NATIONAL IDEALS 
 IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
NATIONAL IDEALS 
 IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY J. CADBURY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1920 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Published April, 1920 
 
 The Bible text used in this volume vexcept where otherwise marked) is taken from the Amer- 
 ican Standard Edition of the Revised Bible, copyright, 1901, by Thomas Nelson & Sons, and 
 is used by permission. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 DIFFERENT theories have held the field with 
 regard to the controlling factor in the destiny of 
 nations. In the older study of history, especially of 
 the sacred history contained in the Bible, God was 
 regarded as the supernatural cause of every 
 national disaster or development. Secular his- 
 tory has long been studied as the history of gov- 
 ernments, with emphasis upon the military rela- 
 tions between states. Battles were the decisive 
 events and "big battalions" were the accompani- 
 ments or the expressions of Providence. More 
 recently the economic interpretation of history 
 has come to the foreground, and the fate of na- 
 tions has been said to depend on natural resources, 
 commerce, and the appetitive and competitive 
 motives which material needs stimulate. 
 
 Against these extreme views, whether super- 
 human or purely material, the influence of na- 
 tional ideals deserves emphasis. There is a col- 
 lective human idealism of which neither economic 
 determinism nor supernatural Providence is wholly 
 independent. The folk songs, the war cries, the 
 moral standards, and all the influences of civiliza- 
 tion and religion have often determined a nation's 
 history quite apart from the working of military 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 and economic factors. Ideals as well as expecta- 
 tion of profit have guided the course of events 
 and animated national conduct. Providence has 
 found expression through patriot and prophet, 
 and through the developing experience of nations, 
 no less than by miracle and military intervention. 
 History must be interpreted spiritually as well as 
 materially, naturally as well as supernaturally. 
 
 The correct interpretation of history is more 
 than an academic question. It affects directly 
 the conduct of individuals and society. The 
 forces which seem to men effective in the past 
 are the very forces on which they will pin their 
 faith for the future. If we accept the apocalyp- 
 tic interpretation of history as the inexorable 
 working of a Divine plan, we shall merely await 
 in passive reliance the unaided intervention of 
 God to create the consummation of his will. All 
 human endeavor will seem useless to hasten or 
 to hinder his purpose. If on the other hand we 
 accept the economic, the military, or the political 
 interpretation of the past, we shall use our effort 
 to secure economic, military, or political readjust- 
 ment in the future. These are indeed the varied 
 hopes of many men to-day premillenarianism, 
 socialism, militarism, democracy are some of 
 the names for them. But if we believe spiritual 
 forces and ideals are the real determinants of 
 human life and progress, then our interest and 
 our effort will be directed toward the creation of 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 a new public conscience, of a spirit of brother- 
 hood, and of all the higher qualities of personal 
 and social life. We shall interpret the movements 
 of our time not as the unwinding of a divine 
 machine nor as the conflict of states and systems, 
 but as a conflict of ideals. "We know that the 
 whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain 
 together until now," and we shall appreciate with 
 Paul "that the earnest expectation of the crea- 
 tion waiteth for the revealing of the sons of 
 God." "The revealing of the sons of God" this 
 simple realization of Christian ideals in all the 
 relations of men and nations is the 
 
 "One far-off divine event, 
 To which the whole creation moves." 
 
 The purpose of the chapters that follow is to 
 sketch in outline some of the striking and influ- 
 ential ideals which were held by the Hebrew 
 nation or its leaders through the thousand years 
 of its history covered by the canonical Scriptures 
 of the Old Testament. This study has been the 
 natural outgrowth of an impulse given by the 
 Great War for the comparison of national stand- 
 ards and aspirations. But it may be predicted 
 that a few years will not make obsolete the analy- 
 sis of these questions nor make valueless the 
 study of the idealism in great nations of the past. 
 An ancient and remote nation like Israel provides 
 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 a field where such study can be carried on with- 
 out passion or prejudice. 
 
 It is a strange fact that so little investigation 
 has been made of the subject. Even the study 
 of political theory usually omits the ancient Orient 
 altogether and begins in Greece only with Plato 
 and Aristotle. Although the Bible has been stud- 
 ied from nearly every conceivable view-point, one 
 cannot easily name any treatise that attempts to 
 describe the development of its national ideals. 
 This volume is not an effort to supply that lack 
 so much as to call attention to it. A thorough 
 and less popular study of the subject by a com- 
 petent Old Testament scholar would be a useful 
 contribution to modern political thought as well 
 as to a knowledge of the Bible. As will be evi- 
 dent to the reader, the author has essayed no 
 independent historical or critical investigations. 
 He is indebted to the current English and Ameri- 
 can commentaries and general works about the 
 Old Testament such as are mentioned in the foot- 
 notes. In the quotations from these books the 
 spelling Jehovah has been substituted for Yahweh 
 and other forms of the Divine name in order to be 
 consistent with the usage of the Bible text adopted. 
 
 As a background for the study the author has 
 adopted that reconstruction of the history of 
 Israel which appears to be most generally accepted 
 by historical criticism, although he is fully aware 
 of the objections to which this reconstruction is 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 open from more than one direction. Perhaps two 
 other criticisms will occur to the reader: the failure 
 to emphasize in conventional fashion the devel- 
 opment of Hebrew religion, and the omission of 
 the New Testament. Both are due to the lim- 
 ited purpose of the book, in aiming to focus atten- 
 tion upon a single phase of a significant national 
 history. The religious meaning of the Bible has 
 so long overshadowed in our minds its social and 
 political significance that it may be well here for 
 the sake of clearness to leave theology in the 
 background. It cannot be completely separated 
 even from patriotism and politics. The implica- 
 tions of early Christianity for national ideals are 
 also an essential supplement to the study of those 
 ideals in Hebrew history. 
 
 To the editors of The Homiletic Review and of 
 The World Tomorrow the writer expresses thanks 
 for permission to reprint from their columns 
 Chapter XX and Chapters XI, XII, XVII, and 
 XXII, respectively. 
 
 HAVERFORD, PENNSYLVANIA, 
 April, 1919. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY: THE BIBLE AND NA- 
 TIONAL IDEALS 1 
 
 II. THE POLITICAL INHERITANCE OF THE 
 
 HEBREWS ........ 8 
 
 III. THE BIRTH OF THE NATION ... 17 
 
 IV. CONTACT WITH CULTURE .... 24 
 
 V. THE PERSISTENCE OF NATIONAL CON- 
 TRASTS 35 
 
 VI. E PLURIBUS UNUM 45 
 
 VII. NATIONAL PROTOTYPES (GENESIS) . 51 
 
 VIII. WAR 61 
 
 IX. MONARCHY AND THEOCRACY ... 74 
 
 X. RADICALS AND REFORMERS ... 88 
 
 XI. RUTHLESSNESS ABROAD AND AT HOME 
 
 (AMOS) 101 
 
 XII. LOYALTY, A NATIONAL MOTIVE (HOSEA) 111 
 
 XIII. THE PROPHET AND POLITICS (ISAIAH) 119 
 
 XIV. THE LIMITATIONS OF STATECRAFT' 
 
 (ISAIAH) 128 
 
xii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XV. THE PLATFORM OF REFORMATION (DEU- 
 TERONOMY) 137 
 
 XVI. PROPHETIC IDEALS IN ACTION (KINGS) 150 
 
 XVII. AN UNPOPULAR PATRIOT (JEREMIAH) . 162 
 
 XVIII. NATIONAL IDEALS IN DISASTER . . 173 
 
 XIX. IDEALS OF RECONSTRUCTION (DEUTERO- 
 
 ISAIAH) * 184 
 
 XX. ON INTERNATIONAL SERVICE (SERVANT 
 
 SONGS) 196 
 
 XXI. THE INTENSIFICATION OF NATIONAL- 
 ISM 206 
 
 XXII. A CARTOON OF NATIONALISM (JONAH) 217 
 
 XXIII. THE LITERATURE OF SUPPRESSION 
 
 (DANIEL) 224 
 
 XXIV.' THE MESSIANIC HOPE 239 
 
 XXV. NATIONALISM TRANSCENDED . . . 251 
 
 CONCLUSION 262 
 
 INDEX . 265 
 
NATIONAL IDEALS 
 IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
NATIONAL IDEALS IN THE OLD 
 TESTAMENT 
 
 INTRODUCTORY: THE BIBLE AND NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 IN every age the Bible has not only met the 
 personal religious needs of men, but it has also 
 proved rich in suggestion for the wider problems of 
 a changing world. This is specially true to-day, 
 when a great war has widened our horizon beyond 
 our own nation as never before, and has encour- 
 aged us to examine and compare the ideals of 
 states and to prepare for new international rela- 
 tionships. Trained to familiarity with the Bible 
 and reverence for it, we instinctively turn to it for 
 lessons and advice on the problem of the new world 
 that is being born under our very eyes. As many 
 generations have done before us, we search the 
 Scriptures in the light of new experiences, and 
 our search is richly rewarded. Such study of 
 the Bible is scarcely new. Men have always 
 turned to Scripture in national as well as personal 
 crises. They have appealed to its guidance for 
 statecraft and leadership. But such use has been 
 sporadic and isolated, too often a reliance on 
 texts for argument, rather than a scientific quest. 
 
 1 
 
There are many reasons which justify such a 
 national interpretation of the Bible. In the first 
 place, it accords with the Bible's historical origin. 
 We are wont to speak of the Jews as the people of 
 a book, but it is no less true that the Bible is the 
 book of a people. The Old Testament is the 
 collected remains of a great national literature. 
 It breathes throughout the national spirit. It 
 portrays a single national culture. It traces the 
 continuous development in political as well as 
 religious and social institutions of the Jewish 
 people, a people as distinct by race and by national 
 self-consciousness as any that was ever called a 
 nation. About half of the Old Testament is the 
 history of this people. But even the parts which 
 are not narrative deal far more directly with 
 national questions than is often supposed. The 
 prophets in many ways the greatest contribu- 
 tion of Israel to civilization were neither recluses 
 nor merely spiritual reformers; they were men of 
 affairs, statesmen, and political idealists. Like 
 Moses, they were God's spokesmen to the na- 
 tion. Their sermons were addressed to the peo- 
 ple as a whole or to its representatives rather 
 than to individual persons. As we have come 
 recently to. recognize, the prophets were social 
 reformers, not evangelists, and the society to 
 which they devoted themselves was their own 
 nation. To a striking extent the prophets tran- 
 scended even this limit and reached a kind of 
 
INTRODUCTORY 3 
 
 "international mind." Both Israel and Israel's 
 God were given by them a universal significance, 
 and history was interpreted internationally. The 
 political interests of the Hebrews did not end 
 with the fall of Jerusalem. They still had a 
 national life and a national hope which became 
 more exalted and more vivid the less it seemed 
 capable of realization. They not only hoped for 
 Israel, but repented and prayed and planned 
 and fought for their nation. So the later proph- 
 ets and the postexilic writings of the Hebrews 
 reflect their national thought and aspirations. 
 Even the Book of Psalms, dedicated by centuries 
 of Christian use as the prayer-book of personal 
 piety, was, without doubt, the liturgy of the 
 national sanctuary of Jerusalem, and some of its 
 most individual expressions are to be understood, 
 by a common Semitic idiom, as the personifica- 
 tion of collective prayer or thanksgiving. 
 
 Little less real, though less obvious than in 
 the Old Testament, is the national standpoint in 
 the New. Its basis is the fulfilment of the Jew- 
 ish national hope for the Messiah, and the writers 
 of the new Israel not only inherit, but consciously 
 adopt, much of the national terminology of Juda- 
 ism. The relation of the individual to the state 
 emerges more clearly in the New Testament as a 
 problem of conscience. The persecutions of Je- 
 sus and of early Christian martyrs present the 
 tragic conflict between loyalty to Caesar and to 
 
4 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 God. In the life and letters of Paul are revealed 
 some of the difficult problems of internationaliza- 
 tion, while the canon closes with a vigorous broad- 
 side against the world empire of Rome. 
 
 The political elements contained in the Bible 
 are not only extensive, they are varied. Cover- 
 ing over one thousand years of history, the vicis- 
 situdes of this small though long-lived people 
 provide a great variety of situations. During all 
 this period the political ideals of the Hebrews are 
 slowly and unevenly evolving from the simple 
 Semitic nomadism of the desert to the cultured 
 cosmopolitanism of Luke. In many cases certain 
 ideas can be traced as they gradually develop 
 from one age to the next; in other cases we see 
 rival standards existing side by side or in open 
 conflict the new versus the old, the material 
 versus the spiritual, the nationalistic versus the 
 universal. We can trace the influence of reli- 
 gious, social, and economic factors upon political 
 life and tendency. We can inquire into the indi- 
 vidual qualities of the outstanding leaders in po- 
 litical theory and practice. We can test their 
 loyalty to the past, and their adaptability to the 
 present, and their insight as makers of their na- 
 tion's future. But, above all, we can learn from 
 the wide scope of time represented how con- 
 stantly "new occasions teach new duties," and 
 how true patriotism expresses itself in strange 
 and often unrecognized ways. 
 
INTRODUCTORY 5 
 
 For the Bible has this further advantage as 
 the teacher of civic duties and the touchstone of 
 national ideals, that its principal characters, in 
 spite of diversity of aim and method, were 
 throughout men of unquestioned patriotism. 
 The long roll-call of heroes in Ecclesiasticus 
 or in the Epistle to the Hebrews is a hall of 
 fame that would make any nation proud. They 
 were men of initiative, resource, patience, and 
 courage. From Moses to Paul they were willing 
 to be "anathema" for the sake of their country- 
 men, and they labored through suffering and 
 often through misunderstanding for the better 
 country that they saw with the eye of faith. 
 Thus the prophets, though notoriously without 
 honor in their own country and generation, were 
 recognized by later generations and in many 
 lands as the supreme type of patriot. The high- 
 est loyalties can always find both example and 
 expression in the pages of Scripture. 
 
 But the greatest quality of the political idealism 
 of the Bible is its high spiritual and moral tone. 
 Religion penetrates even the most secular phases 
 of Hebrew life and gives a spiritual outlook to 
 every important utterance of the Hebrew nation. 
 With this people the combination of church and 
 state, as we call them, was ever peculiarly close. 
 The two were co-extensive in scope and coinci- 
 dent in power. Even in its most primitive stages 
 Hebrew political life was religious. The founding 
 
6 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 both of the state and of its worship is to be 
 traced to the same event the Exodus from 
 Egypt; and to the same human leader Moses. 
 Thereafter warriors and kings share their honors 
 with priests and prophets. In the Bible, there- 
 fore, as nowhere else, statecraft is free from 
 purely material and expediential bias. National 
 ambitions are formed and tested by current 
 standards of religion. National welfare is always 
 the welfare of the nation's God. History is in- 
 terpreted spiritually, and the development of 
 the state is the medium for divine revelation. 
 
 Finally, by studying the Bible's lessons for mod- 
 ern national life, we are copying closely the exam- 
 ple and purpose of its writers. Few of its records 
 are contemporary with the events they describe, 
 and few are written just for their own story. 
 The narratives of the Bible are intended to teach 
 lessons from the past for the present. This prag- 
 matic element is characteristic of both the Old 
 Testament and the New, and explains both the 
 selection and the presentation of the narrative 
 material. If one writer describes the life of 
 Israel under Moses as a theocracy it is because 
 he considers that kind of commonwealth the ideal 
 for his own later days. If the sermons of Isaiah 
 were recorded long after his death it was because 
 they were felt to contain sound advice for the 
 tangled but similar political conditions of the 
 century that followed him. So the stories of 
 
INTRODUCTORY 7 
 
 Elijah, of Jonah, and of Daniel are obvious efforts 
 to train the national conscience of later genera- 
 tions. Surely such precedents justify us in ap- 
 plying to our own times the Bible's national 
 ideals in so far as the historical situations are 
 comparable and the moral principles involved 
 are eternally righteous and universal. 
 
II 
 
 THE POLITICAL INHERITANCE OF THE HEBREWS 
 
 THE founding of the Hebrew nation may be 
 dated from the Exodus from Egypt, but the roots 
 of the nation, of its physical and social history, 
 of its economic and political institutions and 
 ideals, lie far back of Moses and his generation 
 in the desert life of Arabia. For the Hebrew 
 stock was Semitic, and at some time it had been 
 in the most primitive stage of culture the cul- 
 ture of the nomad. Indeed, the Hebrews were 
 but little removed from that stage when first 
 they emerged from Egyptian slavery and pushed 
 their way into Canaan, as some of their ancestors 
 had pushed into the fertile lands of Egypt. Such 
 migrations from the desert of Arabia into the 
 richer lands about it have characterized the 
 whole history of the barren peninsula, with its 
 limited resources for the support of human life. 
 Palestine itself seemed to the desert folk a land 
 flowing with milk and honey, and was the lure of 
 successive waves of nomad immigration long be- 
 fore and long after the famous venture of the 
 Hebrew spies. 
 
 To these nomad ancestors, therefore, must we 
 look to gain some idea of the Hebrew heritage 
 
 8 
 
POLITICAL INHERITANCE 9 
 
 of political thought and customs. No records of 
 these men have come down to us on paper or 
 stone. They lived and died, as transient as the 
 life of all their kind, 
 
 "Like snow upon the desert's dusty face." 
 
 Nor did their descendants soon enough commit 
 to writing their memories of the past to preserve 
 an accurate picture of the desert life. The He- 
 brew records, even in Genesis, all presuppose some 
 stage of agricultural development. The first 
 man, both in Eden and without it, was a tiller of 
 the soil. It is true that many of the nomad 
 habits and customs still survived in the age of 
 Hebrew history that is known to us from con- 
 temporary records, and confirm our assump- 
 tion of a nomadic origin and of powerful no- 
 madic heredity. These clues, together with the 
 similar survivals found in other developed peoples 
 of^Semitic origin, form one source of knowledge 
 about the Hebrew ancestors. But a far more com- 
 plete and no less reliable picture is to be found in 
 the modern life of the Arab bedouin. Scarcely 
 scratched with the civilizations that have risen 
 and fallen about them for thousands of years, 
 these children of the desert have kept unchanged 
 most of the characteristics of the remotest past. 
 By studying these sources a clear impression 
 can be formed of the life of the primitive Semites 
 that was bequeathed to those hardy sons of the 
 
10 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 desert who were welded into a Hebrew nation. 
 Their life was simple and natural. It had no 
 artificial boundaries; but religion, social custom, 
 and government were all bound into one, and 
 these were largely determined by the economic 
 conditions under which they lived. If, however, 
 adopting the modern method of classification, we 
 select those elements in nomad life that can be 
 called political, we shall find the following out- 
 standing factors: 
 
 The unit of nomad life is neither the individual 
 nor the nation but the tribe or clan. 1 The family, 
 of course, exists, but the ties of kinship extend to 
 more than the immediate family circle and include 
 the larger circle of kindred by blood and marriage. 
 The tribe is economically and religiously the unit, 
 owning property in common such property in 
 cattle as the nomads possess and worshipping 
 the same totem or god. The tribe lives together 
 at an oasis and travels together from place to 
 place in the desert. But its unity is fortified not 
 so much by the common ties of blood which are 
 often remote and even imaginary nor by the 
 bonds of mutual service, nor by the fellowship of 
 common worship, but primarily by the need* of 
 mutual defense. Each tribe is hostile to its 
 
 1 Clan and tribe are often used interchangeably by writers 
 on this subject, nor is any effort made here to describe the 
 more elaborate organization which is possibly quite primi- 
 tive by which a group of clans are loosely federated to 
 form a tribe. 
 
POLITICAL INHERITANCE 11 
 
 neighbor, and it is this fear that creates the tribal 
 loyalty and finds its most characteristic expres- 
 sion in the law of blood-revenge. 
 
 The vendetta, or law of blood-revenge, belongs 
 to many primitive cultures and survives even to 
 the present day, not only in backward regions but 
 (in modified form) even in the penal and military 
 institutions of the "civilized" world. As ex- 
 pressed in Genesis 9:5, 6, it is an ordinance of 
 God that "whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man 
 shall his blood be shed." In the life of the bed- 
 ouin this means that the tribe is bound to avenge 
 the death of one of its members, by the death not 
 necessarily of the murderer nor of merely one 
 member of his tribe, but by manifold vengeance 
 on himself and his kin. And this duty is estab- 
 lished by all the sanctions of religion. In strik- 
 ing contrast to the Ishmaelite hostility between 
 clans is the well-known bedouin law of hospital- 
 ity. Parallel with the anarchy of the desert, 
 where all tribes are rivals and each must fight 
 for its existence, is the unalterable and sacred 
 custom which welcomes the stranger without 
 question and without selfish restraint. 
 
 Within the political unit a simple patriarchal 
 form of government prevails in all matters directly 
 affecting the interests of the whole. The sheik is 
 leader in peace and war, in religion, and in quest 
 for food for his clan. But the sheik is raised but 
 slightly in dignity and power over the other free 
 
12 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 members of the clan, who stand to each other in 
 the relation of brothers. The members accept his 
 rule, and little individual initiative can arise 
 where mutual dependence is the unconscious 
 background, where custom is unquestioned law, 
 and where personal ambition cannot disturb the 
 simple equality within the tribe. 
 
 To any one familiar with the Old Testament 
 the influence of these nomad standards and prac- 
 tices upon the Hebrew people is apparent. There 
 is much of the nomadic not merely in the stories 
 of Genesis, as we should expect, but also in the 
 later narratives of the Judges and the Kings. As 
 has been said: "In spite of the tradition of the 
 national unity under Moses before Palestine was 
 reached the children of Israel are represented 
 during the process of that invasion and after its 
 achievement as still a number of loosely connected 
 tribes. One of the strongest of these, Judah, was 
 reinforced by, if indeed, it did not entirely con- 
 sist of, clans which for centuries resided on the 
 desert border. Another tribe, Simeon, never left 
 the desert. The whole nation was reminded that 
 it inherited a civilization which it did not cre- 
 ate (Deut. 6:10, 11). Customs and institutions, 
 tempers and attitudes toward civilization, reli- 
 gious conceptions and religious rites, long per- 
 sisted in Israel, some of which were identical with 
 those of the desert nomads and some were strongly 
 reminiscent of them. 'To your tents, O Israel/ 
 
POLITICAL INHERITANCE 13 
 
 was still the national cry in the days of the king- 
 dom. Long after the monarchy had created a 
 central executive government among the people, 
 with guards or police and prisons, the private 
 vendetta, mitigated by a modified form of the 
 right of asylum, was retained in the national 
 law." 1 
 
 And so the influence of the political heritage of 
 the desert long continued with the settlers and 
 residents of Canaan. There was much of the 
 restless independence, the practical democracy, 
 the love of generous liberty, which the desert 
 had bred. There was still the divisive tendency 
 which made the achievement of a larger national- 
 ism so difficult. As in the larger units of the 
 modern time, making society safe required not 
 so much the increase of democracy within the 
 units as a more extensive integration and organ- 
 ization between the units. Nowhere has this 
 been more evident than in Arabia, the cradle of 
 all Semitic races. As Professor Smith says : " The 
 population is broken up into tribes, that are de- 
 fined not by the more or less vague areas over 
 which they roam in search of pasture, but by 
 ties of blood and kinship, supplemented by fic- 
 tions of a common descent or other artificial expe- 
 dients. Famine and war are the annual curses 
 of their life. The insufficiency of water and pas- 
 ture; the strain of hunger and the jealousy of 
 
 1 George Adam Smith, The Early Poetry of Israel, p. 41. 
 
14 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 blood, all the heat and recklessness which are 
 bred of poverty and pride; the constant tempta- 
 tions to raid the camels and cattle of other tribes, 
 with the sacred obligation which binds the whole 
 tribe to avenge the slaughter of one of its mem- 
 bers all these create a climate of feud, while the 
 necessity of living in shifting camps, and the 
 absence (except for rare moments in the history) 
 of economic or military interests common to the 
 whole peninsula and of an authority effective 
 over so vast and wild a surface, render impossible 
 any policy save of the most loose and friable 
 kind. Such incoherence, derived from resi- 
 dence in these deserts perhaps for millennia be- 
 fore the race broke into history, has cursed to 
 the end even the most settled and progressive of 
 Semitic peoples. Israel itself is an illustration." 1 
 
 Perhaps to the same nomadic origin may be 
 traced the deep-seated and spontaneous hos- 
 tility to foreigners that has long been supposed 
 to be instinctive to all humankind. The law and 
 ethics of the desert, which differ little from the 
 law of the jungle, were not completely discarded 
 with the crossing of the Jordan. Perhaps not in 
 excess of many other peoples in the same stage 
 of culture, yet to a marked degree, the Hebrews 
 who settled Canaan dealt ruthlessly with their 
 neighbors and enemies, while in the later genera- 
 tions they developed a racial exclusiveness that 
 
 1 George Adam Smith, The Early Poetry of Israel, pp. 27 /. 
 
POLITICAL INHERITANCE 15 
 
 was only equalled by the hostile reaction of anti- 
 Semitism which it met among all other peoples. 
 
 Yet in the historical period of Hebrew history, 
 as in the life of the desert before it, there remained 
 in striking contrast to the belligerent attitude to 
 alien peoples the cordial hospitality to individual 
 aliens. The Hebrew legislation throughout is tol- 
 erant and merciful toward the "stranger within 
 the gates," and many narratives attest the strong 
 public sentiment by which such laws were created 
 and maintained. For inhospitality Sodom met a 
 fate that made it a watchword, while Lot provi- 
 dentially escaped because he "entertained angels 
 
 unawares." 
 
 Another noble heritage from desert life was 
 the strong cohesive bond of loyalty that bound 
 together the members of the tribe. To be sure, 
 at first the motives for loyalty were merely self- 
 defense, the objects of loyalty were small and 
 conflicting, and the expression of loyalty was in 
 the form of fanatical revenge and destructive 
 violence; nevertheless, in course of time, all these 
 limitations could be transcended. Mutual service 
 could replace mutual defense; loyalty to the tribe 
 could become loyalty to a nation, and still retain 
 the feeling of solidarity, the sense of social obliga- 
 tion, and the practice of self-forgetting sacrifice. 
 Hebrew history illustrates all these forms of de- 
 velopment. The absence of individual ambition 
 in many chapters of Hebrew history is only the 
 
16 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 political counterpart of that sinking of the indi- 
 vidual which is so marked a feature in Hebrew 
 religion. Both are equally strange to more mod- 
 ern eyes, and both are doubtless due to the desert 
 inheritance. The notable indifference to the 
 physical life of the individual is like the notable 
 indifference to the spiritual life of the individual. 
 "The reason/' says Professor Smith, "is in part 
 the fact that the tribal interests, the security, 
 and the survival of the tribe in this life, over- 
 whelm the individual's interests, and the impor- 
 tance of what may happen to him hereafter." 1 
 It is no accident of history that the world owes 
 to the Jewish race so many expressions of the 
 highest vicarious sacrifice from the prophetic 
 picture of Moses praying to be blotted from the 
 book of life for his people's sins 2 to the patriot 
 martyr of Calvary. 
 
 Thus for good or for ill the ideals of a nation 
 were founded on the habits of long-forgotten 
 ancestors. So the nomad blood with all its con- 
 tradictory passions and instincts flowed in the 
 veins of the children of Israel to more than a 
 third or fourth generation, and unconsciously 
 affected the evolution of their political life and 
 thought. New environment, a new civilization, 
 new ideals modified the old heritage but never 
 completely obliterated it. 
 
 i Op. tit., p. 38. 2 Ex. 32:32. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE BIRTH OF THE NATION 
 
 To few nations has Providence given so dra- 
 matic a beginning as the Exodus of Israel from 
 Egypt. In most cases the origins of national life 
 either are lost in obscurity or appear as the 
 natural evolution of slow and insignificant factors. 
 This is, no doubt, partly true of Israel as well. 
 There is much in its early history that is now lost 
 to view, and much of what we know indicates 
 that the Hebrew nation only gradually developed 
 from the nomads of the desert to the chosen peo- 
 ple of God. Nevertheless, the Hebrew nation 
 clearly dates its birth back to a distinct era, to a 
 definite event. Whatever doubts may attach to 
 other events in their early history, the story of 
 their bondage and liberation can scarcely be an 
 invention. This is the landmark that fixes their 
 birth, and to this their historians forever turn 
 back in grateful memory. Here was the found- 
 ing of the Hebrew nation and the beginning of 
 their distinctive national life. 
 
 The story of the Exodus is familiar to us from 
 childhood. Historical study has only served to 
 make its details more realistic and vivid. A com- 
 
 17 
 
18 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 pany of nomad clans, children of the Arabian des- 
 ert, find their way into Egypt in search of more 
 abundant food. In course of time the ambitious 
 rulers of the land impress them into the unwonted 
 and restrictive labor of public works, and reduce 
 them to the condition of virtual serfs. At length, 
 galled by this yoke, guided by the inspired enthu- 
 siasm of Moses, and aided by a series of local 
 calamities, they strike for freedom and make good 
 their escape to the free, wild life of the desert. 
 Such, in simplest terms, was the birth of the 
 Hebrew nation. 
 
 The religious significance of this event has long 
 been the subject of earnest discussion, but its 
 political significance is clear beyond all argument. 
 It was a great act of self-emancipation and the 
 expression of the inherent love of human liberty. 
 Just how long these revolutionists had eaten " the 
 bread of affliction in the house of bondage" our 
 records do not tell, nor can we be sure that the 
 earlier freedom of the desert was a living memory 
 or a conscious lure to them. But they were not 
 of the servile stock of Egypt, and when their 
 lives were made bitter they felt that holy dis- 
 content which brooks no opposition. 
 
 That the Hebrews in Egypt had exercised no 
 political control goes without saying. Local au- 
 tonomy they doubtless did enjoy, but in the 
 greater affairs of the empire of the Nile they 
 shared with countless other fellahin complete sub- 
 
BIRTH OF THE NATION 19 
 
 jection to the will of the king or the ruling priestly 
 or princely caste. Probably they expected no 
 voice in affairs of state: such a conception of citi- 
 zenship was alien to all antiquity or at least could 
 only be suggested when lack of representation 
 was made acute by its non-political results. In- 
 deed, the Scripture records declare that the op- 
 pression which inspired their unrest was not 
 political but industrial. Their lives were made 
 bitter, not by want of franchise, but "with hard 
 service in mortar and in brick," by the exploita- 
 tion of their labor. The primary political mean- 
 ing of the Exodus was the liberation from indus- 
 trial slavery, though with this liberation came 
 political enfranchisement as well. 
 
 A second factor in the Exodus of Israel was the 
 impulse for co-operation an impulse which in 
 this case, as in so many others, was born only 
 out of the dire necessity of a common need. 
 The lesson that in union is strength was learned 
 once if not once for all in the first national 
 emergency that made the beginnings of the real 
 nation. The oppression of Ramses could con- 
 tinue as long as resistance was sporadic and un- 
 organized. In a telling incident the biographer 
 of Moses reveals the futility of individual effort 
 (Ex. 2:11-15). Moses' first reaction to oppres- 
 sion was the angry killing of an Egyptian task- 
 master. This deed of violence produced no real 
 relief, but, rather, impaired and delayed the pos- 
 
20 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 sible usefulness of the slayer for furthering his 
 patriotic ideals. In the end the relief came 
 through the more gradual method of patient in- 
 sistence on rights and the education of the op- 
 pressed to work together for their common good. 
 And, as repeatedly since throughout history, na- 
 tional liberty was found possible only through 
 national unity. The two are forged together. 
 
 But the third factor of the Exodus was indi- 
 vidual the leadership of Moses. Through the 
 accretions of legend that have gathered about his 
 name can still be discerned the political signifi- 
 cance of the great Hebrew leader. In him all the 
 meaning and glory of the Exodus are summed up, 
 and he is a convincing example of the power of 
 personal initiative in the history of nations. 
 Futile though individual effort often proves when 
 isolated, it is most effective when associated with 
 others in leadership. Without such leadership 
 national progress seems well-nigh impossible. 
 "Israel," it has been said, "perhaps more than 
 any other nation owes its distinction to a few 
 individuals. Poorly endowed as a people with 
 the qualities which lead to national success, being 
 gifted with tenacity and retentiveness rather than 
 power of initiation, it has been indebted for its 
 position amongst mankind to a few commanding 
 personalities. Among these Moses occupies a 
 foremost place." 1 
 
 1 G. W. Wade, Old Testament History, p. 132. 
 
BIRTH OF THE NATION 21 
 
 It is needless to say that these political factors 
 of the Exodus were indelibly stamped on the later 
 life of the nation. The event itself was never 
 forgotten. It was celebrated annually in a feast 
 of rejoicing, in which the love of liberty was for- 
 ever renewed under the sanctions of religion. 
 The passover was more than an act of worship. 
 It was the holiday of national independence. 
 The love of liberty which had called the nation 
 into being was repeatedly roused in memory 
 amid its later vicissitudes. The very existence of 
 the Hebrew people served not merely as a monu- 
 ment of protest against industrial slavery like 
 that in Egypt; it was a charter of independence 
 for political and for religious liberty as well. 
 There is something intensely modern in this 
 national aspiration for freedom, that anticipates 
 by three thousand years the "spirit of 76" and 
 the French tricolor cockade. Throughout his 
 history for all these years the enslaved Jew has 
 been able to trace back his rebel spirit to the 
 shepherd by the burning bush, to the great co- 
 operative venture of faith of his fellow rebels, 
 and to the triumphant vindication of freedom 
 and of faith that cried over the fallen oppressor: 
 
 "Sing ye to Jehovah, for he hath triumphed gloriously; 
 The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea." 
 
