IADINUS (1 Es 9:48) = Jamin of Neh 8:7.
IBHAR.—One of David’s sons, born at Jerusalem (2 S 5:15, 1 Ch 3:6, 14:5).
IBLEAM.—A town belonging to West Manasseh (Jos 17:11, Jg 1:27). It is mentioned also in 2 K 9:27 in connexion with the death of king Ahaziah, who fled by the way of Beth-haggan and ‘the ascent of Gur, which is by Ibleam.’ The Biblical data seem to be well satisfied by the modern ruin Bel‘ ame, some 13 miles E. of N. of Samaria, more than half-way to Jezreel.
In 2 K 15:10 (AV and RV) ‘before the people’ should certainly be emended to ‘in Ibleam.’ Gathrimmon of Jos 21:25 is a scribal error for Ibleam. It is the same place that is called Bileam in 1 Ch 6:70.
IBNEIAH.—A Benjamite (1 Ch 9:8).
IBNIJAH.—A Benjamite (1 Ch 9:8).
IBRI.—A Merarite Levite (1 Ch 24:27).
IBSAM.—A descendant of Issachar (1 Ch 7:2).
IBZAN.—One of the minor judges, following Jephthah (Jg 12:8–10). He came from
Bethlehem, probably the Bethlehem in Zebulun (Jos 19:15), 7 miles N.W. of Nazareth. He had 30 sons and 30 daughters—an evidence of his social importance—and arranged their marriages. He judged Israel 7 years, and was buried at Bethlehem. According to Jewish tradition, Ibzan was the same as Boaz.
ICHABOD.—Son of Phinehas and grandson of Eli. The name means ‘inglorious,’ but probably should be ‘Jahweh is glory,’ from an original Jochebed. If this guess be well founded, then the turn given to the story in 1 S 4:21 is due to a desire to mould it on the story of the birth of Benjamin in Gn 35:18.
W. F. COBB.
ICONIUM, now called Konia, is an ancient city of continuous importance from early times to the present day. Situated at the western edge of the vast central plain of Asia Minor, and well watered, it has always been a busy place. It is surrounded by beautiful orchards, which cover the meanness of its modern buildings. About the beginning of the Christian era it was on the border of the two ethnic districts, Lycaonia and Phrygia. It was in reality the easternmost city of Phrygia, and the inhabitants considered themselves Phrygians, but ancient writers commonly speak of it as a city of Lycaonia (wh. see), the fate of which it generally shared. In the 3rd cent. B.C. it was ruled by the Seleucids, and about B.C. 164, probably, it passed under the power of the Galatæ (Asiatic Celts). It was the property of the Pontic kings from about 130, was set free during the Mithridatic wars, and in B.C. 39 was given by Mark Antony to Polemon, king of Cilicia Tracheia. In B.C. 36 Antony gave it to Amyntas, who was at that time made king of Galatia (wh. see). On his death in B.C. 25 the whole of his kingdom became the Roman province of Galatia. Iconium could thus be spoken of as
Lycaonian, Phrygian, or Galatic, according to the speaker’s point of view. In the time of the
Emperor Claudius, it, along with Derbe, received the honorary prefix Claudio-, becoming
Claudiconium (compare our Royal Burghs), but it was not till Hadrian’s time (A.D. 117–138) that it became a Roman colony (wh. see). Its after history may be omitted. It was eighteen miles distant from Lystra, and a direct route passed between them.
The gospel was brought to Iconium by Paul and Barnabas, who visited it twice on the first missionary journey (Ac 13:51, 14:21). The presence of Jews there is confirmed by the evidence of inscriptions. According to the view now generally accepted by English-speaking scholars, it is comprehended in the ‘Phrygo-Galatic region’ of Ac 16:6 and the ‘Galatic region and Phrygia’ of Ac 18:23. It was thus visited four times in all by St. Paul, who addressed it among other cities in his Epistle to the Galatians. During the absence of Paul it had been visited by Judaizers, who pretended that Paul was a mere messenger of the earlier Apostles, and contended that the Jewish ceremonial law was binding on the Christian converts. Paul’s Epistle appears to have been successful, and the Galatians afterwards contributed to the collection for the poor Christians of Jerusalem. The alternative view is that Iconium is not really included in the Acts narrative after 16:2ff., as the words quoted above from Ac 16:6 and 18:23 refer to a different district to the far north of Iconium, and that the Epistle to the Galatians, being addressed to that northern district, had no connexion with Iconium. In any case, Iconium is one of the places included in the (province) Galatia which is addressed in First Peter (about A.D. 80 probably), and the large number of Christian inscriptions which have been found there reveal the existence of a vigorous Christian life in the third and following centuries.
A. SOUTER.
IDALAH.—A town of Zebulun (Jos 19:15).
IDBASH.—One of the sons of the father of Etam (1 Ch 4:3).
IDDO.—1. Ezr 8:17 (1 Es 8:45f. Loddeus) the chief at Casiphia, who provided Ezra with
Levites and Nethinim. 2. 1 Ch 27:21 son of Zechariah, captain of the half tribe of Manasseh in Gilead, perh. = No. 4. 3. Ezr 10:43 (1 Es 9:35 Edos) one of those who had taken ‘strange’ wives. 4. 1 K 4:14 father of Abinadab, who was Solomon’s commissariat officer in Mahanaim in Gilead (see
No. 2). 5. 1 Ch 6:21 a Gershonite Levite called Adaiah in v. 41. 6. A seer and prophet cited by the
Chronicler as an authority for the reigns of Solomon (2 Ch 9:29), Rehoboam (2 Ch 12:15), Abijah (2 Ch 13:22). 7. Zec 1:1, 7, Ezr 5:1, 6:14 (1 Es 6:1 Addo) grandfather (father acc. to Ezr.) of the prophet Zechariah; possibly of the same family as No. 2. 8. Neh 12:4, 16 one of the priestly clans that went up with Zerubbabel.
IDOLATRY.—Hebrew religion is represented as beginning with Abraham, who forsook the idolatry, as well as the home, of his ancestors (Gn 12:1, Jos 24:2); but it was specially through the influence of Moses that Jehovah was recognized as Israel’s God. The whole subsequent history up to the Exile is marked by frequent lapses into idolatry. We should therefore consider (1) the causes of Hebrew idolatry, (2) its nature, (3) the opposition it evoked, and (4) the teaching of NT. The subject is not free from difficulty, but in the light of modern Biblical study, the main outlines are clear.
1. Causes of Hebrew idolatry.—(1) When, after the Exodus, the Israelites settled in Canaan among idolatrous peoples, they were far from having a pure monotheism (cf. Jg 11:24). Their faith was crude. (a) Thus the idea that their neighbours’ gods had real existence, with rights of proprietorship in the invaded land, would expose them to risk of contamination. This would be the more likely because as yet they were not a united people. The tribes had at first to act independently, and in some cases were unable to dislodge the Canaanites (Jg 1). (b) Their environment was thus perilous, and the danger was intensified by intermarriage with idolaters. Particularly after the monarchy was established did this become a snare. Solomon and Ahab by their marriage alliances introduced and promoted idol cults. It is significant that post-exilic legislation had this danger in view, and secured that exclusiveness so characteristic of mature Judaism (Ezr 10:2f.). (c) The political relations with the great world-powers, Egypt and Assyria, would also tend to influence religious thought. This might account for the great heathen reaction under Manasseh.
(2) But, specially, certain ideas characteristic of Semitic religion generally had a strong influence. (a) Thus, on Israel’s settling in Canaan, the existing shrines, whether natural (hills, trees, wells—each understood to have its own tutelary baal or lord) or artificial (altars, stone pillars, wooden poles), would be quite innocently used for the worship of J″. (b) Idols, too, were used in domestic worship (Jg 17:5; cf. Gn 31:19, 1 S 19:13). (c) A darker feature, inimical to Jehovism, was the sanction of sexual impurity, cruelty and lust for blood (see below, § 2 (1)).
Here then was all the apparatus for either the inappropriate worship of the true God, or the appropriate worship of false gods. That was why, later on in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C., when the earlier Jehovism was changing into typical Judaism, all such apparatus was felt to be wrong, and was attacked with increasing violence by prophets and reformers, as their conception of God became more clear and spiritual.
2. Its nature.—(1) Common to all Canaanite religions, apparently, was the worship of Baal as representing the male principle in nature. Each nation, however, had its own provincial Baal with a specific name or title—Chemosh of Moab, Molech of Ammon, Dagon of Philistia, Hadad-Rimmon of Syria. Associated with Baalism was the worship of Ashtoreth (Astarte), representing the female principle in nature. Two features of these religions were prostitution [of both sexes] (cf. Nu 25:1f., Dt 23:17f., 1 K 14:24, Hos 4:13, Am 2:7, Bar 6:43) and human sacrifice (cf. 2 K 17:17, Jer 7:31, and art. TOPHETH). Baalism was the chief Israelite idolatry, and sometimes, e.g. under Jezebel, it quite displaced Jehovism as the established religion.
(2) The underlying principle of all such religion was nature-worship. This helps to explain the calf-worship, represented as first introduced by Aaron, and at a later period established by Jeroboam I. In Egypt—which also exercised a sinister influence on the Hebrews—religion was largely of this type; but living animals, and not merely images of them, were there venerated. Connected with this idolatry is totemism, so widely traced even to-day. Some find a survival of early Semitic totemism in Ezk 8:10.
(3) Another form of Hebrew nature-worship, astrolatry, was apparently of foreign extraction, and not earlier than the seventh cent. B.C. There is a striking allusion to this idolatry in Job 31:26– 28. There were sun-images (2 Ch 34:4), horses and chariots dedicated to the sun (2 K 23:11); an eastward position was adopted in sun-worship (Ezk 8:16). The expression ‘queen of heaven’ in Jer 7:18, 44:19 is obscure; but it probably points to this class of idolatry. In the heathen reaction under Manasseh the worship of the ‘host of heaven’ is prominent (2 K 17:16). Gad and Meni (Is 65:11) were possibly star-gods. Related to such nature-worship perhaps was the mourning for Tammuz [Adonis] (Ezk 8:14, Is 17:10 RVm). Nature-worship of all kinds is by implication rebuked with amazing force and dignity in Gn 1, where the word GOD as Creator is written ‘in big letters over the face of creation.’ Stars and animals and all things, it is insisted, are created things, not creators, and not self-existent.
(4) There are no clear traces of ancestor-worship in OT, but some find them in the teraphim (household gods) and in the reverence for tombs (e.g. Machpelah); in Is 65:4 the context suggests idolatry.
(5) A curious mixture of idolatry and Jehovism existed in Samaria after the destruction of the Northern Kingdom. The foreign colonists brought with them the worship of various deities, and added that of J″ (2 K 17:24–41). These gods cannot be identified with certainty. By this mixed race and religion the Jews of the Return were seriously hindered, and there resulted the Samaritan schism which, in an attenuated form, still exists.
3. Opposition to idolatry.—While fully allowing for the facts alluded to in § 1, it is impossible to account—not for mere temporary lapses, but—for the marked persistence of idolatry among the Hebrews, unless we recognize the growth which characterizes their laws and polity from the simple beginning up to the finished product. Laws do but express the highest sense of the community— however deeply that sense may be quickened by Divine revelation—whether those laws are viewed from the ethical or from the utilitarian standpoint. If the legislation embodied in the Pentateuch had all along been an acknowledged, even though a neglected, code, such a complete neglect of it during long periods, taken with the total silence about its distinctive features in the sayings and writings of the most enlightened and devoted men, would present phenomena quite inexplicable. It is needful, therefore, to observe that the true development from original Mosaism, though perhaps never quite neglected by the leaders of the nation, does not appear distinctly in any legislation until the closing decades of the 7th cent. B.C. This development continued through and beyond the Exile. Until the Deuteronomic epoch began, the enactments of Mosaism in regard to idolatry were clearly of the slenderest proportions. There is good reason for thinking that the Second of the Ten
Commandments is not in its earliest form; and it is probable that Ex 34:10–28 (from the document
J, i.e. c. B.C. 850) contains an earlier Decalogue, embodying such traditional Mosaic legislation as actually permitted the use of simple images (distinct from molten cultus-idols, Ex 34:17). Such development accounts for the phenomena presented by the history of idolatry in Israel. For example, Samuel sacrifices in one of those ‘high places’ (1 S 9:12ff.) which Hezekiah removed as idolatrous (2 K 18:4). Elijah, the stern foe of Baalism, does not denounce the calf-worship attacked later on by Hosea. Even Isaiah can anticipate the erection in Egypt of a pillar (Is 19:19) like those which Josiah in the next century destroyed (2 K 23:14). As with reforming prophets, so with reforming kings. Jehu in Israel extirpates Baalism, but leaves the calf-worship alone (2 K 10:28f.). In Judah, where heathenism went to greater lengths, but where wholesome reaction was equally strong, Asa, an iconoclastic reformer, tolerates ‘high places’ (1 K 15:12–14; cf. Jehoshaphat’s attitude, 1 K 22:43). It was the work of the 8th cent. prophets that prepared the way for the remarkable reformation under Josiah (2 K 22, 23). Josiah’s reign was epoch-making in everything connected with Hebrew religious thought and practice. To this period must be assigned that
Deuteronomic legislation which completed the earlier attempts at reformation. This legislation aims at the complete destruction of everything suggestive of idolatry. A code, otherwise humane, is on this point extremely severe: idolatry was punishable by death (Dt 17:2–7; cf. 6:15, 8:19, 13:6–10 etc.). Such a view of idolatry exhibits in its correct perspective the teaching of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the elaborate Levitical enactments, the exilic and post-exilic literature. Distinctive Judaism has succeeded to Jehovism, monotheism has replaced henotheism, racial and religious exclusiveness has supplanted the earlier eclecticism. The Exile marks practically the end of Hebrew idolatry. The lesson has been learned by heart.
A striking proof of the great change is given by the Maccabæan war, caused by the attempt of Antiochus Epiphanes to force idolatry on the very nation which in an earlier period had been only too prone to accept it. Relations with Rome in the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D. illustrate the same temper. Had not Caligula’s death so soon followed his insane proposal to erect his statue in the Temple, the Jews would assuredly have offered the most determined resistance; a century later they did actively resist Rome when Hadrian desecrated the site of the ruined Temple.
4. Teaching of the NT.—As idolatry was thus nonexistent in Judaism in the time of Christ, it is not surprising that He does not allude to it. St. Paul, however, came into direct conflict with it. The word itself (eidōlolatreia) occurs first in his writings; we have his illuminating teaching on the subject in Ro 1:18–32, Ac 17:22–31, 1 Co 8 etc. But idolatry in Christian doctrine has a wider significance than the service of material idols. Anything that interferes between the soul and its God is idolatrous, and is to be shunned (cf. Eph 5:5, Ph 3:19, 1 Jn 5:20f., and the context of Gal 5:20 etc.). See also art. IMAGES.
H. F. B. COMPSTON.
IDUEL (1 Es 8:43) = Ezr 8:16 Ariel. The form is due to confusion of Heb. l and r.
IDUMÆA.—The Greek equivalent (in RV only in Mk 3:8) of the name Edom, originally the territory east of the Jordan-Arabah valley and south of the land of Moab. This country was inhabited, when we first catch a glimpse of it, by a primitive race known as Horites, of whom little but the name is known. The apparent meaning of the name (‘cave-dwellers’) and comparison with the remains of what seems to have been an analogous race discovered in the excavations at Gezer, shew that this race was at a low stage of civilization. They were partly destroyed, partly absorbed, by the Bedouin tribes who claimed descent through Esau from Abraham, and who were acknowledged by the Israelites as late as the date of the Deuteronomic codes as brethren (Dt 23:7). They were governed by sheiks (EV ‘dukes,’ a lit. tr. of the Lat. dux), and by a non-hereditary monarchy whose records belonged to a period anterior to the time of Saul (Gn 36:31–39, 1 Ch
1:43–54). See EDOM.
After the fall of Babylon the pressure of the desert Arabs forced the Edomites across the JordanArabah valley, and the people and name were extended westward. In 1 Mac 5:65 we find Hebron included in Idumæa. Josephus, with whom Jerome agrees, makes Idumæa extend from Beit Jihrin to Petra; Jerome assigns the great caves at the former place to the troglodyte Horites. The Herod family was by origin Idumæan in this extended sense. In the 2nd cent. A.D. the geographer Ptolemy restricts Idumæa to the cis-Jordanic area, and includes the original trans-Jordanic Edom in Arabia. R. A. S. MACALISTER.
IEDDIAS (1 Es 9:26).—One of those who agreed to put away their ‘strange’ wives, called Izziah in Ezr 10:25.
IEZER, IEZERITES (Nu 26:30).—Contracted from Abiezer, Abiezerites. See ABIEZER.
IGAL.—1. The spy representing the tribe of Issachar (Nu 13:7). 2. One of David’s heroes, the son of Nathan of Zohah (2 S 23:36). In the parallel list (1 Ch 11:38) the name is given as ‘Joel, the brother of Nathan.’ 3. Son of Shemaiah of the royal house of David (1 Ch 3:22).
IGDALIAH.—A ‘man of God,’ father of Hanan, whose name is mentioned in connexion with Jeremiah’s interview with the Rechabites (Jer 35:4).
IGNORANCE.—It appears to be in accordance with natural justice that ignorance should be regarded as modifying moral responsibility, and this is fully recognized in the Scriptures. In the OT, indeed, the knowledge of God is often spoken of as equivalent to true religion (see KNOWLEDGE), and therefore ignorance is regarded as its opposite (1 S 2:12, Hos 4:1, 6:6). But the Levitical law recognizes sins of ignorance as needing some expiation, but with a minor degree of guilt (Lv 4, Nu 15:22–32). So ‘ignorances’ are spoken of in 1 Es 8:75 (RV ‘errors’), To 3:3, Sir 23:2f. as partly involuntary (cf. He 5:2, 9:7). The whole of the OT, however, is the history of a process of gradual moral and spiritual enlightenment, so that actions which are regarded as pardonable, or even praiseworthy, at one period, become inexcusable in a more advanced state of knowledge. In the NT the difference between the ‘times of ignorance’ and the light of Christianity is recognized in Ac 17:30 (cf. 1 Ti 1:13, 1 P 1:14), and ignorance is spoken of as modifying responsibility in Ac 3:17, 1 Co 2:8, Lk 23:34. This last passage, especially, suggests that sin is pardonable because it contains an element of ignorance, while Mk 3:29 appears to contemplate the possibility of an absolutely wilful choice of evil with full knowledge of what it is, which will be unpardonable (cf. 1 Jn 5:16). Immoral and guilty ignorance is also spoken of in Ro 1:18ff., Eph 4:18. For the question whether Christ in His human nature could be ignorant, see KENOSIS, KNOWLEDGE.
J. H. MAUDE. IIM.—A city of Judah (Jos 15:29); site unknown. See IYIM, 2.
IJON.—A town in the north part of the mountains of Naphtali, noticed in 1 K 15:20 (= 2 Ch 16:4) as taken by Benhadad. It was also captured and depopulated by Tiglath-pileser (2 K 15:29). The name survives in Merj ‘Ayūn, a plateau N. W. of Dan. The most important site in this plateau is Tell Dibbīn, which may be the site of Ijon.
IKKESH.—The father of Ira, one of David’s heroes (2 S 23:26, 1 Ch 11:28, 27:9).
ILAI.—One of David’s heroes (1 Ch 11:29). In the parallel list (2 S 23:28) the name appears as Zalmon, which is probably the more correct text.
ILIADUN (1 Es 5:58).—Perhaps to be identified with Henadad of Ezr 3:9.
ILLYRICUM.—The only Scripture mentionis Ro 15:19, where St. Paul points to the fact that he had fully preached the good news of the Messiah from Jerusalem and round about as far as Illyricum. Neither geographical term is included in the sense of the Greek, which is that he had done so from the outer edge of Jerusalem, so to speak, round about (through various countries) as far as the border of Illyricum. These provinces in order are Syria, Cilicia, Galatia, Asia, and Macedonia, and a journey through them in succession describes a segment of a rough circle. The provinces Macedonia and Illyricum are conterminous, and the nearest city in Macedonia in which we know St. Paul to have preached is Berœa (Ac 17:10ff.). Illyricum is a Latin word, and denotes the Roman province which extended along the Adriatic from Italy and Pannonia on the north to the province Macedonia on the south. A province Illyria had been formed in B.C. 167, and during the succeeding two centuries all accessions of territory in that quarter were incorporated in that province. In A.D. 10 Augustus separated Pannonia from Illyricum, and gave the latter a settled constitution. The government of this important province was difficult, and was entrusted to an exconsul with the style legatus Augusti pro prætore. The northern half was called Liburnia and the southern Dalmatia (wh. see). The latter term gradually came to indicate the whole province of Illyricum.
A. SOUTER.
IMAGE.—In theological usage the term ‘image’ occurs in two connexions: (1) as defining the nature of man (‘God created man in his own image,’ Gn 1:27); and (2) as describing the relation of Christ as Son to the Father (‘who is the image of the invisible God,’ Col 1:15). These senses, again, are not without connexion; for, as man is re-created in the image of God—lost, or at least defaced, through sin (Col 3:10; cf. Eph 4:24)—so, as renewed, he bears the image of Christ (2 Co 3:18).
These Scriptural senses of the term ‘image’ claim further elucidation.
1. As regards man, the fundamental text is that already quoted, Gn 1:26, 27. Here, in the story of Creation, man is represented as called into being, not, like the other creatures, by a simple flat, but as the result of a solemn and deliberate act of counsel of the Creator: ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.… And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.’ Distinctions, referred to below, have been sought, since Patristic times, between ‘image’ and ‘likeness,’ but it is now generally conceded that no difference of meaning is intended. The two words ‘image’ (tselem) and ‘likeness’ (demūth) combine, without distinction of sense, to emphasize the idea of resemblance to God. This is shown by the fact that in v. 27 the word ‘image’ alone is employed to express the total idea, and in 5:1 the word ‘likeness.’ Man was made like God, and so bears His image. The expression recurs in Gn 9:6, and again repeatedly in the NT (1 Co 11:7, Col 3:10; cf. Ja 3:9 ‘likeness’). The usage in Genesis is indeed peculiar to the so-called ‘Priestly’ writer; but the idea underlies the view of man in the Jahwistic sections as well, for only as made in God’s image is man capable of knowledge of God, fellowship with Him, covenant relation to Him, and character conformable to God’s own. To ‘be as God’ was the serpent’s allurement to Eve (Gn 3:5). Ps 8 echoes the story of man’s creation in Gn 1.
In what did this Divine image, or likeness to God, consist? Not in bodily form, for God is Spirit; nor yet simply, as the Socinians would have it, in dominion over the creatures; but in those features of man’s rational and moral constitution in which the peculiar dignity of man, as distinguished from the animal world below him, is recognized. Man, as a spiritual nature, is self-conscious, personal, rational, free, capable of rising to the apprehension of general truths and laws, of setting ends of conduct before him, of apprehending right and wrong, good and evil, of framing ideas of God, infinity, eternity, immortality, and of shaping his life in the light of such conceptions. In this he shows himself akin to God; is able to know, love, serve, and obey God. The germ of sonship lies in the idea of the image. To this must be added, in the light of such passages as Eph 4:24 and Col 3:10, the idea of actual moral conformity—of actual knowledge, righteousness, and holiness—as pertaining to the perfection of the image. Sin has not destroyed the essential elements of God’s image in man, but it has shattered the image in a moral respect; and grace, as the above passages teach, renews it in Christ.
If this explanation is correct, the older attempts at a distinction between ‘image’ and ‘likeness,’
e.g. that ‘image’ referred to the body, ‘likeness’ to the intellectual nature; or ‘image’ to the intellectual, ‘likeness’ to the moral, faculties; or, as in Roman Catholic theology, ‘image’ to the natural attributes of intelligence and freedom, ‘likeness’ to a superadded endowment of supernatural righteousness—must, as already hinted, be pronounced untenable.
2. The idea of Christ, the Son, as ‘the image (eikōn) of the invisible God’ (Col 1:15; cf. 2 Co 4:4) connects itself with the doctrine of the Trinity, and finds expression in various forms in the NT, notably in He 1:3–—‘who being the effulgence of his glory and the very image of his substance.’ Jesus Himself could declare of Himself that he who had seen Him had seen the Father (Jn 14:9).
But the passages quoted refer to a supra-temporal and essential relation between the Son and the Father. God, in His eternal being, reflects Himself, and beholds His own infinite perfection’ and glory mirrored, in the Son (cf. Jn 1:1, 17:5). It is this eternal Word, or perfect self-revelation of God, that has become incarnate in Jesus Christ (Jn 1:14). The consequence is obvious. Bearing Christ’s image, we bear God’s. Being renewed in God’s image, we are conformed to the image of His Son ( Ro 8:29).
JAMES ORR.
IMAGES.—1. The making of an image implies a definite conception and the application of art to religion. The earliest Semitic religion (like that of Greece, Rome, etc.) was accordingly imageless. The first images were the stone pillar and the wooden pole or asherah (a tree fetish possibly of phallic significance). Then came real idols, at first for domestic use (as probably the teraphim, portable household gods), and subsequently those of greater size for public worship.
2. About 15 words in OT are used specifically for images. The earliest point to the process of manufacture—graven, sculptured, molten images. The word properly meaning image, i.e. ‘likeness,’ is not earlier than the end of 7th cent. B.C. From that time onwards metaphor is frequent: images are ‘vanity,’ ‘lies,’ and objects inspiring disgust or horror [cf. the name Beelzebul, which some interpret as = ‘lord of dung’]. Sometimes such terms would replace those used without offence in earlier days; thus, in a proper name compounded with baal (lord), the objectionable word would be replaced by bosheth (‘shame’), in obedience to Ex 23:13 etc.
3. Images represented animals (e.g. the golden calves and the serpent Nehushtan) and human forms (cf. Ezk 16:17f., Is 44:13, Ps 115:4–8, Wis 14:15, 16, 20). The ephod appears to have been some sort of image, but was perhaps originally the robe worn by the image.
4. The materials used in idol manufacture were clay (Wis 15:13, Bel 7), wood (Is 44:15, Wis
13:13), silver and gold (Hos 8:4, Dn 3:1). They might be painted (Wis 13:14, 15:4), dressed up (Jer 10:9, Ezk 16:18), crowned and armed (Bar 6:9, 15). They were kept in shrines (Jg 17:5, Wis 13:15 etc.), and secured from tumbling down (Is 41:7, Jer 10:4). Refreshments (Is 65:11, Jer 7:18) and kisses (Hos 13:2, 1 K 19:18) were offered to them, as well as sacrifice and incense. They figured in processions (cf. ancient sculptures, and Is 46:7, Jer 10:5). See also art. IDOLATRY.
H. F. B. COMPSTON.
IMAGINATION.—In the AV imagine always means ‘contrive’ and imagination ‘contrivance.’
In the case of imagination a bad intention is always present (except Is 26:4 AVm), as in Ro 1:21 ‘they … became vain in their imaginations’ (RV ‘reasonings’); 2 Co 10:5 ‘casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself’ (RVm ‘reasonings’). The Greek words have in these passages the same evil intent as the AV word, so that the RV renderings are not so good. Coverdale translates Is 55:7 ‘Let the ungodly man forsake his wayes, and the unrightuous his ymaginacions, and turne agayne unto the LORDE.’
IMALCUE (1 Mac 11:39).—An Arab prince to whom Alexander Balas entrusted his youthful son Antiochus. After the death of Alexander, in B.C. 145, Imalcue reluctantly gave up the boy to Tryphon, who placed him on the throne of Syria as Antiochus VI. in opposition to Demetrius II.
IMLA (2 Ch 18:7, 8) or IMLAH (1 K 22:8, 9).—The father of Micaiah, a prophet of J″ in the days of Ahab.
IMMANUEL.—The name occurs in Is 7:14, 8:8, Mt 1:23, and is a Heb. word meaning ‘God is with us’; the spelling Emmanuel comes from the LXX (see Mt 1:23 AV, RVm). Its interpretation involves a discussion of Is 7, esp. vv. 10–17.
1. Grammatical difficulties.—The RV should be consulted throughout. The exact implication of the word ‘virgin’ or ‘maiden’ (RVm) is doubtful (see art. VIRGIN); it is sufficient here to say that it ‘is not the word which would be naturally used for virgin, if that was the point which it was desired to emphasize’ (Kirkpatrick, Doctrine of the Prophets, p. 187). The definite article may either indicate that the prophet has some particular mother in mind, or be generic, referring to the class. In v. 16 the renderings of RV and RVm are both admissible, but the former is more probable; in v. 16 RV should be followed, AV being quite misleading. In 8:8 there may be no reference to Immanuel at all; a very slight alteration of the vowel points would give the reading ‘… of the land; for God is with us’; the refrain occurs in v. 10.
2. Historical situation.—In B.C. 735 the kings of Syria and Ephraim formed an alliance against Judah, with the object of setting Tabeel, a nominee of their own, on the throne of David, and forcing the Southern Kingdom to join in a confederacy against Assyria. Ahaz had only lately come to the throne, and the kingdom was weak and demoralized (2 K 16:6). The purpose of Isaiah was to calm the terror of the people (Is 7:2), and to restore faith in Jehovah (v. 9). But the policy of Ahaz was to take the fatal step of Invoking the aid of Assyria itself. Hence, when the prophet offered him a sign from God, he refused to accept it, for fear of committing himself to the prophet’s policy of faith and independence. He cloaked his refusal in words of apparent piety. A sign is, however, given—the birth of a child, who shall eat butter and honey (i.e. poor pastoral fare; cf. v. 22) till (?) he comes to years of discretion. Before that time, i.e. before he is four or five years old, Syria and Ephraim shall be ruined (v. 16). But Ahaz and his own kingdom shall become the prey of Assyria (v. 17); the rest of the chapter consists of pictures of desolation. The interpretation of the sign is by no means clear. Who is the child and what does his name imply? Is the sign a promise or a threat? It should be noticed, as probably an essential element in the problem, that it is the house or dynasty of David which is being attacked, and which is referred to throughout the chapter (vv. 2, 13, 17).
3. Who is the child? (see Driver, Isaiah, p. 40 ff.). (a) The traditional interpretation sees in the passage a direct prophecy of the Virgin-birth of Christ, and nothing else. In what sense, then, was it a sign to Ahaz? The view runs counter to the modern conception of prophecy, which rightly demands that its primary interpretation shall be brought into relation to the ideas and circumstances of its age. The rest of the chapter does not refer to Christ, but to the troubles of the reign of Ahaz; is it legitimate to tear half a dozen words from their context, and apply them arbitrarily to an event happening generations after? (b) It is suggested that the maiden is the wife of Ahaz and that her son is Hezekiah, the king of whom Isaiah rightly had such high hopes; or (c) that she is the ‘prophetess,’ the wife of Isaiah himself. In both cases we ask why the language is so needlessly ambiguous. The chronological difficulty would seem to be fatal to (b), Hezekiah being almost certainly several years old in 735; and (c) makes the sign merely a duplication of that given in 8:3. It becomes a mere note of time (‘before the child grows up, certain things shall have happened’); it leaves unexplained the solemn way in which the birth is announced, the choice of the name, and its repetition in 8:8 (if the usual reading be retained). It also separates this passage from 9:1–7, 11:1–9, which almost certainly stand in connexion with it. Similar objections may be urged against the view (d), which sees in the maiden any Jewish mother of marriageable age, who in spite of all appearances to the contrary may call her child, then about to be born, by a name indicating the Divine favour, in token of the coming deliverance. The point of the sign is then the mother’s faith and the period of time within which the deliverance shall be accomplished. (e) A more allegorical version of this interpretation explains the maiden as Zion personified, and her ‘son’ as the coming generation. But the invariable word for Zion and countries in such personifications is bethulah, not ‘almah (see art. VIRGIN). (f) There remains the view which sees in the passage a reference to a Messiah in the wider use of the term, as understood by Isaiah and his contemporaries. There probably already existed in Judah the expectation of an ideal king and deliverer, connected with the house of David (2 S 7:12–16). Now at the moment when that house is attacked and its representative proves himself unworthy, Isaiah announces in oracular language the immediate coming of that king. The reference in 8:8, and the passages in chs. 9, 11, will then fall into their place side by side with this. They show that the prophet’s thoughts were at this period dwelling much on the fate and the work of the ‘wondrous child,’ who will, in fact, be a scion of the house of David (9:7, 11:1). Strong support is given to this view by Mic 5:3 (‘until the time when she that beareth hath brought forth’); whether the passage belong to Micah himself, a contemporary of Isaiah, or be of later date, it is clearly a reference to Is 7, and is of great importance as an indication of the ideas current at the time. With regard to the beliefs of the time, evidence has been lately brought forward (esp. by Jeremias and Gressmann) showing that outside Israel (particularly in Egypt and Babylonia) there existed traditions and expectations of a semi-divine saviour-king, to be born of a divine, perhaps a virgin, mother, and to be wonderfully reared. That is to say, there was an already existing tradition to which the prophet could appeal, and which is presupposed by his words; note esp. ‘the virgin.’ How much the tradition included, we cannot say; e.g. did it include the name ‘Immanuel’? The ‘butter and honey’ seems to be a pre-existing feature, representing originally the Divine nourishment on which the child is reared; so, according to the Greek legend, the infant Zeus is fed on milk and honey in the cave on Ida. But in the prophecy, as it stands, it seems to be used of the hard fare which alone is left to the inhabitants of an invaded land. We must indeed distinguish throughout between the conceptions of the primitive myth, and the sense in which the prophet applies these conceptions. The value of the supposition that he was working on the lines of popular beliefs ready to his hand, is that it explains how his hearers would be prepared to understand his oracular language, and suggests that much that is obscure to us may have been clear to them. It confirms the view that the prophecy was intended to be Messianic, i.e. to predict the birth of a mysterious saviour.
4. Was the sign favourable or not? The text, as it stands, leaves it very obscure whether Isaiah gave Ahaz a promise or a threat. The fact that the king had hardened his heart may have turned the sign which should have been of good omen into something different. The name of the child and v. 16 speak of deliverance; vv. 15–17 and the rest of the chapter, of judgment. It is perfectly true that Isaiah’s view of the future was that Ephraim and Syria should be destroyed, that Judah should also suffer from Assyrian invasion, but that salvation should come through the faithful remnant. The difficulty is to extract this sense from the passage. The simplest method is to follow the critics who omit v. 16, or at least the words ‘whose two kings thou abhorrest’; ‘the land’ will then refer naturally to Judah; if referring, as it is usually understood, to Syria and Ephraim, the singular is very strange. The prophecy is then a consistent announcement of judgment. Immanuel shall be born, but owing to the unbelief of Ahaz, his future is mortgaged and he is born only to a ruined kingdom (cf.
8:8); it is not stated in this passage whether the hope implied in his name will ever he realized.
Others would omit v. 17, and even v. 15, making the sign a promise of the failure of the coalition. Whatever view be adopted, the inconsistencies of the text make it at least possible that it has suffered from interpolation, and that we have not got the prophecy in its original form. The real problem is not to account for the name ‘Immanuel,’ or for the promise of a saviour-king, but to understand what part he plays in the rest of the chapter. Connected with this is the further difficulty of explaining why the figure of the Messianic king disappears almost entirely from Isaiah’s later prophecies.
5. Its application to the Virgin-birth.—The full discussion of the quotation in Mt 1:23 is part of the larger subjects of Messianic prophecy, the Virgin-birth, and the Incarnation. The following points may be noticed here. (a) Though the LXX (which has parthenos ‘virgin’) and the Alexandrian Jews apparently interpreted the passage in a Messianic sense and of a virgin-birth, there is no evidence to show that this interpretation was sufficiently prominent and definite to explain the rise of the belief in the miraculous conception. The text was applied to illustrate the fact or the belief in the fact; the fact was not imagined to meet the requirements of the text. The formula used in the quotation suggests that it belongs to a series of OT passages drawn up in the primitive Church to illustrate the life of Christ (see Allen, St. Matthew, p. lxii.). (b) The text would not now be used as a proof of the Incarnation. ‘Immanuel’ does not in itself imply that the child was regarded as God, but only that he was to be the pledge of the Divine presence, and endowed in a special sense with the spirit of Jehovah (cf. Is 11:2). The Incarnation ‘fulfils’ such a prophecy, because Christ is the true realization of the vague and half-understood longings of the world, both heathen and Jewish.
C. W. EMMET.
IMMER.—1. Eponym of a priestly family (1 Ch 9:12, 24:14, Ezr 2:37, 10:20, Neh 3:29, 7:40, 11:18). 2. A priest contemp. with Jeremiah (Jer 20:1). 3. The name of a place (?) (Ezr 2:59 = Neh 7:61) . The text is uncertain (cf. 1 Es 5:36).
IMMORTALITY.—See ESCRATOLOGY.
IMNA.—An Asherite chief (1 Ch 7:35).
IMNAH.—1. The eldest son of Asher (Nu 26:44, 1 Ch 7:30). 2. A Levite in the time of Hezekiah (2 Ch 31:14).
IMNITES.—Patronymic from Imnah (No. 1), Nu 26:44.
IMPORTUNITY.—The Greek word so translated in Lk 11:8 is literally ‘shamelessness.’ It is translated ‘impudence’ in Sir 25:22. These are its only occurrences in the Bible. It is probable, however, that it had lost some of its original force, and that ‘importunity’ is a fair rendering. The Eng. word signified originally ‘difficulty of access’ (in-portus), hence persistence. It is now practically obsolete, and ‘persistence’ might have been introduced into the RV.
IMPOTENT.—This word, now obsolescent in common speech, means literally ‘without strength.’ It is used as the tr. of Gr. words which mean ‘without power’ (Bar 6:28, Ac 14:8) or ‘without strength’ (Jn 5:3, 7, Ac 4:9). ‘When religion is at the stake,’ says Fuller (Holy State, ii. 19, p. 124), ‘there must be no lookers on (except impotent people, who also help by their prayers), and every one is bound to lay his shoulders to the work.’
IMPRISONMENT.—See CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS, § 9.
IMRAH.—An Asherite chief (1 Ch 7:36).
IMRI.—1. A Judahite (1 Ch 9:4). 2. Father of Zaccur, who helped to build the wall (Neh 3:2).
INCANTATIONS.—See MAGIC DIVINATION AND SORCERY.
INCARNATION.—It is a distinguishing feature of Christianity that it consists in faith in a person, Jesus Christ, and in faith or self-committal of such a character that faith in Him is understood to be faith in God. The fact on which the whole of the Christian religion depends is therefore the fact that Jesus Christ is both God and man. Assuming provisionally this fact to be true, or at least credible, this article will briefly examine the witness borne to it in the hooks of the OT and NT.
1. The Incarnation foreshadowed in the OT.—Early religions have attempted to explain two things—the existence and order of the universe, and the principles of conduct or morality. The Hebrews attained at an early period to a belief in God as the creator and sustainer of the universe, but their interest in metaphysic did not go beyond this. It is in their moral idea of God that we shall find anticipations of the Incarnation. (a) The OT conception of man. Man is made in the image of God (Gn 1:26, 9:6). Whatever may be the exact meaning of this expression, it appears to imply that man has a free and rational personality, and is destined for union with God. (b) God reveals Himself to man. A belief in the self-manifestation of God, through visions, dreams, the ministry of angels, the spirit of prophecy, and in the possibility of personal converse between God and man, is apparent upon every page of the OT. The ‘theophanies’ further suggest the possibility of the appearance of God in a human form. It is also remarkable that, although the sense of the holiness and transcendency of God grew with time, the Jews in the later periods did not shrink from strongly anthropomorphic expressions. (c) Intimations of relationships in the Deity. Without unduly pressing such particular points as the plural form of Elohim (God), or the triple repetition of the Divine name (Is 6:3, Nu 6:23), it may at least be said that the idea of God in Jewish monotheism is not a bare unit, and ‘can only be apprehended as that which involves diversity as well as unity.’ Moreover, the doctrine of the Divine Wisdom as set forth in the Books of Proverbs and Wisdom (Pr 8:22, Wis 7:23–25, 8:1 etc.) personifies Wisdom almost to the point of ascribing to it separate existence. The doctrine was carried further by Philo, with assistance from Greek thought, and prepared the way for St. John’s conception of the Logos, the Word of God. (d) The Messianic hope. This was at its root an anticipation of the union of Divine and human attributes in a single personality (see MESSIAH). It developed along several distinct lines of thought and expectation, and it will be noted that these are not combined in the OT; but Christianity claims to supply the explanation and fulfilment of them all.
