raged. Moral conduct was not demanded by
it ; morality formed no essential part of it.
The cruelties of Moloch sacrifice were con
joined with the abominable pollutions of

COMPARATIVE RELIGION 59

Asherah worship.1 Baal was the god of force
and patron of military prowess, who gave
his help to tyrants that worshipped him, how
ever brutally and illegally they might act.
The Israelites were well acquainted with the
religion of Egypt too : a religion which built
up society upon the basis of its creed, and
conceived of man very much as it thought of
God. But in Egypt, Pharaoh was worshipped
as divine, and had all godlike qualities attri
buted to him. The result was that man was
regarded as having no rights of his own : he
was a tool of the tyrant, and found a place
among his goods and chattels. The conception
of him as a free, conscious personality never
entered the head of a Rameses or a Meneptah.
Wherever nations are without moral duties
and a moral faith, they fail to organise society
for moral ends, and usually fall under some
kind of unrighteous despotism.

We can perceive, then, what a moment of
transcendent importance to morality it was
when the revelation of a holy and righteous
God was made to Israel, and when all the
powerful forces of religion were converted into
moral forces. The Science of Comparative
Religion enables us to see that the character
of the deity is regulative in every religion.
As the god is, so are the people. And it
further shows that this highly ethical concep-

1 Cf. Konig, Religion of Israel, chap. ix. ; Robertson, Early
Religion of Israel, p. 254.

60 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

tion of God, found in the Old Testament,
must have been got by revelation, and was
not the outgrowth of naturalistic development.
There is no conclusive proof that this lofty
ethical monotheism was the product of the
interaction of Israel's peculiar genius and
environment. Such a view startles us by its
assumption that Israel is the creator of the
idea of Jehovah, and not the created. If so,
it is very difficult to reconcile this wonderful
aptitude of Israel with the fact that all other
Semitic religions are notorious for their very
debased conception of God. With them every
god was a created being, sunk in nature's
grossness — passionate, variable, lustful. In
Phoanicia, where idolaters were the neigh
bours of the Jews, the gods were the vilest of
the vile. Among them there was a total
severance between morality and religion.
The latter was not an ethical force ; and where
it had influence, it operated towards criminal
ends. Besides, the history of Israel shows
that the nation was no exception to the
tendency to degeneracy ; and against their
proclivities a continual protest is maintained
by the whole goodly fellowship of the
prophets.1

The foregoing facts, based upon the truth
of the Old Testament record, go to constitute
an ethical doctrine of God which was never

1 Vide Schult/, op. cit. chap. vii. ; "Robertson, Early History
of Israel, pp. 168 and 242.

COMPARATIVE RELIGION 61

surpassed in the world until, in the fulness of
time, the manifestation of God in Christ took
place. Jehovah, the Holy One, the righteous
and just Ruler, is an ethical Deity ; and the
revealed conception of His character and will
formed the basis of a moral society in which
all men had equal rights and duties ; whilf
every fresh revelation of His nature brought
to Israel a quickened sense of their obliga
tions.1

1 This argument is independent of critical views of the
Pentateuch. " We may study the Pentateuch with a keen
historical or archaeological interest ; but critical investiga
tions must never blind us to the fact that the law witnesses
mainly to a spiritual truth, namely, that in the life of fellow
ship between God and man, moral obligation is the master fact.
The central principle of the entire Levitical system is com
prehended in the words, " Ye shall be holy : for I the Lord
your God am holy" (Ottley, op. cit. p. 208). "Not only
did the pre-prophetic religion itself include an important
ethical element, but this very element was part and parcel
of the original Mosaic teaching." Montefiore, Hibbert Lectures,
p. 45.

CHAPTER IV

ISRAEL THE PEOPLE OP GOD'S POSSESSION

IT was entirely of God's grace that Israel
became the depository of His Law. He
who created the whole earth desired to have
a people who should live in communion with
Him, and be peculiarly His own. The first
message, sent by God through Moses to the
multitude at the base of Sinai, was this :
" Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob,
Ye have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and
how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought
you unto Myself. Now, therefore, if you obey
My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then
ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me above
all people."

The Law is based upon this gracious
relationship, and upon the providential
guidance which followed it. Thus there is
established between God and His people a
relationship of a highly moral character.
His divine love has been set upon them ; and
the lofty communion into which they are
called lays upon them corresponding obliga-

ISRAEL GOD'S PROPERTY 63

tious, necessitating a life and conduct con
formable to their privilege. Yet it is not
privilege that is put into the foreground so
much as service — service of God, and there
fore service in co-operation with God.1 That
they have been selected to be co-workers with
Him in carrying out His great purpose of love
to all mankind, is the thought that must lie
at the basis of all their action, and determine
it to ethical ends. They must surrender
themselves without any reserve to be His
humble instruments. They must become a
people through whose whole public and
national organisations a divine purpose may
find expression, and so reveal to mankind the
true character of their Covenant God. Their
government is to be a divine sovereignty,
and their constitution a theocracy (to use the
word coined by Josephus) 2 in which God is the
true Head aod Source of all power. Regard
ing every department of their life, — political,
educational, ecclesiastical, — they will receive
instructions from Him, warnings in danger,
and guidance in difficulty. And He will give
them a Law fully expressing His will, and
capable of meeting every emergency that may
arise when duly interpreted by His com
missioned servants, the prophets.

On the other hand, the people, being the
special possession of Jehovah, are separated

1 Ex. vii. 16, viii. 1 ; Deut. vi. 13.
8 Contra Apionem, ii. 16.

64 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

from the rest of the nations and consecrated
to a holy service. To fit them for this mission
they are summoned out of Egypt, as Abraham
was from Ur of the Chaldees, that they may
dwell in the land set apart for them. That
separated or consecrated life is not to be an
easy life ; it is a separation to much hardship,
to a long course of moral training in the wilder
ness ; it is an election to sufferings, to captivi
ties in Assyria and Babylon.1 God's elect ones
are not to be envied by the slothful and the
languid. It entailed on them an aloofness in
Palestine from the great empires on either
side. Everything was devised for the purpose
of maintaining them intact in this condition
of holiness as God's people, God's exclusive
property, that they might transmit to others
the moral and religious truth that had been
revealed to them. That truth was too lofty
to be at once grasped by men's minds. And,
accordingly, Israel was set apart to learn those
lessons, so that, when they had become apt
scholars in this school, they might afterwards
become teachers of mankind. There was a
divine intent at the heart of it all. Israel
was separated from the world for a time in
order to serve lofty ethical ends.

This grand idea is one that inspires every
one of the Old Testament writers. It is a
much grander and higher conception of election

1 Ex. xix. 6; Lev. xx. 24; Ezra viii. 28, x. 11 ; Jcr.
xv. 20.

ISRAEL GOD'S PROPERTY 65

than the narrow, individualistic one, common
to Calvinistic theology. It is an election to
service, not to privilege, and is pervaded by
a " social teleology." In later times, it is true,
the prophets clothe Israel, the servant of
Jehovah, with a more definitely Messianic
meaning. But still the divine election of the
one chosen Servant is for service and for the
good of the many (Isa. liii. 5, 11).'

Thus there sprang up in the consciousness
of Israel an assurance of their being in filial
covenant relationship with God. And as they
were, through many providential dealings,
gradually trained to be the fit instrument of
His will, and their national life became shaped
by this divine purpose, they came to realise
how their whole moral life must be conditioned
by this fellowship with God. Their right to
that fellowship was attested by two sacraments
— Circumcision and the Passover, both acts of
covenant consecration. The former was a
"bloody sacrifice" (Ewald), a dedication of
the life to God by a painful purifying of the
source of life, and it had both a moral and
a religious significance. Israel was to serve
God, and the continuation of its life was to be
clothed with holy associations ; while in the
Passover the people were to regard themselves
as God's peculiar property, created by His
gracious act of deliverance.1

1 This is quite in keeping with the more modern view of
the Passover as the Feast of the Firstbom ; the feast of the

6

66 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Thus as the changes and chances of life
come to Israel, their moral history deepens
and enlarges. Their Covenant God will guide
them through the wilderness ; He will be
protection in danger, and light in darkness,
will give food for their hunger and water for
their thirst ; and in return they will consecrate
to Him their service ; and all their motives
will be moralised by a holy ideal, and by the
elements of love and gratitude entering into
their obedience.

Further, as God's people, Israel is specially
called to be a nation of priests. " Ye shall be
unto Me a kingdom of priests," l i.e. at once a
royal and priestly people. The tribe of Levi,
set apart to minister in the daily sacrifice,
simply formed the nation's representatives.
"The consecration of the people to God
receives official expression in the priesthood "
(Schultz). They were bound thereby to a
holy life, and to the strictest moral purity.
Unclean persons should not enter their congre
gation ; but Jehovah was to dwell among
them and sanctify them. Their religious
institutions should all speak to them of this
hallowing presence ; and by means of the
laws of purification and holiness they should
strive to realise the type of life thus set forth.

Shepherds' offering made to recognise the truth that Jehovah
is the giver of the fruitfulness of the flock. Cf. Wellhausen,
Prolegomena, p. 86 (4th edition).

1 So the LXX translates /SamXetov fcparfv/ia. In the
Targura of Onkelos, " Kings and priests."

ISRAEL GOD'S PROrKRTY 67

On this conception of Israel as God's
property and priesthood great stress is laid
by the prophets and psalmists, and many
ethical duties are deduced from it. They are
" His people and the sheep of His pasture."
They were no longer to live as if they were
their own. And as the nation developed in
spirituality, we find a progressive ethicising of
this relationship.1 God becomes to them more
truly the Holy One, and they are willing to
subscribe themselves as His (Isa. xliv. 5).
There was to be no reserve in their consecra
tion, no giving of ninety-nine parts and with
holding of the hundredth ; else the whole act of
consecration was undone. The truth was fore
shadowed which Paul afterwards set at the head
of the Christian code of morality : "Ye are not
your own ; ye are bought with a price : therefore
glorify God in your body." Israel was to find
the dynamics of duty in this relationship to
Jehovah. No calculating ethics should be
theirs ; but to God who had redeemed them,
and called them unto the dignity of a kingdom
of priests, the flame of a sacrificial enthusiasm
should ever burn.

It belongs to Old Testament theology to trace
at full length this steady advance, and the puri-

1 " Its fundamental significance is ethical ; for tlie Covenant
implied on the one side Jehovah's grace, ou the other Israel's
moral obedience. The sacrifices were full of spiritual symbol
ism •. they spoke of self- surrender and devotion to the will of
God, of forgiveness and the blessings of divine fellowship."
Ottley, op. cit. p. 252.

68 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

ficatiou in the conception of the relations of
Jehovah and His people. What it concerns
us, in the interest of ethics, to note is, that
the consciousness grows in Israel that they are
a holy people, and that upon this basis all the
ceremonial laws are made to rest. How great
an advance in moral culture this implies can
be estimated only by a comparison with the
surrounding nations. Jehovah is a moral
Deity, with a righteous will, and hating evil
with the whole force of His nature. And
His people must be like Him, must be His
priests, His associates in His grand purpose of
proclaiming and effecting the salvation of the
whole world. That is an ethical ideal, accom
panied by an ethical motive, to which nothing
in the religions of other Semitic peoples is
found to correspond. It remained, indeed, an
ideal above Israel, and exhibited its divine
origin, as their failure to live up to it mani
fested their human weakness. This at least is
certain. Such a people, so circumstanced and
so constituted, could never have produced of
themselves such a moral ideal. A newly
emancipated horde of slaves, undisciplined and
impatient of restraint, — this call to a life of
lofty moral aims came into terrible conflict
with their lawless passions and stiff-necked
stubbornness. How could that be a product of
the nation which contradicts all their old feel
ings and habits ? We have only to look at
the awful immorality in which the other

INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS 69

nations lay weltering to see how untenable the
theory is. The standard of morality at this
stage was not given by Israel. It was set by
Jehovah, the Supreme Lawgiver, and Himself
at once the embodiment and the inspiration
of all virtue and goodness.

It cannot fail to be noticed that the moral
necessities of the nation are more regarded
than those of the individual. The family of
Abraham are at first selected as the organ of
salvation, and as they grow into a great nation
they are regarded in all the divine dealings as
a unity, or a unitary social group. The truth
of individualism had to wait for full acknow
ledgment until the Christian era ; and the
intense individualism of our century is utterly
foreign to the spirit of the Old Testament.
It is with Israel as a nation that the Covenant
is finally established. If the law of worship be
broken and the service of Jehovah be forsaken
for that of other gods, it is as a nation that they
are warned they shall be punished. Indi
viduals may thus be overlooked ; but had
individual rights been placed first in the order
of development, nothing less than anarchy
would have taken place. In course of time,
as the mission of the nation grew more clear,
the responsibilities and rights of the indi
vidual received additional emphasis, and were
developed into prominence.1 But at first it

1 Cf. Mo/ley, Ruliwj Ideas in Early Ages, p. 235. Principal
Caird, Philosophy ofRdifiion. clian. iii. The erowth of the sense

70 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

was with the 'family group that God entered
into the gracious relationship of salvation :
and He was content to have the basis of ethics
for a time laid, not in the individual, but in
the family conscience.

Hence we find in the Old Testament that
the family is first, and not the individual.
There is no doubt that this compelled
a temporary concession to customs that
belonged to a very rudimentary stage of
morality, and that " because of the hardness
of their hearts" a laxity of divorce was
permitted which the Christian law of marriage
utterly condemns. No doubt, also, this threw
into the background the individual's interest
in a future life, and obscured the doctrine of
personal immortality. But Jehovah was con
tent to gain one great moral end at a time.
And on the basis of a stable, pure family life
He laid the future growth of the ethical and
religious influences that developed into the
Christian family and the organised and per
fected social state.

So it was that salvation in Israel came to a
man by his birth into the family founded by
Abraham. " He was a Jew who was one
outwardly." He might prove unworthy of his
parentage and ancestry ; yet birth into the
family of an Israelite is undoubtedly in the

of individual worth came with the spiritual experience of
elect souls, as psalmists and prophets found solace in com
munion with God. Ps. xvi. 10.

AN ISRAELITE BY BIRTH 71

Pentateuch reckoiied as birth into the king
dom of God. His connection with covenant
privileges is through his descent in the family
line.1 This was far below the New Testament
doctrine of entrance into God's kingdom,
through the new birth of John iii. But for
wise ends the Lord founded the Church in
these early days upon the basis of the family,
and placed it first in the order of salvation.
When in this century we find many, notwith
standing our long experience of the worth of
the Christian home, subordinating the family
to the State, and affirming the collective total
to be strong enough to bear the strain of the
whole of our social duties, we may under
stand in some measure why God determined
that during slow centuries of growth society
should be broad - based upon the family
life.2

This truth, thus embedded in the Hebrew
consciousness, was in course of time stripped
of its temporary entanglements and accretions
by the lessons of history and by the prophetic
teaching. It came to be seen by spiritually
taught men that " they are not all Israel who
are of Israel," and that there was One who
was a Father to them of whom Abraham

1 Of. Eiehra, Alt. Theologie, p. 227. It is to be observed
that when Israel is called God's "Son," as in Deut. xiv. 1,
Jer. iii. 19, Mai. i. 6, the term always implies corresponding
religious obligations.

8 Vide Smyth's Christian Ethic*, p. 442 f. ; Martensen's
Ethics, vol. i. p. 202.

72 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

might be ignorant, and whom Israel might
not acknowledge.

The organic connection of the individual
with the nation becomes part of Israel's
consciousness. It is expressed throughout
the Old Testament in no way more frequently
than in their hostility to idolatrous races.
With such they must have nothing to do :
their severance from them shall be complete.
They shall not intermarry with them, nor
trade with them, nor have any fellowship
with them. Even the social usages of these
races must be shunned. The land they are
to live in is given by promise, and they must
abide within its limits. It is not without
meaning, in connection with this particularism,
that the Old Testament seems to hinge the
completion of the divine kingdom on their
maintaining their connection with the land of
Canaan. Salvation, from the Old Testament
standpoint, is restricted to those who are
within the fold of Israel, and fellowship with
Jehovah is impossible to the idolaters of Moab
and Philistia. But the prophets foresee a
time coming when this limit shall cease, and
all nations, flocking to Mount Zion, shall
make it the centre of the wide world's worship.
The shell of this particularism contained the
kernel of a universal religion.1 In itself it
tended to foster a contempt for foreigners and
a national pride that are contrary to the spirit

1 Cf. A. B. Davidson, Theology of the Old Testament, p. 60.

ADMISSION OF GENTILES FORESEEN 73

of Old Testament religion. But, as we shall
afterward see, many expressions that seem
immoral in their bitter antagonism to the
Gentile races, find their explanation in this
restriction of covenant fellowship. The
prophets do not speak of the heathen as
hopelessly given over to punishment ; but,
as a nation, Israel is undoubtedly the elect
people, and only through them can the heathen
world be blessed.

CHAPTER V

ISRAEL'S CODE OF DuTY1
1. Righteousness in the Old Testament

FROM a people who had been received of
grace into the fellowship of faith, Jehovah
demanded the grateful response of a righteous
life. Their righteousness was rooted in faith ;
it recognised the grace of the divine election,
and delighted to keep the divine command
ments. This righteousness is not by any

1 It is a singular fact that there is no word in the Hebrew
language corresponding to the word " Duty." That word
does occur in the Authorised Version and in the Revised
Version. But in the first instance, Ex. xxi. 10, the phrase
duty of marriage is one word in Hebrew signifying cohabita
tion. In the second instance, 2 Chron. viii. 14, " as the duty
of any day required," the word is dabar ; " as the matters
of the day demand." While in the third instance, Eccles.
xii. 13, the Revised Version prints the word in italics, and
the verse in Hebrew runs : " this is the whole of man." And
the reason is plain. When the Jew thought of duty, his
mind went back to the commandments of God and he simply
said, "Jahveh commanded." For His children God's
commandments are their Code of Duties. And they are
not grievous but joyous, as the Psalmist looks at them.
" Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my
pilgrimage," Ps. cxix. 54.

74

RIGHTEOUSNESS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 75

means equivalent to siulessness ; but it keeps
the Law within the heart. It loves God's
statutes, and finds therein not bondage, but
liberty. It recognises the inmost meaning
of the Law to be the outcome and expression
of God's favour ; and its supreme delight is
to run in the way of His commandments with
enlarged heart. The only way to blessedness
is by the path of obedience. This obedience
of faith lies at the foundation of the covenant
with Abraham ; and it is this that invests
that covenant with moral elements.

In ancient Israel the deep and painful con
sciousness of sin, so characteristic of New
Testament saints, is not prominent ; and the
faithful expect to be recompensed according
to their righteousness and the cleanness of
their hands. There is, for example, in David's
treatment of Saul in the wilderness a fine
instance of noble generosity that moves the
heart of every reader. It sounds strange to
our ears to hear him say that, because he
would not put forth his hand against the
Lord's anointed, therefore the Lord should ren
der to him according to his righteousness and
faithfulness. But there was no inconsistency
in his use of the term. Some of the psalms
contain what may seem to us startling pro
testations of spotless purity, as, " I will wash
mine hands in innocency : so will I compass
Thine altar, 0 Lord."1 In not a few there are

1 Ps. xxvi. 6.

76 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

professions of integrity, and prayers that God
may judge the Psalmist, and vindicate his
uprightness and innocence, professions and
petitions which seem at first to be alien to
that deeper consciousness of sinfulness which
is one of the most precious gifts of Jesus
Christ. " It grates upon ears, accustomed to
the tone of the New Testament, that a
suppliant should allege his single-eyed sim
plicity and steadfast faith as pleas with God ;
and the strange tone sounds on through the
whole psalm. . . . But such professions are
not inconsistent with consciousness of sin,
which- is, in fact, often associated with them
in other psalms (xxv. 20, 21 and vii. 11, 18).
They do indicate a lower stage of religious
development, a less keen sense of sinfulness
and of sins, a less clear recognition of the
worthlessness before God of all man's goodness,
than belong to Christian feeling. The same
language, when spoken at one stage of revela
tion, may be childlike and lowly, and be
swelling arrogance and self-righteous self-
ignorance if spoken at another stage." l

It must also be observed that many of these
professions of inward purity and of integrity
are not so much denials of sin as asseverations
that the writer's heart was honest and his
intention pure. They are made by him in
answer to base charges of .malignant opponents.
He is surrounded by evil men that will not

1 The Book of Psalm*, by Dr. A. Maclaren, vol. i. p. 252.

RIGHTEOUSNESS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 77

scruple to blacken his good name and mis
construe his best motives. Is it to be
wondered at that " the answer of a good
conscience " should often spring to his lips ?
Such a response is the outcome of a healthy
moral feeling, and is removed by whole
diameters from the Pharisaism that finds
salvation in keeping the commandments, and
puts the Law in the place of the merciful
Father. It is perfectly consistent in the Old
Testament saints to make such professions,
and yet to add, in the spirit of one who came
through the synagogue into the Christian
Church, "Yet am I not hereby justified."1
In the New Testament we find that the

1 The Old Testament always in treating of sin maintains
the connection of the individual with the race. " I am a
man of unclean lips : and I dwell among a people of unclean
lips," Isa. vi. 5. Prof. A. B. Davidson, Theology of the O.T.
chap, vii., says that "just as Achan's sin affected in God's
estimate the whole camp of Israel, the sin of any individual
may seem to Him to affect the whole race of mankind." He
sums up the teaching of the O.T. on this question under five
heads, briefly summarised here. 1. The human race is a
unity. 2. As the one man Adam developed into millions, the
one sin multiplied into millions of sinful acts. 3. Thus when
any one sins, it is humanity that sins. But that does not
take away from the other truth that the individual sinner is
guilty of his individual act. The individual Adam was
guilty of his sin. 4. When the race sins, the race is chastised.
But the chastisement will extend over many more than are
guilty. The unity which we know as humanity is held
guilty of the sinful acts. 5. The judgment which falls on
the individual falls on him as an individual sinner, each one
being treated as part of the race and acting as part. No
explanation is given in the O.T. of the rationale of this
inherited corruption beyond the assumption that the race is
a unity.

78 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

apprehension of personal sin becomes far more
profound and ethical, in proportion as a
consciousness of the inwardness of the Law's
requirements is reached. It is the purpose
of the pedagogy of the Law to awaken the
conscience and to effect conviction of sin by
holding up the divine command as a standard
of righteousness. But in the Old Testament
we must frankly admit that, as soon as evil-
doing has been repented of and restitution
made according to the Mosaic code, one may
be termed a righteous man.1 Rather a legal
status in Israel than an ethical attainment
is implied in the term. At the same time,
there is no trace of the idea that a man's
salvation is due to his own righteousness.
Everywhere salvation is spoken of as the
direct result of the free grace and mercy of
God. " The divine life bestowed through
grace is received by faith alone" (Schultz).

This is not, however, inconsistent with the
fact that, as the prophets come on the scene,
the individual consciousness of sin becomes
more acute. The Exile greatly aided the
deepening of this consciousness by making
communion with God a more personal matter.
When far away from Zion and its Temple, and
in the midst of scoffing heathen, the Israelite
was of necessity compelled to enter the closet
and shut the door and pray to the Father in
secret. The idea of the religious nation

1 Prov. xi. 3, 5, 6, 18, xii. 3.

DEEPER SPIRITUALITY OF NEW DISPENSATION 79

remained : but piety became personal com
munion and the sense of sin was much
quickened. The Exilic and post-Exilic Psalms
contain proofs of it. Ezekiel is a prophet who
intensely realises it. The Exile education is
to him what Pentecost was to the Apostles of
our Lord : it plays a grand role in the
spiritual progress of his brethren. They have
lost the large Temple where the crowded
congregation helped to lift up the soul on its
hymns of praise. But Jehovah Himself will
be their Temple ; and in that sanctuary they
shall find sin pardoned and the individual soul
sanctified. " Therefore say to them, Thus saith
the Lord God, Whereas I have removed them
far off among the nations and scattered them
among the countries, yet will I be to them a
sanctuary for a little while." The Dispersion
served its end of spiritualising worship and
deepening the sense of sin.

In the post-Exilic period the place of faith
was taken by a legal righteousness, and fellow
ship with God was gauged by the amount of
religious rites performed. The centre of true
religion was transferred from a gracious and
merciful God to an external legalism ; and
law took the place of grace. This externalis
ing of righteousness continued in Pharisaism
through the Hasmonean age until Christ's
time ; and it appears in Christian ethics as a
righteousness of works, in contrast with the
righteousness which is by faith.

80 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

This leads us to the historic proclamation
of the Law and to a considerat on of its
character and purpose.

2. The Giving of the Law

In the Old Testament the word "law"
is invariably used as meaning some mani
festation of the will of God. It is usually
called Torah, or instruction. It was regarded
by the Jews as the fountainhead of all know
ledge, and as the one thing worth teaching to
their children. In the New Testament it has
a much wider signification. Sometimes there
it refers to the Moral Law, at other times to
the Ceremonial. Very often it means the
teaching of the Pentateuch in contrast with
the doctrine of the prophets ; while in other
places it includes the whole scriptures in
which the mind of God is expressed. But in
the Old Testament the Law by distinction is
the Law revealed from Sinai, and given to
Israel through Moses the man of God. In
the solitude of the sacred Mount did the
Divine Presence make itself known to this
chosen leader. The majestic clitf, rising like
a huge altar and visible against the sky in
lonely grandeur, is the very image of an
adytum, an audience-chamber, wherein no
din of earthly discord might interrupt the
intercourse which the Almighty deigned to
hold with His servant and prophet. Here

ISRAEL'S CODE OF DUTY 81

God " came down upon Sinai," and gave to
Israel the most splendid gift that a nation
could receive. " The delivery of the Moral
Law," says Kalisch, " formed a decisive epoch
in the history of the human race, and was the
greatest and most important event in human
history."

Popularly, Moses is known as the lawgiver.
But though he is called so by the Jews them
selves, they never mean to imply that he was
the fons et origo of the legislation to which
his name is attached. There is no doubt that
his Egyptian education specially prepared him
for being the inspired medium of the divine
Revelation.1 But it was not out of the re
sources of his own mind that the legislative
code sprang. He was but a Trpo^V^?, a
spokesman for God. And it was not as a
legislator like Solon or Justinian that he was
said to have given the Law to Israel. He
was but the pen in the hand of the Almighty,
communicating what he had already received.

The Law was given through Moses ; but
it was accepted by the people and ratified by
a sacrificial offering, without which no covenant
was regarded as binding. In Ex. xxiv. 3-9
we have the account of the formal ratifica-

1 The influence of Egypt's culture could not fail to
prepare Moses for his eminent post. Yet it is probable that
on the whole that influence was prejudicial to the faitli
which the tribes had inherited from the patriarchs. Moses
was a true originator, and much communion with God lay
behind his originality.

7

82 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

tion of this Covenant between Jehovah and
Israel. Moses first rehearsed all the words
and the "judgments," i.e. the Decalogue
and the whole of the statutes following, in
the ears of the people, and got their formal
assent. Then he wrote them down in "the
Book of the Covenant." the first book actually
mentioned in Holy Writ, and the nucleus
around which all later legislation gathered.1
Building an altar, he caused burnt-offerings
and peace-offerings to be laid upon it, to
signalise the fact that it was not on legal
grounds alone, but by an act of grace, that
Israel was admitted to this privilege. There
was grace as well as commandment in this
New Covenant. No covenant of a similar
character is afterwards found in the Old
Testament.

Of the purpose of the Law, and the end it
was intended to serve, two very different
views have been taken. It is common for
theologians, following the lead of the inspired
writings of St. Paul, and especially of the
Epistle to the Galatians, to dwell entirely
upon that aspect of the Law which is pro
hibitory, which presents it as a ministry of
condemnation and not of righteousness, of
bondage and not of freedom, as a letter that

1 Nowhere is the ethical force of Mosaism better illustrated
than in this so-called Book of the Covenant, Ex. xxi.-xxiii.
It is comparatively silent on all matters of ritual. But it
is distinct and forcible in its ethical doctrine. Cf. Riehm,
Alt. Thcologie, p. 63.

THE INTENT OP THE LAW 83

kills and uot a spirit that gives life.1 That
this was the final intent that lay beneath the
Law there can be no doubt ; and the pupil of
Gamaliel had gone through a legal stage of
pre-Christian experience, which has its proper
place in the moral order of every sinful life
still, prior to conversion. But that this peda
gogic aspect is not the only view we may
take of the Law is perfectly clear from in
numerable statements in the Old Testament.
The Law, as it was given at Sinai, bears upon
its front gracious features. These are apt to
be forgotten by such as remember only the
Pharisaic exaltation of the Torah in the Has-
monean Age to the position of an absolute
summum bonum, or simply dwell on its use
as a schoolmaster to lead to Christ. The
Pharisee misunderstood or ignored the normal
relationship between God and man, under
which the Sinaitic Law was given, a relation
ship of grace on the one side and of faith on
the other, into which the principle of Pharisaic
legalism can have no admission. It is a
mistake to regard the Law only from the
point of view of an outward command or
criterion, to be used as a measuring-rod to
bring home to men their deficiencies, and con
vince of sin. The Law contained the con
ditions on which God would continue to dwell
in covenant fellowship with His people. Were
the pedagogic intent its only purpose, it

1 2 Cor. iii. 6, 7, 9.

84 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

would be difficult to understand the language
of Ps. cxix., or the sentiment of the singer,
" The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing
the heart : the commandment of the Lord is
pure, enlightening the eyes . . . more to be
desired are they than gold, yea, than much
fine gold : sweeter also than honey and the
honeycomb" (Ps. xix. 8, 10). To every
sincere and honest Israelite, God's statutes
were capable of being translated into a song.
They spoke of privilege as well as of precept.

That this giving of the Law to Israel was
felt to be an act of favour on God's part, and
a great honour to the nation, is abundantly
proved. In Deut. iv. 7 it is asked : " For
what great nation is there that hath a God so
nigh unto them as the Lord our God is, when
soever we call upon Him ? And what great
nation is there that hath statutes and judg
ments so righteous as all this Law, which I set
before you this day ? " . . . Ver. 32 : " For
ask now of the days that are past, which were
before thee, since the day that God created
man upon the earth, and from the one end of
heaven unto the other, whether there hath
been any such thing as this great thing is, or
hath been heard like it ? Did ever people
hear the voice of God speaking out of the
midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, and
live?" Israel, therefore, understood that the
giving of the Law was part of that manifesta
tion of grace by which they were to be the

THE LAW 85

people of the Covenant, the people among
whom Jehovah should dwell, and through
whom His purpose of salvation should be
mediated to mankind.1

This was doubtless the primary aspect in
which the Law presented itself to the chosen
people. Jehovah was their King, "the strength
of their help, and the sword of their excel
lency." And a King's communications with
His people must be regulated in a manner
that shall secure reverence for Him, and the
means of exalted intercourse for them. Lived
up to, this Law will ensure unbroken fellow
ship. It is a revelation of the condescending
mercy of God, who desires to associate with
Himself a holy people. Its principle is ex
pressed in the words : " I am the Lord your
God : ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves,
and shall be holy ; for I am holy ; and ye shall
keep My statutes to do them : for I am the
Lord your God" (Lev. xi. 44, xx. 8).

That the Covenant of Law rests on the
Covenant of promise is clear from the fact
that in the giving of the Law the initiative
comes from God. We find this in the state
ment which prefaces the Decalogue : "I am

1 "The Law was given to the people in covenant. It was
a rule of life, not of justification ; it was guide to the man
who was already right in God's esteem. ... It is a line
marked out, along which the life of the people or the person
in covenant with God, and already right with God on that
ground, is to unfold itself." Dr. A. B. Davidson, 7'henloijy of
the Old Testament, p. 281.

86 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Jehovah thy God, who brought thee out of
the land of Egypt." So also, at the beginning
of the Book of the Covenant, it is said : "Ye
see what I did unto the Egyptians, and how
I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you
unto Myself" (Ex. xix. 4). In these passages
there is no mention made of Israel's desert.
Out of His love God sets forth this relation
ship of grace, and establishes the conditions
on which it is to be maintained.

The primary feeling of a pious Hebrew
towards the Law was not one of fear and un
certainty, but it was a truly joyful conscious
ness of divine favour. The Law is no heavy
burden that galls the shoulders.1 It is, on
the other hand, a crown of rejoicing, even a
matter of boasting. It is the distinguishing
mark of Jehovah's favour towards His own
people. The sanctuary where the pious wor
shipper meets Him is not a place filled with
the terrors of a broken commandment, but is
rather like a fountain out of which flows fresh
water to a thirsty soul :

" So have I looked upon Thee in the sanctuary,
To see Thy power and Thy glory.
For Thy loving kindness is better than life,
My lips shall praise Thee." (Ps. Ixiii. 2, 3.)

1 In the overthrow of the nation, finally, the mass of the
people came to see this, but the nobler spirits had discerned
it ages before. We must always bear in mind the differ
ence between the great body of the Hebrew people and the
inner circle which responded to the teaching of the Spirit
and the voice of the Prophets. Of. Darmesteter, ov. cit.
p. 165ft

ISRAEL'S RELATION TO LAW 87

The variety of phrase under which this
feeling finds expression in the Psalms and
Prophets is very striking. It is this element
which gives such a bright colour and glow
ing reality to Old Testament religion. It
brightened all those joyous festivals in which
they celebrated their deliverance from the
house of bondage, and thanked God for His
goodness in the plentiful harvests of their
fruitful land.

If the Law is regarded only from the stand
point of the legalist, it is entirely miscon
strued. " It is in the first instance a gift of
grace. It shows the people a way of life
which embraces and defines all the circum
stances of their natural life. A non-Israelite,
or an unbeliever, cannot fulfil it ; but a believer
will not feel its restrictions irksome." So far
from irksomeness being the primary thought
in connection with it, the very opposite is
clearly the fact. " Blessed is the people that
know the joyful sound" of it. "They shall
walk, 0 Lord, in the light of Thy counten
ance." We misrepresent God's purpose and
do the Hebrews an injustice when we imagine
the pious members of that commonwealth
ever hanging the head like a bulrush, and
striving to appease their conscience, and gain
salvation with tears and legal sacrifices. To
them God was a Father, and Israel was " His
son, His firstborn." The idea of redemption

1 Schultz, op. cit. voL ii. p. 37.

88 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

through grace alone was the fundamental idea
of the nation's position. This idea is placed
at the head of the Decalogue. An Israelite,
realising his place as one of the community
redeemed by God, trusting and loving God as
his nation's Redeemer, was a just man, and
lived by faith a joyous, happy life. His re
lation to God was one entirely of grace, "a
relationship which was to obtain realisation in
the righteousness of faith that is in Christ "
(Rom. x. 6ff. ; cf. Deut. xxx. 11-14).1

But let us not forget that in the develop
ment of the moral consciousness of Israel a
deepening of the sense of national failing took
place. With this there came a clearer per
ception of the relation of the individual to
God, and of his responsibility, as a moral
integer within the nation, for its shortcomings.
And then the other aspect of the Law became
prominent, as the prophetic teaching ex
pounded its meaning and accentuated the
individual consciousness of transgression.
Then the Law was seen to be not only the
gift of a gracious Lord, but a commandment
intended to act as a check upon transgression.
That this purpose lay in it from the first
cannot be doubted. The Law was given to
erect a barrier against sin, and the man that
crossed the barrier must bear the penalty.
Without being able to remove the inward

1 Luthardt, History of Christian Ethics (Clark's trans.),
p. 45.

THE PURPOSE OF THE LAW 89

stain of sin, it accentuated the evil of it, and
brought home to the conscience a sense of its
exceeding sinfulness. Paul's education in a
school of legalism, so characterised by its
objectifying of ethics, necessarily led him to
dwell upon this great purpose of the law.
He develops it at length in the powerful
analytic of Rom. vii. Had it not been for
the Law's measuring-rod, he had not known
sin ; but now conscious of a deep sense of
personal guilt, he utters this cry, de profun-
dis, " Wretched man that I am, who shall
deliver me out of the body of this death ? "
He affirms that lust should not have appeared
as lust to him, had not the Decalogue, in its
closing commandment, gone beyond the ex
ternal domain of precept into the inner realm
of motive, and said, " Thou shalt not covet."
" Moreover, the law entered that the offence
might abound " (Rom. v. 20). It was in
this opposition between the commandment
and his inward moral state that he realised
the burden of that legalism which perpetually
harassed his conscience, and landed him in
slavery to the letter that killed. The very
existence of a commandment forbidding the
sin added intensity to the desire to gratify
it. Stolen waters are always sweet ; for
bidden pleasures have a spice and flavour
that are not found in the ways of righteous
ness. " Sin, finding occasion, wrought in
me all manner of concupiscence," says St.

90 THE ETHICS OP THE OLD TESTAMENT

Paul. So far from aiding him in this awak
ened stage, the Law, bepraised by the Rabbis,
only aggravated his difficulties and empha
sised his sense of helplessness. Conscience
would persist in speaking of higher principles
of duty, and whispering in his ears the sting
ing word " imperfection." It is an experience
we all go through. Protestantism began with
St. Paul, and the morality of the Old Testa
ment in him gave place to the awakened
Christian consciousness. Hence it is that
Romans vii. is a bit of autobiography which
possesses for us undying interest. It is a
prison-cell, in which we have all been con
fined. And blessed are they who through
faith have been able to walk out of the
dark dungeon of the seventh of Romans
into the glorious light and liberty of the
eighth.

The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews,
who, if not St. Paul, belonged at least to the
Pauline school of theology, regards the Law
from a similar standpoint. If he thinks less
of it as designed to lead to a clearer know
ledge of sin and to discipline the moral sense,
still he feels that its purpose is to drive home
the conviction of the need of a sacrifice for
sin that would satisfy divine justice, and to
exhibit the powerlessness of Levitical offerings
to cleanse the conscience. In his view, the
Law shut a man up to the hope of a Messianic
Deliverer, who should offer one all-sufficient

THE LAW AS A COMMAND 91

sacrifice for sin, and then sit down at the
right hand of God.

This view is confirmed by what is said of
the Law in the Gospels, which, though not so
directly bearing on the point in dispute, is
quite consistent with the view expressed in the
Epistles referred to. Our Lord affirms that
it was not for the purpose of encouraging,
but of restraining and discouraging, divorce
that the precept regarding it was given.
" Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts,
suffered you to put away your wives " (Matt.
xix. 8). This was, however, but an adjustment
to the level of morality at that time reached
in Israel. It was not intended to be an en
couragement of the moral infirmity that led
to divorce, but to be a curb upon it until
they should reach and realise a principle under
which such a check would not be required.
In the time of Moses the people would not
have understood the deeper principles laid
down in Eph. v. regarding Christian mar
riage. The laws of marriage were therefore
an adjustment to the rudimentary stage of
Israel's morality. It was a temporary con
cession to their ethical imperfection,1 which
was not intended to be permanent. Simi
larly, the law of revenge and the practice of
polygamy were permitted, to the astonish
ment of many people in these days who

1 Mozley, Lectures on Old Testament, Lecture v. See also
closing chapters of this volume.

92 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

cannot understand why what is condemned
in the New Testament should be temporarily
tolerated in the Old. But these practices
were but concessions to moral weakness ; for
education without adjustment to the pupil's
stage of progress is in religion what cram
ming is in education, and so far from in
vigorating, it weakens the moral powers.
The divine permission of these practices was
therefore conditioned by restrictions that
checked the evil necessarily inhering in the
institutions, and pointed to a time when they
should be entirely abrogated.