 For the cause of freedom cannot and could not 
 be regarded as merely a political issue. It was a 
 
22 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 religious and moral issue as well. It was Jeho- 
 vah, as well as Moses, who had heard the cry of 
 bondage, and it was by his guidance and power 
 that liberation was achieved. By manifest signs 
 God identified himself with the interests of the 
 refugees not merely because they were his peo- 
 ple, but because their cause was just. No matter 
 how partisan and unethical the ideas of God may 
 have been in those or even later days, the Exodus 
 proved that God was on the side of right and not 
 of might. And no matter how blind to the 
 claims of equality and fraternity were the wor- 
 shippers of Jehovah, there was always at least a 
 cogent humanitarian reminder in the lawgiver's 
 refrain: "Remember that thou wast a bondman 
 in the land of Egypt, and Jehovah thy God re- 
 deemed thee." Though the religious view-point 
 of the historians of the Exodus doubtless obscures 
 many political details, it has nevertheless sur- 
 rounded this great struggle for freedom with an 
 atmosphere of moral earnestness that is both 
 appropriate and significant, purifying patriotic 
 enthusiasm with the transcendent sacredness of a 
 universal ideal. Into one event were crowded 
 the motives of religious liberty, political indepen- 
 dence, and industrial emancipation motives that 
 in other nations, like the American, have been 
 successive legacies of different generations. And 
 this event became, therefore, the corner-stone of 
 
BIRTH OF THE NATION 23 
 
 that Hebrew love of liberty which, in its nobler 
 moments, shared the altruism of the poet Lowell: 
 
 "Is true freedom but to break 
 Fetters for our own dear sake, 
 And, with leathern hearts, forget 
 That we owe mankind a debt? 
 No ! true freedom is to share 
 All the chains our brothers wear, 
 And, with heart and hand, to be 
 Earnest to make others free I" 
 
IV 
 
 CONTACT WITH CULTURE 
 
 IN their sojourn in Egypt the Israelites appear 
 to have been little affected by the superior cultu're 
 of the land of the Nile. Though we are assured 
 by a Christian writer that "Moses was instructed 
 In all the wisdom of the Egyptians/' there is 
 much more evidence that his religious and legal 
 .ideals were influenced by an obscure bedouin 
 tribe near Sinai, with which he associated during 
 his exile, than that they were affected by the 
 court of Pharaoh. "He refused to be called the 
 son of Pharaoh's daughter," though he accepted 
 apparently both the kinship and the religion of 
 his Kenite father-in-law, and so remained essen- 
 tially a child of the desert. So, also, his fellow 
 refugees show no trace of the civilization of 
 Egypt, except a passing memory of its flesh- 
 pots and succulent vegetables (Ex. 16:3; Num. 
 11:5). When they enter the land of promise 
 they are typical nomads. Several reasons com- 
 bine to explain this fact. Their contact with 
 Egypt was, after all, superficial. They are rep- 
 resented as living apart in the land of Goshen 
 and as still employed in tending their flocks. 
 Even when they were made "to serve with rigor" 
 
 24 
 
CONTACT WITH CULTURE 25 
 
 on public works they were not thereby exposed to 
 the ancient culture of the land, for, as has been 
 found by more modern nations, the industrial 
 exploitation of backward peoples does not tend 
 to civilize them. The duration of their sojourn 
 in Egypt is a matter of doubt. Archaeological 
 evidence suggests that only some of the tribes 
 later affiliated were ever in Egypt at all, while 
 the Bible insists that the whole generation of 
 Moses died before the crossing of the Jordan. 
 
 The first real contact with civilization in He- 
 brew history must be dated, therefore, with the 
 settlement of Canaan. Here was an experience 
 that influenced deeply and permanently the whole 
 nature of Hebrew national life. Between the 
 nomads of the desert and the Canaanites, or 
 Amorites, as the natives appear to be called indif- 
 ferently, there existed a series of distinctions that 
 affected their political, social, industrial, moral, 
 and religious life. Probably both the immigrants 
 and the natives of Canaan at this period belonged 
 to the same (Semitic) race, and possibly they 
 spoke the same language. But the standards of 
 the settled Amorites differed in many points from 
 the standards of the desert. 1 In part this differ- 
 ence of the Canaanites was due to their contact 
 with the older cultures of the Euphrates and the 
 Nile. The Tel-el-Amarna tablets, written in 
 cuneiform characters by the Egyptian governors 
 1 See Chapter II. 
 
26 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 in Palestine not long before the advent of the 
 Hebrews, are a striking testimony to the joint 
 influence of these two ancient centres of civiliza- 
 tion upon the land that lay like a bone of conten- 
 tion between them. The main cause of the Ca- 
 naanites' culture was, however, the physical cir- 
 cumstances of their life. And for this reason it 
 was more certain to affect the nomads of the 
 desert as they came into the same environment. 
 
 The most obvious difference was in occupation. 
 The nomad herded flocks, the Canaanite engaged, 
 besides, in agriculture. The latter had, there- 
 fore, abandoned the wandering life in tents and 
 had built houses, villages, and even walled towns. 
 Their diet included now not only annual crops, 
 like grain, but even the fruits, the grapes, and 
 the wine that implied the prolonged residence in 
 one place and the perennial culture of the olive 
 and the vine. For agriculture new implements 
 were needed, and with settled life household fur- 
 niture could be expanded beyond what was easily 
 portable. In addition to the city walls with 
 which the Canaanites defended themselves, the 
 Hebrew historian mentions among their achieve- 
 ments in military science their " chariots of iron." 
 
 These material elements of civilization pro- 
 duced, of course, their own characteristic ideals 
 and institutions. Private ownership of land and 
 chattel slavery are two far-reaching economic re- 
 sults of the transition from a nomad to an agri- 
 
CONTACT WITH CULTURE 27 
 
 t 
 
 cultural society. And these economic changes 
 produced new social standards of rich and poor, 
 of urban and rural, of inferior and superior. Even 
 new standards of morality are evolved, since new 
 problems in justice arise, and new opportunities 
 occur for antisocial conduct. 
 
 Political ideals are also different in a settled 
 population like that of Canaan. In the new 
 classifications of society with its contrasts, some 
 of the simpler democracy disappears. Monarch- 
 ical government becomes more pronounced, or, 
 at least, the prestige of the prosperous land- 
 owners. The worth of the individual is mini- 
 mized. The political integration also changes its 
 basis, and the unit is formed by geographical 
 unity rather than by kinship. The fiction of 
 relationship is often long maintained, but in 
 Canaan, as elsewhere, tribal names become place 
 names. Nationality becomes local, not racial, 
 and national ambitions become closely associated 
 with the material interests of a community. 
 
 Religion in Canaan was somewhat different 
 from that of the desert. As the most conserva- 
 tive of human institutions it perhaps differed less 
 than other elements of life, but still the difference 
 was well recognized. Over against the Jehovah 
 of the nomads stand the baals of the Amorites. 
 For in settled life religion, too, can be localized 
 and the place of a man's residence determines his 
 religion quite as much as it determines his politi- 
 
28 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 cal adherence. Every nation had its own god, 
 and in the subdivided political life of the Canaan- 
 ites every village or town had its baal. These 
 baals were looked upon as interested in the affairs 
 of their worshippers, including not only cattle- 
 raising and warfare, as in the desert, but the agri- 
 cultural pursuits as well. They were worshipped 
 with vegetable sacrifices as well as animal. Their 
 festivals, like the annual feast at Shiloh (Judges 
 21:19) and the harvest festival at Shechem 
 (Judges 9:27) were regulated by the farmer's 
 seasons. "New wine, which cheereth God and 
 man/' flowed freely. That drunkenness and 
 other license characterized these occasions was a 
 difference noticeable to the more ascetic visitors 
 from the desert. 
 
 The general sketch of the characteristics of 
 Amorite life as thus presented, even without fur- 
 ther elaboration and historical proof of the differ- 
 entiating details, will probably be sufficient to 
 establish the influence of the settlement of Canaan 
 on the final standards of the Hebrew nation, in- 
 cluding their political ideas. Here is a conflict 
 of civilizations or, rather, a conflict between civ- 
 ilization and nomadism. This is the thesis that 
 is clearly and emphatically driven home by Pro- 
 fessor Wallis throughout his book, The Sociological 
 Study of the Bible : " The social group known as 
 f the Hebrew nation' came slowly into existence, in 
 the land of Canaan , at the point of junction between 
 
CONTACT WITH CULTURE 29 
 
 two previously hostile races, the Israelites and the 
 Amorites." 
 
 The story of this coalescence is one of extreme 
 interest. To understand it one must first exam- 
 ine the historical facts about the settlement of 
 Canaan. In spite of the statements of later 
 historians it now appears evident that the He- 
 brews did not suddenly and completely destroy 
 the Canaanites before them. Early statements 
 in the first chapters of Judges and scattered else- 
 where in our records indicate that from large sec- 
 tions of the country, especially from the fertile 
 lowlands with their walled towns, the invaders 
 "did not utterly drive out" the inhabitants. To 
 the later historian, who thought that everything 
 undesirable was characteristic of "the iniquity of 
 the Amorite," it seemed natural that God should 
 command and that Joshua should execute their 
 annihilation. But annihilation is almost always 
 impossible, and is rarely the actual method of 
 invaders, especially such feeble, disorganized, and 
 sporadic invaders as throughout the centuries 
 overflow Palestine from the desert. 
 
 That the first relations between Hebrew and 
 Canaanite were hostile must be granted, and for 
 many years conflicts occurred between them. 
 By such events were inspired the ancient Song 
 of Deborah and many of the early epics of the 
 Book of the Wars of Jehovah. But the impression 
 one gets from the prose narratives of Judges is 
 
30 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 that these conflicts were local and temporary, 
 and that none, not even the famous battle of 
 Megiddo, belongs to the list of decisive battles. 
 And it is worth while to consider the other rela- 
 tions that existed between these two peoples, 
 apart from the incidents of guerilla warfare. 
 
 There was much which may be called "peace- 
 ful penetration. " In many districts the nomads 
 from the desert simply pastured their cattle in 
 the unoccupied uplands without disturbing their 
 neighbors in the valleys. Sometimes property 
 was acquired by purchase, as David bought a 
 threshing-floor from the Jebusite Araunah (II 
 Sam. 24:24; c/. Abraham's purchase of the field of 
 Machpelah, Gen. 23), or by marriage. For many 
 years cities like Jebus (Jerusalem) and Gezer re- 
 mained in the hands of the Canaanites. But 
 generally, as the Book of Judges describes the 
 situation, "the children of Israel dwelt among 
 the Canaanites, the Hittites, and the Amorites, 
 and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebu- 
 sites; and they took their daughters to be their 
 wives, and gave their own daughters to their sons 
 and served their gods" (Judges 3:5, 6). 
 
 The story of Abimelech (Judges 9), though his 
 joint rule over Canaanites and Israelites was only 
 local and short-lived, illustrates the possibilities 
 of political rapprochement in the period of fusion, 
 and, like the other stories in the Book of Judges, 
 "gives us," as Professor Moore has said, "a 
 
CONTACT WITH CULTURE 31 
 
 glimpse of the relations between the two peoples 
 thus brought side by side. The Canaanite town, 
 Shechem, subject to Jerubbaal of Ophrah; his 
 half -Canaanite son, Abimelech, who naturally 
 belongs to his mother's people; the successful 
 appeal to blood, 'which is thicker than water,' 
 by which he becomes king of Shechem, ruling as 
 well over the neighboring Israelites; the inter- 
 loper Gaal and his kinsmen, who settle in Shechem 
 and instigate insurrection against Abimelech by 
 skilfully appealing to the pride of the Shechemite 
 aristocracy all help us better than anything 
 else in the book to realize the situation in this 
 period." 1 
 
 The results of the coalescence between Israelites 
 and Canaanites were not simple or one-sided. As 
 a name the Canaanites disappear, lingering long- 
 est in a separate capacity in the more advanced 
 arts of civilization, as smiths, merchants, and 
 warriors. The resultant population were called 
 Hebrews and the land became the land of Israel, 
 except Judah, though this and some of the other 
 tribal names were probably of Israelite origin as 
 well. 2 Similarly in religion the name of Jehovah 
 prevailed over the baals, and he is identified with 
 the interests of the whole land and people. But 
 
 1 G. F. Moore, "Judges," International Critical Commentary, 
 pp.238/. 
 
 2 It should, however, not be forgotten that Egyptian rec- 
 ords speak of Asher and even of Israel in Canaan long before 
 the Exodus. 
 
32 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 the influence of Canaanites on Hebrews was no 
 smaller than the reverse. Even where the He- 
 brews were finally victorious in war, the customs 
 and ways of their subjects affected their own. 
 As so often has been proved in history, military 
 success determines neither cultural nor political 
 ideals. As vanquished Greece gave her arts to 
 Rome, and as the fall of Rome only civilized the 
 barbarian victors, so the nomad invaders of 
 Canaan soon succumbed to the ideals and insti- 
 tutions of the more civilized Canaanites. And 
 thereby the nomadic heritage of the Hebrew peo- 
 ple became completely transformed. 
 
 It is possible to mention by way of illustration 
 two ways in which the settlement of Canaan 
 affected the national ideals of the Hebrews. Pos- 
 sibly in each case the new conception was empha- 
 sized by the contrast with the earlier life of the 
 desert. In the first place, it is evident that even 
 prior to the settlement the land appeared to the 
 eyes of the nomads, though it would not so now 
 appear to most residents of Europe and America, 
 a land of plenty. Its first appeal to the tentative 
 invader would not be the corn, the wine, and the 
 oil products of agriculture but its superior 
 supply of nomad foods, a land flowing with milk 
 and honey. But as the Hebrews settled in the 
 land and tasted the blessings of civilization, all 
 the more advanced forms of material prosperity 
 Appealed to them. If the ideals of the desert 
 
CONTACT WITH CULTURE 33 
 
 expressed themselves in the blessings of war, the 
 ideals of Canaan added the blessings of peace. 
 Certainly those early poems which, in the form 
 of benedictions pronounced by the dying patri- 
 archs and Moses, portray the Hebrew standards 
 of national desire, emphasize the increase of the 
 field no less than the increase of the flock and 
 the victory of battle. 
 
 " See, the smell of my son [Israel] 
 Is as the smell of a field which Jehovah hath blessed. 
 And God give thee of the dew of heaven, 
 And of the fatness of the earth, 
 And plenty of grain and new wine: 
 Let peoples serve thee, 
 And nations bow down to thee." l 
 
 Throughout much of later literature the language 
 of agricultural prosperity was used to symbolize, 
 if not literally to describe, the fulfilment of 
 national hopes. 
 
 In the second place the transition from no- 
 madic to settled life at once made possible the 
 intimate identification of the people with a defi- 
 nite piece of land. In the desert there are neither 
 individual nor collective rights in property as 
 real estate; at most may be found collective 
 property rights in water. But in settled life we 
 get both private ownership of land and public 
 sovereignty. Now in Canaan Israel developed a 
 sense of local sovereignty rarely surpassed by 
 1 Gen. 27:27 ff.; cf. Gen. 49; Deut. 33. 
 
34 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 any people. As we have said, Canaan became 
 their land, and the title was secured both by 
 promise and by conquest. In both respects this 
 made ownership a divine right. The conquest 
 was God's gift, carried on by his direction. This 
 was no uncommon idea in antiquity and Israel 
 was as willing to grant the same sanction to other 
 nations. As Jephthah says to the King of 
 Ammon: 
 
 Wilt thou not possess that which Chemosh thy God 
 giveth thee to possess? So whomsoever Jehovah our 
 God hath dispossessed from before us, them will we 
 possess. 1 
 
 But in Israel's case the title was conceived of as 
 granted in perpetuum. The repeated promises of 
 God made to the patriarchs and Moses in the pages 
 of the Pentateuch are a reflection of the strong 
 sense of special sanction which existed through- 
 out later history. The actual loss of the land by 
 conquest in no way annulled the deed. Rather 
 in exile the sense of ownership grew with the 
 longings of memory. It was still the promised 
 land. And even to-day, after centuries of dis- 
 possession, the geographical element in national- 
 ism is perhaps best exemplified by the ambitions 
 of the Zionist Jew. 
 
 1 Judges 11:24. The whole passage, though perhaps of 
 Deuteronomic origin, is an interesting discussion of the law 
 of sovereignty. 
 
THE PERSISTENCE OF NATIONAL CONTRASTS 
 
 IT is convenient to describe historical processes 
 in simple terms, but the historical facts are not 
 usually so simple. Thus we must guard against 
 supposing that the fusion of races and cultures 
 described in the preceding chapter resulted really 
 in a perfectly homogeneous civilization. The 
 process did not advance with equal pace in all 
 elements of life or in all places or persons. The 
 transition from nomads to farmers was not made 
 at a stroke, and one can recognize to-day on the 
 borders of the desert the half-nomadic stage 
 which is reflected by the Book of Genesis, although 
 the author writes at a time so late that when he 
 recalls the age of the patriarchs his readers must 
 be reminded that "the Canaanite was then in 
 the land." 1 Judah and Gilead, with their closer 
 relations to the desert and their inferior oppor- 
 tunities for agriculture, long stood in contrast 
 with the richer lands of middle and northern Pal- 
 estine. The notorious political independence of 
 the southern tribes may be due in part to this 
 economic distinction. Thus the contrast between 
 
 . 12:6. 
 35 
 
36 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 cultures which was formerly racial became geo- 
 graphical. And even where the two forms of 
 culture were closely mixed the contrast and the 
 incongruity remained evident long after the race 
 lines disappeared. Comparisons of standards 
 were possible and the comparisons were often 
 odious. It seemed to David anomalous that he 
 should "dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of 
 God dwelleth within curtains." 1 Particularly in 
 religion the fusion between Jehovah and the 
 baals was difficult, and as late as the time of 
 Hosea the contrast between them was as great as 
 ever before. This is not the place to inquire into 
 the exact method of syncretism which did occur, 
 and, indeed, the evidence is not abundant. But 
 it is probable that several tendencies worked at 
 the same time: the subdivision of the single Jeho- 
 vah into a whole series of local divinities, the 
 coalescing of the separate baals into the single 
 Jehovah. 
 
 The lines of cleavage between the contrasting 
 standards which succeeded the racial alignment 
 were social and moral. As Wallis says: "Al- 
 though the distinction between Israelite and 
 Amorite was at length wiped out, the social strug- 
 gle unconsciously followed the original race lines. 
 The moral codes of the city capitalist and the 
 nomad were brought into active collision within 
 the limits of one and the same social group. Two 
 1 II Sam. 7:2. 
 
PERSISTENCE OF CONTRASTS 37 
 
 different standpoints were brought into sharp 
 contrast in the development of the Hebrew na- 
 tion. This fundamental variance comes to the 
 surface over and over again." 1 
 
 The expression of the cleavage, however, rarely 
 took the form of economic or moral definition. 
 Rather, following the genius of Hebrew thought, 
 it expressed itself in religious terms. In the 
 third and final stage the conflict was phrased not 
 as war between Israel and Canaanites, not as a 
 quarrel between ascetic simplicity and the luxury 
 of unrighteous wealth, but as the conflict be- 
 tween Jehovah and the baals. Thus, according to 
 Wallis, "the conflict between the moral stand- 
 points inherited from the Israelites and Amorites 
 was at last viewed as a rivalry between Jehovah 
 and Baal. The moral struggle was figured as a 
 cult war." 2 
 
 For the elaboration of the process so summarily 
 here described we must again refer the reader to 
 the work already quoted. But in order that the 
 influence of the old struggle in its new forms upon 
 the ideals of the Hebrews may be understood, it 
 may be well here to collect some examples of the 
 persistence of the older nomadic standards. 
 Throughout the long period of the Hebrew king- 
 dom there were never lacking men who protested 
 against one or another phase of the new culture. 
 
 1 Sociological Study of the Bibk, p. 94. 
 9 Ibid., p. 197. 
 
38 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 Sometimes their motive was economic, sometimes 
 moral, sometimes religious. It cannot in all 
 cases be determined, though, as has been said, it 
 almost always takes the religious form. The 
 protestants were sometimes simply temperamen- 
 tal conservatives, sometimes they were hereditary 
 sects like the Rechabites, but the most obvious 
 and most notable objectors were the vigorous 
 reformers that we call the prophets. These men 
 were inspired, so far as we can see, neither by 
 stubborn reaction nor by personal social griev- 
 ance, but by their sensitive moral conscience and 
 their deep interest in the highest ideals for their 
 nation. 
 
 To our minds the most arbitrary conservatism 
 finds its expression in the limitations of the cul- 
 tus. In worship, if anywhere in the unchanging 
 East, innovation is peculiarly taboo. To this 
 category belong the restrictions forbidding altars 
 of hewn stone, or molten images. Like the ritual 
 use of knives of flint, they are preferences for the 
 customs of the stone age. In the story of Cain 
 and Abel the farmer and the shepherd are con- 
 trasted and their respective types of offering. 
 No moral reason is suggested, but we are plainly 
 told God's preference for the latter: 
 
 And Jehovah had respect unto Abel and to his offer- 
 ing; but unto Cain and to his offering he had not 
 respect." 
 
 . 4:4, 5. 
 
PERSISTENCE OF CONTRASTS 39 
 
 Equally neutral from the moral standpoint 
 were the restrictions of the Rechabites. De- 
 scended from the nomad tribe of Kenites, they 
 maintained the ways of the desert by the strict 
 provision of their ascetic order: 
 
 Ye shall drink no wine, neither ye, nor your sons, 
 for ever: neither shall ye build house, nor sow seed, 
 nor plant vineyard, nor have any; but all your days 
 ye shall dwell in tents. 1 
 
 Thus by their lives rather than by their words 
 they offered a living protest against the innova- 
 tions of civilization. 
 
 The economic complaints of the conservative 
 protestants appear generally to be based on 
 grounds of social justice. Thus while to Recha- 
 bites and to Nazirites the drinking of wine may 
 have been at first a matter of ritual taboo, by the 
 prophets it is condemned primarily as a mark of 
 luxury and social injustice. The owning of real 
 estate also has its moral snare. It leads to houses 
 of ivory and all the attendant social inequality, 
 to the ousting of little landowners by land mo- 
 nopolists, until they "dwell alone in the midst 
 of the land." The notorious injustice of Jezebel 
 in securing Naboth's vineyard naturally roused 
 the ire of a prophet, like the injustice of the 
 polygamous David in securing Uriah's wife. Nor 
 are we surprised to read that Jehonadab, the 
 iJer.35:6,7. 
 
40 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 founder of the Rechabite order, was heart to 
 heart in sympathy with Jehu's bloody overthrow of 
 Jezebel and of the whole house of Ahab. In fact, 
 the whole social programme of the prophets is a 
 cry of the poor against the luxury, the oppression, 
 the miscarriage of justice, and all the other abuses 
 of highly civilized society. They miss the old 
 democracy of the desert, and on behalf of the 
 proletariat they score the greed and tyranny of 
 the rulers. It is not surprising that they came 
 in many cases from the more backward country, 
 as Amos came from Tekoa and Elijah from 
 Tishbeh. Even in the stories of the building of 
 Babel and of the cities of the plain, we seem to 
 hear a little of the prophetic feeling that "God 
 made the country but man made the town." 
 
 It was inevitable that the complaints against 
 abuse of power should be sometimes converted 
 into attacks against the whole institution of gov- 
 ernment. The king himself was most subject to 
 temptation, and most responsible for injustice by 
 his nobles. And several kings received more 
 serious treatment from the hands of the prophets 
 than the mere rebukes of Nathan and Elijah. It 
 is probable that several of the revolutions that 
 were attempted against a reigning monarch were 
 inspired and assisted by these champions of the 
 people. David gathered the malcontents under 
 Saul, and was aided by the prophet Samuel; Ab- 
 salom made capital of the alleged miscarriage of 
 
PERSISTENCE OF CONTRASTS 41 
 
 justice by his father. The oppressive system of 
 forced labor that characterized the house of Sol- 
 omon was a potent cause of the successful revolt 
 of Jeroboam. And this was encouraged by the 
 prophet Ahijah. Elisha inspired the double revo- 
 lution carried out in Israel and Judah by Jehu; 
 and later Hosea promises vengeance on the house 
 of Jehu and the end of his kingdom. Other illus- 
 trations could be given. 
 
 It is probably in this connection that we are to 
 understand the prophetic criticism of the whole 
 institution of kingship. Parallel to an earlier ac- 
 count which seems to approve the introduction of 
 a monarch, another writer considers it an innova- 
 tion that first takes place in the time of Saul, in 
 imitation of the more civilized nations, and con- 
 demns it apparently on economic grounds. The 
 elaborate description of "the manner of the king" 
 (I Sam. 8:11-18), with his heavy requisitioning 
 of both labor and property, is no doubt based on 
 experience and expresses the reaction against op- 
 pressive monarchical government which later 
 ended with the kingless theocratic ideal. 1 
 
 In religion as in government the reaction against 
 abuse becomes a reaction against the institu- 
 tion as a whole. This probably explains why 
 the prophets condemned the high places and even 
 the whole institution of sacrifice. The former 
 were the local sanctuaries where, prior to the 
 1 See also Chapter IX. 
 
42 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 reformation of Josiah, Jehovah was worshipped 
 with the full approval of the current law. 1 No 
 doubt these had originally been used for the wor- 
 ship of baals, and in not all of them had the substi- 
 tution of Jehovah for the baal been carried through, 
 nor the growing monotheism of the prophets be- 
 come entirely understood. But the chief objec- 
 tion to them was moral. The worship carried on 
 at many of these places, whether in the name of 
 Jehovah or of a baal, offended the consciences of 
 the prophets. If drinking is condemned because 
 based on social injustice, it is a particular offense 
 when men drink in the house of their God the 
 wine of those that have been fined and lie down on 
 garments taken in pledge. Sexual immorality is 
 also objectionable to the prophet; how much 
 more so when carried on in its most objectionable 
 forms, at the high places, as a regular part of 
 worship. To the writer of the Deuteronomic code 
 and to those who attempted to enforce it, the 
 simplest cure for these ills was the most drastic 
 the complete abolition of all the sanctuaries 
 except Jerusalem. 2 
 
 It is already evident that the prophets in their 
 attack on Canaanite innovations could scarcely 
 stop with those things for which a Canaanite 
 origin could be traced. They began to extend 
 the term to customs that were not of foreign pro- 
 venience. Everything that offended their con- 
 
 1 Ex. 20 :24. 2 See Chapter XV. 
 
PERSISTENCE OF CONTRASTS 43 
 
 science was branded as Canaanite, whatever its 
 historical origin. The whole outlook on the past 
 was affected by their new standards; the pro- 
 phetic polemic was read back into the desert, 
 and the settlement of Canaan was interpreted as 
 a conflict between the prophetic ideals of the 
 seventh century and the average religion of their 
 contemporaries. For example, human sacrifice, 
 though we know through the gruesome evidence 
 of excavations that it was practised by the pre- 
 Israelitic inhabitants of Canaan, was hardly un- 
 known to the nomadic Hebrew; but when the 
 prophets came to condemn it utterly, it was 
 relegated to the category of distinctly Canaanite 
 institutions. The same is true, probably, of the 
 asherah and pillar, of the graven images, and, no 
 doubt, of many other customs that once belonged 
 to the worship of Jehovah. They are now 
 branded as the heathen rites of baals, practised 
 by the former inhabitants of the land. 1 While 
 other prophets complain of sacrifice because of 
 the insincerity of those who offer it without 
 obeying the moral requirements of God, Jeremiah 
 goes so far as to repudiate it altogether. In spite 
 of the tradition carrying the cultus back to the 
 Mosaic era, he declares that in the day that 
 Jehovah had brought their fathers out of the land 
 of Egypt he gave no commandment about burnt 
 offerings, or sacrifices, but only about obedience. 2 
 1 Deut. 12:2-4, 29-31; 18:9-14, etc. 2 Jer. 7:21-23. 
 
44 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 Amid all the details which we have given to 
 illustrate the process which we have tried to de- 
 scribe, one thing should stand out clearly. The 
 conflict of ideals which began with the contact of 
 nomadism with civilization did not end with the 
 coalescence of the two races. A divergence of 
 standards originating perhaps in cultural lines, 
 but soon transferred to other grounds, continued 
 from that time on. Israel never settled down to 
 a manner of life that was universal or that was 
 accepted without question. The comparison of 
 standards had bred a critical attitude, a moral 
 judgment of national ideals and institutions. 
 The prophets are a distinct witness to the fluid 
 state of life and thought. Though they were a 
 minority, and though they appear at first as re- 
 actionaries and conservatives, the very opponents 
 of change and progress, they soon assumed the 
 opposite position as the leaders of change and 
 reformation, the pioneers toward a higher na- 
 tional conscience. 1 Through them material con- 
 servatism was transformed into spiritual advance, 
 and in the wholesome medium of flux, which is 
 indicated by their constant conflict with popular 
 standards and with the prophets that opposed 
 them, the ideals of Israel were preserved from 
 stagnation or premature crystallization. 
 1 Compare Chapter X. 
 
VI 
 
 E PLURIBUS UNUM 
 
 WHILE our present subject is the history of the 
 political ideas of Israel and not its political his- 
 tory, the growth of political unity under the 
 monarchy is worthy of some consideration to show 
 the effect of this movement on later Hebrew 
 nationalism. 
 
 One of the legacies of Mosaic tradition, if not 
 of Mosaic history, was the idea of national co- 
 operation. By welding together in a common 
 purpose a few clans Moses created a unit. But 
 the unity achieved under Moses was only a tem- 
 porary federation. The records which represent 
 Joshua as a generalissimo commanding the united 
 twelve tribes in the conquest of the whole land of 
 Canaan are contradicted by the earlier records in 
 which each tribe made headway and secured a 
 place of settlement as best it could. And when 
 at last this movement was completed and a 
 modus vivendi existed between Hebrew and Ca- 
 naanite, the old tribal divisions were only in- 
 creased by the sundering effect of geographical 
 barriers and distance and by the addition of new 
 coalescent groups of natives. 
 
 The stories of Judges are witness to the lack 
 of national unity. Defense as well as conquest 
 
 45 
 
46 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 was the duty of each tribe to itself. The Song of 
 Deborah, it is true, praises temporary alliance in 
 the wars of Jehovah and curses the slacker, but it 
 is significant that there is no reference in this 
 early poem to the southern settlements. Other 
 early poems refer to the several tribes and their 
 comparative strength and leadership, but never 
 to their co-operation or self-effacement in nation- 
 ality. The kingdom of Saul is usually considered 
 the triumph of national unity, but there is no 
 evidence that it ever included Judah. Indeed, 
 much of Israel was apparently subject to Philis- 
 tine rather than Benjamite control. Even under 
 David it was possible for "a base fellow, whose 
 name was Sheba," to dissolve the hard-won unity 
 of Israel by the cry, "Every man to his tents, 
 Israel" (II Sam. 20:1). "The call," says Pro- 
 fessor Smith, "is not to war, nor to an individual 
 anarchy. ... It is the voice of a reaction 
 against the monarchy on the part of that tribal 
 autonomy which Israel brought with them from 
 their desert days. How the habit and the music 
 of the desert still lasts in Israel I" 1 We have else- 
 where referred to this disjunctive element in 
 Hebrew history. 
 
 The causes that led to national unity in spite 
 
 of these tendencies are obvious. They were both 
 
 internal and external. Between Hebrew and Ca- 
 
 naanite, and between tribe and tribe, jealousies 
 
 1 G. A. Smith, Early Poetry of Israel, p. 94. 
 
E PLURIBUS UNUM 47 
 
 and feuds prevented the stabilizing of life. No 
 arbiter could settle disputes or punish offenses t 
 when more than one group was concerned. The 
 appendix to Judges, in dealing with this difficulty, 
 repeatedly notes that: "In those days there was 
 no king in Israel; every man did that which was 
 right in his own eyes." A king was essential for 
 national unity against internal anarchy. Even 
 more potent in the same direction was the influ- 
 ence of foreign attack. The Philistines, racially 
 distinct from all the other peoples of Canaan, 
 naturally inspired more united action, and we are 
 justified in believing that the kingdoms of Saul 
 and David were created by this military neces- 
 sity. It is a notable fact that in the more modern 
 age of national development unification has been 
 often due to foreign attack, and common inter- 
 ests have created nations against external dangers 
 or domination. 
 
 But it is important to observe of the nascent 
 Hebrew nationalism that abstract unity was not 
 a motive of much influence. Though, without 
 doubt, the king, the capital, and the temple 
 served as centres of united allegiance and greatly 
 promoted the strength which is in union, the rec- 
 ords nowhere allude to the appeal to unity. 
 There is nothing in the story of the formation of 
 the kingdom to indicate that either the actors or 
 the historians felt any sentiment toward union 
 as an end in itself. As Todd has said: "A practi- 
 
48 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 cal desire to be allowed to cultivate the arts of 
 peace, rather than a conscious straining to realize 
 the ideal unity of Israel, was the motive for the 
 foundation of the monarchy." 1 So with the 
 division of the kingdom after Solomon. There is 
 no hint in the Books of Kings that any one re- 
 gretted the existence for two centuries of two 
 independent and rival Hebrew kingdoms. The 
 secession is commended by the prophet Shemaiah 
 as of God (I Kings 12:24), and it is difficult to 
 tell which king really should be called the suc- 
 cessor of Solomon. Both of them are condemned, 
 one as an oppressor, the other as an idolater, but 
 neither of them as a usurper or divider; and none 
 of their followers is judged by the standards of 
 ideal national unity. Nor do our other sources, 
 the prophets, seem to lament the divided house. 
 With Hosea as a very doubtful exception, there is 
 no reference in written prophecy condemning the 
 northern kingdom as illegal, nor, with the same 
 doubtful exception, do we meet with any desire 
 for reunion until a century after the fall of Sama- 
 ria in the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel. 2 
 
 Still more striking is the absence of the ideal of 
 unification in the later movement toward unity 
 
 1 Politics and Religion in Ancient Israel, p. 67. 
 
 2 Ezek. 37:15jf.; Jer. 3:18; Hosea 1:11. On the authen- 
 ticity of the last two passages and of other references in 
 Hosea to Judah, see commentaries, also for Hosea's alleged 
 opposition to the non-Davidic monarchs, or to monarchy in 
 general (cf. p. 79). 
 
E PLURIBUS UNUM 49 
 
 in the little kingdom of Judah under Josiah. We 
 may agree with Todd that this was in effect a 
 synoecismus, the formation of the loose outlying 
 villages near Jerusalem into the more compact 
 city-state. But the purpose of Deuteronomy is 
 religious unity and uniformity, and political mo- 
 tives are nowhere expressed. 
 
 Of the political ideal of national unity we shall 
 have to say, therefore, that it was conspicuous 
 by its absence. And yet the experiences that 
 had taught national unity cannot have failed to 
 leave some impress on subsequent ideals. Per- 
 haps it was the experience of the exile that first 
 awakened Israel to this ambition. They were 
 conscious first of this ideal when circumstances 
 denied it. Besides, they had long been schooled 
 by prophets and lawgivers in a national unity 
 that was not political, but religious or cultural. 
 Chiefly by contrast with others their own unity 
 had been fostered, and as the unity of Israel be- 
 came conscious this cultural unity naturally grew. 
 The ambition of exilic Hebrews was not limited 
 to some future reassembling in Palestine; it de- 
 veloped into strict standards of present uniform- 
 ity. It is an unfortunate fact of history that 
 national unity, whether political or cultural, has 
 usually been promoted by an artificial hostility to 
 everything alien. So, at least, it was with Juda- 
 ism, which achieved self-conscious cohesion by 
 fostering an intensive and exclusive self-culture, 
 
50 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 and by sacrificing all more generous and catholic 
 impulses. Every effort was made to exclude for- 
 eign influences. Intermarriage was forbidden, 
 and under the stricter nationalists, all alien speech, 
 literature, and customs were taboo. 
 
 The exclusiveness of later Judaism is one of 
 the least attractive characteristics of its national 
 life, but it must be remembered that it is merely 
 the exaggeration of a common and still prevalent 
 emphasis on nationalism. It is fostered by two 
 of the most insidious national faults: national 
 pride on the one hand, and the implacable hatred 
 of foreigners on the other. That these were arti- 
 ficially stimulated in Judaism is evident from the 
 particularism of the priestly writers, and of the 
 books of Esther and Nehemiah, and from the pro- 
 test against it in Ruth and Jonah. That it created 
 a principal problem in the latest periods of Juda- 
 ism, including the age of early Christianity, is 
 further attested by our records, as well as the 
 more assuring fact that the higher international 
 view-point was never forgotten and ultimately 
 prevailed in Pauline Christianity. 
 