2. The fact of the Incarnation in the NT
(a) The humanity of Christ. It is beyond dispute that Christ is represented in the NT as a man. He was born, indeed, under miraculous conditions, but of a human mother. He grew up with gradually developing powers (Lk 2:52). The people among whom He lived for thirty years do not appear to have recognized anything extraordinary in Him (Mt 13:55). During the period of His life about which detailed information has been recorded, we read of ordinary physical and moral characteristics. He suffered weariness (Mk 4:38, Jn 4:6), hunger (Mt 4:2), thirst (Jn 19:28); he died and was buried. He felt even strong emotions: wonder (Mk 6:6, Lk 7:9), compassion (Mk 8:2, Lk 7:13), joy (Lk 10:21), anger (Mk 8:12, 10:14); He was deeply moved (Jn 11:33, Mk 14:33). He acquired information in the ordinary way (Mk 6:38, 9:21, Jn 11:34). He was tempted (Mt 4:1–11, Lk 22:28). And it may be further asserted with the utmost confidence, that neither in the Gospels nor in any other part of the NT is there the smallest support for a Docetic explanation of these facts (that is, for the theory that He only seemed to undergo the experiences narrated). (b) The Divinity of Christ. Side by side with this picture of perfect humanity there is an ever-present belief through all the NT writings that Christ was more than a man. From the evidential point of view the most important and unquestionable testimony to the early belief of His disciples is contained in St. Paul’s Epistles, especially those to the Romans, Galatians, and Corinthians, which are among the earliest books of the NT, and of the most undisputed genuineness. In these Epistles we find Jesus Christ ‘co-ordinated with God in the necessarily Divine functions, in a manner impossible to the mind of a Jewish monotheist like St. Paul, unless the co-ordinated person is really believed to belong to the properly Divine being.’ In the Gospels we have an account of how this belief arose. The Synoptic Gospels supply a simple narrative of fact in which we can mark the growing belief of the disciples; and the Fourth Gospel definitely marks stages of faith on the part of Christ’s adherents, and of hatred on the part of His enemies. The following points may be specially noted in the Gospels:—
(1) Extraordinary characteristics are constantly ascribed to Christ, not in themselves necessarily Divine, but certainly such as to distinguish Christ in a marked degree from other men. There is a personal influence of a very remarkable kind. This is naturally not described or dwelt upon, but every page of the Gospels testifies to its existence. The earliest record of Christ’s life is preeminently miraculous. In spite of economy and restraint of power, mighty works are represented as having been the natural, sometimes the almost involuntary, accompaniments of His ministrations. Two special miracles, the Resurrection and the Virgin-birth, are noticed separately below. He spoke with authority (Mk 7:29). He claimed to fulfil the Law—a law recognized as Divine—to be Lord of the Sabbath, and to give a new law to His disciples. In all His teaching there is an implicit claim to infallibility. In spite of His being subject to temptation, the possibility of moral failure is never entertained. There is nothing that marks Christ off from other men more than this. In all other good men the sense of sin becomes more acute with increasing holiness. In Christ it did not exist. The title of ‘Son of Man’ which He habitually used may have more meanings than one. But comparing the different connexions in which it is used, we can hardly escape the conclusion that Christ identifies Himself with the consummation and perfection of humanity.
(2) He claimed to be the Messiah, summing up and uniting the different lines of expectation alluded to above. As has been pointed out, the Messianic hope included features both human and Divine; and although this was not recognized beforehand, it appears to us, looking back, that these expectations could not have been adequately satisfied except by the Incarnation.
(3) Of some of the things mentioned above it might be a sufficient explanation to say, that Christ was a man endowed with exceptional powers and graces by God, and approved by mighty wonders and signs. But even in the Synoptic Gospels, which are for the most part pure narrative, there is more than this. In the claim to forgive sins (Mt 9:2–6), to judge the world (Mk 14:62, 63), to reveal the will of the Father (Mt 11:27), in His commission to the Church (Mt 28:18–20, Mk 16:15–18, Lk 24:44–48), and above all, perhaps, in the claim of personal adhesion which He ever made on His disciples, He assumes a relationship to God which would not be possible to one who was not conscious of being more than man.
(4) In the discourses in the Fourth Gospel, Christ plainly asserts His own pre-existence and His own essential relation to the Father. If these discourses represent even the substance of a side of Christ’s teaching (a point which must be assumed and not argued here), He explicitly bore witness to His eternal relation to the Father.
(5) What crowned the faith of the disciples was the fact of the Resurrection. Their absolute belief in the reality of this fact swept away all doubts and misgivings. At first, no doubt, they were so much absorbed in the fact itself that they did not at once reason out all that it meant to their beliefs; and in teaching they had to adapt their message to the capacities of their hearers; but there can be no question about the place which the belief in the Resurrection took in determining their creed (see JESUS CHRIST, p. 458a).
(6) One miracle recorded in the Gospels, the Virgin-birth, naturally did not form part of the first cycle of Apostolic teaching. The Apostles bore witness to their own experience and to the growth of their own faith, and they knew Jesus Christ first as a man. Apart from the evidence for the fact, it has seemed to most Christians in all ages that the idea of a new creative act is naturally associated with the occurrence of the Incarnation.
3 . Purpose and results of the Incarnation
(a) Consummation of the universe and of humanity.—St. Paul (Eph 1:10) speaks of the purpose of God ‘to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth’ (cf. He 2:10). This is a view which is not often explicitly dwelt upon in the Scriptures, but the idea appears to pervade the NT, and it is conspicuous in Eph., Col., and Hebrews. Christ is represented as fulfilling the purpose of humanity and therefore of the universe, as being its first and final cause, ‘for whom are all things, and through whom are all things.’ It is hardly necessary to point out that the modern teaching of evolution, if not anticipated by Christianity, at least adapts itself singularly well to the expression of this aspect of it.
(b) Supreme revelation of God.—Christians have always believed that even the material universe was destined ultimately to reveal God, and St. Paul appeals to the processes of nature as being an indication not only of the creative power, but also of the benevolence of God (Ac 14:17, cf. Ro 1:20). The OT is the history of a progressive revelation which is always looking forward to more perfect illumination, and the whole history of man is, according to the NT, the history of gradual enlightenment culminating in the Incarnation (He 1:2, Jn 14:9, Col 1:14).
(c) Restoration of man.—It has been a common subject of speculation in the Church whether the Incarnation would have taken place if man had not sinned, and it must be recognized that to such a question no decisive answer can be given. As a fact the Incarnation was conditioned by the existence of man’s sin, and the restoration of man is constantly put forward as its purpose. Three special aspects of this work of restoration may be noticed. (1) Christ offers an example of perfect and sinless humanity: He is the unique example of man as God intended him to be. The ideal of the human race becomes actual in Him. His life was one of perfect obedience to the will of God (Mt 17:5, Lk 3:22, Jn 8:29). (2) He removed the barriers which sin had placed between man and his Creator. This work is invariably associated in the NT with His death and resurrection. It is described as an offering, a sacrifice, of Himself (He 9:26), which takes away the sin of the world (Jn 1:29). Many metaphors are used in the NT to describe the effect of His death and resurrection, such as redemption, which conveys the idea of a deliverance at a great cost from slavery; propitiation, or an act or process by which sin is neutralized; salvation, or bringing into a condition of health or safety; reconciliation with God, and remission of sin (see ATONEMENT). (3) These two parts of Christ’s work for man were accomplished by His earthly life, death, and resurrection. But they do not comprise all that the Incarnation has done for the restoration of man. The completion of His work Christ left to His Church, the society which He founded, and in which He promised that He would dwell through the Holy Spirit. The Church, St. Paul says, is His body, living by His life and the instrument of His work. Thus the Kingdom of God which Christ brought to the earth, and which He constantly speaks of both as being already come and as still to come, is visibly represented in His Church, which is ‘the Kingdom of heaven in so far as it has already come, and prepares for the Kingdom as it is to come in glory.’
4. Relation of the NT doctrine to that of the Councils.—It has been seen above that the disciples knew our Lord first as a man, and that they advanced by degrees to a belief in His Divinity. Men educated in Jewish habits of thought would not readily apprehend in all its bearings the Christian idea of a Person who could be both God and man. It is therefore not surprising that there should be in the NT a diversity of treatment with regard to the question of the Person of Christ, and that it should he possible to recognize what may be called different levels of Christological belief. Before our Lord’s death the disciples had recognized Him as the Messiah, though with still very inadequate ideas as to the nature of the Messianic Kingdom which He was to set up. The Resurrection transformed this faith, and it naturally became the central point of their early teaching. The conception of Christ prominent in the earliest Apostolic age, and emphasized in the first part of the Acts and in the Epistles of 1 Peter, James, and Jude, regards Him primarily as the Messiah, the glory of whose Person and mission has been proved by the Resurrection, who has been exalted to God’s right hand, and who will be judge of quick and dead. St. Paul in his earlier Epistles regards Christ’s Person more from the point of view of personal religion, as One who has bridged over the gulf which sin has caused between God and man, and in whom man’s desire for reconciliation with God finds satisfaction. St. Paul’s later Epistles, as well as the Ep. to the Hebrews and St. John’s Gospel, deal with the cosmological and mystical aspects of the Incarnation, and contain the most definite statements of the Divinity of Christ.
It has been further maintained that the definitions of the doctrine made by the great Councils and embodied in the Creeds show an advance upon the doctrine contained in the NT. This was not, however, the view of those who drew up the definitions, for they invariably appealed to the NT writings as conclusive, and believed themselves to be only formulating beliefs which had always been held by the Church. The language of the definitions was undoubtedly to some extent new, but it has never been shown that the substance of the doctrine expressed by them in any respect goes beyond what has been represented above as the teaching of the NT. If the NT writers really believed, as has been maintained above, that Christ was a Person who was perfectly human and who was also Divine, there is nothing in the dogmatic decrees of the 4th and 5th centuries which asserts more than this. What these definitions do is to negative explanations which are inconsistent with these fundamental beliefs. It is not surprising that men found it difficult to grasp the perfect Divinity as well as the perfect humanity of Christ, and that attempts should have been made to explain away one side or other of the doctrine of the Incarnation. The attempt which met with the widest success, and most threatened the doctrine of the Church, was that of Arius, who taught that the Son of God was a created being, a sort of demi-god. This teaching found ready support and sympathy among men who had not shaken off pagan habits of thought, and in opposing it the Church was contending for a true Theism, which cannot endure the multiplication of objects of worship, no less than for Christianity. But although a word was used in the definition finally accepted, the celebrated homoousion—‘of one substance with the Father’—which was not used by any NT writer, it was used unwillingly, and only because other attempts to assert beyond the possibility of cavil the true Divinity of Christ had failed. Again, when the Divinity of Christ was fully accepted, the difficulty of believing the same Person to be both God and man led to attempts to explain away the perfect humanity. Apollinaris taught that the Word of God took the place of the human mind or spirit in Christ, as at a later period the Monothelites held that He had no human will; Nestorius practically denied an Incarnation, by holding that the Son of God and Jesus Christ were two separate persons, though united in a singular degree; Eutyches taught that the manhood in Christ was merged in the Godhead so as to lose its proper and distinct nature. These explanations contradicted in various ways the plain teaching of the Gospels that Christ was a truly human Person, and they were all decisively negatived by the Church in language which no doubt shows a distinct advance in theological thought, but without adding anything to the substance of the Apostolic doctrine.
J. H. MAUDE.
INCENSE.—(1) lebōnāh, which should always be tr. ‘frankincense’ (wh. see). It was burnt with the meat-offering (Lv 2:1, 2, 15, 16, 6:15 etc.), and offered with the shewbread (Lv 24:7–9). (2) qetōreth, lit. ‘smoke,’ and so used in Is 1:13, Ps 66:15, 141:2; used for a definite substance, Lv 10:1, Ezk 8:11 etc. (3) thumiama (Gr.), Lk 1:10, Rev 5:8, 8:3, 18:13. The holy incense (Ex 30:34) was made of stacte, onycha, galbanum, and frankincense, but the incense of later times, which was offered daily (Jth 9:1, Lk 1:8–10), was more complicated. According to Josephus, it had thirteen constituents (BJ V. v. 5). Incense was originally burned in censers, but these were latterly used only to carry coals from the great altar to the ‘altar of incense.’
E. W. G. MASTERMAN. INCENSE, ALTAR OF.—SEE TABERNACLE, § 6 (C), AND TEMPLE, § 4.
INCEST.—See CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS, § 3.
INDIA (Heb. Hōddū) is named as the E. boundary of the empire of Ahasuerus (Est 1:1, 8:9). The Heb. is contracted from Hondu, the name of the river Indus. It indicated the country through which that river flows: not the great peninsula of Hindustan. So also in 1 Mac 8:8, Ad. Est 13:1, 14:1, 1 Es 3:2. Possibly the drivers of the elephants (1 Mac 6:37) were true Indians. If India proper is not named, there is little doubt that from ancient times Israel had relations with the country, by means of the caravan trade through Arabia. Many of the articles of commerce in the account given of this trade are of Indian origin: e.g. ‘ivory and ebony,’ ‘cassia and calamus,’ ‘broidered work,’ and ‘rich apparel’ (Ezk 27:15, 19, 24).
W. EWING.
INDITE.—This Eng. verb is now somewhat old-fashioned. When it is used, it means to write. But formerly, and as found in AV, it meant to inspire or dictate to the writer. Thus St. Paul indited and Tertius wrote (Ro 16:22). The word occurs in the Preface to the AV and in Ps 45:1 ‘My heart is inditing a good matter.’ In the Douai version (though this word is not used) there is a note: ‘I have received by divine inspiration in my hart and cogitation a most high Mysterie.’
INFIDEL.—This word has more force now than formerly. In AV it signifies no more than ‘unbeliever.’ It occurs in 2 Co 6:15, 1 Ti 5:8 (RV ‘unbeliever’ in both). So ‘infidelity’ in 2 Es 7:44 is simply ‘unbelief’ (Lat. incredulitas).
INGATHERING.—See TABERNACLES [FEAST OF].
INHERITANCE.—It is a remarkable fact that the Hebrew language fails to discriminate between the inheritance of property and its possession or acquisition in any other manner. The two words most constantly used in this connexion denote the idea of settled possession, but are quite indeterminate as to the manner in which that possession has been acquired. As might easily be inferred, from the historical circumstances of Israel’s evolution, the words became largely restricted to the holding of land, obviously the most important of all kinds of property among a pastoral or agricultural people.
i. INHERITANCE IN LAW AND CUSTOM
1. Property.—While land was the most important part of an inheritance, the rules for succession show that it was regarded as belonging properly to the family or elan, and to the individual heir only as representing family or tribal rights. Cattle, household goods, and slaves would be more personal possessions, which a man could divide among his sons (Dt 21:16). Originally wives, too, as part of the property of the deceased, would fall to the possession of the heir-in-chief (cf. 2 S 16:20–23, 1 K 2:13ff.).
2. Heirs.—(a) The firstborn son, as the new head of the family, responsible for providing for the rest, inherited the land and had also his claim to a double portion of other kinds of wealth (Dt 21:17). To be the son of a concubine or inferior wife was not a bar to heirship (Gn 21:10, 1 Ch 5:1); though a jealous wife might prevail on her husband to deprive such a son of the right of succession (Gn 21:10). That a father had power to transfer the birthright from the firstborn to another is implied in the cases of Ishmael and Isaac (Gn 21:10), Esau and Jacob (27:37), Reuben and Joseph (1 Ch 5:1), Adonijah and Solomon (1 K 1:11ff.). But this was contrary to social usage, and is prohibited in Dt 21:15–17. Moreover, the exceptions to the rule are presented as examples of a Divine election rather than a human preference (Isaac, Gn 21:12; Jacob, Mal 1:2–3, Ro 9:13; Joseph, Gn 49:24ff.; Solomon, 1 Ch 22:9, 10), and can hardly be adduced as survivals of the ancient custom of ‘Junior Right.’ (b) At first a daughter could not succeed (the inheritance of the daughters of Job [Job 42:15] is noted as exceptional)—an arrangement that has been referred either to the influence of ancestorworship, in which a male heir was necessary as priest of the family cult, or to the connexion between inheritance and the duty of blood revenge. For unmarried daughters, however, husbands would almost invariably be found. In the case of the daughters of Zelophehad (Nu 27:1–11) we see the introduction of a change; but it is to be noted that this very case is associated with the provision (Nu 36:1–12) that heiresses should marry only within their father’s tribe, so that the inheritance might not be alienated from it. (c) For the widow no immediate place was found in the succession. So far from being eligible as an heir, she was strictly a part of the property belonging to the inheritance. According to the levirate law, however, when a man died leaving no son, his brother or other next-of-kin (go’ēl) must marry the widow, and her firstborn son by this marriage became the heir of her previous husband (Dt 25:6). (d) For the order of succession the rule is laid down in Nu 27:8–11 that if a man die without male issue the right of inheritance shall fall successively to his daughter, his brothers, his father’s brothers, his next kinsman thereafter. The provision for the daughter was an innovation, as the context shows, but the rest of the rule is in harmony with the ancient laws of kinship.
ii. NATIONAL AND RELIGIOUS INHERITANCE.—1. The possession of the land of Canaan was
commonly regarded as the inheritance of the whole people. In this particular case the inheritance was won only as the result of conflict and effort; moreover, theoretically at any rate, it involved the annihilation of the previous inhabitants. Consequently the inheritance of Canaan was not entirely devoid of the idea of succession. But the extermination of the Canaanites was never effected; and although the conquest was achieved only by the most strenuous effort, yet the Israelites were so strongly impressed with a vivid sense of Jehovah’s intervention on their behalf, that to subsequent generations it seemed as if they had entered into the labours of others, not in any sense whatever by their own power, but solely by Jehovah’s grace. The inheritance of Canaan signified the secure possession of the land, as the gift of God to His people. ‘The dominant Biblical sense of inheritance is the enjoyment by a rightful title of that which is not the fruit of personal exertion’ (Westcott, Heb.
168).
2. It is not surprising that the idea of inheritance soon acquired religious associations. The Hebrew mind invested all social and political institutions with a religious significance. As Israel became increasingly conscious of its mission in, and began dimly to apprehend its mission to, the world, the peaceful and secure possession of Canaan seemed an indispensable condition of that selfdevelopment which was itself the necessary prelude to a more universal mission. The threatening attitude of the great world powers in the eighth and subsequent centuries B.C. brought the question prominently to the front. Over and over again it seemed as if Jerusalem must succumb to the hordes of barbarian invaders, and as if the last remnant of Canaan must be irretrievably lost; but the prophets persistently declared that the land should not be lost; they realized the impossibility of Israel’s ever realizing her true vocation, unless, at any rate for some centuries, she preserved her national independence; and the latter would, of course, be wholly unthinkable without territorial security. The career of Israel, as a nation, the influence, even the existence, of its religion, would he endangered by the dispossession of Canaan; moreover, it was recognized that as long as the people remained true to Jehovah, He on His part would remain true to them, and would not suffer them to be dispossessed, but would make them dwell securely in their own land, in order that they might establish on their side those conditions of righteousness and justice which represented the national obligations, if Jehovah’s covenant with them was to be maintained.
3. The possession of the land, the inheritance of Canaan, symbolized the people’s living in covenant with their God, and all those spiritual blessings which flowed from such a covenant. And inasmuch as the validity of the covenant implied the continuance of Divine favour, the inheritance of the Holy Land was viewed as the outward and visible sign of God’s presence and power among His own. We know how the remorseless logic of history seemed to point to an opposite conclusion. The Exile spelt disinheritance; and disinheritance meant a great deal more than the loss of a little strip of territory; it meant the forfeiture of spiritual blessings as a consequence of national sin. The more ardent spirits of the nation refused, however, to believe that these high privileges were permanently abrogated; they were only temporarily withdrawn; and they looked forward to a new covenant whose spiritual efficacy should be guaranteed by national restoration. In the reconstituted theocracy, the Messiah figured as the mediator both of temporal and of spiritual blessings. The idea of a restored inheritance suggested at once the glorious anticipations of the Messianic age, when the people, not by works which they had done, but by Jehovah’s grace, should recover that which they had lost; and renew the covenant that had been broken.
4. In this sense ‘the inheritance’ became almost equivalent to the Messianic salvation; and participation in this salvation is not a future privilege, but a present possession. In the OT the secure inheritance of the Holy Land was the outward symbol of these spiritual blessings; under the New Dispensation they are assured by membership in the Christian body.
5. As every Jew regarded himself as an inheritor of the land of Canaan, so also is each Christian an inheritor of the Kingdom of heaven. He is not the heir, in the sense of enjoying an honorary distinction, or of anticipating future privileges; but as one who is already in a position of assured privilege, conferred upon him with absolute validity. As Lightfoot remarks, ‘Our Father never dies; the inheritance never passes away from Him; yet nevertheless we succeed to the full possession of it’ (Galatians8 165).
6. Three particular usages remain to be noticed. (a) The Jews never lost the conviction that
Jehovah was the supreme overlord of the land, and of the people that dwelt in it. Accordingly Canaan is the Holy Land, and Jehovah’s own inheritance; and Messiah when incarnate ‘came to His own country, and His own people received Him not.’ (b) The Jews also recognized that the possession of Canaan had value only in so far as it assured them of the free exercise of their religion, and all other spiritual blessings. This they strove to express by boldly declaring that Jehovah was Himself the inheritance of His people. (c) The Messiah, through whom the disinheritance should be brought to a close, and the covenant should be renewed, was naturally regarded as the supreme ‘inheritor’ or ‘heir’ of all the promises and privileges implied in the covenant. As, moreover, the Messiah’s unique relation to the Father became more clearly defined, the idea of His inheritance, connoting His unique primogeniture and universal supremacy, became enlarged and expanded. It was, moreover, through the humanity which He restored that the Son proved and realized His heirship of all things; and thus His actual position is the potential exaltation of redeemed mankind.
J. C. LAMBERT and ERNEST A. EDGHILL.
INIQUITY.—See SIN.
INJURIOUS.—In the language of the AV ‘injurious’ is more than hurtful; it is also insulting. It ‘adds insult to injury.’ It occurs Sir 8:11, 1 Ti 1:13; and the Gr. word used in these places is in Ro 1:30 translated ‘despiteful’ (RV ‘insolent’ ).
INK is mentioned once in OT (Jer 36:18). Ex 32:33 and Nu 5:23 are adduced as evidence that the old Hebrew ink (derived from lamp-black [?]) could he washed off. From the bright colours that still survive in some papyri, it is evident that the ink used by the Egyptians must have been of a superior kind. The NT term for ‘ink,’ occurring three times (2 Co 3:3, 2 Jn 12, 3 Jn 13), is melan (lit. ‘black’). See, further, under WRITING.
INKHORN.—In one of Ezekiel’s visions (Ezk 9:2, 3, 11) a man appears with a scribe’s inkhorn by his side (lit. ‘upon his loins’). The ‘inkhorn’ consisted of a case for the reed pens, with a cup or bulb for holding the ink, near the upper end of the case. It was carried in the girdle (hence the above expression).
INN.—See HOSPITALITY.
INNER MAN.—The implied contrast involved in this expression may be regarded as exclusively Pauline. The antithesis between the adorning of the visible body, and ‘the incorruptible (ornament) of a meek and quiet spirit,’ ‘the hidden man of the heart’ (1 P 3:3f.) is an example of the Paulinism which pervades this encyclical letter (see Moffatt, Historical NT 2, p. 250). The contrast, so vividly portrayed in Ro 7:22f., is essentially ethical in its character. It is between the law which passion blindly follows, and that to which ‘the mind’ or the informed conscience yields a delighted because a reasoned obedience (cf. Sanday-Headlam, Romans, in loc.). Different from this is the contrast in 2 Co 4:16, where ‘our outward man,’ decaying and dying, stands over against ‘our inward man,’ which is in a constant state of renewal. Here we have the antithesis of the ‘temporal’ and the ‘eternal’ elements in man’s complex personality (v. 18). This phrase is found in an absolute sense in Eph 3:16, where it denotes the entire basis of man’s higher life, on which God’s Spirit works, and in which Christ dwells. The intellectual and moral apprehension of the fruits of the Incarnation depend, first and last, upon whether ‘the inward man’ has its roots struck deep in that Divine love which is the first cause of man’s redemption (v. 17ff.; cf. Jn 3:16).
J. R. WILLIS.
INSPIRATION.—The subject comprises the doctrine of inspiration in the Bible, and the doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible, together with what forms the transition from the one to the other, the account given of the prophetic consciousness, and the teaching of the NT about the OT. 1. The agent of inspiration is the Holy Spirit (see p. 360) or Spirit of God, who is active in Creation (Gn 1:2, Ps 104:30), is imparted to man that the dust may become living soul (Gn 2:7), is the source of exceptional powers of body (Jg 6:34, 14:6, 19) or skill (Ex 35:31); but is preeminently manifest in prophecy (wh. see). The NT doctrine of the presence and power of the Spirit of God in the renewed life of the believer is anticipated in the OT, inasmuch as to the Spirit’s operations are attributed wisdom (Job 32:8, 1 K 3:28, Dt 34:9), courage (Jg 13:25, 14:6), penitence, moral strength, and purity (Neh 9:20, Ps 51:11, Is 63:10, Ezk 36:26, Zec 12:10). The promise of the Spirit by Christ to His disciples was fulfilled when He Himself after the Resurrection breathed on them, and said, ‘Receive ye the Holy Ghost’ (Jn 20:22), and after His Ascension the Spirit descended on the Church with the outward signs of the wind and fire (Ac 2:2, 3). The Christian life as such is an inspired life, but the operation of the Spirit is represented in the NT in two forms; there are the extraordinary gifts (charisms)—speaking with tongues, interpreting tongues, prophecy, miracles (1 Co 12),—all of which St. Paul subordinates to faith, hope, love (ch. 13); and there are the fruits of the Spirit in moral character and religious disposition (Gal 5:22, 23). Intermediate may be regarded the gifts for special functions in the Church, as teaching, governing, exhorting (Ro 12:7, 8). The prophetic inspiration is continued (Ro 12:6); but superior is the Apostolic (1 Co 12:28)
(see APOSTLES).
2. The doctrine of the inspiration of the NT attaches itself to the promise of Christ to His disciples that the Holy Spirit whom the Father would send in His name should teach them all things, and bring to their remembrance all things that He had said to them (Jn 14:26); and that, when the Spirit of truth had come, He should guide them into all the truth, and should declare to them the things that were to come (16:13). These promises cover the contents of Gospels, Epistles, and the Apocalypse. The inspiration of Christ’s own words is affirmed in His claim to be alone in knowing and revealing the Father (Mt 11:27), and His repeated declaration of His dependence in His doctrine on the Father.
3. Christ recognizes the inspiration of the OT (Mt 22:43), and the authority of the prophets (Lk 24:25). The word ‘inspire’ is used only in Wis 15:11 ‘Because he was ignorant of him that moulded him, and of him that inspired into him an active soul, and breathed into him a vital spirit.’ The word ‘inspiration’ is used in this general sense in Job 32:8 AV ‘But there is a spirit in man; and the inspiration (RV ‘breath’) of the Almighty giveth them understanding.’ In special reference to the OT we find in 2 Ti 3:16 (RV) ‘every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching,’ etc. While the term is not used, the fact is recognized in 2 P 1:21 ‘For no prophecy ever came by the will of man; but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Ghost.’ It must be added, however, that both these passages are in writings the Apostolic authorship of which is questioned by many scholars. But the NT view of the authority of the OT is fully attested in the use made of the OT as trustworthy history, true doctrine, and sure prophecy; and yet the inaccuracy of many of the quotations, as well as the use of the Greek translation, shows that the writers, whether they held a theory of verbal inspiration or not, were not bound by it.
4. Although the doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible does not properly fall within the scope of a Bible Dictionary, a brief summary of views held in the Christian Church may be added: (a) The Theory of verbal inspiration affirms that each human author was but the mouthpiece of God, and that in every word, therefore, God speaks. But the actual features of the Bible, as studied by reverent and believing scholarship, contradict the theory. (b) The theory of degrees of inspiration recognizes suggestion, direction, elevation, and superintendency of the human by the Divine Spirit; but it is questionable whether we can so formally define the process. (c) The dynamical theory recognizes the exercise of human faculties in the author, but maintains their illumination, stimulation, and purification by the Spirit of God, in order that in doctrine and ethics the Divine mind and will may be correctly and sufficiently expressed; but this divorces literature from life. (d) We may call the view now generally held personal inspiration: by the Spirit of God men are in various degrees enlightened, filled with zeal and devotion, cleansed and strengthened morally, brought into more immediate and intimate communion with God; and this new life, expressed in their writings, is the channel of God’s revelation of Himself to men. In place of stress on the words and the ideas of Scripture, emphasis is now laid on the moral character and religious disposition of the agents of revelation.
ALFRED E. GARVIE.
INSTANT.—‘Instant’ and ‘instantly’ are now used only of time. In AV they have their earlier meaning of ‘urgent,’ ‘urgently,’ as in Lk 23:23 ‘they were instant with loud voices, requiring that he
might be crucified’; Lk 7:4 ‘they besought him instantly’ (RV ‘earnestly’). Cf. Erasmus,
Paraphrase, i. 31, ‘whoso knocketh at the doore instantly, to him it shal be opened.’
INSTRUMENT.—For musical instruments see MUSIC. The word is also frequently used in AV (though only twice in NT, both times in Ro 6:13) for any utensil, implement, or weapon, and in To 7:14 , 1 Mac 13:42 for a legal document or deed.
INTERCESSION.—See PRAYER.
INTEREST.—See USURY.
INTERMEDIATE STATE.—See ESCHATOLOGY, 3 (d), and PARADISE, 3.
INTERPRETATION.—This word and its cognates are found throughout the Bible with a wide variety in their use. 1. In the earlier stages of the history of mankind dreams were looked upon as manifestations of Divine intervention in human affairs, and it was regarded as of the first importance that their mysterious revelations should be explained for those to whom they were vouchsafed. From the story of Joseph we learn that a special class at the court of the Pharaohs discharged the function of interpreters of dreams (cf. ‘magicians’ [RVm ‘sacred scribes’] and ‘wise men,’ Gn 41:8), A similar body of wise or learned men is mentioned in the Book of Daniel, for the same object at the court of Babylon (Dn 2:2ff., 4:6f.). The idea that dreams were a means of communication between the Deity and men was also current amongst the Hebrews from a very early date. In the NT we find that dreams occupy the place of direct visions or revelations from God, and no difficulty seems to have been experienced by the recipients as to their precise meaning ( Mt 1:20, 2:12, 13, 19, 22).
2. Turning again to the history of Joseph, we find there an incidental remark which leads us to believe that there was an official interpreter, or a body of interpreters, whose work it was to translate foreign languages into the language of the court (cf. ‘the interpreter,’ Gn 42:23). The qualification to act as interpreter seems to have been required of those who acted as ambassadors at foreign courts (cf. 2 Ch 32:31). That prominent politicians and statesmen had this means of international communication at their disposal is seen in the translation by the Persian nobles of their letter from their own language into Aramaic (Ezr 4:7). As the Hebrew tongue ceased to be that of the common people, interpreters were required at the sacred services to translate or explain the Law and the Prophets after the reading of the original (see W. R. Smith, OTJC2 36, 64n, 154). In the NT, examples are frequent of the interpretation in Greek of a Hebrew or Aramaic phrase (Mt 1:23, 27:46, Mk 5:41, 15:22, 34, Jn 1:38, 41f., Ac 4:36, 9:36, 13:8); and in this connexion it is Interesting to recall the extract from the writings of Papias preserved by Eusebius, in which Mark is called ‘the interpreter of Peter’ (see HE iii. 39)—a tradition accepted by Jerome and Athanasius. The most natural explanation is that which makes St. Mark’s Gospel the outcome in Greek of St. Peter’s teaching in his native tongue.
3. The function of the prophets is described as that of interpreters or ambassadors explaining to Israel Jehovah’s messages in terms suited to their capacity (Is 43:27, cf. Elihu’s reference to the intercessory or ambassadorial work of angels in interpreting to man what God requires of him in the way of conduct, as well as explaining the mystery of His dealings with men [Job 33:23]).
4. Frequent reference is made by St. Paul to a peculiar phase in the life of the early Corinthian
Church—speaking with tongues. Whatever may be the precise meaning attaching to this feature of Christian activity, and it is plain that in individual cases the practice gave the Apostle considerable cause for anxiety, one of the special spiritual ‘gifts’ to believers was the power of interpreting these strange utterances. The speaker himself might possess the gift of interpretation and use it for the benefit of the congregation (see 1 Co 14:5, 13), or, on the other hand, he might not. In the latter event his duty was to keep silence, unless an interpreter were at hand to make his message intelligible to the other assembled worshippers (cf. 1 Co 14:26ff., 12:10, 30).
5. A somewhat ambiguous use of the word ‘interpretation’ occurs in 2 P 1:20, where the writer refers to the expounding of ancient prophecies; ‘no prophecy of scripture is of private (RVm
‘special’) interpretation.’ Two explanations of this passage are current: (1) the ‘interpretation’ is that of the prophet himself, who, because of his peculiar relation to the Spirit of God, uttered words the full meaning of which he did not comprehend; or (2) the word has a reference to the exegesis of the passage in question by individual readers. The present writer is of opinion that neither explanation does full justice to the author’s idea. If the word translated ‘private’ be confined solely in its meaning to the noun which it qualifies, we may understand by the phrase that no single event or result can be looked on as a complete fulfilment of the prophet’s message. It has a wider range or scope than the happening of any special occurrence, though that occurrence may be regarded as a fulfilment of the prophet’s announcement.
J. R. WILLIS.
INTREAT.—Besides the mod. sense of ‘beseech,’ intreat (spelled also ‘entreat’) means ‘deal with,’ ‘handle,’ mod. ‘treat,’ always with an adverb ‘well,’ ‘ill,’ ‘shamefully,’ etc. Coverdale translates Is 40:11 ‘He shal gather the lambes together with his arme, and carie them in his bosome, and shal kindly intreate those that beare yonge.’
It is even more important to notice that when the meaning seems to be as now, viz. ‘beseech,’ the word is often in reality much stronger, ‘prevail on by entreaty.’ Thus Gn 25:21 ‘And Isaac intreated the LORD for his wife, … and the LORD was intreated of him,’ i.e. yielded to the entreaty, as the Heb. means. Cf. Grafton, Chron. ii. 768, ‘Howbeit she could in no wise be intreated with her good wyll to delyver him.’
In Jer 15:11 and its margin the two meanings of the word and the two spellings are used as alternative renderings, ‘I will cause the enemy to entreat thee well,’ marg. ‘I will intreat the enemy for thee’ (RV ‘I will cause the enemy to make supplication unto thee’).
INWARDS, INWARD PARTS.—1. The former of these expressions is frequently found in EV
(Ex. and Lv.), meaning the entrails or bowels of the animals to be sacrificed according to the Levitical institutions (Ex 29:13, 22, Lv 3:3, 9, 14, 4:8, 11, 7:3, 8:18, 21 etc.). The same idea is found in Gn 41:21, where EV has ‘had eaten them up,’ and LXX renders ‘came into their belly’ (see AVm which gives the alternative ‘had come to the inward parts of them’; cf. also 1 K 17:21 AVm). For the most part, however, the expression ‘inward parts’ is used in a metaphorical sense, to denote the contrast between the inward reality and the outward clothing of human character. Situated
within the ‘inward parts’ is the capacity for wisdom (Job 38:36, see nevertheless EVm), truth (Ps 51:6), ethical knowledge, and moral renovation (Jer 31:33, where ‘inward parts’ is almost synonymous with ‘heart,’ cf. Pr. 20:30). Here, too, lie hidden the springs of active wickedness (Ps 5:9), and deceitful language (Ps 62:4 AVm). The power of deceiving as to character and motives comes from man’s inherent ability to secrete, within the profound depths of the ‘innermost parts,’ his daily thoughts (Pr 18:8; cf. Ps 64:6). At the same time, these hidden designs are as an open book, beneath the bright light of a lamp, to the Lord (Pr 20:27; cf., for a similar thought, Ps 26:2, 7:9 , Jer 11:20, Rev 2:23 etc. ).
2. In the NT the expression is used only to denote the power of the hypocrites to deceive their fellow-men (Lk 11:39; cf. Mt 7:15, 23:28). The curious phrase ‘give for alms those things which are within’ (Lk 11:41) may be taken as an incidental reference by Jesus to the necessity and the possibility of man’s inmost life being renewed and restored to a right relationship with God and men (cf. Is 58:10). At least it is permissible to take the word rendered ‘the things which are within’ as equivalent to ‘the inward man,’ or ‘the inward parts’ (see Plummer, ICC, in loc.; cf. Mk 7:18f., Lk 16:9). It is not enough to give alms mechanically; the gift must be accompanied by the spontaneous bestowal of the giver’s self, as it were, to the receiver.
J. R. WILLIS.
IOB.—See JASHUB, No. 1.
IPHDEIAH.—A Benjamite chief (1 Ch 8:25).
IPHTAH.—A town in the Shephēlah of Judah, Jos 15:43; site unknown.
IPHTAH-EL.—A ravine N. W. of Hannathon, on the north border of Zebulun (Jos 19:14, 27). It is identified by some with the Jotapata (mod. Jefāt) of Josephus.
IR (1 Ch 7:12).—A Benjamite (called in v. 7 Iri).
IRA.—1. The Jairite who was kōhen or priest to David (2 S 20:26). His name is omitted from the original (?) passage in 2 S 8:18, and from the passage in 1 Ch 18:17. ‘The Jairite’ denotes that he was of the Gileadite clan of the Jairites. The name probably means ‘the watchful.’ 2. The lthrite, one of David’s heroes (2 S 23:38, where perhaps Ithrite should be Jattirite). 3. The son of Ikkesh the Tekoite (2 S 23:26), another of David’s heroes.
W. F. COBB.
IRAD.—Son of Enoch and grandson of Cain (Gn 4:18).
IRAM.—A ‘duke’ of Edom (Gn 36:43=1 Ch 1:54).
IR-HA-HERES.—In Is 19:18 the name to be given in the ideal future to one of the ‘five cities in the land of Egypt that speak the language of Canaan, and swear to Jehovah of hosts’; AV and RV ‘one shall be called, The city of destruction.’ The usually accepted explanation of the passage is that the name ‘city of heres, or destruction,’—or, more exactly, ‘of tearing down’ (the verb hāras being used of pulling or tearing down cities, altars, walls, etc., Jg 6:25, Is 14:17, Ezk 13:14),—is chosen for the sake of a punning allusion to cheres, in Heb. a rare word for ‘sun’ (Job 9:7), the ‘city of cheres,’ or ‘the sun,’ being a designation which might have been given in Heb. to On, the Heliopolis of the Greeks, a city a few miles N.E. of the modern Cairo, in ancient times the chief centre of the sun-worship in Egypt, and full of obelisks dedicated to the sun-god Ra (‘Cleopatra’s needle,’ now on the Thames Embankment, was originally one of these obelisks, erected by Thothmes III. in front of the temple of the sun-god at On); and the meaning of the passage being that the place which has hitherto been a ‘city of the sun’ will in the future be called the ‘city of destroying,’ i.e. a city devoted to destroying the temples and emblems of the sun (cf. Jer 43:13). [The LXX have polis hasedek, i.e. ‘city of righteousness,’ a reading which is open to the suspicion of being an alteration based on 1:26.]