Thus the Law as a command worked wrath
(Rom. iv. 15). By its works no flesh living
could be justified. It was good in itself; but
it could not speak the word "forgiveness,"
nor furnish inspiration like the expulsive
power of love to Christ. Its multiform ordi
nances, the categorical form of its precepts,
the prohibitive character of its injunctions
and social restrictions, were all adapted to
show man the weakness of his efforts to reach
a standard of moral perfection. By this
lengthy and tedious process, in which the
Israelite became more dissatisfied with him
self as sin became more hateful, God was
educating His people to long for something
more satisfactory to the conscience.1 He was

1 In the prophetic books, all the history of Israel is inter
preted from this point of view. Two chief themes occupy
the mind of the prophets, God's judgments and His coming

THE LAW AS A COMMAND 93

preparing the heart of man, ever too fond
of trusting to its own, to accept the righteous
ness which is of faith in Jesus Christ.

redemption. But all their rebukes alternate with promises of
a future when the deepest longings of the saintly neart shall
be satisfied, and the Messianic age shall bring three great
spiritual blessings — viz. remission of sins, a perfect righteous
ness, and the power to do the will of God. Jer. xxxi. 31 ;
Joel ii. 29 ; Mai. ii. and iii.

CHAPTER VI
THE LAW OF THE TEN WORDS

AT the head of the Book of the Covenant
stood the Law of the Ten Words. That Law
stands on a moral eminence of its own, un
rivalled for its comprehensiveness, excellency,
and simplicity. These fundamental rules of
religious and ethical duty were the only
portion of the legislation which was directly
uttered by the voice of God in the hearing
of the whole people. Thereafter they were
graven on the tables of stone by the finger
of God, as if to signify their abiding character,
and to give to them the highest and most
authoritative sanction.1 They sum up in a
pregnant form the duties applicable to Israel's
life as a people dedicated to God. While
many of the enactments of the Book of the
Covenant served but a temporary purpose,
and passed away with the religion of Judaism,

1 Ex. xxxiv. 28 ; Deut. x. 14. The Decalogue is called
"the Testimony," to represent it as the declaration of
Jehovah's iniud. So the ark containing the stone tables is
named " The Ark of Jehovah's Covenant " in Deut. x. 8. Of.
art. " Law in Old Testament," Hastings' Diet, of Bible, vol. iii.

M

THE LAW OF THE TEN WORDS 95

the Decalogue has been retained unchanged
in the Christian Church. The divinity of its
origin and the excellency of its contents still
give it a foremost place in the theology of
every Christian community. There is nothing
in it that is not valid for mankind. It is a
universal code of morals. No • compend of
morality among ethnic religions can be com
pared with it. The ethical systems of Con
fucius, of Zoroaster, of Buddha, of the Greek
moralists, are far behind it as a summary of
human duty.

In the Book of Exodus the Decalogue is
called the Ten Words, a phrase which our
Authorised Version renders " the Ten Com
mandments." Sometimes it is called " the
Testimony," as bearing witness to the ex
pression of the Divine Will. It is by pre
eminence also called " the Covenant," although
the Book of the Covenant in Exodus embraces,
in addition to it, chaps, xxi.-xxiii.

The question has been raised and much
discussed, Does the Decalogue, together with
the civil and ceremonial laws, constitute one
whole legislative "code for Israel ? Or, do the
Ten Words stand out by themselves in marked
distinction from all the other precepts, so that
these must be regarded as but subsidiary direc
tions to secure its better observance ? Is it one
legislative code ? or are there two codes here ?

It has been urged1 that these Ten Words

1 Fairbairn, Typology, vol. ii. p. 89 ff.

96 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

had the " singular honour conferred upon them
of being properly the terms of the Covenant
founded at Sinai " ; that they are expressly
called "the words of the Covenant," "the
words of the Lord," while the additional
enactments given through Moses are called
" the judgments " ; that the feast laws in
particular, " so far from forming any proper
addition to the terms of the Covenant, had
respect primarily to the people's profession
of adherence to it, and contained directions
concerning the sacramental observances of the
Jewish Church."

That the Law of the Ten Words had a
peculiar pre-eminence assigned to it we have
already seen. It obtained such a position by
the solemnity with which it was proclaimed
by the lips of God ; by its own subject-
matter ; possibly, too, by the symbolical
character of the number of its commands,
and by the fact that its words were traced
by God on stone, while the other parts were
written by Moses on parchment. All these
facts go to show — what has been universally
recognised in both the Jewish and the
Christian Church — that the Decalogue occupies
an altogether unique position.1 But, admitting
this, does the law as given to Israel for a code
of duty make any distinction within itself

1 Irenseus, Hcer. iv. 15. 1 : " Nam Deus primo quidem per
naturalia praecepta quae ab initio infixa dedit hotninibus
admonens eos, id eat per decalogum, nihil plus ab eis ex-
quisivit." Cf. T. Aquinas, Sumina Theologice, i. 2, qu. 100.

THE LAW OF THE TEN WORDS 97

between its various parts, to indicate that the
one part had an inherent dignity and per
petuity above another ?

To this question it seems impossible to give
anything but a negative answer. In the Law
itself there is no division of commands and
enactments into permanent and transitory,
into primary and secondary. They constitute
one legal whole, and the obligation to
obedience rests on one and the same principle,
viz. regard for the authority of God.1 Some
are moral, others ceremonial, others juristic.
But within the Law, as given in the
Pentateuch, no such formal division exists.
The division has no doubt an old tradition to
plead in its support ; and it has its use in
making reference to different enactments
more easy. Nevertheless, the Law as pro
mulgated by God is represented as one, and
its every portion is to Israel authoritative.
" The whole Law," says one of the most
conservative of Biblical theologians, "in all
its parts has the same form of absolute,
unconditional command. Before the closing
of the Covenant the people had still the choice
whether they would bind themselves by the
Law that was to be given ; but after they
pledge themselves, all choice is taken away.
Because of this strictly objective character of
the Law, human judgment cannot be allowed
to make distinctions between the individua 1

1 Schultz, Old Testament Theology, ii. 46.

8

98 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

precepts. Whether such distinctions are to
be made can be decided only by the Law
giver, who certainly appoints a punishment
more severe than for other transgressions to
follow on certain moral abominations and on
the transgression of such precepts as stand in
immediate relation to the Covenant idea (e.g.
circumcision, the Sabbath, etc.). But, so far
as man is concerned, the most inconsiderable
precepts fall to be viewed under the aspect
of the obedience demanded for the whole Law :
' Cursed is he that fulfils not the words of this
Law to do them' (Deut. xxvii. 26)." l We
shall afterwards see how, in the time of
Ezra, this fact of the Law, having the form
of an unconditional commandment, became
a stumbling-block to Israel, and contributed
with other influences to an external legalism,
becoming the exclusive form of the later
Rabbinical religion.

Questions regarding the age of the De
calogue do not come within the scope of
the ethics of the Old Testament. But all
will admit that it is cast in an archaic
mould ; and the negative form in which its
commandments are addressed is in keeping
with its primitive character.2 In the in-

1 Oehler, op. cit. sec. 84.

* Ottley, op. cit. 172 : " The Decalogue is especially significant
in this connection : for in it we may confidently believe that
we have an original monument of Moeaism. . . . Moreover,
as is well known, there is a so-called second Decalogue con
tained in Ex. xxxiv. 10-28, which is one of the puzzles of

THE DECALOGUE 99

fantile life of a nation, as in child life,
the early part of its moral training must
always consist of concrete precepts, expressed
in a prohibitory form. In the first portion of
a child's life it has to be kept from harm by
continual prohibitions ; and the formation at
that early stage of the habit of obedience to
these simple prohibitory commands is essential
to moral wellbeing. Thus it is thoroughly
consistent with the youthful stage of the
Beni-Israel, a horde of slaves newly enfran
chised and little better than children, that
this fundamental code of moral and religious
duty should be one, not of principles, but oi
plain precepts. Children do not understand

criticism. But we seem to be justified in adhering to the
traditional view of the Decalogue chiefly on the ground that
it is intrinsically credible. It is consistent with all that we
know of Israel's subsequent history ; and it would be im
possible to explain satisfactorily the vitality and vigour dis
played in the conquest of Canaan without the supposition
that the long observance of some primary laws of moral
conduct had moulded the character of the nation and con
solidated its strength. On the other hand, it is scarcely
conceivable that the prophets were the first ethical teachers
of Israel. They never claim the position of pioneers in
religion : they regard themselves as restorers of a moral and
religious ideal which had been set before the people at the
very outset of its history."

Prof. Robertson, The Early Religion of Israel, p. 264, says :
"The more the pre-prophetic religion is depreciated, the more
difficult will it be to account for its sudden rise to the level
in which we find it in the earliest writing prophets." For a
different view of a Higher Critic, see Budde, Religion of
Israel, pp. 3, 15, 59. Budde admits the spirituality of the
idea of Uod in the Ten Words, and on that account denies
their early historical origin. But he allows this view con
tradicts the uniform tradition of the Old Testament.

100 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

principles : they must at first receive simple,
concrete directions as to what they shall do
and not do. Truth must be accommodated
to the measure of their mind ; and while they
cannot comprehend the principles that lie at
the basis of property, they understand the
command, "Do not steal." The first stage of
moral education will be full of restrictions.
And the form of the Decalogue is in keeping
with the stage of Israel's progress in morality.

In what dialect the Decalogue was first
written we can only conjecture. At the com
mencement of their wilderness journey the
Hebrew tongue, as we know it, could not be
supposed to exist. But Moses, who was skilled
in all the learning of Egypt, must have been
acquainted with the hieroglyphic style of
writing. And the clay tablets of Tel-el-
Amarna have shown us how very freely
a literary correspondence between Egypt,
Babylon, and Syria was carried on in the
Babylonian script. These tablets, covered
with cuneiform characters, are in all prob
ability as early as Moses' time, and they pre
suppose a wide acquaintance with the art of
writing as well as the existence of scribes and
of libraries.1

Two forms of the Decalogue are given, the
first in Ex. xx. and the other in Deut. v. 6 ff.

1 The discovery of these cuneiform tablets in 1887 has
proved that in Moses' time the races of Western Asia were as
fond of literature as the Romans of the Augustan age. Of.
Sayce, The Higher Criticism, chap. ii.

FORMS OF THE DECALOGUE 101

The variations in the two passages are worthy
of notice. In the former, the fourth com
mandment is enforced by a reference to
God's resting at Creation from His work on
the seventh day ; while, in the latter, the
reference is to the deliverance of the people
from Egypt. The other difference is in the
order of the clauses of the tenth command
ment and in the verb that is used. In
Deuteronomy the "wife" is put before the
" house," and the change is marked by an
other verb : " Thou shalt not desire thy
neighbour's wife, nor covet thy neighbour's
house."

These commandments are not numbered by
Moses, and consequently different schemes of
arrangement have been common. The most
ancient of these is that found in Josephus and
in the writings of Philo. It is accepted by
the Greek Church and by the Reformed
Churches, and is that most commonly known
among English-speaking communities.1 In it

1 Some puzzling critical problems emerge from a comparison
of the Decalogue of Ex. xx. and Deut. v. The textual differ
ences are not few. For a comparison of them, see Driver's
Literature of the O.T. p. 30, 3rd ed. On the Decalogue as a
Mosaic utterance, consult A. B. Bruce, Christian Apologetics,
p. 209; Prof. Orr, The Problem of O.T. pp. 152-4, 1st ed. ;
and Kautzsch in Hastings' Diet, of Bible, Extra Vol. p. 634.
The Deuleronomic form of the Ten Words iy, as Delitz=ch
says, " finely rendered in the flow of hortatory oratory and
not literally reproduced " (Delitzsch's Genesis, p. 30). Cf. also
art. by Prof. W. P. Paterson in Hastings' Diet, of Bible, vol. i.
p. 581. After all that has been said, the Decalogue has
intrinsic credibility as a Mosaic utterance.

102 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

the preface is not made a commandment or
part of one : but the first commandment
simply forbids the worship of false deities,
and the second prohibits the use of idols ;
while all the prohibitions of covetousness are
included under the last command. Among
the Fathers this division is supported by
Origen. The Jews, on grounds that do not
appear to be very trustworthy, regard the
first commandment as containing only Ex.
xx. 2 : " I am the Lord thy God, which have
brought thee out of the land of Egypt."
This they interpret as a command to believe
in Jehovah as their God, because of His
gracious deliverance of their forefathers from
bondage. Then, to preserve the number
ten, they include in one our first and second
commandments ; and they justify this by
regarding the prohibition of images as an
extension of the idea of the unity of God.
On the other hand, the Roman and the
Lutheran Churches reverse this order and
include the first and second commandments
in one ; while to preserve the number ten,
they divide the last commandment into two,
thus combining two separate and dividing two
similar things.

According to the narrative in Exodus, the
commandments were written on two tables ;
but we can only conjecture, since we are not
told, what each table contained. The first is
usually supposed to contain the laws respecting

THE TABLES OF THE LAW 103

our duty to God, and the second the laws re
specting our duty to man. Josephus divides
the Decalogue into five commandments of
piety (praicepta pietatis) and five of probity
(prcecepta probitatis).1 Philo makes a similar
division, justifying the place of the fifth under
the category of pietas, on the ground that
parents are regarded as the representatives
of God, and deserve honour as opyava
y€vvr)<re(i><;* To look on parents as clothed
with some portion of the authority over
children which belongs to God, is a view
thoroughly in keeping with all that Scripture
teaches regarding them. The Roman Catholic
Church refers three commandments to the
first table and seven to the second ; while
the Reformed Church adopts another division,
in which one table contains four and the
other six commandments. The former of these
arrangements has most in its favour, and
the system of classification would then
be:

First Table

1. No other gods.

2. No image of God.

3. No dishonouring of God's name.

4. No desecration of God's day.

5. No dishonouring of God's representa

tives (parents).

1 Josephup, Antiq. iii. 6.

2 Philo, ii. 188.

104 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Second Table

1. No taking away of a neighbour's life.

2. No taking away of his wife — his home

— his dearest good.

3. No taking away of his goods.

4. No taking away of his good name.

5. Nor even coveting of his good or his

goods.1

In these commands there is apparent a
gradation or order, which we may express
thus :

I. Let Jehovah be reverenced and honoured
in respect of —

(a) His Person,
His Worship,

(c) His Name,

(d) His Day,

(e) His representatives.

II. Let the neighbour be protected in
respect of —

(a) his life,

(b) his family,

(c) his property,

(d) his character ;

(e) and this in thought and intent

as well as act.

1 Lutliardt, op. cit. p. 47 ; Stade, Gesch. d. Volkes Israel,
p. 510.

THE TABLES OF THE LAW 105

So that the first table has reference to the
worship of God, the second to the service of

man.1

It will be perceived that this analysis shows
a beautiful orderly progress. In the second
table it advances inwardly, through deed and
through word, to the very inmost motive ;
while in the first table it proceeds outwardly,
from the worship of the heart (second), to the
reverent speech (third), and the reverent and
respectful deed (fourth and fifth). Others,
again, make the order proceed upon the Old
Testament triology, and shape it thus :

First Table— Heart, Mouth, Work.
Second Table— Work, Word, Heart.2

The relation of these tables to one another
has an important ethical significance. The
duties which man owes to God take pre
cedence of those which he owes to his fellow-
creatures. Therefore the Decalogue cannot
be spoken of merely as a criminal code. It
is much more than a system of jurisprudence.
It is a code that rests on fundamental ethical
principles, and seeks to root all morality in

1 Cf. Driver, Introduction to Literature of Old Testament,
p. 37, for various reconstructions of the Ten Words. Those
who wish to pursue this line of study should consult Budde,
Religion of Israel, p. 33 ff. ; "VVellhausen, History of Israel,
pp. 432-8; Kuenen, Religion of Israel, p. 272 ff. ; Dillmann,
L'omm. pp. 184, 331.

2 Cf. " Dekalog " in Herzog's Real-Eiicyc. vol. iii. Note
also in this connection, Ps. xxiv. 3, 4 ; art. " Decalogue "
in Hastings' Diet, of Bible, and Wellhausen'a Comm. p. 83.

106 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

the soil of piety. The Israelite who lived in
due reverence and obedience towards God
could not be without regard to the welfare of
his kinsmen after the flesh. Faith in God
makes possible faith in man. This is shown
by our Lord's redaction of the Ten Words
into the two pregnant commands, " Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all
thy mind. This is the great and first com
mandment. And a second like unto it is
this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hangeth the
whole Law and the Prophets" (Revised
Version).

The Decalogue is prefaced by the words,
" I am Jehovah, thy God, which have brought
thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the
house of bondage." These words contain
both a doctrine for belief and a motive to
obedience. That doctrine is the personality
and the existence of God. Whether God is
a person, or only a force devoid of all
personality, is even still a subject of dispute
in the schools of philosophy. Apart from
such a revelation as this, the question can
never be satisfactorily answered. We can
hardly estimate the enormous gain that it
was to Israel to have, in the very opening
language of its legal code, the categorical
affirmation of the personality of Jehovah.
That Great Power, making for righteousness,

PREFACE TO THE TEN WORDS 107

is no mere cosmic force, a historical trend,
but is Jehovah, who with outstretched arms
brought them salvation from bitter bondage
and terrible death. He is more than even
the God of their fathers, and His worship is
far above ancestral worship. He has come
into personal relations with them, has
intervened in the course of their own history,
and thus they both know His nature and His
relations towards themselves. Therefore the
doctrine of God's character declared in this
prologue has a high ethical value. It is so
connected with their preceding history and
with the subsequent commands of the
Decalogue, that they cannot but feel that
mercy and goodness lie at the basis of their
statute law. The Giver of the Decalogue is
One who rules all the forces of history for
His people's good.1

It was most necessary, before the people of
Israel were called upon in the first command-

1 That an ethical conception of Jehovah formed the
starting-point of Israel's religion is most abundantly proved.
Amid much critical divergence as to parts of the Haxateuch,
there is general agreement on this point. We do not claim
for Mosaism any formal ethical system. It is enough to
show that its ground-work lies in the doctrine of the Holiness
of Israel's God. In this connection it is desirable to be
acquainted with the group of chapters in Lev. xvii.-xxvi.
containing what Klostermann in 1877 felicitously called
Das Heilig-Keitsgesetz, " The Law of Holiness," a term ever
since in use. In this whole section holiness, both ceremonial
and moral, is a quality which must distinguish everyone who
worships Jehovah. Dr. Driver in Hastings' Did. of Bible,
vol. iii. p. 69, discusses what he calls " the nucleus of the Law
of Holiness."

108 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

ment to worship, that they should know the
Being to whom worship was to be rendered,
and in what relation He stood to them.
That is the meaning that lies • beneath the
declaration of the preface. We know our
friends, not as metaphysical entities or
abstract personalities, but by their kind deeds
and comforting presence in our hours of
sorrow and of pain. So Israel knew God ;
and as yet they could hardly be said to know
Him in any way but this. Jehovah, there
fore, does not begin by ordering them to
humble themselves before His Majesty, or to
bring sacrifices to His shrine, or to cleanse
themselves from all pollutions and abomina
tions of Egypt. He opens His Law by
reminding them that He is their Saviour, and
by making an appeal to their generous nature
to give Him obedience because of that loving
relationship. Here the code of Hebrew ethics
and the code of Christian ethics radically
meet and touch each other. For it is from the
same force of generous love to a Redeemer
who has first loved us that Jesus Christ looks
for the power that shall be the mainspring
of all Christian activity. The central and
essential principle of the obedience required
in both Old and New Testaments is one.

CHAPTER VII
FIRST TABLE

IN discussing, under the Ethics of the Old
Testament, the Ten Commandments, it is
obvious that our concern is with their original
meaning and purport. It is the task of
others to translate them in terms of a
Christian's duty, and show their practical
bearing on the errors and offences that may
have crept into the Church of to-day. Our
aim will be to point out what the Decalogue
meant for that people to whom it was origin
ally given, how it summed up their moral
duty, and how each commandment embodied
principles which had for them innumerable
applications, and which still abide.

Assuming that the ancient method of
dividing these commandments, adopted by
Josephus and Philo, is the correct one, and
that the commandment prohibiting the use
of idols should be separated from the first,
which forbids the worship of other gods, we
proceed to consider them seriatim.

109

110 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

The First Commandment

The first commandment is, "Thou shalt
have none other gods before Me." These
words are a simple and distinct prohibition of
the worship of any other deity but Jehovah.
No rival gods shall usurp the place of the God
who has been the Redeemer of Israel. With
the man that bows to Baalpeor, or sacrifices
to Chemosh, He will have nothing to do. He
has sought only Israel's good ; He commands
nothing but what is for their moral well-
being. He has set them free from a galling
bondage, that they may have liberty to serve
Him with a full surrender of their being ; and
He can accept nothing less than the "sole and
undivided homage of their hearts.

It is impossible to find monotheism ex
plicitly taught in the words of this command
ment. There can be little doubt that what
the Israelites would gather from them would
simply be that the worship of deities such as
they knew in Egypt was forbidden to them.
The words " before Me " are equivalent in
meaning to " beside Me " (margin of Revised
Version), and explicitly prohibit sacrifice or
honour being offered to any but Jehovah.

But, upon the other hand, such worship,
continued year after year, would be certain to
ensure the ultimate reception of monotheism.1

1 Wellhausen in his History of Israel (p. 439 ff.) admits the
universal character of the ethics of the Decalogue. But he

CONVICTION OF ITS TRUTH GROWS 111

The prohibition of the public worship of any
other deity among a rude people, and their
practice of the public worship of one God, will
soon result in their belief that He whom they
alone worship is the true God. Besides,
Israel had seen such exhibitions of Jehovah's
power and such miraculous interventions of
grace in their behalf, that any superstitious
dread of other deities gradually vanished, and
the confident conviction grew that Jehovah
alone reigned in heaven and in earth. The
overthrow of the Egyptians in the Red Sea
was virtually the disproof of the power of
the deities which the chosen people had
seen worshipped in Egypt. They had heard
Jehovah's voice thundering from Horeb's
peaks ; His own finger wrote down these Ten
Words ; they knew their heavenly origin and
divine sanction. And thus, through their ex
perience as a nation, the great spiritual truths
of God's existence and oneness were rooted in
their heart, before they came to be received as
part of their creed. Their conviction of the
truth of monotheism arose from their own
history of God's loving dealings with them.
Therefore to worship other gods would not
only be to run counter to the teaching, as we
have seen, of the introductory part of the

cannot believe that the religion of Israel was of such an
ethical character before Samuel's time, because he finds such
acts as Jael's murder of Sisera and David's cruelty to prisoners
of war commended. For a reply to this criticism, see Prof.
Bruce's Apologetics, p. 214 ff.

112 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Decalogue, but it would be treason against
Him who had been their personal Redeemer.
It was in the great school of experience
that the Israelites became such intense mono-
theists. " We shall miss the keynote of
the whole moral history of Israel if we fail
to observe this constant reference to the
historical fact with which the table of the
Law begins."

It is in keeping also with this knowledge
of God, and of His gracious relationship to
His people, that in Lev. xix. the command
ments, embraced within what is known as
" the Law of Holiness," are each connected
with the assertion of this truth, " I am
Jehovah your God." That chapter includes a
number of miscellaneous laws, regulating the
moral and religious life of the nation, and
arranged in pentads, each of which closes with
this doctrine like a refrain. It would seem,
therefore, that the whole Law is to be received
as based upon this precept, in which Israel is
to regard Jehovah as their God, their only
God and Redeemer.

Here, then, obedience is rested on faith in
Jehovah, the one true God. Morality is based
upon religion. Placed as they were among
the idolatrous races of Western Asia, and but
lately delivered from a land filled with the
worship of a gross polytheism, Israel was to
maintain a standing protest against the

1 Smyth, Old Testament Morality, p. 21.

ITS MORAL POWER 113

universal tendency to worship many gods.
We may deem it strange that such a command
should have the position of pre-eminence in
the Decalogue. But if we reflect upon the
awe with which every unusual phenomenon
of Nature was then regarded, and the custom
among the Semite peoples, even when giving
their own deity a supreme place, of permitting
other deities to occupy a secondary position
in their homage, we shall understand the
seductive character of the practice against
which this commandment binds Israel to take
a stand.1

The recognition of Jehovah as their God
carried with it to Israel the plain duty of
serving Him. This command lies at the root
of all righteous conduct. When God is re
garded with idolatrous dread as a fetish, or
with irreligious scepticism as a cosmic force,
it will be found impossible to gain for the
Moral Law a position of supremacy over the
conscience. A system of ethics grounded
on self-interest also rests on an insecure
foundation. If the moral worth of life be
reduced to terms of pleasure, the obligation to
do justly and love mercy has been deprived of
its binding power. Religious life is genuine
only when it is moral; and moral life is healthy
and strong only when it is rooted in religion.
Obedience to the first commandment would
secure in Israel the total exclusion of all the

1 Riehra, Alt. Theoloyie, p. 83.

114 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

evils of polytheism. It would make the people
shape their whole life according to the will of
a righteous Governor. It would drive out
the superstitious dread of nature powers,
and render it impossible for them to run
to magicians for help. Witchcraft, too, so
common still in Africa and Asia, would cease ;
for where God alone is revered, the fear of the
evil eye is gone. And God would become the
One Object of their worship and adoration, in
whom their faith and devotion would centre.
We shall afterwards see how, by the internal
ising of the Law in Deuteronomy and the
prophetical teaching, the claims of this first
commandment are brought home to the per
sonal life and conscience of the people, and it
is shown how central is the position which
this duty should occupy in a holy life.1

The Second Commo,ndment

The first and second commandments, though
forbidding offences as different in their char
acter as polytheism and idolatry, are not
always in the popular mind kept apart. Yet
when the language is examined, their differ-

1 For this ethical relation of a holy god to a holy and
separated people, and for the meaning of the term, see Prof.
A. B. Davidson, Theology of the O.T. pp. 144-150. It is re
markable that never in the Levitical law or in Ezekiel is
the term "righteous" applied to Jehovah. The people are
righteous, but Jehovah is holy. Ezekiel uses all the terms of
the ritual law as much as Jeremiah avoids them.

THE SECOND COMMANDMENT 115

ence is easily perceived. The first command
ment forbids the worship of any god but One ;
the second forbids the making of any image
or symbol of that One God. The former pro
hibits the adoration of false deities, the latter
prohibits the adoration of Jehovah by means of
any form that would convey false impressions
of Him.1 The first proclaims His unity, the
second His spirituality. As a Spirit, Jehovah
cannot have a visible representation ; and the
worship offered at His shrine must be in
accordance with His spiritual character. To
represent Him by an image, whether in
statuary or in painting, would be derogatory
to His nature as a Spirit. Not that we believe
this commandment condemns all products
of the plastic art, as Philo maintained, but
only such images as are meant to be aids or
inducements to worship.2 To make a carved
image of Him the object of religious reverence,
is to transfer to senseless things the allegiance
due to the Creator and Preserver of all ; it is
to derogate from His honour, and to lower
Jehovah to the level of the nature-gods of
Moab and Ammon. No doubt the visible
representation gives body and reality to the
invisible deity ; no doubt men will persist in

1 Cf. The Speaker's Commentary, in loc. ; Ottley, op. cit. p.
217.

* In the first temple, honoured of God, there were many
exquisite carvings on the wall of trees and flowers, besides
the Cherubim and the " Molten Sea " standing on pillars of
oxen (1 Kings vi. 27-29).

116 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

forming some mental image of God, and will
always speak, when they pray, to that. It
might be deemed but a condescension to
human infirmity to permit some such repre
sentation of the Creator as an aid to man's
more easy apprehension of His presence in
prayer. But the danger is too great ; and the
help thus obtained is purchased, as experience
soon showed to Israel, at too terrible a risk.
Within a few hours of the giving of the Law
from Sinai, the people were found heaping their
jewels at Aaron's feet, and crying, " Up, make
us a God which shall go before us ; for as for
this Moses, we know not what has become
of him." And the temptation had to be
met by the fearful punishment that followed
it. Nothing was too severe to counteract
the craving of their hearts for a sensuous
worship.

Israel had but recently left a land of which
the cultus exhibited an essentially grovelling
tendency, and where the gods were worshipped
under the debasing representation of the lower
creation. Clement of Alexandria says that
" the holy places of the Egyptian temples are
overhung with gilded tapestry ; but let the
priests lift the corner of the gorgeous curtain,
and there appears a cat, or a crocodile, or a
serpent. The god of the Egyptians appears :
and it is a beast tumbling about on a carpet of
purple." It would seem from the hieroglyphic
records that the priests of Egypt had some

ISRAEL'S SUDDEN RELAPSE 117

glimmerings of the doctrine of monotheism,1 if
the interpretation of Egyptologists be correct ;
but these glimmerings did not reach the mass
of the people. We know that at Thebes the
ram was worshipped, and the god Amon had
a ram's head. In Goshen, where the Israelites
dwelt, it was a god represented with a goat's
head and feet that received divine honours,
and his shrine was the centre of the foulest
orgies. At Memphis the sacred bull was the
incarnation of divinity, suggesting to Aaron
most probably the idea of the golden calf.2
Many of the religious festivals in honour of
these idols were marked by debauchery and
impure revels.

It was not to be wondered at that Israel,
emerging from immediate contact with such
gross forms of idolatry, should carry with
them a very material conception of deity. It
could not be that such an ignorant multitude
would understand those subtle distinctions
made by some devotees of art between the
external symbol and the homage which is
induced by it.8 It was not merely a thing of
art that Aaron led Israel to worship. It was
a symbol of nature's prolific power ; and its

1 On the worship of Amon in the time of Amenophis iv., see
art. " Egypt " in Hastings' Diet, of Bible, vol. i., ana Maspero's
fitudes de Mythol. (1893), where the subject is fully treated.

8 Ebers, Durch Gosen, pp. 483, 528 ; Brugsch, Records of the
Past, vol. ii. ; Herzog's Real-Encyc., art. " Aegypten," by
Lepsius (1st ed.).

3 Cf. Prof. Milligan's Elijah, on Jeroboam's Institution of
Idolatry.

118 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

very sensuousness was its attraction to the
dancing promiscuous multitude.

What is specifically forbidden in this com
mand is the adoration of images. This was
the interpretation put upon the words by the
Jews and by the early Christian Church up to
the time when, under Constantine, heathen
customs began to intrude into the Church.
The sin is clearly not that of worshipping
other deities (which is forbidden by the
first commandment), but that of worshipping
any visible image of the true God who is a
Spirit. It is not said that the worshippers of
Baal believed that Baal was the sun. Yet
there is no doubt they did believe that some
connection existed betwixt the idol and the
central source of all natural life and light ;
and by the law of association they came to
pay to the image the homage they felt they
owed to the power that rules the day. Hence
it is that in the Old Testament the worship of
images and of false gods is regarded as the same
thing. For the image and the god get identi
fied, so that it becomes unmitigated idolatry.

In addition to this, it is always found that
no man can limit his conceptions of God the
Spirit to an image, however lovely be the
lines of the statuary, without dwarfing his
thoughts of the Infinite One. It ties them
down to that material model, and beyond it
they will not expand. Whereas the dimmest
spiritual idea of God in a man's heart has the

DANGER OF RITUALISM 119

power of an infinite expansiveness, and will
grow with the advance of his mind and heart
in spiritual experience.1

They were not to " make any image, nor
bow down to it, nor serve it." This last word
refers to carrying offerings and incense to
the altar of the idol, or the giving of money
to maintain a priestly service at its shrine.
Either act constituted idolatry, and was de
nounced and punished in Israel as an act
of apostasy from God. The recourse to such
methods renders men less willing, and also
doubtless less fit, to receive spiritual revela
tions of God's character which come through
His word or servants. Religious fervour can
be stimulated from beneath much more easily
than from above. It is more akin to the
weakness of human nature to lean upon the
priest than to listen to the inspiring call of
the prophet. The danger of all ritualistic
excess is that it tends to exaggerate the need
of itself. Imagery ever leads to deterioration
in worship. It is stepping on to an inclined
plane which slopes down to all the grossness
and sensuousness of a superstitious heathenism.
The one certain result of it all is that the
spiritual revelation of the unseen God to the
heart and conscience becomes insipid and
actually distasteful.

1 Of. Dean Chadwick on Exodus, p. 296. He illustrates the
point by a fine comparison between Gothic and Grecian
architecture.

120 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

This commandment, in prohibiting idol
worship, prohibited also human sacrifices to
such idols. By this inhibition it lifted Israel
immeasurably above their neighbours in a
moral point of view. The idea of a holy and
righteous God could not long hold possession
of a people where human sacrifice was con
sidered agreeable to His will. The celebrated
Koman author, in his De rerum Natura, is an
advocate of atheism and impiety, because he
felt that in his day religion crushed out human
life with inexorable cruelty. When man
thought of God as a monster who could be

o

satisfied with the offerings of innocent babes,
there was little in Him that a true Roman
could admire. Euripides in his Iphigenia in
Aulis tells how a father determined to sacrifice
his daughter to appease those gods that kept
the Greeks by contrary winds from reaching
Troy. But the tragic poet felt that there was
in this act such a transgression of justice that
he affirms it woke up the utmost ire of the
dread Furies to seek immediate vengeance.
What debasing ideas must have associated in
the mind of Agamemnon with his conception
of God before he yielded to the demands of
the Greek generals to immolate his daughter !
Yet the worship of the Phoenician religions,
with which Israel came in contact, was fre
quently polluted by such sacrifices, in which
men " offered the fruit of their body for
the sin of their soul." And it would seem

CHARGE OF ANTHROPOMORPHISM 121

from its later history that it required a long
course of moral education to make God's
people morally superior to this same degrad
ing superstition. We know how they fell
back into the worship of Moloch, and how the
prophets have repeatedly to denounce this
offence. The reform of Josiah is marked by
his " having defiled Tophet that no man might
make his son or his daughter pass through the
fire " to this idol. But this second command
ment proved to them that Jehovah has no
delight in human sacrifice at any shrine. He
will have no child immolated at His altar.
Abraham was tested in this respect ; and that
object-lesson once for all taught his descend
ants that the Lord does not desire to see the
father slay the child, but will Himself provide
the lamb for the sacrifice.1 This command
ment brings out the moral grandeur of the
Old Testament conception of Jehovah.

There is a reason attached to the command
ment. God declares " He is a jealous God.
visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the
children, unto the third and fourth generation

1 The idea that deity was quickly appeased by human
sacrifice lingered for many a day in the numan mind. It
had in it an element of truth and noble feeling. Jehovah's
treatment of. Abraham was highly pedagogic, and part of the
moral education of the Chosen race. The noble feeling that
the worshipper should devote his very best to God was
approved ; while at the same time the idea that God de-
hgnted in destroying human life was rejected. Cf. Mozley,
Ruling Ideas in Early Ages, p. 255 ; Schultz, Old Testament
Theology, vol. i. p. 191.

122 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

of them that hate Me, and showing mercy
unto thousands of them (or 'a thousand
generations,' margin of Revised Version) that
love Me and keep My Commandments." There
are those who will say that to speak of God
as moved with jealpusy is to use language so
anthropomorphic that His deity is practically
sacrificed to His passion. There is no doubt
that in the Old Testament the person of God
is sometimes presented with a vividness and
a sensuousness of imagination that appear to
humanise the Deity. Breaches of His law
arouse His " wrath " and " indignation." Lying
lips are an " abomination " to Him. Besides,
jealousy is a quality so universally disliked,
so belittling to the man who is guilty of it,
so ugly and ill-favoured, that to call a man
jealous is to ruin his reputation for generosity
and goodness. How then can the term be
used of God without detraction ? And how
can He use it of Himself? Does it not reduce
Him to the level of an Achilles ? or to that of
one of the deities of the heathen Semites ?

The answer will be best understood by
considering the exciting cause. What God
above all desires is His people's trust and love.
He compares Himself to a husband, and says,
"0 Israel, I am married unto thee."1 Could
a husband see a wife's affection alienated from
him by some unworthy lover without experi-

1 Jer. iii. 14. Cf. Tsa. liv. 5, " Thy Maker is thy Husband " ;
and HOP. ii. 2, 7.

THE SECOND COMMANDMENT 123

encing the most acute agony, without feeling
the most just indignation? Would it not be
wrong in him if he were not in such circum
stances jealous of another withdrawing her
love ? We need not be afraid of transferring
this word to God to illustrate the severe
displeasure with which He regards idolatry.
Jealousy, without due cause, is ungenerous
and detestable ; and that is how we condemn
it. But Jehovah's jealousy is not such. It is
that same jealousy which rightly springs up
in the bosom of every honest man whose love
has been wronged. In Him there is nothing
of sin mingling with the strong feeling of
indignation at a love transferred to such an
unworthy object as an idol. But the strong
anthropomorphisms of the Old Testament,
pulsing, as they do, with life and force, are
more correct than " the pale, dead epithets of
metaphysical theologians, who seem afraid to
suggest that God is alive." l

God is jealous of man's affection, just
because He has loved him with an everlasting
love. He will not permit an enemy to come
between His people and Himself. He cannot
endure that their affections be given away to
anything they would make an idol of. The
ethical force of the commandment here becomes
doubly strong.

But the evil consequences of idolatry do
not fall only on the offenders. They descend

1 Dale, The Ten Commandments, p. 62.

124 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

to later generations, even to the third and
fourth. They are not to be regarded merely
as part of life's natural trials, for they are the
reaping of a harvest of which the poisonous
seed has been sown. They are inherent in
the order of things, and are to be regarded
therefore as ordained of God. In short, they
are His judgments on the actual sins of
transgressors. Sins of profligacy and intem
perance are so taken into the physical system
that the principle of heredity works out in a
natural way God's punishment, often in terrible
disease, lifelong and defaming. And moral
transgressions, violations of the laws of honour
and truth, as surely poison the better springs
of man's nature, and descend in weakened
spiritual stamina and perverted moral sense.
Can we suppose it would be otherwise with so
degrading a sin as idolatry ? We have but to
look at China and at Africa to see how this
violation of God's law has injured these races
socially and mentally as well as spiritually.

But, on the whole, the balance of benefit is
upon the side of the race, and the upward
force of the law of heredity is stronger than
its downward attraction. The transmission of
good has outbalanced that of evil, and the
poorest beggar's child of to-day is the heir to
a heritage, mental and spiritual, that lifts him
high above his forefathers. For while God
visits the iniquities of fathers " to four genera
tions," His mercy descends "to a thousand

THE SECOND COMMANDMENT 125

generations1 of them that love Him and keep
His commandments" (margin Revised Version).
God's mercies are far wider and more lasting
than His judgments. Good is more potent
and persistent than evil. The children of
righteous parents inherit the best of legacies.
If honours and riches be not theirs, God's
mercy is promised to them and to their
children's children. Surely this should lead
to a high moral endeavour, and to a lofty
example of faithful righteous conduct.