VII 
 
 NATIONAL PROTOTYPES 
 
 THE chief medium of patriotic instruction in 
 modern times is the teaching of history. To 
 train the youth of a nation for future citizenship 
 we interpret the past of that nation to express our 
 ideals. Indeed, it is a notorious fact that the 
 science of history has often been perverted from 
 the impartial presentation of truth to meet the 
 requirements of national partisanship. Noted 
 figures of the past have been idealized to suit 
 modern standards. But even without such per- 
 version the growth of one's own nation, its tri- 
 umph over difficulties in the way, the example of 
 the loyal men and patriots, who by their courage 
 and wisdom served their country well, all form 
 an effective factor toward national unity and 
 progress. 
 
 In the ancient world this was as true as to-day, 
 and though, perhaps, civic instruction was not so 
 thorough or so systematic as is ours, nevertheless 
 the boys of Greece and Rome learned at an early 
 age the familiar tales of their national heroes. 
 The Hebrews, too, were wont to review the past 
 achievements of their race, and in the extensive 
 
 51 
 
52 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 narratives of Hebrew history that occupy the 
 whole first half of the Old Testament we see the 
 inevitable written prose deposit 1 of the poet's cry: 
 
 "Let us now praise famous men, 
 And our fathers that begat us." 
 
 Even the Book of Genesis, although it represents 
 confessedly the days before the nation was born, 
 combines with its many other motives a distinct 
 national spirit. In this respect it finds many 
 parallels in other literatures. Indeed, it often 
 happens that the most characteristic stories of a 
 nation are taken from the history and even legends 
 of the prenational period. Thus Wilhelm Tell 
 has become the patron saint of all modern Swit- 
 zerland; King Arthur, the Celt, is immortalized 
 by the Anglo-Saxon race; and the German people 
 honor along with heroes of their recent history 
 the more shadowy figures of Teutonic folk-lore 
 and tradition. Even in so recent a nation as 
 America the tales of pre-Revolutionary explorers 
 and colonists and the more shadowy legends of 
 Ojib ways and Delawares are cherished as part of 
 the national heritage. Whatever, then, be the 
 origin of the patriarch stories and the question 
 is one of great delicacy and complexity it can 
 
 1 There are, of course, some poems and poetic fragments 
 remaining in the Octateuch, e. g., in Genesis, chapter 49, for 
 which see p. 33. Probably much now in prose was once in 
 poetry. And in Judges 4 and 5 it is possible to compare a 
 prose and a poetical version of the same story. 
 
NATIONAL PROTOTYPES 53 
 
 surely be said that they were so thoroughly appro- 
 priated and adopted by the Hebrew nation that 
 both through many generations of oral transmis- 
 sion and after they received their present form, 
 these stories served the Hebrew people as an 
 inspiring national epic. 
 
 The miscellaneous character of the Book of 
 Genesis is evident to every careful reader even 
 to those who are unfamiliar with the distinct lin- 
 guistic differences in the original that seem to 
 indicate the participation of at least three differ- 
 ent writers. There is, for example, the difference 
 of subject-matter that clearly divides the book in 
 two after the eleventh chapter: up to that point 
 its stories are cosmic and general, after that point 
 they contain a cycle of narratives associated with 
 the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. 
 Even within this cycle each story is complete in 
 itself; each has its own particular purpose and 
 view-point. Doubtless these stories came from 
 many different sources and each had a long and 
 independent history. In some cases the origin of 
 the stories is known or can be conjectured with 
 some probability. The stories of the creation 
 and the flood may have been derived from the 
 Babylonian versions that we possess or from a 
 more ancient Semitic original. The story of 
 Babel would naturally arise from the place it 
 describes; perhaps the allusions to local shrines in 
 the patriarch stories indicate a Canaanite origin; 
 
54 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 while the local color and literary echoes of the 
 Joseph stories suggest Egyptian provenience. 
 
 Very miscellaneous, too, are the purposes of 
 the stories: the motives are varied and often 
 mixed. Many are setiological intended to ex- 
 plain the origin of words, of customs, of charac- 
 ters, of races, and of the world. Others are told 
 to exalt certain qualities, to make comparisons. 
 In many cases the story can be justified simply 
 for its own sake as can an entertaining tale well 
 told. 
 
 To such a varied book a book, moreover, that 
 is not a separate unit but merely the first volume 
 of a continuous work one can scarcely look for 
 a simple distinctive political ideal. It may be 
 misleading even to speak in the plural of the 
 national ideals of Genesis when its materials are 
 so diverse in origin and character. Nevertheless 
 Genesis does illustrate as well, perhaps, as more 
 homogeneous volumes of the Octateuch, the He- 
 brews* use of stories in inculcating patriotic spirit 
 and in idealizing national standards. Besides, as 
 it has come to us, much of the material has been 
 welded into a partial unity and already fitted to 
 the Hebrew norms. This is particularly evident 
 in the religious adjustment of the heathen stories 
 to the monotheistic view-point of the prophets 
 and priests of the later days. 1 And if we are 
 
 1 E. g., the fourth chapter of Genesis carries the worship of 
 Jehovah back to the sons or grandsons of Adam. 
 
NATIONAL PROTOTYPES 55 
 
 right in giving a foreign origin to any of its stories, 
 these, too, are overlaid with a genuine Hebrew 
 coloring, while the surviving archaic elements in 
 Genesis represent with unsurpassed fidelity much 
 of that ancient local inheritance that can be re- 
 called in more historic ages only through the folk- 
 tales of the older children of the soil. Like the 
 Morte cT Arthur of Malory, the Book of Genesis 
 represents fairly well the real ideals of the nation, 
 combining the new religious and political ideals 
 of the invaders with the native standards so long 
 current in local song and story. Thus, perhaps 
 more fully in this book than in any other, are 
 reflected the resultant ideals of the Hebrew- 
 Canaanite fusion. 
 
 Even the first chapters of Genesis , although, as 
 has been said, their scope is general, reveal some- 
 thing of the international outlook of the Hebrew 
 mind. The unity of all mankind is represented 
 through common descent not only from Adam 
 but also from Noah. Racial differences are, of 
 course, noted, and differences of language, 1 but 
 behind all smaller units the fundamental brother- 
 hood of man is certainly suggested. The genea- 
 logical tables 2 are a most explicit presentation of 
 the racial and tribal subdivisions. Their scope 
 from Spain to India shows the geographical 
 horizon of their authors' day and the relation be- 
 lieved to exist between the Hebrew nation and 
 
 1 Gen. 11:1-^9. 2 Gen. 10. 
 
. 
 
 56 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 the other nations of the world. Throughout 
 these lists and elsewhere each nation is spoken of 
 as an individual according to the common as- 
 sumption that each tribe was descended from a 
 single ancestor and bore his name. And the rela- 
 tionship of the family chart represents the author's 
 sense of racial affiliation. When, for example, 
 Egypt (Mizraim) and Canaan are called the sons 
 of Ham, and it is added that Canaan begat Sidon 
 and the other Canaanite peoples, 1 it is plain that 
 one should think more of geographical and na- 
 tional relations than of individuals. It is well 
 known that the modern ethnological terms, Se- 
 mitic and Hamitic, are due to these "maps" of 
 the Hebrew genealogist. 
 
 The theory of tribal common descent, still 
 maintained in the tribes of Arabia, explains the 
 meaning of the patriarchs' relationships. Most 
 emphatic is the assumption of such a people as 
 the Hebrews that their national unity is a genuine 
 physical brotherhood a descent from a common 
 ancestor. Their very names are patronymic 
 "Hebrews," from the eponymous Eber, 2 or "chil- 
 dren of Israel" from the less shadowy Israel or 
 Jacob. So the "children of Ammon" is an his- 
 torical name that necessitates a prehistoric ances- 
 tor Ammon, as in Greece Dorians and ^Eolians 
 were felt to presuppose ancestors named Dorus 
 and ^Eolus. In some cases the race and the hero 
 
 * Gen. 10:6, 15-18. J Gen. 10:21. 
 
NATIONAL PROTOTYPES 57 
 
 have identical names, as Edom and Moab. As 
 the earlier charts give the Hebrew relations to 
 more remote and alien peoples, so the patriarchal 
 stories supply their supposed kinship to these 
 nearer neighbors and even the unity and sub- 
 divisions existing among their own tribes. With- 
 out reproducing the whole family tree it will be 
 sufficient to recall as illustrations that Edom 
 (Esau) was a" brother, though a rival, of Israel 
 (Jacob), that the brothers Moab and Ammon 
 were only cousins of Israel, while among the 
 twelve sons of Jacob certain groupings exist, due 
 to their different mothers. Thus Joseph and 
 Benjamin are associated as full brothers (sons of 
 Rachel), while in the next generation Ephraim 
 and Manasseh are similarly connected, as grand- 
 sons through Joseph. 
 
 It is often difficult to tell whether actual his- 
 tory is really intended, and where the individual 
 hero shades off into a nation. But even at their 
 face value the stories contain a meaning far 
 deeper than any mere myth or folk-tale. The 
 characters are national types. The interest of 
 the narrator is in the present, not the past. His 
 questions are manifold. He wishes to know, be- 
 sides the relations of the tribes, the reasons for 
 their respective traits and locations, for their 
 ownership of certain places. "And with special 
 frequency was it asked, How does Israel come to 
 have this glorious land of Canaan?" 1 
 
 1 Gunkel, The Legends of Genesis, p. 26. 
 
58 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 More important than the questions of relation- 
 ship are the suggestions of national character 
 which are undoubtedly embodied in the personal 
 portraits. The patriarchs are national types. 
 Without accepting the term "legend," which 
 Gunkel applies to these stories, one can fully agree 
 with him when he says: 
 
 In these legends the clearest matter is the character 
 of the races : here is Esau, the huntsman of the steppes, 
 living with little reflection from hand to mouth, for- 
 getful, magnanimous, brave, and hairy as a goat; and 
 there is Jacob the herdsman, a smooth man, more cun- 
 ning and accustomed to look into the future. His 
 uncle Laban is the type of the Aramaean, avaricious 
 and deceitful, but to outward appearances an excellent 
 and upright man, never at loss for an excuse. A more 
 noble figure is Abraham, hospitable, peaceful, a model 
 of piety. 1 
 
 Thus through the simplest stories, told quite 
 objectively, the ideals of the Hebrews find ex- 
 pression. Both the nomadic and the agricultural 
 ideals emerge even in the earliest chapters. The 
 developments of the arts of civilization are looked 
 on askance, on the one hand, with a nomad's 
 dread of innovation; they lead, we may infer, to 
 the rejection of Cain's offering and to the more 
 violent punishment of the contemporaries of Noah 
 and the builders at Babel. On the other hand, 
 paradise is represented as a fertile garden, and 
 1 The Legends of Genesis, pp. 22, 23. 
 
NATIONAL PROTOTYPES 59 
 
 the discovery of the grape and its rest-giving juice 
 is hailed with joy. Moral judgments are ex- 
 pressed not only against the licentious crimes of 
 foreigners or aliens like Canaan and Shechem, but 
 even against the vengeful or jealous acts of the 
 real children of Israel. 1 
 
 But most undisguised is the patriotic tenor of 
 the book. Much as the origins of the world and 
 of other peoples roused their curiosity, the chief 
 concern of the Hebrews was the genesis of their 
 own race. Back they must push their inquiry 
 beyond the dawn of clear history into a past that 
 will explain their greatness and the glory of their 
 land. Like all literature of its kind, Genesis is 
 warm with patriotic emotion. How far its stories 
 represent actual persons and events we need not 
 here discuss. They are, at any rate, a reflection 
 of the Hebrew national ideals. In the stories of 
 patriarchal migrations is reflected the sense of 
 alien origin outside the land of Canaan. In the 
 stories of God's repeated promises is shown the 
 consciousness of hard-won ownership and of pros- 
 perity achieved. Like Jacob at Penuel, Israel 
 had wrestled with God and had won his blessing. 
 In the stories of the humiliation or the outwitting 
 of Lot, of Laban, and of Esau, we see the Hebrews 
 triumphant over their kinsmen of the south and 
 east. And through the repeated vicissitudes, se- 
 lections, and providences of the whole cycle of 
 i Gen. 34 and 37. 
 
60 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 patriarchal story there runs like a red cord the 
 firm conviction of a special national election and 
 destiny. 
 
 In summary we may say that in a sporadic and 
 unorganized manner, but yet in a most effective 
 way, the stories of Genesis expressed the temper 
 of the Hebrew nation. The virtues and the 
 faults of its character were personified in one or 
 another of those prototypes from whom it claimed 
 descent. In their experiences were embodied the 
 experiences of the race of wandering and of rest, 
 of prosperity and disaster, of reliance on God and 
 the assurances of his promises. The actual unity 
 and solidarity of the nation both established the 
 belief in a common descent and was established 
 by that belief. Identity and continuity of na- 
 tional life were pictured by the simple thread of 
 personal genealogy, while the antipathies and hos- 
 tilities, the jealousies and moral scorn of sister 
 peoples secured corresponding expression. Yet 
 with all the national prejudices and limitations a 
 wide horizon of interest and a generous sense of 
 human brotherhood existed and a courageous 
 trust in the providence of the Creator, and in the 
 justice of the Father of all mankind. 
 
VIII 
 
 WAR 
 
 A NATION'S ideals are often best revealed by 
 war. War is a great national effort, and the 
 aims of war indicate the common national goal. 
 With the Hebrews, as in modern times, the aims 
 of war were manifold and often mixed. They 
 did not distinguish wars as aggressive and defen- 
 sive, nor divide economic, political, and ideal 
 motives. They fought for booty, territory, trib- 
 ute, domination, prestige; to avenge wrongs, to 
 defend rights. They fought to maintain or secure 
 independence, to prevent invasion or even to gain 
 commercial opportunities. Spheres of influence, 
 strategic frontiers, unredeemed territory, national 
 honor, were ideas known to them in fact if not in 
 name. The Hebrews even fought to gain peace 
 and security. And all these war aims can be 
 called national ideals. 
 
 But war itself was not to them a national ideal. 
 Rarely, if ever, has war been an end in itself to 
 any nation. Certainly the Hebrews knew the 
 risks and the horrors of war. They loved peace; 
 but victory, too, was sweet, and the fruits of vic- 
 tory were to be had only by war. War was only 
 a means to these ends, a method of realizing na- 
 
 61 
 
62 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 tional ambitions. But the method of war is so 
 closely associated with its ends, so easily confused 
 with national hopes, so prominent as the expres- 
 sion of national life, that the institution of war 
 must be included in any study of a nation's ideals. 
 The importance of war in Hebrew history is 
 manifest from our records, especially those which 
 are oldest and which are least edited and altered 
 in the interests of religion. The Song of Deborah, 
 probably the oldest extant piece of Hebrew com- 
 position, is a war poem. The ancient lost collec- 
 tion of folk-songs bore the significant title, The 
 Book of the Wars of Jehovah. In those unvar- 
 nished tales of the early monarchy that make up 
 our Books of Samuel the wars of Israel are the 
 predominant interest of the author, who was 
 nearly contemporary; while in the earliest strands 
 of the records of the premonarchic period military 
 history has a pre-eminent place. As military 
 necessity was the constant creator of national 
 unity, national loyalty is expressed chiefly by 
 military service. Patriotism is nearly synony- 
 mous with the virtues of war obedience, strategy, 
 and courage. The Song of Deborah, as it calls 
 curses upon the slackers of Meroz, calls blessings 
 upon the leaders that took the lead in Israel, on 
 the people that offered themselves willingly, and 
 even upon the crafty woman who murdered the 
 enemy general in her tent. The coefficient of 
 popularity was military success: 
 
WAR 63 
 
 " Saul hath slain his thousands, 
 And David his ten thousands." 
 
 And the prowess of David was never forgotten. 
 The association of war and patriotism is too fre- 
 quent in the Old Testament and too familiar in 
 modern times to need further illustration. 
 
 But a third element' should be mentioned which 
 entered this association of war and nationalism 
 on almost equal terms and, as it wele, created a 
 triangle. This was religion. The state, the 
 church, and the army were never more clearly 
 identical than in the primitive culture of the He- 
 brews and the other Semites. We have mentioned 
 before the relation of religion and nationality, we 
 have just declared the connection of patriotism 
 and war; it remains to say a word of the connec- 
 tion of war and religion. As religion is national 
 and as nationality is expressed chiefly in war, it 
 is obvious that religion, except as a personal or 
 family affair, also appears as military. War is a 
 religious institution. It is undertaken at the be- 
 hest of a national god, carried on under his direc- 
 tion, and concluded according to his will. To 
 him belongs the glory and to him is given the 
 bulk of the spoils. The king, the soldiers, and 
 the weapons are anointed with holy oil. God is 
 in the armed camp and on the battle-field, either 
 in the shape of images or of a holy chest, like the 
 ark of Jehovah of armies, or in less definite form. 
 His presence and help are often manifested by 
 
64 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 cloud, rain, hail, flood, earthquake. By his will 
 "the stars in their courses fought against Sisera," 
 and the sun and moon stood still to lengthen 
 Joshua' s victory. 
 
 That this religious interpretation of war is not 
 due to the unique genius for religion of the He- 
 brew people is proved by parallels in all other 
 national religions. The Moabites, to take one 
 neighbor as an example, evidently shared the same 
 view. King Mesha warred at the command of 
 Chemosh, as Joshua warred at the command of 
 Jehovah, and by established custom, each victor 
 dedicated to his god and ally the spoil. The same 
 Mesha, to escape the straits of siege, slew his son 
 on the city walls, a sacrifice to Chemosh, much as 
 Jephthah sacrificed his daughter as a burnt offer- 
 ing to Jehovah. As an Israelite expressed the 
 likeness in a diplomatic dialogue, " Wilt not thou 
 possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee 
 to possess? So whomsoever Jehovah our God 
 hath dispossessed from before us them will we 
 possess." 1 
 
 This religious interpretation of war was not 
 entirely abandoned even by the prophets. On 
 the contrary, the earliest prophets seem to have 
 been, like the Zealots of the later era, the instiga- 
 tors of war, both civil and foreign. Under the 
 
 1 See Mesha's own inscription on the Moabite Stone, and 
 II Kings 3:27; Judges 11. Compare the story of Mesha's 
 contemporary, Hiel the Bethelite, in I Kings 16:34. 
 
WAR 65 
 
 kings of Israel the prophetic institution, with the 
 priesthood, often became, like the Delphic oracle 
 in Greece or the modern churches, entirely sub- 
 servient to the political authorities. They were 
 mobilized in time of war so as to be of great service 
 in maintaining national morale. Independents 
 like Micaiah, who refused to be a mere rubber 
 stamp for the wilful Ahab; Isaiah, who opposed 
 the statecraft of Hezekiah; and Jeremiah, the 
 antiwar agitator of Judah's last days, though 
 they were opposed by the religious officials of 
 their day as bitterly as by political jingoes, were 
 pioneers in a somewhat changed interpretation of 
 war. Even for the writing prophets, however, 
 victory still is the gift of God, and defeat his pun- 
 ishment. But his requirements are now ethical 
 rather than ritual, and military success is closely 
 related to personal and social justice. The proph- 
 ets' internationalism in religion also affected their 
 explanation of war. Jehovah was no longer bound 
 to help his own people right or wrong. Even 
 Israel's enemies could be rewarded by him with 
 victory, or used as the rod of his anger against 
 Israel. Of course, to the monotheist Jehovah is 
 the supreme controller of history; no other gods 
 need be considered. He becomes then less of "a 
 man of war," and though the term "Lord of 
 Hosts" is retained of him, his military functions 
 become less anthropomorphic, less partisan, and 
 altogether less prominent in the religious thought 
 
66 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 of Judaism. Nevertheless the older view never 
 disappeared, and even modern Christianity at 
 war has not emancipated an international Provi- 
 dence from some of the partisanship and other 
 debasing attributes of a national god. 
 
 Though there is much that is quaint in the Old 
 Testament attitude to war we have already seen 
 that it contains much that is modern. The com- 
 mon saying that war is an anachronism only 
 means that the man of to-day differs from his 
 forebears less in this matter than in many others. 
 Time has changed the implements of war, its 
 scale, and perhaps its purpose, but not the emo- 
 tional and irrational attitude of those who engage 
 upon it. Concerning the necessity, the efficiency, 
 and the morality of war, the early Hebrew exer- 
 cised as much or as little intelligent judgment as 
 the average twentieth-century Christian. It is 
 easy, therefore, for us to picture the ancient atti- 
 tude. 
 
 Like much of modern society, the ancient He- 
 brew looked upon war as a necessary evil. It 
 was a bane, a "sore judgment," like plague or 
 famine, and it was equally unavoidable. Modern 
 man has only just discovered that pestilence and 
 famine can be met and mitigated by human 
 organization. He has still more recently con- 
 ceived the idea of applying similar effort to the 
 eradication of war. But the ancient Hebrew was 
 equally innocent of human hope for any of these 
 
WAR 67 
 
 ills. The origin of war seemed no more artificial 
 than the causes of rain and earthquake; all three 
 were assigned to supernatural causes. Jehovah 
 brought war and defeat upon his people as a 
 punishment, and he alone also gave peace. When 
 Jehovah came to be conceived as an international 
 God he did the same for other peoples. The 
 doom which the prophets as his spokesmen threat- 
 ened for their own nation and for other nations 
 was chiefly in military terms, while among the 
 blessings offered for the future none was more 
 attractive than peace. But as the way to inter- 
 national peace only two paths occurred to them: 
 a world empire based on conquest, and the in- 
 tervention of God. Either the mailed fist and 
 pan-Hebraism, or else such a divine miracle as 
 should include within its scope the taming of mar- 
 tial men and the transformation of the lion and 
 the adder these two seemed the only sure cura- 
 tives for war. So fully did the ancient Hebrew 
 accept as a human necessity the will to fight. 
 
 In like manner the efficiency of war does not 
 seem to have been questioned more in antiquity 
 than in modern times. Pacific diplomacy was 
 not entirely unknown to the Hebrews, the favo- 
 rite form being alliance cemented by royal mar- 
 riage. Such alliances were, however, rarely a 
 substitute for war or a preventive of war. They 
 often proved within one generation a chief cause 
 of war, both domestic and foreign. An interest- 
 
68 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 ing alternative to war is the request of Moses for 
 permission to pass through a neighbor's lands 
 under mutual guarantees. But this, too, proved 
 rather an ultimatum of war than a substitute for 
 it. For when the request was refused, either 
 another route was sought, or the Israelite army 
 hewed its way through against resistance. 1 No 
 case of arbitration, as a preventive of war, ap- 
 pears in the history of the Hebrews. Of course 
 then, as to-day, wars were followed by terms of 
 peace. But the absence of any recognized alter- 
 native to war was a chief reason that the institu- 
 tion's efficiency was unchallenged. It had already 
 the fatality which long traditions had given it. 
 Even in the free, democratic life of early Semitic 
 civilization its practical justification was unques- 
 tioned, and certainly with the growth of autoc- 
 racy in Israel the citizens could scarcely expect to 
 do other than give implicit obedience to the king's 
 commands; 
 
 " Theirs not to reason why, 
 Theirs but to do and die." 
 
 Unwillingness to fight seems to have been due 
 sometimes to personal feelings, rarely to logic. 
 Gideon was able to reduce his volunteer army to 
 a third of its size by dismissing every one who 
 was " fearful and trembling." 2 And according to 
 
 iNum. 20:14-21; 21:21-31. 
 3 Judges 7:3; cf. Deut. 20:8. 
 
WAR 69 
 
 the early, though naturally partisan, Song of 
 Deborah, indifference and selfish ease had kept 
 other tribes from joining the great victory that 
 the tribes of central Palestine secured over Sisera. 
 
 "At the watercourses of Reuben 
 There were great searchings of heart. 
 Why sattest thou among the sheepfolds, 
 To hear the pipings for the flocks? 
 Gilead abode beyond the Jordan: 
 And Dan, why did he remain in ships? 
 Asher sat still at the haven of the sea, 
 And abode by his creeks." (Judges 5:15-17.) 
 
 But the effectiveness of war as a means to an 
 end was never questioned. Of course victory 
 was never sure, but when a crisis came no other 
 alternative suggested itself except the hazard at 
 arms, and war became not a last resort, but imme- 
 diately inevitable. 
 
 Neither does the moral justification of war 
 appear as a problem in the Old Testament, at 
 least not for Israel. It is true that the prophets 
 were critical of ruthless warfare carried on by 
 foreign nations, 1 and particularly of the predatory 
 militarism of the great empires that successively 
 held Israel under their hateful yoke; but this con- 
 demnation was scarcely based on impartial moral 
 standards. The very prophets who were most 
 zealous for the Lord of Hosts were most free to 
 encourage and even to execute ruthless warfare. 
 2 Amos 1, 2. (See Chapter XI.) 
 
70 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 The Israelites appear as ready to exterminate the 
 foe and to repay injuries as any of their neighbors. 
 Illustrations are not necessary, though it must be 
 remembered that some of the most vigorous nar- 
 ratives are probably exaggerations due to the 
 patriotic idealization of past victories and the 
 fanatic zeal of prophetic or priestly historians. 
 The extermination of the Canaanites, for example, 
 which shocks Christian sentiment, probably ex- 
 isted only on paper. There are other and older 
 historical passages which plainly deny it. Indeed, 
 according to one source, Jehovah left Canaanites 
 in the land for the specific purpose of giving later 
 generations adequate military training, "to prove 
 Israel by them, even as many of Israel as had not 
 known all the wars of Canaan." 1 Even could we 
 believe with the Syrians that "the kings of the 
 house of Israel are merciful kings/' it is evident 
 that the prophets of Israel were not merciful 
 prophets. In two instances a king is rebuked 
 by a prophet for sparing his enemy. 2 Deuteron- 
 omy repeatedly warns against the natural ten- 
 dency to leniency in dealing with a beaten foe. 
 In the case of Canaanite cities not even women 
 and children are to be spared. The same writer's 
 injunction to spare fruit-trees is prompted not by 
 a primitive sense of international law, but by 
 selfish reasons, and by the author's characteris- 
 tic consideration for inanimate objects: "For is 
 i Judges 3:1. * I Sam. 15; I Kings 20 :31 Jf . 
 
WAR 71 
 
 the tree of the field man, that it should be be- 
 sieged of thee ? " l But even were minor refine- 
 ments of the conduct of war to be found in the 
 Old Testament, they would not answer the chief 
 question, Is war as a whole justified? As has 
 been said: "The question of the right or wrong 
 of war in general was never raised among the 
 Hebrews, so far as we can judge from the Old 
 Testament, and our sources never suggest that 
 they had any doubt regarding the righteousness 
 of the wars which they waged, either in the con- 
 quest or for the defense of the land of Canaan. 
 Just as they assumed that Jehovah was righteous, 
 so they had no other thought than that the wars 
 of Jehovah's people against other nations were 
 just and necessary. They had the easy and com- 
 fortable faith that their foes were Jehovah's foes, 
 and, therefore, they believed that to fight those 
 foes was a very essential element of loyalty to 
 Jehovah." 2 Absorbed with confidence in the 
 holy and patriotic ends for which they fought, 
 unconsciously they assumed that the ends justi- 
 fied the means. In this respect, also, they reflect 
 the modern mind. 
 
 .The single moral or religious objection to war 
 found in the Bible only makes this gen eral state- 
 ment more clear. The writing prophets do seem, 
 as we have said, to oppose the military policy of 
 
 1 Deut. 20:19. 
 
 2 Gilbert, The Bible and Universal Peace, p. 42. 
 
72 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 some of their contemporaries; but their motive is 
 neither respect for taboos and priestly procedure, 
 as at some earlier times, nor a moral condemna- 
 tion for the whole institution, like that of the 
 modern pacifist. Their opposition to war is due 
 to their sense of trust in God. This appears par- 
 ticularly in Isaiah and Jeremiah, but it is not 
 confined to them. In the Book of Micah, for 
 example, the fortress of Lachish on the Egyptian 
 border, with its chariots and horses, is said to 
 have been the beginning of sin to the daughter of 
 Zion; 1 when God purifies the land of idols he will 
 destroy the munitions of war as well fortresses, 
 chariots, and horses. 2 Hosea, too, combines for- 
 eign alliances and trust in cavalry with idolatry. 
 Ephraim, like a silly dove, turns for help to 
 Egypt or to Assyria, but they return not to him 
 that is on high; 3 therefore, the prophet calls them 
 to the renunciation of both with true repentance. 
 They are to say: 
 
 "Assyria shall not save us; 
 
 We will not ride upon horses [i. e., Egypt shall not 
 
 save us]; 
 Neither will we say any more to the work of our 
 
 hands, Ye are our gods; 
 For in thee the fatherless findeth mercy." 4 
 
 The prophets objected to resort to war, be- 
 cause it showed a lack of faith that became in- 
 
 1 Micah 1 : 13. Micah 5 : 10-14. 
 
 3 Hosea 7:11, 16. 4 Hosea 14:3. 
 
WAR 73 
 
 fidelity, a neglect of God comparable to adultery 
 in private life or to apostasy in religion. As one 
 commentator says: "The defiant display of human 
 strength which renders divine help unnecessary is 
 particularly obnoxious to them." 1 By Isaiah 
 especially these dangers of militarism were clearly 
 discovered. It is a striking fact that God is first 
 called spirit in contrast with the material pre- 
 paredness for war and military alliance (Isaiah 
 31:3). Though the prophets, therefore, cannot 
 be called absolute non-resistants or pacifists, their 
 clear apprehension of the materialism of war- 
 makers and their firm reliance on the spiritual 
 alternatives to force are not without importance 
 for the modern age. 
 
 1 Margolis, Micah, p. 25. 
 
IX 
 
 MONARCHY AND THEOCRACY 
 
 THE constitution of the Hebrew people through- 
 out its period of real political life the five hun- 
 dred years from Saul to Zedekiah was a mon- 
 archy. This institution was so prominent in the 
 narrative of that period that the volumes de- 
 scribing it received the titles, "Kingdoms," or 
 "Kings." -The existence of monarchical govern- 
 ment requires little explanation or comment. It 
 was natural to the stage of civilization which the 
 Hebrews reached in Canaan. We have already 
 described the simpler organization of the nomad 
 and seminomad age, and we are prepared to 
 believe, with the writers of Samuel and Deuteron- 
 omy, that the kingship was adopted only by imi- 
 tation and in the settled life of Canaan. It was 
 characteristic of their Canaanite neighbors, and 
 commended itself to the newcomers for obvious 
 reasons, like many of the other inventions of civ- 
 ilization. It was a chief rallying-point for national 
 unity, especially in war and self-defense. It was 
 a cure for anarchy. It was, in fact, an inevitable 
 development. Even in the days of the "Judges" 
 when "there was no king in Israel," the begin- 
 
 74 
 
MONARCHY AND THEOCRACY 75 
 
 nings of kingship are already suggested in the 
 careers of Gideon and Abimelech and of Jeph- 
 thah. In spite of later comments to the con- 
 trary, and the actual limitations of his rule, the 
 appointment of Saul was to his contemporaries a 
 real political achievement, while in David and 
 Solomon the national life reached its zenith. 
 
 To judge from our records the Hebrew mon- 
 archy varied in its first century through a con- 
 siderable gamut. Saul is represented simply as a 
 peasant war-dictator, called from the plough like 
 Cincinnatus. He has no capital, no permanent 
 organization, no hereditary entail. David begins 
 his career as a private adventurer, but provides 
 the three elements of established monarchy just 
 mentioned, while his son approximates the typical 
 Oriental potentate. It is important, however, to 
 recall that "even Solomon in all his glory" was 
 not in reality the absolute monarch that legend 
 made of him. The Hebrew monarchy never 
 reached the despotism and autocracy of some 
 industrial empires, past and modern. Solomon 
 and many other kings found that the succession 
 was not established for their heirs by an inalien- 
 able right. Throughout the half millennium of 
 Hebrew kingship the people still retained a close 
 personal relation to the king, and collectively or 
 through their religious or military leaders, they 
 exercised a democratic control that was equiva- 
 lent to constitutional restraints. As the anointed 
 
76 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 or agent of God and as the servant of the people, 1 
 the king, ideally at least, was not an unrestricted 
 and arbitrary master. And it was no mere coun- 
 sel of perfection when the Deuteronomist enjoins 
 that the king write a copy of the book of the law 
 and "read therein all the days of his life; that he 
 may learn to fear Jehovah his God, to keep all 
 the words of this law and these statutes, to do 
 them; that his heart be not lifted up above his 
 brethren" (Deut. 17:18-20). 
 
 The best ideals of Hebrew monarchy were 
 summed up for the future in the name of David. 
 That by contemporary standards he seemed a 
 man after God's own heart only shows that he 
 was the idol of his people. He entertained in his 
 lifetime the genuine respect and gratitude of his 
 subjects, much as Augustus for similar reasons re- 
 ceived the adoration of a wider empire. In his 
 own tribe, at least, his name carried such weight 
 that his family were retained permanently in 
 power, and it was easy to imagine that their 
 throne would be eternal. When foreign conquest 
 destroyed all political independence, the family of 
 David was still the present or future hope. The 
 shoot from the stock of Jesse, the prince from 
 Bethlehem, the lion of the tribe of Jiidah, express 
 the promise of freedom, righteousness, and happi- 
 ness in the Hebrew Utopia, whether on earth or in 
 heaven. And even if the king is not named, the 
 n Kings 12:7. 
 
MONARCHY AND THEOCRACY 77 
 
 royal institution became a frequent and natural 
 assumption in the national hope. "Blessed is 
 the coming kingdom of our father David." 1 
 
 In spite of its ultimate idealization, the institu- 
 tion of monarchy in Israel was not without its 
 critics. To the conservative, to whom all new 
 things were an abomination, it belonged to the 
 condemned category. It was a mark of civiliza- 
 tion, and in the conflict of cultures that we have 
 described it shared something of the stigma that, 
 in the eyes of one party, attached to every alien 
 institution. There is little doubt that the old 
 tribal and local independence was still jealously 
 prized by the former bedouin, and that the petty 
 sheiks looked askance upon their loss of sover- 
 eignty. 
 
 The economic burdens of royalty aroused more 
 general opposition. In Samuel's description of 
 the "manner of the king" (I Sam. 8:11-18), an 
 unknown writer has presented, presumably from 
 experience, the methods of regal expropriation 
 which were current in any developed kingdom. 
 There was confiscation of all kinds of property, 
 including children and servants. A still more de- 
 tailed description is given in the customs of Solo- 
 mon, with his conscription for war, his corvee for 
 his royal buildings, and his system of universal 
 taxation for the support of an expensive court 
 and harem. It was the fear of this burden which 
 * Mark 11:10. 
 
78 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 at Solomon's death estranged the hearts of Israel 
 from the house of David; and it was this, too, 
 which together, perhaps, with provincial jealousy 
 and the backing of Egyptian support, gave to 
 Jeroboam, Solomon's former superintendent of 
 the forced labor, the majority leadership. The 
 prophets Ahijah and Shemaiah favored this dem- 
 ocratic revolt. Later Elijah appears in the same 
 role of proletarian spokesman and sympathizer 
 against the tyranny of royalty and its secret 
 crimes, and as the original instigator of another 
 revolt. The same complaints against the luxury 
 and oppression of kings and nobles appear in the" 
 sermons of the "writing" prophets. Amos and 
 Isaiah arraign particularly the oppressive extrav- 
 agance of the women. And in the same spirit 
 the Book of Deuteronomy advises sumptuary re- 
 strictions for the king. 
 