To some scholars, however, this explanation appears artificial; and the question is further complicated by historical considerations. The high priest Onias III., after his deposition by
Antiochus Epiphanes in B.C. 175 (2 Mac 4:7–9), despairing of better times in Judah, sought refuge in Egypt with Ptolemy Philometor; and conceived the idea of building there a temple dedicated to J ″, in which the ancient rites of his people might be carried on without molestation, and which might form a religions centre for the Jews settled in Egypt. Ptolemy granted him a site at Leontopolis, in the ‘nome,’ or district, of Heliopolis; and there Onias erected his temple (Jos. BJ. I. i. 1, Ant. XIII. iii. 1–3, and elsewhere; Ewald, Hist. v. 355 f.),—not improbably at Tell el-Yahudiyeh, about 10 m. N. of Heliopolis, near which there are remains of a Jewish necropolis (Naville, The Mound of the Jew and the City of Onias, pp. 18–20). In support of his plan, Onias had pointed to Is 19:18 and its context as a prediction that a temple to J″ was to be built in Egypt (Jos. Ant. XIII. iii. 1 end). These facts have indeed no bearing on Is 19:18, supposing the passage to be really Isaiah’s; but many modern scholars are of opinion that Is 19:16(18)–25 are not Isaiah’s, and even those who do not go so far as this would be ready to grant that 19:18b (from ‘one shall be called’) might be a later addition to the original text of Isaiah.
The following are the chief views taken by those who hold that this clause (with or without its context) is not Isaiah’s. (1) Duhm and Marti render boldly ‘shall be called Lion-city (or Leontopolis),’ explaining heres from the Arab, haris, properly the bruiser, crusher, a poetical name for a lion. But that a very special and fig. application of an Arab. root, not occurring in Heb. even in its usual Arabic sense, should be found in Heb. is not probable. (2) Dillmann, while accepting the prophecy as a whole as Isaiah’s, threw out the suggestion that v. 18b was added after the temple of Onias was built, cheres, ‘sun’ (so Symm., Vulg., and some Heb. MSS), being the original reading, which was altered afterwards by the Jews of Palestine into heres, ‘destruction,’ in order to obtain a condemnation of the Egyptian temple, and by the Jews of Egypt into tsedek, ‘righteousness’ (LXX), in order to make the prophecy more diatioctly favourable to it. (3) Cheyne (Introd. to Is. pp. 102–110) and Skinner, understanding v. 18 (‘there shall be five cities,’ etc.), not (as is dooe upon the ordinary view) of the conversion of Egyp. cities to the worship of J″, but of Jewish colonies in Egyp. maintaining their national language and religion, suppose vv. 16–25 to have been written in the latter years of the first Ptolemy (Lagi), c. B.C. 290, when there were undoubtedly many Jewish settlements in Egypt: the original reading, these scholars suppose with Dillmann, was ‘city of the sun,’ the meaning being that one of these colonies, preserving loyally the faith of their fathers, should flourish even in Heliopolis, the city of the sun-god; the reading was altered afterwards, when the Jews of Palestine began to show hostility towards the Egyptian temple, by the Jews of Egypt into ‘city of righteousness’ (LXX), and then further, by the Jews of Palestine, as a counter-blow, into ‘city of destruction’ (Heb. text).
It may be doubted whether there are sufficient reasons for departing from the ordinary explanation of the passage.
S. R. DRIVER.
IRI.—See IR.
IRIJAH.—A captain who arrested Jeremiah on the charge of intending to desert to the Chaldæans (Jer 37:13, 14).
IR-NAHASH.—A city of Judah (1 Ch 4:12). The site is uncertain.
IRON.—1. A city of Naphtali, in the mountains, Jos 19:38. It is probably the modern Yārūn. 2. See MINING AND METALS.
IRPEEL.—A city of Benjamin (Jos 18:27); possibly the ruin Rafāt, N. of el-Jib (Gibeon).
IRRIGATION.—Owing to the lack of a sufficient rainfall, Babylonia and Egypt have to be supplied with water from their respective rivers. This is conveyed over the country by canals. The water is conducted along these canals by various mechanical devices, and at a cost of great labour. In Palestine the need for artificial irrigation is not so great, as is indicated by the contrast with Egypt in Dt 11:10. As a rule the winter rainfall is sufficient for the ordinary cereal crops, and no special irrigation is necessary. The case is different, however, in vegetable and fruit-gardens, which would be destroyed by the long summer droughts. They are always established near natural supplies of water, which is made to flow from the source (either directly, or raised, when necessary, by a sakiyeh or endless chain of buckets worked by a horse, ox, or donkey) into little channels ramifying through the garden. When the channels are, as often, simply dug in the earth, they can be stopped or diverted with the foot, as in the passage quoted. Artificial water-pools for gardens are referred to in Ec 2:6. A storage-pool is an almost universal feature in such gardens.
R. A. S. MACALISTER.
IR-SHEMESH.—See BETH-SHEMESH, No. 1.
IRU.—The eldest son of Caleb (1 Ch 4:15). The correct name is probably Ir, the -u being simply the conjunction ‘and’ coupling it with the following name Elah.
ISAAC.—Son of Abraham and Sarah. The meaning of the name is ‘he laugheth,’ and several reasons for bestowing it are suggested (Gn 17:17, 18:12, 21:6). The narrative as it occurs in Scripture was derived from three principal sources. J supplied Gn 18:9–15, 21:1–7, 24, 25:5, 11, 26 and the bulk of 27; to E may be attributed 22:1–14 with 27:11f., 17f., 20–22; while P was
responsible for 25:19f., 26, 27:46–28:9, 35:27–29. Apparent discrepancies in the story, such as that Isaac, on his deathbed (27:1, 41), blessed Jacob, and yet did not die until many years afterwards (35:27), are evidently due to original differences of tradition, which later editors were not careful to remove. Viewed as coming from independent witnesses, they present no serious difficulty, and do not destroy the verisimilitude of the story. In outline the narrative describes Isaac as circumcised when eight days old (21:4), and as spending his early youth with his father at Beersheba. Thence he was taken to ‘the land of Moriah,’ to be offered up as a burnt-offering at the bidding of God; and if Abraham’s unquestioning faith is the primary lesson taught (22:12, 26:5, He 11:17ff.), Isaac’s childlike confidence in his father is yet conspicuous, with the associated sense of security. His mother died when he was thirty-six years of age; and Abraham sent a servant to fetch a wife for Isaac from amongst his kindred in Mesopotamia, according to Gn 24, where the religious spirit is as noticeable as the idyllic tone. For many years the couple were childless; but at length Isaac’s prayers were heard, and Rebekah gave birth to the twins, Esau and Jacob. Famine and drought made it necessary for Isaac to shift his encampment to Gerar (26:1), where a story similar to that of Abraham’s repudiation of Sarah is told of him (ch. 20; cf. 12:10–20). The tradition was evidently a popular one, and may have found currency in several versions, though there is no actual impossibility in the imitation by the son of the father’s device. Isaac’s prosperity aroused the envy of the Philistine herdsmen (26:20f.) amongst whom he dwelt, and eventually he withdrew again to Beersheba (26:23). He appears next as a decrepit and dying man (27:1, 41), whose blessing, intended for Esau (25:28, 27:4), was diverted by Rebekah upon Jacob. When the old man discovered the mistake, he was agitated at the deception practised upon him, but was unable to do more than predict for Esau a wild and independent career. To protect Jacob from his brother’s resentment Isaac sent him away to obtain a wife from his mother’s kindred in Paddan-aram (28:2), and repeated the benediction. The next record belongs to a period twenty-one years later, unless the paragraph (35:27–29) relates to a visit Jacob made to his home in the interval. It states that Isaac died at Hebron at the age of 180. He was buried by his sons in the cave of Machpelah (49:31).
Isaac is a less striking personality than his father. Deficient in the heroic qualities, he suffered in disposition from an excess of mildness and the love of quiet. His passion for ‘savoury meat’ (25:28, 27:4) was probably a tribal failing. He was rather shifty and timid in his relations with Abimelech (26:1–22), too easily imposed upon, and not a good ruler of his household,—a gracious and kindly but not a strong man. In 26:5 he is subordinated to Abraham, and blessed for his sake; but the two are more frequently classed together (Ex 2:24, 3:6, Mt 8:11, 22:32, Ac 3:13 el al.), and in Am 7:9, 16 ‘Isaac’ is used as a synonym for Israel. If therefore the glory of Isaac was partly derived from the memory of his greater father, the impression made upon posterity by his almost Instinctive trust in God (Gn 22:7, 8) and by the prevailing strength of his devotion (25:21) was deep and abiding.
Jacob considered piety and reverent awe as specially characteristic of his father (31:42, 53, where ‘the Fear of Isaac’ means the God tremblingly adored by him). The submission of Isaac plays a part, although a less important one than the faith of Abraham, in the NT references (He 11:17f., Ja 2:21). R. W. MOSS.
ISAIAH.—Of the four prophets of the 8th cent. B.C., some of whose prophecies are preserved in the OT, Isaiah appeared third in the order of time—some twenty years after Amos preached at Bethel, and a few years after Hosea had begun, but before he had ceased, to prophesy. Isaiah’s prophetic career apparently began before, but closed after, that of Micah. Hosea was a native of the Northern Kingdom, and addressed himself mainly, if not exclusively, to his own people. Amos was a native of Judah, but prophesied in and to Israel; and thus Isaiah is the earliest of these four prophets who addressed himself primarily to Judah, and even he in his earlier years, like his fellowcountryman Amos, prophesied also against Israel (see Is 9:7–10:4, 5:26–30, 17:1–11).
Our knowledge of the life and teaching of Isaiah rests on the book that bears his name, which, however, is not a book compiled by him, but one containing, together with other matter, such of his prophecies as have been preserved, and narratives relating to him; see, in detail, next article.
Isaiah received the call to be a prophet ‘in the year that king Uzziah (or Azariah) died’ (Is 6:1). The year is not quite certain. If Azariah king of Judah and the Azriau king of Jaudi mentioned in Tiglath-pileser’s annals of the year 738 be identical, Isaiah’s call cannot be placed earlier than 738. But if the identification be not admitted, and it is by no means certain, his call may with more probability be placed a few years earlier. His activity extended at least down to the invasion of Sennacherib in 701, and some years later, if the theory be correct that chs. 36–39 refer to two invasions of Sennacherib, of which that in 701 was the first. In any case Isaiah’s public career covered at the least close on forty years, whence we may infer that, like Jeremiah (Jer 1:6), he became a prophet in early life. Unlike his contemporary Micah, his life, so far as we can trace it, was spent in Jerusalem. Not improbably he was a man of rank, at least he had easy access to the king (Is 7:1ff.), and was on terms of intimacy with persons of high position (8:2). His father’s name, Amoz, has in Hebrew no resemblance to that of the prophet Amos. Isaiah was married, and his wife is termed the prophetess (8:3). Like Hosea, he gave to his children, Shear-jashub (7:3) and Mahershalai-hash-baz (8:3), names which briefly stated characteristic elements in his teaching; his own name, though of a normal and frequent Hebrew type, also happened to have a significance (‘help of Jahweh’ or ‘Jahweh helps’) of which he could have made use; that he actually did so we may perhaps infer from 8:18, if we do not rather interpret that statement, so far as Isaiah himself is concerned, of such symbolic conduct as that which he pursued when he went ‘half-clad and barefoot’ (ch. 20).
It is impossible either to construct a complete biography of the prophet or to trace with any elaboration developments in his thought and teaching. His prophecies have obviously not come down to us in chronological order, and many are without any clear indication of the date when they were delivered; any attempt to date accurately much of the material must therefore be exceedingly uncertain, and the numerous attempts that have been made naturally differ widely in their results.
But there are four periods at which we can clearly trace the prophet and his thought or teaching: these are the time of his call, about B.C. 740 (ch. 6); of the Syro-Ephraimitish War (B.C. 735–734:
7:1–8:18); of the siege of Ashdod in B.C. 711 (ch. 20); and of the invasion of Sennacherib in B.C. 701 (chs. 36–39). The last-mentioned narratives are, however, of a later age than that of Isaiah, and require to be carefully used.
At the time of his call Isaiah became conscious that he was to be a teacher whose primary task was to warn his people of judgment to come, of judgment which was to issue in the extermination of his nation (6:10–13—the last clause is absent from the LXX, and probably not original). This judgment of Jahweh on His people was to be executed by means of Assyria, which, since the accession of Tiglath-pileser in 745, had entered on a course of conquest, and, as early as 740, had achieved marked success in Northern Syria. The causes of this coming judgment, Isaiah, like Amos before him, and not improbably in part owing to the influence on him of the teaching of Amos, found in the prevalent social and moral disorder (see e.g. 2:6–4:1, 5:8–24 for the kind of offences which he denounced), in the ingratitude (e.g. 1:8, 5:1–7) of the people to Jahweh, and in their failure to trust Him or to understand that what He required was not sacrifice, which was offered by the people in wearisome abundance, but justice and humanity (cf. e.g. 1:2–31). In this teaching, as in his lofty conception of God, Isaiah did not fundamentally advance beyond the already lofty moral and religious standpoint of Amos and Hosea, though there are naturally enough differences in the details of the presentation. But, so far as we can see, he exercised a more direct, immediate, and decisive influence, owing to the fact that over a long period of years he was able to apply this teaching to the changing political conditions, insisting, for example, at the several political crises mentioned above, that the duty of Jahweh’s people was to trust in Jahweh, and not in political ailiances, whether with Assyria, Egypt, or Ethiopia (cf. e.g. 7:4–9, 20, and [in B.C. 701] 30:1–6, 15, 31:1–3); and to the fact that from the first he set about the creation of a society of disciples who were to perpetuate his teaching (cf. 8:16).
Although judgment to come was the fundamental note of Isaiah’s teaching, there was another note that marked it from the outset: Israel-Judah was to perish, but a remnant was to survive. This at least seems to be the significance of the name of Shear-jashub, who must have been born very shortly after the call, since in 735 he was old enough to accompany his father on his visit to Ahaz (7:3). Beyond the judgment, moreover, he looked forward to a new Jerusalem, righteous and faithful (1:26). How much further was Isaiah’s doctrine of the future developed? Was he the creator of those ideas more particularly summed up in the term ‘Messianic,’ which exercised so powerful an influence in the later periods of Judaism, and which are doubtless among those most intimately connected with the prophet in the minds of the majority of students of the Bible? In particular, was the vision (9:1–6) of the Prince of Peace with world-wide dominion his? Or, to take another detail, did he hold that Zion itself was invincible, even though hostile hosts should approach it? These are questions that have been raised and have not yet received a decisive answer. On the one hand, it is exceedingly probable that in the several collections of the ancient prophecies later passages of promise have in some instances been added to earlier prophecies of judgment; that later prophecy in general is fuller than the earlier of promises; and that several of the Messianic passages, in particular, in the Book of Isaiah, stand isolated and disconnected from passages which bear unmistakably the impress of Isaiah or his age. On the other hand, Isaiah’s belief in a remnant, which seems secured (apart from individual and perhaps doubtful passages) by the name of his son, forms a certain and perhaps a sufficient basis for the more elaborate details of the future. Further, from the very fact that they deal with the future, the passages in question, even if they were by Isaiah, might naturally bear less unmistakable evidence of their age than those which deal with the social and political conditions of his own time. And again, had Isaiah prophesied exclusively of judgment and destruction, we might have expected to find his name coupled with Micah’s in Jer 26:18f.
G. B. GRAY.
ISAIAH, ASCENSION OF.—See APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE, No. 6.
ISAIAH, BOOK OF.—The Book of Isaiah is one of the four great collections of Hebrew prophecies. Like the book of ‘The Twelve Prophets’—another of these great collections (see MICAH [BOOK OF])—it was formed by incorporating with one another smaller and earlier collections, and contains prophecies of many prophets living at different periods; with the exception of Isaiah’s, the prophecies contained in the collection are anonymous, the term ‘Deutero-Isaiah,’ applied to the author of chs. 40–66 (or 40–55), being of course nothing more than a modern symbol for one of these anonymous writers.
1. Composition and literary history of the present book.—The Book of Isaiah, substantially as we now have it, probably dates, like the ‘Book of the Twelve Prophets,’ from towards the end of the 3rd cent. B.C. But the external evidence is scanty and some of it ambiguous; and the internal evidence of certain sections is differently interpreted; if, as the interpretation of Duhm and Marti would require us to infer, ch. 33 and ch. 34f. were not written till towards the middle of the 2nd cent., and chs. 24–27 not until after B.C. 128, it is obvious that the collection which contains these sections did not attain its present form and size till some (possibly considerable) time later than B.C. 128.
The most important piece of external evidence is contained in Sir 48:22–24. In this passage the author, writing about B.C. 180, refers to Isaiah as one of the godly men of Israel, worthy of praise, and, as afterwards (49:6–8) In the case of Ezekiel and of Jeremiah, he cites, or alludes to, certain sections which now stand in the book that bears the prophet’s name. Thus he says: v. 22 ‘For Hezekiah did that which was pleasing to the Lord, and was strong in the ways of David his father, which Isaiah the prophet commanded, who was great and faithful in his vision’; v. 23 ‘In his days the sun went backward; and he added life to the king’; v. 24 ‘By a spirit of might be saw the end, and comforted the mourners in Sion’; v. 25 ‘For ever he declared the things that should be, and hidden things before they came.’ Possibly the last clause of v. 22 refers to the title ‘The vision of Isaiah’ (Is 1:1); certainly v. 23 refers to the narrative of Is 38 (= 2 K 20), and v. 24f. shows familiarity with the recurrent arguments from prophecy in Is 44–48 (see e.g. 41:21–24, 43:9, 46:9, 48:4ff.), while v. 24b is somewhat clearly reminiscent of the actual phraseology of 40:1, 61:2, 3. Though it would be possible to invent somewhat different explanations of these facts, much the most probable inference is that, by the beginning of the 2nd cent. B.C., some (if not all) of the prophecies in chs. 1–35 had already been brought into a book, and to these had been appended, not necessarily or even probably at the same time, (a) chs. 36–39, (b) chs. 40–66 (or the most part thereof), and that the whole book at this time was attributed to Isaiah. Actual citations from the Book of Isaiah by name, which would help to prove the extent of the book at given periods, are not numerous before the 1st cent. A.D., when we find several in the NT: 1:9 is cited in Ro 9:29; 6:9f. in Mt 13:14f., Jn 12:40, Ac 28:25f.; 9:1f. in Mt 4:14ff.; 10:22f. in Ro 9:27f.; 11:10 in Ro 15:12; 29:13 in Mk 7:6f.; 40:3–5 in (Mk 1:3) Mt 3:3; 42:1–4 in Mt 12:17–21; 53:1, 4, 7f. in Ro 10:16, Mt 8:17, Ac 8:30, 32f.; 61:1f. in Lk 4:17–19; 65:1f. in Ro 10:20f. There are also some twenty-five unnamed citations in NT (Swete, Introd. to OT in Greek, 385 f.), some of which, like the unnamed citations from the Greek text of Is 3:10 and 44:20 in Wis 2:12, 15:10 (about B.C. 50), are, taken in conjunction with the named citations, not without significance. Still, rigorous proof that the Book of Isaiah contained all that it now contains much before the final close of the Canon (see CANON OF
OT), is wanting. The general considerations which, taken in conjunction with the proof afforded by Sir 48:17–25 that (most or all of) chs. 40–66 ranked as Isaiah’s as early as B.C. 180, make it wisest, failing strong evidence to the contrary, to reckon with the probability that by about that time the book was substantially of the same extent as at present, are (a) the history of the formation of the Canon (see CANON OF OT), and (b) the probability, created by the allusions in the prologue (about
B.C. 132) to Sirach to translations of prophecies, that our present Greek version dates from before 132. This version appears to proceed from a single age or hand, and yet it is, apart from brief glosses, of the same extent as the present Hebrew text of the book.
If we may adopt the most natural inference from 2 Ch 36:22f. = Ezr 1:1f., external evidence would go far to prove that chs. 40–66 were not included in the Book of Isaiah much before the close of the 3rd cent. B.C. For the Chronicler here attributes the prophecy of Cyrus, which forms so conspicuous a feature of Is 40–48 (see 41:1f., 43:24–45:7, and esp. compare 2 Ch 36:23 with Is 43:28), not to Isaiah but to Jeremiah, which he would scarcely have done if in his time (not earlier than B.C. 300) these anonymous chapters were already incorporated in a book entitled Isaiah. If we reject this inference, we are thrown back entirely on the evidence of the Book of Isaiah itself for the determination of the earliest date at which it can have been compiled.
Turning then to the internal evidence, we note first the structure of the book: (a) chs. 1–35— prophecies, some of which are attributed to Isaiah (1:1, 2:1 etc.), interspersed with narratives by or about Isaiah (chs. 6, 7, 8, 20); (b) chs. 36–39—historical narratives of the life and times of Isaiah, identical in the main with 2 K 18–20; (c) chs. 40–66—anonymous prophecies. Comparison with the
Book of Jeremiah, which concludes with a chapter (52) about the times of Jeremiah derived from 2 K 24:18ff., suggests that our present book has resulted from the union of a prophetic volume, consisting (in the main) of prophecies by or attributed to Isaiah, with an historical appendix and a book of anonymous prophecies. This union, as we have seen above, took place before B.C. 180: if any parts of chs. 1–39 are later than this, their presence in the book is due to subsequent interpolation.
If it were possible to write a full history of the literary process which culminated in the Book of Isaiah as we now have it, it would be necessary to trace in detail first the growth of chs. 1–39, then that of chs. 40–66, and lastly the causes which led to the union of the two. But this is not possible; in particular, we do not know whether chs. 40–66 were added to chs. 1–39 owing to the triumph of an Isaianic theory over the Jeremianic theory or tradition of the origin of these chapters (2 Ch 36:22f.; see above), or whether, as some have supposed, they were added to make the Book of
Isaiah more nearly equal in size to the other prophetic collections—Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and the Twelve—with the result that as early as B.C. 180 these chapters came to be attributed to Isaiah; or whether something else, which we cannot conjecture, was the real cause of this union. But, apart from internal evidence pointing to the different periods in which different sections originated, certain indications of the complexity of the literary process do exist, particularly in the case of chs. 1–39; these we may consider. (1) The matter is not arranged chronologically: the call (cf. Ezk 1, Jer 1) of Isaiah, which naturally preceded any of his prophecies, is recorded not in ch. 1, but in ch. 6. Similarly, in the Koran the record of Mohammed’s call does not occur till Sura 96; in this case the reason is that the editors of the Koran followed the rather mechanical principle of arranging the suras according to their size. The cause of the order in the case of the Book of Isaiah may in part be found in the fact that (2) the occurrence of several titles and indications of different principles of editorial arrangement points to the fact that chs. 1–35 (39) is a collection of material, some of which had previously acquired a fixed arrangement; in other words, chs. 1–35 is a book formed not entirely, or perhaps even mainly, by the collection and free re-arrangement of prophetic pieces, but rather by the incorporation whole of earlier and smaller books. Following these clues, we may first divide these chapters thus: (1) ch. 1 with title (5:1), probably intended to cover the larger collection; (2) chs. 2–12 with title 2:1; (3) chs. 13–23 with title 13:1 naming Isaiah, and corresponding subtitles not mentioning Isaiah, in 15:1, 17:1, 19:1, 21:1, 11, 13, 22:1, 23:1 (cf. elsewhere 30:6); (4) chs. 24–27, distinguished from the preceding sections by the absence of titles, and from the following by the absence of the opening interjection; (5) chs. 28–31 (33)—a group of woes; see 28:1, 29:1 (RV ‘Ho’ represents the same Hebrew word that is translated ‘Woe’ in 28:1 etc.) 30:1, 31:1, 33:1; (6) chs. 34, 35, which, like chs. 24–27, are without title. Some even of these sections seem to have arisen from the union of still smaller and earlier booklets. Thus it is reasonable to suppose that ch. 6 once formed the commencement of a booklet; again, chs. 2–4 are prophecies of judgment enclosed between Messianic prophecies 2:2–7 and 4:2–6; ch. 5 contains a brief group of ‘Woes’ (vv. 8, 11, 18, 20, 21, 22).
It is impossible to enter into details here as to the dates when these several booklets first appeared, or as to the various processes of union or re-arrangement or interpolation or other modifications. Merely to state theories which have been put forward, without adducing proof or offering criticism, would require more space than is available. And from the nature of the case it would be impossible to offer any complete theory that would not be in many respects uncertain. It is more important to appreciate the general fact, which is clear, that the Book of Isaiah is the result of a long and complex literary history, than to be ready to subscribe to any particular theory of this history. But two points may be briefly touched on. (1) Much of the literary process just referred to lies after the Exile. As will he shown below, chs. 40–55 were not written till the last years of the Exile; chs. 56–66 are certainly of no earlier, and probably of later, origin. The union of chs. 1–39 and 40–66 cannot therefore fall before the close of the Exile, and, as shown above, it need not, so far as the external evidence is concerned, fall much before B.C. 180. But even 1–39 was not a volume of pre-exilic origin; for the appendix 36–39 is derived from Kings, which was not completed till, at the earliest, B.C. 561 (cf. 2 K 25:27), or even in what may be regarded as its first edition (cf. Driver, LOT 6, 189) before about B.C. 600. On this ground alone, then, the completion of chs. 1–39, by the inclusion of the appendix 36–39, cannot be placed earlier than the Exile, and should probably be placed later. It must indeed be placed later, unless we regard all the sections in chs. 1–35 which are of post-exilic origin (see below) as interpolations rather than as what, in many cases at least, they probably are, original parts of the booklets incorporated in chs. 1–39. Thus chs. 2–12 and 13–23 (apart from subsequent interpolations or amplifications) as they lay before the editor who united them, probably owed their form to post-exilic editors. (2) The earliest stage of this long literary process falls in the lifetime of Isaiah (c. B.C. 740–701). But even in its earliest stage the literary process was not uniform. In chs. 6 and 8:1–8 we have what there is no reason to question are pieces of Isaiah’s autobiography; Isaiah here speaks of himself in the first person. Chs. 7 and 20 may have the same origin, the fact that Isaiah is here referred to in the third person being perhaps in that case due to an editor; or these chapters may be drawn from early biographies of the prophet by a disciple. Thus chs. 1, 2–12, 13–23 and 28–33 consist in large part of prophetic poems or sayings of Isaiah; many of them were (presumably) written as well as spoken by Isaiah himself, others we not improbably owe to the memory of his disciples. There is no reason for believing that the present arrangement of this matter, even within the several booklets, goes back to Isaiah himself; the division into chapters and verses is of course of very much later origin, and in several cases does violence to the original connexion, either by uniting, as in ch. 5, originally quite distinct pieces, or dividing, as in the case of 9:8–10:4, what formed an undivided whole. Justice can he done to the prophetic literature only when the brevity of the several pieces is recognized, instead of being obscured by treating several distinct pieces as a single discourse. Unfortunately, we have not for the teaching of Isaiah, as for that of Jesus, a triple tradition. But the analogy of the diverse treatment of the same sayings in the different Gospels may well warn us that sayings which lie side by side (as e.g. in 5:8–24) in the Book of Isaiah were not necessarily spoken in immediate succession.
But how far, if not in the order in which he spoke or wrote them, have the words of Isaiah reached us substantially as he spoke them. The question is not altogether easy to answer, particularly in one respect. Isaiah was pre-eminently a prophet of judgment; but intermingled with his warnings are many passages of promise: see e.g. 2:2–4 and 4:2–6, enclosing 2:7–4:1, 9:1–6 concluding the warnings of ch. 8, and the constant interchange of warning and promise in chs. 28– 31. Are these passages of promise Isaiah’s, or the work of some later writers with which later editors sought to comfort as well as to exhort their readers? These questions in general, and in detail with reference to each particular passage, are still far from settled. The general question of
Messianic prophecy in Isaiah is briefly referred to in preceding art.; for details see Cheyne’s Introd. to the Book of Isaiah, or commentaries such as those of Duhm and Marti, or, on a smaller scale and in English, of Whitehouse. Here this alone can be said: the period over which and down to which the history of the growth of the Book of Isaiah extends, and the complexity of that growth, would easily allow of these passages being incorporated as suggested by the theory; and we have the presumption created, for example, by the absence of the last clause of ch. 6 from the Greek text, that short consolatory annotations were still being made as late as the 2nd cent. B.C. Once the significance of the complexity of the Book of Isaiah is grasped, this at least should become clear, that the question, is such and such a passage authentic? meaning, Was it written by Isaiah? proceeds from a wrong point of view. The proper question is this: To what period does such and such a passage in this collection of prophecies, made certainly after the Exile and probably not much before the close of the 3rd cent. B.C., belong?
The presence of explanatory annotations is now generally recognized. For example, in 7:20 Isaiah speaks figuratively of Jahweh using a razor; an editor added a note, which has intruded into the text, that by ‘razor’ we are to understand the king of Assyria. As to the number of such annotations scholars differ.
2. Summary.—The following summary of the Book of Isaiah and of the periods at which its several parts appear, or have been supposed, to have been written, must be used in the light of the foregoing account of the origin of the book. In the clearer cases the evidence of date is briefly indicated; in others one or two theories are mentioned. But for the evidence, such as it is, the reader must turn to larger works; it would require more space than the scope of the article allows, even to summarize it here. Again, in the majority of cases no attempt is made to indicate the smaller annotations of which an example is given in the preced. paragraph. For a synthesis (in part) of those sections of the book which consist of Isaiah’s prophecies, see ISAIAH; and in connexion with chs. 40–55, consult art. SERVANT OF THE LORD.
1:1. Title.—Probably prefixed by an editor who brought together a considerable collection of Isaiah’s prophecies. ‘The days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah’ describe the entire period of Isaiah’s activity. 1:2–31. Till comparatively recently this was generally regarded as a single discourse, constituting, as Ewald terms it, the ‘great arraignment.’ But there was no agreement as to the period of Isaiah’s lifetime to which it belonged,—some scholars referring it to the period of the Syro-Ephraimitish War (cf. ch. 7), almost at the beginning, others to the time of Sennacherib’s invasion at the close, of Isaiah’s career. If, as is really probable, this is not a single discourse, these differences are in part accounted for. The chapter falls into these sections—(a) vv. 2–17, which may perhaps itself consist of two distinct pieces, vv. 2–9 and vv. 10–17; (b) vv. 18–20, perhaps consisting of distinct sayings, namely, v. 18 and vv. 19–20; (c) vv. 21–26; (d) vv. 27–31, which again, as some think, are two fragments—v. 27f. and vv. 29–31. Of these sections (a) and (c) are distinct prophetic poems of Isaiah complete in themselves, (a) dating probably from 701, since the terms of vv. 6, 7 are better accounted for by the Assyrian invasion of that year than by that of the Syro-Ephraimitish army in 735; (c) perhaps from about 705. The short sayings of (b) and the fragment (d) are more difficult to date; (d) has been regarded by some as a denunciation of the Northern Kingdom, and therefore delivered before B.C. 722; by others as a post-exilic passage of promise (v. 27).
2:1 . Title of a collection of Isaianic prophecies.
2:2–4:6. The main body of this section, consisting of a poem announcing the near advent of the ‘day of Jahweh against’ ‘everything proud and lifted up’ (2:6–21), another (3:1, 15) describing the imminent social disintegration of Judah, and tracing its cause to the moral condition of the nation, and a third denouncing the light and luxurious ladies of Jerusalem 3:16–4:1, the catalogue in prose of 3:18–23 being perhaps an interpolation), appears to preserve the earlier teaching of Isaiah. It has been thought that in 2:6–21 Isaiah writes with the experience of the great earthquake (Zec 14:5) of Uzziah’s time fresh in mind, and that 3:12 contains an allusion to Ahaz (died? 728) as the reigning king. The section, like the Book of Amos (Am 9:8f– 15), was provided by an editor (cf. 4:4 and 3:16), as many think, rather than by Isaiah himself, with a consolatory conclusion. The opening poem (2:2–4), if not, as some still consider, Isaiah’s, was incorporated by an editor. It is also included in the Book of the Twelve (Mic 4:1–4; see MICAH).
Ch. 5. Of independent origin are vv. 1–7, 8–24, 25–30.
Vv. 1–7. The parabolic song of the vineyard pointing to the coming rejection by Jahweh of unworthy and ungrateful Judah. The song is Isaiah’s, but whether composed early or late in his career is disputed. Vv. 8–24: six, perhaps originally seven, ‘Woes’—some of them fragments. These cannot easily be dated, nor are they necessarily all of the same date; they may owe their present arrangement to an editor rather than to Isaiah. Vv. 25–30: the refrain of v. 25b connects this with 9:8–10:4, of which poem it probably formed the last strophe.
Ch. 6. Isaiah’s own record of his call in the year of Uzziah’s death (B.C. 740±), written perhaps some years later.
7:1–8:15. Narratives (in part, and originally perhaps wholly, autobiographical) relating to prophecies delivered during the Syro-Ephraimitish War in B.C. 734. In detail: 7:1–16, Isaiah’s interview with Ahaz; the sign of Immanuel (7:14); v. 15, perhaps interpolated; 7:17–25, somewhat fragmentary, and probably not the immediate continuation of 7:1–16; 8:1–4, two signs indicating that Syria and Ephraim will perish before Assyria; vv. 6–8, Judah, not having trusted in Jahweh, will also suffer, and (vv. 9, 10) so will the nations that oppose Judah; vv. 11–15, Jahweh the only real and true object of fear; vv. 16–18, the conclusion—his disciples are to preserve and witness to what he has said.
8:19–9:7. In spite of the link between 8:20 and 8:16, it is very doubtful whether this section was originally attached to the preceding, which seemed to reach a very definite conclusion in 8:16–18. If not, its date is very uncertain. It consists of an obscure fragment or fragments (8:19–22) describing a period of great distress, a statement in prose of an imminent change of fortune (9:1), and a Messianic poem (9:2–7) celebrating the restoration, triumph, and prosperity of the people under their mighty Prince. Those who deny in toto the existence of Messianic passages in Isaiah’s prophecies naturally treat this poem as a later product, some assigning it to about B.C. 500. The positive defence of Isaianic authorship is rendered difficult by its isolation and by the absence (not unnatural in a poem dealing entirely with the ideal future) of direct allusions of Isaiah’s age.
9:8–10:4 with 5:25(26)–30. A carefully constructed poem of five strophes of nearly (and perhaps in its original form of exactly) equal length, marked off from one another by the refrain in 9:12, 17, 21, 10:4 (5:25). It belongs to Isaiah’s early period (about B.C. 735), and deals with the collapse of the Northern Kingdom, Ephraim, before the Assyrians, who, without being named, are vigorously described in 5:26–30.
10:5–27. Assyria will be punished for its pride and misunderstanding of the purpose for which Jahweh used it. Date much disputed; probably only in part the work of Isaiah.
10:28–32. A dramatic idyll portraying an (imaginary) Assyrian descent on Jerusalem. The period in
Isaiah’s lifetime to which it could best he referred is 701.
10:33, 34. Appended to the preceding poem, and pointing out that Assyria will perish just outside the city on which it has descended.
Ch. 11. Messianic prophecies: (a) vv. 1–9, description of the new prince of the house of Jesse (David), and of the ideal conditions that will exist under his reign; (b) v. 9; (c) vv. 11–16, the restoration of Jewish exiles. The last section clearly seems to be post-exilic; for it presupposes the exile on an extensive scale not only of Israelites, which might be explained by the events of B.C. 722, but also of Jews, which can be satisfactorily explained only by the captivity of 597 and 586. The first section must also date from after 586, if the figure of the felled tree in v. 1 implies that the Davidic monarchy has ceased.
Ch. 12. A psalm of thanksgiving. If most of the psalms in the Psalter (see PSALMS) are later in origin than the age of Isaiah, this psalm probably is so likewise.
13–23. The ‘Book of Oracles’ (AV ‘Burdens’). The untitled sections, 14:24–26, (14:28–32), 17:12–14, 18, 20, which deal with Judah, as contrasted with most of the Oracles, which are against the foreign nations, perhaps formed no part of the original book.
13:1–14:23 . The fall of Babylon (13:19, 14:3, 22). The section contains two poems (13:2–22 and 14:4b– 21) in the same rhythm as is used in the elegies of the Book of Lamentations; between the poems, and at the close of the second, are short prose passages (14:1–4a, 22f.). The section throughout presupposes conditions resembling those presupposed in chs. 40–55, and is, as certainly as that section, to be referred not to Isaiah, but to a writer living after 586, when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Chaldæans (cf. 13:19), whose king was king of Babylon (cf. 14:4). To the Assyrians, who play so conspicuous a part in Isaiah’s prophecies, there is naturally no allusion; for with the fall of Nineveh about B.C. 606 the Assyrians ceased to count, and Babylon, which in Isaiah’s time was subject to Assyria, here figures as possessed of world-wide dominion. Again, the point of the prophecy in 14:1f. is to be observed: it is restoration from exile; the Exile itself is, for this writer, an existing fact, which of course it was not for Isaiah. From the allusion to the Medes (13:17) only, and not to the Persians or to Cyrus, it has commonly been inferred that this section is somewhat earlier than 40–55, and was written about B.C. 549.
14:24–27. A short prophecy, perhaps of the year 701, predicting the overthrow of the Assyrian invaders of Judah.—14:28–32, Philistia warned: according to the title, delivered in the year that Ahaz died (? B.C.
728) . Neither this date nor even the Isaianic authorship of the passage is universally admitted.
Chs. 15, 16. The fate of Moab. The prophecy is provided with an epilogue, 16:13f., written at a later date (and not claiming to be by the author of the prophecy), explaining that what was predicted long ago will be fulfilled within three years. In style the prophecy is very generally admitted to be singularly unlike that of the better attested prophecies of Isaiah; it is therefore either attributed to an anonymous prophet who was earlier than Isaiah, and, as some think, lived in the reign of Jeroboam II., the epilogue in this case being regarded as Isaiah’s (though it contains nothing very characteristic of Isaiah), or the prophecy as well as the epilogue is assigned to a writer later than Isaiah. Much of the material of 15:1–16:12 appears to be worked up from older material, and some of it is in turn used again in Jer 48:5, 29–38.
17:1–11. The impending fall of Damascus, Syria, and Ephraim (cf. 7–8:12): a prophecy of Isaiah’s before the fall of Damascus in B.C. 732.
17:12–14. The roar of hostile nations (presumably in the Assyrian army) advancing, which are to be suddenly dispersed. Date uncertain.
Ch. 18. A difficult prophetic poem containing much that is exceedingly obscure; it is commonly understood to embody Isaiah’s disapproval of accepting proffered Ethiopian assistance; if this be correct, it may be assigned to some time between 704–701.
19:1–15. Jahweh’s judgment on Egypt, which will take the form of civil discord (v. 2), foreign dominion (v. 4), and social distress. Vv. 16–25, the conversion of Egypt, which, together with Assyria, will worship
Jahweh. Date of both sections much disputed; assigned by some to Isaiah and to the time of the defeat of the
Egyptians by Sargon (? v. 2) at Raphia in 720. Many question the Isaianic authorship, especially of vv. 16
(18)–25, and some see in v. 18 an allusion to the temple of Onias in Heliopolis, built about B.C. 170
(Josephus, BJ, VII. x. 2–4). See IR-HA-HERES.