This commandment is one that reveals much
of the heart of Jehovah. It is a proof that
above all things else He yearns for the love
and the confidence of His children. To many
in Israel it may have been a matter of small
concern whether or not their hearts were
given to God. His claim on their allegiance
and trust they might treat very lightly.
This second commandment showed them that
God publishes His law from no fear regarding
His dignity, from no jealousy as to His honour.
It is because He longs for Israel's communion,
and because His love is pained most deeply by
lack of responsive affection. Love must have
love in return. Divine affection longs for
human affection. The heart of the great
Father is not at rest till it draws to itself the
love of all His children.

1 Of. Deut. vii. 9 in support of this reading. The object
is to contrast the long duration of mercy with the brief period
of chastisement.

126 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

The Third Commandment

"Thou shalt not take the name of the
Lord thy God in vain ; for the Lord will not
hold him guiltless that taketh His name in
vain."

This commandment has usually been sup
posed to be directed against the sin of
profanity. But there is considerable doubt
among scholars as to what is the true render
ing of the Hebrew words. There is an ambig
uity in the term "vain," so that the verse
may be translated in two ways. "Thou shalt
not use the name of God irreverently
(vainly)," or "Thou shalt not use the name
of God falsely," i.e. to a falsehood. Hence
the commandment may be held to prohibit
either an irreverent use of God's name, or a
use of it for the purpose of propagating false
hood ; or it may be held as covering both
offences, the sin of profanity and the crime
of perjury. The Authorised Version follows
the Septuagint (with which also the Vulgate
agrees) in adopting the former. Several
modern commentators are in favour of the
latter, and quote our Lord's words in support
of their contention : "Ye have heard that it
hath been said by them (or 'to them') of old
time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but
shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths :
but I say unto you, Swear not at all" (Matt.
v. 33, 34). It is, however, very doubtful

THE THIRD COMMANDMENT 127

whether our Lord is here quoting the words
of the commandment, or is simply drawing a
contrast between His own prohibition of
unnecessary oaths and the forbidding of false
oaths found elsewhere in the Pentateuch.

There is one objection to the second render
ing of the commandment which may at first
seem to have considerable weight. In dividing
the Decalogue into two tables, we spoke of
the first five as having to do with our duties
to God, and of the second five as concerned
with our obligations to man. Would not this
later interpretation of the third commandment
militate against the above division in so far
as perjury is more a crime against our
neighbour than a sin against God ? Besides,
does not the ninth commandment cover the
crime of perjury. But on due consideration
of the character of that dire offence it will be
seen that its awfulness consists in its being
a fearful abnegation of the will and of the
very existence of God. The man that can
solemnly swear by God's name to an untruth
practically denies the existence of the God of
truth ; while, on the other hand, there is a
wide difference between perjury and the
detraction or simple falsehood that is con
demned in the ninth commandment.

Even if the latter commandment be held to
cover the bearing of false witness in a court
of justice no less than slander, still the third
commandment looks at the sin in the light of

128 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

an offence against God, while the other regards
it in its manward aspect.

It seems right for the expositor of Scripture
to regard the command as one that has both
a general and a specific application ; as a
general prohibition of all blasphemy, and as
forbidding in particular the offence of perjury.
Under the Mosaic Law both these offences
were visited with capital punishment, since
they alike insulted the character of Jehovah
and disrupted the bonds that held society
together in Israel. Both sins are found to
cut the roots of that mutual confidence and
religious obligation without which there is no
proper security for the administration of justice,
and no stable foundation for the authority of
government.1

This commandment was given at a time
not long subsequent to the proclamation of
the name of Jehovah. That name, as we have
shown, conveyed to Israel the true conception
of the personality and eternity of God. It
joined together the past and the future of
the nation's history ; for He that was the
God of Abraham would also be the Guide
of the chosen people till He had accom
plished His great purpose of salvation through
them.

This name was given on Sinai amid such
awe-inspiring circumstances that it is not to
be wondered at that associations of a dreadful

1 Smyth, Christian Ethics, p. 400.

SAFEGUARDS AGAINST PROFANITY 129

kind gathered round it. It was very rarely
used by the Israelites. According to an
ancient tradition it was uttered but once a
year, and that only by the high priest on the
occasion of the great Day of Atonement. This
may be an apocryphal story ; but it is certain
that, induced by a superstitious awe, the
Jewish readers of the Torah never pronounced
the word, but substituted for it another of
the names of God which had less august
associations investing it. Even still in our
Hebrew Bibles the vowels of the word Jehovah
are not written, but those of Adonai are
attached to it.1

But true reverence for the name of God
cannot thus be shown. Such miserable trifling
with a word might keep the letter, yet break
the spirit of the command ; and it partakes
more of the art of necromancy than of the
reverence of faith. Possibly it induced a
certain kind of fear in the minds of the
Israelites to know that the dreaded name was
to be pronounced by the priest upon the great
day. But such a feeling is not the reverence
of that love and fear which Jehovah desires.
His name is equivalent to Himself, and in-

1 Among Hebrews the name expressed the nature of the
person. The name of God expressed therefore His revealed
character. " How excellent is Thy name in all the earth "
just means " How good is God's revelation of Himself
throughout the world." The use of this name seems to
imply two things : (1) that Jehovah is God alone ; (2) that
His aim is to reveal Himself to all mankind as Israel's God,
Jehovah.

10

130 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

eludes all by which He reveals Himself.1
The command, therefore, forbids all indecorous
conduct in those solemn acts of worship in
which God promises to be specially present
with His people ; all acts of sacrilege ; the
irreverent use of God's names and attributes ;
the colloquial employment, without due cause,
of God's name in conversation, by way of
adjuration or of strengthening a statement, or
giving force to an asseveration. For all such
acts of irreverence spring from a spirit of
unbelief in a holy God, in whom we live and
move and on whom we daily depend. Faith
in God ever produces a reverential fear of
God which is the beginning of wisdom ; and
when this fear is absent true faith is not there.
The surest method of escaping profanity is
to labour to attain a true and lofty conception
of God's character, and to live in unbroken
communion with Him. He that has learned
the habit of " praying without ceasing " has
learned the secret of a holy life. He will not
use God's name profanely ; yet it may often
be upon his lips, since what is in the heart

1 Jehovah is the personal name of the God of Israel. El
Shaddai is the Almighty God, and does not necessarily imply
monotheism, as one Most High might exist among minor
gods. But it is not easy to get at the first conceptions of
God among tribes. And naturally the different names for
God used by different tribes were considered as separate
deities, when all these names in reality expressed the same
idea. El signifies Strong One ; Bel or Baal, owner ; Adonis,
lord; Moloch, King; Rimmon, thunderer. Cf. Riehm, Alt.
Theologie, p. 47.

THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT 131

will find vent in the speech. Between such
sincere language of the heart and the fluent
talk of the shallow religionist there is a differ
ence of whole diameters. When the heart is
filled with God's love the mouth will reverently
show forth His praise. Of such genuinely
pious souls the prophet speaks : " Then they
that feared the Lord spake often one with
another ; and the Lord hearkened, and heard,
and a book of remembrance was written
before Him, for them that feared the Lord,
and that thought upon His name. And they
shall be Mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in the
day wherein I do make a peculiar treasure " l
(Mai. hi. 16, 17, R.V.).

The Fourth Commandment

" Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy
work : but the seventh day is the Sabbath of
the Lord thy God : in it thou shalt not do any
work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter,
thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy
cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy
gates : for in six days the Lord made heaven
and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and
rested the seventh day : wherefore the Lord
blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it."

1 Or, as Calvin translates it, more in accordance with the
Hebrew idiom, " they shall be My peculiar treasure in the
day in which I will do it."

132 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

The annexe to this commandment carries
us at once back to the order of creation. It
bids God's people commemorate that order
and keep the seventh day a holy day, because
in it the Creator rested after the six days of
creative activity. That in some sense the
Sabbath was then instituted seems clear from
what is said in the opening chapters of Genesis.
It is true that we do not find any mention of
the Sabbath as being kept by Abraham or
Jacob ; but it would be unsafe to draw any
large inference from such omission. There is
no doubt that the institution was, if not
unknown to the Egyptians, at least not
observed among them during Israel's captivity
in Goshen. There these slaves had toiled for
centuries without knowing that sweet remis
sion of hard labour which the day of rest
brings to tired body and jaded mind. If
the day was known to them, then it is certain
the observance of it had during their bondage
fallen into desuetude.

Yet the commandment speaks of it as of
something which had been in existence. If
the word " remember " is to be construed
as a simple injunction not to forget to keep
this day, one would have expected that the
day should first have been constituted holy,
and that the injunction to " remember" would
have followed upon its institution. But when
the commandment opens with the words,
" Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,"

TWOFOLD CHARACTER OF THE COMMAND 133

it seems to us a perversion of the evident sense
of the words to say that they were to remember
that which they had previously never heard of
as existing.1 It is, of course, possible that the
word may have been designed to carry their
minds back to what took place in Ex. xvi.,
when God seized the occasion of the gift of
manna to mark, in the most emphatic manner,
His approval of their keeping the seventh day
as a day of perfect rest. But the words there
employed again convey to the mind that it was
rather a re-institution of the day that took
place, and that at the beginning of this journey
to Canaan they were thus encouraged to return
to a faithful observance of what had been a
custom of the patriarchs.2

Those who argue that the Sabbath was for
the first time instituted in the Decalogue for
get that nothing seems to be there instituted
for the first time. It is not necessary that
legislation should be origination. In early
and rude times it never is so. The name of
God had been used and abused before the
third commandment made the irreverent or
false use of it a crime. Worship was certainly
as old as Adam's age ; and the second com
mandment seeks to regulate only what was in

1 Cf. Meinhold, Jesus und das A.T. p. 71. The history of
Creation in Gen. i. is clearly written for the purpose of lead
ing up to the institution of the Sabbath as a rest-day. In
this the great event of Creation issues.

8 For the evidence of the cuneiform tablets as to the
Sabbath in Assyria, see Records of the Past, vol. iii. p. 143.

134 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

existence. A man's gear and a man's good
name were valued and protected long before
the eighth and ninth commandments were
written down. And there is every probability
that the Sabbath existed before it was enacted
at Sinai. The Decalogue did not create the
day. It simply said, " This day, already kept
by your fathers, shall be kept holy unto the
Lord, and no kind of work shall be done
therein. It shall be observed in such manner
as God rested after the work of Creation."

In the Book of Deuteronomy the reason
assigned for the keeping of the day is different
from that which is given in Exodus.1 There
the reference to work is absent, and the
command is connected with the gracious
deliverance of Israel from Egypt's bondage.
This would create a sentiment of gratitude for
their freedom and quiet after a period of
servile toil. Both reasons would connect the
Sabbath in their mind with the thought of
restfulness, and make it prefigure the eternal
rest and happiness of heaven.

This law is a twofold one, commanding
labour as well as enjoining rest. " Six days
shalt thou labour" is regarded by some as a
prohibition of more than six days' toil rather

1 The Sabbath expressed the thought that all our time as
well as other things is God's. So that the householder
granted his slaves this rest, not from our modern motive
that they too might worship, but as part of his own dedi
cation of the day to Jehovah. Hence the Deuteronomic
reference to the deliverance from Egypt.

THE DAY OF REST 135

than an injunction. But it seems to us that
this first part is no less imperative than the
second. They who spend the week in idleness
cannot know, as the worker does, the restful
calm of the Sabbath day. Work is the law of
God for mankind. But because the love of
gain and the stress of many necessities are
continually making inexorable demands that
drive men into overwork, till the body be
comes a mere machine ; and in order that the
back may not be broken nor the body de
formed with exhaustive toil, that the hours
may not be wholly given up to the service of
mammon, but some portion of them may be
reserved for the needs of the spirit and for
the claims of God, therefore it is enacted that
the seventh day shall be a day of rest. The
Lord makes the Sabbath a perpetual witness
that, though inevitable hardships may be the
lot of the labourer, yet it is not His pleasure
that all our time should be consumed in ex
haustive toil. The day was instituted for this
highly beneficent end.

This law of rest was to extend to the whole
family ; and indolent or cruel parents were
strictly prohibited from exacting work from
their sons and daughters on the Sabbath.
The domestic servants or slaves were also to
enjoy a period of respite from toil. So were
the cattle, about whose welfare the Old
Testament Law was extremely careful.1 No

1 Of. Dollinger, Jew and Gentile, vol. ii. p. 346.

136 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

other religioD of that time contained any such
merciful provision for the beasts of burden.

But though the primary purpose of this law
was to ensure bodily rest, it is no less certain
that it was intended that this period of quiet
repose should contribute to a higher, religious
end. Man is a complex being, and his spirit
needs rest as well as his body. The day was
therefore one for mental and moral improve
ment ; it was not given for the purpose only
of being spent in ignoble sloth and physical
inaction ; the dedication of one day out of
seven to rest was naturally followed by the
institution of religious services, in which all
the people were free to join. The separation
of the day as a holy day soon came to be con
joined with the institution of public worship.
For the conditions of man's life require that
he should not only have time to rest, but also
time to pray and meditate on higher things.
And the nightly rest is not sufficient for this
duty, since it is needed to refresh the exhausted
system and to give it back tone and vigour.
There is need of a weekly day of rest to
recuperate the jaded spirit, and lift up the soul
above the worry and drudgery imposed by the
conditions of a life of toil. But for the
institution of the Sabbath and its rigid en
forcement in those times subsequent to Moses'
day, the worship of Jehovah might have
perished out of the land. The synagogues,
with their weekly instruction and reading of

THE COMMAND BINDING ON ALL AGES 137

the Torah, were not then built. And the
worship of God might have ceased altogether
in Israel but for the strict observance of this
day. The Sabbath, therefore, was a bulwark
of piety and a protest against all worldliness
and secularism.

That such a bulwark was not unnecessary,
we learn from many pages of the Prophets.
There were employers of labour in those
times who, if they had been permitted, would
have wrung seven days' work instead of six out
of their poor bondsmen. They would " have
bought the poor for silver, and the needy for
a pair of shoes." l And others were so given
over to the greed of gain, that in their im
patience to increase their store of wealth
they asked, " When will the new moon be
gone, that we may sell our corn ? and the
Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat?"2
Had not the day been enforced by the strictest
sanctions, it is clear that such men would soon
have combined to procure its abrogation.
And how do these spiritual prophets speak of
the day ? Hating ceremonialism as they did,
when it was divorced from the religion of the

1 Amos viii. 6.

2 Amos viii. 5. The new moon was to be a feast day,
Num. x. 10. Good Nehemiah pledged the returned exiles
not " to bring ware or any victuals to sell on the Sabbath
day," nor buy anything on any holy day from the people of
the land, Neh. x. 31. Both the feast of the new moon and
the institution of the Sabbath day were probably features
in the ancient Semitic religion. Cf. Maine, Early Institu
tions; and Maine's Ancient Law, chap. v.

138 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

spirit, they reckon the keeping of the Sabbath
as the mark of a spiritual man, and they tax
the resources of language in enumerating the
blessings that shall be his who honours it.
" If thou turn away thy foot from the
Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on My holy
day ; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy
of the Lord honourable ; and shalt honour it,
not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine
own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words :
then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord ;
and I will make thee ride upon the high
places of the earth ; and feed thee with the
heritage of Jacob thy father" (Isa. Iviii. 13,
14). It seems perfectly clear from the
language used by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, as
well as the other prophets, that they stood
forth in defence of the day, not merely as a
ceremonial institution and a day of physical
rest, but because the rest was for man's spirit
also, and because if the holiday was not also
made a holy day, the spiritual rest which
should be found in it would be awanting.
The rest-day is profaned when no rest comes
to mind and soul, as well as to wearied body.
It is here that we come to understand how
a formal precept, merely prescribing a certain
proportion of time between rest and labour,
comes to occupy a position in the heart of an
ethical and religious code. It seems at first
so far below the sublime principles that lie
behind the other nine commandments, that

THE SABBATH AN HOLY FESTIVAL 139

many, and among these some of the foremost
Reformers of the Protestant Church, have
affirmed that the Sabbath belongs to the
Mosaic economy, and that it passed away
with the ceremonial ritual of Judaism. It is
said that it is an institution promulgated for a
temporary purpose, a mere arbitrary rule for
Israel, and not an ethical law binding on all men.
Were this the fact, the position of the com
mandment in the Decalogue would seem
utterly inexplicable. The presence of such
an arbitrary rule would be felt to be out of
place in that grand code of moral duty. But
the very fact of its being put immediately
after three commands that deal with duties
valid for all men in all ages, might assure us
that the Reformers who drew up the Augs
burg Confession were mistaken in affirming
that " Scripture hath abolished the Sabbath."
It has been well said that " the position of
the commandment amid a number of moral
and universal duties cannot but weigh heavily
in its favour. It prompts us to ask whether
our duty to God is purely negative, to be
fulfilled by a policy of non-intervention, not
worshipping idols, not blaspheming. Some
thing more was already intimated in God's
promise of mercy to them "that love Me."
For love is chiefly the source of active obedi
ence. While fear is satisfied by the absence
of provocation, love wants not only to abstain
from evil but to do good. . . . Do we say,

140 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

the spirit has abolished the letter ; love is the
rescinding of the Law ? St. Paul said the
very opposite : love is the fulfilling of the
Law, not its destruction. And thus he re
echoed the words of Jesus, " I am not come to
destroy the Law, but to fulfil."

It may be said that the Jewish Sabbath was
primarily and emphatically a day of rest, but
that the Lord's day is a day of holy activity.
But the physiological laws of our being have
not changed with the change of economies.
And it is a fact that where men or nations
have despised the law of the Sabbath, they
have invariably suffered in physical deteriora
tion. Even Christian people may, in the
excess of their zeal for God, still break the day
of rest. And if the good work done by them
on that day is so exhaustive as to deprive the
clay of its essential character, it is a question
whether they are not doing harm for the sake
of accomplishing good. God is best honoured
when we use the day as He meant it to be
used. The banishment of the cares and
worries of business, and the turning of the
mind away from the secularities of the world
to the holy thoughts, meditation, prayer, and
worship which befit the day, are in them
selves a means of rest. We shall do most
effective work for God when we so use the
day as to conjoin the maximum of physical
rest with the maximum of holy thought and

1 Dean Chadwick, The Book of Exodus, p. 307.

THE SABBATH AN HOLY FESTIVAL 141

Christian fellowship. The day was made to
be the festival day of God's children : " This
is the day the Lord hath made, we will be
glad and rejoice in it." If we turn it into a
day of pure inaction or of Puritanic gloom,
we mistake the true principle of Sabbath-
keepiug, and impose a yoke where we ought
to speak of a rich heritage.1

By what authority has the change from the
seventh day to the first day of the week been
made ? Our Lord Himself gave no command
about this matter. Neither did the apostles,
singly or in council. It seems to have been
introduced by the universal consent of the
early Christian Church. In the Epistles of
St. Paul we have a reference made to the dis
continuance of the Jewish Sabbath, and the
practice of keeping it would very probably
die quite a natural death, as the Christians
ceased to attend the temple service. There
is no doubt, however, that on this point there
was not at first consentient practice. But
slowly, as was the case with the growth of
the Canon of the New Testament, the Chris
tian Church ceased to make the seventh day a
day of rest, and introduced instead thereof

1 The Sabbath after the Exile was exalted to a higher
position as a token of membership in the holy nation, and was
more rigorously observed. Death became the punishment of
any slight infringement. It was no longer a social, but
became wholly a religious institution. Israel waa then no
longer a State, but a religious community ; and the representa
tive of its holiness was no longer a King, but a High Priest.

142 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

the observance of the first day of the week.
Naturally that day, the memorial day of
Christ's resurrection and of the descent of
the Holy Ghost, became the day on which
those early Christians met for communion and
worship.1 They then celebrated the Lord's
Supper, and instruction was given from some
Gospel or Epistle. As the Church grew in
numbers and zeal, they sought to increase
their means of fellowship ; and in the weekly
rest-day of the Old Testament they had a
divine authority for fixing this proportion of
rest to labour. " In the history of the
Jewish Sabbath the rest came first and the
worship followed ; in the history of the
Christian Sunday the worship came first and
the rest followed." And in establishing this
first day of the week as the day of rest and
worship, there is no doubt the early Church
was guided by a true spiritual instinct, just
as much as she was in determining the books
that now compose the New Testament Canon.

The Fifth Commandment

" Honour thy father and thy mother : that
thy days may be long upon the land which
the Lord thy God giveth thee."

1 The obligation of the Old Testament command is not
lessened but increased. This follows from the fact that re
demption through Christ is infinitely more glorious than the
deliverance of the Israelites out of Egypt. Hengstenberg,
Ueber den Tag des Herrn, p. 92.

THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT 143

This commandment we include in the first
table, following the classification of Josephus
and Philo. This is done, as has been pre
viously said, on the ground that parents are
to be regarded as representatives of God, and
the respect due to Him must first of all be
paid by children to their fathers and mothers.
And thus it forms a link of connection between
the two tables, uniting our religious and our
social life.

This is the only commandment that is
expressed in a positive form. "Thou shalt
not " here gives place to the positive precept,
" Honour thy father and thy mother." It
is also the only commandment to which a
promise is annexed ; and it is one to which
every Jew attached special importance.

The obligation to filial obedience and
reverence is one so universally acknowledged
that it is clear the parental relationship has
its ultimate basis in the nature of God.
Parental authority cannot be destroyed
without injuring the roots of our religious
life, as well as endangering the stability of
the State.

Among the Israelites this commandment
was held to lie at the foundation of all true
piety. They recognised the fact that the fear
of God could not exist in the heart of the
young without a certain temper of obedience ;
and that God has so ordained it, that men
should cultivate this disposition — first, as

144 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

children under parents, then as servants
under masters, and then as subjects under
State control. They perceived very clearly
that the training of the young in filial duty
and parental respect was the best guarantee of
social order.

It is worthy of note that the command
includes the honouring of the mother as well
as of the father. In this respect the Law was
far in advance of the morality of the time.
Among the nations contemporary with Israel,
as we can learn from the Bible itself, women
were habitually regarded as occupying a
position very inferior to the other sex ;
whereas, in Israel, the highest regard was
always manifested for the wife and the
mother. This is seen in the history of the
patriarchs, where the mother has the greatest
respect shown to her. The beautiful pastoral
story of Ruth exhibits traits of fine ethical
feeling and deep regard for woman. And, in
the Book of Proverbs, the picture of the
virtuous woman presented in chap, xxxi.,
drawn in the richest colours by King Lemuel,
is said to be " the oracle which his mother
taught him."

In Israel the family had a position which it
does not occupy in modern times. Not the
individual, but the household, was regarded
as the unit in Old Testament legislation. As
a man was honoured or disgraced, so was his
family. The dreadful calamity with which

EXTENT OF THIS COMMANDMENT 145

God visited Korah, Dathan, and Abiram
consumed their wives and their little ones as
well as themselves. The modern conception
of individualism, so strongly embodied and
embedded in our legislation, had not then
become a ruling idea. Indeed, the modern
assertion of the liberty and rights of children
would not have been understood amongst the
Hebrews. All government in the household
was centred in the parent. He had even the
powers of life and death in his hand. He was
of necessity in early times patriarch, priest,
and magistrate in one. Many of these
patriarchal prerogatives still obtained in the
period of the Exodus, and until the settlement
of the tribes in Canaan, when the nomadic life
gave place to more stable conditions. This
explains the apparently severe law found in
Exodus, "He that smiteth his father or his
mother shall be surely put to death "
(Ex. xxi. 15).1 The same penalty was attached
to the cursing of father or mother. During
that transition time it was necessary for good
order and government that such extreme
powers should rest in the hands of the parent.
It is a part of the circumstantial evidence in
favour of the antiquity of the Decalogue, that
it does not enjoin obedience to magistrates,
but only speaks of the law of subordination

1 Cf. Dent, xxvii. 1C ; Prov. xx. 20. A father's benediction
was coveted as a valuable blessing, and his curse was dreaded
as a terrible evil ; Gen. xxvii. 4, xlix. 2.

II

146 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

to parental authority. The bonds of social
order could not have held together had the
authority of the parent been weakened. It
was through the father that all those
traditions came down, that were for a long
time the social and religious literature of
Israel. He was teacher, preacher, and
governor in the family ; and if he should
forget his duty in this respect, the education
of the children in divine truth would be
seriously neglected. His authority, therefore,
had at all costs to be maintained. One may
see in this consideration a good reason for
attaching to the commandment the special
promise of prolonged life in the land of their
inheritance.

The promise attached to this precept is not
personal but national. It must be construed
as addressed to the nation in its collective
capacity. Filial obedience would tend to
make Israel's days "long upon the land," just
because that virtue tends to strengthen the
whole structure of society and to secure civil
order.1 Where the love of home is strong,
men will eagerly shed their blood for their
fathers' hearths. The fires of patriotism are

1 " On the individualistic principle, since the burden of
rearing and training children should be, as far as possible,
thrown on the parents, it seems desirable that the parents'
discretion in the training of the child should be left as
unfettered as possible, and that Government should only
intervene in a purely coercive way when the child's interests
are manifestly being sacrificed." H. Sidgwick, Elements of
Politics, p. 140.

BLESSING ATTACHED TO OBEDIENCE 147

always kindled at the family altar. It would
be difficult for a foreign foe to take its land
from a people whose homes are centres of
happy family life, and where parents possess
the esteem and the love of their offspring.

In the Epistle to the Ephesians, St. Paul
gives the promise in a modified form, " that it
may be well with thee, that thou mayest live
long on the earth" (Eph. vi. 3). This in
dividualising of the promise is quite in agree
ment with the purpose of his Epistle. It is
stated by him as being consistent with God's
providence that an obedient child shall have
long life. As a general rule, regard for
parents, the desire for their commendation,
and loving attention to their wants, are
associated with a kindly disposition and an
honest heart ; and such a character naturally
draws to itself the respect of society, and leads
to a beautiful and an honoured old age ;
whereas the social instincts of man and the
moral order of the universe are against the
man " who mocketh at his father, and despiseth
to obey his mother."

CHAPTER VIII

THE SECOND TABLE

The Sixth Commandment

"Tnou shalt not kill."

The second table, at the head of which this
commandment stands, deals with our duties
to our fellow-creatures, and gives to social
ethics the sanction of religion. The first
table concerns itself with the existence, the
worship, the name, the day, and the repre
sentatives of God. Duty to God comes first,
for religion must lie at the root of morality.
This second table concerns itself with our
neighbour, and forbids injury to his life, his
family, his property, his reputation, and that
even by a covetous thought no less than by
an overt act.

The most valuable possession which a man
owns is his life, and the most appalling crime
is the taking of it away. At the head of
the second table, therefore, stands the com
mandment that guards the sanctity of God's
best gift, and makes murder the greatest

THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT 149

crime that man can perpetrate against his
fellow.1

The fundamental principle of this law rests
upon the inherent nature of man as made in
the image of God. That image stamped on
man at creation is defaced and destroyed by
the murderer. The Almighty is injured in
the person of His creature. The life which
He gave for worthy ends is suddenly cut
short by violence, and God's plan is thwarted
by man's perversity. It is an act of rebellion
against the divine government of the world.2
It is no less an act of indignity against our
fellow-men. God has " made of one blood all
nations to dwell on the face of the earth,"
and taught men their oneness in a community
of nature and of need. That being so, love
and esteem are moral duties towards brethren.
Hatred, which is the passion that incites to
murder, is the breaking of the bonds of
brotherhood. Love alone unites. The malici
ous intent that precedes the taking of life con
stitutes the one offence that must be visited with
the severest penalty that the law can inflict.

1 In the Mosaic Code, singularly, no mention is made of
infanticide, as if the crime were unknown. Yet among the
Egyptians it was not uncommon, and the parent was adjudged
to embrace the little corpse for three days. Cf. Wilkinson,
Aiicient Egypt, ii. 209.

2 So very sacred was human life that the owner of an ox,
known to be vicious and that gored a man, was held guilty
of a capital crime, Ex. xxi. 29. The right of pronouncing
whether such a death was but homicide lay with the elders,
Dent. xix. 12.

150 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

The murderer in Israel was adjudged
worthy of death. Only if it could be proved
that intent and malice were absent might
the capital punishment be converted into a
penalty of less degree. But in the Book of
Genesis it is explicitly stated, " Whoso
sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood
be shed." It is clear, therefore, that the
general prohibition of the commandment
cannot be held as excluding the infliction of
the last penalty of the law. For besides the
enunciation of that general principle in
Genesis, the same injunction is frequently
repeated in the legislation of Leviticus and
Deuteronomy. A man who has committed
the crime of murder has therefore forfeited
his right to live. No less was it held that
self-defence might justify an Israelite in
killing the man who attacked him with
murderous intent. And when such defence
of self required the defence of one's own
hearth and household against a public
enemy, the exception was extended to the
case of war. At the same time, the law
which prohibits murder no less condemns
every unjust war of revenge or aggression.
That bloodshed alone is justifiable which is
in defence of a nation's existence and
liberties. The despotism that is built up in
blood stands upon a very unstable foundation.
And it must not be forgotten that the
attempt to extend the kingdom of God by

THE LAW OF THE GOEL 151

the sword frustrates the very end of that
kingdom and ensures the condemnation of
Christ, " All they that take the sword shall
perish with the sword."

In the Mosaic legislation the punishment
of death was much more widely inflicted than
it is in modern times. Capital punishment
was the penalty not only for murder, but for
maustealing, adultery, witchcraft, idolatry,
and such crimes as were contrary to nature.1
In respect of such offences, justice was
administered with the strictest impartiality
and with unrelenting severity.

But, in the event of accidental death, a
merciful provision of a very peculiar kind was
made by Moses. This is known as the law of
the Goel.z It is clearly an adaptation of a
previously existing custom which Moses already
found in existence and was content to modify.
Among primitive nations it had probably long
been the custom for their nearest male relation
to avenge the death of a murdered man. In
that primitive state of society there were no
public prosecutors charged with this duty ;
and crime might have stalked abroad through
the whole land if kinsmen had not taken it
upon themselves to punish it. Moses pru-

1 Lev. xx. ; Deut. xiii.

2 Etymologically the word means "claimant," vindex, or
the one who resumes a claim that may have lapsed. In
Jer. xxxii. the goel has the right of pre-emption of the landed
property before exposure to public sale. In the Book of
Ruth (joel is rendered " kinsman."

152 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

dently did not abolish this custom, but he so
fenced it round with restrictions as to make
it satisfy the rough instinct of justice that pos
sessed the people. He appointed six cities of
refuge, three on the east side of Jordan and
three on the west. " that the manslayer might
flee thither which should kill his neighbour
unawares and hated him not in times past ;
and that fleeing into one of these cities he
might live" (Num. xxxv. 6 if.). These cities,
however, were to give no protection to the
murderer who smote his neighbour with malice,
but only to such as could urge the plea of
accidental homicide. "If he was not an
enemy nor sought his harm, then the con
gregation should judge between the slayer
and the revenger of blood." For the crime of
murder no redress by compensation can under
any circumstances be accepted. According to
the Mosaic Law the land would thereby be
held guilty of conniving at the crime.
Nothing but the shed blood of the murderer
can take away the pollution.1 On the other
hand, the death of the high priest would seem
to have made satisfaction for every accidental
death happening during his lifetime.

To modern minds this law of the Goel
seems very primitive, and far behind the more
impartial forms under which justice in these

1 Num. xxxv. llff. The vengeance of the Goel must
not extend beyond the manslayer to his relatives (Deut.
xxiv. 16).

MURDER ACCOUNTED SACRILEGE 153

days prosecutes with slow but sure footsteps
her victims. But the law was in accordance
with the ideas of the age ; * and there is little
doubt that our slower methods would not have
satisfied the sense of justice that then pre
vailed. The Mosaic legislation wisely accepted
what was the best possible criminal law for
the time, and adapted it to existing circum
stances. The penalties which we frequently
substitute for capital punishment would have
seemed to the Israelites, accustomed to the
operation of the jus talionis, to err by
clemency ; they would have appeared a mis
carriage of justice, and would have operated
injuriously on the moral sense of the nation.
The Mosaic Code allowed no money fine to be
substituted ; it did not even permit the altnr
to be a sanctuary for the murderer. There is
no doubt, therefore, that the law of the Goel
was the best that could be adopted at that
stage of the nation's moral progress.

That the injury to human life was regarded
not only in the light of a crime, but also from
the ethical and religious side, is proved by the
singular ceremonial enacted when a man was
found slain without the murderer being dis
covered. The crime was counted a defilement
of God's holy land, and only a religious cere
mony could cleanse the soil polluted with the

1 The custom of blood revenge is world-wide. It is well
known in Central Africa, and among Arabs. Cf. Dr.
Kennedy's art. on Goel in Hastings' Diet, of Bible, vol. ii., and
Prof. Robertson Smith's Religion of the Semites, p. 33.

154 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

stain of human blood. The elders of the city
found to be nearest to the scene of the tragedy
had to bring a young heifer that had not
known the yoke into a valley, "neither eared
nor sown," and there break its neck. Then the
elders and next of kin were to wash their
hands over the animal, and, affirming their
innocence, were to say : "Be merciful, 0
Lord, unto Thy people Israel, whom Thou
hast redeemed, and lay not innocent blood
unto Thy people of Israel's charge. And the
blood shall be forgiven them. So shalt thou
put away the guilt of the innocent from among
you." Whatever may have been signified by
the "valley neither eared nor sown," the act
of washing the hands by the elders of the
people clearly meant that they repudiated the
crime and denied all participation in the guilt
of it. There seems to have been nothing in
the ceremony of the nature of a sacrifice or
sin-offering. The priests who are present act
only as witnesses to accredit what is done by
the elders. Probably the transaction was in
tended to impress the divine command given
to Noah, " Surely your blood, the blood of
your lives, will I require : at the hand of every
beast will I require it, and at the hand of man
will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth
man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed "
(Gen. ix. 5. 6). The Rabbinists affirm, how
ever, that notwithstanding this ceremonial
cleansing, the murderer, if apprehended, would

MURDER ACCOUNTED SACRILEGE 155

suffer capital punishment, according to the
terms of the Law.1

The primitive character of the Decalogue is
shown in nothing more clearly than in the
fact that under each prohibitive command
ment it specifies only the highest form of
each crime. No other kind of assault on the
person is here mentioned but that which de
prives of life. In Leviticus and Deuteronomy
other degrees of violence arc condemned, and
to each specific punishment is adjudged;2
while in the New Testament that defect of
brotherly love which is found in many a
respectable member of society, the evil malice,
the bitter spite, the secret thought of revenge,
are all spoken of as breaches of this sixth
commandment. According to Christ, they
contain the essential germ of murder. " Ye
have heard that it was said by them of old
time, Thou shalt not kill, and whosoever shall
kill shall be in danger of the judgment ; but I

1 Cf. Holy Bible, with Commentary by Bishops, etc., on
Deut. xxi. ; see also Schultz, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 50.

• The punishments varied greatly. Stoning was the
formal ordinary method for idolatry and adultery and blas
phemy, and the chief witness cast the first stone. Spears
and darts were used at Sinai on trespassers on the holy Mount
(Ex. xix.). The sword was used by the Levites against the
worshippers of the golden calf, by Samuel himself on Agag,
and by Elijah on the priests of Baal. Cutting asunder was
in use, Matt. xxiv. 61 (d^oro/my). Hanging was common,
Deut. xxi. 23 ; but in this case the body must be buried the
same evening. Impaling and gibbeting were also practised
then. Cf. Herodotus, iii. 169 ; Layard, Nineveh and Bab.
295 n. ; Saalschutz, das Motaische Recht on Punishments.

156 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

say unto yon, that whosoever is angry with his
brother shall be in danger of the judgment."
It did not escape the keen mind of John, the
apostle of love, that unless the first resentful
motions within our heart are sternly re
pressed, they will ultimately issue in the
direful deed of blood. For " whosoever hateth
his brother is a murderer, and ye know that
no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him." l
Only a love like God's can enable a man per
fectly to keep this commandment.

TJie Seventh Commandment

" Thou shalt not commit adultery."
After the law that makes life safe comes the
law that protects the sanctity of the home.
The sixth prohibits injury to the life of the
individual ; the seventh prohibits injury to
the life of the family.

Throughout the Mosaic legislation the mar
riage relationship is mainly regarded from the
standpoint of property.2 A man's wife is,
next to his own life, his most valued possession.
Nothing can be more dear to him than the
peace and happiness of his home. The law

1 1 John iii. 15.

8 It is so regarded in the parable of Nathan, 2 Sam. xii.
See Schultz, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 51, note at foot ; and Stade,
Geschichte des Volkcs Israel, 1887, vol. i. 371. The subject
of Eastern Marriages is discussed with much learning in W.
Kobertson Smith's Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia
(Cambridge, 1895) ; also from a legal point of view in Jewish
Law of Divorce ace. to the Bible and Talmud (London, 1897).

THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT 157

that protects the sanctity of marriage protects
the most precious of his earthly goods. It is
not to be wondered at that in Israel the breach
of the law of marriage was looked upon as a
derogation from a husband's honour, and as a
deed of violence which demanded nothing less
than the stern punishment of death. Adultery
ruined the peace of the home, and could not
fail to reflect its sinister influence upon the
family circle. No man could rule his house
hold well whose wife was guilty of infidelity.
Her influence would poison the springs of
home-life, and contaminate the morals of the
children. Parental authority would cease,
and the stability of the n;itiou would be
endangered. It would become impossible for
the children to obey the fifth commandment.
Disorder, confusion, misery, a life of wretched
ness, a home disrupted into atoms, — all these
surely followed on the sin which is here for
bidden.1

In the Book of Genesis marriage is held to
be an indissoluble tie that cannot be broken.
The woman is made to be an helpmeet for man,
and is regarded as having all the rights and
privileges of a free personality. Gen. i. 27

1 Prostitution was held to be a heinous crime (Josephus,
Aid. iv. sec. 8), and was not tolerated by the Mosaic Code,
Deut. xxiii. 17. No fine was permissible, and death by
stoning was the penalty, Deut. xxii. 20. Harlots were often
foreigners, the "strange women" of the Book of Proverbs.
Its terrible effects are vividly pictured in Prov. ii. 5 and 7.
In the Book of Revelation fornication is the type of all
unholy alliances made by the Church, Rev. xvii. 19.

158 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

and ii. 21-23 are the loci classici of the sexual
relations, and there we find that marriage is
no result of mere sensual feeling, but a God-
given institution. Eve is taken from the side
of Adam, and husband and wife stand to each
other in the nearest relations. One woman is
given to one man, and polygamy is not recog
nised. In man's ideal state monogamy is the
rule. It is true that afterwards, among the
Patriarchs, polygamy is permitted, and even
Moses had a second wife, a Cushite woman, to
the great dissatisfaction of his relations. But the
concubine seems generally to have been a slave
of the house. The action of Sarah, of Rachel,
and Leah, goes to show that this was looked
upon in a very different light from adultery.
It did no violation, in their eyes, to the law
of honour ; nor did it even violate the law of
property, in which relationship the institution,
as we have seen, is very much regarded.
Under the Law, polygamy is not condemned,
but its evil consequences are mitigated to a
large degree by several enactments.1 The
beautiful description in the Book of Proverbs
of a good wife seems to imply that monogamy

1 All these are made with the evident purpose of mitigating
the many evils of this custom. The slave- wife is entitled
to all conjugal rights, without which she may claim her
liberty, Ex. xxi. 10, 11. A female war-captive, assumed as a
wife, may not be sold to slavery, Deut. xxi. 14. Again in
Deut. the king is counselled not to multiply wives lest his
heart turn away from God, chap. xvii. 17. The picture of the
Ideal Wife in Prov. xxxi. favours monogamy, which also is
supported by the teaching of the Prophets.