 The same writer, no doubt depending upon 
 some bitter experience, warns equally against the 
 multiplication of wive^ and the multiplication of 
 horses from Egypt. Here, also, his motive may 
 have been considerations of expense, but more 
 likely his fear was the entangling alliances which 
 threatened Israel through these royal associations. 
 To these two causes the historians of the mon- 
 archy attributed much of the idolatrous and de- 
 nationalizing influence of the kings. The inter- 
 national marriages of Solomon and Ahab seemed 
 serious causes of religious apostasy, while the po- 
 
MONARCHY AND THEOCRACY 79 
 
 litical and military alliances, which such mar- 
 riages usually ratified, were looked upon as acts 
 of infidelity and lack of faith toward Jehovah. 
 It is for such reasons as these that Hosea in the 
 years of anarchy before the fall of Samaria speaks 
 so vigorously against the kings and princes: 
 
 "Where is thy king now? that he may save thee, 
 Or all thy princes? that they may rule thee; 
 Those of whom thou hast said, 
 Give me a king and princes. 
 Aye, I give thee a king in mine anger, 
 And I take him away in my wrath 1" * 
 
 It is also from this point of view that we should 
 understand the opposition to the monarchy ex- 
 pressed in one of the narratives of the election of 
 Saul. Beside the older and more primitive ac- 
 count in I Sam. 9:1-10:16 in which the .king- 
 ship has the approval of God and of his prophet 
 Samuel, there is in chapter 8 and allied passages 
 the striking view that human royalty is a usurpa- 
 tion of the function of God. To the prophet 
 Jehovah says concerning the people's request for 
 a king, "They have not rejected thee but they 
 have rejected me, that I should not be a king 
 over them," and to the people he says, "Ye have 
 this day rejected your God, who. himself saveth 
 you out of all your calamities and your distresses; 
 
 1 Hosea 13:10, 11 (G. A. Smith's translation); cf. 8:4; 
 9:9; 10:9. 
 
80 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 and ye have said unto him, Nay, but set a king 
 over us ... when Jehovah your God was your 
 king" (10:19; 12:12). It is the same spirit 
 that inspires Gideon's refusal of a hereditary 
 kingship: "I will not rule over you, neither shall 
 my son rule over you: Jehovah shall rule over 
 you" (Judges 8:23). 
 
 The objection as here stated is a really remark- 
 able one. For while it is a common Semitic idea 
 to conceive of gods as kings, as Robertson Smith 
 has shown in his Religion of the Semites, it rarely, 
 if ever, elsewhere is thought of as excluding 
 anointed representatives and agents. As Pro- 
 fessor Moore has said: "It is one thing to ac- 
 knowledge Jehovah as the divine king, as Isaiah, 
 for example, does, and quite a different thing to 
 conclude that he cannot endure the existence of 
 a human king in Israel. This is by no means a 
 necessary theological inference; it must have had 
 a definite historical reason, such as the experience 
 of Israel in the eighth century afforded." 1 Pos- 
 sibly it was due to a literalistic interpretation of 
 the common religious metaphor, possibly it was 
 due to an inherent nomadic democracy which 
 long survived in Israel and expressed itself in 
 religious terms, but certainly it reflects the natural 
 pessimism of such periods of alternate despotism 
 and anarchy as the age of Hosea. 
 
 To this unusual standpoint is largely due the 
 1 Judges, p. 230. 
 
MONARCHY AND THEOCRACY 81 
 
 common misuse of the convenient term theoc- 
 racy. As often defined, theocracy is an actual 
 polity of government in which all human king- 
 ship is excluded. Thus in Hebrew history it 
 has been applied to either the premonarchic or 
 the postmonarchic era. It was customary, in 
 former times, for example, to assign the term to 
 the age of Moses and the judges. The Mosaic 
 constitution was distinguished, we are told, from 
 all others in being "so arranged that all the 
 organs of government were without any indepen- 
 dent powers, and had simply to announce and 
 to execute the will of God as declared by priests 
 and prophets or reduced to writing as a code of 
 Laws." The period from Moses to Samuel, be- 
 cause of the lack of human organization, "was a 
 time of continual and direct dependence on the 
 help of God alone, with no regular means of gov- 
 ernment, or law, or army, or king." l Accord- 
 ingly the age of Samuel meant a distinct transi- 
 tion not from anarchy to order, but from the 
 theocratic to the human type of government. 
 
 Recent scholars, however, do not accept this 
 view as more than the merest romance of later 
 Hebrew thought, and they are more likely to 
 apply the term theocracy to the period following 
 the monarchy. To them theocracy means the 
 
 1 Kautzsch, "Religion of Israel," in Hastings' Dictionary of 
 the Bibk, V. 630a; Stanley, History of the Jewish Church, 
 Lect. 18. 
 
82 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 supremacy of the church over the state a hieroc- 
 racy or control of government by the priesthood 
 and this consummation certainly can have been 
 achieved only after the exile. The term then is 
 applied to the latest rather than the earliest period 
 of Israel. It is from this later view-point that 
 they explain not only the condemnation of human 
 monarchy in the election of Saul, but also the 
 prominence of divine leadership in the late nar- 
 ratives of the Hexateuch and Judges. 
 
 But the ideal of divine sovereignty certainly 
 was not limited in Israel to the extreme view 
 which made all human monarchy irreconcilable 
 in principle with the kingship of God. It was a 
 fundamental and permeating influence in all their 
 political life. And so the word theocracy cer- 
 tainly deserves wider scope. Even Josephus, 
 who apparently coined the word, though he con- 
 trasts the Hebrew constitution with the various 
 usual forms of government monarchies, oligar- 
 chies, democracies and declares, "Our lawgiver 
 gave attention to none of these, but ordained our 
 government to be what, by a strained expression, 
 may be termed a theocracy, ascribing the sov- 
 ereignty and authority to God," 1 nevertheless 
 does not condemn the monarchy as unconstitutional 
 or incongruous, nor hesitate to refer to his nation, 
 in both Mosaic and postexilic times, as an oli- 
 garchy or aristocracy. And while we would not 
 quarrel over terms, yet it may be desirable to 
 1 C. Apion, ii, 16. 
 
MONARCHY AND THEOCRACY 83 
 
 limit theocracy neither to the sacerdotal polity of 
 the later Levitical legislation, nor to the earlier 
 prophetic picture of a more direct divine leader- 
 ship, but to designate under that name the in- 
 dubitably historical impression, retained by the 
 Hebrews from their earliest Semitic beginnings 
 through all the changes of internal organization 
 and international relationship, that their national 
 life in all its forms was a supreme concern of 
 Jehovah. 
 
 In its simplest sense this theocracy was the 
 personal relationship between the individual citi- 
 zen and the national God. Religion and govern- 
 ment in the primitive society were, both of them, 
 democratic and unofficial. In ritual each man 
 was his own priest, in law each man was his own 
 judge at least, each minor sheik or local judge. 
 In both religion and government these ideals long 
 persisted, as is shown by the lay character of 
 Hebrew prophecy in its most spontaneous forms, 
 and by the frequent democratic leadership in 
 politics and reform. As an ideal it found expres- 
 sion as "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation," 
 in which no man should need to teach his neigh- 
 bor, saying, "Know Jehovah," but all should 
 know him, from the least unto the greatest. 
 Even the most developed form of Levitical piety 
 laid the burden of religious duty on each individ- 
 ual. Thus in all his acts the citizen was su- 
 premely responsible to " God, the invisible King." 
 
84 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 But the visible political or priestly organiza- 
 tions were to few minds in real conflict either 
 with the divine supremacy or with the individual 
 responsibility. Both the king and the priest are 
 the anointed servants and agents of God. They 
 are the interpreters of his will and the representa- 
 tives of his rule. They do not interfere either 
 with the immediate personal duties, both religious 
 and patriotic, of men to God, or with the direct 
 authority of God himself over national life. Even 
 the kingship as an institution is not the denial 
 but the expression of the theocratic idea: "the 
 kingdom of Jehovah in the hand of the sons of 
 David," a priestly writer still calls it (II Chron. 
 13:8). The kings do not infringe upon the 
 royal rights of God; they already enjoy, on con- 
 dition of good behavior at least, a little of the 
 divine right of kings. The real conflict of sov- 
 ereignties, if any is to be thought of, is between 
 the king and the religious representatives of God. 
 Certainly this is the subject that bulks most 
 large in our records, coming as they do primarily 
 from prophetic or priestly sources. It is not a 
 conflict of church and state in the later sense, but 
 merely the insistence that the religious ideals 
 should be supreme. In the story of Saul's rejec- 
 tion we see something of the theocratic indig- 
 nation at the disobedience of the king to the 
 commands of the priest-prophet Samuel. And 
 throughout the story of the monarchies there 
 
MONARCHY AND THEOCRACY 85 
 
 recurs, as we shall see, 1 the same ideal in which 
 an unofficial prophetic leadership is the effective 
 power behind the throne. 
 
 Of all the functions of government none seemed 
 more exclusively divine than law. No provision 
 was ever made in Hebrew society for conscious 
 legislation. Law was custom derived and devel- 
 oped from an unknown past, and this obscurity 
 of origin by a primitive naivet6 was equivalent to 
 divinity of origin. Hence the body of law, oral 
 and, later, written, enjoyed a greater sacredness 
 as time went on than either the executive or the 
 judicial branch of the government. Already in 
 Deuteronomy kings and judges are only students 
 and interpreters of the law. In Ezekiel the 
 king is only a "prince" with somewhat cur- 
 tailed functions. In the later Levitical move- 
 ment the supremacy of the law reaches its cul- 
 mination. Here the priest and scribe largely 
 take the place of the king and judge, or at least 
 take place beside them, as the priestly document 
 adds Aaron to Moses. The transition is, how- 
 ever, only gradual. Possibly a double headship 
 of church and state is contemplated for a time. 
 The two olive-branches of Zechariah represent 
 Zerubbabel, the Davidic prince, and Joshua, the 
 high priest. It may be that in the text of Zech- 
 ariah or its corruptions, and in the story of Aaron's 
 apostasy, we see suggestions of unknown rivalries 
 1 Chapter XVI. 
 
86 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 in this difficult division of authority. But finally 
 the kingship disappears in favor of the hierarchy, 
 whether through preference for the latter, or 
 merely as the making of a virtue out of necessity 
 when loss of independence prevented the titles if 
 not the substance of local self-government. The 
 nation gave place to a church. More and more 
 the priesthood included the real leadership. 1^ he 
 insignia of monarchy the purple and the diadem 
 became the high priest's prerogative. Even 
 the Maccabees, though they could no more claim 
 descent from Aaron than from David, preferred 
 the priestly to the royal titles, exercising, how- 
 ever, all civil as well as ecclesiastical authority. 
 
 With the disappearance of the actual mon- 
 archy the royal hopes of the house of David be- 
 came gradually the expression of a distant and 
 difficult ideal. The illegal assumption of royalty 
 by the later Hasmoneans and the Idumean Herods 
 only made more intense the longing for a true 
 Davidic kingdom. This coming monarch the 
 real anointed one (that is, Messiah or Christ), 
 gives his name to the whole political idealism of 
 later Judaism. He appears in the royal psalms 
 of the exilic psalter, 1 the echo of the earlier 
 monarchy, in the Pharisaic Psalms of Solomon in 
 the age of Roman conquest, and in the apoca- 
 lyptic and devotional literature of late Judaism. 
 So, at least in the future, monarchy and theocracy 
 iE. g., Psalms 2, 20, 21, 72, 101, 110. 
 
MONARCHY AND THEOCRACY 87 
 
 merge, and without difficulty or distinction men 
 could speak of the kingdom of God and the king- 
 dom of his anointed. Between God and his 
 agent perfect agreement of will and character 
 were to exist. From these political ideals of 
 Judaism there came to Christianity not only the 
 terms "Christ" and "kingdom of God," but the 
 natural identification or confusion of the two royal 
 personages, God and Messiah. From the same 
 fruitful source of political idealism Christianity 
 derived the democracy of direct universal indi- 
 vidual responsibility to God and nation, and the 
 theocratic ideal of organized society, expressing 
 perfectly the will of God when "the kingdom of 
 the world is become the kingdom of our Lord 
 and of his Christ." 1 
 
 i Rev. 11:15. 
 
RADICALS AND REFORMERS 
 
 IT is convenient to mention, in connection with 
 the great national institutions with which our 
 last two chapters have dealt, a phenomenon, 
 which, contrary to common opinion, probably 
 exercises more influence on the history of nations 
 than either war or government. I speak of this 
 factor as a phenomenon, for it is impossible to 
 call national reformers an institution. Sponta- 
 neity is their chief ear-mark; organization tends 
 to destroy them, or at least while it embodies 
 their ideals, it does not create or foster their pro- 
 gressive spirit. But alongside of any organiza- 
 tion there exists often this ferment of correction 
 and reform, the sporadic and yet timely leadership 
 of rebel spirits and idealists. 
 
 The phenomenon in Hebrew history which 
 answers this description is prophecy. It is no 
 Ipnger necessary to teach the well-informed Bible 
 student that the prophets of Israel were not pri- 
 marily theologians nor predicters of the Messiah. 
 They were the stirring social preachers of their 
 age, the watchmen of their people's moral security, 
 the creators of the new ideals of the nation, and 
 
 88. 
 
RADICALS AND REFORMERS 89 
 
 the harbingers of the kingdom of God. It is to 
 them and to the ideals for which they stood that 
 Israel owes all that raised it from the level of 
 its neighbors whether in religion, morality, or 
 national ideals. 
 
 Even prophecy itself, though it was the lever 
 of a noteworthy development, illustrates the de- 
 velopmental character of all elements of national 
 life. It began apparently in those groups of 
 devotees and frantic enthusiasts whom the Bible 
 calls "the sons of the prophets," and whom it 
 reveals by occasional hints in a somewhat lurid 
 and unpromising light. In many different lines 
 one can readily trace the evolution of the great 
 prophets from their cruder beginnings. 
 
 In the first place, the "sons of the prophets" 
 were evidently conservatives. They were the 
 champions of the old order and "the old-time 
 religion." Their communism, their dress and 
 appearance, their religion of emotion, all suggest 
 the desert origin like that of the modern dervish. 
 Amos groups them with the Nazirites (2:11), 
 the well-known conservatives. The career of Eli- 
 jah illustrates this adherence to the nomadic cul- 
 ture. The later prophets inherited many of the 
 same archaic characteristics. The personal asceti- 
 cism and the weird boldness continue down to 
 John the Baptist. The prophets were rarely the 
 conscious exponents of novelty. On the con- 
 trary, their opposition to luxury, to religious syn- 
 
90 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 cretism, and even to ritual was largely based on 
 their ideal of the past. They were often the 
 champions of ancient democratic liberties, as the 
 right of peasants to their inheritance, the right 
 of free speech and of fair trial. But they appear 
 to have been the only people in Israel whose con- 
 servatism was not of the letter but of the spirit, 
 and who translated the time-honored principles of 
 religion and morality to meet the new circum- 
 stances of their day. They lived at a time when 
 the rise of Assyria had brought to the Hebrews a 
 much wider political horizon, and when the devel- 
 opment of civilization had produced new and 
 acute problems in the social order. And they 
 met these changes with an insight into underlying 
 principles that was so profound that they ap- 
 peared to be iconoclasts and radicals. They op- 
 posed the laissez-faire policy of society and poli- 
 tics, drifting on new and unsuspected currents 
 toward unspiritual crystallization. They were al- 
 ways men before their time, respected in later 
 generations but persecuted in their own. They 
 were always members of that uncomfortable 
 minority which, contrary to the assumption of 
 majority rule, is more often right than wrong. 
 Not infrequently they came into open conflict 
 with the king and court. They were leaders of 
 his Majesty's opposition. To Ahab Elijah was 
 an "enemy" or "troubler of Israel," and Micaiah 
 an object of hate (I Kings 18:17; 21:20; 22:8). 
 
RADICALS AND REFORMERS 91 
 
 Even where kings avoided violence to the prophets 
 their restraints were more often due to supersti- 
 tious fear than to motives of agreement or prin- 
 ciples of toleration. They were popularly re- 
 garded as disturbers of the peace, as the foment- 
 ers of revolution, or as scourges by whom God 
 "hewed" the people, and whose words the land 
 could not bear (Hosea 6:5; Amos 7:10). It 
 can hardly be doubted that this estimate had 
 considerable basis. As for domestic policy our 
 records make it clear that the prophets took an 
 active part in the revolutions of Jeroboam and of 
 Jehu, while their constant predictions of doom 
 to kings or dynasties were perhaps rightly con- 
 strued as threats and agitation that would lead 
 to the overthrow of the reigning monarchs. In 
 their foreign policy the prophets seemed equally 
 injurious to the strength of national life. They 
 were no doctrinaire pacifists, but they so fre- 
 quently opposed the military ambitions of the 
 aristocracy, not only in wars of aggression but 
 also in wars for reconquest or even defense, that 
 they appeared to have no concern for the political 
 welfare of the state or even for its independence. 
 What has been said of Elijah may in a, sense be 
 transferred to them all: 
 
 The work of Elijah foreshadows that of the prophets 
 of Judah, who in like manner had no small part in 
 breaking up the political life of the kingdom. The 
 prophets were never patriots of the common stamp, to 
 
92 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 whom national interests stand higher than the abso- 
 lute claims of religion and morality. 
 
 Had Elijah been merely a patriot to whom the state 
 stood above every other consideration, he would have 
 condoned the faults of a king who did so much for the 
 greatness of a nation; but the things for which Elijah 
 contended were of far more worth than the national 
 existence of Israel, and it is a higher wisdom than that 
 of patriotism, which insists that divine truth and civil 
 righteousness are more than all the counsels of state- 
 craft. Judged from a merely political point of view, 
 Elijah's work had no other result than to open a way 
 for the bloody and unscrupulous ambition of Jehu, and 
 lay bare the frontiers of the land to the ravages of 
 the ferocious Hazael. 1 
 
 In the second place, Hebrew prophecy broke 
 with the institutions of religion as well as of poli- 
 tics. But to make this plain one must carefully 
 distinguish between two uses of the term prophecy. 
 On the one hand there are those roving bands 
 that first meet us in the days of Saul "the sons 
 of the prophets/' who became later a regular 
 guild. On the other hand, there are a series of 
 national leaders whom men call "the prophets" 
 par excellence. They differed from the guild 
 prophets in their greater spontaneity, and in the 
 extraordinary moral and intellectual power which 
 they displayed. They were by nature too inde- 
 pendent to be organized; they spoke in "divers 
 portions and in divers manners"; they were mostly 
 
 i W. R. Smith, The Prophets of Israel, p. 78. 
 
RADICALS AND REFORMERS 93 
 
 without much conscious fellowship, except with 
 God and with like-minded men of the past. It is 
 difficult, therefore, to fix the time or manner of 
 their origin. It was easy to read the ideal back 
 to Moses and the founding of the nation, as Deu- 
 teronomy did, or even to the beginnings of the 
 world with the author of Acts. If, however, fol- 
 lowing another suggestion of the same writer, 1 
 Samuel is chosen as the first prophet, then we 
 shall be able to assign to one and the same era 
 not only the first signs of kingship and of the 
 institution of prophecy, but also the beginning of 
 the uninstitutionalized leadership. 
 
 At first the connection between tne two kinds 
 of prophecy was intimate. Samuel himself, 
 though he was brought up as a priest, and was 
 called a seer, as well as the last of the judges, was 
 closely associated with the sons of the prophets, 
 though in the perspective of history he rises above 
 them by his individuality. Like him, also, Elijah 
 and Elisha are represented as leaders of the 
 prophetic guild. But from that time on the gulf 
 between the individual prophet and the prophetic 
 institution was a constantly widening one. Amos 
 carefully differentiated himself from the prophets, 
 and they became one of the chief obstacles of 
 other prophets. Perhaps the divergence was due 
 to changes on both sides. The guilds of the 
 prophets were an organization, and as such nat- 
 *Acts 3:24, contrast 3:21, Luke 1:70. 
 
94 - NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 urally became more and more associated with 
 other organizations. They were from the first 
 aligned with kings and priests. They became an 
 appendage of the court, maintained at royal ex- 
 pense. They were, therefore, no longer indepen- 
 dent of popular or official opinion. They were 
 accused of prophesying only for hire and only to 
 suit the wishes of the king or people. They 
 shared the drunkenness, luxury, and immorality 
 of the court. There are several incidents which 
 confirm this impression of their mercenary and 
 servile character. The individual prophet, on the 
 other hand, was, as we have said, essentially spon- 
 taneous. He was a layman, especially called for 
 a purpose; he was too independent to be organ- 
 ized. And while a spiritual kinship connects all 
 the prophets of all generations, a kinship which 
 Jesus and even some of the prophets themselves 
 were conscious of sharing, it was not always evi- 
 dent to their contemporaries who persecuted and 
 despitefully used them, while building the tombs 
 of their honored predecessors. In his own day 
 the prophet was the lonely critic of the very insti- 
 tution which should have been his home. When 
 he came to his own his own received him not. 
 
 Even more clear was the opposition between 
 prophet and priest not as though two rival in- 
 stitutions or classes were consciously opposing 
 each other, but because there was between the 
 two groups an inherent unlikeness of tempera- 
 
RADICALS AND REFORMERS 95 
 
 ment. The difference between the formalist and 
 the mystic, between the ecclesiastic and the 
 spiritual reformer, between the Pharisees and 
 Jesus, is a psychological contrast too familiar to 
 need definition. There is usually an element of 
 misunderstanding on each side. The priest seems 
 too confident of his ritual, and too indifferent to 
 morality and inward religion. The prophet of- 
 fends him as destructive and iconoclastic. Cer- 
 tain it is that the Hebrew prophets during their 
 prime attacked the formal sacrifices with as much 
 violence as they did the sheerest idolatry and 
 heathenism. From Amos through the Psalter 
 there runs an antisacrificial note, in spite of the 
 apparently mediating work of Ezekiel and Deu- 
 teronomy. Justice is contrasted with oblations, 
 loving-kindness with sacrifice, moral cleansing 
 with prayers and Sabbaths, charity with formal 
 fasts. By such arraignments and odious com- 
 parisons, and even more vigorously by their em- 
 phasis on the revolutionary implications of their 
 awakened social conscience, the prophets won in 
 religion as well as in politics the name of radicals 
 and heretics. 
 
 But the growth from humble beginnings is 
 shown by the positive as well as the negative ele- 
 ments in prophecy. From its earliest form proph- 
 ecy was a zeal for the national Jehovah. "I have 
 been very jealous for Jehovah, the God of hosts/' 
 was the claim of Elijah. And this religious basis 
 
96 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 was never lacking in the true prophets. But the 
 expression of religion was completely transformed. 
 Instead of the mantic and divination of the seer, 
 and instead of the ecstatic frenzy of the sons of 
 the prophets, the word of God came to them in 
 forms of religious insight and moral definiteness 
 that have stood the tests of long time. Of course 
 the primitive and crude were not easily removed. 
 Their treasure was in earthen vessels: 
 
 "For every fiery prophet in old times, 
 And all the sacred madness of the bard, 
 When God made music through them, could but 
 
 speak 
 His music by the framework and the chord." 
 
 But the old fire of genuine inspiration was largely 
 refined and enlarged. Religion was translated 
 into social and ethical values. There was in the 
 divine call a more urgent sense of duty to the 
 nation, as of a watchman who must warn his 
 countrymen, whether they will hear or whether 
 they will forbear. There was in it, also, the more 
 moving power of personal relation to God. From 
 this individual religion and this social conscience 
 was born not a patriotism of the vulgar type, but 
 the purest love for a wayward nation, like the 
 love of God. Perhaps even the earliest prophetic 
 movement was kindled by great national devotion 
 at military crises the raids and invasions of the 
 Philistines in the days of Samuel. But "the 
 
RADICALS AND REFORMERS 97 
 
 patriotic enthusiasm of the uprising against Philis- 
 tine domination began to lift the prophets clear 
 of the function and the magical implements of 
 soothsaying. . . . Their predictions henceforth 
 were national in scope and based on fundamental 
 moral laws and convictions. Thus patriotism was 
 the emancipating power which set the feet of the 
 prophetic order on that new and higher path 
 which was destined to lift them far above the 
 soothsayers of other nations with whom they 
 started on a common level. That religious pas- 
 sion which had turned against a foreign invader 
 was equally ready to turn against the domestic 
 oppressors of the people." 1 
 
 This sense of religious conviction is not to be 
 obscured by all we have said of their political and 
 economic and ecclesiastical policy. Fundamen- 
 tally they had no policy at all. In all these 
 realms they were neither theorists nor executives, 
 but voices of protest and reform. To their oppo- 
 nents they seemed often to be dealing with these 
 subjects on the same plane as their own, to be 
 representatives merely of another party or class 
 or creed. But this was scarcely the case. 
 
 The prominence which the prophets assign to social 
 grievances and civil disorders has often led to their 
 being described as politicians, a democratic Opposition 
 in the aristocratic state. This is a total misconcep- 
 tion. The prophets of the eighth century have no 
 
 1 Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis, pp. 23 /. 
 
98 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 new theories of government, and propose no practical 
 scheme of political readjustment. They are the friends 
 of the poor because they hate oppression, and they 
 attack the governing classes for their selfishness and 
 injustice; but their cry is not for better institutions but 
 for better men, not for the abolition of aristocratic 
 privileges but for an honest and godly use of them. 
 The work of the prophets is purely religious. . . . 
 But to the prophets the observance of justice and 
 mercy in the State are the first elements of religion. 1 
 
 It was only by resolutely maintaining this adhe- 
 rence to principles rather than to parties or plat- 
 forms that the prophets were able to retain for 
 so many centuries the spirit of spontaneity and 
 the actual constructive leadership in the na- 
 tion. 
 
 And it is the same quality a neutrality toward 
 parties and an insistence on principles that gave 
 the prophets an aloofness even from national par- 
 tisanship and an almost international view-point. 
 Gradually and incompletely, yet in striking de- 
 gree, the prophets surpassed even the claims of 
 patriotism. As a god of justice, Jehovah seemed 
 to them superior to national prejudices and par- 
 tisanship. He was no respecter of persons. His 
 covenant was not a preferential treaty. By their 
 own superpatriotism the prophets contributed to 
 a supernational religion. Frequently, as we have 
 said, this neutrality appeared in the eyes of their 
 
 1 W. R. Smith, The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, 
 second ed., p. 348. 
 
RADICALS AND REFORMERS 99 
 
 opponents as nothing less than rank treason, but 
 as a higher loyalty it created in the prophets the 
 highest ideals of national allegiance and service. 
 It also made them more impartial judges of the 
 nations round about. It was difficult for them 
 not to share some of the racial prejudices long in- 
 stilled in their Hebrew blood and fanned by wars 
 and foreign oppression. They are not wholly free 
 from provincial chauvinism. Yet Amos could 
 realize the equivalence of Israel's guilt to that of 
 her foes, Isaiah could recognize the Assyrian em- 
 pire as God's tool and agent, while to a Jewish 
 contemporary Cyrus the Persian assumed the 
 position of a real though unconscious Messiah. 1 
 
 Indeed, some of the most illuminating side- 
 lights on the national ideals of the prophets are 
 their oracles on foreign nations. The material is 
 abundant. Besides the judgment of Obadiah upon 
 Edom, of Nahum on Nineveh, and of Habakkuk 
 on the Chaldeans, a considerable section in each 
 of the major prophets is a collection of similar 
 prophecies. 2 It is true that in most cases the ver- 
 dict is unfavorable, but the prophets' reason is 
 not merely Hebrew patriotism or hatred; it is not 
 even religious intolerance; it is the fundamentally 
 immoral and antisocial national vices in their 
 neighbors or masters, like the commercialism of 
 Tyre, or the arrogant militarism of Assyria, 
 
 1 Amos 1, 2; Isaiah 10:5#.; 45:1. 
 
 2 Isaiah 13-23; Jer. 46-51; Ezek. 25-32. 
 
X 
 
 100 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 which, no more and no less than in their own 
 nation, seemed to these Hebrew spectators the 
 sure promise of Divine judgment. 
 
XI 
 
 RUTHLESSNESS ABROAD AND AT HOME 
 
 PREACHING is so regular a part of modern wor- 
 ship that we are apt to forget that it is a compara- 
 tive innovation. The earliest religion consisted 
 in prayer and sacrifice and had no place for ex- 
 hortation. The modern sermon apparently is to 
 be traced back for its origin to the movement 
 called Hebrew prophecy. Out of the obscurity 
 of primitive religion, out of the formalism of 
 ritual worship, there emerged in Israel a series of 
 inspired teachers or preachers, who spoke directly 
 to the men of their day, rebuking them for sin 
 and pointing the way to national reform. They 
 were an early "Mission of National Repentance 
 and Hope." The names of most of them are for- 
 gotten and many of their sermons are lost. But 
 in four large volumes their literary remains have 
 been collected and preserved Isaiah, Jeremiah, 
 Ezekiel, and the Twelve. 
 
 By general consent the oldest of these so-called 
 "writing prophets" is Amos, the herdsman of 
 Tekoa. He lived in the silver age of Jeroboam's 
 kingdom, under Jeroboam the Second. The land 
 of Palestine the Belgium of antiquity though 
 ringed about with enemy nations great and small, 
 was enjoying temporary peace and prosperity 
 101 
 
IDEALS 
 
 prior to the bursting of the great Assyrian storm. 
 The northern kingdom, through two centuries of 
 independence, had acquired some sense of na- 
 tional pride or at least a strong national antipathy 
 to the inveterate foes that surrounded it. For a 
 hundred years the strong house of Jehu, by suc- 
 cessful wars and diplomacy, had not merely 
 avoided civil war and anarchy and held its king- 
 dom intact, but had even enlarged its borders, 
 extended its commerce, and enriched its nobles 
 and merchants. 
 
 To Bethel, the religious centre of the kingdom, 
 came the Judean peasant, Amos. His first words 
 were well calculated to win the approval of his 
 hearers. In turn he mentioned the chief foes of 
 Israel, he rehearsed their outrages on justice and 
 international law, and promised for them a terrible 
 destruction. 
 
 Thus saith Jehovah: For three transgressions of 
 Damascus, yea, for four, I will not turn away the 
 punishment thereof; because they have threshed Gilead 
 with threshing instruments of iron. But I will send a 
 fire into the house of Hazael, and it shall devour the 
 palaces of Ben-hadad. And I will break the bar of 
 Damascus, and cut off the inhabitant from the valley 
 of Aven, and him that holdeth the sceptre from the 
 house of Eden; and the people of Syria shall go into 
 captivity unto Kir, saith Jehovah (Amos 1:3-5). 
 i 
 
 One by one with repeated refrain the surround- 
 ing nations are condemned. Gaza, the next to be 
 
RUTHLESSNESS 103 
 
 mentioned, represents the old Philistine alliance 
 that had fought so stubbornly with Saul and 
 David for the control of Canaan. "For three 
 transgressions of Gaza, yea, for four, I will not 
 turn away the punishment thereof; because they 
 carried away captive the whole people, to deliver 
 them up to Edom." And so Amos swings around 
 the circle, mentioning the charge against each 
 offender and threatening a suitable doom. Tyre 
 is guilty because it had "remembered not the 
 covenant of brothers"; Edom, "because he did 
 pursue his brother with the sword, and did cast 
 off all pity, and his anger did tear perpetually, 
 and he kept his wrath for ever"; the children of 
 Ammon, " because they have ripped up the women 
 with child of Gilead, that they may enlarge their 
 border." 
 
 Very modern is this series of atrocities which 
 Israel had suffered at the hands of its neighbors 
 the iron flail of Syrian conquest in Gilead, whole- 
 sale deportations of the population by Gaza and 
 Tyre, treating as scraps of paper the treaties of 
 peace, relentless, military ruthlessness, gruesome 
 mutilation of non-combatants for the sake of 
 aggressive imperialism, and the blighting of lives 
 unborn. One can readily picture the sympathy 
 and righteous indignation with which the prophet's 
 hearers applauded his pronouncement of the con- 
 demnation of God upon the frightfulness of their 
 foes. Even in cases where they were neutrals, as 
 
104 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 between Moab and Edom, the Hebrews would 
 share the prophet's horror for the Moabite vio- 
 lators of natural decency and international law 
 who had "burned the bones of the king of Edom 
 into lime/' 
 
 But suddenly a change comes over the faces 
 of the Bethelite revellers. Unexpectedly the 
 prophet brings the charge home to Israel itself. 
 With the same hammerlike refrain he begins 
 again: "For three transgressions of Israel, yea, 
 for four, I will not turn away the punishment 
 thereof." The condemnation that they had so 
 eagerly welcomed when applied to their enemies 
 is now laid upon themselves. Having burned 
 with righteous indignation at the mote in an- 
 other's eye they had failed to see the beam in 
 their own eye. They, too, were guilty of fright- 
 fulness. That is the prophet's swift and hard 
 blow upon them. 
 
 There were two specially striking equations in 
 this unexpected arraignment. Such a condemna- 
 tion of Israel would seem to those who heard not 
 merely unpleasant; it would be both unpatriotic 
 and blasphemous. They believed that they were 
 a people of special privilege and position. They 
 were the chosen of Jehovah and he was on their 
 side. Whatever they did was right and their 
 foes were the foes of God, also. This patriotic 
 assumption Amos boldly challenged. In the 
 sight of Jehovah, he declares, all nations are on 
 
RUTHLESSNESS 105 
 
 the same level. There is no place before him for 
 special pleading. Twice again Amos reverts to 
 this same theme and each time he attacks squarely 
 one of the favorite bases of national assumption. 
 Two events were evidently considered chief proofs 
 of God's special favor for Israel one in the past, 
 the deliverance from Egypt, the other in the 
 future, the day of Jehovah. No event in their 
 history was so often cited as a sign of God's choice 
 and care of Israel as the Exodus. It is constantly 
 mentioned in the Hebrew scriptures (e. g. t Amos 
 2:9, 10). Amos does not deny the hand of God 
 in this event; he merely calls attention to parallels 
 in God's favor to their enemies, the Philistines 
 and Syrians: 
 
 Are ye not as the children of the Ethiopians unto 
 me, O children of Israel? saith Jehovah. Have not I 
 brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the 
 Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir? 
 Behold the eyes of the Lord Jehovah are upon the sin- 
 ful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of 
 the earth (Amos 9:7, 8). 
 
 In similar fashion Amos corrects the prevailing 
 view of the final judgment of God. The Hebrews, 
 after the manner of national religionists, had so 
 identified their God with their own interests that 
 they had looked upon his triumph as the day of 
 their own success. They used "the day of Jeho- 
 vah" much as modern schoolboys use the term 
 
106 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 "our day," or the modern jingo uses "der Tag." 
 They did not expect God to be an international 
 neutral. Amos plainly warns them of their mis- 
 take. 
 
 Woe unto you that desire the day of Jehovah! 
 Wherefore would ye have the day of Jehovah? It is 
 darkness, and not light. As if a man did flee from a 
 lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house and 
 leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him. 
 Shall not the day of Jehovah be darkness, and not 
 light? even very dark, and no brightness in it 
 (Amos 5:18-20)? 
 