Ch. 20. A narrative and prophecy showing how Isaiah insisted that it was folly to trust in the Mizrites and Cushites (Arabians, according to some, but as commonly interpreted, Egyptians and Ethiopians). The date in v. 1 corresponds to B.C. 711.
21:1–10. A vision of the fall of Babylon (v. 9) before Elamites (i.e. Persians) and Medes (v. 2). Like 40– 55, this prophecy was written between 549, when Cyrus of Persia conquered Media, and 538, when Babylon fell before him.
21:11f. and 21:13–17. Brief and obscure oracles on (a) Edom; (b) some nomad tribes of Arabia.
22:1–14. Isaiah declares to Jerusalem, once (or, as others interpret it, now) given up to tumultuous revels (v. 2), that it has committed unpardonable sin (v. 14). Assigned by some to B.C. 711, when Sargon’s troops were at Ashdod (ch. 20); by others to the time of revelry that followed Sennacherib’s retreat in 701.
22:16–25. Singular among Isaiah’s prophecies in that it is addressed to an individual, namely Shebna the governor of the palace, who is threatened with disgrace, which in 701 had befallen him in so far that he then occupies the lower office of secretary (36:2, 37:2).
23:1–14. An elegiac poem, closing (v. 14) as it begins (v. 1). on the approaching fall of Phœnicia: the occasion, according to some, being the siege of Tyre (vv. 5, 8) by Shalmaneser, between B.C. 727 and 723: according to others, the destruction of Sidon (vv. 2, 4, 12), in B.C. 348. After its fall Tyre will rise again and serve Jahweh (vv. 15–18); cf. 19.
Chs. 24–27. An apocalyptic vision, in which we see universal catastrophe (24:1–23), which extends to the supernatural rulers or patron angels of the nations (24:21; cf. 27:1), followed by the reign of Jahweh, who to His coronation feast invites all nations; death is abolished and sorrow banished (25:6–8). The Jews, hidden during the time of judgment (26:20–27:1), return from their dispersion one and all to Jerusalem (27:12f.). Interspersed are songs or hymns (25:1–5, 9–12, 26:1–19, 27:2–5). Difficult of interpretation as apocalypses are wont to be, and in parts obscured by very serious textual corruption, it is yet clear that this is a post-exilic work (cf. e.g. 27:12f.); and the occurrence of striking ideas, such as those of resurrection (26:19), immortality (25:8), and patron angels, which occur elsewhere in the OT only in its latest parts, suggests a relatively late point even in this period.
Chs. 28–33. A group of prophecies brought together probably by an editor on account of the similar opening of the sections with ‘Woe’ (see above). In this section there is a constant and remarkable alternation between menace and denunciation of Judah, and consolation of her, which at times takes the form or menace to her foes. Looked at from this standpoint, this booklet falls into the following sections, of which the references to the sections of promise are here given in brackets, 28:1–4, (28:5, 6), 28:7–22, (28:23–29), 29:1–6 (7), (29:8, and possibly parts of 29:1–7, according to interpretation), 29:9–16, (29:17–24), 30:1–17, (30:18–33), 31:1–4, (31:5–9), 32:1–8, (32:9–14, 32:15–20), (33). In some cases it will be seen that the promise follows abruptly on the threat, and considerably lessens the force of the latter. The menaces and denunciations seem clearly to be the work of Isaiah, though some question his authorship of 32:9–14 (a parallel to 3:16–4:1); but of late several scholars have attributed the entire group of promises to later writerse, and a larger number do not consider ch. 33 to be the work of Isaiah. In any case, the section has merely an editorial unity, and is not all of one period: 28:1–4 would appear to have been composed before the fall of Samaria in 722; the majority of the remaining menaces, particularly those which denounce the resort to Egypt for help, may best be referred to the period immediately before Sennacherib’s invasion in B.C.
701.
Chs. 34, 35. The future of Edom, on whom vengeance is to be taken (34:8) for its treatment of Zion (? in 586), and the future of the Jews contrasted. Not earlier than the Exile, which is presupposed (35:10), and probably depended on, and therefore later than, chs. 40–55.
Chs.36–39. Cf. art. KINGS[BOOKS OF]. It is now generally agreed that the editor of the Book of Isaiah derived this section from 2 Kings. The only section of these chapters not found in Kings is 38:9–20, which the editor apparently derived from a collection of liturgical poems (cf. 38:20). The ascription of this psalm to Hezekiah (38:9) is much questioned.
Chs. 40–66. Once, perhaps, attributed to Jeremiah, but from the beginning of the 2nd cent. B.C. (see above) to the close of the 18th cent. A.D., these chapters were regarded as the work of Isaiah. Since the close of the 18th cent. the evidence of their later origin, which is remarkably clear, has been increasingly, till it is now generally, admitted. But till within the last 15 years the chapters were commonly regarded as a unity; now it is by many admitted that chs. 40–55 and 56–66 belong to different periods, the former to the end of the Exile, the latter (in the main) to the age of Ezra, while some carry disintegration considerably further. It is impossible to enter further into details here.
(a) Chs. 40–55. These chapters presuppose that the writer and those whom he addresses lived during the period of the Babylonian Exile; they predict as imminent the close of the Exile, and return of the Jews. In detail observe that Zion lies waste and needs rebuilding (44:28, 49:14–21, 51:3, 17–23, 52:7–12, 54), whereas Babylon is exalted, but is shortly to be brought low (47, 46:1f.). Cyrus himself, mentioned by name in 44:28, 45:1, and quite clearly referred to in 41:25ff., is not the subject of prediction; he is already well known to the prophet and his audience (or readers); his future career is predicted. By observing what part of Cyrus’ career was already over, and what still future to the prophet as he wrote, his book can be dated somewhat precisely. Cyrus appeared shortly before 550 in Persia to the E. of Babylon; in 549 he conquered
Media to the N. of Babylon, and in 538 he captured Babylon. Is 41:25 refers to Cyrus as ruling both to the N. and E.; the prophet then writes after the conquest of Media; but he predicts the fall of Babylon, and therefore writes before that event. Between 549 and 538, and probably nearer the latter date, the prophecy was written.
Speaking generally, chs. 40–55 are dominated by one ruling purpose, namely, to rouse the exiles out of their despondency, and to fire them with enthusiasm for what the writer regards as their future destiny, the instruction of the world in Jahweh’s ways and will,—in a word, in true religion. For this purpose he emphasizes and illustrates the omnipotence and omniscience of Jahweh, and the futility of the gods of the nations. Again, the passages dealing with the ‘Servant of the Lord’ (wh. see) are but one form in which he develops his main theme; for the Servant is Israel. The only sins of the people on which his purpose allows him to lay stress are those of despondency and unbelief; he is aware, indeed, that there have been other sins in the past, but as to these his message is that they are pardoned (40:2). These chapters, then, though the progress of thought in them may be less in a straight line than circular, are closely knit together. But when we turn to—
(b) Chs. 56–66, the contrast is great: this may be seen by a brief summary. Thus (1) 56:1–8 describes the terms on which the eunuch and the foreigner may be admitted to the Jewish community, and enforces the observance of the Sabbath; (2) 56:9–57:21 describes and denounces an existing state of society in which the watchmen of the people are neglectful, from which the righteous perish, and in which the people generally resort to various illegitimate rites: (3) denunciation of people sedulous in fasting, but given to inhumanity and (cf. 56:1–8) profanation of the Sabbath; (4) 59, a denunciation similar to the preceding, followed (vv. 15b–21) by a theophany in which Jahweh appears as a man of war (cf. 63:1–6); (5) chs. 60–62, the future glory of Zion; (6) 63:1–6, Jahweh’s day of vengeance against Edom (cf. ch. 34); (7) 63:7–64, a liturgical confession; (8) the contrasted characters and destinies of the apostates and the loyal; the idolatrous cults (cf.
56:9–57:21) of the former.
The difference of outlook, subject, and treatment between chs. 40–55 and chs. 56–66 is obvious, and must not be disregarded. In itself such difference need not necessarily imply difference of authorship, though it certainly suggests that we have to do with different works, even if of the same author, written with a different purpose and under different conditions. And there are other facts which confirm this suggestion. Thus a number of passages on the most obvious and natural, if not the only possible, interpretation imply the existence of the Temple and the presence of the speaker and his audience in Jerusalem, and consequently that the Exile is over (or not yet begun); see 56:6, 7 (cf. 44:28) 60:7 [in chs. 60–62 the walls of Jerusalem require rebuilding (60:10, cf. 61:4), as they still did in the days of Nehemiah (Neh 1–3), but the Temple is apparently already there] 66:7, 61:3. In 57:5–7 it is implied that the persons addressed are living in a country of torrent valleys and lofty hills such as Judah was and Babylon was not. The general social condition implied is more easily and naturally explained of the Jews in Palestine than in Babylon; for example, the tribunals are administered, though unjustly, by Jews (59:6–9, 14), and there are ‘watchmen’ (prophets) and ‘shepherds’ ( rulers ).
The presence of such passages as 57:5–7 was very naturally and rightly used by those who defended the unity of the Book of Isaiah as proof that the passages in question were not written in the Exile; but, of course, such passages could not annul the even clearer evidence of the exilic origin of chs. 40–55. For a time other scholars saw in those parts of chs. 56–66 which imply residence in Palestine proof of the embodiment in chs. 40–66 of pre-exilic literature. But a clearer view of the history of the Book of Isaiah shows that a theory that such passages are post-exilic is equally legitimate. Whether pre-exilic or post-exilic must be determined by other considerations. The present tendency is to regard the whole of chs. 56–66 as post-exilic, and most of it, if not the whole, as belonging to the age of Ezra and Nehemiah, to which such characteristics as the stress laid on the observance of the Sabbath and the interest in the question of the admission of strangers to the community very naturally point. If this view is correct, we have, for example in 56:1–8, 60–62, the work of broader-minded and less exclusive contemporaries of Ezra and Nehemiah.
It is exceedingly unfortunate that the RV does not distinguish the poetical, which are by far the larger, parts of the Book of Isaiah from the prose. But this defect is made good in Cheyne’e translation (Polychrome Bible), which must on every ground be recommended as one of the most valuable aids to the study of the book of which the English student can avail himself. Of commentaries in English, Skinner’s (on the AV) and Whitehouse’s (on the RV) are convenient and good. The larger commentary by Cheyne has been to some considerable extent antiquated, particularly by his own edition of the book in the Polychrome Bible, and his invaluable
Introduction to the Book of Isaiah. In these works, and in, e.g., Driver’s Isaiah, his Life and Times, and his LOT, and G. A. Smith’s ‘Isaiah’ (Expositor’s Bible), the student will find sufficient guidance to the extensive literature which has gathered round the Book of Isaiah.
G. B. GRAY.
ISCAH.—A DAUGHTER OF HARAN AND SISTER OF MILCAH, GN 11:29 (J).
ISCARIOT.—See JUDAS ISCARIOT.
ISDAEL (1 Es 5:33) = Ezr 2:56 and Neh 7:58 Giddel.
ISHBAH.—A Judahite (1 Ch 4:17).
ISHBAK.—A son of Abraham by Keturah (Gn 25:2 = 1 Ch 1:32). The tribe of which he is the eponym is somewhat uncertain.
ISHBI-BENOB.—One of the four Philistines of the giant stock who were slain by the mighty men of David (2 S 21:15–17).
ISHBOSHETH.—1. The fourth son of Saul; on the death of his father and three brothers on
Mt. Gilboa, he contested the throne of Israel with David for seven years. Driven by David over the Jordan, he took up his headquarters at Mahanaim, where, after having been deserted by Abner, he was murdered by two of his captains. His name is given in 1 Ch 8:33 and 9:39 as Esh-baal. The same variation meets us in the name of Jonathan’s son—Mephibosheth or Meribbaal—and in the case of Jerubbaal or Jerubbesheth; similarly, we have Beeliada and Eliada. In 1 S 14:49 Ishbaal has become Ishvi, which in its turn is a corruption for Ishiah, or ‘man of Jahweh.’ The change of Ish-baal, ‘man of Baal,’ into Ishbosheth, ‘man of the shameful thing,’ is ordinarily accounted for on the supposition ‘that the later religion wished to avoid the now odious term Baal.’ The theory, however, is met by the difficulty that it is in the Chronicler that the form compounded with Baal occurs. Hence it has been suggested that Bosheth is the fossilized name of a Babylonian deity Bast, for which theory, however, little support is forthcoming. 2. Ishbosheth or Ishbaal is probably the true reading for Jashobeam in 1 Ch 11:11 etc., which is corrupted to Josheb-basshebeth in 2 S 23:8.
W. F. COBB.
ISHHOD.—A Manassite (1 Ch 7:18).
ISHI.—1. A Jerahmeelite (1 Ch 2:31). 2. A Judahite chief (1 Ch 4:20). 3. A chief of East Manasseh (1 Ch 5:24). 4. One of the captains of the 500 men of the tribe of Simeon who smote the Amalekites at Mt. Seir (1 Ch 4:42).
ISHI (‘my husband’).—The name which Hosea (2:16) recommends Israel to apply to J″ instead of Baali (‘my lord’).
ISHMA.—One of the sons of Etam (1 Ch 4:3).
ISHMAEL.—1. The son of Abraham by Hagar. His name, which means ‘May God hear,’ was decided upon before his birth (Gn 16:11). As in the case of the history of his mother, three documentary sources are used by the narrator. J supplied Gn 16:4–14, E 21:8–21, whilst Padds such links as 16:15f., 17:18–27, 25:7–10, 12–17. For the story of his life up to his settlement in the wilderness of Paran, the northern part of the Sinaitic peninsula, see HAGAR. At the age of thirteen he was circumcised on the same day as his father (Gn 17:25f.). In Paran he married an Egyptian wife, and became famous as an archer (21:20f.). No other incident is recorded, except that he was associated with his step-brother in the burial of their father (25:9), and himself died at the age of 137 (25:17).
Ishmael had been resolved into a conjectural personification of the founder of a group of tribes; but the narrative is too vivid in its portrayal of incident and character, and too true in its psychological treatment, to support that view. That there is some idealization in the particulars is possible. Tribal rivalry may have undesignedly coloured the presentment of Sarah’s jealousy. The little discrepancies between the documents point to a variety of human standpoints, and are as explicable upon the implication of historicity as upon the theory of personification. The note of all the recorded passions and promptings is naturalness; and the obvious intention of the narrative, with the impression produced upon an uncommitted reader, is that of an attempt at actual biography rather than at the construction of an artificial explanation of certain relationships of race.
In regard to the so-called Ishmaelites, the case is not so clear. Ishmael is represented as the father of twelve sons (Gn 25:12–16, 1 Ch 1:29–31), and the phrase ‘twelve princes according to their nations’ (cf. Gn 17:20) almost suggests an attempt on the part of the writer at an exhibition of his view of racial origins. A further complication arises from the confusion of Ishmaelites and Midianites (37:28ff., Jg 8:24, 26), though the two are distinguished in the genealogies of Gn 25:1, 4, 13. Branches of the descendants of the two step-brothers may have combined through similarity of habit and location, and been known sometimes by the one name, and sometimes by the other; but there was clearly no permanent fusion of the two families. Nor is it possible to say whether at any time a religious confederation of twelve tribes was formed under the name of Ishmael, or if the name was adopted, because of its prominence, for the protection of some weaker tribes. The scheme may have even less basis in history, and be but part of an ethnic theory by which the Hebrew genealogists sought to explain the relationships of their neighbours to one another, and to the Hebrews themselves. A dozen tribes, scattered over the Sinaitic peninsula and the districts east of the Jordan, because of some similarity in civilization or language, or in some cases possibly under the influence of correct tradition, are grouped as kinsmen, being sons of Abraham, but of inferior status, as being descended from the son of a handmaid. That the differences from the pure Hebrew were thought to be strongly Egyptian in their character or source, is indicated by the statement that Ishmael’s mother and his wife were both Egyptians. The Ishmaelites soon disappear from Scripture. There are a few individuals described as of that nationality (1 Ch 2:17, 27:30); but in later times the word could be used metaphorically of any hostile people (Ps 83:6).
2. A son of Azel, a descendant of Saul through Jonathan (1 Ch 8:38, 9:44). 3. Ancestor of the Zebadiah who was one of Jehoshaphat’s judicial officers (2 Ch 19:11). 4. A military officer associated with Jehoiada in the revolution in favour of Joash (2 Ch 23:1). 5. A member of the royal house of David who took the principal part in the murder of Gedaliah (Jer 41:1, 2). The story is told in Jer 40:7–41:15, with a summary in 2 K 25:23–26. It is probable that Ishmael resented Nebuchadnezzar’s appointment of Gedaliah as governor of Judæa (Jer 40:5) instead of some member of the ruling family, and considered him as unpatriotic in consenting to represent an alien power. Further instigation was supplied by Baalis, king of Ammon (Jer 40:14), who was seeking either revenge or an opportunity to extend his dominions. Gedaliah and his retinue were killed after an entertainment given to Ishmael, who gained possession of Mizpah, the seat of government. Shortly afterwards he set out with his captives to join Baalis, but was overtaken by a body of
Gedaliah’s soldiers at the pool of Gibeon (Jer 41:12), and defeated. He made good his escape (41:15) with the majority of his associates; but of his subsequent life nothing is known. The conspiracy may have been prompted by motives that were in part well considered, if on the whole mistaken; but it is significant that Jeremiah supported Gedaliah (40:6), in memory of whose murder an annual fast was observed for some years in the month Tishri (Zec 7:5, 8:19). 6. One of the priests persuaded by Ezra to put away their foreign wives (Ezr 10:22; cf. Ismael, 1 Es 9:22).
R. W. MOSS.
ISHMAIAH.—1. The ‘ruler’ of the tribe of Zebulun (1 Ch 27:19). 2. One of David’s ‘thirty’ (1 Ch 12:4).
ISHMERAI.—A Benjamite chief (1 Ch 8:18).
ISHPAH.—The eponym of a Benjamite family (1 Ch 8:16).
ISHPAN.—A Benjamite chief (1 Ch 8:22).
ISH-SECHEL.—In Ezr 8:18 it is said: ‘And by the good hand of our God upon us they brought
us a man of understanding, of the sons of Mahli,’ where RV gives for ‘man of understanding’ the marginal proper name ‘Ish-sechel.’ That a proper name is required is certain, but whether Ish-sechel is that name is not so certain. Isaachar has been suggested.
W. F. COBB. ISHVAH.—Second son of Asher (Gn 46:17, 1 Ch 7:30).
ISHVI.—1. Third son of Asher (Gn 46:17, Nu 26:44 P, 1 Ch 7:30); patronymic Ishvites (Nu 26:44). 2. Second son of Saul by Abinoam (1 S 14:49).
ISLAND, ISLE.—The Heb. word ʼῑ means primarily ‘coastlands,’ but sometimes lands in general, and in one passage (Is 42:15) ‘dry land’ as opposed to water. In Is 20:6 Palestine is called ‘this isle’ (AV, but RV ‘coast-land’). The islands of the Gentiles or heathen (Gn 10:6, Zeph 2:11) are apparently the coasts of the W. Mediterranean; the ‘isles of the sea’ (Est 10:1, Ezk 26:18 etc.) are also the Mediterranean coasts; ‘the isles’ (Ps 72:10 etc., Is 42:10 etc.) means the West generally as contrasted with the East. Tyre is mentioned as an isle in Is 23:2, and here perhaps the term may be taken literally, as Tyre was actually at that time an island. The isle of Kittim (Jer 2:10, Ezk 27:6) is probably Cyprus, and the isle of Caphtor (Jer 47:4 mg.), Crete. In the NT five islands are mentioned: Cyprus (Ac 4:36, 11:19f., 13:4, 15:39, 21:3, 16, 27:4), Crete (27:7, 12, 13, 21), Clauda ( v. 16), Melita (28:1), and Patmos (Rev 1:9).
E. W. G. MASTERMAN.
ISMACHIAH.—A Levite in the time of Hezekiah (2 Ch 31:13). Cf. SEMACHIAH.
ISMAEL (1 Es 9:22) = Ezr 10:22 Ishmael.
ISMAERUS (1 Es 9:34) = Ezr 10:34 Amram.
ISRAEL
I. HISTORY
1. Sources.—The sources of Jewish political and religious history are the OT, the so-called Apocryphal writings, the works of Josephus, the Assyrian and Egyptian inscriptions, allusions in Greek and Roman historians, and the Mishna and Talmud.
Modern criticism has demonstrated that many of these sources were composed by weaving together previously existing documents. Before using any of these sources except the inscriptions, therefore, it is necessary to state the results of critical investigation and to estimate its effect upon the historical trustworthiness of the narratives. Genesis. Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua (the Hexateuch) are the product of one long literary process. Four different documents, each the work of a school of writers, have been laid under tribute to compose it. These documents are quoted so literally that they can still be separated with practical certainty one from another. The documents are the Jahwistic (J), composed in Judah by J1 before B.C. 800, perhaps in the reign of Jehoshaphat, though fragments of older poems are quoted, and supplemented a little later by J2; the Elohistic (E). composed in the Northern Kingdom by E1 about B.C. 750 and expanded somewhat later by E2; the Deuteronomic code (D), composed by D1 about B.C. 650, to which D2 prefixed a second preface about ninety years later; the Code of Holiness, compiled by P1 about B.C. 500 or a little earlier, the priestly ‘Book of Origins’ written by P2 about B.C 450, and various supplementary priestly notes added by various writers at later times. It should be noted that D 2 added various notes throughout the Hexateuch.
The dates here assigned to these documents are those given by the Graf-Wellhausen school, to which the majority of scholars in all countries now belong. The Ewald-Dillmann school, represented by Strack and
Kittel, still hold that P is older than D. For details see HEXATEUCH.
Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings were also compiled by one literary process. The compiler was a follower of D, who wrote probably about 600. The work received a supplement by a kindred writer about 560. The sources from which the editor drew were, for Judges, Samuel, and the first two chapters of Kings,—the J and E documents in Jg 5 a poem composed about B.C. 1100 is utilized. The editor interpolated his own comments and at times his own editorial framework, but the sources may still be distinguished from these and from each other. A few additions have been made by a still later hand, but these are readily separated. In 1 K 3–11 a chronicle of the reign of Solomon and an old Temple record have been drawn upon, but they are interwoven with glosses and later legendary material. In the synchronous history (1 K 12–2 K 17) the principal sources are the ‘Book of the Chronicle of the Kings of Israel’ and the ‘Book of the
Chronicle of the Kings of Judah,’ though various other writings have been drawn upon for the narratives of Elijah and Elisha. The concluding portion (2 K 18–25) is dependent also upon the Judæan Chronicle. In all parts of Kings the Deuteronomic editor allows himself large liberties. For details see artt. on the Books of
JUDGES, SAMUEL, and KINGS.
Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah are all the result of a late literary movement, and came into existence about B.C. 300. They were composed under the influence of the Levitical law. The history was re-told in Chronicles, in order to furnish the faithful with an expurgated edition of the history of Israel. The chief sources of the Chronicler were the earlier canonical books which are now found in our Bibles. Where he differs from these he is of doubtful authority. See CHRONICLES. A memoir of Ezra and one of Nehemiah were laid under contribution in the books which respectively bear these names. Apart from these quotations, the
Chronicler composed freely as his point of view guided his imagination. See EZRA and NEHEMIAH [Books of].
Of the remaining historical books 1 Maccabees is a first-rate historical authority, having been composed by an author contemporary with the events described. The other apocryphal works contain much legendary material.
Josephus is for the earlier history dependent almost exclusively upon the OT. Here his narrative has no independent value. For the events in which he was an actor he is a writer of the first importance. In the nonIsraelitish sources Israel is mentioned only incidentally, but the information thus given is of primary importance. The Mishna and Talmud are compilations of traditions containing in some cases an historical kernel, but valuable for the light they throw upon Jewish life in the early Christian centuries.
2. Historical value of the earlier books.—If the oldest source in the Pentateuch dates from the 9th cent., the question as to the value of the narratives concerning the patriarchal period is forced upon us. Can the accounts of that time be relied upon as history? The answer of most scholars of the present day is that in part they can, though in a different way from that which was formerly in vogue. Winckler, it is true, would dissolve these narratives into solar and astral myths, but the majority of scholars, while making allowance for legendary and mythical elements, are confident that important outlines of tribal history are revealed in the early books of the Bible.
The tenth chapter of Genesis contains a genealogical table in which nations are personified as men. Thus the sons of Ham were Cush (Nubia), Mizraim (Egypt), Put (East Africa?), and Canaan. The sons of Shem were Elam, Assyria, Mesopotamia, Lud (a land of unknown situation, not Lydia), and Aram (the Aramæans). If countries and peoples are here personified as men, the same may be the case elsewhere: and in Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Esau, and the twelve sons of Jacob, we may be dealing not with individuals but with tribes. The marriages of individuals may represent the alliances or union of tribes. Viewed in this way, these narratives disclose to us the formation of the Israelitish nation.
The traditions may, however, be classified in two ways: (1) as to origin, and (2) as to content.
(For the classification as to origin see Paton, AJTh viii. [1904], 658 ff.)
1. (a) Some traditions, such as those concerning kinship with non-Palestinian tribes, the deliverance from Egypt, and concerning Moses, were brought into Palestine from the desert. (b) Others, such as the traditions of Abraham’s connexion with various shrines, and the stories of Jacob and his sons, were developed in the land of Canaan, (c) Still others were learned from the
Canaanites. Thus we learn from an inscription of Thothmes III. about B.C. 1500 that Jacob-el was a place-name in Palestine. (See W. M. Müller, Asien und Europa, 162.) Israel, as will appear later, was a name of a part of the tribes before they entered Canaan. In Genesis, Jacob and Israel are identified, probably because Israel had settled in the Jacob country. The latter name must have been learned from the Canaanites. Similarly, in the inscription of Thothmes Joseph-el is a place-name. Genesis (48:9ff.) tells how Joseph was divided into two tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh. Probably the latter are Israelitish, and are so called because they settled in the Joseph country. Lot or Luten (Egyp. Ruten) is an old name of Palestine or of a part of it. In Genesis, Moab and Ammon are said to be the children of Lot, probably because they settled in the country of Luten. In most cases where a tradition has blended two elements, one of these was learned from the Canaanites. (d) Finally, a fourth set of traditions were derived from Babylonia. This is clearly the case with the Creation and Deluge narratives, parallels to which have been found in Babylonian and Assyrian literature. (See KIB vi.)
2. Classified according to their content, we have: (a) narratives which embody the history and movements of tribes. (b) Narratives which reflect the traditions of the various shrines of Israel. The stories of Abraham at Bethel, Shechem, Hebron, and Beersheba come under this head. (c) Legendary and mythical survivals. Many of these have an ætiological purpose; they explain the origin of some custom or the cause of some physical phenomenon. Thus Gn 18, 19—the destruction of Sodom and the other cities of the plain—is a story which grew up to account for the Dead Sea, which, we now know, was produced by very different causes. Similarly Gn 22 is a story designed to account for the fact that the Israelites sacrificed a lamb instead of the firstborn. (d) Other narratives are devoted to cosmogony and primeval history. This classification is worked out in detail in Peters’ Early Hebrew Story. It is clear that in writing a history of the origin of Israel we must regard the patriarchal narratives as relating largely to tribes rather than individuals, and must use them with discrimination.
3. Historical meaning of the patriarchal narratives.—Parts of the account of Abraham are local traditions of shrines, but the story of Abraham’s migration is the narrative of the westward movement of a tribe or group of tribes from which the Hebrews were descended. Isaac is a shadowy figure confined mostly to the south, and possibly represents a south Palestinian clan, which was afterwards absorbed by the Israelites. Jacob-Israel (Jacob, as shown above, is of Canaanitish origin;
Israel was the name of the confederated clans) represents the nation Israel itself. Israel is called an Aramæan (Dt 26:5), and the account of the marriage of Jacob (Gn 29–31) shows that Israel was kindred to the Aramæans. We can now trace in the cuneiform literature the appearance and westward migration of the Aramæans, and we know that they begin to be mentioned in the Euphrates valley about B.C. 1300, and were moving westward for a little more than a century (see Paton, Syria and Palestine, 103 ff.). The Israelites were a part of this Aramæan migration.
The sons of Jacob are divided into four groups. Six—Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun—are said to be the sons of Leah. Leah probably means ‘wild cow’ (Delitzsch,
Prolegomena, 80; W. R. Smith, Kinship2, 254). This apparently means that these tribes were of near kin, and possessed as a common totem the ‘wild cow’ or ‘bovine antelope.’ The tribes of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Benjamin traced their descent from Rachel. Rachel means ‘ewe,’ and these tribes, though kindred to the other six, possessed a different totem. Judah was, in the period before the conquest, a far smaller tribe than afterwards, for, as will appear later, many Palestinian clans were absorbed into Judah. Benjamin is said to have been the youngest son of Jacob, born in Palestine a long time after the others. The name Benjamin means ‘sons of the south,’ or ‘southerners’: the Benjamites are probably the ‘southerners’ of the tribe of Ephraim, and were gradually separated from that tribe after the conquest of Canaan. Four sons of Jacob—Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher— are said to be the sons of concubines. This less honourable birth probably means that they joined the confederacy later than the other tribes. Since the tribe of Asher can be traced in the el-Amarna tablets in the region of their subsequent habitat (cf. Barton, Semitic Origins, 248 ff.), this tribe probably joined the confederacy after the conquest of Palestine. Perhaps the same is true of the other three.
4. The beginnings of Israel.—The original Israel, then, probably consisted of the eight tribes— Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Manasseh, and Ephraim, though perhaps the
Rachel tribes did not join the confederacy until they had escaped from Egypt (see § 6). These tribes, along with the other Abrahamidæ—the Edomites, Ammonites, and Moabites—moved westward from the Euphrates along the eastern border of Palestine. The Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites gained a foothold in the territories afterwards occupied by them. The Israelites appear to have been compelled to move on to the less fertile steppe to the south, between Beersheba and Egypt, roaming at times as far as Sinai. Budde (Rel. of Isr. to the Exile, 6) regards the Khabiri, who in the el-Amarna tablets lay siege to Jerusalem, as Hebrews who made an incursion into Palestine, c. B.C. 1400.
Though many scholars deny that they were Hebrews, perhaps they were.
5. The Egyptian bondage.—From the time of the first Egyptian dynasty (c. B.C. 3000), the
Egyptians had been penetrating into the Sinaitic Peninsula on account of the mines in the Wadi Maghara (cf. Breasted, Hist. of Egypt, 48). In course of time Egypt dominated the whole region, and on this account it was called Musru, Egypt being Musru or Misraim (cf. Winckler, Hibbert Jour. ii. 571 ff., and KAT3 144ff.). Because of this, Winckler holds (KAT 3 212 ff.) that there is no historical foundation for the narrative of the Egyptian oppression of the Hebrews and their exodus from that country; all this, he contends, arose from a later misunderstanding of the name Musru. But, as Budde (Rel. of Isr. to the Exile, ch. i.) has pointed out, the firm and constant tradition of the Egyptian bondage, running as it does through all four of the Pentateuchal documents and forming the background of all Israel’s religious and prophetic consciousness, must have some historical content. We know from the Egyptian monuments that at different times Bedu from Asia entered the country on account of its fertility. The famous Hyksos kings and their people found access to the land of the Nile in this way. Probability, accordingly, strengthens the tradition that Hebrews so entered Egypt. Ex 1:11 states that they were compelled to aid in building the cities of Pithom and Raamses. Excavations have shown that these cities were founded by Rameses II. (B.C. 1292–1225; cf. Hogarth, Authority and Archæology, 55). It has been customary, therefore, to regard Rameses as the Pharaoh of the oppression, and Menephtah (Meren-ptah, 1225–1215) as the Pharaoh of the Exodus. This view has in recent years met with an unexpected difficulty. In 1896 a stele was discovered in Egypt on which an inscription of Menephtah, dated in his fifth year, mentions the Israelites as already in Palestine or the desert to the south of it, and as defeated there, (cf. Breasted, Anc. Records of Egypt, iii. 256 ff.). This inscription celebrates a campaign which Menephtah made into Palestine in his third year (cf. Breasted, op. cit. 272). On the surface, this inscription, which contains by far the oldest mention of Israel yet discovered in any literature, and the only mention in Egyptian, seems to favour Winckler’s view. The subject cannot, however, be dismissed in so light a manner. The persistent historical tradition which colours all Hebrew religious thought must have, one would think, some historical foundation. The main thread of it must be true, but in details, such as the reference to Pithom and Raamses, the tradition may be mistaken. Traditions attach themselves to different men, why not to different cities? Perhaps, as several scholars have suggested, another solution is more probable, that not all of the Hebrews went to Egypt. Wildeboer (Jahvedienst en Volksreligie Israel, 15) and Budde (op. cit. 10) hold that it was the so-called Joseph tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh, that settled for a time in Egypt, and that Moses led forth. This receives some support from the fact that the E document, which originated among the Ephraimites, is the first one that remembers that the name Jahweh was, until the Exodus, unknown to them (cf.
Ex 3:14).
Probably we shall not go far astray, if we suppose that the Leah tribes were roaming the steppe to the south of Palestine where Menephtah defeated them, while the Rachel tribes, enticed into Egypt by the opportunity to obtain an easier livelihood, became entangled in trouble there, from which Moses emancipated them, perhaps in the reign of Menephtah himself.
6. The Exodus.—The J, E, and P documents agree in their main picture of the Exodus, although J differs from the other two in holding that the worship of Jahweh was known at an earlier time.
Moses, they tell us, fled from Egypt and took refuge in Midian with Jethro, a Kenite priest (cf. Jg 1:16). Here, according to E and P, at Horeb or Sinai, Jahweh’s holy mount, Moses first learned to worship Jahweh, who, he believed, sent him to deliver from Egypt his oppressed brethren. After various plagues (J gives them as seven; E, five; and P; six) Moses led them out, and by Divine aid they escaped across the Red Sea. J makes this escape the result of Jahweh’s control of natural means (Ex 14:21). Moses then led them to Sinai, where, according to both J and E, they entered into a solemn covenant with Jahweh to serve Him as their God. According to E (Ex 18:12ff.), it was Jethro, the Kenite or Midianite priest, who initiated them into the rite and mediated the covenant. After this the Rachel tribes probably allied themselves more closely to the Leah tribes, and, through the aid of Moses, gradually led them to adopt the worship of Jahweh. Religion was at this period purely an affair of ritual and material success, and since clans had escaped from Egypt through the name of Jahweh, others would more readily adopt His worship also. Perhaps it was during this period that the Rachel tribes first became a real part of the Israelite confederation.
7. The Wilderness wandering.—For some time the habitat of Israel, as thus constituted, was the region between Sinai on the south and Kadesh,—a spring some fifty miles south of Beersheba, —on the north. At Kadesh the fountain was sacred, and at Sinai there was a sacred mountain. Moses became during this period the sheik of the united tribes. Because of his preeminence in the knowledge of Jahweh he acquired this paramount influence in all their counsels. In the traditions this period is called the Wandering in the Wilderness, and it is said to have continued forty years. The expression ‘forty years’ is, however, used by D and his followers in a vague way for an indefinite period of time. In this case it is probably rather over than under the actual amount.
The region in which Israel now roamed was anything but fertile, and the people naturally turned their eyes to more promising pasture lands. This they did with the more confidence, because
Jahweh, their new God, had just delivered a portion of them from Egypt in an extraordinary manner. Naturally they desired the most fertile land in the region, Palestine. Finding themselves for some reason unable to move directly upon it from the south (Nu 13, 14), perhaps because the hostile Amalekites interposed, they made a circuit to the eastward. According to the traditions, their detour extended around the territories of Edom and Moab, so that they came upon the territory north of the Arnon, where an Amorlte kingdom had previously been established, over which, in the city of
Heshbon, Sihon ruled. See AMORITES.
8. The trans-Jordanic conquest.—The account of the conquest of the kingdom of Sihon is given by E with a few additions from J in Nu 21. No details are given, but it appears that in the battles Israel was victorious. We learn from the P document in Nu 32 that the conquered cities of this region were divided between the tribes of Reuben and Gad. Perhaps it was at this time that the tribe of Gad came into the confederacy. At least they appear in real history here for the first time. The genealogies represent Gad as the son of a slave-girl. This, as already noted, probably means that the tribe joined the nation at a comparatively late period. Probably the Gadites came in from the desert at this period, and in union with the Reubenites won this territory, which extended from the Arnon to a point a little north of Heshbon. It is usually supposed that the territory of Reuben lay to the south of that of Gad, extending from the Arnon to Elealeh, north of Heshbon; but in reality each took certain cities in such a way that their territory interpenetrated (Nu 32:34). Thus the Gadites had Dibon, Ataroth, and Aroer to the south, Jazer north of Heshbon, and Bethnimrah and Beth-baran in the Jordan valley; while the Reubenites had Baal-meon, Nebo, Heshbon, and Elealeh, which lay between these. Probably the country to the north was not conquered until later. It is true that D claims that Og, the king of Bashan, was conquered at this time, but it is probable that the conquest of Bashan by a part of the tribe of Manasseh was a backward movement from the west after the conquest of Palestine was accomplished. During this period Moses died, and Joshua became the leader of the nation.
9. Crossing the Jordan.—The conquests of the tribe of Gad brought the Hebrews into the Jordan valley, but the swiftly flowing river with its banks of clay formed an insuperable obstacle to these primitive folk. The traditions tell of a miraculous stoppage of the waters. The Arabic historian Nuwairi tells of a land-slide of one of the clay hills that border the Jordan, which afforded an opportunity to the Arabs to complete a military bridge. The account of this was published with translation in the PEFSt, 1895, p. 253 ff. The J writer would see in such an event, as he did in the action of the winds upon the waters of the Red Sea, the hand of Jahweh. The accounts of it in which the priests and the ark figure are of later origin. These stories explained the origin of a circle of sacred stones called Gilgal, which lay on the west of the Jordan, by the supposition that the priests had taken these stones from the bed of the river at the time of the crossing.
10. The conquest of Canaan.—The first point of attack after crossing the Jordan was Jericho. In Jos 6 J’s account and E’s account of the taking of Jericho are woven together (cf. the Oxford Hexateuch, or SBOT, ad. loc.). According to the J account, the Israelites marched around the city once a day for six days. As they made no attack, the besieged were thrown off their guard, so that, when on the seventh day the Israelites made an attack at the end of their marching, they easily captured the town. As to the subsequent course of the conquest, the sources differ widely. The D and P strata of the book of Joshua, which form the main portion of it, represent Joshua as gaining possession of the country in two great battles, and as dividing it up among the tribes by lot. The J account of the conquest, however, which has been preserved in Jg 1 and Jos 8–10, 13:1, 7a, 13, 15:14–19, 63, 16:1–3, 10, 17:11–18, 19:47, while it represents Joshua as the leader of the Rachel tribes and as winning a decisive victory near Gibeon, declares that the tribes went up to win their territory singly, and that in the end their conquest was only partial. This representation is much older than the other, and is much more in accord with the subsequent course of events and with historical probability.