GRADUAL DECLINE OF POLYGAMY 159

increasingly prevailed in the later days of
Judaism, and the New Testament everywhere
presupposes it. There is no doubt that in
Israel the wife occupied a position far superior
to that which she had among primitive races
in the East. At the same time, woman did
not then hold the exalted place which is now
given to her in Christian lands, but one
essentially dependent. Yet children born in
wedlock are always regarded as a blessing
from the Lord, and " the fruit of the womb is
His reward." And the custom, so common
among the heathen, of parents doing away
with the weaklings, is totally unknown to the
Hebrews.1

Marriage is looked upon as the normal con
dition, and every effort was made by a father
to get a wife for his son. Celibacy is spoken
of as unnatural, and is to be avoided. The
enforced virginity of Jephthah's daughter is
bewailed. No greater punishment can fall on
the land than that the young men should be
consumed by the sword and the maidens
" should not be given to marriage." Virginity
is "a reproach to be taken away." From the
time of the first promise of a Messiah to Eve
it was the ambition of every woman in Israel
to be a wife and a mother of sons, who might
bring about the fulfilment of the hope of
Israel.

The sin here prohibited is one that was

1 Philo, De Spec. Leg. ii. 318 ; Tacitus, Hut. v. 5.

160 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

regarded with peculiar abhorrence among the
Hebrews, not only because it violated the Law
of God, but because it tended to undermine
the institution of the family. In the Old
Testament the family has a peculiar weight
and worth attached to it, which we who live
in an age of excessive individualism can
scarcely understand. Morality was based, not
on the individual conscience, but on that of
the family. It was through it that the
Messianic hope was to be realised. This gave
sanctity to motherhood, and gradually tended
to giving the children of the wife a preference
over those of the concubine or handmaid. In
course of time the lax ideas of divorce that
at first prevailed were cast aside, and the in
estimable worth of the family was recognised.
Upon its wellbeing depended the moral wel
fare of the nation. Were the homes pure,
then the nation was strong. Were they
honeycombed with vice, then the strength
of the nation was gone, and Israel would flee
before their enemies. Hence adultery is re
garded as a crime of such heinousness that
both offenders were put to death. No punish
ment was too severe to guard the sanctity of
the home and the continuity of the family
line.

Under the ethics of marriage it is necessary
that we should here refer to the custom of
divorce as permitted in the Mosaic Code, and
also to the singular law of Levirate marriage.

LAW OF DIVORCE 161

The former is found in Deut. xxiv., where,
however, the language of the Authorised
Version has led to a misunderstanding of the
passage. The first three verses of the chapter
are all conditional, and the apodosis is in ver. 4.
Read thus, it is clear that divorce is not in
stituted nor enjoined in this chapter, though
the right of divorce is presupposed. All that
is said is that if a man give his wife, for some
reason or other, a bill of divorcement, and if
she go and get married to another husband,
and he also hate her, and write her a bill of
divorcement, then the first husband shall not
marry her again, for " that would be an
abomination before the Lord." The Law
simply regulates a custom that had long been
in vogue in the East, and strives to soften its
harshness.1 An arbitrary repudiation was pre
vented by the necessity of making out a legal
instrument, showing that the grounds of it
were not the mere pleasure or spite of the
husband, but that they were founded on fact
and reason. What the offences were that
were considered justifiable grounds of separa
tion is not stated ; but the Rabbis mention
very trivial faults, and Josephus seems to
have exceedingly lax ideas of the marriage
tie.2 But the whole proceeding evidently is

1 The origin of this custom has given rise to much con
troversy. Cf . Starke, Prim. Fam. p. 160 ; and Hastings' Diet,
of Bible on Marriage.

2 Antiq. iv. 8. 23. For certain reasons see Ex. xxi. 10, but
these hold onlv in the case of a bondwoman.

12

162 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

in glaring inconsistency with the Old Testa
ment conception of marriage, which admits
ethically of no dissolution. Adultery works
divorce indeed ; but it was one that was to be
brought about summarily by death. But all
divorce is in its essence adultery ; and our
Lord affirms its moral impossibility. He
gives us the correct spirit of the passage in
Deut. xxiv., when he says that Moses suffered
the Jews to put away their wives " TT/OO? rrjv
o-K\r)poKap&Lav vp&v." His words in Mark x. 12
give us reason to believe that though the
right of divorce in the Old Testament is
spoken of as belonging only to the husband,
yet in later Judaism the wife might also
exercise the right. And it has been the
invariable custom among the Jews to permit
reunion, if the divorced wife did not marry
again. In one instance, recorded in 2 Sam.
iii. 14, there is an apparent breach of this law.
But though the spirit of it is broken, David
might plead he did not violate the letter of
the command, since Michal had not been
dismissed, but forcibly taken from him and
given to another.

If the husband entertained a suspicion of
his wife's infidelity, she was bound to remove
his spirit of jealousy by one of the most severe
ordeals contained in the Old Testament. In
Num. v. this painful rite is described in detail.
As in the case of the purification of the soil
from the suspicion of blood-guiltiness, so here

THE WATER OF JEALOUSY 163

there is nothing of the nature of atonement
for the supposed offence. The offering is, of
set purpose, of the poorest kind — symbol of
the sad condition to which the unfortunate
woman has been brought.1 The priest pro
nounced the curses appropriate to the crime,
wrote them down on paper, and blotted them
out with the bitter water, which he made the
woman drink. If she was guilty, the potion
took effect upon her limbs by a supernatural
cause ; if innocent, she remained unharmed,
and was restored to her family and to her
husband's confidence.2

In the teaching of the Prophets and in
the Wisdom Literature, the marriage bond is
purified and lifted to a higher level. In the
Song of Songs a chaste conjugal love is
praised, while polygamy is satirised. Accord
ing to the writer of Proverbs, the gift of a
good wife is a token of the divine favour.
" A prudent wife is from the Lord," which
means, in modern phrase, that marriages are
made in heaven.3 In the New Testament,
marriage attains to its moral completeness,
and becomes a type of the mystical union
which subsists between Christ and His
Church. Every taint of sensuousness is re
moved from it ; and the unity of the sexes
is complete when the loves of earth are

1 Keil, Com., in loc.

1 A custom similar to this has been shown by Brugsch, in
his Romance of Setnau, to have existed in Egypt.

3 Oehler, Old Testament Theology, § 244, quoting Hitzig.

164 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

lifted up and purified in the higher love of
God.

Under this rule only the most grave offence
is specified, while every other degree of sensual
impurity is left to be covered by the word
" Adultery." But in this case we are not left
in doubt as to the mind of God. Christ
enables us, in the opening discourse of His
ministry, to understand its true ethical con
tents. Not only fornication, but every im
purity, whether of thought, word, or deed, is
forbidden. The commandment is already
violated by the lustful look.1 If the libidin
ous desire is harboured, the guilt of the sin
has been contracted. The doctrine of Christ
is developed by St. Paul in his Epistle to the
Corinthians, where he teaches that the human
body is to be regarded as a temple of the
Holy Ghost which no unholy impulse should
be permitted to defile. It is not his own, but
is set apart, devoted and consecrated to the
service of God.2

Throughout Scripture marriage is invariably
spoken of as of divine institution. And it is
very significant that in all civilised nations
it is regarded not merely as a civil contract,
constituted by the consent of the contracting
parties, but as a most solemn engagement,
requiring to be confirmed by a religious

1 Matt. xxv. 27-32.

2 " A temple," from rt^va — something cut off by the augurs
and separated for another use.

THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT 165

ceremony. This is a proof of the universal
conviction of its moral and religious worth.
And the value which is put by a community
upon this hallowing of the marriage bond by a
religious service is a sure measure of the pro
gress it has made in social ethics.1

The Eighth Commandment

"Thou shalt not steal" (Ex. xx. 15).

Following the commandments that deal
with a man's two most precious possessions,
his life and his home, comes the eighth
commandment, which concerns his property.
Property is the reward of moral labour and
a legitimate end of moral effort, though it
becomes sinful when it is exalted to the
position of the summum bonum. It is one
of the things that distinguish man from the
animal creation ; it is all but unknown to him
in his savage condition. The brute is without
it because he does not work ; and the savage is
without- it because he will not work. Property
is, when ethically viewed, the externalising and
enlargement of a man's own personality. To
its enjoyment he has accordingly an ethical
right, but not to its exclusive enjoyment, since
the law of love comes in to modify it.

This right is anterior to any occupancy or

1 On Marriage as a type of the unity subsisting between
Christ and His Church, see the author's Social Aspects of
Christian Morality (Croall Lectures for 1904), London, 1905,
chap. iv.

166 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

use of the thing possessed. It is similar to a
man's right to his liberty, without which he
cannot make a proper moral use of his powers.
It is not derived from any agreement with
society ; but its foundation is in the constitu
tion of things and of man's own moral nature.
Were a man deprived of that which belongs
by right to himself, he could neither develop
his own personality nor fulfil his duties to
God and to his fellow-men.1 In short, with
out his own he could not discharge his
functions as a moral being, nor fill the place
which God means him to occupy in the world.
Therefore, though the right to property has
been spoken of as an acquired right,2 it is
grounded in nature, and in the order of
things.

The law of inheritance in Israel was prob
ably a continuation of an old traditional
custom. By that law the first-born son got a
double portion ; although probably, along with
that share, there went the care of and pro
vision for his mother and sisters (Deut. xxi.
17). There seems to have been no jus relictcs
for the widow. The other sons got an equal
dividend ; so that, were there three sous left,
the estate was divided into four portions, one-
half thus going to the eldest.

When the tribes reached Canaan, the land

1 Fide Cicero, De Rep. iii. 22 ; Blackstone's Com. vol. ii.

2 Paley, Moral Philosophy, part i. Kant's Philosophy of Law
(Hastie's trans.), chap. vi. ; T. H. Green, Work*, vol. ii. 524.

THE LAW OF INHERITANCE 167

was equitably divided by Joshua among the
families of each tribe. Here, again, the im
portance of the continuance of the family is
attested by the fact that as far as possible the
land belonging to it was to be kept entire.
The head of the household was not permitted
to alienate the possession. The sons inherited ;
but if only daughters were left, the inherit
ance passed to them. If there were neither
sons nor daughters, the brother inherited, and
next to him the father's brother. The land
belonging to the family was an inalienable
holding given to it by God, in accordance with
the theocratic principle, " The land is Mine ;
for ye are strangers and foreigners with Me "
(Lev. xxv. 23).

If the land of a family had to be sold for
debt, the sale held good only for a limited
time. As soon as the original owner was able
to repurchase it, it was in his option to do so.
But should the year of jubilee occur before
that time, the possession returned to its owner
free. There took place in that year " a new
birth of the state," in which all alienated
property was restored, without compensation,
to the family to whom it was originally given
at the partition of the land. This law did not
extend to estates which had devolved on a
different family through the marriage of an
heiress (Num. xxxvi. 4-8). Hence the law,
that an heiress could marry only within her
own tribe, in order to prevent the land of one

168 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

tribe passing into the possession of another.
The statement made by Josephus,1 that in the
year of jubilee debts also were remitted, is not
borne out by anything in the Mosaic Law.
But it seems to have been the practice in the
Sabbatic year.2

All these limitations were for the purpose of
carrying out the ends of the theocracy. It
was the design of Jehovah that there should
be no destitution in the land of Israel. The
Hebrews were commanded to exercise such
kindness to their poorer brethren that the
temptations to theft, springing from want,
should cease (Deut. xv. 7 if.). This divine
ideal was not actually realised when they
entered Canaan, because of Israel's disobedience
to God's injunctions. But that it was the
divine intention that want should be unknown
in that land appears clear from Deut. xv. 4 :
" There shall be no poor with thee ; (for the
Lord shall surely bless thee in the land which
the Lord thy God giveth thee to possess it ;) if
only thou diligently hearken unto the voice of
the Lord thy God to do all His command
ments" (R.V.).8

This ideal condition of Israel in Canaan,
where every man was possessed of his own
freehold and surrounded by kind brethren,
sure to help him if reduced to straits, has been

1 Antiq. xiii. 12. 3.

2 Cf. Oehler, Old Testament Theology, § 151 ; and Hastings'
Diet, of Bible, vol. iv., "Sabbatical Year."

8 Keil and Lange translate the first clause as an imperative.

CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 169

pointed to by many socialistic writers. It led
M. Proudhon to express his high admiration
of the Mosaic property laws. Yet the law
clearly assumes the existence of proprietary
rights in the land descending by inheritance,
and lends to them religious and ethical
sanctions ; while it is, both in spirit and letter,
opposed to the revolutionary creed of the
famous French socialist, " Property is theft."
But the Old Testament is full of warnings of
the dangers of wealth, and faithfully reminds
the owners of it that it comes from God and
has its duties no less than its rights. If it
does not favour socialism, it teaches truths
which would make the cry for a compulsory
division of property die out. It denounces
the greed of the covetous man ; it affirms that
he that giveth to the poor lendeth to the
Lord ; it warns the successful man, if riches
increase, not to set his heart upon them. And
the voice that uttered the eighth command
ment, " Thou shalt not steal," inspired also
the words of the man who said—

"Give me neither poverty nor riches;
Feed me with food needful for me :
Lest I be full, and deny Thee and say, Who is the Lord ?
Or lest I be poor, and steal " (Prov. xxx. 8, 9).

The Ninth Commandment

" Thou shalt not bear false witness against
thy neighbour" (Ex. xx. 16).

1 " La propriete c'est le vol."

170 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

We have seen how the previous command
ments of this second table of the Law are based
upon those indestructible rights which all
government and society are pledged to protect
— a man's right to his life, to the purity of his
home, and to his goods. Now we come to the
law that protects what is not less dear to him
than his goods, what is indeed much dearer to
every honest man than any outward possession
— his good name. Our great English poet
affirms that the man who steals his purse
steals only " trash " ; but

"Who steals my good name
Steals that which makes me poor indeed."

And the Psalmist asks, " Lord, who shall
sojourn in Thy tabernacle ? who shall dwell in
Thy holy hill ? He that walketh uprightly
and speaketh truth in his heart, he that
slandereth not with his tongue," Ps. xv. 1-4.

The ninth commandment is but an ampli
fication of the ethical principle of the eighth.
The law of truth is very intimately connected
with the law of honesty. He that is dishonest
in deed is untrue in heart and thought. And
he that breaks the ninth, also, in the sense of
the poet's words, breaks the eighth command
ment. That truth -speaking and just dealing
are but two manifestations of one principle, is
everywhere implied in Scripture. The ideal
saint of the Old Testament is the man that
" walketh uprightly and speaketh truth." In

THE LAWS OF PROPERTY 171

a previous chapter we remarked that the
" righteous man " in Israel was one who might
carry his appeal to God with the words,
" Judge me, 0 God, according to my righteous
ness and mine integrity " ; " Examine me and
prove me, for 1 have walked in Thy truth."
Truthfulness of heart is essential to righteous
ness of conduct. The one is to the other what
the seed is to the harvest, and the flower to
the fruit.

The laws of property, though all founded on
the immutable law of right, may vary in
different nations, and in fact do vary very
much. But truth is of absolute obligation.
It is one of the attributes of God ; and man,
made in God's image, is made to reflect this
same quality of goodness. An essential
element in it is self-respect, a deep regard for
one's own spiritual worth as a creature of God,
and made for moral communion with Him.
Kant never said a finer thing than when he
affirmed, in his Metaphysics of Ethics, that
falsehood was simply a forfeiture of a man's
personal worth, a destruction of his ethical
integrity. " The original right of man," says
Dorner, " the true fundamental right (Grund-
recht] which follows from duty, is the right to
be a moral being," 1 which right he cannot
exercise apart from truthfulness. It is not a
question of consequences and of practical
utilities ; it is an absolute obligation to be

1 System of Christian Ethics, § 13.

172 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

inwardly sincere, to be faithful to the law of
our mind, constant to the facts of our nature,
and consistent in all our conduct. Without
it character loses all its beauty and strength,
the fine delicate edge of conscience is blunted,
and the soul's powers of perception get so
impaired that a man comes to believe himself
truthful when his whole life is a self-deception.

But truth is a duty that one owes to others
not less than to oneself. It lies at the basis
of all government and commerce. Without it
society would soon be disintegrated into atoms ;
for universal distrust has ever been the pre
monitory sign of a nation's decay.

The statute law of the land does not affix a
penalty to every violation of veracity ; but
there are certain forms of falsehood so pre
judicial to the interests of society and of
individuals, that they have in all civilised
nations been visited with condign punishment.

It is a proof of the archaic structure of the
Decalogue that it does not pretend to cover
the whole wide sphere of ethical obligation.
It lays its finger on outstanding specific sins
and forbids them. Bearing false witness
against a neighbour, though not necessarily
the most injurious form of falsehood, was
probably a very common one among the
Hebrews. Loyalty to the truth has never
been a prominent virtue among Asiatic races.
In Israel, where the people were every day
accustomed to see the elders sitting in judg-

JUDGES AND WITNESSES 173

ment and settling matters of dispute, the
form of falsehood here prohibited was likely
that which was most salient. Even to the
present day in Syria, the sheyk of the tribe
frequently is seen sitting in public in judg
ment. He is continually deciding disputes,
in which he has to listen to the evidence of
witnesses who are neighbours.1 In the calm
and not too busy life which Easterns live
it is always possible, and it is the usual
custom, for a crowd to assemble and listen
with open ears to the whole evidence for the
prosecution and the defence.

In the wilderness of Sinai the work of
deciding between litigants became too heavy
for Moses. "Moses sat to judge the people:
and the people stood by Moses from the
morning unto the evening." Jethro, his
father-in-law, was puzzled to understand this
tedious work, and asked its meaning. The
reply of Moses shows that he not only decided
the matter in dispute after careful evidence
and in accordance with divine laws, but that
he also took the trouble of instructing the
people in these laws. " I make them know
the statutes of God and His laws" (Ex.
xviii. 16). By the advice of Jethro, Moses
resolved to hear only the weightier and more
difficult cases: and "able men, such as fear

1 In 1886, the author was present while such disputes were
being decided by a sheyk in one of the villages of the Druses
on the slopes of Hermon.

174 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

God, men of truth, hating covetousness,"
were appointed to settle and decide every
small matter. We may accordingly be sure
that the work of judgment was well known
to the Israelites, and that the bearing of
false witness in a court was probably the
most prominent form that lying assumed
among them.

These courts of justice, or judgment-seats
(for probably many of them were held in the
open air and at the gate of encampment),
were numerous, They were so arranged that
there should be easy access at all times to
the leaders of the people for counsel and
judgment. The judges were discharging
duties which fell to them as administrators
of justice ; they were there in order to fulfil
a function instituted by God. These courts
(like all courts of judgment still) were pre
sided over by God's servants. To state what
is false in such a court, or to withhold the
truth necessary to convict the breaker of the
Law, is to conspire to defeat the ends of
government and to encourage vice. Such
conduct is not only inimical to human justice,
but is treason against the Divine Ruler.

That perjury was not an uncommon sin in
Canaan, there are many grounds for believing.
St. Paul affirms that the Law was made,
among other ends, "for liars and perjured
persons." The trial of our Lord and of
Stephen the proto-martyr are memorable

PERJURY 175

instances in which the suborned witness
helped the persecutors to carry out their
nefarious schemes. The crime was severely
punishable under the Mosaic Code. " Thine
eye shalt not pity : life shall go for life, eye
for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot
for foot" (Deut. xix. 21). The evidence of
one witness could not procure a conviction
(ver. 15).1

The commandment forbids not only perjury,
but also slander, which, though a sin not
committed in a court of justice, may not be
less hurtful to a neighbour's character. It is
a vice to which society its peculiarly liable.
The Hebrews, pursuing as they mainly did
rural occupations, may not have been so
guilty of this sin as those that live in large
communities. But wherever committed, in
cities or in lonely rural districts, the sin was
equally malignant, deadly in intention, and
hateful in the sight of God. It is a sin
peculiarly devilish, peculiarly kindred to him
whose name agrees with his nature, Sm/9oXo<?,

1 Oaths are forbidden in the O.T., but only when the
adjuring was by false gods or idols, such as Baal. It was
right to swear by Jehovah, and it was necessary faithfully to
perform the oath. Even God took an oath to Abraham that
He would multiply the patriarch's seed as the stars, Gen.
xxii. 16. " As the Lord liveth " was a common form of adjura
tion. Such an oath was a "solemn confession of faith" on
the part of the Israelite. Cf. Driver, Deuteronomy, p. 95. St.
Paul solemnly calls God to witness for the truth of his state
ments. " Behold, before God, I lie not," Gal. i. 20. The use of
such asseverations is a matter for Christian judgment as to
mode and place. Cf. Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, vol. i. p. 270.

176 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

" the slanderer." That it is a sin too common
in all countries is proved by the wealth of
words in which, in every language, the
various shades of malice and falsehood find
expression. It is a world-wide practice ; for
everywhere envy and hatred love to batten
on this foul garbage.

Calumny assumes many forms, including
a large range of personal talk. Nothing is
more pleasant to some natures than to spice
their speech with a flavour of malice, " to
hint a fault, and hesitate dislike." They
rejoice to mix a little malignity with their
witticisms to give them point,

" Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer."

Or they detract from a neighbour's character
by relating stories about him, as to the truth
of which they have no certainty, and have
not troubled themselves to make inquiry.
And so reputations are blasted, and many a
good name is covered with infamy. King
David suffered in this way from the stabs of
evil tongues, more keen than "the piercings
of swords " ; " they flattered with their tongue,
but there was no faithfulness in their
mouth";1 "whose mouth was smooth as
butter, but their heart was war ; whose words
were softer than oil, yet were they drawn
swords." 2 It was this same sin that made
1 Ps. v. 9. * Ps.lv. ai.

SIN OF SLANDER 177

good Jeremiah long for a lodging-place in the
wilderness, that he might escape from a
society where " every brother utterly sup
planted, and every neighbour went about
with slanders." l The Hebrew Wisdom Litera
ture, with its faculty of acute observation of
the foibles as well as the vices of society, is
full of wise maxims warning against defama
tion and slander. It was impossible, in a book
well termed " The Philosophy of the Hebrews,"
to pass by the prevalent sins of tale-bearing
and scandal that bred such universal mischief.
The virtuous man must learn to control his
words, for " death and life are in the power
of the tongue." 2 Even his gestures must be
watched, since an insinuation may be con
veyed and a reputation ruined by a wink as
well as a word. " He that winketh with the
eye causeth sorrow, but a prating fool shall
fall."5 And the wise man touches the secret
of all this leprous vice when he says, he
would rather have a dinner of herbs where
love is than abundance of goods and hatred
with it. In every one of its pages the Word
of God endeavours to shift the centre of
gravity of man's nature from selfishness to
love. The Wisdom Literature was but antici
pating the apostle of the New Testament,
who, in the larger light of the Christian
revelation, presented to the Galatians the
only remedy for this hateful sin, " All the

1 Jer. ix. 4, 5. -' Prov. x. 10 and xviii. 21.

13

178 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

law is fulfilled in one word, even in this,
Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
But if ye bite and devour one another, take
heed that ye be not consumed one of another." l
A man is not perfect in the virtue of truth
fulness who simply abstains from flagrant
violations of the ninth commandment ; for
virtue does not consist of negations. The
New Testament expands the negative pro
hibition of this rule into a positive principle
when it says, " Love worketh no ill to its
neighbour ; therefore love is the fulfilment
of the law."

The Tenth Commandment

" Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's
house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's
wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant,
nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is
thy neighbour's " (Ex. xx. 17).

This commandment appears in different
forms in Exodus and Deuteronomy. We
saw how these two additions annex different
reasons to the fourth commandment ; the
Deuteronomist, in accordance with his pre
dominant subjective purpose, not adducing
the rest of the Creator, but the deliverance of
Israel from Egyptian slavery.2 Here, too,

i Gal. v. 15.

* Of. Schultz, Old Testament Theology, ii. 52. St. Paul refers
to the inwardness of the law in Rom. vii.

THE TENTH COMMANDMENT 179

there seems to be some such intention dictat
ing the change. Not the house, as in Exodus,
but the wife is first mentioned ; while a
different verb is used with regard to her
as if to accentuate the variation. "Neither
shalt thou desire thy neighbour's wife, neither
shalt thou covet thy neighbour's house, his
field, or his manservant," etc,

It may be remarked that the Septuagint
translators differ in the reading of Ex. xx. 17
from the Massoretic text, but without sufficient
justification. The authorised reading is sup
ported by the Samaritan Pentateuch and by
Josephus.

We can easily see how the systematic plan
of the Decalogue should end with such a com
mandment as this. The second table, con
taining the precepts of probity, is intended to
define a man's duties to his neighbour, and in
accordance with the Old Testament trilogy of
hand, mouth, and heart, it proceeds from the
outward to the inward. There is manifest in
it an ethical progress, which, beginning in the
prohibition of murder, advances through the
laws that forbid illicit passion, theft, and
slander, to this concluding command which
enters the inward province of desire and
motive. Thus it becomes clear that the Ten
Commandments are not merely a criminal
code for the purpose of protecting life and
property. The criminal laws of a nation take
cognisance only of overt actions. Covetous-

180 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

ness is a motive within the breast which
could only be guessed at by the law ; its
precedence to an act of theft could hardly be
proved in the witness-box. The tenth com
mandment is altogether outside the boundaries
of civil jurisprudence. Its presence in the
Decalogue is a manifest proof of the spiritual
intention and ethical character of the Sinaitic
code. It reminds us that Israel was to be not
only a commonwealth, but the people of
Jehovah's possession. The Decalogue does
more than lay down the duties of a citizen.
It embraces within its purview more than the
crimes which it desires to repress. It looks
ultimately to the cultivation of a better
temper and a right spirit. Like the other
parts of the Mosaic Law, it aims at developing
the consciousness of sin. Unless the Law had
said, " Thou shalt not covet," Paul affirms that
he would not have known what sin meant.1

The Decalogue, as we have said before, was
content to prohibit crime, without command
ing positive duty, being addressed to men at
a primitive stage of moral education. We
can therefore understand how the Apostle of

1 Rom. vii. 7. If? the law sin ? Away with the thought !
But I should not have known (understood ?yvo>i/) sin but
by means of the law. For I should not have known coveting
(tiridvfuav) except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet
(firidvwvtis). Most probably St. Paul is here recalling a
crisis in his own spiritual life. It is worthy of notice that
he implies that the evil bias or trend of the desire, its
gravitation away from God's will, is sinful, although not
realised in act.

COVETOUSNKSS 181

the Gentiles could honestly affirm that " as
touching the righteousness which is in the
law," he was found blameless (Phil. iii. 6).
As a Pharisee, trained to the strictest observ
ance of every external rule and precept, his
life had been irreproachable, from the point of
view of a Hebrew citizen. But when con
science awaked within him, and he looked
away from the decorous moralities of his out
ward life to the condition of his heart, then
this tenth commandment sounded the knell
of all trust in self. The great searcher of
hearts had found him out.

" He put his finger on the spot,
Arid said, Thou ailest here, and here."

And Paul fled from all trust in Pharisaic
righteousness to the righteousness which is in
Christ Jesus. This closing commandment
teaches that it is the inward relation of the
heart to God which constitutes the substance
of true obedience ; and that, while a feeling
of discontent or envy is lodged in the breast,
there is no true keeping of the Moral Law.

Behind and beneath almost every sin lies
the vice of covetousness.1 The man who steals

1 The Greek word of the Septuagint is Tr\(ovt£ia. Usually
in the Old Testament this sin is connected with the desire
for another's property, Mic. ii. 2 ; hut also with usury,
bribes to judges or arbiters, the selling of legal debtors into
slavery, and the seizing of the patrimony of the poor.
Samuel asserts his innocence of it in fine language, 1 Sam.
xii. 3.

182 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

begins by coveting his neighbour's purse ; and
then to gain his end takes away his neighbour's
life. Or, he covets his prosperous business,
and to secure a share of it spreads slanderous
reports injurious to his character. Every vice
has some one of its roots in covetousness.
From such an evil soil who could expect a
harvest of good fruit ? A covetous heart will
breed nothing but evil thoughts and intents.
Covetous thoughts are the invariable fore
runners of guilty deeds.

In the Sermon on the Mount, in which our
Lord laid down the laws of the new kingdom
of grace, He withdrew all limits of time and
place from the commandments, and summed
them all up in love to God and to our
neighbour. Just as love is the fulfilling of
all the Law, so is covetousness a breach of
every commandment in the Decalogue. The
covetous man is the godless man, for " covet
ousness is idolatry." His god is self, and to
that idol all his worship is given ; so that all
the commandments in the first table are
broken by him. And the covetous man is
the neighbourless man ; for love makes neigh
bourhood, and weaves the delicate silken cords
that bind society together. But covetousness
tends to cut every one of these bonds, to dis
rupt society into fragments, or to turn it into
a den of ravening wild beasts. It sets a man
in an attitude of hostility to every one of his
fellow-men. And so it violates every precept

INTERNALISING OF THE LAW 183

in the second table of the Law. " The truth is
that illicit conduct always has its root in illicit
desire. It is one and the same moral (or im
moral) state, which begins with the secret
suggestion of evil, burns on through the stage
of indulged imagination, of longing and dal
liance with opportunity, till it consummates
itself in the criminal deed. As St. James
traces for us in a sentence the genealogy of
evil when he says : " The lust when it hath
conceived, beareth sin ; and the sin, when it is
full grown, bringeth forth death," so does St.
James' Lord trace a continuity of development
betwixt the angry temper and the murderous
stroke ; betwixt the lascivious glance and the
broken vow of wedlock ; betwixt the deceit
that palters with a phrase and the perjurer's
oath. What is this but the teaching of the
tenth commandment ' writ large ' ? " l

Both by the preface that introduces the
Decalogue and by the commandment that
ends it, the Law shows that, while it has an
external form and naturality, it has also an
internal meaning and reference. The words
of the prologue are an appeal to love and not
to fear ; the relation in which God there pre
sents Himself to Israel is not that of lawgiver
but of saviour. Because He had redeemed
them from Egypt's bondage and revealed to
them His holy character, therefore they were
to give Him their devoted service. In the

1 Dr. J. 0. Dykes, The Law of the Ten Words, p. 201.

184 THK ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

very prologue the Decalogue bases morality
upon religion. And in this commandment
that closes it, again the Law enters the region
of character and motive. The will of God
must be done from the heart. This is more
fully set forth afterwards in the Book of
Deuteronomy and in the Prophets, where it
is contrasted with that spirit that trusts for
salvation to the external order and the opus
operatum. It is on the basis of this religious
sanction that the whole Decalogue rests.
Without a heart of love there can be no
keeping of the Law. If we love a man, we
shall not covet any of his goods ; for love likes
better to give than to get. A true father will
never covet a son's good name, his property, or
his business ; rather is he proud of them, and
rejoices in every accession of fame or wealth
that may come to his child. Where love
reigns, hatred and malice cannot dwell. The
Law of the Ten Commandments can therefore
be fulfilled only by the renewal and sanctifica-
tion of the inner man. This is proved by its
opening and its closing words.

THE PROHIBITORY FORM OF THE LAW

It has been often urged, by way of objection
to the perfection of the Decalogue, that the
most of its requirements are expressed in a
prohibitory form. With the exception of the
fifth commandment, all the others take the

PROHIBITORY FORM OF LAW 185

shape of a prohibition, not of an injunction.
The fourth begins with enjoining the re
membrance of the Sabbath day, but the rest
of its clauses are prohibitory of work ; and on
the whole it rather forbids than enjoins. Have
those negative precepts, then, any contents of
a positive character ? And may those specific
commands, that are elsewhere given by
Jehovah, be comprehended under some one
or other of the Ten Words ?

There is no doubt that there were many
things that were obligatory on the Israelites
that are not mentioned in the Decalogue, and
which, had they not been elsewhere com
manded by God, would not have been
observed by them. But we have seen that
the Decalogue, in its closing command, had
clearly a pedagogic purpose, and through a
particular form it led on to a law of universal
love. Every Israelite, who regarded those Ten
Words in the spirit of love, would find them
comprehensive enough for him. His experience
would lead him to discover fuller contents in
each of them. And the ethical interpretation
given of them in Deuteronomy would prove
to him that really they covered all the com
plex relations of life, including his duties both
to God and to his fellow-men.1

1 The expression of an ethical and religious spirit char
acterises the whole of Deuteronomy. Its form of the Deca
logue emphasises the spirituality and unity of tlie Godhead.
All duties are to be penetrated with a sense of personal
devotion to Jehovah, and done " with all thy heart and all

186 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

There could be nothing of a moral nature
in a commandment that had not something
positive in itself. In inaction per se, in not-
doing, there is nothing that we can call
ethical. Ethics concerns itself with human
actions and relations. A stone statue sus
tains moral relations to no one. And if it
were possible for a living being to occupy a
position of pure inactivity, it might be said
that then he was beyond the sphere in which
duty could lay an obligation upon him, and
claim him as her servant. But such a state
of unethical being would be nothing better
than moral and spiritual death. There is no
break in the continuity of the ethical exist
ence of a living man, and there is every
probability that death brings no interruption
to that existence.

It seems, therefore, reasonable to conclude
that, as every moral good implies an opposite,
every precept of virtue implies the prohibition
of contrasted vice. But does every forbidding
imply a command ? Does the prohibition of
murder require the taking care of a neigh
bour's life, or merely inaction and indifference
with regard to a neighbour? Clearly, it
could not be so. For me to remain inactive
and effortless while I beheld a neighbour

thy soul." The former phrase, " those that love Me," is in
Deuteronomy richly ethicised. In later days the pious Jews
daily recited Deut. vi. 4-9. Cf. C. Taylor, Sayings of the
Jewish Fathers, pp. 52, 130 ; Ottley, Aspects of the Old
Testament, p. 219.

THE LAW A TUTOR 187

drowning would be positively wicked : the
inaction would be evil action. Statute law
might not recognise it, but morally it would
be homicide. Indifference to my neighbour's
property or good name becomes on my part,
as an ethical being, positively sinful. Such
non-action in fact becomes, through my self-
determination, an act having a moral character
of its own. It would constitute an essential
breach of any of the commandments. The
framers of the Westminster Shorter Catechism
were therefore justified in expounding each
commandment as containing a "requiring"
no less than a " forbidding." Obedience to
God's Moral Law is something more than
abstention from wrong. It involves the
doing rightly. The Decalogue, in its com
pressed brevity, contains but the headings of
ten chapters on duty ; and under each of them,
as interpreted afterwards in the word of God,
may be gathered the whole wide range of our
obligations both to God and to man.

A further explanation of the negative form
in which the Decalogue is expressed, is to be
found in the relative standard by which God
was at first content to measure the duty of
Israel. We are told that Jehovah took Israel
" by the hand," 1 guiding him as a nurse
guides a child ; and it is in accordance with
this code, as designed at first for the nation
in its infancy, that it should be expressed in

1 Heb. viii. 9, quoting Jer. xxxi. 32.

188 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

prohibitions. The nurse is continually saying
to the child, "You shall not." That is the
first or rudimentary stage of its moral train
ing. The education of every child begins in
its being restricted from whatever is hurtful
to it. The Decalogue is mainly prohibitory,
because Israel had not yet reached his
adolescence. But that rudimentary morality
did not end in a series of negations. As
given, it was part of a divine order of ethical
development. As such it had a fitness for
the time, and became a tutor to what was
higher and better. For men as yet far off
from moral maturity, the negative form was
the best that could be given, being the more
simple and easily understood. It brought
more clearly into his consciousness the wrong
doing of the transgressor, and was a prepara
tory training in the moral necessity for a time
of better things.

Such as it was, the Decalogue far surpassed
any ancient code of morals. No doubt in
pagan systems, some of its individual com
mands have been found ; but they are found
with limitations that narrow their scope and
lessen their value. But in no heathen system
do we meet with such a complete collection of
religious and moral precepts. Not even in
Greece can we find a Plato or an Aristotle
presenting anything that is so complete, that
rules both the external and the internal life of
man, and covers all the essential ethical wants

RESULT 189

of the people. Rudimentary as it was in
form, the Decalogue was the first religious
code that gave the world the idea of an
ethical Deity — holy, just, and good, full of
mercy as of equity ; high, stern in His
righteousness ; loving and aiding all that is
good, hating and opposing all that is evil.
It stood in opposition to many of the pre
judices, the passions, and the early associa
tions of the Hebrews. It put severe restraint
upon that undisciplined mob of slaves, just
rescued from a galling tyranny, not more unfit
for freedom than impatient of the conditions
that necessarily guard it. Yet, in contra
diction to every prejudice and association,
they are found believing that nothing can be
acceptable to God that is impure, that no
service is pleasant to Him except the service
of a righteous life.

Now, that which is essentially opposed to a
people's disposition cannot be supposed to be
the natural outcome of such a disposition.
The good fruit comes from the good tree ; and
the evil tree cannot produce anything but evil
fruit. Therefore, the natural genius of Israel
did not devise the Decalogue. It is not an
evolution of Hebrew thought.1 It came from
God, and was given to Moses for preservation
to all time. It brought to Israel the deep

1 For a clear statement of the Decalogue ad the work of
Moses and not an aftergrowth, see Prof. Bruce, Apologetic*,
p. 214.

190 THE ETHICS OP THE OLD TESTAMENT

conviction of failure ; it gave them the know
ledge of sin ; and thus it prepared the way
for Jesus Christ.

It cannot be denied that it was by the
education which this code gave that the
moral consciousness of the Hebrew nation
advanced to a clearness and an excellence
which that of the nations with whom they
came in contact never reached. It first of
all gave the world a true conception of God,
and a correct notion of man as a free, re
sponsible agent, with duties which no
neighbour could perform for him, and with
rights that no one should filch from him.
Lying as it did at the foundation of the
whole Mosaic legislation, which was but an
expansion of it, it is at once social, religious,
and moral, yielding an ethical basis for
individual and national life, as well as for
that of the Church. It is without peer or
parallel as a summary of man's duty to God
and to his fellow-man.