 But more novel still was the second equation of 
 Amos's sermon, for it was an equation between 
 two kinds of sin. The same refrain that so boldly 
 condemned Israel to the same punishment as its 
 heathen foes clearly associated with their enemies' 
 crimes, crimes of a different nature. The three or 
 four transgressions of their neighbors had been 
 atrocities in war and ruthless conquest. Israel's 
 past history, too, had been marked by similar 
 acts, 1 but it is not these that the prophet chooses 
 to classify with the crimes of the Syrians and the 
 Philistines. It is sins of the domestic regime, of 
 the industrial and social order at home. 
 
 Thus saith Jehovah: For three transgressions of 
 Israel, yea, for four, I will not turn away the punish- 
 ment thereof; because they have sold the righteous for 
 silver and the needy for a pair of shoes they that 
 1 E, g., II Sam. 12:29-31. 
 
RUTHLESSNESS 107 
 
 pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the 
 poor, and turn aside the way of the meek: and a man 
 and his father go unto the same maiden to profane 
 my holy name: and they lay themselves down beside 
 every altar upon clothes taken in pledge; and in the 
 house of their God they drink the wine of such as have 
 been fined (Amos 2:6-8). 
 
 Under the same condemnation as the atrocities 
 of war are the atrocities of peace; in the same 
 category with exploitation of foreign peoples is 
 the exploitation of the lower classes at home. In- 
 dustrial slavery is on the same level as political 
 slavery, and the ruthlessness of the forum and 
 the market-place is as unpardonable as that of 
 the battle-field. Repeatedly the prophet returns 
 to this theme bribery, greed, oppressive luxury, 
 violence, perversion of legal justice, monopoly, 
 false measures, adulterated food, and all die other 
 evils of a corrupt industrial order. Even though 
 these crimes are done in the name of religion and 
 under the shadow of the altar, they are none the 
 less crimes. Fair names and ideals, the formal 
 worship of God, and scrupulous observance of 
 certain religious rites, are no real cloak for injus- 
 tice and crime. 
 
 I hate, I despise your feasts, and I will take no 
 delight in your solemn assemblies. Yea, though ye 
 offer me your burnt-offerings and meal-offerings, I will 
 not accept them; neither will I regard the peace- 
 offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from 
 
108 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the mel- 
 ody of thy viols. But let justice roll down as wa- 
 ters, and righteousness as a mighty stream (Amos 5: 
 21-24). 
 
 The effects of this sermon of Amos are not ex- 
 plicitly recorded, but they are not hard to con- 
 jecture. The kingdom of Israel, we know, sur- 
 vived for only a few years. Amos himself, no 
 doubt, met the rebuffs of a true prophet. One 
 illuminating incident is told : 
 
 Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to Jero- 
 boam, king of Israel, saying, Amos hath conspired 
 against thee in the midst of the house of Israel: the 
 land is not able to bear all his words. For thus Amos 
 saith, Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel shall 
 surely be led away captive out of his land. Also Ama- 
 ziah said unto Amos, O thou seer, go, flee thou away 
 into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and 
 prophesy there: but prophesy not again any more at 
 Bethel, for it is the king's sanctuary, and it is a royal 
 house (Amos 7:10-13). 
 
 It is significant that the opposition was from 
 the official, not of the state, but of orthodox reli- 
 gion. With zeal characteristic of his class he 
 reported Amos to government headquarters as a 
 disturber of the peace, and converted unpopular 
 propaganda into constructive treason. Typical, 
 too, are his words to the prophet himself. He de- 
 sires to silence his unpatriotic moral criticism 
 or, at least, to forbid him the publicity of the 
 
RUTHLESSNESS 109 
 
 capital and to censor the sentiments which pil- 
 grims to the shrine would be likely to hear and 
 disseminate. Perhaps like many officials of reli- 
 gion since, he felt some responsibility for the sanc- 
 tuary, that it should harbor nothing "disloyal." 
 As Amaziah was true to his type, so Amos shows 
 himself the true prophet in his simple but genuine 
 reply, when, disclaiming any professional author- 
 ity, he says: "Jehovah took me from following 
 the flock, and Jehovah said unto me, Go, prophesy 
 unto my people Israel." 
 
 Twenty-five centuries have passed by since the 
 days of Amos, and the scale of things has changed. 
 Our political horizon has widened and its units 
 are no longer petty states in a restricted corner of 
 Asia, but great modern nations and alliances em- 
 bracing large sectors of the world. The guerilla 
 warfare of the toy kingdoms of Jeroboam and the 
 house of Ben-hadad has given place to the Great 
 War, and the outrages have been organized, mul- 
 tiplied, and extended. Air raids and starvation 
 blockades merely enlarge the scope of operations 
 of the iron flails of Syria and the swords of the 
 children of Ammon. Industrial life has also 
 changed its scale, and its abuses also have become 
 organized and extended. Exploitation, graft, eco- 
 nomic monopolies and injustice have become 
 wholesale rather than individual, in corporations 
 as well as in men, and in well-defined classes of 
 society. 
 
110 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 But many things have not changed with the 
 years and the earliest recorded sermon of history 
 must be preached again to-day. In international 
 affairs the same lust of conquest, the same relent- 
 less vengeance to the bitter end, the same cold 
 cruelty in the name of military necessity and 
 national interest, continue, and in the social life 
 greed, oppression, luxury, and indifference to the 
 interests of the poor. Nations still gladly con- 
 demn in other nations what they condone in their 
 own history or in their allies. They forget the 
 two equations of Amos the equality of moral 
 responsibility for all nations in the sight of God, 
 and the equivalence of economic and industrial 
 injustice to the atrocities of war. 
 
 And organized religion is still often merely the 
 ally of the government and of the industrial status 
 quo, more concerned to serve Caesar and Mammon 
 than to render "unto God the things that are 
 God's." It still shelters the self-satisfied, com- 
 fortable classes "who are at ease in Zion," but 
 "are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph/' 
 while it strives to silence moral criticism or to 
 exile into obscurity as traitors the God-sent 
 prophets who compare injustice within a nation 
 to the universally condemned sins of its foes. 
 
XII 
 
 LOYALTY, A NATIONAL MOTIVE 
 
 As one studies the prophets of Israel in the 
 light of modern times, two facts seem to emerge 
 more clearly than ever before: First, that these 
 men are speaking to a nation rather than to per- 
 sons; and, second, that each of them has a distinc- 
 tive mission and message. 
 
 The prophet Hosea illustrates these statements. 
 For Hosea the nation is the object of concern. 
 Ephraim is a unit and can be described as a whole 
 by a single designation. Its social and religious 
 conditions are national problems. Like many 
 other prophets, Hosea deals directly with the po- 
 litical questions of his day the chaotic govern- 
 ment, the inadequate public leadership, the futile 
 chauvinism and fickle diplomacy that marked the 
 decadence of the Hebrew monarchies. On the 
 other hand, in spite of the variety of his accusa- 
 tions and the extreme obscurity of his literary 
 remains Hosea evidently had a special message. 
 Living as he did a few years after Amos, and 
 dealing with conditions but slightly changed, he 
 forms in many ways the most striking contrast 
 with the shepherd of Tekoa. He is also distinct 
 from Judean prophets who followed. It is true 
 that in many elements of his message there is 
 ill 
 
112 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 nothing unique. His themes include all the com- 
 monplaces of prophecy. Many of them are more 
 clearly elaborated by others. The distinctive 
 thing about Hosea, among the great national 
 idealists of Israel, is neither in his diagnosis of 
 the nation's faults, nor in his certainty of its 
 doom, nor even, as has been often thought, in his 
 hopefulness of its repentance. It is, rather, the 
 motive to which he appeals in his plea for national 
 reform, and the analogy by which he makes his 
 motive clear. 
 
 Why, then, does Hosea challenge the nation to 
 repent? Is it for the fear of just punishment as 
 in Amos? Yes, Hosea threatens punishment, 
 though it is doubtful whether he thought that 
 punishment could be averted. Is it for hope of 
 reward ? Yes, but the promises of restoration are 
 no more vivid or authentic in Hosea than in some 
 at least of the other prophets. No, the appeal of 
 Hosea beyond these common and somewhat mer- 
 cenary motives is the appeal to national loyalty. 
 This is not the loyalty of the citizen to the state, 
 nor of the state to its own self-interest, but the 
 loyalty of the whole nation to what might be 
 expected of it from the highest outside moral 
 view-point. In religious terms Hosea' s appeal 
 was for a response to the love of God. 
 
 On its religious side the emphasis of Hosea upon 
 love has long been recognized. The fact is fa- 
 miliar to theologians that, as Amos had taught 
 
LOYALTY 113 
 
 the impartial justice of God, Hosea manifested 
 his persistent love. Hosea, therefore, anticipates 
 the gracious good news of the greater Galilean. 
 He discloses the sorrow of God's loving heart over 
 the waywardness of his prodigal child, Israel, and 
 his love that "never faileth" nor lets go. 
 
 "How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? 
 How shall I cast thee off, Israel ? 
 How shall I make thee as Admah ? 
 How shall I set thee as Zeboiim ? 
 My heart is turned within me, 
 My compassions are kindled together. 
 I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, 
 I will not return to destroy Ephraim: 
 For I am God, and not man; 
 The Holy One in the midst of thee; 
 And I will not come in wrath (11:8, 9)." 
 
 Such love is the superhuman trait of the divine. 
 The distinction between God and man is in lov- 
 ing-kindness and tender mercies. 
 
 This love of God for Israel is beautifully por- 
 trayed in the poet's memories of Israel's past. 
 History is the gracious story of divine redemp- 
 tion. The nation is the living epistle, the monu- 
 ment of God's care surpassing his care for the 
 birds and the flowers of Galilee. "In a series of 
 lovely images Hosea pictures the beauty of Israel's 
 childhood and youth. As 'grapes in the wilder- 
 ness' Jehovah had found them; as 'first ripe 
 figs' He saw their fathers. ... As a flock of 
 
114 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 docile sheep He 'tended' her in the desert, 
 'through a land of burning drought/ Even as 
 a son He loved her, and called her unto Him 
 from Egypt, took her in His arms, and healed her 
 little sores, taught her to walk and drew her on 
 'with leading-strings of love/" l But Israel had 
 not responded to this love. Like a faithless wife 
 she had followed other lovers, and had forsaken 
 her own God. 
 
 But the love of God for Israel was revealed to 
 Hosea even more clearly in a personal experience. 
 His wife, whom he loved, had proved unfaithful 
 to him. Her children were not his children: 
 Loammi, "no kin of mine," he calls one of them. 
 She strayed away from him until she fell into 
 slavery. But Hosea found in himself an impulse, 
 which seemed to him like a call to God, still to 
 love this woman. He redeemed her from slavery, 
 and appealed to her again with the wooing love 
 of their first romance. All this was a lesson of 
 the sorrow and love of God. By a device not 
 uncommon in the Semitic world the nation is per- 
 sonified. It carries a man's name, like Israel, 
 Ephraim, or Jacob. Its history is like a biogra- 
 phy. Its relation to God is described, as in all reli- 
 gion, in human analogies. Many personal met- 
 aphors are used. God is the nation's king (melek), 
 its uncle, its father, its husband (baal). The na- 
 tion is his servant, his son, or his bride. All these 
 1 Gordon, The Prophets of Israel, pp. 70 /. 
 
LOYALTY 115 
 
 occur in the Old Testament. Hosea, as we have 
 already seen, spoke of Israel as the son of God. 
 But it is the last figure that suits best his own 
 emotion and experience. 
 
 The idea of a nation as her god's bride was a 
 natural one among the Semites, but it was a 
 metaphor peculiarly fraught with dangers. For 
 not all human relations are ideal, and only the 
 more spiritual ones are fit expressions of the 
 divine. 
 
 By the neighbors of Israel the marriage of a god to 
 his people was conceived with a grossness of feeling 
 and illustrated by a foulness of ritual which thoroughly 
 demoralized the people, affording, as they did, to licen- 
 tiousness the example and sanction of religion. So 
 debased had the idea become, and so full of temptation 
 to the Hebrews were the forms in which it was illus- 
 trated among their neighbors, that the religion of 
 Israel might justly have been praised for achieving a 
 great moral victory in excluding the figure altogether 
 from its system. But the prophets of Jehovah dared 
 the heavier task of retaining the idea of religious mar- 
 riage, and won the diviner triumph of purifying and 
 elevating it. It was, indeed, a new creation. Every 
 physical suggestion was banished, and the relation was 
 conceived as purely moral. Yet it was never refined 
 to a mere form or abstraction. The prophets fear- 
 lessly expressed it in the wannest and most familiar 
 terms of the love of man and woman. 1 
 
 This assertion applies pre-eminently to Hosea, 
 for the metaphor came from his own heart, with 
 1 G. A. Smith, The Book of Isaiah, II, p. 399. 
 
116 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 its pure, yearning, unsatisfied affection. God's 
 words to Israel are like a love-song: 
 
 "Therefore, lo! I will allure her, 
 
 And will lead her to the desert, and will speak to 
 
 her heart; 
 And I will give her back her vineyards, 
 
 And will make the valley of Achor a door of hope. 
 And she shall respond to me there as in the days of 
 
 her youth, 
 Even the day that I brought her up from the land 
 
 of Egypt; 
 
 And I will betroth her to me in love and com- 
 passion, 
 
 And I will betroth her to me in truth and the knowl- 
 edge of Jehovah (2:14-17, Gordon). 
 
 Such is Hosea's message that "God is love." 
 And yet his purpose is not simply the revelation 
 of God, and our interest in the Godlike sufferings 
 of Hosea or in the nature of God must not obscure 
 the fact that Hosea's purpose was an appeal to 
 the nation. The question is not, How does God 
 feel? but, What is the nation's response? The 
 Book of Hosea is a supreme challenge to the higher 
 ideals of his people in the light of the love of God. 
 It is to awaken them to the moral implications of 
 their history and to the compelling power of 
 noble ideals which are comparable to the pursuant 
 love of a true lover. And here, as elsewhere, the 
 comparison with Amos is obvious. Amos had 
 spoken of God's justice, and had demanded jus- 
 
LOYALTY 117 
 
 tice among men and nations. Hosea declared 
 God's love "leal love" is the Scotch translation 
 of the characteristic word of Hosea and aroused 
 the nation to the response of loyalty. Amos ap- 
 pealed to the reason, Hosea to the heart; Amos 
 to the law of cause and effect, Hosea to the sen- 
 timent of gratitude. Both attributes of God are 
 true, both appeals to men are important. But as 
 a motive for national action, as a demand for sheer 
 loyalty and gratitude, for fidelity to that which 
 is neither selfish gain nor fear, but the highest 
 ideals with their persistent and wooing influence, 
 Hosea's message is the more unusual. It is a 
 kind of national "noblesse oblige," the duty of a 
 state to do what is expected of it, not by mere 
 justice, or law, or self-interest, but by the highest 
 standards within or without; it is the irresistible 
 urge, like the moral impulse, which thrills the 
 heart that is the object of the most spiritual love 
 call it God, or national conscience, or humanity, 
 or "loyalty to loyalty," whichever you like. 
 
 So interpreted, Hosea has surely a significant 
 message for to-day. Both his analogy and his 
 motive are needed by the modern nations. " We 
 are at the beginning of an age," President Wilson 
 is reported to have said, "in which it will be in- 
 sisted that the same standards of conduct and 
 responsibility for wrong done shall be observed 
 among nations that are observed among individ- 
 uals of civilized states." At least as a standard 
 
118 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 of law the personal analogy is coming to have a 
 place in statecraft. Political and military acts 
 will be viewed in the light of reason and equity, 
 like the acts of individuals. But many of us are 
 limiting the analogy to cold reason and blind jus- 
 tice. A further step must follow as Hosea fol- 
 lowed Amos. Justice must be supplemented by 
 mercy, law by love, reason by affection. In tjie 
 new international relationships the analogy not 
 merely of the law court but of the family must 
 be adopted, and all the highest sentiments of 
 loyalty, gratitude, and leal love must supplant 
 the adulterous and idolatrous waywardness in 
 the nations' hearts. Loyalty as a term must be 
 redeemed from that recent abuse of enforced con- 
 formity to government policy. It must mean 
 not the loyalty of citizens to the state, nor of the 
 state to its citizens, but the united fidelity of 
 both to the highest national ideals. Like the 
 response of the betrothed to the very love of God, 
 it must shame and allure and inspire nations from 
 self-regarding, ingrate materialism to mutual con- 
 sideration and service. International law must 
 be transformed into international love, and the 
 familiar twofold summary of personal duty must 
 become the domestic and foreign policy of the 
 state: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, and 
 thy neighbor as thyself." 
 
XIII 
 
 THE PROPHET AND POLITICS 
 
 THE relation of the early Hebrew prophets to 
 contemporary politics is a subject regarding 
 which Bible students have passed from one ex- 
 treme view to another. The older idea of proph- 
 ecy as a merely predictive function, without any 
 relation to current affairs, has been entirely dis- 
 credited. But any alternative view which makes 
 of these great leaders mere time-servers and poli- 
 ticians, concerned only with the passing political 
 scene, is equally erroneous. They were surely 
 men of their own age, and deeply concerned with 
 everything that affected the welfare of their 
 nation. 
 
 But the real significance of the prophets is not 
 in their participation in political life, but their 
 aloofness from it. Like Jesus at a later time, 
 they displayed an indifference to partisan feeling 
 which must have been annoying to their contem- 
 poraries. They apparently suffered the usual 
 fate of neutrals in being disliked by both .sides. 
 But, in spite of the personal sufferings to which 
 they were thus exposed, their position gave them 
 an opportunity to see life steadily and see it 
 whole. They were aware of the lessons of his- 
 tory while history was in the making, and even 
 
 119 
 
120 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 amid the din of battle and confusion of political 
 strife they had faith in the guiding hand at the 
 helm. With the prophet of the beleaguered 
 Samaria their prayer to God and the purpose of 
 their own efforts was to open the eyes that could 
 not see beyond the present and the material to 
 behold the future and the spiritual. 
 
 The best illustration of the relation of the 
 prophets to politics is Isaiah ben Amoz. For- 
 merly he was thought of only as the evangelist 
 of the Old Testament; now he is called the states- 
 man among the prophets. Certainly the book 
 that bears his name, in spite of confusions of 
 order and interpolations, gives us a picture of 
 most varied and difficult international problems 
 amid which Isaiah and the kings of Judah lived. 
 Isaiah's words of political import are clustered 
 about a series of national crises covering a period 
 of perhaps forty years, and can best be studied 
 in connection with the events of the time. Brief 
 references to these circumstances must suffice us 
 here. 
 
 In the closing part of the eighth century the 
 Assyrian Empire was making itself felt in south- 
 western Asia as never before. Nominal sov- 
 ereignty it had for long held over some of the 
 petty states. Israel, for example, had paid trib- 
 ute to Assyria and sent soldiers to fight in the 
 Assyrian army one hundred years before. In 
 earlier centuries frequent visits of Assyrian 
 
PROPHET AND POLITICS 121 
 
 armies to the west are mentioned on the inscrip- 
 tions. But now Tiglath-pileser, Sargon, and 
 Sennacherib sought to make their rule more per- 
 manent and solid. Conquest was made easy by 
 the lack of unity between the petty states, whose 
 mutual jealousies prevented effective combined 
 resistance. But conquests once made were not 
 easily conserved, because of their distance from 
 the seat of military and political control, and be- 
 cause of civil wars or revolts in other quarters 
 which, from time to time, weakened the Assyrian 
 authority in the west. The whole history of 
 Judah and its neighbors during Isaiah's lifetime 
 may be summed up as a series of revolts against 
 Assyria and reconquests by the Assyrian kings. 
 The earliest political crisis referred to in Isaiah's 
 career is in chapter 7. The date is about 734 B. c. 
 Israel and Syria (Damascus), after a hundred 
 years of war and commercial rivalry, have set- 
 tled their differences to make a defensive alli- 
 ance against the common foe, Assyria. Their 
 kings, Pekah and Rezin, appear at the walls of 
 Jerusalem, intending to force their neighbor to 
 break its fealty to Nineveh as a vassal state and 
 to join the anti-Assyrian coalition. If persuasion 
 will not succeed they will fight; if immediate cap- 
 ture is impossible they will lay siege, and when 
 they have entered the city they will replace King 
 Ahaz by an appointee of their own. It is natural 
 that the heart of the king should tremble "and 
 
122 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 the heart of his people, as the trees of the forest 
 tremble with the wind." Isaiah finds King Ahaz 
 "at the end of the conduit of the upper pool," 
 no doubt inspecting the water-supply, which was 
 the critical point in the city's preparedness for 
 siege. His words are words of calm: 
 
 "Take heed, and be quiet; 
 Fear not, neither let thy heart be faint, 
 Because of these two tails of smoking firebrands. . . . 
 If ye will not believe, 
 Surely ye shall not be established" (7:4, 9). 
 
 This early incident in Isaiah's career is typical 
 of all we know of him. With a play on words 
 that is not translatable he declares that faith is 
 the one requisite of national security. This does 
 not mean that Isaiah was sure of Judah's political 
 or material success. In predicting the speedy 
 downfall of her present foes a prediction for 
 which he later gives the king a definite sign and 
 a date within sixty-five years, or even less Isaiah 
 does not promise permanent immunity for his 
 own country; its doom also is threatened. It is 
 becoming increasingly doubtful whether Isaiah 
 ever declared the inviolability of Zion in the 
 sense which has sometimes been ascribed to him. 
 Nor later, when Assyria's power is exalted as the 
 assured victor over all its foes, and the rod of 
 Jehovah's anger in punishing the nations, are we 
 to assume that Isaiah meant to imply permanent 
 
PROPHET AND POLITICS 123 
 
 success to Assyria and utter defeat to Judah and 
 Egypt. Assyria, too, shall be brought low; the 
 virgin daughter of Zion shall laugh it to scorn: 
 while Judah shall not perish forever from the 
 earth; a remnant shall return. 
 
 The predictions of Isaiah, therefore his prom- 
 ises of blessing or threats of disaster must not 
 be understood as mere worldly wisdom, the 
 shrewd conjectures of a skillful forecaster of the 
 stormy political weather of southwestern Asia. 
 They are, rather, the expression of religious stand- 
 ards in national life. Isaiah does not weigh 
 specific policies for special occasions; he expresses 
 the fundamental spirit that policies must em- 
 body. When he opposes in Judah the panic for 
 preparedness, the drifting into entangling alli- 
 ances, or the cowardly fear of capture, quite as 
 much as when he scorns the ruthless imperialism 
 of Assyria or the military impotence of Egyptian 
 allies, Isaiah is not merely giving advice; he is 
 dealing with moral values. The prophet is no 
 political doctrinaire; he is neither an opportunist 
 nor the consistent advocate of a particular politi- 
 cal formula. But amid all his words there runs 
 one thread that gives unity transcending politics 
 the unity of faith in God. 
 
 This faith of Isaiah must also be distinguished 
 from fatalism. There is an absolute difference 
 between them. For while Isaiah believes that 
 God controls history, his assurance is not so 
 
124 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 much in the details of God's intended acts as in 
 the moral principles of his action. The divine 
 favor is not with the powerful or the prosperous, 
 but with the righteous and the upright. It is 
 moral, not material, preparedness that Isaiah ad- 
 vocates; reliance on God, not alliance with men. 
 God is not with the strongest battalions, but 
 with those who trust in him. He can save by 
 many or by few, and one with God is a majority. 
 Fatalism, in the real sense of the word, Isaiah 
 condemns, the fatalism that believes that char- 
 acter does not count. It may be optimism, as of 
 men who say: 
 
 " We have made a covenant with death, 
 And with Sheol are we at agreement; 
 When the overflowing scourge shall pass through, 
 It shall not come unto us" (28:15). 
 
 It may be pessimism of those who cry: 
 
 " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die" (22:13). 
 
 But in either case the need is the same faith, 
 the foundation stone, and righteousness, the 
 builder's plummet. 
 
 This principle of faith in God is the basis of all 
 Isaiah's national and international teaching. In 
 the first place, it explains his emphasis on moral 
 character. Even amid serious political and mili- 
 tary crises, when general moral teaching seems 
 so out of place, and the insistence on fundamen- 
 tals of national virtue are ridiculed as the monot- 
 
PROPHET AND POLITICS 125 
 
 onous "line upon line, precept upon precept" of 
 the elementary pedagogue, Isaiah asserts that 
 the foundations of national life are a righteous 
 government. Faith in God is neither theology 
 nor ritual, but the practice of social justice. In 
 the opening chapter of our present collection of 
 Isaiah's sermons the prophet declares the hollow- 
 ness and futility of the sacrifices, feasts, and sab- 
 baths because of the blood-stained hands and 
 sinful hearts of the worshippers. He calls the 
 rulers and people of Judah chieftains of Sodom 
 and people of Gomorrah. And in order to escape 
 the fate of those ill-starred cities he summons 
 them to national repentance and conversion. 
 
 "Cease to do evil; learn to do well; 
 Seek justice, relieve the oppressed, 
 Judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. 
 Come now, and let us reason together, saith Jehovah: 
 Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white 
 
 as snow; 
 
 Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as 
 wool" (1:16-18). 
 
 In the second place, Isaiah's principle of faith 
 and its moral emphasis explains his attitude to 
 the nationalism of his time. Not so explicitly as 
 other prophets, but with no less reality, Isaiah 
 escapes the particularism of the Jehovah religion. 
 "The Holy One of Israel/' as he still calls him, is 
 too pure to behold with favor iniquity even in 
 his own nation. Zion can expect no better fate 
 than has recently befallen Samaria and Damas- 
 
126 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 cus, or in the olden time befell the wicked " cities 
 of the plain." Even Assyria and Egypt are in 
 God's hand to exalt and to bring low. Before 
 him are their rising up and their lying down, 
 their going out and their coming in. But God 
 will not only apply to Israel this strict justice 
 which he applies to others: he will grant to the 
 other nations the same favors as to his own. As 
 later a Christian teacher perceived "that God is 
 no respecter of persons: but in every nation he 
 that feareth him and worketh righteousness is 
 acceptable to him," so the earlier prophets looked 
 forward to the time when the knowledge of Jeho- 
 vah should cover the earth as the waters cover 
 the sea. " In that day," says the Isaianic passage, 
 "shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with 
 Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth; for 
 that Jehovah of hosts hath blessed them, saying: 
 Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the 
 work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance." 1 
 
 In the third place, this principle of faith ex- 
 plains Isaiah's attitude toward political machina- 
 tions of coalition and diplomacy. The clever 
 schemers are ridiculous in the sight of God, for as 
 Isaiah sarcastically remarks, "Jehovah also is 
 wise," and in leaving him out of account and his 
 moral requirements they heap sin upon sin. 
 
 In the fourth place, it explains his emphasis 
 upon quietness. "He that believeth shall not 
 1 19:24, 25. 
 
PROPHET AND POLITICS 127 
 
 be in haste." For those who trust in God excite- 
 ment and panic are of no avail; it is only moral 
 qualities that count. 
 
 "In returning and rest shall ye be saved; 
 In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength" 
 
 (30:15). 
 
 "And the work of righteousness shall be peace; 
 And the effect of righteousness, quietness and con- 
 fidence forever" (32:17). 
 
 In the fifth place, it explains his attitude toward 
 military endeavor and military fear. He rebukes 
 in the most scathing terms the brute violence of 
 the Assyrian lords and their conceit in their con- 
 quests; but at the same time he rebukes the little 
 Judah that quails before the powerful military 
 machine. Both nations are wanting in faith in 
 God. Their respective faults, as Professor Smith 
 has finely expressed them, are the atheism of 
 force and the atheism of fear. To the timid, 
 faith in God gives assurance because they fear 
 not him that kills the body. To the arrogant 
 victor, faith is a reminder of the real sovereignty 
 of God. 1 Faith in militarism, on the one hand, 
 and fear of militarism, on the other, are equally 
 condemned when one realizes that only righteous- 
 ness exalts a nation and that mankind endures or 
 progresses not by military or economic success, 
 but by purely spiritual values. 
 
 1 Contrast 8:12, 13 with 10:15. 
 
XIV 
 
 THE LIMITATIONS OF STATECRAFT 
 
 AT the crisis of the attempted Syro-Ephraimite 
 intervention, described in the preceding chapter, 
 Ahaz rejected the policy of neutrality and "watch- 
 ful waiting" wfiich Isaiah urged upon him. But 
 Isaiah's words about the two meddling kings 
 proved true. As he had said, in less time than 
 it takes for a child to be born and to grow old 
 enough to cry "my father" or "my mother," or 
 to distinguish the evil from the good, the riches 
 of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria were car- 
 ried away before the king of Assyria. 1 Damascus 
 was taken and destroyed (732 B. c.) ; of Israel the 
 large outlying fertile territories were lost even 
 before that year, and with the siege and capture 
 of the city of Samaria in 722-1 and the deporta- 
 tion of its leading citizens, the Kingdom of Israel, 
 or Ephraim, ended. But in other parts of Pales- 
 tine the same restlessness continued. With every 
 favorable opportunity coalitions were formed to 
 throw off the Assyrian yoke. Once a powerful 
 revolutionary state in Babylon, under Merodach- 
 Baladan, became the leader and hope of local 
 independence. But this uprising was suppressed. 
 More often Egypt was the stalking-horse of Assyr- 
 
 1 Isaiah 8:4; cf. 7:14-16. 
 
 128 
 
LIMITATIONS OF STATECRAFT 129 
 
 ian rivalry, a great nation of immense resources, 
 full of promises of help, but a feeble reed to lean 
 upon. How he put down such a coalition in the 
 early part of his reign is vividly described by Sen- 
 nacherib himself, in his annals. The death of 
 his predecessor was apparently the signal for a 
 general rebellion. Merodach-Baladan reappeared 
 and instigated a successful revolt in Babylonia; 
 in Palestine the states of Tyre, Judah, Edom, 
 Moab, Ammon united in an alliance against 
 Assyria and secured the promise of help from 
 Egypt. One by one the enemies of Sennacherib 
 were defeated or frightened into submission. In 
 702 B. c. Merodach-Baladan was beaten in battle 
 and put to flight before the forces of the Emperor, 
 who then turned to the West. The towns along 
 the coast surrendered and Lull, King of Tyre, 
 fled. In southern Palestine Sennacherib met and 
 defeated an Egyptian army. Ekron and Lachish 
 were besieged and captured. The kingdoms of 
 Edom, Moab, and Ammon submitted. Judah, 
 remaining defiant, was severely treated. As Sen- 
 nacherib himself declares: 
 
 Of Hezekiah, the Judean, who had not submitted to 
 my yoke, forty-six strong cities, with walls, the smaller 
 cities without number, by the battering of rams and 
 the assault of engines, the attack of foot soldiers, mines, 
 breaches and axes, I besieged and captured. Two 
 hundred thousand one hundred and fifty men, young, 
 old, male, female, horses, mules, asses, camels, oxen, 
 
130 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 and sheep without number I brought out from them 
 and counted as booty. [Hezekiah] himself I shut up 
 like a caged bird within Jerusalem, his royal city. 1 
 
 There are many passages in Isaiah's writings 
 that reveal his reaction to these circumstances. 
 Against the constant tendency to reliance on 
 Egypt he objects by word and symbol. 2 
 
 The dominant note here as elsewhere is the 
 prophet's sense of the limitations of statecraft. 
 Three principal limitations are manifest in the 
 national policies of Hezekiah or those who con- 
 trolled. One is the tendency to neglect God as 
 a factor in international relationships. It is in 
 Isaiah's opposition to Eygptian alliance that the 
 religious reasons for his political advice most 
 clearly appear. Perhaps Isaiah appreciated more 
 fully than his contemporaries the invincibility of 
 the Assyrian wolf, and the military impotence of 
 Egypt, and of the loose coalition that sought 
 refuge in her shadow. There is something quaint 
 in the Judean's horror of "the land of the rustling 
 of wings," that unknown southland with monsters 
 as fabulous as its wealth. 3 But Isaiah's chief ob- 
 jection to the intriguers is that their political 
 schemes are made without consulting God, in 
 defiance of his will, and without estimating the 
 
 1 The so-called Taylor Cylinder (translation from Rogers, 
 Cuneiform Parallel* to the Old Testament, pp. 343 /.). 
 9 Isaiah 20; 30:1-7; 31:1-3. 
 'Isaiah 18:1; 30:6. 
 
LIMITATIONS OF STATECRAFT 131 
 
 comparative importance of his demands. Egypt 
 thus becomes the foil of Jehovah. In a manner 
 characteristic of the religious teachers of Israel 
 Isaiah calls attention to the contrast between 
 material and spiritual reliance. Foreign alliances, 
 large financial supplies, extensive military equip- 
 ment are listed with crass idolatry. 1 The Egyp- 
 tian cavalry, both horses and men, are only 
 flesh, not spirit, like God. When security was 
 to be found "in quietness and in confidence/' 
 they said, 
 
 "No, for we will flee upon horses . . . 
 We will ride upon the swift." 
 
 But all those wno " trust in chariots because they 
 are many and horsemen because they are strong/' 
 "look not unto the Holy One of Israel, neither 
 seek Jehovah." The same forgetfulness had char- 
 acterized all their preparations for war in the 
 day that men looked "to the armor in the house 
 of the forest." As Isaiah complains: 
 
 "Ye gathered together the waters of the lower poof; 
 And ye numbered the houses of Jerusalem, 
 And ye brake down the houses to fortify the wall. 
 Ye made also a reservoir between the two walls for 
 
 the water of the old pool: 
 But ye looked not unto him that had done this, 
 Neither had ye respect unto him that purposed it 
 
 long ago "(22:9-11). 
 
 i Isaiah 2:6-8. 
 
132 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 Quite as well to the ancient militarists of Judah 
 as to the more extended modern imperium could 
 be applied the prayer of Kipling's "Reccessional": 
 
 " For heathen heart that puts her trust 
 
 In reeking tube and iron shard 
 All valiant dust that builds on dust, 
 
 And guarding calls not thee to guard 
 For frantic boast and foolish word, 
 Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord I " 
 
 Certainly forgetfulness of God is the first limita- 
 tion of diplomatic or military policy. "Except 
 Jehovah keep the city, the watchman wakethjn 
 vain." 
 
 The second limitation of politics is in the realm 
 of social justice. As we have said, the faith in 
 God advocated by Isaiah was to show itself in 
 works of righteousness. Parallel with that proph- 
 et's attacks on foreign policy are his invectives 
 against the domestic conditions of Judah. Isaiah 
 has much more concern for public morality than 
 for military " morale." The sins he enumerates 
 are those familiar to Amos and Micah, as well as 
 to many other reformers of more recent eras. 
 Monopoly, luxury, bribery, exploitation of the 
 poor and helpless all these are to Isaiah expres- 
 sions of the same insensate folly and neglect of 
 Jehovah that he scored in connection with their 
 secret diplomacy and reliance on arms. 
 
LIMITATIONS OF STATECRAFT 133 
 
 "The harp and the lute, the tabret and the pipe, and 
 
 wine, are in their feasts; 
 But they regard not the work of Jehovah, 
 Neither have they considered the operation of his 
 hands" (5:12). 
 