According to J, there seem to have been at least three lines of attack: (1) that which Joshua led up the valley from Jericho to Ai and Bethel, from which the territories afterwards occupied by Ephraim and Benjamin were secured. (2) A movement on the part of the tribe of Judah followed by the Simeonites, southwestward from Jericho into the hill-country about Bethlehem and Hebron. (3) Lastly, there was the movement of the northern tribes into the hill-country which borders the great plain of Jezreel. J in Jos 11:1, 4–9 tells us that in a great battle by the Waters of Merom (wh. see) Joshua won for the Israelites a victory over four petty kings of the north, which gave the Israelites their foothold there. In the course of these struggles a disaster befell the tribes of Simeon and Levi in an attempt to take Shechem, which practically annihilated Levi, and greatly weakened Simeon (cf. Gn 34). This disaster was thought to be a Divine punishment for reprehensible conduct (Gn 49:5–7). J distinctly states (Jg 1) that the conquest was not complete, but that two lines of fortresses, remaining in the possession of the Canaanites, cut the Israelitish territory into three sections. One of these consisted of Dor, Megiddo. Taanach, Ibleam, and Beth-shean, and gave the Canaanites control of the great plain of Jezreel. while, holding as they did Jerusalem, Aijalon, Harheres (Beth-shemesh), and Gezer, they cut the tribe of Judah off from their northern kinsfolk. J further tells us distinctly that not all the Canaanites were driven out, but that the Canaanites and the Hebrews lived together. Later, he says, Israel made slaves of the Canaanites. This latter statement is perhaps true for those Canaanites who held out in these fortresses, but reasons will be given later for believing that by intermarriage a gradual fusion between Canaanites and Israelites took place.
Reasons have been adduced (§ 3) for believing that the tribe of Asher had been in the country from about B.C. 1400. (The conquest probably occurred about 1200.) Probably they allied themselves with the other tribes when the latter entered Canaan. At what time the tribes of Naphtali and Dan joined the Hebrew federation we have no means of knowing. J tells us (Jg 1:34, 35) that the Danites struggled for a foothold in the Shephēlah, where they obtained out an insecure footing. As they afterwards migrated from here (Jg 17, 18), and as a place in this region was called the ‘Camp of Dan’ (Jg 13:25, 18:12), probably their hold was very insecure. We learn from Jg 15 that they possessed the town of Zorah, where Samson was afterwards born.
11. Period of the Judges.—During this period, which extended from about 1200 to about 1020 B.C., Israel became naturalized in the land, and amalgamated with the Canaanites. The chronology of the period as given in the Book of Judges is certainly too long. The Deuteronomic editor, who is responsible for this chronology, probably reckoned forty years as the equivalent of a generation, and
1 K 6:1 gives us the key to his scheme. He made the time from the Exodus to the founding of the
Temple twelve generations (cf. Moore, ‘Judges’ in ICC, p. xxxviii.). The so-called ‘Minor Judges’—Tola, Jair, Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon (Jg 10:1–5, 12:8–15)—were not included in the editor’s chronology. The statements concerning them were added by a later hand. As three of their names appear elsewhere as clan names (cf. Gn 46:13, 14, Nu 26:23, 26, Dt 3:14), and as another is a city (Jos 21:30), scholars are agreed that these were not real judges, but that they owe their existence to the mistake of a late writer. Similarly, Shamgar (Jg 3:31) was not a real judge. His name appears where it does because some late writer mistakenly inferred that the reference to Shamgar (probably a Hittite chief) in Jg 5:6 was an allusion to an earlier judge (cf. Moore, JAOS xix. 159 ff.). Some doubt attaches also to Othniel, who is elsewhere a younger brother of a Caleb,— the Calebites, a branch of the Edomite clan of the Kenaz (cf. Jg 1:13 with Gn 36:11, 15, 42), which had settled in Southern Judah. This doubt is increased by the fact that the whole of the narrative of the invasion of Cushan-rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia, is the work of the editor, RD, and also by the fact that no king of Mesopotamia who could have made such an invasion is known to have existed at this time. Furthermore, had such a king invaded Israel, his power would have been felt in the north and not in Judah. If there is any historical kernel in this narrative, probably it was the Edomites who were the perpetrators of the invasion, and their name has become corrupted (cf. Paton, Syr. and Pal. 161). It is difficult, then, to see how Othniel should have been a deliverer, as he seems to have belonged to a kindred clan, but the whole matter may have been confused by oral transmission. Perhaps the narrative is a distorted reminiscence of the settlement in Southern Judah of the Edomitic clans of Caleb and Othniel.
The real judges were Ehud, Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah, Eli, and Samuel. Samson was a kind of giant-hero, but he always fought single-handed; he was no leader and organizer of men, and it is difficult to see how he can justly be called a judge. The age was a period of great tribal restlessness. Others were trying to do what the Israelites had done, and gain a foothold in Palestine. Wave after wave of attempted invasion broke over the land. Each coming from a different direction affected a different part of it, and in the part affected a patriot would arouse the Hebrews of the vicinity and expel the invader. The influence thus acquired, and the position which the wealth derived from the spoil of war gave him, made such a person the sheik of his district for the time being. Thus the judges were in reality great tribal chieftains. They owed their office to personal prowess. Because of their character their countrymen brought to them their causes to adjust, and they had no authority except public opinion whereby to enforce their decisions.
Deborah and Barak delivered Israel, not from invaders, but from a monarch whom up to that time the Hebrews had been unable to overcome. It is probable that this power was Hittite (cf. Moore, JAOS, xix. 158 ff.). This episode, which should probably be dated about 1150, marks the conclusion of the conquest of Northern Palestine.
There were four real invasions from outside during the period of the judges: that of the Moabites, which called Ehud into prominence; that of the Midianites, which gave Gideon his opportunity; that of the Ammonites, from whom Jephthah delivered Gilead; and that of the Philistines, against whom Samson, Eli, Samuel, and Saul struggled, but who were not overcome until the reign of David. The first of these invasions affected the territories of Reuben and Gad on the east, and of Benjamin on the west, of the Jordan. It probably occurred early in the period. The second invasion affected the country of Ephraim and Manasseh, and probably occurred about the middle of the period. Gideon’s son Abimelech endeavoured to establish a petty kingdom in Shechem after Gideon had run his successful career, but the attempt at kingship was premature (cf. Jg 9). The Ammonite invasion affected only Gilead, while the Philistine invasion was later, more prolonged, and affected all of Central Palestine. These people came into Palestine from the outside
(cf. PHILISTINES), pushed the inhabitants of the Maritime Plain back upon the Israelites, made many attempts to conquer the hill-country, and by the end of the reign of Saul held the greater part of the Plain of Jezreel.
The struggles with these invaders gradually called into existence a national consciousness in Israel. It is clear from the song of Deborah that when that poem was written there was no sense of national unity. A dim sense of kinship held the tribes together, but this kinship brought to Deborah’s standard only those who had some tribal interest in the struggle. The Reubenites did not respond to the appeal (Jg 5:16), while the tribe of Judah is not mentioned at all.
At the end of the period, the kingship of Saul, who responded to a call to help Jabesh, a Gileadite city, against a second in vasion of Ammonites, is the expression of a developing national consciousness.
At some time during this period a part of the Danites moved to the foot of Mount Hermon, to the city which was henceforth to be called Dan (Jg 17, 18). During these years the process of amalgamation between the Israelites and the tribes previously inhabiting the land went steadily forward. Perhaps it occurred in the tribe of Judah on a larger scale than elsewhere. At all events, we can trace it there more clearly. The stories of Judah’s marriages in Gn 38 really represent the union of Shnaites and Tamarites with the tribe. The union of the Kenazites and Calebites with Judah has already been noted. The Kenites also united with them (Jg 1:16), as did also the Jerahmeelites (cf. 1 S 30:29 with 1 Ch 2:9). What went on in Judah occurred to some extent in all the tribes, though probably Judah excelled in this. Perhaps it was a larger admixture of foreign blood that gave Judah its sense of aloofness from the rest of Israel. Certain it is. however, that the great increase in strength which Israel experienced between the time of Deborah and the time of David cannot be accounted
for on the basis of natural increase. There were elements in the religion of the Israelites which, notwithstanding the absorption of culture from the Canaanites, enabled Israel to absorb in turn the
Canaanites themselves. The religious and ethical aspects of the period will be considered in connexion with the religion.
12. Reign of Saul.—There are two accounts of how Saul became king. The older of these (1 S 9:1, 10:16, 27b, 11:1, 15) tells how Saul was led to Samuel in seeking some lost asses, how Samuel anointed him to be king, and how about a month after that the men of Jabesh-gilead, whom the Ammonites were besieging, sent out messengers earnestly imploring aid. Saul, by means of a gory symbolism consonant with the habits of his age, summoned the Israelites to follow him to war. They responded, and by means of the army thus raised he delivered the distressed city. As a result of this Saul was proclaimed king, apparently by acclamation. The later account (which consists of the parts of 1 S 8–12 not enumerated above) presents a picture which is so unnatural that it cannot be historical. Saul gained his kingdom, then, because of his success as a military leader. Probably at first his sovereignty was acknowledged only by the Rachel tribes and Gilead.
The Philistines, upon hearing that Israel had a king, naturally endeavoured to crush him. Soon after his accession, therefore, Saul was compelled to repel an invasion, by which the Philistines had penetrated to Michmash, within ten miles of his capital. Their camp was separated from Saul’s by the deep gorge of Michmash. Owing to the daring and valour of Jonathan, a victory was gained for Israel which gave Saul for a time freedom from these enemies (cf. 1 S 13, 14). Saul occupied this respite in an expedition against Israel’s old-time enemies the Amalekites. Our account of this (1 S 15) comes from the later (E) source, and gives us, by way of explaining Saul’s later insanity, the statement that he did not destroy the accursed Amalekites with all their belongings, but presumed to take some booty from them.
Soon, however, Saul was compelled once more to take up arms against the Philistines, whom he fought with varying fortunes until they slew him in battle on Mount Gilboa. During the later years of Saul’s life fits of insanity came upon him with increasing frequency. These were interpreted by his contemporaries to mean that Jahweh had abandoned him; thus his followers were gradually estranged from him. A large part of the space devoted to his reign by the sacred writers is occupied with the relations between Saul and the youthful David. These narratives are purely personal. The only light which they throw upon the political history of the period is that they make it clear that Saul’s hold upon the tribe of Judah was not a very firm one.
How long the reign of Saul continued we have no means of knowing. The Books of Samuel contain no statement concerning it. Many scholars believe that the editor of Samuel purposely omitted it because he regarded David as the legitimate religious successor of Samuel, and viewed Saul consequently as a usurper. Saul must have ruled for some years—ten or fifteen, probably—and his kingdom included not only the territory from the Plain of Jezreel to Jerusalem, with a less firm hold upon Judah, but the trans-Jordanic Gileadites. The latter were so loyal to him that his son, when Judah seceded, abandoned his home in Gibeon, and made Mahanaim his capital. What attitude the tribes to the north of Jezreel took towards Saul we do not know.
13. Reign of David.—Before Saul’s death David had attached the men of Judah so firmly to himself, and had exhibited such qualities of leadership, that, when Saul fell at Gilboa, David made himself king of Judah, his capital being Hebron. As Jonathan, the crown prince, had fallen in battle, Abner, Saul’s faithful general, made Ish-baal (called in Samuel Ish-bosheth) king, removing his residence to Mahanaim. For seven and a half years civil war dragged itself along. Then Joab by treacherous murder removed Abner (2 S 3:27ff.), assassins disposed of the weak Ish-baal, and Israel and Judah were soon united again under one monarch, David. We are not to understand from 2 S 5 that the elders of Israel all came immediately in one body to make David king. Probably they came one by one at intervals of time. There were many tribal jealousies and ambitions deterring some of them from such a course, but the times demanded a united kingdom, and as there was no one but David who gave promise of establishing such a monarchy, they ultimately yielded to the logic of events.
David soon devoted himself to the consolidation of his territory. Just at the northern edge of the tribe of Judah, commanding the highway from north to south, stood the ancient fortress of
Jerusalem. It had never been in the possession of the Israelites. The Jebusites, who had held it since
Israel’s entrance into Canaan, fondly believed that its position rendered it impregnable. This city David captured, and with the insight of genius made it his capital (2 S 5:4ff.). This choice was a wise one in every way. Had he continued to dwell in Hebron, both Benjamin—which had in the previous reign been the royal tribe—and Ephraim—which never easily yielded precedence to any other clan—would have regarded him as a Judæan rather than a national leader. Jerusalem was to the Israelites a new city. It not only had no associations with the tribal differences of the past, but, lying as it did on the borderland of two tribes, was neutral territory. Moreover, the natural facilities of its situation easily made it an almost impregnable fortress. David accordingly rebuilt the Jebusite stronghold and took up his residence in it, and from this time onward it became the city of David.
The Philistines, ever jealous of the rising power of Israel, soon attacked David in his new capital, but he gained such a victory over them (2 S 5:18ff.) that in the future he seems to have been able to seek them out city by city and subdue them at his leisure (2 S 8:1ff.). Having crushed the Philistines, David turned his attention to the trans-Jordanic lands. He attacked Moab, and after his victory treated the conquered with the greatest barbarity (8:2). He was, however, the child of his age. All wars were cruel, and the Assyrians could teach even David lessons in cruelty. Edom was also conquered (8:13, 14). Ammon needlessly provoked a war with David, and after a long slege their capital Rabbah, on the distant border of the desert, succumbed (10, 11). The petty Aramæan State of Zobah was drawn into the war, and was compelled to pay tribute (8:3ff.). Damascus, whose inhabitants, as kinsfolk of the people of Zobah, tried to aid the latter, was finally made a tributary State also (8:5ff.), so that within a few years David built up a considerable empire. This territory he did not attempt to organize in a political way, but, according to the universal Oriental custom of his time, he ruled it through tributary native princes. Toi, king of Hamath, and Hiram, king of Tyre, sent embassies to welcome David into the brotherhood of kings. Thus Israel became united, and gained a recognized position among the nations.
This success was possible because at the moment Assyria and Egypt were both weak. In the former country the period of weakness which followed the reign of the great Tiglath-pileser I. was at its height, while in the latter land the 21st dynasty, with its dual line of rulers at Thebes and Tanis, rendered the country powerless through internal dissensions.
David upon his removal to Jerusalem organized his court upon a more extensive scale than Saul had ever done, and, according to Oriental custom, increased his harem. The early Semite was often predisposed to sexual weakness, and David exhibited the frequent bent of his race. His sin with Bathsheba, and subsequent treachery to her husband Uriah, need not be re-told. David’s fondness for his son Absalom and his lax treatment of him produced more dire political consequences. Absalom led a rebellion which drove the king from Jerusalem and nearly cost him his throne. David on this occasion, like Ish-baal before him, took refuge at Mahanaim, the east Jordanic hinterland. Here David’s conduct towards the rebellious son was such that, but for the fact that the relentless Joab disregarded the express commands of his royal master and put Absalom to death after his army had been defeated, it is doubtful whether Absalom would not have triumphed in the end. A smaller revolt grew out of this, but the reduction of Abel near Dan in the north finally restored David’s authority throughout the land.
During the reign of David, though we do not know in what part of it, two misfortunes befell the country. The first of these was a famine for three successive years (2 S 21). The means taken to win back the favour of Jahweh, which it was supposed Israel had forfeited, so that He should give rain again, is an eloquent commentary on the barbarous nature of the age and the primitive character of its religious conceptions. The other event was a plague, which followed an attempt of David to take a census (ch. 24), and which the Israelites accordingly believed Jahweh had sent to punish the king for presumptuously introducing such an innovation.
The last days of David were rendered unquiet by the attempt of his son Adonijah to seize the
crown (1 K 1). Having, however, fixed the succession upon Solomon, the son of Bathsheba, David is said to have left to him as an inheritance the duty of taking vengeance upon Joab and Shimei (1 K 2:1 ff. ).
To the reign of David subsequent generations looked as the golden age of Israel. Never again did the boundaries of a united Israelitish empire extend so far. These boundaries, magnified a little by fond imagination, became the ideal limits of the Promised Land. David himself, idealized by later ages, became the prototype of the Messiah. The reign of David is said to have lasted forty years. It probably extended from about B.C. 1017 to 977.
14. Reign of Solomon.—Probably upon the accession of Solomon, certainly during his reign, two of the tributary States, Edom and Damascus, gained their independence (1 K 11:14–25). The remainder of the empire of David was held by Solomon until his death. Up to the time of Solomon the Israelites had been a simple rural people untouched by the splendour or the culture of the world outside. Simple shepherds and vinedressers, they knew nothing of the splendours of Tyre or Babylon or Egypt, and had never possessed wealth enough to enjoy such splendours had they known them. David had risen from the people, and to his death remained a simple man of his race. Solomon, born in the purple, determined to bring his kingdom into line with the great powers of the world. He accordingly consummated a marriage with the daughter of Pharaoh, probably one of the Pharaohs of the Tanite branch of the 21st dynasty. This marriage brought him into touch with the old civilization of Egypt. In order to equip his capital with public buildings suitable to the estate of such an empire, Solomon hired Phœnician architects, and constructed a palace for himself, one for the daughter of Pharaoh, and a Temple of such magnificence as the rustic Israelites had never seen. Later generations have overlaid the accounts of these, especially of the Temple, with many glosses, increasing the impression of their grandeur (cf. TEMPLE), but there is no doubt that in the way of luxury they far surpassed anything previously known in Israel. The whole pile was approached through a hypostyle hall built on Egyptian models, called the ‘house of the forest of Lebanon,’ while into the Temple brazen work and brazen instruments were introduced, in flagrant violation of Israelitish traditions. Even a brazen altar of burnt-offering was substituted for the traditional altar of stone. Ornaments of palm trees and cherubim such as adorned the temple of Melkart at Tyre decorated not only the interior of the Temple, but the brazen instruments as well. These religious innovations were looked upon with disfavour by many of Solomon’s contemporaries (cf. 1 K 12:28b), and the buildings, although the boast of a later age, were regarded with mingled feelings by those who were compelled to pay the taxes by which they were erected.
Not only in buildings but also in his whole establishment did Solomon depart from the simple ways of his father. He not only married the daughters of many of the petty Palestinian kings who were his tributaries, but filled his harem with numerous other beauties besides. Probably the statement that he had 700 wives and 300 concubines (1 K 11:3) is the exaggeration of a later writer, but, allowing for this, his harem must have been very numerous. His method of living was of course in accord with the magnificent buildings which he had erected. To support this splendour the old system of taxation was inadequate, and a new method had to be devised. The whole country was divided into twelve districts, each of which was placed under the charge of a tax-gatherer, and compelled to furnish for the king’s house the provision for one month in each year (1 K 4:7–18). It is noteworthy that in this division economic conditions rather than tribal territories were followed. Not only were the tribes unequal in numbers, but the territory of certain sections was much more productive than that of others. Solomon’s tax-collectors were placed in the most fertile sections of the land. Solomon is also said to have departed from the simple ways of his father by introducing horses and chariots for his use. The ass is the animal of the simple Palestinian. The ancient Hebrew always looked askance at a horse. It was an emblem of pride and luxury. In his eyes it was the instrument of war, not of peace. The introduction of this luxury further estranged many of
Solomon’s non-Judæan subjects. His wealth was increased by his commerce with South Arabia. He established a fleet of trading vessels on the Red Sea, manned with Phœnician sailors (1 K 9:26ff.).
Early in his reign Solomon obtained a reputation for wisdom. ‘Wisdom’ to the early Hebrew did not mean philosophy, but practical insight into human nature and skill in the management of people (cf. 1 K 3:16–28). It was this skill that enabled him to hold his kingdom intact in spite of his many innovations. It was this skill that in the later traditions made Solomon, for the Israelite, the typical wise man. Although we cannot longer ascribe to him either the Book of Proverbs or the Book of Ecclesiastes, his reputation for wisdom was no doubt deserved.
Solomon’s reign is said to have continued forty years (1 K 11:42). If this be so. B.C. 977–937 is probably the period covered. Towards the close of Solomon’s reign the tribe of Ephraim, which in the time of the Judges could hardly bear to allow another tribe to take precedence of it, Became restless. Its leader was Jeroboam, a young Ephraimite officer to whom Solomon had entrusted the administration of the affairs of the Joseph tribes (1 K 11:28). His plans for rebelling involved the fortification of his native city Zeredah. which called Solomon’s attention to his plot, and he fled accordingly to Egypt, where he found refuge. In the latter country the 21st dynasty, with which Solomon had intermarried, had passed away, and the Libyan Shishak (Sheshonk), the founder of the
22nd dynasty, had ascended the throne in B.C. 945. He ruled a united Egypt, and entertained ambitions to renew Egypt’s Asiatic empire. Shishak accordingly welcomed Jeroboam and offered him asylum, but was not prepared while Solomon lived to give him an army with which to attack his master.
15. Division of the kingdom.—Upon the death of Solomon, his son Rehoboam seems to have been proclaimed king in Judah without opposition, but as some doubt concerning the loyalty of the other tribes, of which Ephraim was leader, seems to have existed, Rehoboam went to Shechem to be anointed as king at their ancient shrine (1 K 12:1ff.). Jeroboam, having been informed in his Egyptian retreat of the progress of affairs, returned to Shechem and prompted the elders of the tribes assembled there to exact from Rehoboam a promise that in case they accepted him as monarch he would relieve them of the heavy taxation which his father had imposed upon them. After considering the matter three days, Rehoboam rejected the advice of the older and wiser counsellors, and gave such an answer as one bred to the doctrine of the Divine right of kings would naturally give. The substance of his reply was: ‘My little finger shall be thicker than my father’s loins.’ As the result of this answer all the tribes except Judah and a portion of Benjamin refused to acknowledge the descendant of David, and made Jeroboam their king. Judah remained faithful to the heir of her old hero, and, because Jerusalem was on the border of Benjamin, the Judæan kings were able to retain a strip of the land of that tribe varying from time to time in width from four to eight miles. All else was lost to the Davidic dynasty.
The chief forces which produced this disruption were economic, but they were not the only forces. Religious conservatism also did its share. Solomon had in many ways contravened the religious customs of his nation. His brazen altar and brazen utensils for the Temple were not orthodox. Although he made no attempt to centralize the worship at his Temple (which was in reality his royal chapel), his disregard of sacred ritual had its effect, and Jeroboam made an appeal to religious conservatism when he said, ‘Behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.’ Since we know the history only through the work of a propagandist of a later type of religion, the attitude of Jeroboam has long been misunderstood. He was not a religious innovator, but a religious conservative.
When the kingdom was divided, the tributary States of course gained their independence, and Israel’s empire was at an end. The days of her political glory had been less than a century, and her empire passed away never to return. The nation, divided and its parts often warring with one another, could not easily become again a power of importance.
16. From Jeroboam to Ahab (937–875).—After the division of the kingdom, the southern portion, consisting chiefly of the tribe of Judah, was known as the kingdom of Judah, while the northern division was known as the kingdom of Israel. Judah remained loyal to the Davidic dynasty as long as she maintained her independence, but in Israel frequent changes of dynasty occurred. Only one family furnished more than four monarchs, some only two, while several failed to transmit the throne at all. The kings during the first period were:
ISRAEL. JUDAH.
|
Jeroboam I |
|
937–915. |
|
|
Nadab |
915–913. |
Abijam |
920–917. |
|
Baasha |
913–889. |
Asa |
917–876. |
|
Elah |
889–887. |
Jehoshaphat |
876 –. |
|
Zimri |
|
days. |
|
|
Omri |
|
887–875. |
|
Few of the details of the reign of Jeroboam have come down to us. He fortified Shechem (1 K 12:25), but Tirzah (which Klostermann regards as the same as Zeredah) was also a residence (1 K 14:17). Jeroboam extended his royal patronage to two sanctuaries, Dan and Bethel, the one at the northern and the other at the southern extremity of his territory. Naturally there were hostile relations between him and Judah as long as Jeroboam lived. No details of this hostility have come down to us. If we had only the Biblical records before us, we should suppose that Jeroboam was aided in this war by Shishak of Egypt, for we are told how he invaded Judah (1 K 14:25) and compelled Rehoboam to pay a tribute which stripped the Temple of much of its golden treasure and ornamentation. It appears from the Egyptian inscriptions, however, that Shishak’s campaign was directed against both the Hebrew kingdoms alike. His army marched northward to the latitude of the Sea of Galilee, captured the towns of Megiddo, Taanach, and Shunem in the plain of Jezreel, the town of Bethshean at the junction of Jezreel with the Jordan valley, and invaded the East-Jordanic country as far as Mahanaim. Many towns in Judah were captured also. (Cf. Breasted’s Hist. of Egypt, 530.) How deep the enmity between Israel and Judah had become may be inferred from the fact that this attack of the Egyptian monarch did not drive them to peace.937–920 .Rehoboam
Shishak’s campaign seems to have been a mere plundering raid. It established no permanent Asiatic empire for Egypt. After this attack, Rehoboam, according to the Chronicler, strengthened the fortifications of his kingdom (2 Ch 11:5–11). According to this passage, his territory extended to Mareshah (Tell Sandehannah) and Gath (Tell es-Safi?) in the Shephēlah, and southward as far as Hebron. No mention is made of any town north of Jerusalem or in the Jordan valley.
The hostile relations between the two kingdoms were perpetuated after the death of Rehoboam, during the short reign of Abijam. In the early part of the reign of Asa, while Nadab was on the throne of Israel, active hostilities ceased sufficiently to allow the king of Israel to besiege the Philistine city of Gibbethon, a town in the northern part of the Maritime Plain opposite the middle portion of the Israelitish territory. The Israelitish monarch felt strong enough to endeavour to extend his dominions by compelling these ancient enemies of his race to submit once more. During the siege of this town, Baasha, an ambitious man of the tribe of Issachar, conspired against Nadab, accomplished his assassination, and had himself proclaimed king in his stead (1 K 15:27–29). Thus the dynasty of Jeroboam came to an end in the second generation.
Baasha upon his accession determined to push more vigorously the war with Judah. Entering into an alliance with Benhadad I. of Damascus, he proceeded to fortify Ramah, five miles north of Jerusalem, as a base of operations against Judah. Asa in this crisis collected all the treasure that he could, sent it to Benhadad, and bought him off, persuading him to break his alliance with Israel and to enter into one with Judah. Benhadad thereupon attacked some of the towns in north-eastern Galilee, and Baasha was compelled to desist from his Judæan campaign and defend his own borders. Asa took this opportunity to fortify Geba, about eight miles north-east of Jerusalem, and Mizpeh, five miles to the north-west of it (1 K 15:16–22). The only other important event of Asa’s reign known to us consisted of the erection by Asa’s mother of an ashērah made in a disgustingly realistic form, which so shocked the sense of the time that Asa was compelled to remove it (15:13).
Cf., for fuller discussion, below, II. § 1 (3).
During the reign of Elah an attempt was made once more to capture Gibbethon. The siege was being prosecuted by an able general named Omri, while the weak king was enjoying himself at Tirzah, which had been the royal residence since the days of Jeroboam. While the king was in a drunken brawl he was killed by Zimri, the commander of his chariots, who was then himself proclaimed king. Omri, however, upon hearing of this, hastened from Gibbethon to Tirzah, overthrew and slew Zimri, and himself became king. Thus once more did the dynasty change. Omri proved one of the ablest rulers the Northern Kingdom ever had. The Bible tells us little of him, but the information we derive from outside sources enables us to place him in proper perspective. His fame spread to Assyria, where, even after his dynasty had been overthrown, he was thought to be the ancestor of Israelitish kings (cf. KIB i. 151). Omri, perceiving the splendid military possibilities of the hill of Samaria, chose that for his capital, fortified it, and made it one of his residences, thus introducing to history a name destined in succeeding generations to play an important part. He appears to have made a peaceful alliance with Damascus, so that war between the two kingdoms ceased. He also formed an alliance with the king of Tyre, taking Jezebel, the daughter of the Tyrian king Ethbaal, as a wife for his son Ahab. We also learn from the Moabite Stone that Omri conquered Moab, compelling the Moabites to pay tribute. According to the Bible, this tribute was paid in wool (2 K 3:4). Scanty as our information is, it furnishes evidence that both in military and in civil affairs Omri must be counted as the ablest ruler of the Northern Kingdom. Of the nature of the relations between Israel and Judah during his reign we have no hint. Probably, however, peace prevailed, since we find the next two kings of these kingdoms in alliance.
17. From Ahab to Jeroboam II. (875–781).—
The monarchs of this period were as follows:—
|
|
ISRAEL. |
|
JUDAH. |
|
Ahab |
|
875–853. |
|
|
Ahaziah |
853–851. |
Jehoram |
851–843. |
|
Joram |
851–842. |
Ahaziah |
843–842. |
|
Jehu |
842–814. |
Athaliah |
842–836. |
|
Jehoahaz |
814–797. |
Joash |
836–796. |
|
Jehoash |
797–781. |
Amaziah |
796–782. |
Azariah (Uzziah) 782 –.
With the reign of Ahab we come upon a new period in Israel’s history. Economic and religious forces which had been slowly developing for centuries now matured for action and made the period one of remarkable activity. Movements began which were destined in their far-off consummation to differentiate the religion of Israel from the other religions of the world.876–851 .Jehoshaphat
The new queen Jezebel was a Tyrian princess. According to the custom of the time, she was permitted to raise shrines for her native deities, Melkart and Ashtart of Tyre. These gods were kindred to Jahweh and the Canaanite Baals in that all had sprung from the same antique Semitic conceptions of divinity; but they differed in that Tyre had become through commerce one of the wealthiest cities of the world, and its wealth had made its cult more ornate than the simpler cults of rural Canaan, and much more ornate than the Jahweh cult of the desert. The idleness which wealth creates, too, had tended to heighten in a disgusting way the sexual aspects of the Semitic cult as practised at Tyre. These aspects were in primitive times comparatively innocent, and in the Jahweh cult were still so (cf. Barton, Semitic Origins, 300). Jezebel seems to have persuaded her husband also to disregard what the Israelites, in whom the spirit of individual and tribal feeling still survived, considered to be their rights. There was a royal residence in the city of Jezreel. Near this a certain Naboth owned a vineyard, which the royal pair desired. As he refused to part with it on any terms, the only way for them to obtain it was to have him put to death on the false charge of having cursed God and the king. This Jezebel did, and then Ahab seized his property. Hebrew polity made no provision for the forcible taking of property by the Government even if the equivalent in money were paid, and this high-handed procedure brought from the wilds of Gilead a champion of Jahweh and of popular rights against the king and the foreign gods—in the person of Elijah the Tishbite. It was not that Naboth had been put to death on false testimony, but that his property had been taken, that was in the eyes of Elijah the greater sin. This infringement of old Hebrew privilege he connected with the worship of the foreign deity, and in his long contest with Ahab and Jezebel he began that prophetic movement which centuries after for economic, religious, and, later, for ethical reasons produced Judaism.
On the political side we know that Ahab made an alliance with Jehoshaphat of Judah, which secured peace between the two kingdoms for a considerable time. Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat, married Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel (1 K 22:44, 2 K 8:26). Ahab rebuilt and fortified Jericho (1 K 16:34). The first part of his reign seems to have been prosperous, but about the middle of it the Moabites, according to the Moabite Stone, gained their independence. In B.C. 854 Ahab was one of a confederacy of twelve kings, who were headed by Benhadad II. of Damascus, and who fought Shalmaneser II. at Karkar on the Orontes (KIB i. 173 ff.). Although Shalmaneser claims a victory, it is clear that the allies practically defeated him. He may have taken some spoil as he claims, but he made no further progress into Palestine at that time. In the next year we find that Benhadad had invaded the trans-Jordanic territory and had seized Ramoth-gilead. Ahab, in endeavouring to regain it, had the assistance of the Judæan king, but was wounded in battle and lost his life. When Ahab died, therefore, the Moabites and Aramæans had divided his East-Jordanic lands between them. Of the brief reign of his son Ahaziah we know nothing.
Meantime, in Judah, Jehoshaphat had had a prosperous reign, although the Biblical writers tell us little of it. He had made Edom tributary to him (1 K 22:47), and had re-established a Hebrew fleet upon the Red Sea (22:48). Jehoram (or Joram), who succeeded to the throne of Israel in Jehoshaphat’s last year, leaving the Aramæans in possession of Ramoth-gilead for a time, endeavoured, with the aid of Jehoshaphat and his tributary king of Edom, to re-subjugate Moab (2 K 3). They made the attack from the south, marching to it around the Dead Sea. The armies were accompanied by the prophet Elisha, who had succeeded to the work of Elijah, although he was not a man of Elijah’s sturdy mould. After a march on which they nearly died of thirst, they overran Moab, besieged and nearly captured its capital. In his distress the king of Moab sacrificed his eldest son to Chemosh, the Moabite god. The sacrifice was performed on the city wall in sight of both armies, and produced such opposite effects on the superstitious minds of the besieged and the besiegers that the siege was raised and the conquest of Moab abandoned.
The chief event of the reign of Jehoram of Judah, Jehoshaphat’s successor, was the loss of
Edom, which regained its independence (2 K 8:20ff.). His son Ahaziah, the son of Athaliah, and a nephew of Jehoram, the reigning king of Israel, went to aid his uncle in the siege of Ramoth-gilead, which was still in possession of the king of Damascus. Joram was wounded in battle, and the two monarchs returned to the royal residence at Jezreel while the wound was healing. Meantime the prophetic circles, in which the traditions of the simple worship of Jahweh were cherished, determined to overthrow the hated house of Ahab. Elisha encouraged Jehu, a military officer employed in the siege of Ramoth-gilead, to return to Jezreel and slay the king. This he did, killing not only the king of Israel, but also the king of Judah, and exterminating Jezehel and all her offspring. This done, Jehu started for Samaria. On the way he was joined by Jonadab, son of Rechab, who had founded a kind of order of zealots for the preservation of the simpler forms of
Jahweh worship. Accompanied by Jonadah, he went to Samaria, called a solemn feast in honour of Baal, and when the worshippers were assembled, massacred them all. Thus barbarous and unethical were the Jahweh reformers of’ this period (cf. 2 K 9, 10). In the very year that Jehu thus gained the throne, Shalmaneser II. again marched into the West. This time apparently no powerful alliance was formed against him. Damascus and Israel were at war; resistance to the Assyrian seemed hopeless, and Jehu hastened to render submission and pay a tribute. In consequence of this Jehu is pictured on the black obelisk of Shalmaneser in the British Museum in the undignified attitude of kissing the Assyrian monarch’s foot. Beyond this not too glorious revolution and this inglorious submission, the reign of Jehu, though long, accomplished nothing.
In Judah, when Ahaziah was put to death, Athaliah, the daughter of Jezehel, saw that her opportunity was slipping away. A queen-mother counted for something; she had held that position but for a year, and now it was gone. Athaliah inherited the spirit and the ruthlessness of Jezebel. Accordingly she seized the reins of government and put to death, as she thought, all the royal seed that could in any way dispute her sway. Thus it happened that a daughter of Jezebel sat on the throne of David. Here no doubt she exercised her preferences for the richer and more repulsive cult of Melkart, but in Judah there had developed as yet no strong opposition to such innovations. In this early period the religious interest is in the Northern Kingdom. What there was no prophet to do, priests, however, accomplished. One little prince, Joash, had been rescued when the slaughter of the princes occurred, and after he had been concealed six years, under the guidance of Jehoiada, the priest, he was proclaimed king, and Athaliah was assassinated (2 K 11). Joash enjoyed a long reign of forty years, during the early part of which he was under the guidance of the priests. During his reign money for the repair of the Temple was raised in a very natural way, but in a way not sanctioned by the later Levitical Code (cf. 2 K 12:4–16).
Meantime, in Israel, Jehu had passed away, and his son Jehoahaz had succeeded him. At the beginning of his reign Jehoahaz, like his predecessors, was unsuccessful in his efforts against Damascus, but Hazael, who now occupied the Aramæan throne, was a less able man than his predecessors, and Jehoahaz ultimately defeated him (2 K 13:2–5). This was the beginning of an era of prosperity for Israel which was continued over into the next period.
Hazael, as he was losing strength in the East, sought to increase his prestige in the West. After a successful campaign in the Maritime Plain, he moved against Jerusalem. Joash was no warrior, and hastened to buy off the Aramæan with a heavy tribute (2 K 12:17ff.). Whether it was this that disaffected the subjects of Joash we do not know, but he was assassinated by a conspiracy (2 K 12:20) , which placed his son Amaziah on the throne.
Meantime Jehoahaz of Israel had been succeeded by his son Jehoash, who followed up his father’s victory over the Aramæans, defeating them three separate times, and regaining all Israel’s East-Jordanic territory (2 K 13:25). Amaziah, the Judæan king, when once established in power, executed the assassins of his father, and then set out to build up his kingdom. Edom seemed the natural direction in which Judah could expand; he accordingly attacked, defeated, and occupied a part at least of that country. He then sent a challenge to Jehoash of Israel, which that king at first treated with contempt. The challenge, however, produced war, Israel seems to have been the invader after all, for the battle was fought at Beth-shemesh. Judah was defeated so completely that Jehoash went up and took Jerusalem without serious opposition, and broke down four hundred cubits of its wall, from the corner gate to the gate of Ephraim. Later, Amaziah, learning that a conspiracy had formed against him, fled to Lachish, which seems to have belonged to Judah. The conspirators pursued him thither, slew him, and made his young son Azariah, or Uzziah, king.
18. From Jeroboam II. to the fall of Samaria (781, 722).—The chronology of this period is as follows:—
|
|
ISRAEL. |
|
JUDAH. |
|
|
Jeroboam II |
|
781–740 |
|
|
|
Zechariah |
6 months |
Jotham |
737–735 |
|
|
Shallum |
740–737 |
Ahaz |
735–725 |
|
|
Menahem |
737–735 |
Hezekiah |
725–696 |
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|
Pekahiah |
2 months |
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||
|
Pekah |
735–733. |
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||
|
Hoshea |
733–722. |
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||
Towards the end of the period treated in the preceding paragraph, Israel’s enemies on every side had grown weaker. An Assyrian king, Adadnirari III., had made an expedition into the West in 797, on which he claims to have received tribute not only from Tyre and Sidon, but also from the ‘land of Omri’ as the Assyrians still called the kingdom of Israel, but after this for more than half a century Assyria was too weak to disturb the Hebrews. The Aramæans under Hazael had also lost their power to disturb the Israelites. Egypt under the 22nd dynasty became unable, after the one expedition of Shishak, to interfere in Asiatic affairs. Accordingly the kingdoms of Israel and Judah under the two able kings, Jeroboam and Uzziah, entered upon an era of unprecedented prosperity. Between them these monarchs restored the territory over which they ruled, almost to the limits of the Davidic boundaries. Jeroboam in his long reign extended the boundaries of Israel northward to Hamath and Damascus, perhaps including in his empire Damascus itself (2 K 14:28), while Uzziah, if the Chronicler is to be followed (2 Ch 26), extended his boundaries southward to the Red Sea, and reduced the Philistine cities once more to the position of tributaries. With outposts in all these directions, and the Red Sea open to commerce, a vigorous and profitable trade sprang up in this long era of peace. Freed from the necessity of continual warfare, the spirit of the nation gave itself with tremendous enthusiasm to the acquisition of material advantages. Neither earthquake nor tempest could dampen their ardour by misfortune. Wealth increased greatly, and palaces which to the simple Israelites seemed vast were reared on every hand. Every document of the time speaks of the erection of buildings or palaces. Wealth and leisure created a literary epoch, as a result of which, about 750, the E document was composed. Wealth, however, was not evenly distributed. The palaces were for a comparatively small minority. The poor, while they saw prosperity increasing around them, were daily becoming poorer. The economic conditions of the reign of Ahab, which had called forth the denunciations of Elijah, not only existed now in an exaggerated form, but were daily becoming worse. A moneyed class, distinct from the old shepherd and agricultural class, had been evolved. Capitalists then, as now, desired interest for their money. Lending it to the poor husbandman, they naturally felt justified in seizing his land if he was unable to repay. This social condition appeared to the conservative worshippers of Jahweh as in the highest degree obnoxious. Jahweh had never been the God of a commercial people. For one of His worshippers to exact usury from another was regarded as an offence against Him; to take from one of His faithful ones land given him by Jahweh in payment for debt, however just the debt, was in Jahweh’s eyes
unpardonable oppression of the poor.782–737 Azariah (Uzziah )
These social conditions, thus viewed, called forth a new set of prophets,—men of a higher moral and spiritual order than any known before in Semitic history. Two of these, Amos and Hosea, belong altogether to this period, while Isaiah began his prophetic work when two-thirds of it had passed. Amos (wh. see), the earliest of them, came forward about 755 to denounce the social injustices of the Northern Kingdom and to pronounce Jahweh’s doom on the whole circle of sinful nations which surrounded Israel. One-sided as his economic point of view was, his ethical standard was the loftiest and purest, and his conception of Jahweh as the God who ruled all nations carried men’s thoughts into a clearer atmosphere. Amos simply denounced, but Hosea (wh. see), who came a little later, and put forward a view of Jahweh no less ethical, proclaimed Jahweh as a God of redeeming love. It is clear from the work of these prophets that the cults of Jahweh and Baal had in the lapse of time become mingled. Jahweh had long been conceived as a Baal. Hosea proclaims again the nomadic Jahweh, austere, simple, and moral, as compared with the deteriorated cults now practised by His followers.