CHAPTER IX

I. OLD TESTAMENT LEGISLATION IN
RELATION TO NATURE

AMONG the wider aspects of the Law is its
relation to the external world of nature.
The compass of Israel's obligations includes
those duties which have regard to animate
and inanimate creation, to the animals that
feed on the soil, and to the soil itself. Over
the land, the living and life-giving Spirit of
God broods. It is His land, and His word
has called into being each individual form.
The earth at creation brings forth the living
creature at God's command, and continues to
obey His will, and fulfil it in her annual
course. The order of nature is in the Old
Testament recognised as being at one with
the order and will of God. In accordance
with this view, the Mosaic legislation is full
of a grand conception of the good of nature
and of the world. It loves nature, and shows
that love in its laws regarding the culture of
the fields, and the care of the vineyards and
oliveyards. The impoverishment of the soil

101

192 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

is forbidden. The institution of the Sabbatic
year is intended to be an effectual prevention
of it (Ex. xxiii. 11). The more explicit law
of Leviticus designates the purpose of this
ordinance by saying: "The land shall keep
a Sabbath unto the Lord : in the seventh
year shall be a Sabbath of rest unto the land,
a Sabbath for the Lord : thou shalt neither
sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard . . .
for it is a year of rest unto the land"
(Lev. xxv. 4, 5). The seventh of these
Sabbatic years was to be followed by the
year of jubilee,1 when for two consecutive
seasons the land lay fallow, and the fertility
of the soil became very much increased.
Thus the soil was regarded with a kindly
feeling, and was looked at as possessing, no
less than the beasts of burden, a divine right
to a certain amount of forbearance and of
rest. For six years might the farmer tax its
utmost capacity to bring forth fruit for him,
but in the seventh he must not make any
such demand.

This is a very ethical view of man's
relations to the soil, and it is borne out by

1 The year of jubilee closed the cycle of Sabbatic seasons :
so that the new period did not commence till the fifty-
first year, Josephus, Antiquities, iii. 12. 3. Saalschiitz in his
Archdologie der Hebriier, ii. p. 229, however, maintains that
the jubilee year began with the latter six months of the
Sabbatic year and the first six months of the new period.
If so, the consecration of Lev. xxv. 10 did not take place till
the middle of the year of jubilee ; not a very probable
event.

THE YEAR OF JUBILEE 193

many parts of the Old Testament. In the
poem of Job this feeling is felicitously voiced
in dramatic language. " If my land cry
against me, and the furrows thereof weep
together; if I have eaten the fruits thereof
without money, ... let thistles grow
instead of wheat, and cockle instead of
barley" (Job xxxi. 39); which is as much
as to say that, if he had deprived the true
owner of the land of his inheritance, the
very furrows would find a voice to accuse
him, and the thistles would proclaim his
guilt. If this were so with a stranger, how
much more was it the duty of the owner of
the land to treat it with leniency. He had
a right to expect that the land should pay
the debt due to him for the labour he had
expended on it : that were but a fair return
for his pains. But, on the other hand, just
as the law of the Jubilee year looked with
mercy on the human debtor, and demanded
that the creditor should think of the un
fortunate man's rights, and restore them, so
has the land its rights, and every seventh
year its owner is to be merciful to it by
ceasing to exact a tribute from it. " Nature
is to be set free, as it were, from the service
which mankind exacts from her, and to be
left entirely to herself." l So that between
every owner and his land there exists this
legal and moral relation.

1 Schultz, op. dt., vol. i. p. 363.
14

194 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

There is little doubt that the fundamental
law of the Sabbath reappears in the institution
of the Sabbatic year. In fact, this year of
rest is to be symbolically a bringing back of
the sinless age of paradise before the terrible
curse was pronounced, " In sorrow shalt thou
eat of it all the days of thy life" (Gen. iii.
17) ; while at the same time it points forward
to the happier time, spoken of by the apostle,
when the creation, now travailing in pain,
" shall be delivered from the bondage of
corruption into the glorious liberty of the
children of God."

In all this it is clear that the law regarding
the land proceeds upon an ethical view of
man's relations to it. The purpose of an
Israelite's life was not the incessant gathering
of fruits and storing of goods for many years,
that he might eat, drink, and be merry. Lest
the continuous cultivation of the soil might
lead to some such thought, he was reminded
of God's promise that His people should be
well provided for in His land. They should
not be ground down with labour, but the un
usual fertility of the sixth year should render
them independent of a harvest in the seventh.
And their very soil should have its Sabbatic
rest also ; for Nature, too, requires her seasons
of rest in order to recuperate her exhausted
energies. In point of fact, however, this
ordinance was not kept by the Israelites.
Greed got the better of gratitude. And not

NATURE VIEWED ETHICALLY 195

till the Babylonian captivity did " the land
enjoy her Sabbaths" (2 Chron. xxxvi. 21).1

Nor did this law overlook the animals that
tilled the soil for man's benefit. It would not
permit the dumb creatures to be subjected to
cruelty, or unnecessary harassment. They
belonged to Jehovah no less than their owners,
and were to receive humane treatment. The
nest of the bird must not be robbed while the
mother is sitting on the eggs, or rearing the
brood (Deut. xxii. 6). A similar merciful pro
vision is made with respect to the young of
the domestic animals that were offered in
sacrifice (Lev. xxii. 28). The ox must not be
muzzled as he treads the corn, but is to have
his bite as he paces his weary round beneath
the broiling sun (Deut. xxv. 4). The ox or ass
of an enemy, if found after he had strayed,
must be led home to his stall (Ex. xxiii. 4) ;
and an ass discovered lying helpless beneath
his load is to be relieved by the passer-by.
His enmity to the owner must not lead him
to forbear help to the beast. Similarly, it is
enacted that, for three years after planting,
the young fruit-trees are to be kindly spared,
and not made to yield a tribute of fruit (Lev.
xix. 23). This was not a mere sanctification
of the tree, but had undoubtedly a moral mean-

1 During prosperity in Palestine the Sabbatic year was all
but forgotten. It was not attended to until adversity came
and the Jew ceased to be an agriculturist and became a trader
and banker in other lands. Jehovah chastened because He
loved.

196 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

ing, and illustrates the spirit of the whole
Law.

The same moral considerations led to the
enactment that the human form should not
be disfigured by any markings or cuttings in
token of grief for .the dead.1 These wild
demonstrations of grief were very common
amons; emotional Orientals, and in one in-

o

stance in the Book of Kings the priests of
Baal are found seeking to propitiate their god
by so maiming themselves. But Jehovah's
children are not to disfigure their bodies.
The heathen, who have no hope in death,
may do so, but such disfigurement is unworthy
of Israel's privileges; and Jehovah takes no
pleasure in actions which are an outrage on
His own handiwork.2 He desires His people
to be, like His priests, without deformity or
bodily blemish.8

Even the bodies of the animals offered in
sacrifice must be perfect to be accepted. Any
blemish marred the offering. The Mosaic
Law would not permit the ugly and deformed
to be brought near the altar. But, on the

1 Of. Jer. xvi. 6 and xlviii. 37.

2 The tatooings referred to in Lev. xix. 28 were probably
an Egyptian custom. See Lane's Egyptians, chap. i. The
Roman Law of the Ten Tables had very similar prohibitions.

8 The blind, the lame, the dwarfed, those suffering from
scurvy, from a broken arm or broken leg, ets., were excluded
from the acting priesthood; and according to blischn&Bechoroth,
chap, vii., many other blemishes were soon added to the list or
Lev. xxi. But such priests received the portions due to them
in virtue of their descent, and often engaged in inferior work
about the temple, Joseph. Wars of the Jews, v. 5 and 7.

THE ANIMAL CREATION 197

other hand, for all such in their loss and
suffering it had only pity and protection. It
breathes a spirit of love and kindness for the
dumb creatures, a spirit of delight in the
beauty of all the animal forms God has
made. And it seeks to encourage the same
spirit of tenderness among the people who
belong to Jehovah.

There is one brief enactment, bearing on
man's moral relation to the animal creation,
of such a peculiar character as to deserve more
than passing notice. It is that which says :
" Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's
milk." The "Book of the Covenant" ends
with this prohibition, and it is three times
repeated in the books of Exodus and Deuter
onomy. Of the many explanations given,
the only satisfactory one is that which pro
ceeds upon the ethical view of the passage,
namely, that " it is a protest against cruelty
and outraging the order of nature." Natural
feeling revolts against the idea of using that
which ought to be the young creature's food
for mere culinary purposes, and of making
the mother, so to speak, an " accomplice to
the death of her progeny, which men were
induced to kill on account of the flavour which
her milk gave it." The precept is clearly
moral and not ceremonial. It forbids men to
harden their heart against the natural instinct
of pity, on the plea that it is of no conse
quence how their food is prepared, and that

198 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

the dumb mother has no perception of the
inhumanity of the act. The practice was
in all probability a common one, on account
of the very palatable character of the flesh so
cooked. And this frequent injunction is
intended to make men refrain from what is
unfeeling and inhuman, since such action
springs out of selfishness, and marks a spirit
unworthy of the children of a just and merci
ful God.

II. OLD TESTAMENT LEGISLATION
IN RESPECT OF MAN

Jehovah is the Redeemer and Governor of
Israel, and the legislation of the Old Testa
ment proceeds upon the personal and loving
relation existing between Him and them.
They are His ransomed children, and the
rights of man are recognised without any
distinction of class. Before Jehovah every
man is a free personality, free to obey or
disobey, to love Him with heart and soul and
mind, or to exalt himself in opposition to the
divine will.1

To this conception of man, as possessing
inalienable and equal rights, the Mosaic
legislation corresponds. Yet there are ap
parent exceptions to the rule, which mark
this stage of the Law as still primitive and
rudimentary. Slavery, for one thing, is per-

1 Of. Schultz, op. cit., vol. ii. p. 11.

LAWS CONCERNING MAN 199

mitted, and some conquered races who join
Israel seem to have been held in a state of
subjection that is a denial of the equality of
rights. How can slavery find a place in a
nation where the law of brotherhood and
kindness is meant to prevail ?

The answer to this is that, though slavery
is permitted, it is yet so limited by the re
strictions of the Mosaic Code that its worst
features are removed ; and what remains
comes under the principle of adjustment to
the existing conditions of the nation, which
we shall afterwards see is the only explanation
of other defects of the legislative code of
Mosaism. Slavery existed ; but in course of
time it was dropped off as an archaism that
belonged to the earlier times of Israel. Such
as it was, it is yet to be observed that it never
was regarded as natural or unarbitrary, as we
find it regarded in other countries.

Take, for example, the not far distant land
of Greece. In the Politics of Aristotle, there
is actually formulated a theory of slavery, in
which it is argued that a household without
goods and serving tools or instruments is not
conceivable ; and therefore, in like manner,
every Greek house must have slaves, which
are nothing else than necessary living instru
ments for the doing of the household work.
In the mind of this famous teacher of ethics,
slaves and barbarians are of an imperfect
grade, incapable of moral emancipation, being

200 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

utterly destitute of the power of deliberation,
and therefore of the virtues of wisdom and
prudence. Consequently, they should have
no political rights in Greece.1

Such views of man and of his relations to
society are contrary to the whole spirit of the
Mosaic Code. It recognises slavery, as all the
world then did, but it is of that kind that is
least hurtful to the bondman. It would not
be too much to say that it is there radically
changed, and is not slavery but rather " a
service-relation,"2 Even in the time of the
patriarchs, a slave in Abraham's household is
such a trusted friend that he is sent all the
way to Haran to find a wife for his master's
son (Gen. xxiv.). And when Abraham receives
the sacrament of circumcision, the whole of
his slaves participate in this covenant privi
lege. Further, it is to be noticed that it is
only of the mass of prisoners captured in war,
or of heathen who join themselves to Israel,
that slavery can be predicated. The freeborn
sons of Israel might become bondmen either
by poverty or by a judicial sentence on account
of theft. But they could not be sold to
strangers as slaves. Though it was perfectly
legal to hold war captives as bondmen, yet all
cruelty towards them is prohibited by the
Mosaic Law ; kindness is indeed specially
enjoined. The injunction also is coupled with

1 Aristotle, Politics, i. 9.

2 Wuttke, Christian Ethics (T. & T. Clark), vol. i. p. 165.

SLAVERY 201

a reference to Israel's own pathetic memories
of the cruel lash of the Egyptian taskmaster
(Deut. v. 14, 15).

There were certain slaves employed by the
priests about the sanctuary to perform the
menial duties connected with the tabernacle.
In Ezra ii. 43 they are called the Nethinims,
or " given ones," and are there clearly dis
tinguished from the Levites. They must
have been temple slaves, and were probably
captives taken in war. They were virtually
adopted into the Levite families, and their
names are given, both in Ezra and Nehemiah,
in the register of the genealogies of those who
came out of Babylon. Though they were a
servile class, this shows that they were
cherished with real respect and affection by
their masters.

For the Israelites themselves, bondage was
entirely abolished. Though they might fall
into slavery through poverty, or endure it as
a punishment, yet their servitude was very
carefully hedged and guarded. In Ex. xxi. 7,
a father may sell his daughter to be a maid
servant ; but she is not to go out to the field
as the menservants do, and the clause seems
to contemplate her betrothment to the pur
chaser or to his son. Any man or woman who
was compelled to sell themselves because of
poverty, could be held in bondage only until
the Sabbatic year came round. The period at
the longest could be only six years. If he

202 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

were a married man at the time of his being
sold, his wife received her freedom along with
her husband ; but if he married during
bondage, his wife and children remained
slaves. If he loved his master's service so
well that, when the year of emancipation
came, he preferred to remain, then a very
suggestive ceremony must be gone through
(Ex. xxi. 5, 6). His master is to bring him
before the judges to declare his wish in public.
Then he is to take him to his doorpost (or
probably, according to Ewald, to the door of
the sanctuary), and there he is to bore his
ear through with an awl in token of his vow
of perpetual service.1 There is no doubt that
this proceeding was brought about by affection
for his master, and perhaps even more by un
willingness on the part of the slave to leave
the wife and children he had got during his
servitude. But the worst result of slavery is
when a man ceases to feel its degradation,
and no more desires his liberty. In this light
the Rabbis have always viewed this unique
ceremony.

Another ordinance, which very much miti
gated any severity or cruelty attaching to the
slavery permitted in Israel, was the law of

1 Theologians have differed about the interpretation of this
ceremony. Its spiritual counterpart may be found in Rom.
xii. 1, 2. Miss Havergal voiced the truth in her beautiful
hymn :

" I love, I love my Master,
I will not go out free."

SLAVERY IN ISRAEL 203

the Jubilee year. It provides for the return
of the Israelite, who may have sold himself to
some one after giving up his freehold estate,
to his tribe and his legal inheritance. The
value of any land that was alienated or
pledged was estimated by the number of
years intervening betwixt the sale and the
Jubilee year, beyond which no contract of
sale was valid. So that, when this year came
round, every Israelite who had sold himself re
gained at once both his freedom and his land.1
It was likewise provided that he might redeem
himself at any time during the currency of the
period before the jubilee by payment of redemp
tion money. Nor was he to serve as a slave,
but " as an hired servant, and as a sojourner
he shall be with thee" (Lev. xxv. 40).2

1 Cf. p. 117 above. The coining in of this happy clay was
always pro::! aimed throughout the whole land by trumpeters
on the tenth clay of the seventh month. This was the Day
of Atonement, so that the joy of the Jubilee immediately
followed the expiation of the people's transgressions. The
word Jubilee is probably onomatopoetic in the sense of
jubilavit and annus jubileus of the Vulgate.

2 The spiritual meaning of this institution is made clear
by the Second Isaiah in Ixi. 1. The Messiah is to proclaim
the acceptable year of the Lord, to preach good tidings to the
meek, to bind up the brokenhearted, and proclaim liberty to
the slaves. Messiah's Day is to bring about the world's
happiness and end its sorrows. Jesus' announcement of the
Kingdom was in these very words of Isaiah (Luke iv. 21). The
Sabbath-rest of the people of God (Heb. iv. 9) is the New
Testament fulfilment of this typical institution. Even the
weekly Day of Rest cannot exhaust, but can only picture,
tins abiding a-a^aria-^s. Here lies one of the deepest
secrets of the Christian life, the source of the peace of God,
r) flptjvr) TOV dtov fj \jir(pf\ov(Ta ndvra roiiv (Phil. iv. 7).

204 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

With regard to a slave got in war, or bought
of an alien, the Mosaic Law provides that he
should have the privilege of partaking of the
passover after being circumcised. He might,
in the event of his master having no male
issue, become his son-in-law, and be adopted
into the family and continue it (1 Chron.
ii. 34, 35). Punishment by death was entirely
prohibited ; while the ordinances regarding
female captives taken in war and sought after
for their beauty, are very characteristic of the
merciful spirit of Old Testament legislation.

In discussing these laws regarding slavery
from an ethical point of view, it must be
remembered that the question we have to face
is not, Are they abstractly just and equitable ?
— for to a Christian conscience slavery is
abhorrent, and all enactments for its regula
tion unjust. The Christian world has entirely
passed beyond the rudimentary stage in
which these laws were justifiable. But the
fact is that Mosaism adopted the best course
that was then possible. If slavery could not
be abolished, the next best thing to abolition
was modification. These laws bear traces of
existing heathen customs ; yet they restrict
and reform these customs. While reforma
tory, they at the same time show signs of
being progressive. Under the spiritual im
pulse of prophetic teaching there are evidences
of advancement to more correct ethical views
regarding bondmen. In the later times of

SANITARY LAWS 205

Judaism the Essenes entirely abolished slavery
and asserted the innate equality of man ; as
did also the Therapeutae.1 Though these Old
Testament practices came short of the perfect
law of liberty, yet they were stages, ethically
necessary moments, on the way to perfection.
It is probable that the Hebrews would have at
first been unable to understand the purpose of
an entire prohibition of slavery. But the in
creasing stringency of the regulations guarding
the well-being of the slaves proceeded pari
passu wTith the moral training of Israel, until
at last the institution was cast aside under
the influence of the teaching of Christ. But
while our moral instincts are offended at
slavery, it is perfectly clear that the Israelites
did not so regard it.2

III. THE MOSAIC LAW IN REFERENCE
TO SANITATION

The morality of the Old Testament was par
excellence a sanitary morality. No legal code
ever looked so well to cleanliness, or placed it
nearer to godliness. In this respect it exer
cised a most healthful influence on Jewish
social life.

1 Cf. Sir. xxx. 33 ; Aristotle, Nic. Ethics, viii. 13. In
Athens the proportion of slaves to citizens was as high as
four to one ; in Israel it was not more than one to six
(Neh. vii. 66, 67).

2 See art. in Herzog's Real-Encyc.,1 " Sklaverie bei den
Hebriiern."

206 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

The laws regarding uncleanness spring out
of the conception of divine holiness in Israel.
The natural life of the people is deemed too
impure for immediate communion with a holy
God. The flesh of man needs purification
ere he can present himself acceptably at the
altar. This fact is declared by the mother
being regarded as unclean at child-birth.
Everything relating to generation, birth,
decomposition, corruption, and especially
death, causes defilement ; and stringent rules
of purification for such uncleannesses are
enjoined.

The primary purpose of these enactments
was to bring to the worshipper's memory the
defiling character of sin. The fellowship with
God which is here contemplated is an external
one, maintained through a national life set
apart for this end, and is not that spiritual
life of communion required in the New Testa
ment. It is effected through the sanctuary
service, by means of sin-offerings and purifica
tions. Only by attending to these conditions
of cleanliness can the individual Israelite share
in the moral and social life of the nation,
which, as a whole, had to purify itself
annually on the great Day of Atonement.1

The laws of purification embrace everything

1 The peculiar ritual of the red heifer, presented in Num.
xix., and constituting a sin-offering, clearly sets forth the
defilement of evil. The water of separation is to be
strengthened by elements which symbolise incomiption and
vitality.

LEPROSY 207

of the nature of food, and are designed for
sanitary no less than for spiritual uses. They
seem to be based on popular customs which
had decided for their forefathers what was
healthful and what was hurtful. All animals
living on any kind of carrion are to be con
sidered unclean, both for dietetic reasons and
because, through contact with the carcase,
they have contracted uncleanness. Any beast
that is torn in pieces, or dies a natural death,
must not be eaten (Deut. xiv. 21). And the
general instruction given is, " Thou shalt not
eat of any abominable thing" (Deut. xiv. 3).

The disease against which the most careful
and stringent provisions are made is leprosy.
It is regarded as a slow creeping death, attack
ing organ after organ of the body, and so
rendering the miserable sufferer a constant
centre of infection and uncleanness. With
what frightful horror it was looked upon may
be seen in the restrictions enforced, as well as
in the terrible sense of isolation and banish
ment with which a victim such as Miriam
received her chastisement from God.1 The
regulations both for the purpose of discovering
its presence and of preventing its spread are
given in Lev. xiii. and xiv. The duty and
power of sanitary inspection lay with the
priest ; he must pronounce upon the nature of
the disease ; and, if it were discovered, must

1 Num. xii. 12, "as one dead." So in Josephus, Ant.
ii\. 11, " In no way different from the dead."

208 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

order the garments to be disinfected, and in
certain events burned. After recovery, the
patient had to go through the ritual of
purification described in Lev. xiv., and to
undergo separation from the camp for seven
days.

In this healthy sanitary legislation Israel
was far ahead of contemporary nations. In
Greece lepers were spoken of as the victims of
the wrath of Phoebus, and most of them with
drew from all social life, and were left to
perish in solitude. Among the Chinese they
were regarded with natural aversion were left
to themselves, and frequently committed
suicide. Egypt was the centre of this
elephantiasis in ancient times, and it is very
likely that the Hebrews contracted the
disease on the banks of the Nile. Egypto
logists have not been able to find any law
enforcing the segregation of the sufferers.
On the other hand, hospitals for their resi
dence and cure have existed for many
centuries in Syria, and we may reasonably
suppose that these are a result of the wise
regulations of the Mosaic Law.

CHAPTER X

I. LAWS REGARDING THE POOR IN ISRAEL

NOWHERE is the humanity of the Mosaic
legislation more clearly visible than in its
treatment of the distressed. Care for the
poor and the bereaved is made a duty of the
highest importance. At the same time, it is
very noticeable that it does not seen! to con
template any settled class of poor in the land,
but only such as are reduced by loss or
accident to sudden impoverishment. Pro
vision is made for every head of a family
having his allotment of ground, and the means
of earning an independent and honest liveli
hood ; while at the same time the claims of
kinship among relatives are not neglected.
Provision, too, is made for continuing the
family, in the case of a widow having no
child, by what is known as the Levirate
marriage law. So that, in point of fact, no
pauper class existed, or could exist, among the
Israelites. A " submerged tenth " was not pos
sible in the Land of Promise ; and the Law has
no regulations of the nature of our Poor Laws.

210 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Yet the poor will always be in the land, so
long as death strikes down the wage-earner
and father. The Law, accordingly, provides
for widows and orphans in the most effective
way. It is to be remembered that in Israel
the soil, no less than its cultivators, is the
property of Jehovah, and the poor are to get
some share of its produce. This idea underlies
all legislation about fatherless children. In
accordance with it, the law of the harvest
ordains that such shall get the gleaning of the
fields. Whatever grew on the land during
the seventh year of rest — and in Palestine
the wheat and oat crops sow themselves to a
considerable extent — is to belong exclusively
to the poor. Theirs too, in that Sabbatic year,
is the entire fruit-crop of vine and olive
(Ex. xxiii. 11). Nor are the husbandmen in
any harvest season to beat their olive trees a
second time, nor to glean the grapes left at
the first gathering. All this is to be for " the
stranger, the fatherless, and the widow "
(Deut. xxiv. 20, 21). If a poor man shall
pledge his outer garment — the garment of
goat's hair in which he slept at night — for a
loan, the pledge is not to be kept overnight,1
lest he shall have nothing to cover him during
sleep. The hired servant, if in poverty, must
be paid his wage at sundown, lest he be in
need of food. Similarly, no creditor is per-

1 Amos ii. 8 contains a strong condemnation of this unkind
practice.

TITHES OR TENTHS 211

mitted to take the upper or nether millstone
with which the women grind the household
meal, " for he taketh a man's life to pledge "
(Deut. xxiv. 6). The needy and defenceless
are to have special attention and kindly care ;
and bondmen in particular are never to be
maltreated in such a way as to endanger their
power to work. The poor stranger who has
conformed to Hebrew customs is strongly
commended to the charitable, and is to be
loved as much as their own kindred, " for ye
were once strangers in the land of Egypt."
He, too, is to have a share in the gleanings of
the harvest.1

The tithes, or tenth of the fruits, which were
devoted to the Levites in compensation for
their loss of tribal land, are at the end of
every third year to be laid up at home, and a
great feast to be given therewith to the
Levites, the stranger, the fatherless, and the
widow (Deut. xiv. 28). This offering seems,
from Deut. xxvi. 13 ff., to be regarded as less
a tithe to the priest than a freewill offering of
gratitude to God for His goodness in bringing
them to Canaan. It would appear, also, from
the way in which Amos sarcastically refers to
it, that it was regularly paid by the people to
the poor, however much in other respects they
ceased to honour God.

1 In these days of Collectivism weave coining to appreciate
more keenly the wisdom of these O.T. regulations. The
study of them would help in the solution of modern economic
and social problems.

212 THE ETHICS OP THE OLD TESTAMENT

In all these diverse ways tlie exercise of
benevolence to the poor is encouraged.
Fully carried out, these regulations would
entirely prevent the growth of a pauper
class in the land. They may not have been
always observed ; and doubtless they were by
many selfish people neglected. But they are
thoroughly ethical in their scope and inten
tion. They formed part of the morality of
Israel, and derived all their authority from
God. Not in Egypt, nor in Assyria, nor in
later days in Rome, could we find such a
noble moral sentiment as that of Prov. xiv. 21 :
"He that despiseth his neighbour sinneth :
but he that hath mercy on the poor, happy is
he. He that oppresseth the poor reproacheth
his Maker : but he that honoureth Him hath
mercy on the poor." This humane kindness
constitutes an ethical feature of the Old
Testament that is frequently referred to for
imitation in the Gospels and Epistles.

Yet, with all this charity towards the poor
and the stranger, we cannot fail to notice the
relative limitations. The exercise of these
kindnesses does not go beyond the nation of
Israel. For the stranger that has not be
come a citizen, that has not complied with the
religious customs of the people, no such
humane treatment is enjoined. He remains
outside all covenant privileges and neigh
bourly acts of charity. The ancient inhabi
tants of Canaan are to be utterly extermiu-

RELATIVE LIMITATION 213

ated, and towards them no humanity is ever
to be shown. To the Ammonite and the
Moabite the hatred of Israel is to extend to
the tenth generation. This is the particularism
of the ethical code of Moses. Ideally, it falls
far short of perfection, and is a long way
behind the ethics of the thirteenth chapter of
First Corinthians. But this is a limitation
that tends to pass away. In the Book of
Ruth a Moabite woman is taken into a
Hebrew family, and becomes famous as an
ancestress of King David. The beautiful
prayer of Solomon at the feast of the
dedication of the Temple does not fail to
include " the stranger that cometh out of a
far country." l In the Prophets the universal
spirit of love begins to breathe out hopes of a
time when of Egypt and Assyria it shall be
said by God, "Blessed be Egypt My people,
and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel
Mine inheritance. In that day Israel shall be
the third with Egypt and with Assyria, a
blessing in the midst of the earth " (Isa. xix.
24, 25).

All this shows that while the moral codes
of other nations either remain where they
began, or else grow narrower and less pure
with the progress of years, that of Israel
tends to purify itself, and to widen out into
a stream that shall carry cleansing and bless
ing to all mankind. It casts off its particu-

1 Cf. Schultz, op. cit., vol. ii. p. 62.

214 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

larism, and rises into an even wider and
higher law, that embraces in its sweep the
whole human race. A law with such inherent
power of working out to wider accomplish
ment, and with such force of self-purification,
was the product of no mere human legislator.
A divine hand was all the time guiding its
evolution.

II. LAWS AS TO WOMEN AND CHILDREN

The way in which the relations of the sexes
are viewed is always an excellent test of the
legislation of any era or nation. Are the
rights of the women and children carefully
conserved ? Or does State absolutism swallow
them up ? Is the individual looked at
morally ? Is he regarded as a member of a
household, or only as a citizen and soldier?
If the latter be the light in which individuals
are viewed, the logical result is that, since
women and children cannot go to war, they
must be placed upon a much lower ethical
platform than the male citizen who is able to
undertake military duties. Accordingly, we
find it so in ancient Greece. Outside of the
State there is no proper morality. In the
mind of Plato, the State includes only three
classes — the men of thought who rule, the
soldiers who fight, and the labourers who
produce. For these classes it must provide
wives, whose children are to be reared in

WOMEN AND CHILDREN 215

common, being the property of the State
rather than of the family. There the woman
could not be the loved mother at the head of
the home, but only one whose function it was
to beget children and do house work, and, if
need be, go to the battlefield among the tent-
bearers. Of a morality valid for all, men and
women alike, Plato is entirely ignorant.

In the Old Testament we find no specific
rules as to the treatment of women laid down.
But in the history of the chosen people many
occasions happen in which God manifests His
regard for the wife, and treats her as having
an equal interest with the husband in the
well-being of the family, and an important
share in carrying out the divine purpose.
Thereby it is shown what value woman has
in the economy of grace.1 The descendants of
Abraham could not read the story of Sarah
without perceiving that her life and safety
and moral well-being were regarded by God
as of the utmost importance. Abraham's love
for her is beautifully manifested. The story
of Rebecca's wooing and marriage is an Old
Testament idyll. Isaac is to get a wife from
the monotheistic people of Mesopotamia, not

1 The condition of woman in a nation is the touchstone
of that people's progress. In this sense she may be said to
be the interpreter and revealer of God. Religions outside
the Bible have largely overlooked her. The Wisdom
Literature claims for ner a rightful place, and foreshadows
the significance which was to be given to Christian Woman
hood iu Eph. v.

216 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

from the heathen around. In the history of
Jacob and Rachel we have a touching story
of true affection, and of the honour put upon
a departed mother, a tale that went to the
heart of Israel. Deborah is an instance of a
woman who, in a time of shameful national
degeneracy and faithless fears, stepped to the
forefront of a great revolutionary movement,
and inspired even laggard tribes to come to
the help of God's cause. The history of her
doings was a very inspiration to patriotism ;
she became a nurse of heroes. The beautiful
idyll of the Book of Ruth exhibits traits of
pure feeling and nobleness that could not
but elevate woman in the eyes of the
Hebrews. The fact that Huldah the
prophetess had gained such a position of
eminence in the eyes of the leading men of
Josiah's time that she was taken into the
deliberations of his privy council, is a proof
of the growing appreciation of the worth of
woman in the times of the later kings.1

In the Book of Proverbs the picture of the-
virtuous woman (chap, xxxi.) is drawn in
the richest colours. It sets forth an ideal of
womanhood far superior to anything found
in contemporary writings of pagan ethical
teachers. The wife is one who possesses the
full confidence of her husband ; she is not
the favourite of his harem, but is conceived
of as the beloved single companion of his

1 Of. Schultz, op. cit., vol. i. p. 216.

VIEW OF WOMAN 217

life, and the partaker of all his thoughts and
cares. She ministers to him only good. Her
unobtrusive help evokes his deepest reverence.
Her attraction does not lie in form and
feature, but in moral and spiritual worth.
She is a woman that fears the Lord ; her
praise is in every mouth ; she is admired and
esteemed for her general capacity, for
her motherly and wifely goodness. Her
daughters rise up and call her blessed.
Her husband thinks her peerless, and praises
her, saying, " Many daughters have done
virtuously, but thou excellest them all." All
this indicates a conception of woman as far
above that found in Plato's Republic as the
heavens are above the earth. A good wife—
and this is the root-thought of it all — is from
the Lord : she is a divine gift, and whoever
gets her, gets a treasure straight from
heaven.

But here again, because of the hardness of
man's heart, customs are permitted which are
contrary to the better spirit of the Old Testa
ment. Though at creation one woman is
given to one man, and monogamy is clearly
established, yet we soon find polygamy in
practice. The concubine, however, seems to
have been a slave of the house ; and the evil
results of the custom are to a considerable
extent lessened by various injunctions.1
Children are always regarded as a blessing

1 Cf. Exposition of the Seventh Commandment, p. 156.

218 THE ETHICS OP THE OLD TESTAMENT

from the Lord ; and the custom, so common
among the heathen, of doing away with weak
lings,1 is totally unknown to the Hebrew
nation.

Connected with its assertion of woman's
worth is the care which the legislation of
Moses took of the children. It honours
the mother, and carefully guards the child.
The Hebrew father is invested with no such
absolute power over his family and household
as the Roman father has. Although the legal
code of Rome was regarded as the richest
product of the Latin genius, and virtually
gave laws to all Europe, yet under it children
and mothers could scarcely be said to possess
any inherent rights. But in the Pentateuchal
code, a father must provide for his family ;
the widow is not to be treated as a burden
upon the estate, but as the mother of a line of
descent that God cares for, and to which He
has given an inheritance. In the prophetic
writings, and in the Wisdom Literature,
children are regarded as the heritage of the
Lord, and their youth is to be blessed with
God's grace, if they seek to find Him. The
fields of the unprotected fatherless are to be
the special care of the righteous citizen, and
their landmarks are to be very carefully
guarded ; for, it is added, " their Redeemer
is mighty, He shall plead their cause with
thee" (Prov. xxiii. 10). While the wicked lie

1 Philo, De Spec. Leg. ii. 318 ; Tacitus, Hist. v. 5.

EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG 219

in wait to ensnare them, God is the helper of
the fatherless (Ps. x. 14), and will requite any
evil done to them. The greater their need
and helplessness the more claim have they on
the good man. He whom God most approves
is he who pleads the cause of the widow and
judges the orphan.

The education of children in the knowledge
of God's Law, and in the principles of right
conduct, receives much attention in the Book
of Proverbs. The author is never weary of
emphasising the blessing of sons and daughters
who are wise and walk in the fear of God.1 It
is remarkable that in Prov. vi. and xxiii. the
mother is put upon a level of authority with
the father as the child's teacher ; she has an
equal share in the duty of giving moral and
religious instruction to the family. Parents
are counselled to train their children to a high
ethical standard, so that their manhood and
womanhood may be in accordance with God's
Law.2 Though girls are not mentioned, it is
implied that they also receive instruction in the
legal precepts, no less than in the virtues that
beautify a woman's character. Their adorning
is to be modesty and kindness ; and the fear
of the Lord in the heart of the young is better
than worldly favour or riches (Prov. xxxi.).

From the foregoing observations it will be

1 Prov. iv. 3, x. 1, xvii. 21, xxiii. 22, 25 ff.
8 Cf. Dr. Mackie's Bible Manners and Customs (Church of
Scotland Guild Library), chap. v.

220 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

seen that, in relation to man, in all the various
spheres of his activity, domestic and civil,
industrial and social, the Law of the Old
Testament presents a moral ideal that is the
highest and purest known to the ancient
world. Everywhere it approves virtue,
honesty, love of our neighbour, and justice
as between man and man. It exhorts to
truth and kindness ; it inculcates the love of
the poor ; it tells of the rights of the weak,
the needy, and the fatherless ; it denounces
all insanitary customs, immoral practices, and
inhuman rites, however widely these may be
countenanced. In a word, it upholds an ideal
of ethical duty of the highest type ; and it
desires to make that ideal a universal rule,
valid for all time and for all peoples.

III. LAWS RELATING TO WORSHIP

These laws we shall consider only on their
ethical side. The religious aspect of the
subject belongs to Old Testament theology.

One of the most degrading customs of
pagan religions was the offering of human
sacrifices. There seems to be little doubt
that the Israelites became acquainted in Egypt,
or soon after leaving it, with the cruel rites
connected with the worship of the fire-god
Moloch.1 Indeed, it has been maintained by

1 Vide Robertson's Early History of Israel, p. 241 if. The
word is usually Molech in Hebrew. It is a variation of

LAWS REGARDING WORSHIP 221

not a few eminent scholars that the original
worship of Israel was this Moloch cultus, and
that the purer worship of Jehovah was a
development of it. That the offering of
children to this fire-god was of very ancient
origin cannot be denied. It belonged to a
time prior to the call of Abraham ; and, after
disappearing for many centuries, it reappears
about the time of Amos. The offering by
parents of their offspring to this deity is
rigidly prohibited in Leviticus, and with such
a reiteration of emphasis as to show Jehovah's
detestation of the practice. Yet the custom
of expiating sin in this unnatural manner had
such a hold of the people that it was found a
very difficult matter to extirpate it, and to
educate them to a more ethical worship. To
the nations surrounding Israel it seems to
have been the most natural thing to ask,
" How shall I come before the Lord ? Shall
I give the fruit of my body for the sin of my
soul ? " The sentiment voiced in these words
is a very common one amongst pagans.1
Some of the most pathetic Greek tragedies
are founded upon the story of a father offering

melech = king. At Topheth, in the valley of Hinnom, beside
Jerusalem, children were passed through the fire to this
deity. On the Moabite Stone the word is treated as a divine
name. Cf. Sayce, Higher Grit, and Monuments, p. 367.

1 The worship of Moloch consisted in propitiating the deity
with that which was the most precious possession. There
may have been the saving idea that thereby the life of the
child was united for ever with that of the god. Cf. Dillmann,
Alt. Theol. pp. 98, 120.

222 THE ETHICS OP THE OLD TESTAMENT

up a child, that he might win the favour of the
gods ; so dismal were the ideas of the character
of deity that prevailed even in cultured Greece.

On this point the Law of Moses spoke out
in clear tones. It unsparingly condemned
these cruel Moloch rites. Human sacrifice is
denounced in every form. To offer human
life to Jehovah is "an abomination which He
hateth" (Deut. xii. 31). Man has no right to
take away life unless in the execution of
judgment conformable to God's Law. The
prohibition of the Moloch cultus is an evi
dence of the ethical character of the God
revealed in the Pentateuch, and of the nature
of the worship which His people are to offer.
It proves Him to be a deity, abhorring every
offering of cruelty, every holocaust of innocent
children, but delighting in the service and the
praise of the young. He did not wish the
fruit of the body to be offered for the sin
of the soul. The reply which the prophet
gives to the question quoted above is very
instructive, " What doth the Lord require of
thee, but to do justly, and love mercy, and
to walk humbly with thy God ? " (Mic. vi. 8).
God desires from man no worship save that
which is moral and spiritual.

During the reigns of Manasseh and Amon,
both of whom endeavoured to overthrow the
worship of Jehovah and to establish the undis
puted supremacy of idolatry, Moloch worship
seems to have been again introduced. On

MOLOCH WORSHIP 223

this occasion it was brought from the northern
parts of Asia Minor. Its chief seat was
Tophet, in the valley of Hinnom, close to
Jerusalem, where Manasseh actually sacrificed
to the fire-god his own offspring (2 Chron.
xxxiii. 6). For some time the priests seem
to have participated in the universal moral
degeneracy : but the prophets are found
raising their voices with defiant note against
the crimes of Manasseh (2 Kings xxi. 10), and
doubtless won the martyr crown for so doing
(v. 16), being among the innocent blood so
plenteously shed by that king in his wild youth,
ere yet the grace of God had changed his heart.
There is an old tradition that Isaiah suffered
martyrdom at the hands of Manasseh, probably
for his courage in denouncing this sin. Josiah,
the grandson of Manasseh, endeavoured to
cleanse Judah of this disgusting cultus, which
afterwards gave the valley of Hinnom the
significant name of Gehenna, the terrible
symbol of hell. He ordered the places of
Moloch-worship to be razed to the ground.
Under his beneficent rule the Prophet
Jeremiah exercised his office ; and he also
invokes God's wrath on those that send their
children through fire to win the divine favour.
Still they were ruthlessly offered up on the
burning shrine ; and the keynote of Jeremiah's
prophecy regarding the future becomes a very l

1 Schultz,' Old Testament Theology, i. 233 ff. ; Oehler, Old
Testament Theology, i. § 26. The prophets finally brought

224 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

dolorous one. " Then will I cause to cease
from the cities of Judah, and from the streets
of Jerusalem, the voice of mirth, and the voice
of gladness" (Jer. vii. 34). It required no
little courage to denounce a practice so deeply
rooted in the heart of the people ; and we
do not wonder at Jeremiah's subsequent im
prisonment. The persistent prevalence of the
custom shows us how the natural heart con
ceives of God, and tries to appease His wrath.
It thinks of Him as One whose favour is to be
won by excruciating agonies, and by the
surrendering of what it most loves to the God
it abhors.