 The causes of national disaster are fundamentally 
 to be found in the social order. And here the 
 rulers and leaders are responsible. The people 
 can rise no higher than the priest, the prophet, and 
 the noble. The lower classes cannot be expected 
 to practise restraint, mercy, or piety, when they 
 are led by iniquitous teachers. In the day of 
 social upheaval which Isaiah threatens, when 
 economic want and military weakness bring 
 chaos, and the respectable classes are supplanted 
 by upstart authorities, still "the people shall be 
 oppressed, every one by another, and every one 
 by his neighbor." General greed and need will 
 lead to selfish anarchy and civil war. 1 Only by a 
 complete conversion of rulers and counsellors can 
 Jerusalem become a "citadel of righteousness." 
 In his own person Isaiah represented the alter- 
 native of the politician. The terms statesman, 
 prophet, reformer, only imperfectly name his role. 
 But it included both of the elements so woefully 
 lacking in the misleaders of Judah consideration 
 for God on the one hand, and a sense of respon- 
 sibility for the common people on the other. In 
 the few autobiographic passages preserved to us 
 i Isaiah 3: 1-5; 9: 19-21. 
 
134 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 we see his sense of divine direction. The simple 
 story of his vision records the commission that 
 came to him to speak God's word to the unrecep- 
 tive people. His whole opposition to current 
 opinions and emotions is due to the " strong hand" 
 of Jehovah, who instructed him not to walk in 
 the way of the people. He and his children were 
 "for signs and for wonders in Israel from Jehovah 
 of hosts." And while he appealed directly to the 
 rulers, his method was not backstairs interview, 
 but public proclamation. Not only his own cap- 
 tive garb proclaimed the future advance of As- 
 syria, but his son's name and the formal tablet on 
 which it was recorded served to advertise his 
 message of imminent destruction. "The spoil 
 speedeth, the prey hasteth." And the other 
 son, Shear- Jashub, "A-Remnant-Shall-Return," 
 though his name, like his brother's, involved in 
 the end both Judah's weal and woe, was a "liv- 
 ing epistle" to declare: 
 
 A remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob 
 unto the mighty God. For though thy people, Israel, 
 be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them 
 shall return: a destruction is determined, overflowing 
 with righteousness (10:21, 22). 
 
 Isaiah's doctrine of the remnant, like his Mes- 
 sianic hope, rests, perhaps, on passages and inter- 
 pretations too doubtful to warrant the emphasis 
 that has often been given. But in his conscious 
 
LIMITATIONS OF STATECRAFT 135 
 
 opposition to prevailing national standards, and 
 in the group of disciples in whom he bound up 
 God's testimony, he not only preached but created 
 a new social group apart from the conventional 
 national lines. Perhaps we are justified in con- 
 sidering this a third example of Isaiah's apprehen- 
 sion of the limitation of politics, and a new agency 
 itfthe expression of national ideals the indepen- 
 dent minority. This new departure, if such it 
 was, is of utmost importance for both religion and 
 politics. As has been said: 
 
 The formation of this little community was a new 
 thing in the history of religion. Till then no one had 
 dreamed of a fellowship of faith dissociated from all 
 national forms, maintained without the exercise of 
 ritual services, bound together by faith in the divine 
 word alone. It was the birth of a new era in the Old 
 Testament religion, for it was the birth of the concep- 
 tion of the Church, the first step in the emancipation 
 of spiritual religion from the forms of political life a 
 step not less significant that all its consequences were 
 not seen till centuries had passed away. The com- 
 munity of true religion and the political community 
 of Israel had never before been separated, even in 
 thought; now they stood side by side, conscious of 
 their mutual antagonism, and never again fully to fall 
 back into their old identity. 1 
 
 One is tempted to dwell at greater length on 
 the national significance of Isaiah. But further 
 expansion is not needed here. In the work just 
 
 1 W. Robertson Smith, The Prophets of Israel, pp. 274 /. 
 
136 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 quoted the subject is dealt with by a master 
 hand to the extent of nearly half the volume. 
 Isaiah is, in a sense, typical of all the prophets; 
 ex uno disce omnes. He it is who reveals most 
 clearly the national implications of the prophets' 
 religion. "Even to the political historian Isaiah 
 is the most notable figure after David in the 
 whole history of Israel." l For his later career we 
 are dependent upon the stories in Kings which we 
 shall discuss elsewhere, and on some untrust- 
 worthy traditions of martyrdom at an advanced 
 age under Manasseh. His influence is, however, 
 written on more reliable records the future re- 
 ligion and life of his people. "The whole subse- 
 quent history of the Hebrew people bears the 
 impress of Isaiah's activity. It was through him 
 that the word of prophecy, despised and rejected 
 when it was spoken by Amos and Hosea, became 
 a practical power not only in the state but in 
 the whole life of the nation." 2 And if we must 
 select but two elements in his message, one posi- 
 tive and one negative, we would choose for exam- 
 ples, as we have done in these two chapters, the 
 emphasis on faith as the first, and, aa the second, 
 the limitations of statecraft. 
 
 i W. R. Smith, op. cit., p. 208. 2 Ibid., p. 206. 
 
XV 
 
 THE PLATFORM OF REFORMATION 
 
 IT would be difficult to overpraise the service 
 of the prophets of Israel, who simply by their 
 spoken words endeavored to redeem their con- 
 temporaries to higher conceptions of both politics 
 and religion. Yet one feels that their influence 
 would have been only transitory unless their 
 words had been recorded and their ideals put 
 into more concrete form. It is our great good 
 fortune that with them, as with the greatest of 
 the prophets, followers, mostly unknown, guaran- 
 teed before too late the immortality of the winged 
 words that they spoke. What the four gospels 
 have done for perpetuating the teaching of Jesus, 
 the four volumes of prophetic sermons did for 
 the oracles of the prophets. 
 
 It is impossible to tell when this collecting was 
 done. Apparently by the time of Ezekiel the 
 prophet himself made his message sure of written 
 form. Jeremiah twice had a summary of his 
 teaching prepared by Baruch the scribe. And 
 even before these prophets, perhaps in the days 
 of Manasseh, when freedom of speech was for- 
 bidden the prophets, some unknown scribes had 
 prepared an extensive programme based on the 
 137 
 
138 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 standards of the preceding prophets. Whether 
 by intention or by accident, this document came 
 to the hands of King Josiah of Judah in the year 
 621. But instead of burning it in the fire as his 
 successor did to the roll of Jeremiah, he accepted 
 it as the basis for a national reorganization which 
 is vividly described near the end of 77 Kings. It 
 is this significant document that must here claim 
 our attention. 
 
 There is much about the exact origin of the 
 Book of Deuteronomy that still is uncertain. But 
 one fact seems fixed, that it embodies and ex- 
 presses the fundamental principles of Josiah's 
 reform. Parts of it may be of later date, yet the 
 bulk of the book has such unity of view-point and 
 language that for a study of prophetic ideals it 
 may be taken as a whole. And at once its mean- 
 ing is clear: it is the codification, in a series of 
 definite suggestions, of the spirit and teachings of 
 the great prophets that preceded it. Its purpose 
 was evidently not merely to put the prophetic 
 ideals in writing, but to reduce them from general 
 arraignments or counsels for specific occasions to 
 a definite and permanent platform of reformation. 
 
 It would be a mistake to look upon Deuteronomy 
 as a complete constitution. It, too, is sporadic in 
 its scope. It is rather a series of suggestions, 
 often based on earlier laws, but revising them so 
 as to express the motive and the method of the 
 prophets. Many of its detailed instructions are 
 
PLATFORM OF REFORMATION 139 
 
 negative prohibitions against idolatry, against 
 social injustice or lack of consideration. The 
 negative form is an old one in legislation and was 
 a natural sequel to the denunciations of the proph- 
 ets. But at the same time it would be difficult 
 to find a more constructive expression of the 
 prophets' desires and a better summary of their 
 positive contribution to the nation's ideals. 
 
 It is needless to say that Deuteronomy is a relig- 
 ious book. Its laws largely concern worship; 
 even its secular laws are inspired by religious mo- 
 tives. The legislator cast his code in the form of 
 a sermon. Of its religious and ritual meaning we 
 shall not here speak. That is the feature about 
 Deuteronomy which is most widely known or most 
 readily learned from modern commentators. It 
 is mentioned here only as the first and universal 
 characteristic of all Hebrew national ideals, espe- 
 cially those of the prophets. 
 
 The political importance of the Deuteronomic 
 reform is usually overlooked. It is comparable 
 to a revolution rather than to a reformation a 
 revolution in which the scattered communities of 
 Judah were formed into a centralized city-state, 
 the king was subjected to a popularly ratified 
 constitution, and many new provisions were en- 
 acted for the military and judicial branches of the 
 government, for the abolition or reduction of 
 slavery and the extension of popular government. 
 And the same emphasis may be laid upon the 
 
140 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 political element in the new law. It was not a 
 new Book of Discipline but a Constitution. As 
 Todd has said: "The primary intention of the 
 Deuteronomic Code is political; there is, indeed, 
 a great deal of religion in it, but it is political 
 religion. The aim sought is not the glory of 
 God, but the safety and welfare of the state." 1 
 We are justified, therefore, in seeking in the book 
 some guidance in our study of the nation's ideals. 
 
 In the first place, it is well to note the patriotism 
 of the author (for convenience we use the singular 
 without excluding at all the possibility of a plu- 
 rality of "Deuteronomists"). He is proud of his 
 nation and its history, of its "good land" and its 
 wealth, and, above all, of its God and its religion. 
 God has made his nation "high above all nations 
 which he hath made, in praise and in name and 
 in honor." Even other nations recognize this 
 superiority and say: "Surely this great nation is 
 a wise and understanding people." 
 
 This patriotism of Deuteronomy is not merely 
 implicit but explicit. There is a distinct national 
 self-consciousness, which is fostered not only by 
 international comparison but by the retrospect of 
 history. Although the literary form of the book 
 places it at the beginning of national life, its 
 spirit agrees with its real date and presupposes a 
 sense of national continuity. The nation's pres- 
 ent is linked with its past in grateful memory, in 
 1 Politics and Religion in Ancient Israel, p. 218. 
 
PLATFORM OF REFORMATION 141 
 
 stern warning, and in assurance of God's continu- 
 ing care. The election of Israel was not a mere 
 isolated act of the past. Israel is still a people of 
 God's own possession. The covenant of Sinai is 
 a perpetual covenant, to be observed not merely 
 by the generation that had been present, but by 
 the generations which had not seen and yet had 
 believed. It secures the continuance of a con- 
 sistent national policy. 
 
 It is in this connection that the solidarity of 
 the individual finds expression. Each single Is- 
 raelite shares the blessings and responsibilities of 
 the whole state. All the deeds of all the citizens 
 must contribute to the nation's welfare. The 
 unity of the nation and the identity of the indi- 
 vidual with the nation are so firmly established 
 that it is often difficult to determine whether the 
 singular pronouns in the book refer to the person- 
 ified state or to the citizen as a corporate part of 
 the nation's life. 
 
 These two characteristics are well illustrated 
 by the liturgy of the first-fruits in Chapter XXVI. 
 The worship, as we shall see, is not personal but 
 national, and not merely a present isolated act 
 but a sacrament that binds the men now .living 
 with all generations before them. " And so," 
 writes Welch, "when the writer says at the con- 
 clusion of his beautiful and expressive ritual, 
 'Thou hast avouched Jehovah this day to be 
 thy God,' he is filled with the sense of how each 
 
142 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 worshipper is the member of a nation that lives 
 under the one eternal covenant. Each act of its 
 organic life in its worship is the act of men who 
 thus take up and serve themselves heirs to their 
 past. Above all, each act in which a man in 
 Israel shows himself conscious of God's mercy 
 to him and of God's will for him is something in 
 which he avouches himself anew the heir of the 
 life that has sustained all his nation's history. A 
 little deed of ritual renews the sense of their 
 organic life and expresses afresh their historic 
 identity and their corporate unity." 1 
 
 Although the Deuteronomist is a firm believer 
 in the elect and peculiar relation of Israel to God, 
 his treatment of this subject is much like that of 
 Amos. The election is not absolutely unique; at 
 least God has settled other nations on their lands, 
 much as he has given Palestine to Israel. 2 Elec- 
 tion involves duties rather than privileges, the 
 duties described in this law. It means service, as 
 the great prophet of the exile had yet to point 
 out more clearly, and service as God's witness to 
 the world. Thus the author was able to com- 
 bine the highest patriotism with humility and 
 freedom from national egoism. 
 
 To fulfil such a destiny the essential thing for 
 Judah was not political domination or control, 
 but superiority of civilization. Not victory by 
 
 1 Welch, Religion of Israel under the Kingdom, p. 218. 
 *Deut. 2:5, 9, 19; Amos 9:7. 
 
PLATFORM OF REFORMATION 143 
 
 arms but the nobility of its institutions is to 
 secure the admiration of neighboring peoples. It 
 is true the programme calls for the drastic elimi- 
 nation of the Canaanites, but this is not an act 
 of triumph but an act of purification. The author 
 does not seem to contemplate any conquests be- 
 yond or to encourage a policy of militarism. 
 Here he follows the trail of Isaiah, with his idea 
 of trust in God. His conception, as Welch says, 
 is "the great conception of a nation which is 
 filled throughout with the sense that it has its 
 own character to preserve and its own work to 
 fulfil, and which is more interested in these things 
 than in asserting its place in the world. The lat- 
 ter concern it leaves to the unseen Providence 
 who governs all our outward fate; the former it 
 turns to consider with its whole heart." 1 
 
 The author's pride is far removed from chau- 
 vinism or complacent self-satisfaction. Israel's 
 greatness is not due to her own merit; it is due 
 purely to God's love and election. They were 
 the fewest in number of all peoples. A Syrian 
 ready to perish was their father, but he became 
 a nation, great, mighty, and populous. It was 
 God who brought them through the desert and 
 gave them their land. It was he who defeated 
 their foes before them. Both military and moral 
 conceit is forbidden them: "Beware lest . . . 
 thou say in thy heart, my power and the might of 
 1 Welch, Religion of Israel under the Kingdom, p. 223. 
 
144 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 my hand hath gotten me this wealth." "Speak 
 not thou in thy heart. . . . For my righteousness 
 Jehovah hath brought me in to possess this land." * 
 It is not for their own righteousness or for the 
 uprightness of their heart that they possess the 
 land. Nor is their tenure secure. The fate they 
 have inflicted on the Canaanites will be their own 
 if they share their wickedness. Their prosperity 
 is contingent on obedience to this law. That 
 simple rule became the standard of all later his- 
 tory. 
 
 But beside the materialistic motive of reward 
 and punishment associated with Deuteronomy, 
 more spiritual motives are appealed to in the 
 book. The famous twofold summary of love to 
 God and love to neighbor finds repeated expres- 
 sion in its laws. The whole code is an eloquent 
 appeal for a grateful response to the love of God. 
 History is considered here, as by Hosea, the mov- 
 ing story of God's patient dealing with a forget- 
 ful and unappreciative nation. The appeal to 
 memory "lest ye forget" is more often used 
 to recall God's goodness and mercy than to recall 
 his severity and justice. The election and the 
 prosperity of Israel are marks of Jehovah's love. 
 Therefore love should flow back to him in return 
 a love that springs from the whole being. 
 
 Man's love for men is closely associated with 
 God's love for them. It is his divine example 
 l Deut. 8:17; 9:4. 
 
PLATFORM OF REFORMATION 145 
 
 that inspires the new social relations. "He doth 
 execute justice for the fatherless and widow, and 
 loveth the sojourner in giving him food and rai- 
 ment. Love ye, therefore, the sojourner." And 
 here at once a second common argument is added : 
 "For ye were sojourners in the land of Egypt." 
 The past of Israel is a memory that con- 
 demns any injustice from superior social standing. 
 Their own exaltation up from slavery made it 
 easy for them to picture the situation of the op- 
 pressed and to sympathize with the suffering. 
 
 And here again we find ourselves on the same 
 social level as the prophets. It has been some- 
 times argued that this programme and the revo- 
 lution that followed it emanated from the upper 
 classes of the state either the priests or the 
 nobles. This it is difficult to disprove, and cer- 
 tainly, if the account in Kings is to be trusted, 
 its ultimate ratification by the king and his offi- 
 cers was secured, though the formal adoption 
 was an act of the whole people gathered in demo- 
 cratic assembly. At any rate the characteristic 
 prophetic concern for the oppressed and unrep- 
 resented classes of society betokens at least the 
 influence of the prophets. Many of the specific 
 rulings aim to safeguard and extend the privileges 
 of these helpless classes. The workers are to be 
 provided with holidays, the hungry are to be 
 guaranteed food, men with capital are to lend 
 freely and not to demand interest, nor to take 
 
146 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 as pledge things essential to their debtors for food 
 and clothing; wages are to be paid promptly. 1 
 The perversion of the law courts and the use of 
 false weights sins so frequently mentioned by 
 the prophets are here expressly forbidden. And 
 a regular cycle is provided for the remission of 
 debts, the release of slaves, and reversion of land 
 to its original owner. In all these laws the spirit 
 of human brotherhood and co-operation finds full 
 and practical expression. 
 
 In spite of its proletarian sympathies and dem- 
 ocratic spirit the Deuteronomic revolution ap- 
 pears to have involved few political changes. 
 The king remains, but he is a constitutional mon- 
 arch only. Like all citizens, he is subject to the 
 law: "It shall be with him, and he shall read 
 therein all the days of his life . . . that his heart 
 be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he 
 turn not aside from the commandment, to the 
 right hand, or to the left.'* 2 He is to avoid the 
 constant dangers of the Hebrew monarchs, reli- 
 ance on Egyptian cavalry, the distraction of the 
 harem, and the accumulation of large treasures 
 of silver and gold. Of course the king, himself, 
 must be a full-blooded Hebrew. There is also 
 the prophet, the authoritative native adviser of 
 the nation's policy, who, like Moses, shall serve 
 as Jehovah's spokesman to the people at each 
 successive time of crisis. As Jehovah had told 
 Moses: 
 
 1 Deut. 24:6-25:4. 2 Deut. 17:14-20. 
 
PLATFORM OF REFORMATION 147 
 
 I will raise them up a prophet from among their 
 brethren, like unto thee; and I will put my words in 
 his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I 
 shall command him. And it shall come to pass, that 
 whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he 
 shall speak in my name, I will require it of him 
 (Deut. 18:18, 19). 
 
 i 
 
 This conception of an unofficial but influential 
 series of prophets was also typical of the pro- 
 phetic ideal, as we shall see in the next chapter. 
 
 Many of the individual laws are merely repeti- 
 tions of older codes. Sometimes the only change 
 is in the motive involved or at least the elabora- 
 tion of the motive, as in the old Sabbath law, 
 whose purpose in Deuteronomy is represented as 
 primarily a provision for the laboring class. Even 
 domestic animals are included in this humani- 
 tarian purpose as, again, in the law against muz- 
 zling "the ox when he treadeth out the grain." 
 As far as we can observe, the most radical changes 
 affected chiefly the cultus the centralization of 
 the worship in Jerusalem, with the consequent 
 provisions needed for the support of disestab- 
 lished priests, etc. Indirectly, however, this 
 change affected national life. It was really a 
 final act of religious establishment the national- 
 ization of religion. This momentous act, no 
 doubt, was contrary to the growing individualism 
 in religion which Jeremiah stood for, and even to 
 that independence of political thought and action 
 
148 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 which, at least in the prophets, was beginning to 
 emerge, but it prepared the way for the trans- 
 formation of the state into a church, so that 
 when the national structure was destroyed a few 
 years later, Judaism as a distinctive culture sur- 
 vived. In this way the prophets* insistence upon 
 the superiority of national ideals to national 
 security and autonomy was fully vindicated. 
 
 But probably the greatest service of Deuteron- 
 omy was not in any or all of its provisions, but 
 simply in its written character. As we have said, 
 it contains little that was new, either in spirit or 
 in letter. But by joining the spirit of the proph- 
 ets with the letter of the law, by reducing princi- 
 ples to practical application, by combining in a 
 single clear and effective programme, not Utopian 
 schemes but some tentative suggestions that were 
 feasible enough to be accepted at least as a basis 
 for the actual revision of Hebrew institutions, it 
 became, when once ratified, a work of surpassing 
 influence upon all later generations. Its con- 
 creteness was its merit (as well as its weakness). 
 As the author says: "It is not too hard for thee, 
 neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that 
 thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to 
 heaven, and bring it unto us, and make us to 
 hear it, that we may do it? . . . But the word 
 is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy 
 heart, that thou mayest do it." * About it clus- 
 ^Deut. 30: 12-14. 
 
PLATFORM OF REFORMATION 149 
 
 tered finally the whole Biblefirst the Old Tes- 
 tament and then the New, as the written and 
 permanent programme of a new society. Deu- 
 teronomy made Judaism the religion of a book, 
 and this nucleus, with its later associates, became 
 the constitution of the church both Jewish and 
 Christian. It is possible that much of its original 
 intention failed of immediate or universal fulfil- 
 ment. There was much of it that required far 
 more than mere outward conformity, for example, 
 the injunctions to love and the prohibition against 
 coveting. But as an essay toward a better defini- 
 tion of national motives and social standards it 
 should be classed with the most influential char- 
 ters of history. 
 
XVI 
 
 PROPHETIC IDEALS IN ACTION 
 
 BESIDES the sermons of the prophets and their 
 codifications of the laws there was a third method 
 by which these propagandists influenced their 
 contemporaries and by which their ideals are 
 known to us. This is the writing of history from 
 the prophetic view-point, a method which is illus- 
 trated, among others, by the Books of Kings. 
 Not only the editorial outline of this work shows 
 the plain marks of prophetic authorship the same 
 school of thought that produced Deuteronomy: 
 even the earlier and more naive material which 
 is inserted into this outline consists of stories 
 with a purpose. They are not all of the same 
 date and authorship. There are several cycles. 
 Yet practically all of them have in common the 
 prophetic outlook and the emphasis upon the pro- 
 phetic function. The stories of Elisha, for ex- 
 ample, are probably a single group. They are 
 written in a racy style, with deep veneration for 
 the hero, but with more emphasis upon his won- 
 der-working power than upon his political rela- 
 tions. The other stories are not all so homo- 
 geneous as this group about Elisha. In few of 
 them the miraculous element is so prominent, 
 
 150 
 
IDEALS IN ACTION 151 
 
 and they give the prophets a greater political 
 role. 1 The authors wished to prove by example 
 the service of prophecy to the people, to show 
 their own standards in action, and to encourage 
 their associates and disciples in fidelity to the 
 prophetic ideals. They represented their own 
 order as the real foundation of the nation. "Be- 
 ginning with Moses and all the prophets," they 
 expounded their ideal of a theocracy by picturing 
 the actual government of the past in this form. 
 The greatness of the nation, according to their 
 records, was due to the leadership of a series of 
 prophets: "By a prophet Jehovah brought Israel 
 up out of Egypt, and by a prophet was he pre- 
 served." 2 As Plato, the philosopher, gave the 
 chief authority in his ideal commonwealth to 
 philosophers, so the prophetic historians, in their 
 idealized history, magnified the contributions of 
 their predecessor prophets. 
 
 It would be a long but interesting task to study 
 the prophetic ideals as revealed in the biographies 
 of the Books of Kings to consider in detail the 
 stories of the several prophets, not only of the 
 more familiar figures, but also of Nathan, Ahijah, 
 Shemaiah, Jehu ben Hanani, Micaiah ben Imlah, 
 Jonah, Huldah, and even of many an unnamed 
 "man of God." In all these stories the political 
 
 1 For a vivid description of the style and purpose of these 
 stories see J. C. Todd, Politics and Religion in Ancient Israel, 
 pp. 139 jf. 
 
 Hoseal2:13. 
 
152 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 ideals of the prophets appear in action, and par- 
 ticularly there emerges that more intimate prob- 
 lem of the individual prophet's duty to the state. 
 They are a noble series of figures, patriotic and 
 faithful, but yet uncompromising in the allegiance 
 to God and to the higher ideals, which they held 
 out to their people. They are the portraits of 
 prophets by prophets and thus contain in double 
 measure the essence of the prophetic ideal. Here 
 the spirit of the prophets is subject to the proph- 
 ets and not to the perversions of unsympathetic 
 historians. And the portraits are individual and 
 varied and not all of the same mould. Many of 
 them were prophets of warning, harbingers of 
 disaster like those unnamed spokesmen of Jeho- 
 vah who declared: 
 
 Behold, I bring such evil upon Jerusalem and Judah, 
 that whosoever heareth of it, both his ears shall tingle. 
 And I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria, 
 and the plummet of the house of Ahab; and I will wipe 
 Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it and turn- 
 ing it upside down (II Kings 21:12, 13). 
 
 Others were forecasters and instigators of na- 
 tional success. So we are casually told, when 
 Jeroboam II "restored the border of Israel from 
 the entrance of Hamath unto the sea of the 
 Arabah," that this maximum extension of power 
 was " according to the word of Jehovah, the God 
 of Israel, which he spake by his servant Jonah 
 
IDEALS IN ACTION 153 
 
 the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was of Gath- 
 Hepher." It will be necessary to limit ourselves 
 to one example of each of these types. 
 
 Elijah of Gilead was a prophet of the sterner 
 mould. There is no reason to doubt his exist- 
 ence or the essential elements of his portrait, but 
 some of the narratives suggest an origin in the 
 days of Manasseh of Judah, when the conflict 
 between Baal and Jehovah was acute, and the 
 prophets of the latter were under the ban of 
 royal displeasure. 1 As pictured by his biogra- 
 phers, Elijah is the illustration of the persecuted 
 but faithful prophet. Courage and thoroughness 
 are the marks of his character. Coming from the 
 desert, clad in the rough garb of the nomad, he 
 represents the simplicity of conservative religion 
 against the background of court luxury. His re- 
 lations with the king suggest that fearless relation 
 of the later nomads to the court of the caliphs of 
 Damascus or Bagdad. "Into the council of the 
 mighty caliph in his civilized and luxurious capi- 
 tal would stride a rough captain, a wild dervish 
 or preacher, a free son of the desert, asserting a 
 democratic equality strangely in contrast with the 
 apparent autocracy, a simplicity in apparently 
 irreconcilable conflict with the luxury of city and 
 court. To the face of the monarch such a man 
 would utter his word with unhesitating directness, 
 
 1 So Todd, op. eit., pp. 195 ff. Many scholars date them 
 earlier. 
 
154 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 quite the opposite of the obedience of the official 
 or the flattery of the courtier. ... So Israel 
 preserved in the midst of increasing luxury and 
 civilization a keen consciousness of its desert 
 origin, its native and democratic simplicity. The 
 heart of the people at large responded to the man 
 who asserted that simplicity and plainness in the 
 face of the king and court." 1 
 
 Elijah's democratic standpoint is best shown in 
 the incident of Naboth. The inalienable rights 
 of private property were assailed by the ambition 
 of the king. In his autocratic methods he was 
 ably inspired and assisted by his foreign wife. 
 Kingship, as Jezebel conceived it, had no limita- 
 tion of popular rights, or at least it was able to 
 secure by foul means what fair means could not 
 accomplish. She could both kill and take posses- 
 sion. Judicial murder under cover of law, and 
 royal appropriation of the estate of a factitious 
 criminal, were her simple and familiar methods. 
 Here was a concrete instance of those crimes 
 against which Amos and the other prophets in- 
 veighed panting after the dust of the earth on 
 the head of the poor, joining field to field, turning 
 justice to wormwood, turning aside the needy in 
 the gate from their right. Against this high- 
 handed autocracy Elijah raised his voice. He 
 was not deceived by legal subterfuges or cowed 
 by servile fear. It was a royal crime comparable 
 1 Peters, Religion of the Hebrews, p. 176. 
 
IDEALS IN ACTION 155 
 
 to David's sin, and where such abuse exists pro- 
 testants like Nathan and Elijah must in due 
 time appear. If these are not heeded national 
 disaster is sure to come. Social injustice is the 
 real cause of proletarian uprising. And the 
 bloody revolt of Jehu was the inevitable punish- 
 ment upon Jezebel and the house of Ahab for 
 their violation of democratic rights. 
 
 At first sight the other conflict between king 
 and prophet seems purely religious a choice of 
 religious cults, in which Elijah is the champion of 
 the old-time religion against an imported cult. 
 To academic religionists it may seem so, but 
 other issues lay behind it. Foreign gods came 
 from a foreign alliance. They meant foreign po- 
 litical and social institutions a foreign culture 
 with immoral and undemocratic tendencies. The 
 contest in Israel between Jehovah and the Phoeni- 
 cian Baal was more than a mere conflict of relig- 
 ions. Like the contest of Jehovah and the Ca- 
 naanite Baals which it followed and for which 
 it gave the historians a new interest and color, it 
 was essentially a conflict of civilizations. Elijah 
 is the defender of a pure nationalism, the un- 
 compromising opponent of foreign customs and 
 worships. The court and its official prophets 
 desired a syncretism of worships and cultures. 
 The people were divided and uncertain "limp- 
 ing," as Elijah says, between two opinions. The 
 scene at Mt. Carmel is the dramatic presentation 
 
156 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 of the choice and the striking vindication of the 
 religion of Jehovah. To the idealist there is no 
 blurring of the issue; no compromise is possible. 
 The alternatives are clear and irreconcilable, and 
 the signal discomfiture of the Baal worshippers 
 means the complete triumph of the prophet's God. 
 It is easy to understand the interest of pro- 
 phetic historians in these elements in Elijah's 
 career. But still more consoling to them than 
 this vindication of the prophets must have been 
 the story of Elijah's flight and despondency. 
 From the trying circumstances of his own day 
 the writer has given us a bit of psychological 
 study that for autobiographic interest must rank 
 with the noble confessions of Jeremiah. The 
 circumstances are similar. The prophet is dis- 
 couraged and hunted to death. His cause seems 
 lost, his life not worth living. And so he lies 
 down to die alone in the wilderness. In the 
 mount of God he has an experience of Jehovah 
 like that which came to Isaiah in the temple. 
 Conscious of the crisis in the nation's life, the 
 universal wickedness and unfaithfulness of his 
 fellow countrymen, conscious also of his own 
 failure to rise above the level by his brave but 
 unavailing efforts, overwhelmed with a sense of 
 loneliness which is the more acute because of his 
 exceeding zeal in such a mood he is ripe for 
 the divine assurance. God speaks to him in the 
 secret of his heart by the still small voice and 
 
IDEALS IN ACTION 157 
 
 sends him forth with courage to a task whose full 
 success cannot be known in the gloom of the 
 present, but only by its indirect but momentous 
 results upon future generations. To the despon- 
 dent prophet comes the ringing challenge, " What 
 doest thou here, Elijah?" And with new confi- 
 dence he returns to his work, conscious of God's 
 presence and help, and assured, as Jeremiah says: 
 
 Since God is with me, I triumph like a hero. 1 
 
 Our other illustration is an incident in the his- 
 tory of Judah, the famous escape of Jerusalem 
 from Sennacherib. The narrative of Kings, 
 though it raises many historical and literary prob- 
 lems, is a telling example of prophetic history. 2 
 The crisis is one of foreign rather than domestic 
 affairs, but the hero, as in the incident from 
 Ahab's reign, is not the weakling king but a 
 prophet and no phantom figure, either, but a 
 genuine historical character, Isaiah of Jerusalem. 
 The traits of his message, familiar to us from his 
 sermons, here are put in dramatic setting. Once 
 
 1 Jer. 20:11, Buttenwieser. 
 
 S II Bangs 18:17-19:37, copied thence with other bio- 
 graphical stories of Isaiah in the appendix of I Isaiah. The 
 problems, aside from the question of historicity, are principally 
 (a) whether this incident should be dated at the invasion of 
 Sennacherib in 701 B. c. or on a later campaign about 690, 
 and (b) whether there were two ultimatums or two versions 
 interwoven in the present text. See commentaries for a 
 discussion of these points. 
 
158 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 more we have a duel on the one side Rabshakeh, 
 the diplomat of the proud Assyrian empire, on 
 the other Eliakim, Shebnah, and Joah, the rep- 
 resentatives of the helpless Judah. It is a duel 
 not of armies nor of men, but of gods and national 
 ideals. How characteristic of the philosophy of 
 force is the argument of the Assyrian! This 
 clever diplomat knows well the military weakness 
 and internal dissensions in his enemy's position. 
 He understands the pro-Egyptian fallacy of one 
 party and the passive trust-in-God policy which 
 Isaiah opposes to it. He knows even the religious 
 controversies that culminated in Hezekiah's re- 
 form, and the advanced international theology of 
 the prophets with its non-partisan God, and he 
 makes capital of all this information. His speech 
 is a masterpiece: 
 
 Thus saith the great king, the king of Assyria, 
 What confidence is this wherein thou trustest? 
 Thou sayest (but they are but vain words), There is 
 counsel and strength for the war. Now on whom dost 
 thou trust, that thou hast rebelled against me ? Now, 
 behold, thou trustest upon the staff of this bruised 
 reed, even upon Egypt; whereon if a man lean, it will 
 go into his hand, and pierce it: so is Pharaoh king of 
 Egypt unto all that trust on him. 
 
 But if ye say unto me, We trust in Jehovah our 
 God; is not that he, whose high places and whose 
 altars Hezekiah hath taken away, and hath said to 
 Judah and to Jerusalem, Ye shall worship before thig 
 altar in Jerusalem ? 
 
IDEALS IN ACTION 159 
 
 Now therefore, I pray thee, give pledges to my 
 master the king of Assyria, and I will give thee two 
 thousand horses, if thou be able on thy part to set 
 riders upon them. How then canst thou turn away 
 the face of one captain of the least of my master's 
 servants, and put thy trust on Egypt for chariots and 
 for horsemen? 
 
 Am I now come up without Jehovah against this 
 place to destroy it? Jehovah said unto me, Go up 
 against this land and destroy it (II Kings 18:19-25). 
 
 Though his words are addressed to the king, 
 they are meant for general consumption. But it 
 was easy for Hebrew nobles to see that such per- 
 suasive arguments should not be allowed to reach 
 the ears of the people uncensored. The people 
 who overheard could not be trusted, with all their 
 dissensions and ignorance, to share the confidence 
 of the royal diplomats. Such hostile propaganda 
 was calculated to breed sheer defeatism. Secrecy 
 of negotiation was desirable to preserve the He- 
 brew morale. Therefore, said Eliakim the son of 
 Hilkiah, and Shebnah and Joah unto Rabshakeh: 
 
 Speak, I pray thee, to thy servants in the Syrian 
 language; for we understand it; and speak not with 
 us in the Jews' language, in the ears of the people that 
 are on the wall. 
 
 But Rabshakeh knows well the value of open 
 negotiations in undermining the enemy's unity 
 of counsel. He would appeal to the people over 
 
160 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 the heads of their representatives, he would 
 estrange them from their government and would 
 offer them favorable terms for disloyalty. He 
 would demand unconditional surrender, not be- 
 cause it is deserved, but because he thinks he can 
 get it. He has an army at his back to enforce 
 his demands, an army that none of the gods of 
 other nations has been able to resist, not even 
 Jehovah himself in the fateful siege of Samaria. 
 For Rabshakeh's diplomatic offensive everything 
 is to be gained by publicity, and so he " cried with 
 a loud voice in the Jews' language" to the very 
 populace that suffered the most from siege. 
 "But the people held their peace, and answered 
 not a word; for the king's commandment was, 
 saying, Answer him not." 
 