It is clear, therefore, that the same forces were at work that appeared in the time of Ahab and Elijah, only now the foreign religious element was not so clearly foreign in the eyes of the people at large, and the economic conditions were more aggravated.
Amos and Hosea were country prophets, whose sympathies were naturally with the poorer classes of the people, but Isaiah, the city prophet, is no less strenuous than they in his denunciations of man’s inhumanity to man. Towards the end of this long period of outward prosperity and social and religious ferment, a change occurred in Assyria. Pul, or Tiglathpileser III., as he now called himself, seized the throne (B.C. 745), subsequently proving himself, both as a general and as a statesman, one of the world’s great men. This monarch was, however, occupied until the year 742 in reducing the East to his sceptre. When he turned his attention to the West, the siege of Arpad occupied him for two years, so that before he interfered in Palestinian affairs Jeroboam II. had passed away.
The chronology of the Northern Kingdom after the death of Jeroboam II. is very confused. Many of the statements of the present Biblical text are manifestly incorrect. The statement of it given above is a conjectural reconstruction resting partly on the Assyrian evidence.
After Zechariah, the son of Jeroboam, had reigned but six months, a conspiracy removed him and placed Shallum on the throne. With Zechariah the house of Jehu disappeared.
Uzziah, who in his old age had become a leper, and had associated his son Jotham with him on the throne, appears to have taken a leading part in the organization of a coalition of nineteen States, including Carchemish, Hamath, and Damascus, to oppose the westward progress of Tiglath-pileser. Before the Assyrian monarch made his appearance again in the West, another revolution in Samaria had removed Shallum and placed Menahem on Israel’s throne. The Assyrian, who apparently came in 737 (Esarhaddon mutilated the inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser so that our data are incomplete), seems to have marched southward along the Maritime Plain as though to attack Uzziah himself. Upon his approach Menahem deserted the confederacy and hastened to pay his tribute to Assyria. Whether it was this defection or whether it was a battle that compelled Uzziah to pay tribute we do not know, but Tiglath-pileser records him among his tribute payers (KIB ii. 20). Uzziah died in that year. The short, independent reign of Jotham seems to have been uneventful. Menahem died about 735; his son Pekahiah was soon removed by a revolution, and Pekah became king in Samaria (2 K
15:22–27). In Judah, Jotham was succeeded in the same year by his youthful son Ahaz. Pekah and
Rezin, who now sat on the throne of Damascus, desired to form a new confederacy to throw off Assyria’s yoke. Into this they attempted to draw Ahaz, and when he declined to engage in the hopeless enterprise they threatened to make war jointly on Judah, depose Ahaz, and place a certain Tabeel on the throne of Judah. Upon the receipt of this news, consternation reigned in Jerusalem, but both king and people were reassured by the prophet Isaiah (Is 7). Isaiah’s hopes were well founded, for in the next year (134) Tiglath-pileser returned to the West, took Damascus after a considerable siege (a town which his predecessors had at various times for more than a hundred years tried in vain to capture), made it an Assyrian colony, put Pekah the king of Israel to death (KIB ii. 33), carried captive to Assyria the principal inhabitants of the territory north of the Plain of Jezreel (2 K 15:29ff.), made Hoshea king of a reduced territory, and imposed upon him a heavy tribute. Ahaz, upon the approach of Tiglath-pileser, had renewed his allegiance; and after the capture of Damascus he went thither to do obeisance in person to the Assyrian monarch. Thus the whole of Israel passed irrevocably into Assyria’s power. At Damascus, Ahaz saw an altar the form of which pleased him. He accordingly had a pattern of it brought to Jerusalem, and one like it constructed there. The brazen altar which Solomon had erected before the Temple was removed to one side and reserved for the king’s own use. The new altar, established in its place, became the altar of ordinary priestly services.
One would suppose that the Northern Kingdom had now received such a chastisement that further revolt would not be thought of, and apparently it was not, so long as Tiglath-pileser lived. That monarch passed away, however, in 727; and soon afterwards Hoshea, encouraged by the king of a country to the south, withheld his tribute. The Biblical text calls this king ‘So, king of Egypt’ (2 K 17:4), and it has been customary to identify him with Shabaka, the first king of the 25th dynasty. It now appears, however, that either he was a king of the Musri to the south of Palestine, or was some petty ruler of the Egyptian Delta, otherwise unknown, for Shabaka did not gain the throne of Egypt till B.C. 712 (cf. Breasted, Hist. of Egypt, 549 and 601). The folly of Hoshea’s course was soon apparent. Shalmaneser iv., who had succeeded Tiglath-pileser, sent an army which overran all the territory left to Hoshea, cut off his supplies, and then shut him up in Samaria in a memorable siege. The military genius of Omri had selected the site wisely, but with the country in ruins it is a marvel that Samaria resisted for three years. While the siege dragged on its weary length, Shalmaneser died, and Sargon II. gained the Assyrian throne. Perhaps the generals who were prosecuting the siege did not know of the change till Samaria had fallen, but Sargon counts the reduction of Samaria as one of the achievements of his first year. When Samaria fell, Sargon deported 27,290 (cf. KIB il. 55) of the inhabitants of the region, including no doubt the more wealthy and influential citizens, princes, priests, etc., to cities which he had recently captured in the far East, and brought to Samaria people from Cuthah and Sippar in Babylonia, and from Hamath in Syria, to mingle with the mass of Hebrew population which he had left behind (2 K 17:24). The Israelitish monarchy he abolished.
The foreigners who were introduced into Samaria at this time worshipped at first their own gods, but when lions attacked them, they petitioned to have a priest of Jahweh to teach them the worship of the God of the land. Sargon granted their request, and sent back a captive priest. In due time these foreigners intermarried with the Israelites who had been left, the cults of their gods were merged in the Jahweh cult, and they became the Samaritans. Those who seek for the ‘ten lost tribes’ should remember that they were never lost by captivity. Only the merest percentage of them were wrenched from their land. They were lost by becoming the substratum of later populations, and a handful still survives in the Samaritans (wh. see).
19. Hezekiah and Isaiah.—The fall of Samaria made doleful reverberations in Jerusalem. The date of the accession of Hezekiah is not quite certain, but it probably occurred before the fall of Samaria. Throughout his reign the prophet Isaiah was one of his chief advisers, and for the most part he ruled in accord with the prophetic ideals. About the time of his accession, and apparently before the fall of Samaria, another prophet, Micah, began to prophesy in the town of Moresheth (Maresha) in the Sbephēlah on the Philistine border. His burden was consonant with that of the three great literary prophets who had preceded him.
Judah escaped when Samaria fell, because she maintained that submissive attitude to Assyria which she had assumed when Uzziah paid tribute to Tiglath-pileser. This attitude secured her peace for some years to come, though it was not an easy attitude to maintain. On Judah’s western border the petty kingdoms of Philistia were always plotting to throw off the Assyrian yoke, and endeavouring to secure the co-operation of Hezekiah. Such co-operation, however, Isaiah steadily opposed. In the year 711 Ashdod succeeded in beading a coalition which she hoped would gain her freedom, but Sargon sent an army which soon brought her to terms (Is 20:1). The course of political events went on smoothly therefore until after the death of Sargon in 705; then, as so often happened in Oriental countries, many subject lands endeavoured to gain their independence before the new monarch could consolidate his power. Hezekiah was tempted now, not by the Philistines only, but also by Merodach-haladan (Marduk-apal-iddin), a Babylonian king whom Sargon had early in his reign driven from Babylon and who now sought the opportunity to return (2 K 20:12ff., Is 39:1ff.). In this new coalition the Egyptians also, now under the stronger control of the 25th dynasty, had a part. Although Isaiah still consistently opposed the move, Hezekiah nevertheless yielded. In the city of Ekron there was one petty king faithful to Sennacherib. Him his subjects deposed, threw into fetters, and delivered to Hezekiah, who cast him into a dungeon (cf. KIB ii. 93). This was a direct act of rebellion, which Sennacherib was sure to avenge. Affairs in the East delayed the blow, but in 701 it finally fed. Sennacherib marched into the West, defeated the allies at Eltekeh, besieged and took Ekron, impaled many of the rebellious inhabitants, and invaded Judah. Forty-six of the smaller towns were captured, and Jerusalem itself was invested. Its inhabitants were of course panicstricken, but Isaiah came forward, declaring Jerusalem to be the home of Jahweh, and, as such, inviolable in His eyes (Is 31:4). Hezekiah, meantime recognizing that his rebellion had been a grievous error, sent to Lachish, Sennacherib’s headquarters, and offered to pay indemnity and tribute. Meantime Sennacherib had sent his main army on to inflict punishment upon Egypt, the strongest member of the alliance against him. On the border of Egypt his army was attacked with bubonic plague (such seems to be the meaning of 2 K 19:35 combined with Herod. ii. 141), which rendered further operations impossible; he accordingly accepted Hezekiah’s terms, raised the siege of Jerusalem, and withdrew to Assyria.
This event had a profound influence on Israel’s religious history. In the time of David and Solomon, Jerusalem was a new town to the Israelites, and a town without religious associations.
The real home of Jahweh was on Mount Sinai, but the land contained scores of shrines more dear to Him than Jerusalem, because He bad longer dwelt in them. Solomon’s innovations had tended to increase this feeling, and although the lapse of three hundred years had given Jerusalem an important place among the shrines, especially as the capital of the kingdom of Judah, nothing had occurred until now to make men think that it was the home of Jahweh par excellence. Now He had palpably abandoned the shrines of the Northern Kingdom, and by this victory, vindicating as it did the word of His prophet, He had shown that He had chosen Jerusalem as His permanent abode. Thus this event Introduced Jerusalem to that place in the reverence and affection of the Hebrews which has made it the Holy City of three great religions.
According to 2 K 18:4 (RD), Hezekiah attempted to abolish the country shrines and centralize the worship in Jerusalem. Some have doubted this statement, and others have thought that it is confirmed by an older document quoted in 2 K 18:22. It seems in accord with historical probability that, prompted by Isaiah, Hezekiah should in his closing years have made such an effort. Hosea had seen, a generation before, that the worship of Jahweh could never be socially pure till separated from the elements which he believed had been introduced from the cult of Baal, and now that Isaiah had become convinced that Jerusalem had been Divinely proved to be Jahweh’s special abode, it is certainly within the realm of probability that he prompted the king to do away with all other demoralizing shrines. If Jahweh could have only one temple and that under prophetic control, His cult would be for ever differentiated from that of the Baals. What time could be more opportune for such a movement than the beginning of the 7th cent., when first the captivity of the Northern Kingdom, and then the reduction of the territory of Judah to narrow limits by Sennacherib, left at a minimum the number of shrines to be destroyed?
20. Manasseh and Amon.—From the time of Amos to the accession of Manasseh the prophetic vision had made steady progress, and the elevation of the religion of Jahweh and of the recognized standard of morals had gone steadily forward, but in the long reign of Manasseh (696–641) a strong reaction occurred. It is difficult to account for this reaction unless some attempt to destroy the village shrines had been made by Hezekiah, but if this he presupposed, all that occurred is natural. The superstitious prejudices of the village people had been outraged. They clamoured for liberty to worship at the village shrines consecrated by the usage of unknown antiquity, and the king, when Isaiah was gone, had no real motive for resisting them. Then, too, the period seems to have been a time of distress, Manasseh seems to have quietly remained in vassalage to Assyria, so that the armies of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal, which four times marched along the coast and accomplished the reduction of Egypt during his reign, did not disturb Judah, though she may have been compelled to contribute to their support. Perhaps there was civil war in Jerusalem, for we are told that Manasseh shed much innocent blood (2 K 21:16). At all events, whether on account of war, or famine, or unjust rule, his reign was a time of distress, and Judah sought escape from her trouble, not through prophetic reform, but by the revival of half-heathenish, outworn forms of worship. Jahweh was worshipped as Melek, or king, and to Him in this capacity child sacrifice, which had been prevalent among the Semites in early days, was revived. The Ammonites called their god Melek (Molech [wh. see]), and human sacrifice was still practised at times by Judah’s heathen neighbours, especially by the Phœnicians. The prophets accordingly combated this form of worship as displeasing to Jahweh, and tried to persuade their countrymen that it was a foreign cult.
This turn of affairs drove those who cherished the Ideals of Isaiah into retirement, where, being
able to do nothing else for the cause they loved, one of them, about 650, drew up the legal code of Deuteronomy as the expression of the conditions which the prophetic experience had found to be necessary to the realization of their ideal.
The brief reign of Amon was but a continuation of the reign of his father.
21. Josiah and the Deuteronomic Reform.—Of the early part of the reign of Josiah, who ascended the throne as a boy of eight, we know little. Probably the customs which the previous reign had established were continued. In his thirteenth year, Jeremiah, a young priest from Anathoth, came forward as a prophet. In the next year the great Assyrian king Ashurbanipal died, and Assyria, whose power had been shattered by a great rebellion twenty years before, rapidly sank to her end. In Josiah’s eighteenth year repairs on the Temple were undertaken at the king’s command. During the progress of these, it was reported to him that in making the repairs they had found the copy of a code purporting to be the Law of Moses. When this was read to the king he was filled with consternation, since the current cult violated it in almost every particular. To test the genuineness of the Law it was submitted to an old prophetess, Huldah, who, since it agreed with her conceptions of the ideal religion of Jahweh, declared it to be the genuine Law of Moses (2 K 22). Upon this Josiah set himself to adjust the religious worship and institutions of his kingdom to this standard, and to a great reform, which swept away from Judah all shrines except the Temple in Jerusalem, all pillars as representatives of deity, and all ashērahs, together with all immorality practised under the guise of religion (2 K 23). Modern criticism has clearly demonstrated that the Law which came into operation at this time was the Law of Deuteronomy.
This reform cost a long struggle. People who had all their lives regarded certain spots as places where Jahweh revealed Himself, and who knew that their ancestors for centuries had done the same, did not tamely yield to the new order. All the authority of the king and all the strength of the prophetic order were needed to carry it through, and the struggle continued for a generation. It was this reform, however, that began the creation of the Jew. But for it, he would not still be a distinct figure in the world.
This struggle for a better religion went on successfully for some years, when the little Judæan State was overtaken by a sad misfortune.
Assyria was tottering to its fall. Babylon, which had regained its independence upon the death of Ashurbanipal, in 625, was rapidly growing in power. Egypt, which under the 26th dynasty now possessed once more a line of native kings, had a monarch, Necho II., ambitious to re-establish for her an Asiatic empire. In 609 or 608 Necho marched an army into Asia and moved northward along the Maritime Plain. Josiah, probably because he determined to claim sovereignty over all the territory formerly occupied by Israel, marched northward with an army, fought Necho at the ancient battlefield of Megiddo, and met with defeat and death (2 K 23:29ff.). A greater calamity could scarcely have befallen the party of religious reform. Not only was their king fallen, but their hope of a prosperous Judæan kingdom, faithful to Jahweh’s new Law, was rudely dashed to the ground.
22. Last Days of the Kingdom.—When the news of the defeat at Megiddo reached Jerusalem, the leaders of the people there placed Jehoahaz, a son of Josiah, on the throne. Necho meantime proceeded northward, taking possession of the country, and established his headquarters at Riblah in the territory of Hamath. Thither he summoned Jehoahaz, threw him into bonds, sent him to Egpyt as a prisoner, and made his brother Eliakim king, imposing a heavy tribute upon the country (2 K 23:31–34). Eliakim upon his accession took the name of Jehoiakim (2 K 23:34). Judah thus became tributary to Egypt. Jehoiakim proved to be a man of quite different religious interests from his father, as the Book of Jeremiah makes clear.
Events in Western Asia were changing rapidly, and within a few years they gave Jehoiakim a new master. The new Babylonian power was pushing westward to secure as much of the Euphrates valley and of the West as possible. Assyria had fallen at the hands of Indo-European hordes in the year 606. Necho was ambitious to follow up his previous success and to check the growth of the Babylonian power. Accordingly in 604 he entered Asia again and marched to the Euphrates. Here he was met by Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian crown prince, and so crushingly defeated that he fled rapidly homeward, Nebuchadnezzar following closely upon his heels (Jer 46). Thus perished Necho’s dreams of Asiatic empire, and thus Judah passed into vassalage to Babylon.
Nebuchadnezzar, on the border of Egypt, ready to invade and conquer it, was informed of the death of his father in Babylon, and hastened home to secure his crown.
So important in the history of his people did Jeremiah consider this crisis, that at this time he first began to put the substance of his prophecies in writing, that they might have wider and more permanent influence (Jer 36). Nebuchadnezzar appears not to have been able to establish order in Western Asia all at once, so distracted was the country. He established his headquarters at Riblah, and for several years sent out bands of soldiers whither they were most needed. Jehoiakim, thinking to take advantage of the unsettled state, withheld his tribute, and some of these bands, composed of men of neighbouring tribes, were sent against him (2 K 24:1ff.). Jehoiakim continued obstinate, however, and Nebuchadnezzar finally, in 598, sent a large army. Before it arrived Jehoiakim was no more, and his young son Jehoiachin was occupying his throne. Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem, which after three months was compelled to capitulate, whereupon the Babylonian took ten thousand of the most prominent men, princes, warriors, priests, and craftsmen, and transported them to Babylonia. Another son of Josiah, who now took the name of Zedekiah, was placed upon the throne, subject of course to a heavy Babylonian tribute. Jehoiachin, a youth of twenty, was taken prisoner to Babylon, to languish in prison for many years.
It was now to be seen whether Judah would repeat the history of the Northern Kingdom or whether her king would have wisdom to remain faithful to Babylon. Jeremiah, as he had done for years, steadily proclaimed that Judah’s sole safety lay in fidelity to Babylon; such was the will of Jahweh. There was in Jerusalem, however, a strong party who advocated an alliance with Egypt as a means of securing freedom from Babylon. The king himself was weak and unwise. Finally, in 588, when Hophra, filled with ambitions for an Asiatic empire, ascended the Egyptian throne, he made such promises of aid to Judah that the standard of revolt was raised. Jeremiah, one of the greatest religious teachers that ever lived, did not, like Isaiah a century before, proclaim Jerusalem inviolate.
He had seen further into the heart of religion, and now declared that Jahweh would abandon Jerusalem, and establish an inner covenant of the heart with all who were faithful. His younger contemporary, Ezekiel, a young priest who had been carried to Babylonia in 598, and had in 593 become a prophet there, was also teaching a similarly high conception of religion, and with
Jeremiah, preparing the faith of the people to survive the approaching shock. In 587 the Babylonian army appeared and the siege of Jerusalem began. The tedious suffering of its weary months may be traced in the Book of Jeremiah. Early in 586, Hophra marched an army into Palestine, and
Nebuchadnezzar was obliged to raise the siege to send his full force against the Egyptian. Jerusalem was then wild with joy, thinking deliverance had come. Jeremiah and his party were laughed to scorn. But Hophra was soon defeated, the siege of Jerusalem renewed and pressed to completion. In August the city surrendered, its wall was broken down, its glorious Temple destroyed, another large body of captives transported to Babylonia, and Zedekiah after being blinded was taken there too (2 K 25). Thus Jerusalem suffered the fate of Samaria. Providentially, however, before Jerusalem fell, the work of the prophets had so taken root, and such reforms had been instituted, that the future of spiritual religion was assured. Those who had been deported were again the more prominent citizens. The poorer people and the peasantry were not disturbed. Gedaliah was made governor of Judæa, and, because Jerusalem was desolate, Mizpeh, five miles to the northwest, was made the capital. Gedaliah had been in office but two months when he was assassinated, and this event so terrified some friends of Jeremiah, who had been permitted with the prophet to remain in Palestine, that they took Jeremiah, contrary to his advice, and fled to Egypt (2 K 25:25ff. and Jer 41–43).
23. The Exile.—Counting women and children, perhaps fifty thousand Jews had been transported to Babylonia in the two deportations of Nebuchadnezzar. These, with the exception of a few political leaders, were settled in colonies, in which they were permitted to have houses of their own, visit one another freely, and engage in business (Jer 29:5ff.). Ezekiel gives us the picture of one of these at Tel-abib (Ezk 3:15, 8:1, 20:1ff., 24:18 etc.), by the river Chebar (a canal near Nippur; cf. Bab. Ex. of Univ. of Pa., Cun. Texts, ix. 28), in which the Palestinian organization of
‘elders’ was perpetuated. In such communities the Jews settled down in Babylonia. The poorer ones in Palestine kept up as best they could the old religion, in an ignorant and superstitious way (cf. Jer 41:5ff.), while the priests and the more intelligent of the religious devotees transported to Babylon cherished the laws of the past, and fondly framed ideals for a future which they were confident would come. Such an one was Ezekiel, who lived and wrote among the captives till about B.C. 570. After the destruction of the city he elaborated a new religious polity for the nation, hoping that it would form the basis of Israel’s organization when the time for the re-construction of the State came. Some years later another writer (P) wrote the ‘Holiness Code’ gathering up the traditions of the past, and shaping them with a view to a future religious ideal. Meantime many of the practically minded Jews had engaged in business in Babylonia and were acquiring wealth.
Thus time passed on, Nebuchadnezzar died, and his weak successors were rapidly following one another, when in the East a new political figure appeared. Cyrus, a petty king of Anshan, a small district of Elam, had conquered Persia, then Media and the Indo-Europæan hordes called in the inscriptions ‘Manda,’ and was pushing his arms westward to the subjugation of Crœsus of Lydia. At this juncture one of the world’s great poets and prophets appeared among the captives, and in most eloquent and poetic strain taught them that Cyrus was the instrument of Jahweh, the God of heaven, that he was conquering for Jahweh and for them, and that it was Jahweh’s will that they should return to rebuild Jerusalem and the desolations of Judah. The name of this prophet is lost, but his work now forms chs. 40–45 of the Book of Isaiah. The hope of this poet in Cyrus was justified, for in 538 Cyrus captured Babylon, overturning the Chaidæan empire, and reversed the policy of transportation which Assyrians and Babylonians alike had pursued from the time of Tiglath-plieser III. Cyrus himself tells in a cuneiform inscription (KIB iii2. 121ff. that he permitted captive peoples to return to their lands and rebuild their temples. This gave the Jews the opportunity for which the Second Isaiah (so-called) had hoped. The prophet’s faith in his own people was not so well justified. It was years before any considerable number of the captives made use of their newly acquired liberty (see § 24). They were interested in their religion, but they had learned to practise it outside of Palestine without sacrificial ritual, and the opportunities in Babylonia for wealth and trade were too good to be abandoned for the sterile soil of the land of their fathers. Here, accordingly, they continued to live for fifteen hundred years. They frequently sent money contributions to their brethren in Jerusalem; and occasionally a few of them returned thither. After a time they chose Exiliarchs, or ‘Princes of the Captivity.’ Schools of Jewish learning developed here. In due time the Babylonian Talmud was compiled in these schools. These communities thus survived the
vicissitudes of Persian, Macedonian, Parthian, Sassanian, and Arabian rule, continuing to have their Exiliarchs till the 11th cent. A.D., when the oppressions to which they were subjected led them gradually to migrate (cf. JE v. 288–291).
24. Reconstruction of the Jewish State.—We have been accustomed to suppose, on the authority of the Book of Ezra, that when Cyrus issued his permission to exiled peoples to return and rehabilitate their shrines and their States, a large number at once went back. Recent investigation has, however, discredited this view. Haggai and Zechariah twenty years later know of no such return, and probably it did not take place. Twenty years later we find Zerubbabel, a grandson of the unfortunate king Jehoiachin, present in Jerusalem as governor, and a high priest named Joshua in charge of the worship. The altar of Jahweh had been rebuilt on the old site, but Jerusalem and the Temple were still in ruins. The tolerance of the Persians is shown in allowing the Jews a governor of their own royal family. He, with a small retinue, had no doubt returned from Babylonia, but we have no evidence that others had come back.
The Jewish population which had been left behind in Palestine, equally with those in Babylonia, expected at some time the re-construction of the Jewish institutions. A prolonged famine led Haggai in the second year of Darius I. (B.C. 519) to persuade the people that Jahweh withheld rain because He was displeased that the Temple was not yet rebuilt. Another prophet, Zechariah. took up the same burden, and under their leadership and inspiration the Temple was rebuilt by B.C. 516 on the lines of the old wall. Contributions to aid this enterprise had been received from their brethren in Babylonia. The first six years of the reign of Darius were troublous times. The reign of the false
Bardiya had made nations suspect that the government of Persia was weak, and it became necessary for Darius to reconquer his empire, as many of the subject nations took the opportunity to rebel. It is probable that Zerubbabel represents such a movement. Scholars now have no doubt that Zechariah regarded Zerubbabel as the Messiah, and expected him to be crowned and to reign jointly with the high priest Joshua. Such is the meaning which underlies the text of Zec 3 (cf. H. P. Smith, OT Hist. 357 ff.). How these expectations were thwarted we can only guess. We know with what a strong arm the great Darius put down revolutions elsewhere, and certain it is that Jewish hopes for independence were not at this time realized.
Our knowledge of the next eighty years, till the arrival of Nehemiah, is derived from Is 56–66, large parts of which appear to come from this period, and from the anonymous prophet called Malachi, who, perhaps, wrote shortly before Nehemiah’s return. The tone of these writings is one of depression and anarchy, both in civil and in religious affairs. Zerubbabel had been succeeded by a foreign governor (Mal 1:8), who probably had little sympathy with Jewish ideals. The Nabatæans had pushed the Edomites out of their old territory, and the latter had occupied southern Judæa almost as far as Hebron. These migrations caused unrest and suffering in Judah. The Samaritans, who had apparently spread to the valley of Aijalon, held many of the approaches to the city. The Jewish colony occupied but a small territory about Jerusalem, and in their distress some, as in the days of Manasseh, were seeking relief in the revival of long-discarded superstitious rites (Is 65:11). There were nevertheless some souls of noble faith whose utterances we still cherish among the treasures of our Scriptures. Thus passed the reigns of Darius and Xerxes. Somewhere, whether in Babylonia or Palestine we cannot tell, the priestly Grundschrift—the main body of the Priestly document—was compiled by P2 during this period, about B.C. 450.
Such was the state of affairs when in B.C. 444, Nehemiah, the noble young Jewish cup-bearer of Artaxerxes I., arrived in Jerusalem with a commission from the king to rebuild the walls. The energy with which Nehemiah devoted himself to the erection of the walls, the opposition which he encountered from the surrounding tribes, especially from the Samaritans, who wished to share in the religious privileges of the Temple, but whom his narrow conceptions excluded, and the success which attended his labours, are forcibly depicted in Neh 1–7. Before the summer of 444 was over, Jerusalem had a wall as well as a Temple. Nehemiah remained for some years as governor, and then returned to Persia. He came back a second time to the governorship in B.C. 432, and continued in the office for a length of time which we cannot now trace. Perhaps it was until his death, but we do not know when this occurred. During Nehemiah’s administration he persuaded the Jews to do away with all foreign marriages; with, it is stated, the aid of Ezra the scribe, he introduced the Pentateuch, so constructed that the Levitical law was its heart and core, and bound the people to observe its provisions (Neh 8:9); and he completely separated the true Jews from the Samaritans (Neh
13:28ff.), thus thoroughly organizing the Jewish community in civil and religious affairs. Nehemiah completed what Ezekiel had begun. The whole Levitical ritual was at this time established. The menial offices of the Temple were assigned to Levites, to whom also was committed the singing. This organization a hundred years later was so thoroughly fixed that the Chronicler could attribute it to David. Probably it was at the time of Nehemiah that the first book of the Psalter (Pss 3–41) was compiled. When Nehemiah died, the Jewish State was not only reconstructed, but was transformed into the Jewish Church.
25. Late Persian and Early Greek Periods.—After the time of Nehemiah our sources fail us for a considerable period. Only one other glimpse of the Jewish colony do they afford us before the fall of the Persian empire, and this glimpse is a somewhat confused one. Josephus (Ant. XI. vii. 1) tells us that the Persian general Bagoas, whom he calls Bagoses, entered the Temple, and oppressed the Jews seven years, because the high priest John murdered his brother Joshua, a friend of Bagoas, for whom the latter had promised to obtain the high priesthood. Perhaps there was more underlying this than appears upon the surface. Many have supposed, at least, that the action of Bagoas was the result of an attempt on the part of the Jews to regain their independence.
Josephus (Ant. XI. viii. 3 f.) also tells a tale of the fidelity of the nigh priest Jaddua to Darius III., while Alexander the Great was besieging Tyre. Alexander summoned the Jews to aid him, so the story runs, but on the ground of loyalty they refused. Alexander, after the surrender of Gaza, marched personally to Jerusalem to take vengeance upon it. At his approach the Jews, clad in white, marched out to Scopus. The high priest, wearing his glorious robes of office, led the assemblage, and Alexander seeing them forgot his wrath and saluted the high priest graciously. This story is no doubt mere legend. Arrian, for example, declares that the rest of Palestine had submitted before the siege of Gaza. Jerusalem was to Alexander simply one Syrian town. It was out of his route, and probably was never visited by him. The one element or truth in the tale is that the high priest was the head of the Jewish community.
During the wars that followed the death of Alexander, Judæa must often have suffered. In the struggles between the generals, the armies of Antigonus and Demetrius were at various times in this region. In 312 a great battle was fought near Gaza, and the Jews must have had their share of the hardship and uncertainty which in the shock of empires during those years tried men’s souls. Palestine finally fell however, to the lot of Ptolemy Lagi, who had secured Egypt, and for a century was subject to the Ptolemaic line. Seleucus regarded it as rightfully his, but on account of the help Ptolemy had given him when his fortunes were at a low ebb, he did nothing more than enter a verbal protest, though Sulpicius Severus says (Sacr. Hist. II. 17) that he exacted 300 talents in tribute from him. The age was a period of migration, and the Jews felt the Impulse along with others. During this century large settlements were made by them in Egypt, and probably elsewhere (see DISPERSION). In 220 Antiochus the Great gained Palestine for Syria, but in 219 it reverted to Egypt again. Finally, in B.C. 199, he permanently attached it to Syria, and its fortunes were never subject to the Ptolemys again.
The chief connexion with the suzerain power during this period was through the payment of taxes. At one period the Egyptian king became dissatisfied with the high priest’s management of the finances and committed them to the care of one Joseph, son of Tobias, who with his sons led for a generation or two spectacular careers (cf. Ant. XII. iv.). At times tribute had to be paid both to Syria and to Egypt.
During this period the head of the Jewish community was the high priest, assisted by a
Sanhedrin or council. The religious life of the community can only be inferred from the literature. An intense devotion to the Law was begotten in the minds of the Jewish people, as is shown by such psalms as the 119th. But the life of the community was a varied one. The ‘Wisdom’ literature was cultivated, and many a passionate psalm attests that a deep religious life superior to all formalism was springing up (cf. e.g. Ps 51).
26. The Maccabæan Revolt.—For many years the Hellenic civilization, radiating from the many cities founded by the Macedonians, found no welcome among the little Jewish community in Jerusalem. Gradually, however, it penetrated even there, and under the Syrians certain high priests adopted Greek names, and, to court the favour of the Syrian kings, cultivated Hellenic practices. In Jerusalem, where there was a Syrian garrison, Greek culture became popular, gymnasia were established, and men went so far as to attempt to remove artificially the signs of circumcision. The country towns were more conservative, but possibly even here the movement would have made its way had not Antiochus iv. determined to force upon the Jews both Greek culture and religion. One curious feature of this period consists in the fact that a high priest, Onias III., deposed by Syrian intervention, went to Egypt and established at Leontopolis in the name of Heliopolis a temple to Jahweh, which existed there for a hundred years.
In B.C. 168, Antiochus commanded altars to Zeus to be erected throughout the land, and especially in the Temple at Jerusalem. He also directed swine to be offered in sacrifice upon them. The fear of Syrian arms secured wide-spread obedience to this decree. In the little town of Modin, however, an old priest. Mattathias, struck down the officiating priest and raised the standard of revolt. The faithful soon rallied to his standard, and he made his son Judas captain over them. Unexpected victories speedily followed, and the successful Judas was surnamed Makkab, ‘the hammer.’ Mattathias died before the end of the first year, but the struggle was continued by his sons. At the end of three years the Syrians had been driven from the Temple, though they still held the fortress which overlooked it. Accordingly, in December 165, three years after the Temple had been defiled, a great feast was held for its dedication. Up to this time Judas had been aided by the Chasīdīm, or pious—a set of religious devotees whose ideal was ceremonial puritanism. This party would have been satisfied to rest in what had already been achieved, but Judas and his brethren aimed at political Independence. Although it estranged the Chasīdīm, Judas, with varying fortunes, maintained the struggle till B.C. 161. Antiochus IV. died, the forces of the young Antiochus v. were defeated, a great victory was won over Nicanor, whom Demetrius I., the next king of Syria, sent to Judæa. This victory was long celebrated in a yearly festival. Judas himself fell before the end of the year 161 in a battle with the force which Demetrius sent to avenge the death of Nicanor.
The direction of the Jewish cause then fell to Jonathan, one of the brothers of Judas, who for nearly twenty years was the leader (161–143). At the beginning of this period the Maccabæan fortunes were at their lowest ebb. At first Jonathan thought of taking refuge with the Nabatæans, but here he was treacherously treated and his brother John was slain. He himself, with a considerable force, was caught near the Jordan by the Syrians, and escaped only by swimming the river to the western side. Here Jonathan maintained himself for some years as an outlaw in the wilderness of Judæa. After many unsuccessful efforts to capture him, the Syrians finally (B.C. 153) entered into a treaty with him whereby he was permitted to live at Michmash as a kind of licensed free-booter. Here, like David in his outlaw days, he ruled over such as came to him. A little later Alexander
Balas appeared in the field as a contestant for the Syrian crown. This proved a great help to the Maccabæan cause, as both parties were willing to bid high for the support of Jonathan. Jonathan for a time adhered to the cause of Alexander, who killed Demetrius I. and secured the crown. But although Alexander had driven Demetrius I. from the field, he was left but a short time in undisputed possession of the Syrian throne. Demetrius II. appeared, and bid high for Jewish favour. He recognized Jonathan as high priest, and exempted the Jews from various taxes. This angered the adherents of Alexander, one of whom lured Jonathan to Ptolemais for a conference and treacherously put him to death. Another brother, Simon (143–135), then assumed the leadership. The star of Alexander Balas went down, and Demetrius II. made a treaty which once more recognized the independence of the Jews. This event created the wildest joy. Never since Uzziah had paid tribute to Tiglath-pileser III. in B.C. 737, unless it was for a few years in the reign of Josiah, had the Jews been politically free. It seemed like a new birth of the nation, and it stimulated the national genius and devotion in all directions. Many psalms were written at this period, and the whole civil and religious polity of the nation were reorganized. Simon was made both political head of the nation and high priest, and it was ordained that these offices should continue in his house for ever, or until a faithful prophet should arise (1 Mac 14:41ff.). Simon spent his energies in the following years in organizing his government and consolidating his territory. He was successful in taking possession of Gezer, where he built a large castle, recently excavated; also Joppa, which he made his port, and on the other side of the country, Jericho. At the latter place he was assassinated in B.C. 135 by his son-in-law, who hoped to seize the government. 27. The Hasmonæan Dynasty.—The chronology follows:— John Hyrcanus I
|
Aristobulus I |
105–104 |
|
Alexander Jannæus |
104–79 |
|
Alexandra |
79 – 69 |
|
John Hyrcanus II |
69 – 63 |
}
Aristobulus II
During the early years of Hyrcanus I. the vigorous Antiochus VII. (Sidetes), who had gained the Syrian crown, pressed him so hard that the struggle for independence not only had to be renewed, but seemed for a time to waver in the balance. Weaker hands, however, soon came into possession of the Syrian sceptre; and Hyrcanus, his independence secure, set about consolidating the power of Judæa. He conquered the Edomites, who had centuries before been pushed up into southern Judah, and compelled them to accept Judaism. Later he conquered Samaria and lower Galilee, treating the latter country as he had treated Idumæa (cf. Jos. Ant. XIII. x. 2). During the reign of Hyrcanus the Pharisees and Sadducees began to emerge into well-defined and opposing parties. The former were developed out of the Chasīdīm of the earlier time. They desired separation and exclusion from foreigners in order that they might devote themselves to the keeping of the Law. The Sadducees, on the other hand, consisted largely of the old priestly families. whose wealth and position prevented them from either the narrowness or the devotion of the Pharisees. Hyrcanus threw in his lot with the latter.135–105
Aristobulus I., upon his accession, assumed the title of king (Ant. XIII. xi. 1)—a step which still further estranged the Pharisees. He was a man of cruel and suspicious disposition, who imprisoned his brother and treated his subjects roughly. He conquered and Judaized in the one year of his reign ‘upper Galilee,’ by which it is supposed Ituræa is meant.
Upon his death his widow, Alexandra, released her brother-in-law, Alexander Jannæus, from prison and offered him her hand and the throne, both of which he accepted. In his long and chequered reign he not only put down rebellion on the part of his turbulent subjects, but conquered and Judaized the old Israelitish territory across the Jordan, so that under him the little Jewish community had spread, by conquest and forcible conversion, from the narrow limits of the days of Nehemiah to practically the limits of the territory of ancient Israel. Thus the foundations of the NT distribution of Palestinian Jews were laid by the Hasmonæans. During the whole of the reign of Alexander the opposition of the Pharisees to the dynasty and its policy was exceedingly bitter. As his end approached, Alexander committed the government to Alexandra, advising her to make her peace with the Pharisees (Ant. XIII. xv. 5). This she did, and for the next ten years the internal affairs of the kingdom were more pacific. Alexandra made her son, John Hyrcanus II., high priest. Upon her death she left the civil authority to Aristobulus II., the younger of her two sons (Ant. XIII. xvi. 1). This division of the two offices, which had been united from Simon to Alexandra, proved a fatal mistake. Each brother desired the office of the other, and a civil war followed. This dragged itself on for several years. Aristobulus was more popular with the soldiery, and in a short time had defeated Hyrcanus and assumed the high priesthood. The contemplative Hyrcanus would probably have been quietly relegated to private life had not an extraordinary man, Antipater, an Idumæan, appeared. He attached himself to Hyrcanus, and persuaded the latter to flee to Haretath III. (Aretas), king of the Nabatæans, who upon the promise that the cities which Alexander Jannæus had taken should be restored to him, furnished an army for the prosecution of the civil war. The advantage seems to have been with Hyrcanus, when in the year 65, Scaurus, the representative of the Roman general Pompey, appeared in Damascus, and both brothers appealed to him. The interference of Scaurus gave Aristohulus some advantage, but settled nothing, so that when, in 64–63, Pompey himself appeared, both brothers sent him rich gifts and appealed to him. Pompey postponed decision until he should reach Jerusalem. Meantime he set out upon an expedition against the Nabatæans, taking both Aristobulus and Hyrcanus with him.