When we remember the fundamental maxim
of comparative religion, that " as is the god,
so is the religion," we perceive that the Law
of Israel was ethically pure, because the idea
of God was ethically lofty. Its baser elements
had been eliminated, and Israel was taught
to think of God as the highest and purest
goodness. And this conception was realised,
not as the result of mental effort directed to
the subject, but as a fact historically accom
plished. Ultimately this ideal triumphed
over all degraded conceptions to which the
nation was tempted to return ; and it utterly
abolished human sacrifices among the Hebrews.

o

about the abolition of the religious syncretism that existed
in the time of the Judges by which the worship of Jehovah
was blended with that of heathen deities. Prophetism finally
established in the mind of Israel the truth that the true
sacrifice of God is " a broken and a contrite spirit."

LAWS RELATING TO SACRIFICE 225

IV. LAWS RELATING TO SACRIFICE

The dwelling of God in the midst of His
people does not remove the yawning gulf that
divides a holy God from sinful men. Jehovah
dwells within the tabernacle ; yet fellowship
with Him can be maintained only through
sacrifice and priestly intercession. The people
cannot immediately approach the place of the
Most High. Even the priests are not fit to
enter into full communion with Him ; for the
Holy of Holies, where Jehovah is throned,—
revealed yet concealed, among His people and
yet separate from them, — may be entered only
by the high priest, " not without blood, which
he offered for himself and for the errors of the
people." Even he who carries on the service
of reconciliation must know his own separate-
ness, and must cleanse his own acts by sacri
fice. And that separateness is still more
emphasised by the regulations enforcing purity
on the part of the offerer.

It is outside our province to discuss the
ritual of these sacrifices, the presentation of
the animal at the altar, the laying on of the
offerer's hands, the slaying, and the sprinkling
of blood. It concerns us simply to point out
that the offerer meant the victim to be a
means of atonement, a symbol of thanks
giving and of supplication. The meaning of
the laying on of hands on the victim's head is
rightly set forth when, as Ewald says, " the
16

226 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

offerer himself laid down all the feelings,
which must now rush upon him in full
fervour, on the head of the creature, the
blood of which was presently to flow for him,
and as it were to appear before God for him."
The fellowship between God and him, broken
by sin, was to be restored ; the soul of the
clean and innocent animal was, in the blood of
the offering, presented in the place of the im
pure soul of the offerer, so that God might see
at His altar only a pure life, by means of
which the evil life of the offerer was covered,
and atonement was made for him. Whatever
might be the special significance of the trespass-
offerings, the thank-offerings, drink-offerings,
and burnt-offerings,1 the general purpose of
them all was to remind the people that they
had entered into covenant relationship with a
holy God who dwelt among them, and who
was willing, if they thus approached Him, to
maintain a loving fellowship with them.

To the ritual of sacrifice was added a
number of rules regarding purification. They
were intended to deepen the conviction of
sinful uncleanness, and to remind Israel that
they must, as God's people, be free from all
sinful impurity. (The laws regarding leprosy,
etc., have been already discussed.) The object
of these ordinances was both sanitary and

1 Cf . Hastings' Diet, of Bible on Sacrifice for an explanation
of all these offerings. Each is in Hebrew a different word.
The addition "offering" corresponds to no distinct element
in the Hebrew expression.

LAWS REGARDING PURIFICATION 227

religious. They promoted health and they
fostered piety. They tended, in this latter
aspect, to deepen a sense of shortcoming ; and
they pointed beyond themselves to that
perfect Atonement which was on Calvary to
effect a truly inward and abiding communion
between God and man.

A great moral and religious idea lay at the
root of the Old Testament sacrifices. That
idea was one of the formative influences in
the ethical education of Israel. It mingled
with the deepest currents of the nation's life.
In the Prophets and Psalmists it advances
with the spiritual apprehension of the writers,
and awakens an agonising cry for a time when
the inward cleansing should correspond with
the outward symbol. Ceremonial cleanness
was not to remain a negative and fruitless
idea, a mere religious dress for the holy nation.
It was to result in " clean hands and a pure
heart," in a conduct characterised by separa
tion from sin, and devotion to the cause of
righteousness. The law of sacrifice becomes
thoroughly ethicised in the doctrine of the
Cross. It no longer remains a cold and hard
requirement, but is filled with the fire of a
self-sacrificing zeal in the work of the kingdom
of God.

CHAPTER XI
OLD TESTAMENT VIEW OF A FUTURE LIFE

THE doctrine of a Future Life is not an out
standing feature of the Old Testament. Its
conception of immortality is at first shadowy,
and is presented only in a fragmentary
manner. It seems to us surprising that a
truth, found to be so full of ethical value in
the New Testament, should be developed with
so little explicitness in the Law and the
Prophets. It certainly is referred to in many
parts, but it does not come into the foreground.
There is probably no religion of antiquity that
lays less stress on the rewards and punish
ments of the next world than that of Israel.

So much is this the case that it has been
denied by some that the truth of a personal
immortality is taught at all in the Old
Testament. Bishop Warburton, in his Divine
Legation of Moses, goes the length of en
deavouring to show that the absence of any
appeal to the solemn sanctions of the other
world is a proof of the divine origin of Old
Testament Revelation. He argues that since

228

A FUTURE LIFE 229

the other religions sought to strengthen
themselves by appeals to a hereafter, Judaism
did not do so, because thoroughly conscious of
its supernatural origin and miraculous mission.
Whether or not that argument be valid, it is
clear that the absence of " other- worldliness "
is an outstanding feature of the Old Testament.
Had Moses borrowed his ideas of God from
the religion of Egypt, with which by means
of his early training he must have been
thoroughly acquainted, he would certainly have
been found invoking the sanctions of a future
judgment. The Egyptologists tell us how
prominent is the position given to the worship
of Osiris in the religion of the Egyptians,1 and
how frequently the mosaics of the tombs of
Luxor and Thebes reproduced for us the
scenes of the great Judgment Day, which so
overawed and impressed the mind of the
Egyptian worshipper.

It is probable that this may have been a
reason why the doctrine of a personal
immortality was kept by Moses so much in
the background, lest it might have connections
in the minds of the Israelites with Egyptian
superstitions. Or it may have been that,

1 Cf. Maspero's Dawn of Civilisation in Egypt, p. 190 ff. ;
Budge, The Mummy, p. 209 ; Davis, Egyptian Book of the Dead,
p. 60 ff. This latter is a very singular collection of maxims
and of devotions for the instruction of those in the next
world. The information was gained chiefly from papyrus
rolls found in the tombs of the kings and from inscriptions
on the walls of tombs. These existed probably as early as
the fifteenth century B.C.

230 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

since a theocratic kingdom was to be
established and consolidated in Canaan, the
emphasis was to be laid upon the present and
not upon the future. A city of God, a society
on earth governed by moral laws and ruled
by the fear of God, had to be founded and
organised as a basis for all subsequent exten
sion of pure religion. It was probably needful
that the motives deduced from a future life
should be kept out of sight, if the ethical
forces that go to the making of a righteous
and powerful nation were freely to operate.
In this way the moral life of Israel would be
pervaded by a vital energy which would
separate it, longo intervallo, from that of
Egypt, where religion concerned itself much
more about a future world and its doings
than about the terrible injustice and in
equalities of the present.1

Besides, all this longing after immortality,
this hope of a hereafter of pure bliss and
continuous life, is a doctrine that is rooted in
other beliefs that must precede it. To those
whose mind is of the earth earthy, this feeling
is one that is weak and ineffective. The
thought of death is so dismal that they will

1 Cf. Naville'd Das Aegyptisdw Todtenbuch, chaps. 104, 119,
and Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, p. 182. The judgments in this
famous book are mixed up with many trilling artificialities,
and it is not easy to affirm what are the retributions that
await the deceased : for the book seems to imagine that all
that consult it will be among the justified ones and not
among the condemned.

A FUTURE LIFE 231

not allow it to enter and take possession of
their mind. It is in the breast of such as
have, Enoch-like, found out the joy of walking
with God, or who have with Job discovered
the vanity of evanescent things, that the
strong desire for an immortal life beyond the
present roots itself and springs into life and
power. When a man's whole life is shaped
by the ethics of a selfish prudence, and his
aim is to steer safely in the vid media of
moderation, he may be quite content to realise
the good of life in this world alone, and at the
end of it vanish into Sheol, the realm of
shades. But when, as in the fine passage in
Prov. xxx., a man affirms that he prizes
prosperity only in proportion as it is sanctified
by righteousness and enriched with the
blessing of God, and is thus a token and
pledge of the divine complacency, he cannot
contemplate with pleasure a cessation of that
divine favour. Deeper thoughts will come to
him, and he will not rest content with the
outlook of a sensuous eudaemonism. The
communion with God which the good man
enjoys (Ps. Ixxiii. 23-26) comes to assert itself
with such force in his soul, that he rises above
the fear of Sheol and becomes confident that,
though flesh and heart fail, God will be the
strength of his heart and his portion for ever.1

1 The man who walks now in fellowship with God and
maintains abiding communion with Him soon becomes con
vinced that this life of fellowship cannot be cut in two
by death. 1 Cor. xv. 14, 57.

232 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

The mature faith in an eternal life after
death, it is true, came only when Jesus Christ
brought life and immortality to light in the
gospel. But the foundation of this hope was
laid in the institution here of a fellowship
of man with God, the ever-living One. And
they who enjoy it in the present come to be
convinced that it must be unending, just
because God's eternity secures the immortality
of His servants (Ps. cii. 2 4-2 8 ).1

What is perfectly clear to every student of
the Old Testament, however, is that the lower
hope was the firstborn. The desire of every
patriotic and righteous Israelite for the
preservation of the chosen nation under the
protection of Jehovah, the longing for a
family name, and a family inheritance in
Israel, for children and children's children, —
on these was grafted the higher hope of the
coming Messianic time, which was to the
Israelite what the hope of heaven is to the
Christian.

It is in accordance with this fact of ex
perience that we find the hope of a future
life is a growing one in the prophets of Israel.
Those men were consumed with a passion

1 Principal Salmond amplifies this thought in a beautiful
passage, Christian Doctrine of Immortality, p. 192. See also
Encyc. Brit. vol. xxiii. p. 239, where Prof. Flint speaks of
the same belief in God in Israel as an " essentially ethical
elevating and hopeful faith." Whereas the Egyptian creed
was unconnected with any belief in a moral order of
Providence shaping present events to ethical issues, and
resulted only in degrading fear.

REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS 233

for righteousness ; they were men of un
paralleled moral zeal, the noblest and best
of their time. They saw, what others were
blind to, a moral order in the world working
for righteousness. They believed in a living
and true God, who cared more for goodness
than for ritual and rubrics. And with their
splendid spirit of optimism they beheld a
golden age lying beyond the gloom of the
present, of which they presented the most
glowing pictures. As the environment of
Israel grew darker in the Exilic age, and the
collapse of the nation at the Captivity seemed
complete, the yearning for a future and un
ending salvation, extending beyond the
horizons of Palestine, and even of earth, was
intensified and purified.

With this doctrine of immortality is closely
connected the question of future rewards and
punishments.1 Piety and probity bring with
them, in the Old Testament, prosperity ;
while wickedness is surely followed by
adversity. The men who built up the
commonwealth of Israel were not called to
do so by any view of rewards and punish
ments in a future existence. They were to
do right, because God had so commanded ;
and He would bless them in so doing. If

1 Immanuel Kant made a huge error in imagining that the
Jew ignored the moral judgments of an after life because
there was so little of the ethical in his religion. On the
other hand, it is because the ethical at present so absorbs
the Hebrew interest that less stress is laid on future rewards.

234 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

they turn to God with their heart, and serve
Him, He will turn to them, will fill their
houses with abundance, and will give them
long life and peaceable possession of their
inheritance.

In the Pentateuch, the theocratic scheme
does not look beyond the limits of Israel, nor
beyond the natural life of the individual and
of the nation. Life, long and healthy ; plenty
in basket and store ; a full house and a last
ing posterity, these are the gifts and rewards
certified to the man that walks uprightly.
This has been challenged as unmitigated
eudaemonism, as teaching that the service of
God is but the sure and direct means to the
attainment of worldly prosperity, the best and
shortest road to riches. We admit that, until
we look closely into it, it does seem so. But
we find that even in Lev. xxvi., where the
doctrine of divine rewards is plainly laid
down, and righteousness is to be rewarded
with riches and peace in the land, the bless
ings culminate in the spiritual one of com
munion with God, who will dwell continually
among them.1 It is not, therefore, prosperity
per se that is to be sought by the Israelite,
but prosperity along with and because of
God's blessing, for that is the meaning of

1 "This association of all weal with God Himself could not
but carry the Hebrew belief in an after-existence beyond its
own initial stage, and far beyond what was possible in re
ligions which knew not a God like Israels God." Dr.
Salinond, Dod. of liwnwrtality, p. 227.

REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS 235

His presence with them. Riches are un
doubtedly a pledge of God's goodwill, and
are to be sought as such. A family and a
name are similar pledges. And the patriarchs
who received these gifts are patterns of what
every Israelite should strive to be. Faith
fulness to God's covenant will ensure all
these good things ; and these, together with
God's promised protection and presence, will
form the rich reward of the godly man's
life.

On the other hand, if the nation turn away
from Jehovah to serve other gods, and fall
back into paganism, their infidelity shall
certainly forfeit the blessings of a sure in
heritance and a lasting posterity. Famine
shall invade their land ; their crops shall be
mildewed, their cattle shall be barren, and
their fruit trees shall cast their fruit. The
heathen will be found making irruptions into
their fields, and will bring sword and rapine
to their homes ; and they will be carried off
into captivity. All this shall be done, that
they may know that the source of all their
blessing is in God, and that their best posses
sion is Jehovah Himself.

This doctrine of retribution has been much
misunderstood. It is not a morality based
upon motives alone of temporal rewards and
punishments. Rather it is full of ethical
encouragement to live so as to ensure God's
presence in Israel, and with it all these pledges

236 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

of His favour. Its aim is to get men to co
operate with the great moral order of the
world, to bring about a reign of righteousness.
There are in it, doubtless, many appeals
which would have little weight with a mind
enlightened by the Christian's hope. But the
Old Testament is not a treatise of perfect
morals. God was content to accomplish one
thing at a time. Revelation just kept
ahead of the age, and in this way it was able
to give the nation constant moral guiding.
There was in it, as Canon Mozley says, a
divine principle of adjustment, by which it
took the child by the hand and taught him
one step at a time. It brought certain truths,
that were easily within the grasp of the
people's mind, to bear upon them, and to
keep them moving onwards. For a nation of
emancipated slaves, rising out of the lowest
plane of ignorance into the first rudimentary
stage of morality, these truths were of in
estimable service. It was as yet with them
the age of the primer ; and so the word
" conscience " is not made use of, but they
are simply told to obey. Law must precede
love ; and external rules must go before in
ward principles.

So it comes about that the first blessing
promised to the patriarch is not the heavenly
life ; it is the very substantial blessing of a
son, and a seed numerous as the sand, with a
far-off inheritance in Canaan. For generations

THE EARTHLY COMES FIRST 237

after Abraham's time the righteous lives
of the patriarchs were similarly rewarded,
God thus working on the instinctive love of
men for a family name and inheritance.
Then, when Canaan was reached, the family's
inheritance in the tribe was secured to it,
and again on this the law of retributive
justice seized and wrought for moral ends.
A man owning his father's land was not to be
sold as a slave ; and so slavery was slowly
undermined, and a conception of individual
rights was developed. In this manner a way
was prepared for teaching the higher truth
of the moral worth of every soul in God's
sight.

Through all this teaching of the individual's
worth and value, the doctrine of a personal
immortality was working its way upward and
outward into clearer light. " That was not
first which was spiritual, but that which is
natural, and afterwards that which is
spiritual." First came the earthy, and then
came the heavenly ; first the love of family,
and the tribal inheritance, and a lasting name
and place in Israel ; then out of this germ
blossomed the psalmist's hope of life unend
ing; in the light of Jehovah's face.1 From a

0 o

1 The sixteenth Psalm, from its expressions most probably
Davidic, occupies an important place ironi this point of view.
Ver. 10 expresses an assurance of immortality. Jehovah will
not leave him in Sheol : neither will He allow him to have
experience of the pit. He will show him the way of life,
i.e. a life of communion with the living God. "He who

238 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

fixed inheritance in the land which God
owned and blessed and defended to a belief
in a life of unending communion with this
same gracious God, was but a step, the final
and important step in Israel's moral educa
tion' To seers and saints there came fore-
gleams of it as they stood upon the moun
tain-tops of Revelation and caught the first
rays. But the full-orbed truth that Jesus
Christ came to teach regarding the future
life and its rewards, was not yet reached
amid the shadows of the Old Testament
dispensation.

There can be little doubt that this obscura
tion of the truth of a future life lay at the
bottom of those doubts that so often invaded
the minds of Old Testament saints. Such
men could not behold the enemies of God
triumphant without being sadly perplexed at
such a condition of apparent moral disorder.
The actualities of the present life, in which
vice walked in purple and virtue was often
dressed in rags, did not seem to harmonise
with the government of a righteous ruler.
We shall afterwards see how the prophets
were able to rise above such doubts through
their faith in an objective moral order, a
power-not-themselves making for righteous
ness, and taught Israel to believe that the

trusteth in God shall live : Sheol and Shachath shall have
no power over him." Dr. A. B. Davidson, Old Testament
Theology, p. 447. Cf. Salmond, Doctrine of Immortality, p. 225.

A FUTURE LIFE 239

world after all is ruled impartially by the just
will of Jehovah.1

1 This remains to be said, that if the Old Testament
doctrine of a future life is limited and obscure, yet BO far
aa it goes it is quite original. It borrows nothing from
ethnic religion?. It contradicts the doctrines of Assyrians,
of Persians, of Egyptians, and of Greeks. Between it and
ethnic faiths there is a difference deep and radical. Beneath
the surface, low but articulate voices are heard hinting of
immortality. Great principles are working behind the lives
of Enoch and Moses and David, which are strong enough to
make them hold fast by the hope of an after- existence with
Him who on earth is the strength of their life and the safe
guard of their faith. These principles work themselves out
into a final creed which is unique, and is far superior to the
creeds of surrounding nations. Of course there are coinci
dences and similarities : but these do not prove derivation.
In all essential points the Old Testament doctrine of
Immortality is both ethical and original. Cf. Cheyne,
Origin of the Psalter, p. 433 ff.

CHAPTER XII
ADVANCE AND DEVELOPMENT

WE have seen that there is a progress of
Revelation in the Old Testament, and one that
was supernaturally conducted. There can be
no doubt that in like manner, along with the
historic advancement in the knowledge of God,
there is, pari passu, an historic progress in
Old Testament morality. At the centre of
the Law lay a great pedagogic intent, of which
the purpose was to evolve a higher type of
character in man, in keeping with a truer
knowledge of God. A vital and self-purifying
principle was at the root of this onward move
ment ; and so unbroken and continuous is it
that it is clear the evolution was determined
by divine wisdom.

It is in respect of this continuous progress
that the morality of the Old Testament is
distinguished from all other moralities, and is
seen, like the Bible, to be no mere product of
the Semitic genius working itself out amid its
actual environment. The pagan moralities
are never found to grow more elevated and

240

ETHICAL DEVELOPMENTS 241

pure with age. With the growth of centuries,
the fruit on their trees, so far from improving,
degenerates. In the tenth lecture of his
Ruling Ideas, Mozley points out how among
other nations than Israel " the ideas of
justice, benevolence, purity, stay at an
incipient stage, and never become more than-
half ideas." The Roman moralists did not
advance beyond a passive morality to a
positive ethical influence. Seneca sought to
build up a universal Humanism out of the
ancient Particularism ; but it got only to
theoretical propositions, and never possessed
power and vitality. Natural selfhood was the
true root-principle of the ethics of both Greece
and Rome. The ancient World is the realm
of selfishness, however much the pill may be
sugared and gilded with philosophical terms
and fine names. It is a wise saying of the
author of Ecce Homo, "The selfishness of
modern times exists in defiance of morality ;
in ancient times it was approved and even in
part enjoined by morality."

In contrast with this we find that in the
Old Testament ethical principles are always
receiving new developments, and, under the
guidance of God's Spirit, are being wrought
out into larger and richer results.1 While those
races to which Israel was kindred remained

1 "A progressive revelation, such as the Jewish, may
adopt for its present use the hiyhest imperfect moral standard
of the age as embodied in particular rules and precepts, and
may yet contain an inner movement and principle of growth

242 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

at the lowest levels of morality, Israel rose to
higher and higher platforms of ethical religion.
There is no rational interpretation of this
unique fact but that which recognises a divine
mind educating the Jewish conscience. For
the evolution was not in the line of the natural
disposition of the people. Often, indeed, it
ran counter to their strongest prejudices. Yet
it triumphed over every opposition, proving
that a higher Power counteracted the natural
stream of tendency, and caused it to make for
righteousness.

The life that was lived under the Mosaic
rule was a life of restraint and of obedience to
an external law. Under such a government
there was no little danger that Israel might
fall into a mechanical formalism without any
depth of moral or spiritual contents. The Law
accomplished its end by bringing about and
maintaining a theocratic union between God
and the nation. That was its primary pur
pose. But it had also another purpose, by
virtue of which " the Law entered that the
offence might abound." In that early stage
of training these rules formed the immediate
ethical environment of Israel. Round about
the life of the people they drew a containing
line of ceremonial regulations which galled
and irritated. But of itself the Law could not

which will ultimately extricate it as a law out of the shackles
of a rudimentary stage." Mozley, ut supra, p. 223. The whole
lecture is worthy of study.

ETHICAL DEVELOPMENTS 243

work out fulfilment nor make the people
perfect. Its standpoint was one of external
authority. Jehovah was the theocratic ruler,
and His Law must be complied with in the
whole external form and life of the nation.

It was not therefore enough that the Law
should manifest the special relationship in
which God stood to the favoured nation, and
in correspondence with this regulate the ex
ternal life of the community. It must also
be realised in an inner harmony between the
heart of the worshipper and Jehovah ; it must
be accepted, not as a curb or rein, but as the
rule of the inner life.1 Only thus can the
heart and the life correspond, and the outward
observance be the true index of the inward
moral reality. The Law graven on tables of
stone is to be written by the Spirit on the
fleshly tablets of the heart.

Now the Law does contain a prophecy of
something better. It points beyond itself to
a time when it shall cease to be but an ex
ternal form, and shall become part of the
inward disposition. This aim is clearly set
forth in Deuteronomy and in the prophetic
writings, in which the observance of the cere
monial law is declared to be absolutely worth
less, unless so far as it is the resultant of a
life surrendered to the will of God.2

That this highly ethical end was the raison

1 Oehler, Theology of Old Testament, vol. ii. § 201.

2 Dent, xxxiii. 19 ; Pa. iv. 6 and li. 18 ; Isa. Ix. 1, 3, 20.

244 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

d'etre of prophecy is proved by the terms of
its institution. In Deut. xviii. 15-22, the
nature of the office is described. It was to
begin with Moses, and was to be a continuous
testimony, on the part of those specially called
and fitted by God, to the truth of His word.
The people were assured that all needful in
struction and guidance in their difficulties
would be vouchsafed to them by God's accred
ited messengers. The prophets were to be
endowed by the " Spirit of Jehovah," and
enabled to interpret His law in a living and
practical manner, with all the moral force of
a message coming straight from the heart.
They were from time to time to reveal new
counsels of God, and to make the people
thoroughly acquainted with new developments
of His purpose. They were essentially the
spiritual men of the day, the men who saw the
deeper meaning of God's Law, and brought it
into living touch with the circumstances of the
nation (Ex. vii. 1).

Of these spiritually minded men, there arose
none greater in Israel than Moses himself.
For if the " prophet, as such, knows himself
to be the organ of divine revelation," there
can be little doubt that this knowledge be
longed to Moses in a pre-eminent degree.1

1 It is unnecessary and outside the scope of our purpose to
describe the prophetic office or the prophet's consciousness of
himself as the medium of divine revelation. But there can be
uo doubt that he knew the objective reality of the word which
he proclaimed, and knew himself to be the organ of a divine

PROPHETISM 245

None received a more clear vocation to the
office. God Himself desired him to be the
exponent of His will, and richly endowed him
with the gifts of the Divine Spirit. Besides,
was he not taken up into the very audience-
chamber of God for forty days, and received
there direct communications from the divine
lips ? There can therefore be no question as
to his prophetic inspiration.

Whatever view may be taken of the author
ship of several parts of the Pentateuch, it
cannot be denied that they contain the pre
sentation of a very ethically conceived Deity.
This we have already seen. The spirituality
and the moral character of Jehovah cannot be
eradicated from the laws we have been con
sidering ; and however much they may have
had to contend for recognition with the less
spiritual ideas of the times of the Judges, yet
these truths were held by all the best and
purest minds in Israel after the death of Moses.

In the Book of Deuteronomy these truths
are prominently set forth. The name of the
book declares it to be a repetition of the Law,
and its design is clearly to bring the Law
home to the heart and life of the people.1 It

revelation in virtue of a call which came to him with irresistible
power from the Spirit of God. Amos (chap. iii. 8) descril es
this feeling of constraint, while at the same time he vindicates
his prophetic function.

1 Deuteronomy is more, however, than a repetition of the
M»>aic Code <>{ laws. Everywhere it gives expression to a
profoundly ethical and religious spirit. In particular, it points

246 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

would get before the Israelites the divine
meaning of their wonderful history, would
show them its real tendency, and present it in
its moral completeness. There is no discover
ing of new truth, but a very earnest accentuation
of the ethical character of God's Revelation and
of the need of a corresponding conduct on the
part of His people. Indeed we may say it is
so intelligently expounded, and is re-affirmed
with such breadth of treatment, that it practi
cally amounts to a new revelation. And the
same thing is true of all the other prophets as
well as of Moses.

The teaching of Hosea and Amos, though
presenting some different features, agrees with
that of Deuteronomy in demanding an obedi
ence of the heart to the Law of the Lord.
They denounce a worship which is content
with ritual and rubrics, and insist on the fact
that morality is far above ceremonialism.
Micah and Isaiah follow in the same line of
teaching, manifesting a like " passion for
righteousness," and broadening out the con
ception of Jehovah as the God of all the
nations of the earth. Micah affirms the Cere
monial Law to be absolutely worthless unless
in so far as it is the resultant and outcome of
a life surrendered to the will of God. " Where-
cut the chastening hand of a loving Father in the people's
trials, chap. viii. 2, 3, 10. It was a true instinct on the part
of the Hebrews which in after times selected chap. vi. 4-9
for daily recitation. Here first of all the great commandment
of Love was expj eased and this moral motive accentuated.

PROPHETISM 247

withal shall I come before the Lord ? . . . He
hath showed thee, 0 man, what is good ; and
what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do
justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly
with thy God?" (Mic. vi. 8).

In the succeeding prophets, and especially
in Jeremiah,1 the ethical teaching of the Law
is developed in a similar manner. They place
obedience above sacrifice, and prefer the per
formance of duty to hecatombs of bullocks and
rams.

If we combine with the teaching of the
prophets that of the psalmists, both pre-Exilic
and post-Exilic, we shall find the same char
acteristics prevailing. Righteousness is praised
without any reference to the value of Levitical
ordinances. So strongly is the contrast put
between the comparative worth of ritual and
of righteous conduct, that the psalmist even
goes the length of accentuating one side to
the apparent disparagement of the other.
" Thou delightest not in sacrifice, else would
I give it ; Thou hast no pleasure in burnt-
ofiering" (Ps. li. 16). And he does not

1 Jeremiah occupies a position of peculiar prophetic im
portance, inasmuch as his character and life are full of sur
prises that stir thought on great moral problems. It is a
question whether he ever served any priestly function
though a member of a priestly family. It is his thorough
sympathy with his people, and his identification with them in
all their sufferings, that show the true priestly heart. Yet
this man is distinctly called to the prophet's office, chap. i. 5,
and becomes a saint and a religious reformer. Cf. Ewald,
Lehre der Bibel von Gott, ii. p. 208 ; Cheyne's Jeremiah, chap. i.

248 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

hesitate to affirm that the sacrifice which is
most pleasing to God, is the offering of grati
tude, springing from a broken and contrite
heart. At the same time, every sacrifice of
the offerer who is contrite and faithful, is " a
sweet-smelling savour unto Jehovah."

But while there is maintained a continuous
polemic against the externality of Levitical
rites, and while prophets and psalmists do
not hesitate to speak of them with disparage
ment, yet it is clear all the time that it is not
because they despise these ordinances, but
rather because they had observed that the
people rested in the outward act without
rendering it valid by inward devotion.
Samuel, the founder of the school of the
prophets, first of all sounds this note of
objurgation, when to the impatient king he
says : "To obey is better than sacrifice, and
to hearken than the fat of rams." Yet all the
while we know that Samuel himself regularly
offered sacrifices at the appointed place. Even
in Ps. li., where God at first is spoken of as
not delighting in sacrifice, it is afterwards
affirmed that when devoted hands have built
the walls of Jerusalem, " Then shalt Thou be
pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness."
And the same Isaiah who affirms that the
defiled multitude of exiles should not build a
temple to Jehovah (Isa. Ixvi. 1, 3), and who
speaks of their offerings as detestable, yet
predicts in the same chapter (ver. 20) that a

PROPHETISM 249

new and better sacrificial service shall be
instituted in the New Jerusalem. None of
the prophets denounces with more unsparing
vigour the utter worthlessness of the opus
operatum than the prophet Hosea, who
declares that God "desires mercy and not
sacrifice," expressing the relative contrast in
terms that are absolute. Yet Hosea clearly
shows (ix. 4) the importance attributed to
genuine sacrifice, when it is the expression of
a spirit that mourns its misdoings.

It has been said that Ezekiel and Daniel are
exceptions, and that they encourage a legal
externalism. There is no doubt that Ezekiel
describes in highly coloured terms the restora
tion of the Levitical ceremonial, and that this
is consistent with the priestly character of his
teaching.1 But it must be remembered that
during the Captivity it was all the more
needful to keep the people as separate as
possible from their heathen surroundings,
inasmuch as the Levitical worship could not
be carried out on heathen soil. The only
offering possible was that of prayer, and in
the view of Ezekiel it was all the more neces
sary, in order to prevent a total falling away,
strictly to observe those regulations that were
not connected with the Temple service in
Jerusalem. But that Ezekiel did not regard
this external worship as having value apart

1 Vide Driver, Introd-uction to Old Testament Literature, p.
273 ff.

250 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

from a truly religious spirit, is clear from the
fact that the outpouring of the Diviue Spirit
was to be the preparation for Israel's restora
tion to Canaan : " And I will put My Spirit
within you, and cause you to walk in My
statutes ; and ye shall keep My judgments,
and do them." x

The one-sided Levitism, charged against the
Book of Daniel, arises from a misunderstand
ing of the pedagogic element. Daniel's strict
abstinence from unclean meats at the royal
table is simply a proof that he remained a
true and faithful servant of Jehovah though
dwelling among a heathen people, and that to
him the ritual ordinance was not a matter of
place and time, but of heart and conscience.
His legal strictness sprang from faith in the
divine guidance and promise. To speak of
his custom of praying thrice a day, with his
face turned towards Jerusalem, as an instance
of the bondage of legalism, is to ignore the
methods and helps that never hinder but
rather aid the spiritual mind in its approaches
to God. Method in prayer must be of a
kind that shall never override the individual
speciality and freedom of petition. If it
hinder the " boldness " with which a man

1 The informing idea of the Levitical sanctuary, as sketched
by Ezekiel, is that of Jehovah's presence in the midst of
Israel : and the covenant thus enacted implies on Jehovah's
side condescending grace and on Israel's side true obedience.
The fundamental significance is highly ethical. See Ezek.
xxxvii. 26-29.

PROPHETISM 251

comes to the throne of grace, or confine his
spirit in its confession, adoration, or thanks
giving, then such method is a carnal ordinance
hurtful to outspokenness, and tending to
cramp free personal communion. But to
dedicate certain hours of the day to private
prayer, to give it the measured allotment of
the morning, midday, and evening hours, is to
do what all the noblest saints in all ages have
done, a method which they have found brings
them a manifest spiritual gain. It is only a
proof of the critics' unspirituality when this
pious custom of Daniel is regarded as a mark
of an extravagant ceremonialism. Daniel is
at one with the other prophets on this point
of the comparative importance of morality
and ritual. In this respect they were all true
to the spirit of Moses and of the Decalogue,
in which, as has often been said, ritual finds
no place at all.

When in the Assyrian, the Babylonian, and
the Persian periods, the most critical stage of
the history of Old Testament religion, it
seemed probable that worship would sink to
the level of common Semitic heathenism and
perish with the political extinction of the
nation that had maintained it, it was the
faithful preaching of the prophets that averted
such a catastrophe. They stated with ever
growing clearness the moral and spiritual truth
that had been all but lost amid the grossness
of a dead externalism. Jehovah is a God of

252 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

righteousness ; Israel's religion is an ethical
religion ; and God's dealings with His people
follow an ethical standard. He will have no
worship but that of the heart. A worship of
outward ceremonies alone, however gorgeous
and seemly, is devoid of the essential elements
of religion, and in fact is not religion at all.

By their passion for righteousness, as well as
by their unhesitating obedience to the voice
of God, the prophets are witnesses to the
moral government of God in the world.
Above all, they bear testimony to the fact
that a righteous Ruler presides over and
judges with equity the actions of men. The
moral ideal which they present before their
contemporaries is always a lofty one. They
are the champions of the poor against the rich,
and are full of sympathy and compassion for
the needy and distressed ; while their view of
life is thoroughly healthy and humane. They
are possessed by a splendid hopefulness, and,
in spite of distresses and captivities, paint
glorious pictures of a golden age that lies in
the future. They have visions of a time when
God's purpose with Israel will be eventually
fulfilled, and the elect nation will be the
medium of conveying to the whole world the
saving revelation of truth, of which it had so
long been the conservator. Pagan poets write
of a golden age that existed in the past, in the
early prime of their nation's history ; but it is
down the vista of the future that the Old

PROPHETISM 253

Testament prophets behold that age, uiid
rejoice and are glad.1

Our purpose does not permit us to fill in
the details of this picture of the prophetic
golden age. They will be found in books on
the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testa
ment. Isaiah gives prominence to the
political side, but Jeremiah and Ezekiel
emphasise the ethical forces of it.2 Then the
Law will be written upon the heart ; the
righteous King will execute justice in the
earth ; the stony heart will be taken away,
and a new spirit put within them. There
will be a great national regeneration ; and
righteousness will flow down the streets like
streams of water. The historic realisation
of it all is to be found in Jesus Christ. It
could not be accomplished by the Law ;
but the Law was the pedagogue to lead to
Christ.

Before that consummation was accomplished,
however, the nation had to go through the
dark night of legalism, and learn what the
Law could and could not do. Sad it is to

1 Cf. Darmesteter, Lex Prophe'tes d'Israel, pp. 11 and 208.

2 It has been well said that Heathenism " has neither a
religious view of history nor a philosophy of history ; for it
knew no absolute final moral purpose to the attainment of
which the fates of the nations were to serve as means. Israel,
<>n the other hand, knew such u history. It was the belief of
her prophets in the purpose of a righteous God that made
them for all mankind the teachers of the religiuus view of
the world which contemplates all that is transitory and
perishing sub xpecie mtcrnitatiis" Pfleiderer, Gifford Lecture*,
vol. i. p. 191. Of. Robertson Smith, Prophets of Israel, p. 138.

254 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

think that in the Judaism of the closing era of
Old Testament religion the teaching of those
spiritual prophets receded before the advance
of an external Leviticalism, in which outward
works took the place of heart repentance, and
the heroic " Protestants and Reformers of
Israel " were displaced by a set of Casuists,
who utterly divorced ritual from righteousness,
and were children of the bondwoman and not
of the free.

THE WISDOM LITERATURE

The teaching of the prophets was not the
only gate by which the conscience of Israel
found an escape from restraints of the Law
into a wider sphere of moral ideals. In the
Chokhmah Literature the Hebrew mind took
up and discovered the personal relations of
man. That literature has been termed the
Philosophy of the Old Testament. It endea
voured, through the knowledge of God's re
vealed will, at once to understand the divine
ways, and to determine human duties.

It includes the three Books of Job, Proverbs,
and Ecclesiastes, as well as some of the Psalms.1
It differs from prophecy, with its " word of
the Lord," its "burden," and its "visions";
nor were the authors of it orators or preachers.
Rather was it the product of much mental
reflection on the world in which man's duty

1 Some would include the Song of Songs.

WISDOM LITERATURE 255

lay, and which it believed was ruled by the
divine agency.1

The Wisdom Literature presents some
striking contrasts with the writings of the
Pentateuch and of the prophets. It looks
more to the social sphere than to the indi
vidual life for the realisation of ethical ends.
Its point of view is a universal, not a
particular one,2 it surveys the whole world
of humanity, and declares that " there is not
a just man upon the earth that doeth good
and sinneth not" (Eccles. vii. 20). In the
books of the Law the main object is to secure
obedience to the moral and ceremonial in
junctions. But in the Chokhmah books not
obedience but wisdom is enjoined : and for all
that is said of the priesthood and sacrifice, the
Tabernacle service and Temple of Solomon
might never have existed. In the Penta
teuch, wisdom is never mentioned. Nor is
the reason far to seek. The Hebrews had to
go through 'the pedagogy of a legal training
before they could arrive at the freedom of the
principle of wisdom, and feel the power of
moral truth. Indeed the rise of this Wisdom
Literature is a proof that the school stage of

1 Cf. Driver, op. cit. chap. viii. ; A. B. Davidson, Biblical
and Literary Lectures, p. 24.

2 The remarkable thing about this literature is that it
marks the stage of advance in Judaism from being a national
faith to becoming a world religion. This Wisdom, so personi
fied, has been aptly described as constituting " a middle term "
between the Greek philosophers and the Hebrew Humanists.
See Froude, Short Studies, vol. i. on the Book of Job.