 In these dire straits the anxious king and court 
 consult the prophet Isaiah. Against this back- 
 ground of general alarm over a calamity that 
 threatened all that they held dear including the 
 very integrity of the state Isaiah's wonted 
 "quietness and confidence" are most impressive. 
 His reply to Hezekiah is prompt, brief, and em- 
 phatic; 
 
 Thus saith Jehovah, Be not afraid of the words that 
 thou hast heard, wherewith the servants of the king 
 of Assyria have blasphemed me. Behold, I will put a 
 spirit in him, and he shall hear tidings, and shall return 
 to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the 
 sword in his own land. 
 
IDEALS IN ACTION 161 
 
 In an alternative version (unless it be a later 
 incident) the complete inviolability of the city is 
 promised, and in fulfilment " the angel of Jehovah 
 went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyr- 
 ians a hundred four-score and five thousand: 
 and when men arose early in the morning, be- 
 hold, these were all dead bodies." So once more 
 the prophet is vindicated. In time of crisis he 
 becomes the real guide of his people, the true 
 statesman, the national hero. And the victory 
 that overcomes the world is the prophet's faith. 
 By such stories as these the devout admirers of 
 prophecy drove home powerfully its lessons for 
 the nation, and actually created a better people 
 from the history of its past. Such vindications 
 of the prophets gave authority to their teaching 
 on national righteousness and self-reliance, until 
 these virtues became appropriated as the realized 
 achievement of Judaism. And in these stories 
 many men in successive generations have found 
 the lessons of courage, of faith, and of individual 
 faithfulness to untarnished ideals, which have 
 made of them true patriots and worthy successors 
 to the mantle of Elijah and Isaiah. 
 
XVII 
 
 AN UNPOPULAR PATRIOT 
 
 THE Book of Jeremiah, in spite of its length 
 and some confusion in order, presents a remark- 
 ably clear picture of a most dramatic figure. The 
 simplicity of his message, the depth of his reflec- 
 tive lyrics, and the vividness of his experiences 
 combine to make living and modern this ancient 
 patriot of Judah. Jeremiah's lot was cast at the 
 climax of his nation's woes. He saw his people 
 pass from the happy, hopeful days of Josiah to 
 the utter desolation of repeated disasters. Of 
 Josiah's successors only two, Jehoiakim and Zede- 
 kiah, ruled more than two or three months, and 
 each of these brought on himself and his people 
 the scourge of punitive conquest and exile. 
 
 In many respects the situation of Jeremiah re- 
 sembles that of Isaiah just a century before him. 
 Instead of Assyria, Babylonia now held sway over 
 all southwestern Asia. But in Judah a restless 
 party, as in the days of Hezekiah, still chafed 
 under foreign dominion. The prophet in each 
 case deplored this political unrest and advised 
 submission to the inevitable, rather than futile 
 revolt and entangling alliances. But Jeremiah 
 maintained this stand further than Isaiah. For 
 
 162 
 
AN UNPOPULAR PATRIOT 163 
 
 even when war was actually on and the besieging 
 army surrounded the starving city, Jeremiah did 
 not wait for miracles to happen, or foster a des- 
 perate hope, but coolly advised the king and peo- 
 ple to surrender and make the best terms they 
 could with the enemy rather than await the more 
 disastrous consequences of continued resistance. 
 He explained clearly to the people the alterna- 
 tives: 
 
 Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way 
 of death. He that abideth in this city shall die by 
 the sword, and by the famine, and by the pestilence; 
 but he that goeth out, and passeth over to the Chal- 
 deans that besiege you, he shall live (21:8). 
 
 To men obsessed with a blind absorption in a 
 war to the bitter end such open advocacy of de- 
 sertion seemed treasonable and thoroughly dis- 
 astrous. We are not surprised to read that the 
 princes said unto the king: 
 
 Let this man, we j>ray thee, be put to death; foras- 
 much as he weakeneth the hands of the men of war 
 that remain in this city, and the hands of the people, 
 in speaking such words unto them; for this man seek- 
 eth not the welfare of this people, but the hurt (38:4). 
 
 One can follow through many chapters the 
 story of Jeremiah's persistent propaganda and its 
 inevitable consequences to himself. With painful 
 iteration and with constant variety of resource by 
 
164 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 speech and by writing he presented his unwelcome 
 message. In many cases the religious authorities 
 were his chief opponents. When Hananiah, the 
 prophet, predicted the speedy breaking of the 
 Babylonian yoke, Jeremiah dramatically answered 
 the false hopes of his countryman in his own fig- 
 ures; the yoke of Babylonia is a yoke of iron and 
 not of wood. When Jeremiah predicted the deso- 
 lation of the Jerusalem temple the chief of police 
 put him in the stocks. From their exile in distant 
 Babylon the religious leaders and prophets com- 
 plained of his propaganda of non-resistance and 
 recommended that the temple officers give him 
 condign punishment. 
 
 Even at his own home, the priestly town of 
 Anathoth, his life was in danger and he found, like 
 many another prophet, that a man's foes are they 
 of his own household. How his life hung in the 
 balance when again he predicted the downfall of 
 the temple is told in inimitable narrative. The 
 accusers, the defendant, and the judges each 
 speak in turn. 
 
 Then spake the priests and the prophets unto the 
 princes and to all the people, saying, This man is 
 worthy of death; for he hath prophesied against this 
 city, as ye have heard with your ears. 
 
 Then spake Jeremiah unto all the princes and to 
 all the people, saying, Jehovah sent me to prophesy 
 against this house and against this city all the words 
 that ye have heard. Now therefore amend your ways 
 
AN UNPOPULAR PATRIOT 165 
 
 and your doings, and obey the voice of Jehovah your 
 God; and Jehovah will repent him of the evil that he 
 hath pronounced against you. But as for me, behold, 
 I am in your hand: do with me as is good and right in 
 your eyes. Only know ye for certain that, if ye put 
 me to death, ye will bring innocent blood upon your- 
 selves, and upon this city, and upon the inhabitants 
 thereof; for of a truth Jehovah hath sent me unto you 
 to speak all these words in your ears. 
 
 Then said the princes and all the people unto the 
 priests and to the prophets: This man is not worthy of 
 death; for he hath spoken to us in the name of Jeho- 
 vah our God (26:11-16). 
 
 Only through the influence of Ahikam and the 
 princes, and by the elders' happy recollection of 
 the precedent of Micah, more than a hundred 
 years before, was Jeremiah spared. But such 
 good fortune does not always befall prophets of 
 Jeremiah's mould. As an ominous parallel is 
 told the fate of Uriah, a contemporary prophet 
 who for similar "seditious" utterances was extra- 
 dited from Egypt and executed by Jehoiakim. 
 Indeed, the same king was prevented from inflict- 
 ing the same fate on Jeremiah and his scribe only 
 because, as the historian puts it, "Jehovah hid 
 them." 
 
 The circumstances of this escape were these: 
 Prevented, perhaps by special interdiction, from 
 speaking in the temple, Jeremiah devised a new 
 method of publicity. He dictated to Baruch, his 
 scribe, the substance of his consistent prophetic 
 
166 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 message for many years past, and then had Baruch 
 read the prophecies aloud on a fast-day to the 
 multitudes gathered in the temple. The princes, 
 when informed of this proceeding, first examined 
 the writing themselves and then reported the 
 matter to the king. So the king had the roll 
 brought and read in his presence, but instead of 
 repenting at the threatened destruction of his 
 city, he destroyed the book, cutting off and burn- 
 ing it piece by piece as it was read, and he tried 
 to complete the suppression of its unpopular mes- 
 sage by destroying its authors. 
 
 That Zedekiah treated Jeremiah more leniently 
 than his predecessor appears to be due rather to 
 the superstitiousness of the king than to any 
 cowardice of the prophet, for now "the princes 
 were wroth with Jeremiah and smote him and put 
 him in prison in the house of Jonathan the scribe," 
 whence he was later transferred to the court of 
 the guard. Once Zedekiah weakly surrendered 
 him to the will of the princes who cast him into a 
 dungeon of mire, only to be rescued by the kindly 
 intercession of an Ethiopian eunuch. Finally 
 Zedekiah promised to save Jeremiah from those 
 who sought his life, and "Jeremiah abode in the 
 court of the guard until the day that Jerusalem 
 was taken." 
 
 If the outer experiences of Jeremiah are inter- 
 esting, still more so are the inner conflicts of his 
 mind. Shy and sensitive in his personal relations, 
 
AN UNPOPULAR PATRIOT 167 
 
 deeply patriotic and loyal to his country, funda- 
 mentally optimistic in his faith, it was laid upon 
 him to be an object of universal scorn, abuse, and 
 indignation and the herald of national disaster. 
 The form of Jeremiah's message was political 
 rather than religious. He was the spokesman of 
 a diminishing and persecuted minority party, who 
 opposed the current international policy of his 
 government, and although the method of his ad- 
 dress the monotonous prediction of doom is 
 hardly the type of political argument that would 
 be effective to-day, we must recall that to his 
 contemporaries it was more cogent. His message 
 was in accordance with the prevailing theory of 
 his day, that the moral test of any programme is 
 its practical success or failure, and that the clear- 
 est proof of God's disapproval of a course is mis- 
 fortune, predicted or realized as its result. The 
 religious view-point was the basis of his political 
 advice. It was in this that he really differed 
 from the prophets who opposed him. They over- 
 looked the social crimes, the hypocrisy of the for- 
 mal worship, and based their optimism on a 
 superficial confidence in Jehovah's partisan favor 
 for their nation, whether it was right or whether 
 it was wrong. It was not even long-headed po- 
 litical sagacity that guided Jeremiah. As David- 
 son says: 
 
 His assurance and announcement that Jerusalem 
 should fall before the Chaldeans was not founded on 
 
168 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 his belief that so small a power as Judah could not 
 resist the Babylonian empire. He had no such idea 
 as that. The Babylonian empire was in Jehovah's 
 hands, as all things else were. Jeremiah's assurance 
 was the outcome of his profound conviction of the 
 people's sinfulness, for which Jehovah must bring the 
 state to an end. The optimism of the false prophets 
 was based on their conception of Jehovah's power; the 
 pessimism of the true prophets on their conception of 
 his ethical being. 1 
 
 Indeed, the very pessimism of Jeremiah is one 
 of the grounds of his assurance. He knows too 
 well the subtle pressure of public opinion that 
 tempts the statesman or prophet to accept the 
 popular or optimistic policy. But he feels his 
 solidarity with the prophets before him, who, 
 though time may have vindicated them, seemed 
 to their contemporaries traitors and pessimists. 
 Indeed, the presumption of truth is on the side of 
 such as these. It is to Jeremiah almost the proof 
 of a true prophet that he is a prophet of evil. 
 
 And thereby Jeremiah is freed from the charge 
 of wilful pessimism that so easily attaches to 
 men of his position. He did not desire the evil 
 that he predicted and he did not enjoy predicting 
 it. He was not a professional objector nor the 
 temperamental champion of the unpopular side. 
 His love for his country is sincere and heartfelt, 
 though he seemed to others a pro-Chaldean 
 traitor. Sincere, too, was his personal suffering 
 1 Old Testament Prophecy, p. 305. 
 
AN UNPOPULAR PATRIOT 169 
 
 at his loneliness and isolation. The occasional 
 outbursts of vengeful desire upon those who per- 
 secuted him are easily understood, and though 
 they place him below the highest Christian ideals, 
 they do not invalidate the sincerity and force of 
 his anguish of soul. He knows himself "a man 
 of strife and a man of contention to the whole 
 earth." Yet he cannot do otherwise, he cannot 
 withhold a single word. 1 
 
 Upon Jeremiah there fell that unique sorrow 
 the sorrow of an unpopular patriot. Sharing all 
 the suffering of his fellow citizens in the ravages 
 of war and siege, even to the extent of voluntary 
 self-denial, he must bear besides the intolerable 
 burden of an outcast, misunderstood and un- 
 heeded, maltreated and abused, and, above all, 
 falsely accused of disloyalty and treason. No 
 wonder that he cursed the day that he was born 
 and prayed for vindication. Yet out of the cruci- 
 ble of suffering he developed a strength of char- 
 acter, a certainty of God, and even a new discov- 
 ery of religion that have made his name immortal. 
 
 This discovery was nothing less than a new 
 national ideal. For many generations the men 
 of Israel had thought of religion in ethnic terms: 
 the unit was the state. Jeremiah inherited this 
 ancient conception. He symbolically identified 
 himself with the sufferings of his nation. His 
 whole being was filled with such a passion for cor- 
 ijer. 20:7-10. 
 
170 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 porate righteousness as we to-day, with our traiti- 
 ing in individualism, have only lately begun to 
 appreciate with the awakened social conscience 
 of our time and the religious vindication of na- 
 tional policies required by a world war. But to 
 a Hebrew prophet the collective outlook was 
 natural, the novelty of Jeremiah's thought a 
 novelty due, perhaps, to his own unique isolation 
 within his state was the discovery of the indi- 
 vidual in religion. 
 
 The climax of the Book of Jeremiah and per- 
 haps the climax of all Hebrew religion is the 
 promise of the new covenant. Among the doleful 
 warnings of the prophet jeremiads, as we call 
 them occur a few such hopeful strains. It is a 
 new covenant to replace the covenant at Sinai, 
 but expressed in terms of personal knowledge of 
 God and inward authority: 
 
 I will put my law in their inward parts, and in their 
 heart will I write it; and I will be their God, and they 
 shall be my people. And they shall teach no more 
 every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, 
 saying, Know Jehovah; for they shall all know me, 
 from the least of them to the greatest (31:33, 34). 
 
 Thus the individualism of Jeremiah is at once 
 the successor and the supplement of the old 
 nationalism. The outlook is still national, but 
 out of the burning pangs of his solitary sorrow it 
 
AN UNPOPULAR PATRIOT 171 
 
 gained a depth and meaning that were unknown 
 before. As Peake has said: 
 
 The religion remains the religion of Israel, a national 
 religion. God and Israel are still the contracting par- 
 ties to the New Covenant as to the Old. But the in- 
 dividualism which characterized the New made the 
 religion national in a sense unattainable under the 
 Old. For when the religion rested on external guar- 
 antees and was expressed in external institutions, 
 while its laws were imposed by an external authority, 
 when, moreover, the people was contemplated as a 
 unit, without reference to the individuals of whom it 
 was composed, then it was national, but in a general 
 and superficial sense. Only when every individual in 
 the mass is renewed in heart and his will brought into 
 harmony with the Divine will, can the nation itself be 
 truly called religious. Through its individualism the 
 religion first became national in the full sense of the 
 term. 1 
 
 Amid the conflicting voices of international and 
 party strife Jeremiah, the prophet of Anathoth, 
 still challenges us by his unwavering fidelity to 
 the voice of conscience. He calls us to advocate 
 without compromise the highest ideals for our 
 nation, even in the face of contumely and mis- 
 understanding. He recalls us from the impersonal 
 concepts of party and race and nation to our own 
 soul and the souls of our neighbors, and, above 
 all, he reminds us that only through the direct 
 1 Century Bible, "Jeremiah," vol. I, pp. 45 jf. 
 
172 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 and spontaneous response of individuals to the 
 righteousness which exalteth a nation can the 
 kingdoms of the world become the Kingdom of 
 God. 
 
XVIII 
 
 NATIONAL IDEALS IN DISASTER 
 
 EXCEPT victory, hopeless disaster is the sever- 
 est test that can befall a nation's ideals, and this 
 was the test that Judah faced in the opening dec- 
 ades of the sixth century. After two hundred 
 years of more or less nominal vassalage to Assyria 
 and Babylon, the political framework of Judaism 
 was at last destroyed. The flower of the nation 
 was carried into captivity. The city and its walls 
 were levelled to the ground. The native peasant- 
 ry that remained were at best the offscourings 
 of the people. They lived in a state of disorgani- 
 zation and terror. Many of them, haunted by 
 fear and memories of the siege, fled into the land 
 of Egypt, hoping there to "see no war, nor hear 
 the sound of the trumpet, nor have hunger of 
 bread." The final remnant lived in want, amid 
 the chaos of constant petty intrigues and subject 
 to the terrorism of hostile neighbors, who satisfied 
 their long-standing animosities by preying upon 
 them in their weakness. 
 
 The incurable grief of these miserable survivors 
 is vividly portrayed in the Book of Lamentations. 
 The horrors of famine and death are not merely 
 past but present, sorrow and tears are still their 
 
 173 
 
174 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 portion, the joy of their heart is ceased, their 
 dance is turned into mourning. Yet vivid as are 
 these pictures of contemporary want, and spon- 
 taneous as are the outbursts of grief, they are al- 
 ready reduced to permanent liturgy. Four out 
 of five of the elegiac poems of Lamentations are 
 cast in the form of alphabetic acrostics, by which 
 device they have been remembered and recited 
 by Jews unto this day. Thus with the fall of 
 Jerusalem a permanent note of sadness entered 
 the literature, the religion, and the national life 
 of the Hebrews: 
 
 "0 wall of the daughter of Zion, 
 Let tears run down like a river day and night; 
 Give thyself no respite; let not the apple of thine eye 
 
 cease; 
 Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the 
 
 watches; 
 Pour out thy heart like water before the face of the 
 
 Lord: 
 Lift up thy hands toward him for the life of thy 
 
 young children, 
 That faint for hunger at the head of every street." 
 
 " Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by ? 
 Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my 
 sorrow." l 
 
 Another natural reaction from disaster was the 
 desire for revenge. Among all the sorrows of 
 defeat and want none cut the heart to the quick 
 i Lam. 2:18, 19; 1:12. 
 
IN DISASTER 175 
 
 like the triumph of old foes. The Hebrews were 
 fully conscious of this malicious joy. 1 There was 
 Ammon that cried, "Aha/' against Jehovah's 
 "sanctuary, when it was profaned; and against 
 the land of Israel, when it was made desolate; and 
 against the house of Judah, when they went into 
 captivity." 2 There was Edom, Israel's brother, 
 who "stood aloof in the day that strangers car- 
 ried away his substance" and said of Jerusalem, 
 "Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof." 8 
 There was Tyre, intent only on commerce, whose 
 first thought about Israel's disaster was, "I shall 
 be replenished, now that she is laid waste." 4 
 And finally there was Babylon itself the arch- 
 enemy, and ruthless agent of destruction proud, 
 boastful, "wanton as a heifer that treadeth out 
 the grain," blasphemous against Jehovah, yet 
 hypocritically justifying its own excesses against 
 the Hebrews by saying, "We are not guilty, be- 
 cause they have sinned against Jehovah." 8 
 
 Both in anticipation and in retrospect the 
 retribution of Babylon filled the Hebrews with 
 vengeful joy. The Psalmist, weeping when he 
 remembered Zion, cries: 
 
 "O daughter of Babylon, that art to be destroyed, 
 Happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee 
 As thou hast served us. 
 
 1 Lam. 1 :21 ; 2 : 16. * Ezek. 25 :3. 
 
 Obad. 11 ; Psalms 137:7. Ezek. 26:2. 
 
 Jer. 50:7, 11. 
 
176 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy 
 
 little ones 
 Against the rock." x 
 
 So, also, the prophet, in an ode of triumph, pic- 
 tures the humiliation of the relentless empire 
 the welcome to Sheol of the king who thought to 
 make himself like the Most High, and the desola- 
 tion of the city with a destruction like that of 
 Sodom and Gomorrah. 2 "Fallen, fallen is Baby- 
 lon," is the exultant cry that rises from hearts 
 once full of anguish and despair, and it has echoed 
 as a cry of " Revanche 1 " through the ages, until 
 it was caught up in the negro melody of emanci- 
 pated slaves. 3 
 
 This spirit of revenge is one of the least attrac- 
 tive elements in prophecy and psalm, nor is it 
 much disguised by the excuse of retaliation and 
 even of justice which it claims. "What is sheer 
 hate," says Thackeray, "seems to the individual 
 entertaining the sentiment so like indignant vir- 
 tue, that he often indulges in the propensity to 
 the full, nay, lauds himself for the exercise of it." 
 So with Israel. No doubt Babylon had played 
 the part of a ruthless conqueror, and retribution 
 seemed a religious necessity, for at least where 
 their enemies were concerned the Hebrews be- 
 lieved that "Jehovah is a God of recompenses, he 
 will surely requite." 
 
 1 Psalms 137:8, 9. 2 Isaiah 13, 14, 21, 47; Jer. 50, 51. 
 Isaiah 21:9; Revelation 14:8. 
 
IN DISASTER 177 
 
 It was inevitable that the loss of national life 
 should decrease the national interests of many 
 Israelites and should increase the individualism 
 of their thought and ambitions. It would be im- 
 possible to follow all the lines along which the 
 exile stimulated this new emphasis. In Babylon 
 and Egypt especially the new surroundings and 
 the loss of all political opportunity forced the 
 refugees to attend to their immediate personal 
 necessities. Many of them became absorbed in 
 business, or in the commercial life of these wealthy 
 and ancient civilizations. In this respect alone 
 the exile produced a most significant change on 
 the outlook of the Hebrews. For a second time 
 their principal occupation had changed: as the 
 agriculture of Canaan had replaced the pastoral 
 life of the desert, farming was in turn supplanted 
 by the life of trade which to-day seems instinc- 
 tive to the Hebrews. Certainly one of the reac- 
 tions from national disaster is despair of ideals, 
 and selfishness and materialism flourished in the 
 disintegration of the Jewish nation. 
 
 To a certain extent religion was the substitute 
 for politics. As is often said, the exile converted 
 a nation into a church. From being both church 
 and state combined, Judaism changed, as the 
 Roman Catholic Church changed in the Middle 
 Ages, to a largely non-political association. The 
 social and political energies of the people found 
 their expression in a religious organization. The 
 
178 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 synagogues took the place of the older judicial 
 assemblies. The high priest was the exilic sub- 
 stitute for the king. Debate and religious con- 
 troversies were the equivalents for war. As the 
 loss of Greek independence stimulated the relig- 
 ious and philosophical club life in Hellenistic 
 Athens, so within Judaism there grew up new 
 local interests and parties like the Pharisees, that 
 were often religious and philosophical rather than 
 political. A greater other-worldliness resulted. 
 Some men deliberately held themselves aloof from 
 politics. They felt no hope or desire for a re- 
 vived national life, and they watched the rise 
 and fall of empires with an unconcern unparal- 
 leled in the pre-exilic prophets. Their concern 
 was with religion alone, and if they desired a 
 change of government, they were willing to wait 
 for the miraculous intervention of God. 
 
 It is a common statement that through all 
 antiquity the primary unit was the nation. 
 Though we must admit, with Professor Knudson, 1 
 the presence of individualism in pre-exilic Israel, 
 we cannot deny the national view-point of the 
 bulk of pre-exilic literature. The fall of Jerusa- 
 lem is a landmark from which to trace the growth 
 of Hebrew individualism. Heretofore the sub- 
 merging of the individual in the body politic had 
 been unconscious rather than reasoned. Now it 
 was challenged, explained, or denied. The new 
 
 1 The Religious Teaching of the Old Testament, pp. 331 ff. 
 

 IN DISASTER 179 
 
 religion already emerging in Ezekiel and Jeremiah 
 is personal. Each man is in direct relation to 
 God. His guilt is his own apart from the sins 
 of his ancestors or fellow countrymen. Ezekiel 
 denied the proverbial expression of hereditary 
 guilt "the fathers have eaten sour grapes and 
 the children's teeth are set on edge." Even the 
 fate and hope of the individual were divorced from 
 those of the state. And it may be that from the 
 darkest hours of national despair was born the 
 hope not only for a restored nation but for the 
 survival of the individual life even beyond the 
 gates of death. 
 
 There were many Hebrews whose thought con- 
 cerning the disaster of their nation was not satis- 
 fied by these most obvious reactions. Such an 
 event demanded some deeper causal explanation. 
 How could the God of Israel a just God per- 
 mit such a calamity ? A very simple explanation 
 was forthcoming. According to the popular phil- 
 osophy all evil is the punishment for sin, and 
 therefore disaster is the obvious evidence and 
 proof of national guilt. Men who had not been 
 sensible of their guilt before, now accepted this 
 explanation and began to recall and test their 
 past. The prophets had complained of the peo- 
 ple's sin all along, and, sharing the popular philos- 
 ophy, had predicted just such punishment. For 
 them the disaster was no puzzle, it was only the 
 confirmation of their words. And so the prophets 
 
180 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 secured greater respect than ever before. Men 
 built the sepulchres of those whom their fathers 
 had killed. The prophets' sermons were recalled 
 and carefully preserved. Their precepts, as em- 
 bodied in the law of Deuteronomy, became the 
 sacred bond of national life, while their philosophy 
 of history was adopted as the framework for the 
 editing of the records of the past. With quick- 
 ened hindsight it was seen that in the perspective 
 of time the fall of the state was not an isolated or 
 unprepared for calamity. It was the result of 
 repeated and cumulative transgressions, through- 
 out the whole history of the Hebrew monarchy. 
 Even in the oldest period of their national life 
 the same law of moral cause and effect was dis- 
 covered and the primitive stories of the Judges 
 fell into the simple framework: 
 
 And the children of Israel again did that which was 
 evil in the sight of Jehovah; and Jehovah delivered 
 them into the hand of x years. 
 
 Thus there came to the Hebrew people with 
 the exile a benumbing and oppressive sense of 
 guilt. Their punishment was well deserved, and 
 although in time they came to hope that repen- 
 tance would win pardon, or that a double punish- 
 ment would be followed by release, the shadow 
 of guilt fell forever across the lights of hope and 
 promise. As Knudson says: 
 
IN DISASTER 181 
 
 The national humiliation and suffering that followed 
 from the fall of Jerusalem brought home to the people 
 a consciousness of sin such as they had not had before. 
 The book of Lamentations illustrates this, and so does 
 the whole post-exilic priestly system. ... In ancient 
 Judaism there was a sense of world-weariness. The 
 nation had been defeated in its political aims. Self- 
 assertion, it was now felt, could yield but little. If 
 the hopes of the devout Israelite were to be realized, it 
 could be only by a marvellous divine intervention. 
 The thing to do, consequently, was not to devote one- 
 self to a positive programme of social amelioration, but 
 to remove the obstacles to the coming of the kingdom 
 of God. The ethical life thus took a negative turn. 
 It found its satisfaction in repentance from sin rather 
 than in achievement and self-realization. 1 
 
 Not all Hebrews, however, accepted the simple 
 explanation that their national disaster was a 
 punishment. Not only had it included the inno- 
 cent with the guilty, but even when the nation 
 was taken as a unit, it was possible to conceive 
 its past more favorably than Jeremiah and Eze- 
 kiel were inclined to do. Under Josiah a united 
 effort had been made to purify the religion of 
 Israel according to prophetic standards. In fact, 
 to some of Jeremiah's contemporaries, unfaithful- 
 ness to the queen of heaven rather than to Jeho- 
 
 1 The Religious Teaching of the Old Testament, pp. 254, 257. 
 While the situation to-day in America is different, and many 
 Christians hold the reverse view-point, the emphasis upon 
 sin, the expectation of a divine coup d'etat, and the negative 
 attitude toward social religion are well illustrated by certain 
 evangelistic and millenarian schools of thought. 
 
182 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 vah seemed the cause of their disaster. 1 And 
 many men of unclouded conscience and prophetic 
 sympathies felt that the nation was relatively 
 innocent. Thus there arose the eternal problem 
 of evil, not only as an individual problem, but as 
 a problem for the nation. Why do the right- 
 eous people suffer? In neither the personal nor 
 the national problem did Hebrew thought reach 
 a scientific theodicy, but its struggle with the 
 problem produced the most exalted reaches of 
 Hebrew literature. The personal problem is 
 dealt with in the Book of Job, and leads, as we 
 have said, to a faith in the future life. On the 
 national side the answer was suggested princi- 
 pally along the lines of future promise. The suf- 
 ferings of Israel are not so much the measure of 
 past guilt as of future reward. Return, restora- 
 tion, and ultimate glory will cancel the present 
 distress. Only be patient. "Though it tarry, 
 wait for it, because it will surely come, it will not 
 delay/' 2 What is commonly called "the Mes- 
 sianic Hope" owes its emphasis, if not its origin, 
 to this interpretation of the exile. 
 
 The second solution of national distress was 
 even more sublime. To at least one Hebrew of 
 the exile came the idea of its vicarious and re- 
 demptive service. He saw that Israel's suffer- 
 ings were not for its own sins only, but for the 
 sins of many, and thus through the path of sor- 
 
 Uer. 44:15-19. Hab.2:3. 
 
IN DISASTER 183 
 
 row his nation would bring light and healing to 
 all the world. Thus, while most of the effects of 
 the exile seem, from the view-point of national 
 ideals, negative and unproductive, along these 
 two lines of development it did contribute ele- 
 ments of permanent value. To these two ideals 
 we must return in separate chapters. 
 
XIX 
 
 IDEALS OF RECONSTRUCTION 
 
 THE Old Testament contains an unexpected 
 amount of what we should call nowadays "litera- 
 ture of reconstruction." The primary occasion 
 of such writings was the fall of Jerusalem in 
 586 B. c. Though the prevailing reaction from 
 that disaster was at first prostrate hopelessness, 
 there were men in both Judah and Babylon who 
 soon rallied from defeat and turned their thoughts 
 from the past to the future. But their time of 
 waiting was prolonged and the aspirations for 
 new national life, instead of finding fulfilment 
 immediately after disaster, as it is hoped will be 
 the case in modern Belgium and Serbia, were 
 maintained, as was done in Poland and Finland, 
 throughout many years of subjection. For two 
 generations, until the accession of Cyrus, they 
 waited for the first chance to undertake the task 
 of reconstruction. The delay was irksome, but it 
 only strengthened the force of their constructive 
 ideals. It gave them time to consider their pro- 
 gramme. It made their memory of past inde- 
 pendence and prosperity so remote as to be easily 
 idealized. It made their hope for the future soon 
 transcend the simpler expectations of a return to 
 184 
 
RECONSTRUCTION 185 
 
 the status quo ante. It gave them an opportunity 
 to start de novo, to avoid the old ruts, and to 
 build more nearly to the heart's desire. There 
 are clear evidences that, in the absolute break 
 with the past provided by the Hebrew exile, cer- 
 tain permanent changes actually occurred in the 
 national life. But "hope deferred" had become 
 a hope glorified beyond any possibility of fulfil- 
 ment. And so it never died or ceased to grow. 
 Even at their periods of greatest prosperity and 
 achievement the Hebrews were filled with a holy 
 discontent. They had learned once for all to 
 look for a better city. Like the fleeing Italy of 
 the Mneid y their aspiration became a permanent 
 attitude of their later history. 
 
 For this reason it is impossible to limit the re- 
 construction literature of Judaism to the round 
 seventy years which Jeremiah promised as the 
 period of Babylonian control. It includes many 
 passages of unquestionably later date. Even such 
 fulfilment of the national hope as was achieved 
 under Zerubbabel in the sixth century, under 
 Nehemiah in the fifth century, and under the 
 Maccabees in the second century before Christ, 
 prolonged the need for cultivating these aspira- 
 tions and for facing the problems of reconstruc- 
 tion. The Messianic hope of the apocalyptic 
 writers and even of political agitators in the first 
 Christian era shows the, persistence of the recon- 
 struction ideal. 
 
186 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 There is some evidence, also, that the hope of 
 restoration preceded as well as followed the actual 
 span of the exile. There are many passages in 
 the eighth-century prophets which predict return, 
 revival, or restoration. It is customary with 
 scholars to reject these as later interpolations, 
 and to limit the genuine prophecies of the future 
 to those which foretell doom. Such a wholesale 
 method of criticism can hardly be justified, t and 
 even though many of these passages be excluded, 
 there still remain in the pre-exilic prophets some 
 very probable suggestions of a hopeful outlook. 
 There is nothing inconsistent in assigning to the 
 same prophet promises both of blessing and of 
 punishment. It seems, therefore, quite probable 
 that the hopes of the exilic Jews were not a new 
 creation of their disaster, but were based on 
 earlier ideals that can be traced back, if not to 
 Egyptian and Babylonian ideals of the Golden 
 Age, at least to Isaiah's belief in the salvation of 
 a remnant and to other elements inherent in the 
 Hebrew view-point under the monarchy. 1 Cer- 
 tainly those prophets who spoke just before the 
 city's destruction already felt the probability of 
 restoration. Thus Jeremiah, though he vigor- 
 ously contradicts the optimism of Hananiah, who 
 predicted the immediate destruction of the Baby- 
 lonian yoke, nevertheless promises at a more dis- 
 
 l See Knudson, Religious Teaching of the Old Testament, 
 Chapter XV, "The Messianic Hope.", 
 
RECONSTRUCTION 187 
 
 tant date return and restoration. The same ex- 
 pectation appears in EzekiePs famous vision of 
 the Valley of Dry Bones. 
 
 For this and for other reasons it was natural 
 that when the crisis had really come the prophets 
 should be the leaders in reviving national hope. 
 They and their predecessors had been vindicated 
 in their prediction of disaster. In the revulsion 
 of feeling that followed the failure of the dominant 
 anti-Babylonian party, they secured the inevita- 
 ble prestige that comes to the minority party. 
 Formerly Jeremiah and Ezekiel were branded as 
 traitors, now they were respected as the expo- 
 nents of an alternative policy that might have 
 met with success. They had not been absorbed 
 in the fatal policy of resistance, which had brought 
 the other leaders into disrepute; they had been 
 free to observe events at leisure and to formulate 
 a policy and an attitude to the future. The 
 problem of reconstruction had not found them 
 unprepared. Though they had striven with all 
 their zeal to avert the disaster in the only way 
 that could be effective the preaching of their 
 unpopular social and international programme, 
 when the disaster was upon them they refrained 
 from mere recriminations of conscious innocence 
 and the futile "I told you so," and devoted them- 
 selves to the reconstruction of national morale. 
 So by a natural reaction the disappointed nation 
 turned to the prophets for advice and guidance, 
 
188 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 and not to the living prophets only, but to those 
 who were dead. The fragmentary remains of 
 the older sermons were carefully collected and 
 edited and fitted with many interpretations for 
 the new world. From such an epoch of prophetic 
 appreciation arose the hope for a prophetic re- 
 vival, for the return of the reformer prophet, 
 Elijah, or for one greater than all the prophets. 
 
 The vindication of the political programme of 
 the prophets meant the vindication of their moral 
 standards as well. The punishment had come as 
 the prophets expected; it was natural to accept 
 the prophets' explanation of its cause. The re- 
 newed sense of guilt that now stirred the nation 
 was the popular confession of the justice of the 
 reformer's earlier demands. Now at last the na- 
 tion was prepared to give them a trial: "Let us 
 search and try our ways, and turn again to Jeho- 
 vah." It is of the utmost significance that in 
 the chaos which followed the fall of the Hebrew 
 nation, the constructive leadership came to the 
 prophetic group. This fact gave to the recon- 
 struction ideals that emphasis upon spiritual and 
 moral reconstruction which fills the resultant lit- 
 erature. For the real crisis in the nation's history 
 proved to be not its hour of defeat, but the suc- 
 ceeding formative years when its power of rally- 
 ing was so severely tested. 
 