In the progress of this expedition Aristobulus deserted and fled, first to Alexandrium and then to Jerusalem. Pompey, hearing of this, proceeded at once to Jerusalem. When he approached it, Aristobulus first promised to capitulate, and then, at the instigation of his soldiers, shut the gates against him. Pompey invested the city, which, after a terrible siege of three months, capitulated (Ant. XIV. iv. 1–4). With the fall of Jerusalem. In Oct. 63, the Jews for ever lost their independence, and the dream of empire which had been awakened by the success of Simon eighty years before
was dispelled.
28. Roman Rule before Herod.—The history of the Jews for the next few years reflects the vicissitudes of the tangled politics of the city of Rome. From B.C. 63–48 Palestine was under the personal power of Pompey. That general had re-established Hyrcanus II. in power as high priest, but stripped him of most of the territory won since the days of Simon, and made him subject to his personal representative, Scaurus. In the years that followed, Hyrcanus came more and more under the influence of Antipater, his self-appointed adviser. Antipater was found to be a man of such ability that the Romans committed to him the finances of Judæa, and on more than one occasion entrusted delicate missions to him, but Hyrcanus was in name the ruler of the land. How the Pharisees felt during this period we learn from the poems called ‘The Psalter of Solomon.’ The loss of independence had led them to cherish with renewed fervour the hopes of a Messianic kingdom.
After the defeat and death of Pompey in 48, Antipater and Hyrcanus were able to render Julius Cæsar material aid at Alexandria, thus winning his favour. Antipater, who had of course been the chief instrument in this, was made a Roman citizen by Cæsar, and also procurator of Judæa. Many privileges of which Pompey had deprived them were restored to the Jews. The old powers of the Sanhedrin were revived; the religious customs of the Jews were guaranteed, not only in Judæa, but in Alexandria and elsewhere, and their taxes were remitted in the Sabbatical years (Ant. XIV. ix. 3– 5). Antipater proceeded to build up the fortunes of his family, making his son Phasaelus governor of Jerusalem, and Herod governor of Galilee. Herod proved an able administrator, but narrowly escaped condemnation by the Sanhedrin for presuming to exercise the power of life and death without its consent.
In B.C. 44 Lucius Cassius went to Syria to raise funds for the conspirators. Antipater made no resistance, but sought to show how useful his family could be. He set his sons to raise the 700 talents imposed on the Jews, and Herod was so successful in raising the part assigned to him that he was made general of the forces, both land and maritime, of Cœle-Syria.
The withdrawal of Cassius from Syria was followed by the murder of Antipater, after which Hyrcanus came under the power of Herod and Phasaelus. When Cassius and Brutus were defeated at Philippi (B.C. 42), Antony moved on to the eastward to secure Syria. Although many Jews complained bitterly of the sons of Antipater, he made them tetrarchs with full political power, leaving to Hyrcanus only the high priesthood.
While Antony was in Egypt, Antigonus, a son of Aristobulus II., gained the aid of the Parthians, who sent a force which captured Jerusalem (B.C. 40), and made Antigonus both king and high priest. In the progress of events which thus culminated Phasaelus had committed suicide. Hyrcanus was taken to Babylon and had his ears cut off, that he might never be high priest again. Herod, in view of these events, made a most remarkable winter journey to Rome, where he besought Augustus and Antony to make Aristohulus. a grandson of Hyrcanus II., king. These Roman statesmen, however, preferred to commit the government to one whose ability had already been proved; they accordingly made Herod king and he returned to win his kingdom. Naturally Herod could do little until Antony, who was leading an expedition against the Parthians, could allow him troops with which to fight, but with aid so furnished he finally expelled Antigonus and became king of the Jews in fact as well as in name in B.C. 37.
29. Herod and his successors.—The reign of Herod (wh. see) was marked at first by a period of difficulty. His master, Antony, was the slave of the Egyptian Cleopatra, and Herod had not only the ordinary difficulty of a ruler of the Jews to contend with, but the caprices of Cleopatra as well. After the battle of Actium he won the favour of Augustus, who became the master of the whole Roman world, and a period of prosperity set in. Herod had a passion for building, and knew how to squeeze money out of his subjects for his purposes. He therefore built many cities, adorning them with the beauties of Greek architecture. He also built many temples. His rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem is, perhaps, the best known of these undertakings, but it is only one of many. The taxes necessary for his various enterprises fell heavily upon his subjects, and rendered them wretched and restless. His domestic life was tragic, though his own disposition was the cause of this. During his reign Hellenism made new inroads into Judæa, and Pharisaism became consolidated in the celebrated schools of Hillel and Shammai.
When Herod died (B.C. 4), Augustus divided his dominions among his sons, Archelaus receiving Judæa and Samaria; Antipas, Galilee and Peræa; and Philip, Ituræa and Trachonitis. Antipas held his territory till A.D. 39, and was the ruler of Galilee in the time of Christ, but Archelaus proved such a had ruler that in A.D. 6 Augustus removed him, banishing him to Gaul (Jos. BJ II. vii. 3). Judæa was then placed under procurators as a part of the province of Syria. The fifth of these procurators was Pontius Pilate, under whom Christ was crucified.
Once more (A.D. 41–44) all the dominions of Herod were united under Herod Agrippa I., a grandson of Herod the Great. Agrippa was a friend of the Emperor Caligula, who gave him this position, but his rule was brief. Upon his death the country passed once more under direct Roman rule through procurators.
30. Last political struggles.—From the time that Pompey conquered Jerusalem many Jews had entertained hopes of national independence. Some thought that the tables might be turned, and Jerusalem might replace Rome as the mistress of the world. Gradually these feelings pervaded most of the population, and became more intense. Finally, in A.D. 66, they took shape in open rebellion. The Roman general Vespasian was sent to put down the revolution, and had reduced Galilee and the outlying cities of Judæa when he heard of the death of Nero, and withdrew to Egypt to await events. During 69 Vespasian was fighting for the empire, which he finally won; but the Jews, instead of strengthening themselves for the coming conflict, were consuming one another by civil war. Finally, in A.D. 70, Titus appeared before Jerusalem with a Roman army, and after one of the most terrible sieges in its history, which Josephus fully describes (BJ V. ii. ff.), it was once more devastated. The Temple was ruined, its sacred furniture taken to Rome, where the candlestick may still be seen carved on the Arch of Titus, the wall of the city broken down, and the whole site laid waste. The services of the Jewish Temple then ceased for ever.
The tenth Roman legion was left in charge of the spot, and camped here for many years. A small garrison of the Jews who had captured the fortress of Masada, on the shore of the Dead Sea, held out for three years longer, but was finally captured (Jos. BJ VII. viii.).
After this terrible calamity the Jews were politically quiet for many years. The Sanhedrin removed from Jerusalem to Jabneh (Jamnia), a town in the Philistine plain south of Joppa, where in later years its sessions became famous for the discussions of Rabbi Akiba and others concerning Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs and other interesting questions.
In A.D. 116, under the Emperor Trajan, Jews in Cyprus and the East-Mediterranean lands raised a revolt, but it accomplished nothing. Hadrian, a ruler of just and tolerant spirit, is said to have granted permission for the rebuilding of the Temple, when the slanders of the Samaritans led him to revoke it. Such an event tended to foster national resentment. In 132 a new Jewish leader, called Bar Cochba, or ‘Son of the Star,’ appeared and led a new and stubborn revolution. This precipitated a bloody war. After the defeat of the main force a body of troops fortified themselves at Bether (mod. Bittir), where they held out till 133. Hadrian was so exasperated that he determined to erase the name of Jerusalem from the map. A Roman colony, called Ælia Capitolina, was accordingly founded on the site of Jerusalem, from which all Jews were banished, and a temple to Jupiter was erected on the site of the Temple of Jahweh.
This revolt was the last expression of Israel’s national aspirations. In the centuries which have elapsed since, the Jew has been scattered in many countries. Often persecuted, he has in persecution cherished Messianic expectations. He has maintained his national identity without land or national government, content to stand as the representative of a religious idea once embodied in a glorious national life. II. RELIGION
1. The pre-Jahwistic religion of Israel.—The history of the religion of Israel is the history of the religion of Jahweh. The religion of Jahweh was, however, introduced at a definite time in Israel’s history, and His religion as practised by the Hebrews contains many features which are identical with those of other Semitic religions. Several of these can be proved to have had their origin in very primitive conditions common to all the Semites, from which the Israelites had in a good degree emerged before the worship of Jahweh was introduced. It will aid to clearness of thought to note at the beginning what those features were which the Hebrews brought to the religion of Jahweh from their common Semitic inheritance.
(1) In this early religion totemism prevailed. In Comparative Religion the term ‘totemism’ denotes the idea that a natural object—usually an animal—is kindred in blood to the worshipper. Such animals are held in great veneration; often they are regarded as specially related to the god of the tribe, and are then worshipped as the representatives of the deity. Traces of such a conception among the ancestors of the Israelites are found in the fact that the name Leah means ‘wild cow’; Rachel, ‘ewe’; Simeon, a kind of ‘wolf’ or ‘hyæna’; Caleb, ‘a dog.’ Confirmation of this view is found in the food taboos of the Israelites. Certain animals were ‘clean,’ and others ‘unclean.’ The latter class was in early times indistinguishable from ‘holy’ animals (Smith, RS 425 ff.). For further proof of totemism, see Barton, Semitic Origins, 34 ff., and the references there given.
(2) Another conception common to the primitive Hamite and Semite was the idea that deity manifests itself especially in the processes of reproduction, and that therefore the organs of reproduction are especially sacred. That this was true of these people generally is abundantly proved (cf. Barton, ch. iii.). One direct evidence that it survived in Israel is the fact that when in early times one swore by Jahweh he put his hand under the thigh (Gn 24:2), as one now puts it on the Bible.
(3) The ‘pillar’ (mazzēbah) was a sacred symbol in the worship of Jahweh down to the reform of Josiah (cf. Gn 28:22, Hos 3:4, Dt 7:5, 2 K 23:14). This object was not peculiar to the Israelites, but is found in all Semitic countries. The ‘pillar’ was at first a representation of a phallus (cf. Barton, 102), and no doubt, as such, came to be the symbol of deity. The Egyptian obelisks are but more conventionally fashioned ‘pillars.’
With the ‘pillar’ must be placed the ashērah. This object was among the Hebrews at times a wooden post, but usually consisted of more than one. There is some reason for supposing that the ashērah was not complete until there was carved in it a rude doorway, symbolic of the physical doorway of life, in which a figure of a goddess stood (cf. Ohnefalsch-Richter, Kypros, p. 165 ff., Plates 17, 18, 29, 80, 83; also 1 K 15:13). If this be true, the pillar and the ashērah together represented at every sanctuary the male and female organs of reproduction (cf. Whatham, Amer. Jour. of Rel. Psychology, i. 25 ff.). Ashērahs stood by the altar of Jahweh down to the Deuteronomic reform (2 K 23:6). These symbols, then, were survivals from the pre-Jahwistic religion of Israel, and their existence proves that the conception of deity of which they are the expression formed a part of that early religion also. Cf. artt. ASHERAH, PILLAR.
(4) Circumcision also is an institution which the Hebrews had inherited from their Semitic ancestry. It can no longer be regarded as a peculiarly Hebrew institution, for it was practised by both Hamites and Semites (Barton, 98–117), and is pictured on an Egyptian monument earlier than the 1st dynasty (Bull. de cor. hellēnique, 1892, p. 307 ff., and pl. 1). Circumcision, like many other religious institutions, underwent different interpretations at different periods; but its origin is clearly connected with that naive conception of the close connexion of the reproductive organs with the Divine which characterized all the people of the Hamito-Semitic race (cf. Whatham, ‘Origin of Circumcision,’ l.c. i. 301 ff.). The practice of circumcision among the Israelites is another proof that their conception of deity was in early times closely connected with animal fertility.
(5) From the pre-Jahwistic period came also the idea that spirits or numina dwelt in certain natural objects, such as trees, stones, and springs. This conception belonged to the primitive Semites, by whom it was held in common with primitive peoples generally (cf. RS2 132, 167–183,
185–195; Sem. Or. 82 ff., 87–97). Sacred trees existed in many parts of Palestine. There was
Abraham’s oak of Mamre near Hebron (Gn 13:18, 18:1), at Shechem stood another (Jos 24:26), at Ophrah another (Jg 6:11, 19), and at many other places they were found, and indeed they are still found in Palestine at the present day (cf. Curtiss, Prim. Sem. Rel. To-day, 91 ff.; Barton, A Year’s Wanderings in Bible Lands, 162, 163, and Biblical World, xxiv. 170, 174).
Wells were also sacred. The fountain at Kadesh was called En-mishpat (Gn 14:7), or the ‘spring of judgment,’ no doubt because oracular decisions were obtained there. The well of Lahai-roi (Gn 16:14) had a story to account for its sacredness, as had also the wells at Beersheba (Gn 21:29), which were evidently sacred. En-rogel (modern Job’s Well) was so sacred that Adonijah held a sacrifice by it (1 K 1:9ff.), while Solomon was anointed at Gihon (modern Virgin’s Fountain) for the same reason.
A sacred circle of stones called Gilgal existed on the west of the Jordan (Jos 4:19ff.). This sacred stone-circle, like many which exist still on the east of the Jordan (cf. Barton, A Year’s Wanderings, 143, and Biblical World, xxiv. 177), was no doubt of pre-historic origin. In the preJahwistic religion, then, such numina were worshipped by the Hebrews.
(6) Another feature of this early religion was sacrifice. In later times sacrifice was regarded mainly as a gift of food to the deity (cf. Ps 50), and probably in early times this idea entered into it. The late W. R. Smith thought that the chief feature of primitive sacrifice was communion, i.e. that a commensal feast, in which the god and the worshipper partook of the same food, and their kinship was consequently renewed, was its chief feature (RS2, vi.–xi.). Whether this was its sole feature or not, there can be no doubt that the sacrificial feast formed an important part of primitive sacrifice, and of sacrifice among the early Hebrews (cf. Ex 24:11). Curtiss believes that the originally significant element in sacrifice was the bursting forth of the blood,—that this rather than the feast constituted it a sacrifice (Prim. Sem. Rel. To-day, 216–228), while Whatham (l.c. ii. 38) holds that human sacrifice, at least, originated in impersonating the death of the earth-goddess’s son, i.e. the death of vegetation. Whatever the meanings attached to it (and in the long developments of prehistoric time they may have been many), sacrifice both of human beings and of animals was practised by the primitive Semites, and was perpetuated by the Hebrews into the OT period. Traces of human sacrifice were found by Mr. Macalister during the excavation at Gezer (cf. PEFSt, 1903, pp. 33 ff., 121, 306 ff.). The story of the sacrifice of Isaac (Gn 22) is in reality an attempt to justify the discontinuance of the sacrifice of the human firstborn, and to substitute a ram for it. It is really the story of Isaac’s deliverance, not of his sacrifice. Its presence in the OT proves that in early times the Israelites, in common with other Semites, practised human sacrifice.
(7) Probably the ‘ban’ (chērem), by which even before a battle all the population of the enemies’ country and their effects were devoted to destruction as a solemn obligation to Jahweh, is another survival from primitive times. Many examples of it are found in the OT (cf. Nu 21:2, Jos 6:17, 1 S 15:3ff.). It seems to have been the custom of the Moabites, for Mesha says (Moabite Stone, l. 11 f.): ‘I killed all the people of the city—a pleasing spectacle to Chemosh.’ So barbarous a custom was no doubt primitive.
(8) Another custom perpetuated by the Israelites from pre-Jahwistic times was the law of blood revenge, by which it became a religious duty, when one was injured, to inflict a like injury, and if the blood of one’s kinsman was shed, to shed the blood of those who had committed the deed. This idea not only meets us frequently in the OT (Gn 4:14ff., 23ff., Ex 21:23ff.), but is also found often in the Code of Hammurabi, B.C. 2100 (§§ 127, 195–197, 200, 202, 210, 219, 229, 230, 231), and among the Arabs to-day (cf. e.g. Zwemer, Arabia. 155, 265). It is clearly one of the religious points of view which have come out of the primitive Semitic past.
(9) The Passover, or spring leaping festival, so called, perhaps, because the young were then gambolling about, is another institution which as is now generally recognized, the Israelites brought with them from their remote Semitic past (cf. RS2 406ff., 464; Sem. Or. 108 ff.: Kautzsch, in Hastings’ DB, Ext. Vol. 621 ff.: Schmidt, Prophet of Nazareth, 62). It is one of the survivals of the early Semitic worship of deity as the giver of animal life and, like the ‘pillar’ and ashērah, is an evidence of the sacred nature of reproduction among the ancestors of the Hebrews. It underwent in later times a different interpretation at their hands (cf. Ex 12), but it is certain that that explanation does not account for its origin.
(10) It is probable that an autumn festival, which in primitive Semitic times was connected with the date harvest, and in the OT period was known as the Feast of Tabernacles, was brought by the Israelites into Jahweh-worship from their primitive life. This is not so universally recognized as in the case of the Passover, but has been practically proved by Barton (Sem. Or. 111–115). In connexion with this festival probably in primitive times the wailing for Tammuz occurred, and all those ceremonies which celebrated the death and resurrection of vegetation. This wailing was in the late Hebrew ritual interpreted as mourning for sin on the Day of Atonement (cf. RS2 411: Sem. Or. 289 ff.). Similarly after the settlement in Canaan it was regarded as the feast of the grape harvest instead of the date harvest.
(11) We can hardly say that the Hebrews were believers in polytheism before the covenant with Jahweh, but certainly they were not monotheists. Probably each tribe had its god. One of these, the god of the tribe Gad, has survived in the OT with a specialized function (cf. Is 65:11). These tribal deities received the special homage of their respective clans, but no doubt when men wandered into the region of other local numina they propitiated these also. Such a condition, where tribes worship one deity but recognize the reality of other deities, is called by some scholars ‘henotheism.’
2. The covenant with Jahweh.—The historical circumstances under which Jahweh became the God of Israel have been sketched above (I. § 6).
(1) Those circumstances certainly suggest that Jahweh was the god of the Kenites before He was the God of Israel.
This view, first suggested by Ghillany also independently by Tiele, more fully urged by Stade, fully worked out by Budde, is now accepted by Guthe, Wildeboer. H. P. Smith, Barton, and W. R. Harper. The reasons for it are: (a) Of the three documents which narrate the Exodus, E and P tell of the introduction of the name Jahweh as a new name. In early religion a new name usually means a new deity E, on whom
Pisdependent in this part of the narrative, was an Ephraimite and preserved the traditions current among the
Joseph tribes. (b) The account of the institution of the covenant (Ex 18:12ff.) makes it clear that Jethro, the Kenite priest, offers the sacrifice. He really initiates the Hebrews into the worship of Jahweh. This is confirmed by the underlying thought of all the documents that it was in this Midianite or Kenite country (the Kenites were a branch of the Midianites) that Moses first learned of Jahweh. (c) For centuries after this Sinai was regarded as the home of Jahweh. From here He marched forth to give victory to His people (Jg 5:4ff., Dt 33:2, Hab 3:1, Ps 68:4). Elijah also made a pilgrimage to Sinai to seek Jahweh in His home (1 K 19). (d) The
Kenites during several succeeding centuries were the champions of the pure worship of Jahweh. Jael killed Sisera (Jg 5:24ff.). The Rechabites, who from Jehu to Jeremiah (2 K 10:15, Jer 35) championed Jahweh, were Kenites (1 Ch 2:55). (e) Some of the Kenites joined Israel in her migrations (Nu 10:29ff.), mingling with Israel both in the north (Jg 5:24) and in the south (Jg 1:16); some of them remained on the southern border of Judah. where they maintained a separate existence till the time of Saul (1 S 15:6), and were finally, in the days of David, incorporated into the tribe of Judah (1 S 30:26ff., 29ff.). (f) it is this absorption of the Kenites by Judah which, if Jahweh were a Kenite deity, explains why the J document, written in Judah, regards the knowledge of the name Jahweh as immemorial (Gn 4:26). The perpetual separateness of Judah from the other tribes tended to perpetuate this in spite of contrary currents from other quarters. We are therefore justified in holding that Jahweh was the god of the Kenites, that some of the Hebrew tribes entangled in Egypt were ready to abandon their old gods for one that could deliver them, and thus He became their God. The objections to this view urged by Kautzsch (loc. cit. 626 ff.) really do not touch the nerve of the argument. The words ‘God of thy fathers’ on which he lays so much stress are written from a later point of view, and that point of view is quite as well justified by the Kenite hypothesis (for the Kenites were absorbed by Judah) as by the supposition that Jahweh was the god of one of the Israelitish clans.
(2) What conception the Hebrews of the time of Moses held of Jahweh we can in broad outline define. Evidently they conceived Him to be a god of war. The needs of the oppressed tribes demanded a warrior. The people are said to have sung, after their deliverance, ‘Jahweh is a man of war.’ A book of old poems was called ‘The Book of the Wars of Jahweh’ (Nu 21:14), and ‘Jahweh of hosts’ (or armies) was afterwards one of His most constant names. There can be little doubt that this conception of Jahweh as a war-god had developed among the Kenites, and that it had large influence in drawing the Hebrews into His worship.
There is reason also to believe that, as Jahweh had long been worshipped around Mount Sinai, where severe thunder-storms occur (cf. Agnes Smith Lewis, Expos. Times, June 1906, p. 394), He had come to be regarded as a god who manifested Himself especially in the phenomena of storms. He is usually represented as coming in a thunder-storm (Ps 18, Ezk 1, Hab 3, Is 19:1, Job 38), and the regular name for thunder was ‘the voice of Jahweh’ (Ps 29:3ff., Job 37:4). He is also said to have led His people in a cloud (Ex 13, 14), to have appeared on Mount Sinai and in the Temple in a cloud (Ex 19, 1 K 8:10, 11); and in the middle books of the Pentateuch the cloud is used more than forty times as the symbol of Jahweh’s presence. Probably, then, the Israelites received Him from the Kenites as a god of war who manifested Himself in the storm-cloud and uttered His terrible voice in thunder.
These conceptions, however, did not exhaust their thought of Him. The Israelites were Semites, and they thought of Him as a god of life. Had this not been so, circumcision would not have been His sign, the ‘pillar’ and ashērah would not have been symbolic instruments in His worship, the firstborn would not have been offered to Him in sacrifice, and the genitals would not have been the part of the body specially sacred to Him. Barton has shown that Jahweh is an evolution out of that primitive Semitic conception which made plant and animal fertility especially reveal deity (op. cit. ch. vii.). These conceptions, too, the Hebrews in the time of Moses held of Jahweh.
(3) The name Jahweh, explained in Ex 3:14 as ‘I am that I am’ or ‘I will be that which I will be,’ was long thought to justify the view that at the time of Moses the Israelites regarded Jahweh as the self-existent or uncreated One. It has now been generally recognized, however, that this is only a later Hebrew explanation of a name the original meaning of which had been forgotten.
In an attempt to recover the lost original, many and various theories have been put forward. For a resumé of these, see Barton (op. cit. 283, 284). Scholars are by no means agreed as to the meaning of the name. There are almost as many theories of its etymology as there are different scholars. Barton has correctly seen that the name probably had some reference to Jahweh as the God of life,—the God whose ‘reward’ is ‘the fruit of the womb’ (Ps 127:3), but he failed, then, to see that the etymology should be sought not in Hebrew but in Arabic. The Kenites were an Arabian tribe, and Jahweh was no doubt an Arabian epithet. Probably it is connected with the root hawa, ‘to love passionately’ used in some forms especially of sexual desire. If this meaning were understood by Hebrews at the time of Moses, it was lost as soon as the Israelites began to speak a Canaanitish dialect.
(4) It is probable that the covenant between Jahweh and Israel involved at the time no more than that they would become His worshippers in return for deliverance, victory, and protection. In becoming His worshippers, however, it was necessary to have a knowledge of His ritual, i.e. how to worship Him. Our oldest document J gives a list of ten commands or ‘words’ (Ex 34), which its author regarded as the basis of the covenant. As this Decalogue of J stands, it would form a convenient summary of ritual law for a nomadic people to carry in the memory.
Some features of it cannot, however, be as old as Moses, for the feast of ‘unleavened bread’ is, as
Wellhausen and others have demonstrated, an agricultural festival, which grew up after the settlement in Canaan. It was, however, merged with the Passover, and its name has probably been substituted for the Passover by some editor. The Feasts of Weeks and of Ingathering were also agricultural festivals, but, as pointed out in the preceding section, the latter goes back to a nomadic date festival. The observance of the Sabbath probably goes back, as Toy has shown (JBL xviii. 190 ff.), to an old taboo. With very little alteration, therefore, the Decalogue of J suits all the wilderness conditions.
We may suppose that the summary of ritual which Moses taught the Israelites as the basis of the covenant with Jahweh was somewhat as follows:—
1. Thou shalt worship no other god.
2. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.
3. The feast of the Passover thou shalt keep.
4. The firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb.
5. None shall appear before me empty.
6. On the seventh day thou shalt rest.
7. Thou shalt observe the feast [of the date harvest ].
8. Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread, neither shall the sacrifice of the Passover be left until the morning.
9. The firstlings of thy flocks thou shalt bring unto Jahweh thy god.
10. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.
These commands are in part conjectural, but as they are obtained from J by omitting the
agricultural and later elements, they are probably approximately right.
(5) It will be noticed that the second command is not a prohibition of idols, but only of expensive idols. Kautzsch (loc. cit. 629) thinks that the number of references to the bodily presence of Jahweh (cf. e.g. Ex 33:23) may indicate that some idol of Him existed in Sinai. This is quite possible, since the Decalogue, as J understood it in the 9th cent., did not prohibit such images.
(6) Jahweh’s symbol at this time was the sacred ark. As the Egyptians and Babylonians had similar structures for carrying their gods (cf. Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, iii. 289; ‘Isaiah’ in SBOT, 78), it is probable that the ark was a kind of movable sanctuary for a nomadic people. A late tradition (1 K 8:9, 21) says that it contained the Ten Commandments written on stone. The later versions of the Commandments differ so radically that it is not probable that an authoritative copy from such early date was preserved. Scholars suppose therefore that the ark contained an aerolite or some such symbol of Jahweh. Centuries afterwards, when it was carried into the camp of the Philistines, it was thought that Jahweh Himself had come into the camp (1 S 4).
In the J document the ark plays a small part, while in the E document it is much more prominent. J apparently thought much more of Sinai as the home of Jahweh. This probably came about from the fact that after the settlement the ark was in the possession of the Joseph tribes and became their shrine.
(7) According to the oldest sources, there seems to have been no priesthood at this time except that of Moses himself. J tells us that when the covenant was ratified, Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu and seventy elders of Israel went up into Jahweh’s mountain, but only Moses was permitted to come before Him (Ex 24:1, 2, 9–11), while E tells us of a ‘tent of meeting’ which Moses used to pitch at a distance from the camp, and to which he would go to consult Jahweh (Ex 33:7–11), and then return. In this tent Joshua, Moses’ minister, abode all the time (Ex 33:11). It is clear that neither of these writers had any conception of the choice of the tribe of Levi for the priesthood. Indeed E makes no mention of the tribe of Levi anywhere. Moses was in his view apparently of one of the Joseph tribes, and how the term ‘Levite’ for priest originated he does not tell us. In Jg 17:7 he tells us of a Levite who belonged to the tribe of Judah (cf. SBOT, ad loc.), so that here ‘Levite’ cannot have a tribal signification. J tells us of a tribe of Levi to which a calamity happened (Gn 34, 49:5–7), and he tells us also (Ex 32:26–28) of a number of men who in a crisis attached (lewied) themselves to Moses for the preservation of the religion of Jahweh, and were, perhaps, accordingly called ‘Levites.’ Many scholars think that the later priesthood was developed out of this band, and that its identification with the unfortunate clan of Levi is due to a later confusion of the names. In the present state of our knowledge, this is, perhaps, the most probable view. (For the great variety of opinion among scholars, cf. art. ‘Levi’ in JE vii. 21.) The priesthood is probably a development later than Moses.
3. The pre-Prophetic religion in Canaan.—(1) The conquest of Canaan strengthened the faith of the Israelitish tribes in Jahweh as the god of war. Their success strengthened the hold of Jahweh upon them. A Semitic people upon entering a new land always felt it necessary to propitiate the god of the land. As this was the case as late as the 8th cent. (2 K 17:24–34), it would be all the more true at the beginning of the 12th. At first, therefore, they must have mingled the worship of the Baals with the worship of Jahweh. As we have seen, the conquest did not occur all at once; there must have been many conflicts, which kept the tribes in constant dependence upon Jahweh (cf. Jg 5:23).
These conflicts continued to the time of Saul and David, and constituted a life and death struggle. When, under David, Israel emerged victorious, Jahweh was more than ever the god of armies. These vicissitudes tended to eliminate the worship of the tribal deities. Little by little Jahweh came to be regarded as the god of the land,—as a Baal,—and as such took possession in their thought of the principal Canaanitish shrines.
(2) Gradually the Canaanitish conceptions connected with these shrines were transferred to Jahweh. This fusion was easily possible because of the kinship of Jahweh and the Baals. Both had sprung from the same primitive conceptions. Both were regarded as gods of animal fertility. To both the same symbols of fertility were sacred. The main difference was that the Baals were the gods of clans which had longer resided in a fertile land (cf. Sem. Or. 297 ff.). By this fusion the somewhat meagre and simple ritual of Jahweh was enriched. By the time of Gideon the term Baal (‘lord’) was applied to Jahweh, as Jerub-baal, Gideon’s real name, proves. Ish-baal and Meri-baal, sons of Saul, and Beeliada, a son of David, bear names which prove the same thing.
(3) During this period it was not thought wrong to make images of Jahweh. Gideon made an ephod-idol at Ophrah (Jg 8:27), Micah made an image to Jahweh (Jg 17:3ff.), and it is probable that similar images existed elsewhere. Sometimes these were in the form of bullocks as were those which Jeroboam set up at Bethel and Dan. These latter symbolized Jahweh as the generator of life, and the god of pastoral wealth. Household numin’a called teraphim were also worshipped. Images of these were also made, sometimes large enough to be passed off for a man (1 S 19:13ff.).
(4) In the whole of this period it was thought that Jahweh existed in the form of a man. He might appear and talk with a person, indistinguishable from a human being, until the moment of His departure (cf. Gn 18:2ff., Jg 6:11ff., 13:3ff.). Sometimes, as in the last two passages cited, it was the angel of Jahweh that appeared, but at the period when these narratives were written, the conception of the difference between Jahweh and His angel was not fully developed. So the ‘face’ (presence) of Jahweh (Ex 33) is a reference to the ‘person’ of Jahweh. It indicates that He was conceived as having a bodily form When the J document was written, the Prophetic period was already dawning. As we are indebted to that document for most of these anthropomorphic representations of Jahweh, we may be sure that this conception prevailed throughout the pre-Prophetic period.
(5) The only literature which has come to us from this pre-Prophetic time consists of a few poems—the Song of Deborah (Jg 5), David’s Lament over Saul and Jonathan (2 S 1), and a few fragments elsewhere (e.g. Nu 21 and Jos 10:12). No one now thinks of attributing the Psalms in the form in which we have them to David, or the books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes to Solomon. The literature of this period, then, is, so far as we know it, secular in character. The people were religious, but the religion existed as a help to secular life. It consisted largely of inherited customs, of half-superstitious beliefs, while the main interest of all was centred in physical prosperity. Certain practices were regarded as wrong,—as offences against Jahweh (e.g. the crime of Jg 19 and David’s sin [2 S 11]), but the ethical content of the religion was of a very rudimentary character. Stealing (cf. Jg 18), deceit (Gn 27), and treachery (Jg 3:15ff., 5:24, 27) were not only condoned but at times even glorified.
(6) Before the time of Solomon a traveller in Palestine would have found no elaborate temple or structure devoted to religion. Instead, in every village he would have found an open-air ‘high place,’ marked by ‘pillars’ and ashērahs,—high places such as have recently been excavated at Gezer and Megiddo and found at Petra. In connexion with these there were often sacred caves and other accessories of primitive worship. In some, as at Gezer and Jerusalem, serpent-worship was practised, and brazen serpents as well as the living animal were kept (cf. PEFSt, 1903, p. 222; 2 K 18:4). Probably at most of them, as at Gezer, some form of Ashtart, the mother-goddess, was also worshipped (cf. PEFSt, 1903, p. 228). As time went on, an occasional shrine had a building. The first of these which we can trace was at Shiloh (1 S 1–3); it had at least two rooms and doors. Solomon then erected the splendid Temple at Jerusalem on Phœnician models, departing, as has been pointed out (I. § 14), from older Hebrew practice in many ways. Perhaps Jeroboam erected temples at Bethel and at Dan (cf. 1 K 12:31, Am 7:13), but for the most part these shrines were of the simplest nature and without buildings. A wealthy citizen might in this period have a private temple in connexion with his residence (Jg 17).
(7) The priesthood in this period was not confined to any tribe. There seems to have been a feeling that it was better to have a levi for priest (whatever that may have meant; cf. Jg 17:10), but Micah, an Ephraimite, made his son a priest (Jg 17:5); Samuel, a member of one of the Joseph tribes, acted as priest (1 S 9:12ff.); and David made his sons priests (2 S 8:18 RVm). According to J (cf. Jg 18:30), Jonathan, a grandson of Moses, started life as an impecunious resident of Bethlehem in Judah; in seeking his fortune he became a priest in the private shrine of Micah, the Ephraimite; then at the instigation of the Danites he robbed that shrine and fled with them to the north, becoming the founder of a line of priests in the temple of Dan. Even if his descent from Moses should not be credited, the story gives evidence of the kind of irregularity in the priesthood which was still conceivable when the J document was composed. So far as Jerusalem was concerned, David improved this chaotic condition by regulating the priesthood.
(8) The festivals at this period were of a simple, joyous character. They were held in the interest of the worshipper. A picture of one has been preserved in 1 S 1, 2. The priests killed the sacrifice, pouring out the blood no doubt to Jahweh, and then the flesh was cooked. While it was cooking, the priest obtained his portion by a kind of chance (cf. 1 S 2:13ff.), after which the victim was consumed by the worshippers in a joyous festival. This festival was the appropriate time to pray for children, and it is probable that considerable licence accompanied it (cf. Sem. Or. 287 ff.). The feast described occurred annually, but there were lesser feasts at the time of the new moons and on other occasions, which were probably observed in the same simple way (cf. 1 S 20:5ff.). In addition to the sacrifices at such feasts (cf. 1 S 9:22ff.), it is clear that on extraordinary occasions human sacrifice was in this period still practised. The story of Jephthah’s daughter, whether historical in all its features or not, proves that such sacrifices were regarded as possible. It is probable that 1 K 16:34 is proof that children were still sacrificed when important structures were set up. The language of this passage has been greatly illuminated by the discoveries at Gezer (cf. above, § 1 (6)).
(9) A glimpse into the household worship of the time we obtain from the teraphim. These seem to have been household deities, similar to those found in Babylonia (Ezk 21:21) and among the Aramæans (Gn 31:19). Of their use we know little. They seem to have been employed for divination (Zec 10:2), and they were sometimes made in human form (1 S 19:16). Throughout this period they were a recognized element in the worship (cf. Jg 18:20, Hos 3:4). Whether these gods formed the centre of the home worship or not we cannot tell. They were evidently a crude survival from an earlier time, and with religious progress they disappeared.
In addition to the features of the religion of the pre-Prophetic period which have been enumerated, it must be remembered that the fundamental institutions of the pre-Jahwistic religion of Israel, enumerated in § 1, continued through this period also.
(10) Another religious phenomenon of the pre-Prophetic period consisted in the development of a class of seers or prophets, who are to be carefully distinguished from the great moral and literary prophets of the next period. The prophets of this period were closely akin to the seers and fortunetellers who are common the world over. They had their parallel in other Semitic countries, e.g. Phœnicia and Assyria. In the time of Saul there was a class of ecstatic prophets in Israel who used music to aid their prophetic excitement, who uttered themselves when possessed by an uncontrollable frenzy, and who went about in hands (cf. 1 S 10:9–13, 19:23, 24).
These prophets have their analogue in a youth at Gebal in Phœnicia, of whom the Egyptian Wenamon makes report about B.C. 1100. This youth was seized by the spirit of the gods and thrown into a frenzy, and then uttered prophecies which moved a king (cf. AJSL xxi. 105). This type of prophecy was therefore in this period widely spread over the country even beyond the bounds of Israel. The ‘eons of the prophets’ referred to so often in the OT were simply guilds of these men organized for mutual help. Music helped to bring on the frenzy, and it was more contagious when a number were together.
Samuel was not sharply distinguished from the ‘sons of the prophets,’ although he was evidently a man of a higher order, believed by the people to possess superior gifts. He was called a ‘seer’ (1 S 9:9), and was believed to be able to direct people in finding lost property, and not to be above taking a fee for it (1 S 9:7). Somewhat parallel to such a seer is the one mentioned by Ashurbanipal (G. Smith, Assurbanipal, 119 ff.).
These men were held in high esteem, and obtained their living by telling people what they wished to know. Their oracles were mostly about the future, but often no doubt they told a man whether this or that action was in accord with the will of Jahweh, or of the god whom they represented. Baal as well as Jahweh had his prophets (1 K 18:19). Such men were necessary adjuncts of a court, for a king had often to engage in hazardous enterprises of State. We find accordingly that Ahab kept four hundred of them about him (1K 22:6). David and other kings had probably done the same. No doubt Nathan and Gad, whom later writers mention in connexion with David, were really men of this character, who are in the narratives pictured like the nobler prophets of later time.
These prophets by profession possessed no higher ethical tendencies than the other men of their time. Their sustenance was dependent on the pleasure of their royal master, if they were connected with the court, and usually they gave such oracles as were desired. (For fuller account, see Batten, The Hebrew Prophet, 27–72.) The institution was held in high regard. When the ecstatic frenzy came upon a man and his higher nerve centres were by the excitement inhibited from action, he was, as such men usually are among savage and primitive people (cf. Davenport, Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals, ch. I. vi.), thought to be under the possession of a supernatural spirit. He was accordingly listened to most carefully, and his utterances were supposed to reveal the Divine will. It is significant that the Hebrews used the same word for ‘prophet’ and for ‘lunatic.’ The institution was capable nevertheless of high possibilities. If those came forward exercising its gifts who were animated by high ethical purpose and possessed a great spiritual message, the regard in which this institution was held assured them of a hearing.
4. Religion in the Prophetic period.—The period which we call Prophetic extends from Elijah to the great prophet of the Exile, the so-called Second Isaiah. It was in this period that, thanks to the labours of the great school of prophetic reformers, the religion of Israel became ethical and spiritual. They gave it this content, and by the new Interpretation which they put on the covenant with Jahweh which Moses and Jethro had mediated, forced it upon the nation. In this they were aided by the misfortunes and sufferings incident to the interference of Assyria and Babylon in Hebrew affairs. In one important respect the prophets in this noble succession changed the method of prophetic utterance. With one exception, they discarded the method of ecstatic utterance, and spoke as the result of prophetic vision. Just what they mean by ‘vision’ we may not say, but we may be sure that intelligence and imagination had their part in it. It led to the perception of a noble ideal, and gave the beholder a holy passion to realize it.