256 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

moral education was now passed, and that
Israel had progressed to that manhood where
they could cast aside the bondage of rule, and
step out into the large and wide field of
ethical principles.1

The contrast presented between the Wisdom
Literature and the writings of the prophets is
not less striking. It found, outside the
sphere of the Law, a divine teleology at
work in the world, an omniscient mind guid
ing and ruling all things in conformity with
its purpose, and maintaining not only the
stars in their places, but also the moral
order of the world. This wisdom both
"instructs" and "reproves" (Prov. iv.
11, 18). He who will not receive instruc
tion, who will have none of the reproof of
wisdom, is a fool rushing on to his deathful
doom. But he who has in him " the fear
of the Lord," will turn from the paths
of evil and choose the way of righteous
ness.

This fear of the Lord, which is the sub
jective principle of Old Testament Wisdom,
is not the fear of divine vengeance, such as is
denounced against the sinner in the ordi
nances of the Law. Nor is it a gloomy,

1 The Wisdom of the Hebrews deals with many of the most
urgent of universal problems, such as the purpose and mean
ing of pain and the mystery of retribution. If it does not
solve these anomalies, it may at least be claimed for it that
it adequately states them. Of. Professor Bruce, Apologetics,
p. 242.

WISDOM LITERATURE 257

unintelligent dread of Deity, as of an iron
fate. But it is the fear of disobeying the
word of a holy and wise Ruler, whose will
is His people's highest good, and in whose
favour is true life. If it gives less heed to
the Law as issuing directly from God
Himself, it is more distinctly ethical in its
endeavour to renounce pride, arrogancy, and
the evil way, and to recognise the great
maxims of life which Wisdom utters at the
opening of the gates and in the market
place.

From this source, the fear of God, spring
all the virtues enumerated in the Book of
Proverbs. Out of this fountain will flow a
stream of conduct that shall enrich the life,
and bring both honour and long days to its
possessor. Among the first graces shall be
humility and kindness. " Before honour
goeth humility" (xviii. 12). " He that hath
pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord"
(xix. 17). Along with kindness shall go
justice : for nothing is so hateful to God as
"divers weights and a false balance"

1 Prof. A. B. Davidson (art. "Proverbs" in Encycl. Brit.)
claims that the oldest proverbs are those contained in chaps.
xxv., xxvi., and xxvii. He thinks that the more highly finished
and regular form of those in chap. x. ff. is such as to suggest
no great antiquity, but rather a stage of literary culture where
the proverbial ist of the Solomon type has mastered his craft.
The former class are more nearly what we should imagine
the very early epigrammatic sayings to be, all the more
that they are the favourite proverbs among ourselves
to-day.

18

258 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

(xx. 23). The love of one's enemy is in
culcated, and coals of fire are to be heaped
upon his head by deeds of unexpected kind
ness. Anger is to be restrained, and to a
wrathful man stirring up contention the
best reply is the "soft answer" of a patient
and gentle spirit. Mercy to the lower
creation is enforced, and harshness and
cruelty are vigorously condemned. Above
all, the righteous man will never oppose the
poor, nor enter the fields of the fatherless
to rob them. He will not sit among wine-
bibbers and gluttons, nor spend his means
in riotous living. The " strange woman " he
will not look at, and the gossips who stir up
strife he will shun. Wealth is a great bless
ing, but only if it be got by righteous
methods. Much is said on the right use of
the tongue ; discreet speech is highly valued,
but lip-talk only impoverishes, and tale
bearing breeds strife. Respect for parents
is throughout commended ; as are also
liberality and benevolence. The sin of pride
is denounced in unsparing language, and the
purse-proud man is well warned of the fall
that awaits him. A virtuous woman is
spoken of as the crown of her husband, while
much sarcasm is cast on the brawl. In
several places the sluggard is held up to
well-merited contempt, while industry re
ceives unusual commendation. The book
ends with a glowing description of the ideal

WISDOM LITERATURE 259

woman of wisdom, whose portrait is drawn
in the finest ethical colouring.1

In all this there is a total disregard of
any Israelitish standpoint in characterising
men's virtues and vices. Society is looked
at in the broadest light, and with a thorough
practical end in view. The wise man regards
mainly the consequences of actions, and from
a wide observation gathers up his conclusions
and rests them on grounds common to all
men. He is not a philosopher of the hard
utilitarian school of morals ; but "he is
philanthropic in the literal sense : every way
of man, and every expression of his mind
or nature has a charm for him." 2 It is
because of this tendency to look at human
nature in its broadest aspects that these
writers have been fitly called the Humanists
of Israel.3

It was through these two gateways of
Prophetism and the Wisdom Literature that
the moral life of Israel, long cramped by
the restriction of legal codes, opened out into
a wider region of ethical power. They

1 If it be said that the teaching of the Book of Proverbs ia
deficient and is not that of the whole Bible, that is frankly
admitted by every student of Old Testament theology. But
the teaching of this Wisdom is of universal and abiding
value, and cannot gro\v obsolete. The gospel of Christ trans
cends it far, but does not therefore supersede it.

s Prof. Davidson in Expositor, May 1880.

3 Cf. Cheyne, Job and Solomon, p. 119, and F. Delitzsch's
fine volume on Proverbs, 1873, Das Salomonische Spruch-
buch, chap. i.

260 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

indicate the high-water mark in the ethics of
the Old Testament. In passing from them
into the next period, introduced by Ezra the
scribe, we enter upon an era of decline and
retrogression.

CHAPTER XIII

ETHICS OF THE LATER JUDAISM

AFTER the brilliant period of prophecy in the
Babylonian age, we come to a stage in the
moral development of God's people where we
must speak not of progress so much as of
reaction. Prophecy had laid emphasis on the
obligation of a righteous life, and had never
failed to affirm that morality must be at the
basis of national prosperity. But after the
return of the captives from Babylon there
takes place a deterioration in religion, and
Levitical ceremonialism is elevated to a place
beside morality. The Mosaic Law is regarded
in all its parts as equally necessary to salva
tion. The religious life of the people gathers
round the Temple service and the Torah, the
exposition of the latter of which falls into
the hands of the scribes.1

This result was brought about by causes
that began to operate during the Captivity
in Babylon. Away from Jerusalem, and in

1 Cf. H. E. Ryle, Camb. Uible for Schools ; P. H. Hunter,
After the Exile ; Ewald's Histoi-y, i. p. 189.

261

262 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

a heathen land, it was impossible to carry
out the Levitical worship. But all the more
rigidly were such religious customs observed
as were not dependent upon the Temple
service. The Sabbath was carefully re
membered, and the books of the Law were
earnestly studied.1 Captives far away from a
loved land are much given to meditation ; and
there is no doubt that the Jews in Babylon
found great consolation in the study of the
sacred writings and in literary activity.

These exiles seem to have become thoroughly
acquainted with the whole scheme of Levitical
worship. Their loving and continuous study
of the Torah made it as well known to them
as to the priests, who trusted more to
traditional usage handed down by their fore
fathers than to a minute acquaintance with
the Scriptures. This knowledge awakened in
the hearts of those laymen an ardent desire
for a sweeping religious reform. Accordingly
we find that when Ezra returned to Jerusalem,
" he was a ready scribe in the Law of Moses,
. . . and the Law of his God was in his
hand." He went to the capital with the
resolution of carrying out a thorough re
formation of morals, and of establishing the

1 The compilation of the " Priestly Code " is by many
to-day assigned to the time preceding Nehemiah's visit to
Jerusalem (444 B.C.). It is based on the fundamental idea
that Israel is still a holy community having in its midst the
Temple of Jehovah. The narrative proceeds on the concep
tion of Israel rather as a Church than a nation.

THE REFORMATION OF EZRA 263

worship of God upon the basis of the Book
of the Law which he carried with him. In
this resolute effort he was afterwards seconded
by Nehcmiah. These leaders by their energy
and courage soon accomplished their object.
The people were roused to enthusiasm in
favour of Levitical worship ; the priests were
sharply reprimanded for their perfunctory
service ; and the restored nation entered
upon a new career.1

The change represents a real watershed in
the history of Israel. It marks the termina
tion of the governing power of the priesthood,
and the commencement of the work of the
scribes. Hitherto the priests had supported
a free foreign policy, and permitted inter
marriage with the Samaritans. Now, through
the influence of men like Ezra and Nehemiah,
this policy came to an end. The principle of
separation from the heathen was relentlessly
enforced, and all mixed marriages were for
bidden.1

Very soon the scribes, owing to differences
of interpretation, found it necessary to form
themselves into a society or College, the origin

1 Nehemiah raised the inhabitants of Jerusalem by the
sheer force of his personal character. His life is a very
interesting study. He persuaded them (chap, x.) to adopt
three courses besides rebuilding walls, viz. (1) a strict observ
ance both of the Sabbath and the Sabbatical year : (2)
abstention from all marriages with aliens : (3) payment of
Church dues to provide for the work of the priesthood.
Israel's real life was made to depend upon the maintenance
of sanctuary worship.

264 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

of which was the desire to bring their decisions
into harmony. Here is the beginning of that
vast accumulation of oral tradition which in
course of time came to be recognised as possess
ing a religious and moral value equivalent to
that of the sacred writings. This body of tradi
tion we can now study in the Talmud, " the
vast pyramid in which Judaism lies entombed."

Probably the scribes alone would not have
been able to popularise the new legalism, if
they had not been aided by the establishment
throughout the land of the service of the
Synagogue, in which service the reading of
the Law soon became a prominent feature.
Any member of the community, more
especially a scribe, might give an exposition
of the portion that was read, a custom that
prevailed down to the time of our Lord (Luke
iv. 16). This practice in course of time
effected a thorough acquaintance on the part
of the people with the teaching of the Torah,
the influence of which was soon felt on their
whole moral and religious life.

This reforming movement had a worthy
object. The leaders were men of high
character and moral insight, and in their
teachings principles of great ethical import
ance were enunciated. They desired to pre
serve society in Judea from falling into
heathen ways. They acted upon the con
viction that, at the restoration, the Jews
would relapse into idolatry, unless their

THE PERSIAN PERIOD 265

worship were fenced round by the most
minute legal restrictions. Therefore they
threw themselves into the multiplication of
religious rites with an ardour inspired by
zeal for God's honour, and for the moral
well-being of their nation.1

Yet amid these hopeful features the seeds of
religious decay were being sown, and before
the end of the Persian period they had pro
duced pernicious fruit. Worthy and noble as
was the aim of leaders like Ezra and Nehemiah,
yet it was found impossible to prevent the
development of the movement towards an
externalism that was ultimately inimical both
to morality and piety. Good men struggled
against the current, but in vain. On the one
hand, the rites of the Temple worship increased,
and the people made Nehushtans of their
former privileges. The conscience of the
worshipper was burdened with a load of
ceremonial observances, and spiritual worship
was apt to vanish amid the pageantry of
ritualism. On the other hand, the Book of
the Law, in the hands of the scribes, became a
fetish ; and the conscience, burdened with
ritual, was also injured by a system of
casuistry that took off its fine edge, and
obscured the eternal distinctions between sin
and holiness, between right and wrong.

1 The feeling was all the more keen because the Jews now
found themselves really in subjection to the heathen who
inhabited the land of their forefathers, and saw that all hope
of political independence had become impracticable.

266 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Gradually the Jewish people lapsed into
legalism ; and the glad freedom of the time
of the prophets was entirely superseded by the
bondage of a self-imposed formalism. It was
the age of the Hagiocracy, and the govern
ment of the people fell entirely into the
hands of the priests and scribes.1 The pro
phetical writings were neglected, for the
ideals of the nation had changed. Legalism
had to work out its natural results, and show
the world that on the basis of the Law a holy
Church could not be raised by the scribes any
more than a holy nation could be created by
the prophets. "The result was rabbinism
and pharisaism ; a people technically and out
wardly holy, really and inwardly altogether
unholy. By a prophet this might have been
foreseen from the first. But the foresight of
the wise does not render superfluous the age
long requirements whereby truth is made
patent to all the world. Rabbinism had to
be evolved before men could perceive the
full significance of Jeremiah's oracle of the
law written on the heart." 2

Towards the end of the Persian period these
reactionary tendencies of scribism increased,
and the germs of a pharisaic self-righteousness
rapidly developed. A more rigorous observ
ance of Levitical ritual was enforced ; personal
righteousness was seldom spoken of; and the

1 Ewald, History of Israel, vol. v. p. 165.

2 Prof. Bruce, Apologetics, p. 277.

THE PERSIAN PERIOD 267

scribe instructed his scholars or amused the
synagogue with his midrash of hair-splitting
puerilities. The religious life came to be
surrounded with a network of petty rules that
cramped its liberty. Questions of a childish
character were handled in public assemblies
and regarded as vital to godliness. Thread
bare precedents were counted of more weight
than God's eternal law of righteousness ; and
the Great Synagogue could actually issue, as
its three cardinal rules or tenets, the follow
ing : "Be circumspect in judgment," "Raise
up many scholars," and " Make a hedge
around the Law" (Pirke Aboth, i. 1). And a
leading scribe, discussing the chief command
ment of the Law, declared that the Law con
cerning fringes excelled all others in import
ance. The result of all this, as regards moral
and religious life, was that the people were
kept in leading-strings, and that those who
looked beneath for reality began to exhibit
signs of scepticism. The whole service of
religion seemed to them to be stamped with
littleness and unprofitableness. The echoes
of such a spirit may be seen in Ecclesiastes , a
book that exhibits many signs of belonging to
the closing period of the Persian age. When
men have been offended in their conscience by
an empty ritual, the feeling of indifference to
religion cannot fail to follow.1

1 It is not matter of wonder that the Jews for a time
questioned the right of Quoheleth to a place among the Rolls

268 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

These phenomena lead us to conclude that
it was in this period that were sown the germs
of that pharisaism which afterwards developed
into a morality of external works, and led to
lamentable declension from the lofty ethical
standard of prophetism. In fact, two divergent
tendencies at this time sprang up, the result
of which was the rise of two opposing parties
in the Judaism of the decline. On the one
side were the scribes, the popular expounders
of the Law to the people in their village syna
gogues, meeting with them every Sabbath day
and bringing home to their everyday life the
precepts of the Law. On the other side were
the priests, proud of their official position,
rulers as well as Temple officials, opposed
to all reformations in religious matters, and
very susceptible to influences proceeding vfrom
foreign princes and heathen courts.

The distance between these parties widened
in the periods known as the Greek and the
Asmonean. The priesthood developed stronger
aristocratic affinities, while their religious
indifference and lukewarmness increased. The
head of the Greek party in the reign of

or Megilloth, and that chiefly on the ground of difficulties
springing out of its contents and apparently contradictory
statements. It was defended partly on the ground that it
bore the name of Solomon, and partly because it seems to
begin and end with the Law. " Ecclesiastes " comes from the
rendering given in the Greek version of the Hebrew
" Quoheleth," which signifies a preacher or else a Collector of
iiuixims. Dean Plumptre held that it means Debater. The
Revisers in their margin suggest The Great Orator.

PHARISEES AND SADDUCEES 269

Antiochus Epiphanes was the brother of the
very high priest, and within the walls of the
Temple he encouraged pastimes of such a kind
as to shock the feelings of the Jews. On the
other hand, the more pious party, the
Chasidim, sought, even at the risk of their
lives, to maintain the integrity of the Law and
the distinctive features of the faith of Israel.
Rather than break the letter of the fourth
commandment, they allowed themselves,
when surprised by a body of hostile soldiers,
to be slain in cold blood without raising a
weapon in self-defence (1 Mace. ii.). Edu
cated by the scribes in all their traditions as
well as in the Law of Moses, they held that
the traditional interpretation of the Law was
absolutely binding — a doctrine that became
the parent of many subsequent errors.

In the Asmonean period the lines of cleav
age between the two parties were somewhat
different ; but the opposing tendencies were
at root the same. The Chasidim were suc
ceeded by the Pharisees, while the party of the
priests drew to those known in the New Testa
ment as the Sadducees. Of the latter the
greater portion belonged to old aristocratic
families closely allied to the high priests, and
they gave their attention mainly to the secular
side of politics. They aimed at shaping the
policy of the nation by arts of statecraft, and
withstood the extortionate demands which the
Pharisees made on life and manners. In

270 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

opposition to this the Pharisees aspired at
making the Law supreme in every depart
ment of public and private life. With the
scribes they inculcated an extreme devotion
to all the requirements of the Mosaic ritual ;
they insisted on avoiding contact with
Gentiles and the inhabitants of the land as
being utterly defiling. They were the
Perushim, " the separated ones," and separa
tion from all causes of external defilement
was of the essence of their creed.1 Whether
the name connotes praise or censure it is now
difficult to say, but there is no doubt it was
given or assumed because of their stringent
observance of the laws respecting uncleanness.

The strife betwixt these two parties became
very bitter in the time of the Maccabees. The
priests and their friends the Sadducees strove
to acquire the political power in Judea, and to
use it for maintaining the nation's independ
ence. The Pharisees consequently opposed
the high-priestly family of the Maccabees,
and made it their chief aim to win the people
over to the observance of the Law. They
insisted on their followers attending to the
most minute details and rubrics of the scribe-
made code no less than of the ancient Torah.
In the keeping of these rules alone would
salvation be found.

It is evident that here the relationship of
grace gives place to a righteousness of works.

1 Wellhausen, Pharisaer und Sadducaer, p. 76.

PHARISEES AND SADDUCEES 271

The Law is torn away from its connection with
the salvation of the individual, and is regarded
only as the legal order of the elect nation.
Consequently, the commonwealth of Israel is
looked upon as the alone medium of salvation,
to the entire exclusion of the Samaritan and
the heathen. The universal salvation pro
claimed by the prophets as contained in the
purpose of God is now limited to a particu
larism that bears its death-warrant in its own
bosom.1 The ethics of the period becomes
utilitarian ; evil is to be shunned because of
its results, and good is to be done because it
pays. The Messianic hope disappears, or at
least has but little influence on the minds of
men. The splendid testimony of the prophets
against the opus operatum is no longer heard.
Faith in God gives place to legality. And by
means of this pharisaic spirit the way is
prepared for other errors which were not
long in developing within the early Christian
Church.

1 Cf. Schiirer, Hist, of the Jewish People, §§ 30, 31, and 24 ;
E. de Pressense, Jesus Christ and His Times, p. 294 ff. ; Ottley,
A Short History of the Hebrews, p. 259.

CHAPTER XIV
MORAL DIFFICULTIES

IN the introductory chapter of this book we
referred to the desirability of postponing
consideration of the moral difficulties that
are connected with the Old Testament dis
pensation until first we had understood the
principle that underlay the ethical and re
ligious education of Israel. The conviction
was expressed that it is only in connection
with a general presentation of Old Testament
ethics that those difficult passages that per
plex many a tender Christian conscience can
be explained. As soon as we have come to a
right understanding of the disciplinary method
of revelation, and perceive the pedagogical
purport of the Law, we shall find that many
of those problems will have solved themselves,
and that the character of Jehovah has, at least
in some measure, been vindicated.

It is easy for the popular critic to scan the
history of Israel, and, by selecting this and
the other act or this and the other law, to
impeach the divine benevolence and prove the

272

MORAL DIFFICULTIES 273

Bible unfit to maintain the moral leadership
of mankind. There are in it men employed
by God who, measured by modern standards,
cannot well pass muster. There are acts per
formed by them that seem to conflict with our
modern wisdom, and are out of harmony with
our ideas of right. If the Old Testament is to
be studied and judged only from the polemical
platform of the nineteenth century, then it is
not easy to defend its ethics. But the student
of the Bible, who has gained the broader view
of revelation and the larger faith in God's
purpose of grace, will not make this mistake.
He will remember that he must think himself
back into the period of Israel's moral educa
tion and the particular circumstances under
which it took place.1 Then he will find that
while the Law is one, being of the very sub
stance of the divine nature, yet there are
needful adaptations and adjustments of it to
the stage of Israel's growth, methods of ad-

1 In fixing the meaning of particular statements (in the Old
Testament), in tracing the line of the transmission of thought,
in determining the chronological relations of beliefs and forms
of expressions, the most formidable and most continuous diffi
culty is the first difficulty — that of transporting ourselves
into a world of ideas, on the present and on the future, on
good and on evil, on what makes life and what makes death,
which are singularly unlike all that the Western and modern
mind is accustomed to. We have to place ourselves outside a
vast environment of intellectual habit — the late result of the
thoughts of men as for many centuries they have been directed
to the problems of the future. We have to unlearn those
philosophical conceptions and distinctions which rule our
modern thinking. Cf. Prof. Salmond, Christian Doctrine of
Immortality, pp. 162, 163.

19

274 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

dressing the national life to unusual or transient
conditions, which have their due place in the
onward moral progress of the kingdom of
God. There have always been those who
have been impatient with Jehovah, because He
did not push on quickly enough to His great
ends. But He is long-suffering and patient ;
and centuries are needed for the fulfilment of
His beneficent purposes. The Old Testament
adopts the moral order of the God of creation
and of history, who is seen through slow cycles
of times to be maturing His ends and working
out His wise designs for the good of His
creatures. A criticism that forgets to keep
its eye on the moral environment of ancient
Israel measures the ethics of the Old Testa
ment by a false standard. But when studied
in the light of the evolution of the purpose of
grace, the Old Testament is seen to be per
vaded by a divine intention that moulded
the history of Israel and wrought itself out
into final form in the teaching of Jesus
Christ.

We are confident that if our readers have
followed the line of thought traced out inr the
preceding chapters, they will be prepared to
admit that laws of the highest utility may be
given by God which yet are not absolutely
perfect. Relatively, however, they are so ; for
they are thoroughly adapted to the circum
stances and to the stage of Israel's progress.
Had they been given independently of these,

MORAL DIFFICULTIES 275

they would not have accomplished the good
ends that Jehovah had in view. Or had such
rudimentary laws permitted the people to
remain at the stage of moral childhood instead
of educating them through it to something-
better and higher, we might justly question
their place in the plan of the divine order.
But however defective they seem to us, with
the illumination of Christian doctrine to aid
us, yet if there were immanent in them the
promise and potency of ethical improvement,
they served a wise and good purpose. A
nation in its growth r it is now generally
admitted, goes through a course of training
very similar to that of a child. Now, it is
the mark of a judicious teacher that he shall
not set before his pupils impracticable rules,
but shall make use of such as Jit their age,
and such as are, for their stage of progress, the
best possible. And Jehovah, with His great
patience and enduring love, condescended to
train Israel in accordance with the laws of
education, till, when the fit time came, He
could reveal the completed code of morality,
and they could leave the stage of external
restraints for that of inward principles. The
course of training was long, but it was steadily
onward and upward ; and rudimentary pre
cepts were laid aside when the principles
that underlay them had been clearly
evolved.

In the foregoing chapters we have seen that

276 THE ETHICS OP THE OLD TESTAMENT

the ethics of the Old Testament is an organic
structure, and we have sought to find out the
principle of its growth. Through Mosaism,
Prophetism, and Wisdom Literature it pro
gressed, each of those furnishing its own
instalment. It is a necessary corollary from
this fact to say that before any intelligent
judgment can be passed upon it, it must be
viewed as an organic whole, and not regarded
only in its separate parts. Consequently,
when the popular critic points to some penal
law or some barbarous custom as proving that
this morality is inconsistent with the character
of Jehovah, let us not forget that, in a histor
ical process like the education of Israel, such
laws may have their place and use. They may
be but moments in the disciplinary process.
They may be but the scaffolding, temporarily
useful, yet requiring to be laid aside when the
structure stands complete. Such critics would
judge the sculptor from a broken fragment of
his marble, chipped off in the process of work
manship. Once admit that the Revelation of
God is progressive, and that as a result Israel's
education is progressive, and such difficulties
disappear. " The Law made nothing perfect "
(Heb. vii. 19); but it awaited the advent of
the Perfect One. In studying the ethics of
Israel we are not gazing at a stagnant pool,
but we are tracing a flowing stream, whose
current bears us onward to the perfect teach
ing of the Son of God. Just because the

MORAL DIFFICULTIES 277

Revelation is progressive is incompleteness
written on the very face of it. But one by
one, in the course of its progress, these marks
of imperfection are cast aside ; and the under
lying principles are taken up and set in their
right place in the ethics of Christianity.1

The one important feature on which emphasis
ought to be laid is, not the imperfection of the
rudimentary stages, but the indubitable fact
that there is continuous progress onward
towards an ethical ideal which is at last
realised. That there should at first be im
perfection is only what is to be expected.
The analogy of the individual Christian's
growth in grace would lead us to expect this.
But when we see the spirit of the movement
tending steadily in one upward direction, and
that too in opposition to the natural down
ward drag of the nation on whom it wrought,
we may be assured the principle of that pro
gress is of God.

It is much to be regretted that some

1 " It is of primary importance in the study of Hebrew
religion to remember the principle that ' the beginning finds
ita true interpretation in the end.' The religious history of
Israel is, in fact, the record of an evolution, and everything
depends upon the point of view from which it is approached.
In the light of the result actually aimed at and attained, that
which looks prima facie like a purely natural process is to
Christian eyes transfigured. Even in the earliest and lowest
stages of the upward movement the presence of an inspiring
and controlling idea can be discerned — an idea not indeed
consciously realised by the men of the time, yet to some
extent moulding their thought and directing their actions."
Ottley, The Religion of Itrael, p. 3.

278 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

defenders of the Scriptures, in their pardon
able fear lest any part should exhibit signs of
defect, have refused to see these traces of
growth in the ethics of the Old Testament.
They do not forget that the New Testament
is latent in the Old, just as the fruit lies in
the seed. But they do not seem to see that
this implies that what is seed cannot at the
same time possess the perfect and ripened
qualities of fruit. The seminal principles of
Christianity are all found in the Old Testa
ment ; but they cannot present the developed
form which they have in the New. And
what is .this but to say that the Old Testament
gives a necessarily incomplete presentation of
full-orbed moral truth ? This fact is strikingly
exemplified in the moral sentiments and
religious temper of Old Testament saints.
Yet such minds as I refer to will not permit
these saints to exhibit any defects of character,
but will justify every act of Abraham, and
apologise for Jacob, and excuse the Judges,
from a feeling that to do otherwise is to dis
honour God or detract from the value of the
inspired record. But should we not expect to
find deficiencies in men who " were kept in
ward under the Law," and were under a system
of " tutors and governors," like a minor who
has to be thus subject till his majority arrive ?
(Gal. iv. 2). Not to do so is to dishonour and
even deny the statements of the New Testa
ment, and can only hinder and not help one's

MORAL DIFFICULTIES 279

faith. It is to assert that the inspired writer
was under error who spoke of the Old Testa
ment as a rudimentary dispensation. It is
to forget that it is the New Testament
which has created the difficulties of the earlier
Covenant, and which compels us to criticise
its ethics.

We frankly admit that there are many and
serious moral difficulties in the Old Testament,
and that they have created embarrassment and
doubt in many minds. Further, we acknow
ledge that they are not mere accidents in the
record, which can be explained away without
doing any injury to the organic structure of
Revelation ; they are woven into its texture,
and form an integral part of it. The singular
combination in the imprecatory psalms of
devout trust in God, along with the desire for
vengeance on His enemies, is startling to a
Christian conscience ; yet it is clearly the
truthful expression of the conscience and heart
of the ancient Church. Due consideration
will at once show us that the entire system of
Old Testament morality is homogeneous, and
that an attempt to attenuate the difficulty, by
regarding these things as accidental, is an un
worthy makeshift.

Having said so much by way of presenting
the general principles that underlie the
ethics of the Old Testament, we shall now
specifically consider some of the difficulties
from which arguments have been drawn

280 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

against its inspiration and authority. We
shall begin by looking at objections that have
been urged against the ethics of the Old
Testament, because of some general im
perfections.

(a) It has been said that Old Testament
ethics is mailed by the absence of systematic
fcn*m and of scientific development Now,
this objection we frankly acknowledge to be
founded in fact. These are the necessary
defects of a system that did not spring
Minerva-like, in full stature, from the mind of
God, but which was connected with a great
historical redemption movement. We have
already pointed out that any other method
would have failed to accomplish the same dis
ciplinary ends, since Israel would have been
unable to comprehend a morality revealed
from heaven in full-orbed completeness.1
Taught as a part of a historical process, it
necessarily partakes of the characteristics of
every organic movement, and passes through
the several stages of growth. Had it been
given in purely scientific form, it would
probably have remained inoperative and
practically useless. What was wanted at
the earliest stage was, not to discover the
grounds of moral consciousness, but to get
simple rules of moral conduct and a powerful
motive to obey them. Therefore the sole
ground of morality set forth before Israel was

1 A. B. Bruce, Chief End of Berela-tion-, chap. iii.

PARTICULARISM 281

the will of a loving Jehovah, who had led
them out of a land of bondage, and now set
before them a great moral end. But the
purpose of this pedagogic process was not
fully revealed until Jesus Christ came.1 And
until He furnished the key to the meaning
of the movement, it was impossible that the
ethics of the Bible could have scientific form.
Up till that time, simple gladsome obedience
must be the sum and essence of all moral
activity. For the Old Testament saint, duty
was summed up in the words, " Observe and
hear all these words which I command thee,
that it may go well with thee and with thy
children after thee for ever."

(b) Another objection urged against the
ethics of the Old Testament as a whole, is
that it is marred by a narrow particularism
which engendered in Israel a spirit of ex-
clusiveness. It must be admitted that in the
Greek and Asmonean periods this national
feature assumed an ugly form that cannot be
defended, and, in fact, is condemned by the
whole spirit of the Bible. But this latter was

1 It is a sure and safe maxim that the cause is best known
in its effect, and that the beginning becomes manifest in the
end of the evolutionary process. All the O.T. ran its race
" looking unto Jesus." Negative critics often forget this, and
explain the highest by the lowest and construe the end in
terms of the beginning. The spiritual mind will do the
opposite : it will interpret matter by mind, and the be
ginnings of creation by the far-off end of it. " Of Him and
through Him and to Him are all things." See Ed. Caird's
Grit. Phil, of Kant, ii. 33, and Prof. Jones, Browniiuj as a
Philosophical and Religious Teacher, p. 202.

282 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

a retrograde step of the Judaism of the
decline, and the Old Testament is not
responsible for it. But in the time of the
prophets this particularism was not the evil
thing which it is represented to have been.
Though in connection with it Israel may have
given way to a spirit of pride, yet it was
belief in the nation's election by God that
lay at the root of their monotheistic faith,
and inspired them with the patient endurance
of persecution. The people were in continual
danger of being entirely dissolved among
their heathen neighbours ; and this danger
could be averted only by the most rigid
maintenance of their national religious order.
This in itself was a good end ; it was a particu
larism that carried in its bosom the future
salvation of the whole world. The election of
Israel was j ust God's way of preparing the one
nation to be a means of blessing to all nations.1
It was an election to service and not to privi
lege, a service that included the ultimate
benefit of the whole race. And so it came
about that when it had served its purpose this
earlier exclusiveness was cast aside, the scaf
folding was taken down, and the door of the

1 In his Apologetics, p. 200, Prof. Bruce shows how the
election of Israel involved universalism in reference to the
idea of God and also in reference to the vocation of the elect.
Nations are never chosen for their own sakes, but in order to
serve mankind. " The importance of a people liee not in its
numbers, but in the contribution it makes to the higher good
of the world."

WARS OF EXTERMINATION 283

temple of salvation was thrown open to all
nations.

Passing from these objections to the general
scope of the ethics of the Old Testament, we
shall consider the difficulties presented by
particular passages of the historic narrative.
These may be reduced to three different
classes :

(1) Difficulties connected with the manner
in which the character or the action of God is
presented. (2) Difficulties arising from traces
of an irreligious spirit in Old Testament saints.
(3) Difficulties arising from moral defects in
some of the laws of Moses.

1. Difficulties have arisen in many minds
from the mode in which God has been repre
sented as permitting or enjoining acts that
seem to be of doubtful morality. It is not
only in our day that those instances of
severity have offended the moral instincts of
believers. Augustine tells us how the Manic-
haeans stumbled at them, and affirmed that
they represented Jehovah in such a strange
character that the God of the Old Testament
could not be the loving and redeeming God
of the New Testament. Even the Jews have
felt as if the command to destroy the Canaan-
ites compromised the gracious character of
Jehovah ; and they have a tradition, intended
to soften the crude features of the case, to the
effect that Joshua sent messengers to warn the
inhabitants of the coming vengeance, and to

284 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

request them either to escape by flight, or to
enter into treaty relations. This, however, is
mere rabbinical tradition, and the word of God
knows nothing of it. There can be no doubt
that these exterminating wars were not only
permitted but commanded by God.

Various methods of defence have been
adopted. Some have held that the Israelites
were simply expelling clans who had intruded
into and seized lands that were promised to
Abraham's seed, and which had originally
belonged to his descendants. But this
apology is contradicted by the very terms
of Scripture, that Palestine was a free gift,
and that the gift was to be held on condition
of the complete extermination of the corrupt
tribes then settled in the land. A possession
that had fallen into abeyance for over four
hundred years, even if the original title-deeds
had existed, was not one that could have been
claimed by any moral right. The eighth or
ninth generation was now in possession of the
fields, and to excuse the wholesale slaughter
of these persons on the ground of such an
antiquated claim is to set up a line of defence
which cannot be honestly supported.

The first question to be answered is, Could
a righteous God be a party to such extreme
and relentless cruelty ? Is not such a com
mand utterly inconsistent with the character
of a moral governor ? Was it just to visit
upon the innocent the sins of the guilty ?

WARS OF RXTERMINATION 285

It must be remembered that these Cauaanite
tribes are throughout the Pentateuch spoken
of as having reached a state of fearful moral
degeneracy. They had gone from bad to
worse, until now they were hopelessly corrupt.
Yet vengeance was not taken on them sum
marily. In Gen. xv., God informed Abraham
that the iniquity of the Amorite was not yet
full, and that four generations (equivalent to
the four hundred years previously spoken of
in the same chapter) would pass ere his de
scendants should possess the Promised Land.
The same forbearing God who was moved by
Abraham's intercession to declare that He
would spare degenerate Sodom if ten righteous
men were found therein, gave four centuries
to the Canaan ites to repent of their evil
deeds. But when, instead of repenting, they
were found to have become thoroughly and
hopelessly infamous, then it was clearly for
the moral interests of the rest of mankind
that they should be swept off the face of the
earth. A moral governor must think of the
well-being of the righteous, no less than of
the sparing of the abandoned. The land had
become so utterly defiled with the festering
mass of moral putridity upon it, that it is
represented as loathing the presence of such
races on its surface ; in the graphic words of
Scripture, " it vomited forth its inhabitants."
Was it not right that God should vindicate
His government in the interests of justice

286 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

and righteousnesss, and that, to prevent the
spread of this moral infection, the seething
mass of putrefaction should be utterly extin
guished ? Was not such action the work of
a Power making for morality and opposing
vice ?

Some critics represent this command of God
to exterminate these tribes as exhibiting the
favouritism of a merely national deity, who,
without any regard to justice, would sacrifice
the lives of other tribes in the interests of
those who worshipped at his shrine. But the
narrative of Scripture is inconsistent with any
such view. Jehovah was loath to remove
these offenders from the earth, and gave them
ample time for repentance. He is a God who,
while He visits the iniquities of fathers "to
four generations," makes His mercy descend
" to a thousand generations of them that love
Him" [margin of Revised Version]. He is
slow to wrath, and judgment is His strange
work, provoking by His forbearing patience
the spirit of many a psalmist and of a prophet
like Jonah, who desired speedy vengeance upon
His enemies. Yet such a value does He set
on righteousness and holiness, that He will
maintain them at any cost. And when evil
has reached its climax He will prove Himself
severe and relentless in His swift destruction
of it, sweeping away effete and corrupt tribes
to make way for purer and stronger races.1

1 Cf. Mozley, Ruliiiy Ideas in Early Ages, chap. iv.

WARS OF EXTERMINATION 287

The God of the Old Testament is the God of
to-day, who by the milder methods of civilisa
tion is exterminating races that have fallen
below hope of national redemption.

It must be carefully noted that Joshua him
self could not with justice have inflicted such
punishment upon the tribes of Canaan. The
sentence was a judicial one of God's pro
nouncing, and Joshua was but the agent and
executioner of it. The knowledge that the
Israelites were here obeying the command of
a holy God, and were simply the ministers
of divine judgment, saved them from the
brutalising influences of a war of conquest.
That they might not be tempted to imagine
that they were simply doing their own will,
their course of conquest was frequently
checked, and they were recalled to exact
obedience to the injunctions of Heaven.
Other nations might carry on war for their
own glory, or for the prize of extended
territory ; but Israel was to be simply the
instrument of the righteous Lord against
those who had polluted His land with un
speakable defilement. Nothing was more
fitted to develop in them a deep sense of
the heinousness of the sin of a sensual
idolatry, and to perpetuate the abhorrence of
it among their descendants.

Whatever view be taken of this perplexing
question, it is to be said with all reverence
that there was- here but a choice of two evils.

288 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Either the Canaanites were to be spared to
contaminate Israel with their abominations,
until the latter became wholly unfit to be the
instruments of revelation, or they must be
swept off the face of the earth. To spare them
would have been to imperil the hope of the
world's salvation. It was a drastic process,
but it was the only method by which the world
could be saved from such poison. When the
taint has got into the blood, there is no other
remedy open to Providence but moral surgery.
We cannot but admit that this action to a
certain extent obscured the gracious character
of God. It was one of those hard necessities
to which the God of redemption conde
scended. He desired through one nation to
bless all mankind ; and yet He had to exter
minate whole tribes that the elect people
might be saved from idolatry, and that
through them all mankind might be blessed.
It was a burden, we may be sure, to God to
have His gracious character overshadowed by
such terrible destruction of human life. But
this consideration has to be borne in mind, that
the action was something special and extra
ordinary. As Canon Mozley says, it was
" extra-legal," outside the ordinary mode of
justice, and was a necessity of the world-
historical mission of Israel, which demanded
that it should be such an exhibition of severity
and righteous judgment as would take a
strong hold on the minds of men, and teach

MODERN WARFARE 289

them once and for ever God's abhorrence of
sensuous idolatry and unnatural crime.1

If the objection be made that such a war
of extermination could not now be permitted
or commanded by God, we readily assent.
We are not now under the peculiar discipline
of the Old Testament dispensation. Chris
tianity has become one of the moral forces of
the world, entering into its politics, commerce,
and literature. After our wars with heathen
tribes we endeavour to spare all the com
batants, and never dream of involving the
innocent with the guilty. We want them to
live on their lands and trade with us ; and
instead of exterminating the idolaters, we try
to exterminate the idolatry. We feel our
selves morally stronger than they, and do not
contemplate the possibility of their converting
us to their degrading superstitions. We send
them missionaries, and labour to convert them
into good Christians ; for we have learned
that moral suasion is better than force, and
prayer and love more potent to destroy than
the sword. Besides this, Christian society is
now penetrated with the sense of human
individuality, and recognises that every soul
has its personal rights even as against the
welfare of a family or nation, rights which
God will not overlook or override. But under
the legal dispensation no such idea of justice
existed among the Israelites. Indeed, it is

1 Cf. Dr. Arnold's Sermons, vi. 35, 36.
20

290 THE ETHICS OP THE OLD TESTAMENT

possible that, had not the children and the
women of Korah, of the Amalekites, and the
Canaanites perished with their husbands and
fathers, there would have been a feeling on
the part of Israel that justice had miscarried,
and that full punishment had not been meted
out. Our sense of the relation of events to
historic setting assures us that in these wars
of extermination Jehovah, while vindicating
His righteous law against an ungodly and
immoral nation, had also another necessity
in view, and, by methods of punishment
apparently rough yet really moral, He re
moved degenerate tribes, in order to make
room for a race which had the moral fibre
and genius that fitted them to be the teachers
of pure religion to mankind.

Turning from those acts, which were com
manded by God, let us now examine a
difficulty of another kind connected with the
manner in which His action is presented in
the Old Testament. We are sure that evil
can never be attributed to Him. And yet
there are passages that represent evil spirits
as so acting under the immediate command
of God, that it seems impossible to avoid the
conclusion that the responsibility of the evil
done lies with Him. He is described as
sending an evil spirit on the men of Shechem
(Judg. ix. 23); as troubling Saul with an evil
spirit; as having, through Micaiah, "put a
lying spirit in the mouth of all the prophets "

ANTHROPOMORPHISMS 291

(1 Kings xxii. 23). Is God here conceived
of as the author of evil ? and does He directly
use evil emissaries to tempt men to sin ?

We believe that if those passages are con
strued according to the legitimate canons of
biblical interpretation no moral difficulty will
be found. The question is one of exegesis ;
yet it is of great importance in estimating the
morality of the Old Testament. It must not
be forgotten that the genius of the Hebrew
is as different from that of an Indo-European
language as the genius of the Orient is from
that of the Occident. Anthropomorphic
forms natural to the one are unnatural to the
other. Semitic figures of speech are carried
to an extreme that transgresses our classic
rules of style. It was not an age of reasoning,
but of simple perception. Hebrew thought
seldom rose to the abstract ; it delighted to
revel in the concrete. And it is well it is so ;
for its faithful portrayal of the concrete is one
of the secrets of the power of the Bible over
the common people, who feel its immediate
influence though they may not be able to
analyse it.

This continual coming into touch with facts
and realities in external nature was connected
with the habit which the Hebrew mind had
of associating the whole world with God.
To the Jew all nature was animate with His
presence. It ministered to His pleasure ; it
declared His will ; it took part in all Old

292 THE ETHICS OP THE OLD TESTAMENT

Testament theophanies. The wind was His
breath, the lightning was a flash of His anger.
" The Lord marched out of Seir, the earth
trembled, and the heavens dropped water."1
There is no tracing of effects through immedi
ately antecedent causes ; all is God's action,
and that is the end of it.

Now these are not the literary methods of
our Western mind. It is difficult for us to
enter sympathetically into the spirit of such
language. It is a real difficulty that has to
be transcended, and one that has given rise to
a misunderstanding of the divine action in
the Old Testament. Construed aright, such
passages as those above quoted do not im
peach the goodness or truth of God. The
writer never intended to lay on Him the
responsibility of the evil. When Amos asks,
" Shall evil befall a city, and the Lord hath
not done it?" we must not forget that he
wrote as an Oriental poet, and ascribes to
God's efficient agency what came to pass only
by His permission. God permits evil to enter
and work havoc "that His justice may be

1 The Scmg of Deborah, which bears every mark of belong
ing to the early age of the Judges, is full of these anthropo
morphisms. They are found in every part of the O.T. ;
in Gen..ii. Jehovah breathes into man's nostrils, He plants,
closes up, builds ; in chap. iii. He walks in the garden ; in
vii. shuts Noah into the ark. In Exodus He grieves, repents,
and is angry, etc. But indeed all representations of the Deity
in human speech must be anthropomorphic ; only care must
be taken that they be not misunderstood as if they conveyed
a material meaning.

ANTHROPOMORPHISMS 293

known in its punishment, and His grace in
its forgiveness." But of evil He could never
be the author, A correct exegesis will remove
the apparent moral difficulty connected with
these passages.1

It is perfectly in accordance with the
anthropomorphism of the Old Testament to
speak of Jehovah as doing evil by means of
His messengers and again repenting of the
evil He meant to do (2 Sam. xxiv. 16), and
saying to the destroying angel, " It is enough,
stay thy hand." The lying spirit in the
mouth of the prophets was not himself an evil
or Satanic spirit. All that is meant is that,
in carrying out God's, decree of condemnation,
he becomes a means of leading the king on
to his doom through the fawning guile of
these false prophets. In Ps. Ixxviii. 49 the
hail and frogs of Egypt are spoken of as "a
band of angels of evil" (Revised Version), cast
by the Lord on the Egyptians. Such emissaries
are not bad angels. " In such cases the moral
standard is quite as inapplicable to those
kings as, in the case of human relationships,
to those State officials who have to discharge
a disagreeable but just and necessary function.
In fact, it can be clearly proved that in the
narratives belonging to the original Book of
Kings this class of baleful, morally or
materially pernicious acts, which a later age
was fond of transferring from God to the evil

1 Cf. art. " Heb. Poetry " in Herzog's Encyk. ii., Aufl. v.

294 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Satanic being, are still quite frankly ascribed
to the direct agency of God." *

Similarly, it was in thorough accordance
with the genius of the Eastern mind to speak
of God as " hardening Pharaoh's heart," a
phrase that has caused much perplexity in
Christian minds. In Ex. viii. 15 it is
said, "Pharaoh hardened his heart," and in
ver. 19, "Pharaoh's heart was hardened."
After five different plagues had visited him
in vain, it is at last said : " The Lord made
strong the heart of Pharaoh, and he hearkened
not unto them " (margin of Revised Version, ix.
12). Clearly, then, this hardening was a disci
plinary, not a penal process. To the Hebrew
mind it simply meant that the man who
resists so many warnings and penalties sub
jects himself to the inevitable law of the
searing of conscience.2 That terrible resvlt
arises from his own moral constitution ; it is
a law that is every day in operation. Rightly
interpreted, the words contain no impeach
ment of God's justice. Behind every law of

1 Schultz, op. cit., vol. ii. p. 270.

2 The Authorised Version has to some extent caused
the perplexity alluded to. Three different expressions in
Exodus are translated by the word " harden." The Revised
Version has made most useful changes here. The whole
discussion affords another proof of the urgent necessity of
studying the synonyms of the Hebrew language ; though it
may be doubtful if they can ever be reduced to order when
we learn that some one hundred and eighty words are used
to express the ideas of " destroy," " take," and " break." See
Gmllestone's Synonyms of the O.T., and Sayce's Principles
of Cwup. Pkiloloyy.

HEBREW SYNONYMS 295

our moral nature there is One who loveth
righteousness. And it is quite in consonance
with the genius of the East to express this
induration of conscience as directly caused by
God. The Bible was written in the Orient,
and we must not create ethical problems out
of Orientalisms. Yet how often has this been
forgotten ! How often has the hard and
rationalistic mind of the West entered the
enclosure of the Bible, and tramped through
it like an elephant through a garden of
flowers. There are critics who, having first
missed all the teaching of historical perspec
tive, have then applied to God's word the
canons of criticism that belong alone to the
literature of the Saxons. Need we wonder,
when the Bible is so unhistorically appre
hended and so unscientifically studied, that
moral difficulties crop up in every page ?
Bonus textuarius, bonus theologus.1

1 The following quotation from Dr. A. B. Bruce, The Chief
End of Revelation, p. 284, is apposite : " The Bible conveys
to us its didactic lesson in a very occasional, indirect, and
indefinite way. Its method is literary, not dogmatic. It
teaches, as it were, without intending to teach : relates a
history, an 1 leaves us to infer the lesson ; indites a psalm
expressive of the sentiments awakened in the writer's mind
by contemplation of the manifestation which God has made
of Himself, and leaves us to find out by poetic sympathy the
thought embodied. The Bible contains all sorts of literature
— histories, prophecies, poems lyric and dramatic, proverbs,
parables, epistles. All are profitable for doctrine, but none
are dogmatic ; all are excellent for religious edification, but
disappointing from the point of view of scholastic theology."

CHAPTER XV

MORAL DIFFICULTIES — CONTINUED

WE shall now consider a second class of
difficulties arising from the imperfect char
acter of some of those who are numbered
among the saints of the Old Testament.
Much perplexity has been caused by the ap
parent approbation bestowed by God upon men
whose lives, while in many respects noble, were
yet tainted with serious faults and even with
great crimes. ,Noah, a grand figure in the
dawn of history, after being spared from the
Deluge, yielded to the wine-cup. Abraham
forgot his manhood in the presence of
Pharaoh, and betrayed a vein of cowardice or
duplicity that startles one in such a splendid
character. Jacob was guilty of an unworthy
trickiness in his treatment of his dull but
generous brother. Aaron had some weaknesses
that we do not admire in one chosen to be
God's high priest. And David stained his
life's maturity with a sin so heinous that
many a Christian conscience has found it
difficult to understand how one whose char-

298

OLD TESTAMENT SAINTS 297

acter was so blurred could be " the man after
God's own heart," and the inspired singer of
Israel.

It is clear that the Scriptures never repre
sent their heroes as models of impeccable
virtue. There is not the slightest attempt to
justify any one of their actions, nor even to
throw a veil over their many failings. Their
weakness and their strength, their evil and
their good, are alike set forth ; their charity
and their want of it are plainly written
down ; their virtues and vices are impartially
recorded. Some of them are evidently held
up to view rather as beacons than as ex
amples ; and their history is recorded more
for the admonition than for the admiration of
later times.1

Therefore, in forming a judgment of such
men as agents of Jehovah, what we have to
ask ourselves is whether they possessed the
qualities necessary for the end for which they
were chosen. Their failings are patent to all ;
but are they of a kind to render them unfit
for their work, however much they may have
injured their moral character in our estima
tion ? Does God require and demand nothing
but perfect instruments to effect His purpose ?
or is He in His great love and patience not
willing to condescend to use very imperfect
agents? Had not these men some virtues
which could be made to serve the divine

1 Cf. A. B. Bruce, Apologetics, p. 265.

298 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

purpose at that time ? If so, God simply did
the best that could be done by human agen
cies for His people, when He made use of
these fallible men, that by their means
He might guide His people on to the goal
of a perfect morality.

At the same time, it may be shown that in
the course of their lives their virtues were
developed in the service of Jehovah ; while, on
the other hand, either their vices were over
come by the divine training, or they were
shown by the result to be serious impediments
to the purpose of grace, and a moral lesson
was given of the highest value. Jacob's vice
of worldliness was eradicated by the terrible
discipline through which he passed ; and in the
furnace of affliction were burnt in and made
permanent the colours that beautify his old
age.1 The fiery zeal of the young Moses, that
led him to shed blood at the beginning of "his
life, was toned down by divine dealings into a
patient meekness that renders him one of the
grandest figures in the early prime of history.
While, on the other hand, Saul is evidently
meant to be a beacon light to warn men off
the rocks of proud self-will, on which he made
sad shipwreck. The fall and the penitence
of David brought him such a knowledge of
his own heart, and such an experience of
forgiving grace, as fitted him to voice for all
time the finest of our penitential hymns. In

1 Gen. xxx., xxxi., and xxxiv.

OLD TESTAMENT SAINTS 299

his case sin was manifestly a parenthesis, and
the thread of grace was gathered up again.
But the law of the spiritual harvest was
written in large letters in the sins of his
family, and the truth was taught that the
cancelling of the guilt of the sin was not the
removal of these other temporal penalties
that necessarily attach to such breaches of the
Moral Law.

Thus it is clear that in the working out of
the divine purpose through the Old Testament
history the choice of these men proved their
own judgment, and their very errors con
tributed to the ethical teaching of the elect
nation. Were there any condoning of their
faults, it would be manifest that their employ
ment as divine agents could not be justified.
But so far is this from being the case that the
chastisements they endured form part of the
great purpose of grace, and contributed to
the end which God had in view in the election
of Israel. They who were to be the teachers
of after ages had to be made fit for their work
through many sufferings.

Probably in connection with nothing have
more difficulties arisen than with the very
imperfect character of those known as
" Judges." The general purport of the Book
of Judges is quite clear. It is written to show
that national sin would never be permitted
to go without punishment, but that the punish
ment was educational, and the moment that

THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

true repentance awoke retribution ceased.1 The
historical lessons it contains lift up the book
to the level of an ethical treatise, and show
that there is a righteous God ruling in the
earth. But when we turn from the book and
study the character of the men whose agency
God makes use of, we are surprised to discover
instances of terrible revenge, of treachery and
cruelty of the darkest kind. Of them all
Othniel alone is spoken of as without fault.
One of the most shocking deeds of blood
recorded is the story of Ehud slaying Eglon.
The act is one that cannot be justified at the
bar of a Christian conscience. To quote it in
defence of the assassination of tyrannical kings
is a perversion of Scripture. What gives
Ehud a claim to be called a Judge is simply
this, that, at a time when they had been for
eighteen years under the galling tyranny of
the Moabite king, he was raised up to do a
deed of daring that should give the Israelites
heart to strike again for freedom. This readi
ness to sacrifice his own life, if need be, was
inspiriting to the down -trodden people, how
ever unjustifiable the act. And it must not
be forgotten that in those days men did not
estimate this deed by our ethical standards.2
Such acts were quite common in Ehud's day,
and we must not apply to the Judges criteria
that are, in relation to them, anachronisms.

1 Cf. Speaker's Comm. on Judges.

2 Cf. Mozley, op. cit., Lecture vin.

ACTS OP THE JUDGES 301

History tells us that when the tyranny of the
Peisistratidse at Athens had become insuffer
able, two of the young men of the city did not
hesitate to assassinate Hipparchus at the
Panathenaic festival (514 B.C.). So highly
did the Athenians estimate the deed that they
built statues and decreed immortal honours to
the young heroes. Even in times much later,
and in Rome where the conception of law pre
vailed, and civilisation had reached a high pitch
of excellence, Brutus felt little compunction in
assassinating an old friend whom he had come
to regard as a menace to the commonwealth.
If in Rome in the century before Christ this
was done, we may be assured that in Ehud's
time the general standard of honour and of
regard for life was not nearly so high ; and he
must be judged on this point by the standard
of his age. Ehud partook of the defective
notions of his time. His hatred of such
tryanny was moral, though blind and dim as
to the means to be employed. The act prob
ably offended no sense of justice in Israel or in
the nations around. And it spoke to them of
a law of righteous judgment that reached even
the tyrant on the throne, though by a very
rough and ready method of justice, which by
Christian standards cannot be justified. And,
so it spoke in a language which Ehud's con
temporaries could understand.

At the same time, it would be an error to
infer that the attribution of the deliverance of

302 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Israel to God who " raised them up a Saviour"
in the person of Ehud involves the least
approval of the treacherous elements in the
deed of regicide. God overruled the act to
the fulfilment of His own ends. But the
language does not mean that He approved of
such criminal acts any more than the words,
" He strengthened Eglon, king of Moab,
against them," indicate approval of Eglon's
tyranny. The fact is, that God had either to
educate the chosen people to be " a nation of
teachers " by a constant supranatural interfer
ence with the usual methods of training, or
else He had to suffer a certain eclipsing of His
gracious character. The latter, we know, was
the method employed. Jehovah might have
lifted Israel at once to the lofty moral platform
which was reached after the Exile, by the aid
of the prophet's teaching. But he was content
to work by the slower method of a moral Pro
vidence, which is patient with evils, and makes
use of early forms of rudimentary justice,
while all the time it works steadily on to
the accomplishment of high moral ends.

The treacherous assassination of Sisera by
Jael has been the subject of much criticism,
and the entire silence of the Scriptural narra
tive as to the cruel and unwarrantable nature
of the deed has been construed into a divine
approval of Jael's conduct. Critics are apt to
forget that ancient, unlike modern, literature
seldom introduces moral reflections into the

JAEL 303

story. Many a cruel and barbarous deed is
graphically told by Homer and Virgil, down to
its most minute and gross details, without a
single exculpatory phrase. But it would be
wrong to infer that the approval of the poet
was given to every single detail related. The
fact is that Jael acted from a very inadequate
conception of the value of individual life.
But it is only fair to judge her in this respect
by the moral standard of her time.1 Deborah
sings the praises of Jael, for to her and her
contemporaries it seemed a splendid instance
of the dauntlessness of religious zeal, and did
not offend the then existing sense of justice

But let us not class Jael in this deed among
those whose acts were prompted by nothing
better than a burning lust for vengeance
against a personal enemy. She has been so
compared, to the injury of the morality of the
Old Testament. It would be more to the
purpose to liken her to Judith, who went out
of Bethulia "because she feared God greatly,"
and by her daring succeeded in bringing back
the head of Holofernes, the Assyrian general.

1 Cf. Mozley, op. cit., Lect. vn. " There can be no doubt
that the dispensation of that day completely overrode any
scruple of international law. Scripture itself challenges the
validity of the objection by the bold admission that ' there
was peace between Jabin the king of Hazor and the house
of Heber the Kenite.' An express command of God
supersedes any human arrangement. And Jael's religion is
a matter between God and her own heart, with which she
does nut mean State law to interfere. It ia an early case of
religious independence of mind." P. 144.

304 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

The words of Ozias to Judith very closely
resemble the praise bestowed by Deborah on
Jael. " 0 daughter, blessed art thou of the
Most High God : and blessed be the Lord God
which hath directed thee to the cutting off of
the head of the chief of our enemies. For this
thy confidence shall not depart from the heart
of men, which remember the power of God for
ever" (Judith xiii. 18). This lofty tribute of
respect was perfectly in accordance with the
spirit of the age, though an age much later
than that of Jael. What we must consider in
all these instances is not whether they come up
to the criterion of an educated Christian con
science, but this — Were they offences against
the conscience, in a land where the sense of
justice resembled the passion of a child, and
where the individual was never regarded as
separate from his tribe or family ? It is clear
that these acts were in accordance with the
moral instincts of Israel, and were counted
proofs of intense devotion to the nation's holy
cause. The rulers of the city being judges,
Judith's conduct was praiseworthy'; and their
judgment fairly represents the sentiment of
that age, the ruling ideal of which is referred
to by our Lord when He quotes the saying of
the old times, "Thou shalt love thy neigh
bour, and hate thine enemy" (Matt. v. 43).

There is no doubt that the story of Jael
would be often quoted by mothers to their
children as one of indomitable courage and

THE JUDGES 305

patriotic ardour. And so, for the times of
which it was a part, it wrought for righteous
ness. Jael's name was a synonym for the
championship of the cause of Israel against
their enemies, and it helped to rid the land of
those inveterate idolaters. But the true and
final justification of it is to be found in God's
great moral purpose in commanding the
destruction of the Canaanite tribes. Their
destruction was the price which had to be paid
for the value of a pure and monotheistic re
ligion. That act was right, being commanded
by God, and the justification of the whole
covers the part which Jael took in it.

When we turn to the following Judges and
read of the blood-vengeance taken by Gideon
against Zeba and Zalmunna, of the wild
revenge inflicted by Samson upon the Philis
tines, and of the indiscriminate massacre of the
offending tribe of Benjamin by their own
brethren of Israel, it is clear that the historian
is treating of a time when deeds were done
that have been well called extra-judicial, and
are opposed to the true spirit of the Old
Testament. Gideon and Samson were the
children of their times, and many superstitions
no doubt mingled with their ideas of God.
They were men at a lower stage of moral
attainment than those we find employed as
agents of Jehovah, either before or after their
day. Superstition, cruelty, and licence can
never be wellpleasing in His sight, who,
21

306 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

whether in old or new dispensation, hates
sin and loves righteousness.

But, acknowledging all this, we must not
forget in what times these men lived. When

O

we remember that in Christian England, only
three centuries ago, leaders of religion in this
country — men of undoubted zeal for God, as
they conceived of Him and His kingdom —
could burn their fellow-Christians at the stake,
or drown them in the rushing flood, or torture
them with thumbscrews for the good of their
souls — when we remember these things, and
see how the accepted standards of those times
are now rejected by the twentieth century,
we may get help in understanding at how
low a stage God had to commence the
moral education of a people like Israel. The
moral defects of those Judges are not to be
charged upon the teaching of Revelation at
the time. The children of Israel fell fearfully
away from the law of God, as revealed through
Moses. Terrible degeneracies of morals
followed their settlement in Palestine. And
it was during this time of reaction that the
Judges were raised up to deliver the people.
They served God, in so far as they delivered
His people from the oppression of cruel
tyrants ; and they must be judged by the
standards of their own time. In adopting
this line of judgment we follow the example
of Jesus Christ, who affirmed that because of
the hardness of Israel's heart many things

THE JUDGES 307

were permitted which "from the beginning
were not so" (Matt. xix. 8). Though these
men partook of the shortcomings of their day,
yet their courage and hardihood were needed ;
and we recognise their virtues, while we guard
against any condonation of their vices. In the
day of its greatest peril, Israel was preserved
by them from utter extinction. The national
foundations were laid of rough and unhewn
stones ; and we may allow the uncouth blocks
in the foundation, which we should not like
to see in the perfect finish of the super
structure.

Besides, in making a just and fair estimate
of the morality of such agents, we must
observe that the endurance of some evils was
accompanied by remedial measures for their
final eradication. If there was patience on
God's part, there was also severity. Jeph-
thah's terrible loss was an object-lesson, ever
afterwards warning men against rash vows.
Samson's sin found him out ; and Delilah has
ever since been a name to point this moral, and
emphasise the ethical law of nexus betwixt
evil and its necessary punishment. Even his
rough witticisms, not less than his individual
prowess, helped to prepare the nation for
throwing off the bondage of Philistia by
keeping them in a spirit of hopeful buoyancy.
As Ewald says : " The nation felt unsubdued in
mind and body, while its sons could flow out
in such health and vivacity." To drive away

308 THE ETHICS OP THE OLD TESTAMENT

despondency and give heart to a downtrodden
people was no small benefit. And at the end
of his sad life, Samson, blind and crushed,
turned to God for the help that never is
sought in vain, and by an act of splendid self-
sacrifice sought to make what atonement he
could for the one rash deed that blighted his
manhood. In the lifelong struggle between
the flesh and the spirit, the spirit ultimately
won the victory. We may believe that, just
as Israel's perception of their duty as execu
tioners of the sentence pronounced by God
upon the Canaanites, preserved them from the
brutalising effects that the invasion of the land
might have had upon them, these brave men
of a later time were also purified by the
service to which they were called ; and the
divine patience that endured these vices did
not fail to work for their final eradication.

Besides difficulties arising from the character
of those employed as agents, difficulties of a
cognate character have arisen regarding some
personal characteristics of Old Testament
saints in general. A spirit of narrowness
and hatred is exhibited by them, especially in
some of the compositions of psalmists, that are
believed to belong to the post-exilic period.
One cannot fail to perceive that the spirit of
loving forgiveness, so characteristic of the
New Testament, had. not yet in all its fulness
taken possession of the writers of these
psalms. There can be little doubt that the

DEFECTS IN OLD TESTAMENT SAINTS 309

operation of the law of retaliation, demanding
eye for eye and tooth for tooth, tended to
engender this spirit of vindictiveness. The
criminal code in Lev. xxiv. fully recognises
the principle of equivalent retaliation ; and in
the later recension of it in Deuteronomy the
principle is extended. This law, however,
was not one of private revenge, but of public
justice, and it demanded the quid pro quo
solely in vindication of the law, and not for
the advantage of the prosecutor.

Let us honestly acknowledge that Old
Testament saints exhibit not a little of this
spirit of vengeance. It jars upon our better
feelings in many a beautiful psalm, and it has
made many ask the question whether such
songs should be embraced in the portions of
the psalter sung in the Christian Church.
We shall not enter upon the thorny subject of
the imprecatory psalms further than to say
that it is only upon such enemies as exhibit
downright wickedness that the psalmists ask
God's vengeance, and that in every case the
motive seems to spring from a sense of duty
and desire for God's honour. These sacred
odes are not the outcome of private passion,
but the psalmist identifies himself with God,
and believes that God's majesty and glory are
bound up with the overwhelming of His foes.

Yet when all these considerations have been
taken into account, we have to admit that this
fiery hatred towards enemies could find no

310 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

place in a code of Christian ethics. " They
express a stage of feeling far beneath the
Christian, and the attempt to slur over the
contrast is in danger of hiding the glory of
midday, for fear of not doing justice to the
beauty of morning twilight." l It was im
possible to live under the pedagogic training
of the Law without receiving some of its
harshness into one's blood ; but it was the
only possible way by which in those times
God could train men to be heroes and saints.
Yet the desire for revenge upon enemies was
but one of the accompaniments of the system
under which they lived, and did not belong to
its true end. The difference between the two
Testaments lies in this, that the saint of the
Old would extinguish the idolater ; the saint
of the New would destroy the idolatry.
How difficult it was to eradicate the old
vindictive spirit is shown in the desire
expressed by the apostle of love himself,
that Christ should call down fire from heaven
and annihilate those that opposed His mission.
The faults of the Old Testament saints, as
Herder says, were the faults of the pupil, not
of the teacher. They were the inevitable
accompaniments of a partial and progressive
revelation.

In this connection also, it must not be
forgotten that the doctrine of immortality
was only then a germinant hope, and that in

1 Dr. A. Maclaren, Book of Psalms, i. p. 336.

DEFECTS IN MOSAIC LAWS 311

the mind of these psalmists divine retribution
was mainly confined to the present life.1 To
them it seemed that unless justice inflicted an
adequate sentence upon the wicked now and
here, wickedness would entirely escape its
proper punishment. The narrower outlook of
the psalmist made him more eager to execute
vengeance speedily. The wider horizons of
Christianity, comprehending the next life as
well as the present, afford far more scope for
the exercise of both the love and the justice
of God.

The effect of the legal discipline of the Old
Testament is also manifest in a certain spirit
of eudaemonism, which seems to make earthly
prosperity the true object of life. We have
already pointed out in Chapter XII. how
the Wisdom Literature represents riches and
honour as the sure reward of righteousness,
and how to the wise man shall assuredly come
quietness and security in his possessions.
One cannot fail to observe the outwardness
of all this, as contrasted with the extreme
subjectivity of the beatitudes of Jesus
Christ.

At the same time, it is fully recognised
that there can be no earthly prosperity apart
from communion with God. Earthly goods
are the pledges of His friendship, apart from
whom they cannot bring happiness. Thus
all earthly goods bear to the righteous man

1 Of. Salmond, Christian Doctrine of Immortality, p. 213 ff.

312 THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

a spiritual character, and honour and wealth
are never to be counted as the end of life.
They are to be sought and received only as
pledges of His love, who has joined together
righteousness and its rewards by as close a
nexus as that which unites cause and effect.1

We shall now consider the third class of
difficulties arising from apparent defects in
some of the Mosaic laws. Having discussed
the character of these laws generally in
previous chapters, we here refer to them only
in so far as they have been challenged as
belonging to a stage of imperfect morality.
Some of them, such as the law of the Goel,
were doubtless old legal customs incorporated
into the criminal law of Israel because of
their fitness to the, existing communal and
national conditions. The age was a period of
war and violence, when the people were
fighting their way into the promised inherit
ance. Pastoral life and primitive wants
furnish the explanation of laws which other
wise could not be historically accounted for.
They were simply a survival of archaic justice ;
and, being suitable to the time and the needs
of the nation, a wise providence made use of
them as educational helps to the moral train
ing of Israel.

The law of the Goel belonged to a time

1 PBS. i., xli., Iviii., cxix. Of. Horton on Proverbs, chap. iii.
(Expositor's Bible).

DEFECTS IN MOSAIC LAWS 313

when the rights and the perpetuity of the
family were more thought of than the rights
of the individual. In the absence of an
impartial civil justice, protecting life and
property, it was absolutely necessary that the
cause of the murdered man should be taken
up by his relatives. Such laws were to be
found a century ago amongst nomadic tribes,
living apart from any established political
government. It was one of those pioneer
laws necessary for such a time of social
disorder as that of Israel's entrance into
Canaan. The law afforded protection in the
city of refuge only for the man who by
accident killed his neighbour. As Canon
Mozley says, it served as a basis and com
mencement of a regular civil justice, since it
roused the relatives of the deceased from their
natural lethargy and unwillingness to investi
gate fully the circumstances of the homicide.1
No doubt this law was but a blind way of
groping after impartial justice ; but it was
quite in accordance with the ideas of righteous
vengeance, which then had possession of
men's minds, and it was the best that could
be adopted at that rudimentary stage of the
nation's career. An imperfect conception of
justice lay at the root of it ; but if the con
ception was not highly moral, still it cannot
be charged with immorality. It was simply
a case of justice struggling through adverse

1 Ruling Ideas in Early Ages, Lecture ix.

314 THE ETHICS OP THE OLD TESTAMENT

circumstances to reach a moral end — an end
which ultimately was attained when Israel
became a kingdom under the Davidic line.

In the early stages of Old Testament
history, captives taken in war were frequently
reduced to a state of slavery. Such bondage
was a denial of the first principles of the
rights of man, as laid down in the Book of
Genesis, where men are represented as being
of one blood, and slavery is spoken of as a
curse. Yet slaves are mentioned in connection
with Abraham's household, and the Mosaic
Law makes provisions regarding their treat
ment. It took care that the service should
be of a kind as little hurtful to the slave as
possible. By restrictions of the most humane
nature it protected him from all arbitrary or
cruel oppression. His rights as a fellow-
worshipper were recognised, and provision
was made for his introduction into the
covenant of Israel. Such as were Israelites by
birth might become bondmen only through
poverty, or by sentence passed upon them for
the crime of theft. But, as we have before
pointed out, the time of servitude could last
only six years, and the seventh year brought
freedom. In the course of time the organisa
tion of society in the Old Testament was so
perfected that slavery seems to have all but
ceased. In the age of the prophets the sense
of man's individual rights * was much more

1 Cf. Ottley, Aspects of the Old Testament, p. 91.

CONCLUDING REMARKS 315

keeuly realised, and this detestable institution,
common to all surrounding nations, ceased to
exist in the land of Israel. Slowly but surely
the legislation of the Old Testament wrought
for liberty and equality. And in our judgment
of a progressive revelation we must estimate
its morality, not by its starting-point, but by
its conclusion.

In the foregoing pages we have sought to
apply to the ethics of the Old Testament only
such tests as are historically applicable. Any
judgment formed upon different criteria must
be worthless. And our whole discussion may
now be summed up in the conclusion that one
grand moral purpose has ever presided over
its development. That purpose we have
traced in Mosaic legislation, in prophetic
inculcation of justice and righteousness, in
the wise man's enforcement of prudence and
the fear of God. The divineness of the course
is apparent in its results. Other nations
ended as they began ; but throughout Israel's
history there was a dynamic energy con
structively working for a purer morality.
And its most conspicuous triumph is to be
seen in the heroic courage and moral fervour
of its saints and seers, which led them to
contend against every wrong, to denounce
vice and thwart tyranny, and expose the
falsities and hypocrisies that satisfied the
somnolent shepherds of their day. It is their
fervid passion for righteousness, their splendid

316 THE ETHICS OP THE OLD TESTAMENT

courage of conviction, their inextinguishable
spirit of hope amid direst calamity, their
grand visions of a coming kingdom of God,
in which every wrong shall be righted, and
all shall know God from the least to the
greatest, that form the wealth of ethical
teaching which is the glory of the Old
Testament.

Recognising as we have done its limitations
and restrictions, we cannot fail to perceive
that Hebrew ethics rises far above the
standards of its age, and presents a direct
contrast to pagan morality. It looks evil in
the face, and vigorously combats it ; it knows
sin, and speaks in plainest language of its soul-
destroying power; it draws a clear line of
division between the righteous and the wicked,
says to the one it shall be well with him, and
to the other it shall be ill with him. Instead
of lingering in the sphere of the ideal, its
antagonism to wickedness is fundamental
and strenuous. Leaving no room for com
promise, it calls evil evil and good good, and
loudly utters its categoric imperatives, " Thou
shalt," " Thou shalt not." Up to the extent
of its revealed truth, and the possibilities of
its stage of knowledge, it wrought earnestly
for righteousness ; and it left a heritage of
moral truth that has entered fruitfully into
the morality and the legislative codes of every
civilised nation, and has enriched the life of
the Christian Church. Looked at in the light

CONCLUDING REMARKS 317

of its end, it is seen to be a worthy product of
Him from whom it came. Such portions as
were but educational and preparatory fell
away when the Fulfiller appeared. But its
central elements all abide in Christian ethics.
And every broken light of truth that shone
through decalogue or vision, through proverb
or psalm, has been gathered up and made
vital by Jesus Christ. He has drawn forth to
light the far-reaching principles that underlay
the ancient forms, has shown us where their
true ethical value lies, and has summed them
all up in the law of love to God and to our
neighbour.

INDEX

Abraham, 38.
Adaptations, 273.
Advance in O.T. Ethics, 240.
Amos, 210, 245, 246.
Animals, 196.

Anthropomorphisms, 47, 291.
Aristotle, 15, 199, 204.
Arnold, Dr., 289.
Asmonean Period, 269.
Assyriology, 133.
Augustine, 3.

Blackstone, 166.

Bruce, Prof. A. B., 3, 6, 10,

11, 26, 30, 40, 189, 295,

297, 282.

Bruce, W. S., 165.
Brugsch, 163.
Budge, 229.

Caird, Ed., 281.
Caird, Principal, 69.
Calumny, 176.
Calvin, 131.
Canaanites, 285.
Celibacy, 159.
Chadwick, Dean, 119.
Cheyne, 239, 247, 259.
Children, 214.
Collectivism, 211.
Concubines, 217.
Covenant, The, 82, 85.
Covetousness, 179, 184*
Cuneiform Tablets, 100.

Dale, R. W., 123.
Dal man, 12.

Daniel, Book of, 250.
Darmesteter, 8, 86, 253.
Davidson, A. B., 72, 77, 114,

238 257

Davidson, W. L., 18, 43, 85.
Davis, 229.

Day of Atonement, 1 29.
Debtors, 193, 201.
Decalogue, 89, 95, 123, 155,

179, 187.

Delitzsch, F., 45, 101, 259.
Deuteronomy, 185.
Divorce, 157, 161.
Dollinger, 135.
Dorner, 31, 171.
Driver, Prof., 57, 105, 249,

255.

Druses, 173.
Duty, Code of, 74.

Ecclesiastes, 267.
Egypt's Religion, 81, 229.
Ehud, 300.
Election, 64.
Ethics, Pagan, 18.
Ewald, 12, 65, 225, 247.
Exile, The, 79, 141.
Ezekiel, 249, 250.

Fairbairn, Principal, 95.
Falsehood, 171.
Flint, Prof., 3, 232.
Froude, 255.
Future Life, 228.

Genesis, 20, 36, 45.
Girdlestone, 294.

318

INDEX

319

Goel, 151, 153.
Graf-Wellhausen School, 21,

33.

Greeks, 58.
Green, T. H., 166.

Hastings' Diet, of Bible, 40, 54,

101, 105, 161.
Hebrews, Epistle to, 10.
Hengstenberg, 142.
Herodotus, 155.
Herzog, 204, 293.
Higher Critics, 3.
Highest Good, 23, 24.
Holiness, 107.
Horton, Dr., 312.
Hunter, P. H., 261.

Images, 118.

Immortality, 229, 231, 237.
Individualism, 24, 146.
Irenseus, 96.

Jael, 303.

James, St., 183.

Jehovah, Character of, 43, 45,

48, 54, 70, 107, 121, 280,

286, 288.
Jeremiah, 247.
Job, Book of, 25.
Jones, Prof., 281.
Josephus, 63, 103, 157.
Jubilee Year, 192, 203.
Judges, 299, 305, 308.
Jukes, 17.

Kant, 166, 171, 233.
Kautzsch, 20.
Keil, 52, 163.
Kirkpatrick, Prof., 17.
Kbhler, 7.
Konig, 3, 59.
Kuenen, 34, 35, 36, 44.

Ladd, 16.

Law, The, 61, 80.

Layard, 155.
Legalism, 87.
Leprosy, 267.
Levirate Marriage, 160.
Levites, 201.
Levitical Code, 39.
Limitations of O.T., 213.
Luthardt, 50, 88.
Lux Mundi, 7, 37.

Mackie, Dr. A., 219.

Maclaren, Dr. A., 310.

Maine, 137.

Malice, 149.

Marriage, 156, 161.

Martensen, 71.

Maapero, 229.

Matron, The Virtuous, 216.

Meinhold, 133.

Memphis, 117.

Messianic Prophecy, 23, 203.

253

Milligan, Prof., 117.
Moabite Stone, 221.
Moloch Cultus, 222.
Molten Sea, 115.
Monotheism, 36, 40.
Montefiore, 29, 61.
Moral Difficulties, 272-318.
Mosaism, 81, 149, 151.
Mozley, 69, 91, 121, 242,

300,' 303.

Names of Jehovah, 46, 48,

54, 129, 130.
Nature in O.T., 191.
Naville, 230.
Nehemiah, 263.
New Testament Relations to

O.T., 279.

Oaths, 175.

Oehler, O.T. Theology, 12, 5?,

98, 163, 243.
Oettli, 3.
Orientalisms, 295.

320

INDEX

Orr, Prof., 26, 36.
Ottley, 6, 25, 27, 30, 40, 55,
67, 98, 277, 314.

Paganism, 17.

Paley, 166.

Parents, 144.

Particularism, 281.

Passover, 65.

Paterson, Prof. W. P., 101.

Paul, St., 147, 164, 180.

Pentateuch, 97, 245.

Perjury, 128.

Persian Period, 257, 266.

Pfleiderer, 263.

Philo, 103, 159.

Pirke Aboth, 267.

Plato, 16.

Polygamy, 157, 168.

Poverty, 201, 210.

Pressense, 271.

Priestly Code, 262.

Principles, Fundamental, 18.

Progressive Ethics, 67, 241,

277.
Prophets, The, 22, 92, 224,

259.

Prostitution, 157.
Proudhon, 169.
Proverbs, Book of, 256,

259.
Psalms, Book of, 28, 76, 84,

86, 237.
Purification Laws, 267.

Eabiger, iO.

Records of the Past, 133.
Renouf, 230.
Retribution, 235.
Revelation, Method of, 7.
Riehm, 17, 18, 27, 71, 113.
Righteousness, 75.

Robertson, Prof., 17, 59, 99.
Rothe, 26.
Ryle, H. E., 261.

Saalschutz, 155, 192.

Sabbath, 134.

Sabbatic Year, 194, 263.

Sacrifice, 227.

Salmond, Principal, 232, 234,

273, 311.

Sanitary Laws, 204.
Sayce, 100, 221, 294.
Schultz, 4, 10, 60, 86, 97,

121, 156, 178, 213.
Schurer, 271.
Scribes, 263.
Semites, 153.
Sheol, 229.
Slander, 177.
Slavery, 200.

Smith, W. R., 16, 55, 156.
Smyth, N., 71, 112.
Socialism, 169.
Stade, 36, 156.
Starke, 161.

Tables of Law, 103, 108.
Tacitus, 159.
Talmud, 264.
Taylor, C., 186.
Thebes, 117.
Theology, O.T., 67.
Triple Tradition, 39.

Wars of Extermination, 287.
Wellhausen, 29, 33, 57, 66,

105, 110, 270.
Wendt, 175.
Wisdom Literature, 21, 28,

163, 218, 254-260.
Woman in O.T., 214, 217.
Worship, 220.

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.EGE