(1) Elijah. The prophetic work began with Elijah. The main points of his career (1 K 17–19) have already been touched upon above (I. § 17). His significance lies in the ‘act that in the name of Jahweh he championed the poor against the rich. That his conception of Jahweh was narrow,—that he regarded Him as a god of the nomadic type,—that he opposed a foreign cult, are all incidental. Any enthusiastic member of a prophetic guild might have done any one of these three things. The significance of the work of Elijah lies in the fact that it marks the dawn of ethical purity and social justice in Jahweh’s religion. The method of Elijah, too, was an ethical method. He delivered his message, and relied upon its weight for the results.
(2) The Jahwist (J writer). In the same century, perhaps contemporary with Elijah, the first of the J writers was composing his matchless prose narratives in Judah. He was pervaded by the prophetic spirit in its incipient form. He traces the creation of man to Jahweh, and is interested in the descent of the nations from a primitive pair. He tells the stories of the patriarchs to illustrate the power of Jahweh, but the purely religious motive is not often present. He represents the patriarchs as on friendly terms with the Canaanites about them, which indicates that he is not conscious that the religion of Jahweh is hostile to other faiths. His conception of the basis of Jahweh’s covenant with Israel is, as pointed out above (§ 2 (4)), ten commands of a purely ritual nature. The tone of his stories is sombre. Clothing and child-hearing came in consequence of sin. The first agriculturist was the first murderer. The inventors of metal instruments and of music were especially wicked men. The civilization of Babylonia attempted such astounding structures, that, as Jahweh looked down from heaven, He found He could prevent men from reaching heaven only by confounding their language. To the Jahwist civilization meant sin, pain, and trouble. He had no hopeful outlook. His type of faith was nomadic indeed. He represents the starting-point from which the prophetic movement went forward.
(3) Elisha hardly deserves to be reckoned in this great succession. He was the very head of professeional prophecy. When absent from the band of associates he found it necessary to call a minstrel to work up his ecstasy before he could prophesy (2 K 3:15). It was he, too, who prompted Jehu, one of the bloodiest of usurpers and reformers, to undertake the purification of Israel from the taint of foreign religion; and when it was accomplished Israel was not one whit more ethical or spiritual than before. Elisha is usually counted as Elijah’s successor, but he belongs to a different class. The nobler religion of Israel owes him nothing.
(4) Amos, the first prophet to commit his message to writing, came, like Elijah, with a magnificent message—a message indeed which is to that of Elijah like noon to dawn. Amos announces for the first time the faith of a practical monotheist. Such a faith had been implicit in the Jahwist, when he traced the existence of all mankind to Jahweh’s act, but in Amos it is explicit. Jahweh brought not only the Israelites from Egypt, but the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Aramæans from Kir (Am 9:7), and He will likewise judge the Philistines, Damascus, Moab, Edom, and all nations (chs. 1, 2). Jahweh, too, Amos proclaims as an ethical God. Ethics, not ritual, was the basis of the covenant at Sinai (Am 5:21–25). Justice is to roll down as waters and righteousness as a perennial stream before Jahweh will be satisfied. In this spirit Amos championed in the name of Jahweh the cause of the oppressed poor, and rebuked the social impurities connected with religion, pronouncing upon the unethical the doom of Jahweh.
(5) The Elohist. Perhaps contemporary with Amos was the first E writer. He was a man of true prophetic spirit. Like J, he recorded many of the traditions of ancient times, but he tells them with a more hopeful outlook. He has a high regard for a prophet, and represents Abraham as one (Gn 20:7). He represents a higher conception of God than J. J’s anthropomorphism has disappeared. God is never seen in human form in E’s narratives, but reveals Himself in dreams. The ethical character of E’s conception of religion appears, however, in his conception of the basis of the covenant which Moses made between Israel and Jahweh. The basis of this is a Decalogue in which the ritualistic is reduced to a minimum (Ex 20 without the additions of Rn), and which contains the fundamental elements of morality, and a code of laws (Ex 20:24–23:19) embodying the principles of equity that were necessary for the life of a simple agricultural community. In giving expression to this conception, the Elohist placed himself in line with the great ethical prophets, and did much towards the differentiation of the religion of Israel from the nature cults about it. In his opening to the Decalogue (Ex 20:3) he shows that his monotheism was somewhat insecure, but his ethical conception of Jahweh’s relation to Israel helped to put religion on a spiritual basis.
(6) Hosea’s main contribution to religious theory was the thought that God is love—not the crass sexual love of the early Semite, but the self-sacrificing love of an affectionate father or a devoted husband, who would suffer to reclaim the fallen. Not less stern than Amos in his conception of ethical standards, Hosea is less occupied with proclaiming doom. He seeks by the love of Jahweh to allure Israel and win her back. Amos devoted himself mainly to checking the oppression of the poor, Hosea largely to the establishment of social purity. It became clear to him that this could not be accomplished so long as the primitive orgies of sexual freedom which were enacted in the name of religion in all the high places were permitted to continue. These he believed were no part of the real religion of Jahweh; they had come into it from the cult of Baal and Astarte. He accordingly denounced this impurity as the worship of another god,—as conjugal infidelity to Jahweh, and prohibited the application to Jahweh in the future of the appellation Baal, or ‘lord’ (Hos 2:16). Thus, as in the time of Elijah the struggle for justice linked itself with opposition to a foreign cult, so now the struggle for justice and purity led to opposition to Baal. The cult was not so foreign as the prophets supposed. It was native, as we have seen, to Jahweh as well as to the clans of Canaan which were now a part of Israel, but the idea that it was foreign helped the prophets to fight it. The fight was taken up by Hosea’s successors and pushed to success. The recovery of the high place at Gezer, with all its crass and revolting symbolism. helps us to understand the weight of deadening sensualism against which the prophets contended.
Hosea. like Amos was a monotheist. His conception of Jahweh was, however, not perfect. He thought of Him as caring especially for Israel. Though He ruled other nations, Hosea believed He controlled them mainly for the sake of Israel.
(7) Isaiah continued the work of Amos and Hosea. He proclaimed Jahweh as the All-powerful, who fills heaven and earth,—the Holy One, who proves His sanctity by His justice. For forty years, in many crises and under varying figures, Isaiah set forth this doctrine. Man is in Jahweh’s hands as clay in the hands of the potter. The powerful Assyrian is but the rod by which Jahweh in His wrath is chastising Israel; when His will is accomplished, the rod will he broken and thrown away (Is 10:5ff.). Isaiah’s monotheism, though lofty, had the same defect as Hosea’s. In upholding this conception of God, Isaiah denounced the social sins which had called out the opposition of Amos and Hosea. So great is Jahweh’s desire for justice, that Isaiah believed that He would one day raise up a prince great in all the qualities of a princely conqueror, who should be a ‘Wonderful-counsellor, a god of a warrior, a father of booty, but a prince of peace’ (Is 9:6). At another time he saw a vision of a kingdom of complete justice which an offshoot of the Davidic dynasty should found (Is 11). These visions show how, in Isaiah’s conception, the Holy One would organize human society. In addition to his work in keeping alive these lofty ideas, Isaiah, as was pointed out above (I. § 19), gave practical direction to the development of Israel’s religion. His doctrine of the inviolability of Jerusalem took effect in later times, and had much to do with the development of Judaism. He is probably responsible also for that attempt to suppress the high places which afterwards found legal expression in Deuteronomy. The significance of this will, however, he pointed out in considering that law. In Micah, a younger contemporary of Isaiah, the spirit and message of Amos reappear.
(8) The Deuteronomist. in the development of the Prophetic period, follows Isaiah. Amos, Hosea, and
Isaiah had proclaimed an ethical monotheism. They had denounced ritual as without place in the religion of Jahweh. The message had been enforced by the awful calamity which had overtaken the Northern Kingdom; it had in consequence of Isaiah’s friendship with Hezekiah, moulded policies of State. Under Manasseh, however, it became painfully evident that it was to take more than moral means to eliminate impure ritual from the religion of Jahweh. No part of the world, not even the Hebrews, was ready for a religion without ritual. Isaiah, probably, had seen this in his old age. The Deuteronomist at all events saw it. Ritual should be retained, but it should be brought within manageable limits. The high places should be eliminated, the cult centralized in Jerusalem—the place which Isaiah’s teaching and the signal defeat of Sennacherib had so clearly proved to be Jahweh’s special dwelling-place. From this all sodomites and sacred harlots were to be excluded, as well as all symbols, such as the ‘pillar’ and ashērah, which were specially significant of the odious social practices. To accomplish this, the code of the Elohist was rewritten in such a way that this conception of the sanctuary stood in the forefront, and other parts were made to conform to it. Into the whole code a more humanitarian tone towards the poor was introduced. It was thus made to express in legal form the burden of the best social teaching. Although the Deuteronomist did not advance the great ideas of spiritual religion to higher levels, he did by the compromise of this code help those ideas to influence practical life.
(9) Jeremiah, perhaps the greatest of the prophets, made great advances in the conception of spiritual religion. There was in all his work an undertone of passionate love,—a heart-throb,—like that of Hosea. The greatest significance of his teaching is not, however, his tenderness. He saw that Jahweh is independent of temple or place. An inviolable Jerusalem He did not need. What Jahweh desires is that man shall break up the fallow ground of his disposition, that he shall circumcise his heart (Jer 4:3ff.). Religion is a matter not of a temple, but of a soul. Jeremiah, too, was the first to declare that the idols of the heathen are mere vanities. Others had ignored them, he exhibits them in their true nothingness (10:8, 14:22). Another great truth which Jeremiah was the first to grasp was that the heathen as well as the Hebrew might come to Jahweh and be welcome (16:19). Not only did Jeremiah proclaim universality and ideality in religion, but he shook himself free from the old Semitic conception of solidarity which had prevailed before him. No lofty morality could prevail until every one was responsible for his own acts and for those only; and this is the standard proclaimed by Jeremiah (31:29, 30). No prophet reached a loftier flight.
(10) Ezekiel occupies a peculiar position in the Prophetic development. He stands, on one side in the succession of prophets, and, on the other, is the father of Judaism. As one of the prophetic succession, his chief work lay in the recognition and elaboration of the idea of individualism. No prophet is so impressed as he with the fact that God deals with each soul individually (Ezk 18). This thought leads Ezekiel to place a very great value upon the individual. The salvation of the individual becomes his special care. He even thinks of the Messiah as primarily a shepherd,—a pastor,—one whose chief care will be to accomplish the salvation of individuals. He addresses the rulers of Israel as shepherds. Cornill, who calls attention to this phase of his work (Prophets of Israel, 115 ff.). calls him the father of pastoral theology. Ezekiel was, however more truly the successor of the Deuteronomist than of Jeremiah. Like the former, he endeavoured to adapt prophetic conceptions to Israelitish institutions. Isaiah’s conception of Jerusalem as the home of Jahweh he fully shared, and in the closing chapters of his book he utters his ideal for the rehabilitation of Hebrew institutions about Jerusalem as a centre. Some of these conceptions were unpractical, but others took deep root, and made Ezekiel the father of Judaism.
(11) The Second Isaiah was the last of Israel’s really great prophets. His conception of Jahweh as the creator of the universe, as the ruler of the world and the maker of history, is clearer than that of any of his predecessors. The great Cyrus, who was conquering so successfully as the Second Isaiah wrote was only Jahweh’s creature. Cyrus might think otherwise, but Jahweh and His prophet knew the truth. Even Hosea never expressed the tenderness of Jahweh towards His people with greater beauty than did this prophet. His conception of Jahweh, too, is more symmetrical than that of the 8th century prophets. If in him, as in them,
Jahweh seems to care chiefly for Israel, it is so only in appearance. He has shown in his great poem on the Suffering Servant (Is 52:13–53:12) that in his view Israel was made the chosen people not through favouritism, or to puff up her self-esteem, but because Jahweh had for her a great mission. That mission was nothing less than to bring the nations of the world to Jahweh. The path of this service was the path of suffering, but it was to accomplish the salvation of the world. Jahweh, then, loved the world. He had chosen Israel and given her her tragic experience that she through this might become a missionary to the nations and bring them all to Jahweh. It does not detract from the prophet’s great conception, that the mission which he conceived for his people was never fulfilled till the coming of the ideal Israelite, Jesus Christ.
This prophetic conception of God and religion, which thus developed from Elijah to the Second Isaiah, is unique in the world’s history. Only once has this teaching been surpassed. Jesus of Nazareth, who perfected this conception of God and made it capable of being universally received, alone has gone beyond it. It was the teaching of these prophets that redeemed the religion of Israel from the level of other Semitic religions. It is this that has made the religion of Jahweh the inspiration of the world as the religion of the one true God. This prophetic teaching is quite unaccounted for by its environment. Nothing like it has been produced without its aid in any portion of the Semitic world, or among any other people. It is in the prophetic teaching and the influences which flowed from it that we find proof of the truth of the words: ‘Men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit’ (2 P 1:21).
5. From the Exile to the Maccabees.—(1) It is clear from the sketch given above (I. § 24), that in the rehabilitation of the Jewish communities in Palestine the whole sentiment of the organizers centred in the ritual. If there were prophets, such as Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, they uttered their prophetic visions to persuade the people to make sacrifices to restore and maintain the sacred ceremonies. It thus happened that the whole movement in the early days after the Exile was pervaded more by the priestly than by the prophetic spirit. The Priestly document with its supplements (for the analysis cf. Carpenter and Harford-Battersby’s Hexateuch) was the heart of the whole movement. The religious life of the Judæan community did not become consistent until it was organized upon this basis, and after this organization it went forward confidently. The author of the Priestly document (P 2) was the successor of Ezekiel, as Ezekiel had been the successor of the Deuteronomist. As Ezekiel took more interest in the organization of the ritual than did D, so P 2’s interest greatly exceeded Ezekiel’s. The prophetic movement had given P 2 his pure monotheism. From it he had received a faith in an All-powerful, Holy Creator and Ruler of the universe. The nearness and warmth of God, as the prophets had conceived Him, escaped P 2, but with such elements of the prophetic conception as he could grasp he set himself to the organization of the ritual.
The ritual which had come down to him from his priestly ancestry he had received as the will of God. We can see that it had its birth in Semitic heathenism, but he could not. In reality this ritual bound him to earth by the strands of many a half-superstitious custom, but in his thought it had all come from heaven. If this were so, the problem to his mind was to find the connexion of all this with the will of the God of the universe. To express the vital connexion which he thought he found, he re-wrote the history of the creation of the world and of the fortunes of the chosen people down to the settlement in Canaan, in such a way as to make it appear that circumcision had been enjoined on Abraham at the very beginning of revelation (Gn 17), and that the basis of the covenant at Sinai was neither the ‘Book of the Covenant’ (Ex 20:24–23:19), nor the code of Deuteronomy, but the whole Levitical ritual. This ritual, as he conceived it, had been profoundly influenced by Ezekiel. The menial work of the sanctuary was no longer to be performed, as in pre-exilic days, by foreign slaves. The descendants of those priests who had officiated in shrines other than Jerusalem were to be assigned to these services (cf. Ezk 44:8–14). Thus an order of Levites as a menial class was created. If this ritual was the basis of the covenant at Sinai, it could not have been ignored in the Wilderness Wandering. There must have been a movable sanctuary. Solomon’s Temple was the model shrine to Ezekiel and the priests, but Solomon’s Temple must (so suppose P 2 and his successors) have been patterned upon a previous nomadic shrine; hence the account of the Tabernacle was placed in their history. Among the newly created class of Levites there were many who had descended from men who had officiated as priests at Hebron, Gezer, Kadesh, Ashtaroth, and many other ancient shrines. P 2 and his followers accounted for this fact by supposing that Joshua had given the tribe of Levi cities in all parts of the land (Jos 21; cf. Barton, ‘Levitical Cities of Israel in the Light of the Excavation at Gezer,’ Biblical World, xxiv. 167 ff.).
This conception was accepted as the real account of the history only when the Priestly document had been skilfully combined with the older writings in our Pentateuch in such a way that these priestly institutions seemed to be the heart of the whole and to overshadow all else. Then apparently all opposition vanished, and priestly enthusiasm and prophetic fervour were joined by popular co-operation in establishing this ritual as the one right method of serving the Living God. This enthusiasm was in part the result of a distorted reading of history, but all uncritical readers so distort the history to the present hour. By the time of Nehemiah this view of the history was fully accepted, and by the time of the Chronicler, a century later, it had distorted the history of the Israelites in Canaan, to correspond with the priestly picture, as appears to this day in the Books of Chronicles.
This priestly triumph was in a way a retrogression from prophetic ideals. Some of the prophets, as Jeremiah, had taught a religion free and spiritual, capable of becoming universal. The priestly conception, however noble its monotheism, was so harnessed to outworn ritual that it could appeal only in a limited degree to men of other races. Nevertheless this ritual had its place. In the centuries which followed, when the soul of the Hebrew was tried almost beyond endurance, and no cheering voice of prophet was heard, it was due to this objective ritual, as something for which to live, and strive, and fight, that he survived to do his work in the world. With the adoption of the Priestly Code Judaism was born.
(2) The effects of the priestly ritual were not, however, so deadening as one might suppose. Various causes prevented it from stifling the deeper religious life. The teachings of the prophets were cherished, and many of them had taught that religion is a matter of the heart and not a ceremonial. During the long exile the devout Jew had learned how to live a really religious life without the help of Temple ritual. Many of the faithful were in Babylonia, and were still compelled to do without the Temple sacrifices and prayers. Then the Law itself did not contain sacrifices for many sins. The old customs adapted in Lv 4–6 and 16 provided sacrifices for only very few of the sins of life. The sincere heart was compelled still to live its life with God in large measure independently of the ritual. The Pentateuch also contains many noble and inspiring precepts on moral and spiritual matters. There were those, too, who paid little attention to the ceremonies of the Temple, although most supported it as a matter of duty. All these causes combined to prevent the Law from at once stereotyping the religious life. This period became accordingly the creative period in Judaism.
The first of these important creations was the Psalter, the hymn-book of the Second Temple. This greatest of the world’s collections of sacred song was a gradual growth. Book I. (Pss 3–41) came into existence probably in the time of Nehemiah. The other collections were gradually made at different times, the whole not being completed till the Maccabæan age (cf. art. PSALMS). In compiling it some earlier hymns were probably utilized, but they were so re-edited that critics cannot clearly date them. Into this collection there went every variety of religious expression. The breathings of anger against enemies mingle with tender aspirations after communion with God. One psalm, the 50th, treats sacrifice sarcastically, while many express a devotion to the Law which is extremely touching. One (Ps 51) expresses the most advanced and psychologically correct conception of the nature of sin and forgiveness that is found anywhere in the OT. A Judaism capable of producing such a book was noble indeed. To live up to the highest expressions of this the firstfruits of creative Judaism is to be a pure Christian.
(3) There was, however, in this period a class of sages who lived apart from the life of the Temple, untouched by the ceremonies of the priest or the aspirations of the prophet. They treated religious problems from that practical common-sense point of view which the Hebrews called ‘wisdom.’ The books produced by this class had a profound religious influence. The attitude of these men left them free for the greatest play of individuality. Their books are, therefore, written from various standpoints, and present widely divergent points of view.
The oldest of these, the Book of Job, discusses, in some of the noblest poetry ever written, the problem of suffering, or the mystery of life. The author treats his theme with absolute freedom of thought, untrammelled by the priestly conceptions of the Law. In his conclusion, however, he is profoundly religious. He demonstrates at once the function and the limits of reason in the religious life,—its function to keep theology in touch with reality, and its inability to fathom life’s mystery. Job does not find satisfaction till he receives the vision of God, and becomes willing, through appreciation of the Divine Personality, to trust even though his problems are unsolved (cf. Peake, Problem of Suffering in OT, 100 ff.).
The Book of Proverbs contains the sayings of sages of the practical, everyday sort. Their view of life is expediential. Wisdom is good because it pays, and the fear (worship) of Jahweh is the beginning of wisdom. Sometimes, as in ch. 8, they rise to noble poetry in the praise of wisdom, but for the most part they pursue the humdrum pathway of everyday expediency. Their point of view is the opposite of that of the impassioned Psalmists, but is not inconsistent with formal faithfulness in the observance of the Law.
Ecclesiastes is the work of a man who has almost lost faith, and who has quite lost that enthusiasm for life which the perception of a noble meaning in it gives. He is not altogether able to throw off completely his childhood’s beliefs, but they have ceased to be for him a solution of life’s mystery, and he has scant patience with those who, in like case with himself, continue to volubly profess their devotion because it is the orthodox thing to do. He insists upon bringing all things to the test of reality.
Sirach is a collection of aphorisms which continues the work of the Book of Proverbs.
(4) The religious life thus far described was that which flourished in Palestine. During this period, however, the Jews had been scattering over the world (cf. DISPERSION). These scattered communities had no idea of being anything but Jews. They had their synagogues in which the Law was read, and, like the Captivity in Babylonia, they maintained as much of their religious life as they could away from the Temple. As often as possible they went to Jerusalem at the time of some great feast, and took part in its sacrificial worship. Contact with the heathen world, however, broadened the vision of these Jews. They saw that many Gentiles were noble men. Probably too here and there one of the nobler Gentiles was attracted by the lofty religion of the Jew. At all events there sprang up among the Diaspora a desire to win the heathen world to Judaism. The translation of the Bible into Greek, which was begun in the 3rd cent., was demanded not only for the use of the Greek-speaking Jews, but as an instrument in the hands of those who would fulfil the missionary conception of the Second Isaiah and win the world to Jahweh. Towards the end of this period a missionary literature began to be written. One portion of this, the Sibylline Oracles, the oldest part of which dates perhaps from the Maccabæan age, represented the Sibyl, who was so popular in the Græco-Roman world, as recounting in Greek hexameters the history of the chosen people. The
Book of Jonah dates from this period, and is a part of this literature, though probably written in Palestine. Its author satirizes the nation as a whole for her unwillingness, after all her chastisements, either to go on the mission to which Jahweh would send her, or to rejoice that He showed mercy to any but herself.
6. The reign of legalism.—With the beginning of the Hasmonæan dynasty (John Hyrcanus I.), the creative period of Judaism was over, and the leaders, gathering up the heritage of the past, were crystallizing it into permanent form. This did not come about all at once, and its beginnings go back into the preceding period. The writers of the Priestly Law were the real intellectual ancestors of those Chasīdīm, or enthusiasts for the Law, out of whom the Maccabees sprang. Until after the Maccabæan struggle, however, the religious life was too varied, and the genius of the nation too creative, for the priestly conceptions to master everybody. The struggle of the Maccabees for the life of the Jewish religion greatly strengthened the Chasīdīm, who early in the Hasmonæan rule developed into the Pharisees. More numerous than the Sadducees, and possessing among the country people a much greater reputation for piety, they soon became the dominant party in
Palestine. Some, as the Essenes (wh. see), might split off from them, but they were too insignificant to shatter the Pharisees’ influence. The aim of the Pharisees was to apply the Law to all the details of daily life. Some of its provisions were Indefinite. It called on the Hebrew not to work on the Sabbath, but some work was necessary, if man would live. They endeavoured to define, therefore, what was and what was not work within the meaning of the Pentateuch. Similarly they dealt with other laws. These definitions were not for some centuries committed to writing. Thus there grew up an Oral Law side by side with the Written Law, and in due time the Pharisees regarded this as of Divine authority also. Thus their energies fastened the grip of external observance upon the religious life. The epoch was not creative. They dared not create anything. Everything was given out either as an interpretation of the Law, or as the interpretation of some predecessor. There was development and growth, of course, but this was accomplished, not by creating the new, but by interpreting the old. In the Rabbinic schools, which were developed in the reign of Herod, this system fully unfolded itself, and became the archetype of orthodox Judaism to the present day.
In the Rabbinic schools the method of teaching was by repetition. The sayings or interpretations of famous Rabbis were stated by the master and repeated again and again till they were remembered. Not originality but memory was the praiseworthy quality in a student. Thus when, centuries later, the Oral Law was committed to writing, it was called Mishna, or ‘Repetition.’
In the synagogue (wh. see), where the people worshipped on the Sabbath, and where the children were taught, the inner religious life was fostered, but synagogues gradually became centres for the propagation of Pharisaism.
Beginning with the Maccabæan struggles, a new class of literature, the Apocalyplic, was called into existence. Prophecy was completely dead. No one had the creative genius to unfold in his own name the Divine purposes. For some centuries those who had a message for their contemporaries in persecution presented it as a vision which some ancient worthy, Enoch, Daniel, Baruch, or Ezra, had seen. The apocalyptists were only in a secondary sense creative. They moulded the utterances of the prophets and traditional material borrowed from Babylonia, so as to make them express the hopes which they would teach. No fewer than seven of these works were attributed to Enoch, and six to Baruch; one was ascribed to Moses, one to Isaiah, while each of the twelve sons of Jacob had his ‘Testament,’ and Solomon a ‘Psalter.’
In this literature the national consciousness of Judaism, in conflict first with Syria and then with Rome, finds expression. The hopes for the long-delayed kingdom of which the prophets had spoken are portrayed. As one sees that kingdom fade (or brighten) from the earthly empire of the early apocalypses to the heavenly kingdom of some of the later ones, one follows the eschatological conceptions which were at this time being born in Judaism. The apocalyptic hopes were quite consistent with the Law; they pointed forward to that time when the faithful should have ability to serve God completely, and to the reward for all that they had suffered here.
The great idea of God expressed by the Priestly document pervaded and still pervades Judaism. The Divine unity and majesty were and are its watchwords. These as well as its Pharisaic ritual have been embodied in Talmud and Midrash, and transmitted to modern times. Judaism during the Christian centuries has had its history, its development, and its heresies. It has produced independent thinkers like Maimonides and Spinoza. In modern life the Reformed Jew is casting off the forms of Pharisaism, but through the lapse of all the centuries Judaism, as shaped by the Pharisees and held by their successors, has been the orthodox religion of that race which traces its lineage to Israel.
GEORGE A. BARTON.
ISRAELITE (Jn 1:47).—This is the only instance of the use of the word ‘Israelite’ in the Gospels. It has the particular significance, suggested by the story of Jacob in Gn 32:28, 35:10, of one belonging to the Jewish race, with special reference to the privileges conferred by God on His people: ‘whose is the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the temple service, and the promises’ (Ro 9:4). Its use (as distinct from ‘Jew’ and ‘Hebrew’) became closely associated with belief in the Messianic hope (cf. Jn 1:45), and the expression ‘Israelite indeed,’ addressed to Nathanael, breathes that sense of tragedy so apparent in the Fourth Gospel, inasmuch as those who were specially ‘His own’ received Him not. We may compare the attitude of ‘the Jews,’ in ch. 6, who blindly claimed race privileges, and yet were enemies of Christ, and who cherished the very prejudice that Nathanael overcame (cf. Jn 1:46 with 6:42, where the objection in both cases is to the commonplace origin of Jesus), when he readily responded to Philip’s invitation, ‘Come and see.’ It is in this sense that Nathanael is ‘without guile.’ He does not allow his devout sense of privilege to destroy openness of heart towards the claim of Jesus of Nazareth. His action shows that he is sincere, frank, and without sinister aim (cf. 2 Co 12:16, 1 Th 2:3). To Jesus, therefore, he is an object of surprise.
R. H. STRACHAN.
ISSACHAR.—The fifth son of Leah, born after Gad and Asher, the sons of Zilpah, and the ninth of Jacob’s sons (Gn 30:18 [E], cf. 35:22b ff. [P]). The name (in Heb. Yiss-askar) is peculiar in form, and of uncertain signification; but it is quite probable that it has arisen from a corruption of ’ish-sakhar as Wellhausen (Sam. 95) suggests, and further, that the latter element is the name of a deity. Ball (SBOT, ad loc.) suggests the Egyptian Memphite god Sokar. The name would then correspond to the name ’ish-Gad by which the Moabites knew the Gadites. J and E, however, both connect it with the root sākhar, ‘to hire’: J, because Leah ‘hired’ Jacob from Rachel with Reuben’s mandrakes; E, because she gave Zilpah to Jacob. The difference shows that the traditions are of little value as linguistic guides. Gn 49:14, 15 also appears to play upon the root sākhar in its description of Issachar as ‘a servant under task work.’ This would harmonize with the interpretation ‘hired man’ or ‘labourer.’ It has, however, little to commend it.
P’s census at Sinai gives the tribe 54,400 (Nu 1:29), and at Moab 64,300 (26:25); cf. 1 Ch 7:5.
For the clans see Gn 46:13 and 1 Ch 7:1ff..
The original seat of the tribe appears to have been S. of Naphtali and S.E. of Zebulun, ‘probably in the hills between the two valleys which descend from the Great Plain to the Jordan (Wady elBireh and Nahr Galud)’ (Moore, Judges, 151). On the N.W. it touched upon Mt. Tabor, on the S. upon Mt. Gilboa. Eastward it reached to the Jordan. P’s lot (Jos 19:17–23) assigns to the tribe sixteen cities and their villages, scattered throughout the eastern end of the rich Plain of Esdraelon and the Valley of Jezreel. The tribe participated in the war against Sisera (Jg 5:15), and Deborah perhaps belonged to it. The ‘with’ before Deborah might be read ‘people of’; but the verse is evidently corrupt. Baasha, the son of Ahijah, who succeeded Nadab, was ‘of the house of Issachar’; and, possibly, also Omri, who gave his name to the Northern Kingdom. The references in the Blessing of Jacob (Gn 49) would indicate that during the early monarchy Issachar lost both its martial valour and its independence. On the other hand, in the Blessing of Moses (Dt 33:18, 19) great commercial prosperity is indicated, and the maintenance of a sanctuary to which ‘the peoples’ flock to the sacrificial worship. Tola the judge, the grandson of Dodo, was a man of Issachar (Jg 10:1). This name Dodo, occurring on the Mesha stele as that of a divinity, has led to the suggestion that he may have been worshipped in early times by the tribe. According to the Talmud, the Sanhedrin drew from Issachar its most intellectually prominent members. See also TRIBES OF
ISRAEL.
JAMES A. CRAIG.
ISSHIAH.—1. One of the heads of the tribe of Issachar (1 Ch 7:3). 2. A Korahite who joined David at Ziklag (1 Ch 12:6). 3. The son of Uzziel (1 Ch 23:20, 24:25). 4. A Levite (1 Ch 24:21).
ISSHIJAH.—One of those who had married a foreign wife (Ezr 10:31): called in 1 Es 9:32 Aseas.
ISSUE.—See MEDICINE, p. 600a.
ISTALCURUS (1 Es 8:40).—‘Uthi the son of Istalcurus’ here stands for ‘Uthai and Zabbud’ in Ezr 8:14.
ITALIAN BAND.—See BAND.
ITALY.—This word varied in sense from time to time. It first signified only the Southern (the Greek) part of the peninsula; later it included all the country south of the Lombard plain; and finally, before the time of Christ, it had come to bear the meaning which it has now. Its central position in the Mediterranean, the conformation of its coast, and the capabilities of its soil under proper cultivation, fitted it to be the home and centre of a governing race. In the 1st cent. A.D. there was constant communication between the capital Rome and every part of the Empire, by wellrecognized routes. Among the routes to the E., which mainly concern the NT student, was that from Rome along the W. coast of Italy to Campania, where it crossed the country and eventually reached Brundisium. From the harbour there the traveller either sailed across the Adriatic to Dyrrhachium, and went by the Egnatian road to Thessalonica and beyond, or sailed across to the Gulf of Corinth, transhipped from Lechæum to Cenchreæ (wh. see), and from there sailed to Ephesus or Antioch or Alexandria, as he desired. The best account of a home journey is in Ac 27. The Jews poured into Italy, especially to Rome, and had been familiar to the Italians long before Christianity came.
A. SOUTER.
ITCH.—See MEDICINE, p. 599b.
ITHAI.—See ITTAI, 2.
ITHAMAR.—The fourth and youngest son of Aaron and Elisheba (Ex 6:23 etc.); consecrated priest (Ex 28:1ff.); forbidden to mourn for Nadab and Abihu (Lv 10:6), or to leave the Tent of Meeting (v. 7); afterwards entrusted by Moses with priestly duties (Lv 10:12ff.) and rebuked by him for neglect (v. 16ff.); set over the Gershonites and the Merarites in connexion with the service of the Tent of Meeting (Nu 4:21–33, 7:7f.; cf. also Ex 38:21); ancestor of Eli (cf. 1 K 2:27 with 1 Ch 24:3; Jos. Ant. VIII. i. 3). The family in David’s time was only half the size of Eleazar’s (1 Ch 24:4). It was represented among the returned exiles (Ezr 8:2).
W. TAYLOR SMITH.
ITHIEL.—1. A Benjamite (Neh 11:7). 2. One of two persons to whom Agur addressed his oracular sayings, the other being Ucal (Pr 30:1). Neither LXX nor Vulg. recognizes proper names here, and most modern commentators point differently and tr. ‘I have wearied myself, O God, I have wearied myself, O God, and am consumed.’ So RVm.
ITHLAH.—A town of Dan, near Aijalon (Jos 19:42). The site is unknown.
ITHMAH.—A Moabite, one of David’s heroes (1 Ch 11:46).
ITHNAN.—A city in the Negeb of Judah (Jos 15:23); site uncertain.
ITHRA.—The father of Amasa, and husband of Abigail, David’s sister. He is described as an Israelite in 2 S 17:25, but the better reading is ‘Jether the Ishmaelite’ (1 Ch 2:17).
ITHRAN.—1. Eponym of a Horite clan (Gn 36:26, 1 Ch 1:41). 2. An Asherite chief (1 Ch 7:37), probably identical with Jether of the following verse.
ITHREAM.—The sixth son of David, born to him at Hebron (2 S 3:5, 1 Ch 3:3).
ITHRITE, THE.—A gentilic adjective applied to the descendants of a family of Kiriath-jearim (1 Ch 2:53), amongst whom were two of David’s guard (2 S 23:38, 1 Ch 11:40 Ira and Gareb). Possibly, however, the text of 2 S 23 and 1 Ch 11 should be pointed ‘the Jattirite,’ i.e. an inhabitant of Jattir (mentioned in 1 S 30:27 as one of David’s haunts) in the hill-country of Judah (Jos 15:48, 21:14). See JATTIR.
ITS.—It is well known that this word occurs but once in AV, Lv 25:5, and that even there it is due to subsequent printers, the word in 1611 being ‘it’—‘that which groweth of it owne accord.’ The use of ‘It’ for ‘its’ is well seen in Shaks. King John, II. i. 160.
‘Go to it grandam, child:
Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will
Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig.’
The form ‘its’ was only beginning to come into use about 1611. The usual substitutes in AV are ‘his’ and ‘thereof.’ Thus Mt 6:33 ‘But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness,’ where Tindale has ‘the rightwisnes thereof’ (RV takes the pronoun to be masculine, referring to God, not kingdom, and retains ‘his’).
ITTAI.—1. A Gittite leader who, with a following of six hundred Philistines, attached himself to David at the outbreak of Absalom’s rebellion. In spite of being urged by David to return to his home, he determined to follow the king in his misfortune, affirming his faithfulness in the beautiful words: ‘As the Lord liveth, and as my lord the king liveth, surely in what place my lord the king shall be, whether for death or for life, even there also will thy servant be’ (2 S 15:21). He therefore remained in the service of David, and soon rose to a position of great trust, being placed in command of a third part of the people (2 S 18:2). 2. A Benjamite, son of Ribai, who was one of David’s mighty men (2 S 23:29, 1 Ch 11:31 [in the latter Ithai]).
W. O. E. OESTERLEY.
ITURÆA [the name is probably derived from Jetur, who is mentioned in Gn 25:15 and 1 Ch
1:31 as a son of Ishmael], with Trachonitis, constituted the tetrarchy of Philip (Lk 3:1). But whether ‘Ituræa’ is employed by the Evangelist as a noun or an adjective is a disputed point. Ramsay contends (Expositor, Jan., Feb., Apr., 1894) that no Greek writer prior to Eusebius in the 4th cent. A.D. ever uses it as the name of a country. The Ituræans as a people were well known to classical writers. According to Cicero (Philipp. ii. 112), they were a ‘predatory people’; according to Cæsar (Bell. Afr. 20), they were ‘skilful archers’; according to Strabo (XVI. ii. 10 etc.), they were ‘lawless.’
They seem to have migrated originally from the desert to the vicinity of Southern Lebanon and Cœle-Syria. Both Strabo and Josephus (Ant. XIII. xi. 3) locate them in these parts. The Romans probably caused them to retreat towards the desert again shortly before the Christian era. Lysanias the son of Ptolemy is called by Dio Cassius (xlix. 32) ‘king of the Ituræans.’ He was put to death by Mark Antony in B.C. 34. Zenodorus his successor died in B.C. 20, whereupon a part of his territory fell into the hands of Herod the Great; and when Herod’s kingdom was divided, it became the possession of Philip (Jos. Ant. XV. x. 3). Whether Ituræa and Trachonitis overlapped (as Ramsay thinks), or were two distinct districts (as Strabo), is uncertain; G. A. Smith in his art. ‘Ituræa’ in Hastings’ DB is non-committal. The passage in Luke seems to favour a distinct and definite district, which was probably somewhere N.E. of the Sea of Galilee.
GEORGE L. ROBINSON.
IVORY (shēn, lit. ‘tooth’; and shenhabbīm, ‘elephants’ teeth’ [but reading doubtful], 1 K 10:22,
2 Ch 9:21).—Ivory has been valued from the earliest times. In Solomon’s day the Israelites imported it from Ophir (1 K 10:22): it was used in the decorations of palaces (22:39). The ‘tower of ivory’ (Ca 7:4) may also have been a building decorated with ivory. Solomon had a throne of ivory (1 K 10:18–20). ‘Beds of ivory,’ such as are mentioned in Am 6:4, were, according to a cuneiform inscription, included in the tribute paid by Hezekiah to Sennacherib.
E. W. G. MASTERMAN.
IVVAH.—A city named in 2 K 18:34, 19:13, Is 37:13, along with Sepharvaim and Hena, as conquered by the Assyrians. Its real name and location are both uncertain. It is frequently identified with Avva of 2 K 17:24. Some would make it the name not of a city but of a god. See, further, art. HENA.
IVY.—This plant (Hedera helix) grows wild in Palestine and Syria. It is mentioned in 2 Mac 6:7. See DIONYSIA.
IYE-ABARIM (‘Iyim of the regions beyond,’ distinguishing this place from the Iim of Jos
15:29).—The station mentioned in Nu 21:11, 33:44 (in v. 45 Iyim alone) and described (21:11) as ‘in the wilderness which is before Moab toward the sun-rising,’ and more briefly (33:44) as ‘in the border of Moab.’ Nothing is known as to its position beyond these indications.
IYIM (‘heaps’ or ‘ruins’).—1. Short form of Iyeabarim in Nu 33:45. 2. Jos 15:29 (AV and RV incorrectly Iim) , a town in Judah, one of the ‘uttermost cities toward the border of Edom.’
IYYAR.—See TIME.
IZHAR.—1. Son of Kohath the son of Levi (Ex 6:18, 21, Nu 3:19, 16:1, 1 Ch 6:2, 18, 38, 23:12, 18); patron. Izharites (Nu 3:27, 1 Ch 24:22, 26:28, 29). 2. A Judahite (1 Ch 4:7).
IZLIAH.—A Benjamite chief (1 Ch 8:18).
IZRAHIAH.—A chief of Issachar (1 Ch 7:8).
IZRAHITES.—Gentilic name in 1 Ch 27:8, possibly another form of Zerahites, vv. 11, 13.