 The basis of the prophets' hope was religious. 
 It was not a mere forecast of probable political 
 
RECONSTRUCTION 189 
 
 changes, but an assurance of faith. While other 
 men were lost in despair, the courage and opti- 
 mism of the prophets were grounded on their trust 
 in God. Nowhere is the theological basis of na- 
 tional optimism more effectively expressed than 
 in Second Isaiah. God is the protagonist of his- 
 tory. Israel is only his servant and witness, 
 Cyrus is his tool and agent. The power of God 
 is assured from nature, from prehistoric mythol- 
 ogy, from history, and from comparative religion 
 and divination. It is he that cut Rahab to 
 pieces in the days of old, "that measured the 
 waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out 
 heaven with the span," "that bringeth princes 
 to nothing, that maketh the judges of the earth 
 as vanity," "that sitteth above the circle of the 
 earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grass- 
 hoppers." Before him "the nations are as a 
 drop of a bucket, and are accounted as the small 
 dust of the balance." The other gods are mere 
 stocks and stones compared with him, "their 
 molten images are wind and confusion." They 
 are powerless to help their worshippers, or to 
 guide them with mantic forecasts of the future. 
 Jehovah's favor for Israel is shown through its 
 past. He made a great nation from Abraham; 
 he can make a great nation out of the feeble 
 remnant of Judah. He saved Israel out of Egypt, 
 he can also redeem them now from Babylon. 
 Then he dried up the sea and made rivers in a 
 
190 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 wilderness; now he "will make a way in the wil- 
 derness and rivers in the desert." Though Israel 
 was a transgressor from the womb, though their 
 first father sinned, God will blot out their trans- 
 gressions and will not remember their sins. He 
 has refined them but not as silver, he has tried 
 them in the furnace of affliction. He has chosen 
 them for his service to bear his salvation to the 
 ends of the earth. All this he will do for his own 
 name's sake, as the expression of his righteous 
 character. He has foretold the things that have 
 come to pass; now he declares a new thing and 
 it also shall be accomplished. These are the 
 themes that repeatedly occur in the exquisite 
 lyric songs of the prophet of the restoration. 
 These are the basis of his assurance and hope. 
 
 It is not possible here to review all the forms 
 which the restoration ideals assumed, or to enu- 
 merate all the longer and shorter passages in 
 which they were expressed. Beside the poetic 
 masterpiece of the prophet of the restoration, 
 contained in Isaiah 40-55, both earlier chapters 
 (as 34, 35) and the whole later part of the book 
 seem to deal with the same general problem. 
 All the preaching of Ezekiel falls after the first 
 disaster of Jerusalem in 597 B. c., and the whole 
 latter part of this volume suggests a date after 
 the final desolation. Of the sermons of Jeremiah, 
 four chapters, 30-33, appear to contain his chief 
 prophesies of restoration. Of the "minor proph- 
 
RECONSTRUCTION 191 
 
 ets," Zechariah, Haggai, and Malachi deal most 
 directly with the same subject. 
 
 To many Jews repatriation seemed the pre- 
 requisite of national restoration. It is perhaps 
 for that reason that the general amnesty for 
 exiles offered by Cyrus inspired such enthusiasm 
 in prospect as we find in Second Isaiah, and such 
 magnified importance in the retrospect of the 
 Chronicler. For those in Babylon it meant their 
 own return to the land of happy memory, to 
 Jerusalem unforgotten and preferred above their 
 chief joy. For those in Judah it meant the re- 
 population of the desolate cities and the blossom- 
 ing of the deserted fields and vineyards with the 
 return of agricultural care. The songs of Zion 
 that could not be sung for sorrow in a foreign, 
 land re-echo through the lyric melody of the 
 prophet as he pictures this return: 
 
 "The ransomed of Jehovah shall return, 
 And come with singing unto Zion, 
 And everlasting joy shall be upon their heads" (51:11). 
 
 "Break forth into joy, sing together, 
 Ye waste places of Jerusalem; 
 For Jehovah hath comforted his people, 
 He hath redeemed Jerusalem" (52:9). 
 
 "Jehovah hath comforted Zion; 
 He hath comforted all her waste places, 
 And hath made her wilderness like Eden, 
 And her desert like the garden of Jehovah; 
 Joy and gladness shall be found therein, 
 Thanksgiving, and the voice of melody" (51:3). 
 
192 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 "Lo, these shall come from far; 
 And, lo, these from the north and from the west; 
 And these from the land of Sinim. . . . 
 The children of thy bereavement shall yet say in 
 
 thine ears, 
 
 The place is too strait for me; 
 Give place to me that I may dwell" (49:12, 20). 
 
 Zion is represented as a widow, once desolate and 
 childless, now rejoicing as her children are ' re- 
 stored from the four corners of the earth. They 
 will find the circuit of the city too small to con- 
 tain the teeming population. 
 
 Sometimes the hope for the future is expressed 
 in terms of economic prosperity. The soil will 
 bear richly at home; and from abroad will be 
 brought either as imports or as tribute the wealth 
 of the fabled East. All other forms of happiness 
 color the picture. Sorrow and disease shall dis- 
 appear, the life of men shall be prolonged beyond 
 the three score years and ten. Even nature shall 
 be miraculously changed. 
 
 As was natural after years of distress from civil 
 and foreign war, the hope of peace played a prom- 
 inent part in the thought of Jewish Utopians. 
 Though some were inclined to base their hopes 
 for security on restored defense and the use of 
 the sword, to many had come the dream of uni- 
 versal disarmament and permanent peace. 
 
 "They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, 
 And their spears into pruning-hooks; 
 
RECONSTRUCTION 193 
 
 Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, 
 Neither shall they learn war any more." 1 
 
 Of course even the most international ideals 
 are never entirely free from the national bias. In 
 the Golden Age Israel is to have the real sover- 
 eignty, Jehovah is to be the international arbi- 
 trator, Judaism is to become the universal relig- 
 ion. Nevertheless the nucleus of a more neu- 
 tral internationalism is to be found in the spirit 
 and method by which such supremacy is antici- 
 pated. 
 
 There were many persons whose interest in 
 restoration was centred in the domestic political 
 problems. The restoration of the house of David, 
 the proper adjustment of judicial authority, the 
 codification of civil law, were their concerns. They 
 were anxious that the best elements in the earlier 
 government should be carefully preserved and 
 restored. 
 
 A similar interest was felt by many persons in 
 the resuscitation of the religious system. The 
 elaborate plans of Ezekiel, the Holiness Code, 
 and the later priestly outline of Levitical duties 
 are an expression of that form of idealism that 
 trusts the machinery of religion as the guarantee 
 of national security. In such a hope the temple 
 holds a central place, and the restoration of this 
 building in the time of Haggai and Zechariah 
 
 Isaiah 2:2-4 and Micah 4:1-3. The original date and 
 author are uncertain. 
 
194 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 gave an impetus to this conception which de- 
 scended to the priests and Sadducees. Yet al- 
 ways, as we have suggested, the moral resuscita- 
 tion is included in the programmes for recon- 
 struction. Absolute reliance could not be placed 
 on the most perfect panaceas of political or eccle- 
 siastical organization. A new heart was required, 
 a new spirit the spirit of God himself perpetu- 
 ally resident with men and these were the pre- 
 requisite of the new song, the new name, the new 
 heaven and the new earth. The closing chapters 
 of the Book of Isaiah show that amid the ideals 
 of religious conformity, of political supremacy, 
 and of economic prosperity the old spiritual ideals 
 and social religion of the prophets were still re- 
 tained. Here is a soul that is sensitive to the 
 sins of the present as well as the past, of oneself 
 as well as of others, yet fully aware of the possi- 
 bilities of moral achievement. The crowning ele- 
 ment in such an ideal is the awakened civic con- 
 science, the commutation of ceremony into social 
 service, and the universalizing of righteousness. 
 With words reminiscent of the International Ser- 
 vant and prophetic of the beneficent Christ, he 
 cries: 
 
 "The Spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon me; 
 Because Jehovah hath anointed me to preach good 
 
 tidings unto the meek, 
 
 He hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, 
 To proclaim liberty to the captives [of war], 
 
RECONSTRUCTION 195 
 
 And the opening of prison to them that are bound. . . . 
 
 To comfort all that mourn. . . . 
 
 That they may be called trees of righteousness, 
 
 The planting of Jehovah, that he may be glorified. 
 
 And they shall build the old wastes, 
 
 They shall raise up the former desolations, 
 
 And they shall repair the waste cities, 
 
 The desolations of many generations" (61:1-4). 
 
 Such a message is the surest evidence of divine 
 inspiration and the surest fulfilment of the eternal 
 divine purpose of reconstruction. Through such 
 passages one can see the roots of an indomitable 
 optimism which has enabled the Jewish race to 
 endure unparalleled persecution and disaster, and 
 having done all to stand. Out of weakness they 
 were made strong, and they dedicated to all men 
 of faith who followed them a perennial and eternal 
 hope in the recreative power of God. In their 
 footsteps Christ walked when he proclaimed at 
 Nazareth his programme, and so do his followers 
 to-day, if with moral insight and prophetic fervor 
 they bend their energies to the urgent tasks of 
 spiritual reconstruction. 
 
XX 
 
 ON INTERNATIONAL SERVICE 
 
 THE biographical stories and sermons of Isaiah 
 of Jerusalem are followed in the book through 
 which they have come down to us by a series of 
 poems dealing with the reconstruction era of Jew- 
 ish history. And among these later poems 
 scholars have recognized a group of passages so 
 distinct in subject and manner that, whether they 
 were originally part of their present context or 
 not, they seem to deserve separate consideration. 
 These brief songs, culminating in the familiar 
 fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, all deal with the 
 same figure the servant of Jehovah. 1 They de- 
 scribe his training and his method and the aston- 
 ishing results of his career. It is easy to imagine 
 in the successive songs a natural development of 
 the thought, or at least a logical progress in pre- 
 senting it. And while the language is no less 
 poetic and sublime than in the other parts of this 
 prophecy, these sections offer not only a separate 
 literary problem of their own, but an interpreta- 
 tion of national duty and destiny that is almost 
 unique in antiquity, and that possesses consider- 
 able interest for modern times. 
 
 1 These passages include at least the following verses: 
 Isaiah 42:1-7; 49:1-6; 50:4-9; 52:13-53:12. 
 
ON INTERNATIONAL SERVICE 197 
 
 The term "service" is so familiar to us now- 
 adays, in a political sense, as an ideal if not a 
 genuine motive, that we are wont to forget its 
 simpler and suggestive meaning. When slavery 
 was an existent human custom and servant or 
 slave, if applied to religion or politics, was still 
 a conscious metaphor, public or religious ser- 
 vice meant a real kind of serving. Among the 
 Hebrews and the other Semites, where men so 
 freely used human relations to describe relations 
 with the gods, the idea of the service of God was 
 soon developed. This conception was embodied 
 in the names of both gods and men. The former 
 were called king and master, the latter servant or 
 slave. Thus the term "servant of Jehovah" was 
 no novelty in the sixth century. The originality 
 of the passages under consideration consists in 
 the scope and nature of the service, and perhaps 
 in the definition of the servant. 
 
 For, in the first place, the service contemplated 
 is distinctly international. From the viewpoint 
 of most earlier Hebrew thought this would be an 
 innovation. Except for some slight hints of the 
 prophets, Israel rarely escaped from the old 
 nationalistic view of religion. They were the 
 people of Jehovah and Jehovah was the God of 
 Israel. Hence the service of God naturally found 
 its scope within the nation. National heroes, 
 kings, prophets, warriors, would be Jehovah's 
 servants or the whole nation collectively. But 
 
198 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 their service would be for God and country, two 
 objects of identical interest. Other nations were 
 expected to serve other gods, and other gods to 
 choose other nations. But Jehovah had chosen 
 Israel for himself. 
 
 Here, however, the servant of Jehovah is given 
 a wider field. In the Hebrew idiom this broad 
 horizon is expressed by two means either by 
 such plural terms as "nations" (usually trans- 
 lated "Gentiles"), "kings," and "peoples," or* by 
 the mention of the most distant places, "the 
 isles" (perhaps the European coast lands) or 
 "the ends of the earth." These are to be the 
 witnesses of the servant's attention and the ob- 
 jects of his service; to them he is to bring light, 
 justice, salvation. For the God of this poet 
 national service does not suffice; patriotism is too 
 petty. In words that remind us of the famous 
 saying of Edith Cavell, Jehovah is represented as 
 admonishing his servant: 
 
 "It is too light a thing to be my servant to raise up 
 
 the tribes of Jacob, 
 And to restore the preserved of Israel; 
 I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, 
 That thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of 
 
 the earth" (49:6). 
 
 "Patriotism is not enough." Even when the 
 motive is not national aggrandizement, but merely 
 the restoration of a nation in sore distress and 
 
ON INTERNATIONAL SERVICE 199 
 
 disaster, the servant of God must not be content 
 with national service for the nation's sake. 
 "Jewry for the Jews" is not his type of slogan. 
 Even nationalism must be altruistic. 
 
 By this extension of the scope of service the 
 Hebrew prophet enhances the meaning of both 
 service and election. The unique relation be- 
 tween God and his elect is for the selfish advan- 
 tage of neither. Through them the whole world 
 is benefited. The exilic prophet has quite 
 changed the old ideal of national election. The 
 servant is the chosen of God, but the selection 
 involves duties quite as much as privileges on the 
 servant's part. He is chosen for service not of 
 himself or of his nation, but of all mankind. The 
 great ideal of foreign missions first finds expres- 
 sion here. 1 It is the transmutation of all the 
 other ideals of selfish satisfaction. God's purpose 
 in history is not an exclusive scheme for reciprocal 
 service between himself and his chosen nation. 
 They are rather co-workers in a great missionary 
 enterprise the evangelization of the world. In- 
 deed the service is something more than the 
 preaching of the true religion. It is a life and 
 example influencing others in the most effective 
 way. Religion, or judgment, as the Hebrew word 
 is translated, comprehends not merely religion 
 
 1 When a later writer characterizes the great apostle to the 
 Gentiles as a light to the Gentiles, a chosen vessel to bear 
 God's name before nations and kings, he is simply borrowing 
 the expressions of these songs. 
 
200 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 but a whole culture in its fullest sense, and in- 
 volves the highest standards of personal and so- 
 cial life. This is the light and salvation which 
 God, through his servant, sends forth to all the 
 world. 
 
 But the method of the servant is quite as note- 
 worthy as the field of his service. Transcending 
 national boundaries was not altogether a new 
 thing in antiquity, but there was only one 'ap- 
 proved method of doing it military conquest. 
 The great empires of the East Assyria, Babylo- 
 nia, and now Persia were marked illustrations of 
 international influence, but their method was 
 the sword. The new international servant has 
 another method. 
 
 "He will not cry, nor lift up his voice, 
 Nor cause it to be heard in the street. 
 A bruised reed will he not break, 
 And a dimly burning wick will he not quench: 
 He will bring forth justice in truth. 
 He will not fail nor be discouraged, 
 Till he have set justice in the earth; 
 And the isles shall wait for his law" (42:2-4). 
 
 Apparently the service contemplated is to fol- 
 low a quiet, unobtrusive, and pacific method, ex- 
 ercised in patience and in spite of discouragement. 
 It is the way of all effective and permanent con- 
 versions. It is persistent and victorious, though 
 distinctly non-resistant. Confident in Jehovah 
 the servant submits to abuse. "I have set my 
 
ON INTERNATIONAL SERVICE 201 
 
 face," he says, "like a flint, and I know that I 
 shall not be put to shame." Such a method in- 
 volves misunderstanding and suffering. In the 
 later chapters suffering itself is vindicated as 
 the servant's method, though few can be expected 
 to believe in such an unexpected and unheard-of 
 programme. Only at the end do the witnesses 
 and beneficiaries of his service appreciate the 
 meaning of his suffering. This is the burden of 
 the famous last poem of the series, the mystery 
 of the suffering servant. 
 
 "Surely he hath borne our griefs, 
 And carried our sorrows; 
 Yet we did esteem him stricken. 
 Smitten of God, and afflicted. 
 But he was wounded for our transgressions, 
 He was bruised for our iniquities; 
 The chastisement of our peace was upon him; 
 And with his stripes we are healed" (53:4, 5). 
 
 In this classic passage vicarious suffering is 
 plainly described, and its ultimate triumph in 
 spite of apparent failure. As Jesus did after him, 
 the poet has substituted, for conventional stand- 
 ards of greatness, the unexpected success of 
 altruistic service. And he has found for innocent 
 suffering not merely a theodical explanation but 
 a positive value. He has anticipated the riddle 
 of the cross. 
 
 The novelty of these elements in the poet's 
 
202 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 conception only makes more keen our interest in 
 the further question the identification of the 
 servant. Who is this mysterious figure with the 
 strange mission? Unfortunately the poetic lan- 
 guage, and, perhaps, an intentional indirectness 
 of reference, do not make the answer to this ques- 
 tion easy. Scholars do not agree here, though on 
 other phases of the poet's meaning they readily 
 reach a common conclusion. The language, is 
 certainly personal, and it is natural that it should 
 be understood literally of an individual. In that 
 case there still remains the question that was 
 asked of Philip: "Of whom speaketh the prophet 
 this of himself, or of some other?" Many ele- 
 ments in the picture suit Jeremiah; many of them 
 are typical of every prophet. Of course, from 
 the earliest clays of the Church, Christians have 
 found in the servant a type and prophecy of the 
 sufferings of Christ. 1 No individual more strik- 
 ingly fulfilled the prophecy than Christ himself. 
 And yet this fulfilment does not prove that the 
 original meaning of the writer was individual. 
 There is much to be said for the view that the 
 author used the common device of personification, 
 and means by the servant not a person but a 
 group either the better elements in the nation 
 or, ideally, the nation as a whole. Repeatedly, 
 through the surrounding passages and apparently 
 
 1 It is not, however, clear that Jesus himself or the Jews 
 understood even Isaiah 53 messianically. 
 
ON INTERNATIONAL SERVICE 203 
 
 once or twice in the servant poems, Israel or 
 Jacob is identified with the servant. 
 
 Whatever solution is given to this problem 
 and into the full discussion of it we cannot enter 
 here the political ideals of this prophet are great 
 and revolutionary. And if following the opinion 
 of many careful students we accept further the 
 identification of the servant with the nation, the 
 national significance of the passages is even 
 greater. Like many before him, the writer is 
 thinking wholly in national terms; Israel is still 
 the unit. He is groping for the meaning of his 
 nation's career. He would explain to his fellow 
 countrymen the sufferings of the past and present 
 in terms that would remove not merely impa- 
 tience and despair, but selfishness and the ex- 
 clusive nationalistic spirit. And he finds the jus- 
 tification of God and the glory of Israel in its 
 vicarious suffering for the sins of the world. In 
 modern terms he thinks of his country as a mar- 
 tyr nation, a Christ among nations, redeeming 
 the world not by the sword of triumph nor the 
 self-assertive spirit of human pride, but through 
 the way of the cross. 
 
 This sublime conception finds its fullest per- 
 sonal fulfilment in the life, teaching, and death of 
 Jesus of Nazareth. But as the ideal for a nation 
 it is still unfulfilled. To a considerable degree 
 the Jewish people themselves have illustrated its 
 possibilities; they have been a light to the Gen- 
 
204 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 tiles, carrying much truth about God and his will 
 to the ends of the earth. We would not under- 
 estimate the services of Judaism to mankind. 
 Many a nation, too, has suffered as the servant is 
 pictured as suffering, but certainly no nation with 
 an innocence comparable to that of Christ. What 
 the prophet hoped for was a nation without guilt 
 or guile, a nation free from "violence" and "de- 
 ceit," a nation consecrated to the service of man- 
 kind, which was willing to rely on the patient 
 methods of God's training, so unfamiliar and so 
 scorned in the imperialistic Realpolitik of that day. 
 That hope still remains an alluring ideal. 
 Though, as a personal ideal, it has been highly 
 praised and sometimes even practised, it has 
 scarcely been understood and certainly never 
 fully adopted as a national programme. In these 
 days of reconsidered national ambitions its out- 
 lines seem Utopian and unreal. The altruism of 
 international service can scarcely emerge when 
 fear and hate and self-seeking so fully control 
 men's minds. Not only the great and prosperous 
 nations but even the weak and crushed peoples 
 like the Israel of the exile are far more bent on 
 national than. international aims. Neither is the 
 prophet's method of service popular. Men still 
 look with scorn on national patience and humility 
 compared with blatant patriotism and bravado. 
 They call military service "the service" and trust 
 to physical force to establish the ideals for which 
 
ON INTERNATIONAL SERVICE 205 
 
 they stand. Even where the aims of modern 
 nations agree with the ideals of the prophet 
 for his "light," "salvation," and "judgment" are 
 only ancient names for culture, safety, and jus- 
 tice their champions apply, as means to those 
 ends, the futile methods of the servants of Bel 
 and Marduk rather than the availing methods of 
 the servant of Jehovah. Yet the world still 
 needs the strange and unpopular ideal of the 
 exilic prophet. It needs, in the first place, that 
 splendid discontent with nationalism for its own 
 sake and the substitution of the common good of 
 all. In the second place, it needs that still more 
 novel reversal of values, that strange method of 
 the true servant of Jehovah, the reliance on spir- 
 itual forces of love, patience, and self-sacrifice. 
 In this sign it will conquer, through seeming fail- 
 ure and defeat. Both the mission and the 
 method are needed for complete fulfilment of the 
 prophet's hopes. International service cannot 
 avail unless it is prompted by the spirit of sacri- 
 fice, and sacrifice cannot avail unless it means 
 altruistic service. For the nation, as for the indi- 
 vidual, this is the supreme ambition not to be 
 ministered unto but to minister, and, if necessary, 
 to give its life a ransom for many. The nation 
 that will do less than that is not only unchristian, 
 it has not even realized the best ideals of Judaism. 
 
XXI 
 
 THE INTENSIFICATION OF NATIONALISM 
 
 THE centuries from Zedekiah to Judas Macca- 
 bseus are strangely wanting in full political record. 
 The continuous history of Kings closes with the ex- 
 ile. The author of Chronicles who attempted to 
 continue his revision of that earlier record could 
 discover only a few miscellaneous Jewish sources, 
 which he pieced together in a confusing manner 
 in our books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Josephus 
 can supplement the Chronicler's information only 
 by selections from Gentile history, and by a few 
 popular Jewish legends. Thus, for our knowledge 
 of political thought in this era we are left largely 
 to the indirect evidence of the late prophets, 
 psalmists, historians, and jurists. 
 
 But in spite of the slightness of our information 
 it is evident that these four centuries were times 
 when a single direct course of national evolution 
 was confused by varied and conflicting tenden- 
 cies. Out of darkness and confusion many par- 
 tial suggestions of new developments of thought 
 vaguely appear. Our estimate of the ideals in 
 this era must be based largely upon their fruits in 
 later Judaism, as that stage of development is 
 more clearly disclosed to us in the Apocrypha, 
 
 206 
 
INTENSIFICATION OF NATIONALISM 207 
 
 the New Testament, and the rabbinic literature. 
 No one or two consecutive lines of development 
 exhaust the national movements that produced 
 these results, yet it may be convenient to speak 
 collectively of two kinds of opposing forces the 
 centrifugal and the centripetal tendencies of 
 Judaism. 
 
 To the former category belong all the sponta- 
 neous and natural results of the absorption of a 
 petty nation in a world empire. With the con- 
 quest of Jerusalem in 586 B. c. national sovereignty 
 and national government disappeared. Even the 
 visible signs and foci of national adherence po- 
 litical and religious vanished with the razing of 
 the city and the temple. And, above all, the 
 scattering of Jews throughout the world the 
 exile, or dispersion, as it is called henceforth 
 made national rehabilitation difficult. At home 
 and in foreign lands the cultures and the religions 
 of the victors naturally overshadowed the van- 
 quished Jewish civilization and its God. The 
 new imperialism was usually a great leveller. 
 Conformity was easier than local and racial pecu- 
 liarity, and cosmopolitanism was safer than 
 ardent nationalism. Even war, the great con- 
 comitant of nationalism, was no longer possible 
 for the Jews as an independent enterprise. They 
 were merely subjects or allies of successive em- 
 pires, helpless pawns in the games of kings, pitiful 
 victims in the cockpit of Asia. Thus their na- 
 
208 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 tionality was deprived of the natural forces of 
 cohesion and exposed to all the subtle denation- 
 alizing tendencies of a people discouraged, dis- 
 persed, and overshadowed by civilizations more 
 catholic and in some ways more cultured than 
 their own provincialism. 
 
 The decentralizing influences upon Judaism 
 were chiefly unconscious and unintended. There 
 is little evidence that their Babylonian and Per- 
 sian masters cared for anything but their political 
 subservience. Indeed, Cyrus adopted the en- 
 lightened policy of conserving and stimulating 
 local cultural and religious influences, and of re- 
 storing populations and reconstructing business. 
 Nor is there evidence that many Jews for their 
 part became deliberate renegades to their faith 
 and race, preferring the wider outlook to their 
 older inheritance, or cultivating artificially a new 
 internationalism. But the change was none the 
 less effective and powerful for the reason that it 
 was spontaneous and natural. And had it not 
 been for peculiar conditions and conscious resis- 
 tance, Judaism would have joined the coalescence 
 of petty races that befell all her neighbors. 
 
 Of course there were some centripetal forces 
 that were also subconscious. There was the old 
 patriotism that endured by a natural momentum 
 long after its object was to all outward sight de- 
 stroyed. There was an instinctive conservatism 
 that made the Jews resent and avoid new or alien 
 
INTENSIFICATION OP NATIONALISM 209 
 
 habits of speech, behavior, and apparel. But the 
 maintenance of Hebrew nationalism amid the hos- 
 tile and obscuring influences of the day became a 
 definite, conscious policy of the whole nation or 
 of its leaders, and has come down to us to-day 
 with very little modification. 
 
 Indeed, the exile proved to be to a certain extent 
 a new beginning of national self-consciousness. 
 The death of the body seemed to liberate the 
 soul. To be sure, one often hears it said that in 
 Judaism nationalism was giving place to individ- 
 ualism. As a matter of fact, the exile marks 
 neither the end of one nor the beginning of the 
 other, but the coincident development of both. 
 Professor Knudson has recently questioned the 
 usual hypothesis of early national self-conscious- 
 ness in Israel: 
 
 The general notion of solidarity as applied to the 
 nation is clear enough. Various aspects of it appear 
 in the Old Testament. . . . The ancient Israelites 
 looked upon the nation as a self-identical moral per- 
 sonality, embracing in its unity not only all existing 
 members but also past generations. 
 
 The question, however, arises as to whether the 
 idea of national solidarity actually existed in such a 
 definite form as this in the minds of the Hebrews, 
 whether it was not with them rather a vague feeling 
 than a clear concept. It might even be questioned 
 whether we have not here simply a personification 
 rather than a personalization of the nation. ... It is, 
 consequently, a mistake to attribute to the early Israel- 
 
210 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 ites a paramount interest in national affairs and a 
 superior devotion to the common good. Their nation- 
 alism was largely of the instinctive or mechanical type. 
 Not until we come to literary prophecy do we have a 
 really serious effort to bring Israelitic nationalism to 
 self-consciousness. Here the blind patriotism of the 
 past and a merely mechanical conformity to rites and 
 customs are set aside as worthless and misleading. 
 The nation has a mission to perform, but it is a moral 
 mission; and this mission can be performed only by 
 resolute devotion to the will of God and the conlmon 
 good as expressed especially in the moral law. To 
 bring this truth home to the minds and consciences of 
 the people was the chief task of the eighth-century 
 prophets. And the work they began was in its essen- 
 tial nature carried on by the Deuteronomists, and the 
 exilic and post-exilic prophets and lawgivers. What 
 we have, therefore, in the history of Israel is not a grad- 
 ual decline of nationalism, but an increasing conscious- 
 ness of it. 1 
 
 It was fortunate that the policy adopted to 
 maintain national identity did not follow the 
 usual course of political and military effort. Of 
 course the Hebrews long cherished a hope for 
 political restoration. But, after all, independence 
 is not essential to national greatness, and revolu- 
 tion against their lords would either have been in 
 vain or of temporary and superficial success. 
 Neither was geographical reunion altogether im- 
 portant. Certainly the restoration of Palestine's 
 former population two generations or two mil- 
 1 Religious Teaching of the Old Testament, pp. 325 ff. 
 
INTENSIFICATION OF NATIONALISM 211 
 
 lennia after the deportations of Nebuchadnezzar 
 has been over-emphasized by many persons from 
 the Chronicler to the present-day Zionists. The 
 essential thing in nationality for inner unity and 
 for service to mankind, is not its separate govern- 
 ment and habitat, but its distinctive genius and 
 culture. The heroes of Judaism were not its mili- 
 tary patriots and political liberators, but the 
 creators and champions of a Jewish civilization. 
 And in the transfer of the nation's allegiance from 
 land and government to God and law is one of 
 the great lessons as well as one of the miracles of 
 history. For of all the remaining elements of the 
 old nationalism, religion the national religion 
 was the most powerful nucleus. About it all 
 other Hebrew loyalties could rally and develop in 
 spite of heathen rule and foreign land. It f ocussed 
 the ideals and culture of the race and conserved 
 the national hopes. Of course adjustments were 
 necessary. The destruction of the temple, the 
 one legal centre of worship, according to Deuteron- 
 omy, may have really strengthened Judaism more 
 than did restoration of the temple some seventy 
 years later. It delocalized religion and, together 
 with the wide dispersion of Jews throughout the 
 world, it transformed religion into a movable in- 
 stitution. The law, also, as the written charter 
 of national custom, gave a new basis for religious 
 allegiance. Obedience to the law was the new 
 patriotism, and this could be practised wherever 
 
212 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 the Jew was placed. Knowledge of the law was 
 the new requirement of citizenship, and the syna- 
 gogue became the universal school of nationalism. 
 No nation with a government and land of its own 
 ever possessed a more effective instrument of 
 nationalization than the educational system of 
 Judaism. And by its curriculum not only the 
 youth but adults were constantly held true to 
 the literature, the language, the culture, as .well 
 as the faith of their fathers. 
 
 It is difficult for modern Christians to look 
 upon this intensive nationalism of the Jews with- 
 out some traditional prejudices. It is always 
 natural to regard foreign customs as burdensome; 
 and the burden of the law seems to us to have 
 become grotesque casuistry in the elaborations of 
 the Pharisees. But legalism was only the des- 
 perate attempt to maintain national identity. 
 To its advocates the only alternative seemed 
 national annihilation. And whatever we may 
 think of it as religion, we must at least recognize 
 in Jewish legalism the patriotic and successful 
 effort, heroically undertaken in the face of un- 
 paralleled obstacles, not simply to secure for 
 Judaism some selfish advancement or place in the 
 sun, but to fulfil the duty and the high destiny 
 which Providence had given it. 
 
 Perhaps the chief fault of intensive Judaism 
 was its ingrowing exclusiveness. It is a misfor- 
 tune that loyalties seem to flourish best by odious 
 
INTENSIFICATION OF NATIONALISM 213 
 
 comparisons, and that uniform standards of na- 
 tional culture are most readily observed in con- 
 tradistinction from others. Within the nation, to 
 be sure, this difficulty is not serious, but in con- 
 tact with their neighbors the Hebrews were con- 
 stantly given to the spirit of self-differentiation. 
 This difference had, indeed, been recognized for 
 many generations; the prophets had always been 
 aware of the cultural, especially the religious, un- 
 likeness of their neighbors, and had warned against 
 religious syncretism. Even in Deuteronomy the 
 nations are made to recognize the self-sufficiency 
 of Israel's culture in its religion and its law. 
 "Surely," they say, "this great nation is a wise 
 and understanding people." "For what great 
 nation is there," continues the author, "that hath 
 a god so nigh unto them as Jehovah our God is 
 whensoever we call upon him? And what great 
 nation is there, that hath statutes and ordinances 
 so righteous as all this law ?" 1 " Deuteronomy," 
 says a recent commentator, " expresses the soul of 
 Israel, conscious of their distinction, roused to 
 every foreign influence as the threat of their dis- 
 integration, and concentrating upon their spiritual 
 heritage and duties, since only by loyalty to these 
 can they preserve their individuality as a people 
 and prove their right to live." 2 In the next code, 3 
 holiness, the characteristic word, we cannot for- 
 
 1 Deut. 4:5-8. 2 G. A. Smith, Deuteronomy, p. xciv. 
 
 ' The so-called "Holiness Code" of Leviticus 17-26. 
 
214 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 get, has its force of separateness as well as of 
 purity. And throughout later legalism all efforts 
 at national unity and uniformity seemed to lead 
 to aloofness and peculiarity. It is no accident 
 that of two terms for later zealots for the law, one 
 (Chaber) seems to mean comrade, the other 
 (Pharisee) separatist. Association means dis- 
 sociation whenever it occurs unless the unit is 
 all-inclusive. 
 
 And so it came to pass that Judaism drew fur- 
 ther away from the other nations. The very 
 word "nations" gained a sense of distance and 
 disdain that is well felt in our English transla- 
 tions, "Gentile," or "heathen." National ego- 
 ism expressed itself as clearly in this dichotomy 
 as in the distinction of Greeks against the bar- 
 barians. In the book of Nehemiah the Samaritan 
 schism and the rigorous abolition of foreign wives 
 show the inevitable results of such ruthless in- 
 tensification of national purity. Like the wall of 
 China, a strong cultural defense was built up by 
 zealous rabbis and scribes about the chosen peo- 
 ple. Circumcision and sabbath-keeping became 
 their distinctive marks throughout the world. 
 The sense of difference became mutual. The 
 Gentiles ridiculed the peculiarities of the Jews 
 and gave them a separate ghetto in their cities 
 and a separate name in their classification of 
 mankind. The peculiarity, which to the Jew 
 meant special devotion to Jehovah, seemed to 
 
INTENSIFICATION OF NATIONALISM 215 
 
 his neighbor eccentricity and stubborn supersti- 
 tion. So the way was prepared for persecution 
 and pogrom and the dreary history of anti-Semitic 
 bitterness. 
 
 Of course the ingrowing tendencies of Judaism 
 did not wholly prevail. From the earliest times 
 the resident alien had been treated with true 
 nomadic hospitality, and even in the later Jewish 
 particularism he enjoyed far greater consideration 
 than did the stranger without the gates. The 
 intolerant and unsocial attitude did not always 
 pass unchallenged; it was rebuked by the indirect 
 method of fiction as in Jonah and Ruth. The 
 former we shall consider in the next chapter; the 
 latter is a beautiful idyl that is most readily un- 
 derstood as a gentle reproach against the whole- 
 sale forbidding of mixed marriages. The heroine, 
 though a Moabitess, became a devout worshipper 
 of Jehovah and an ancestor of the great David. 
 Another writer distinctly warns against the dis- 
 couragement of law-observing proselytes, who 
 speak, saying, " Jehovah will surely separate me 
 from his people." On the contrary God says: 
 
 The foreigners that join themselves to Jehovah, to 
 minister unto him, and to love the name of Jehovah, 
 to be his servants, every one that keepeth the sabbath 
 from profaning it, and holdeth fast my covenant; even 
 them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make 
 them joyful in my house of prayer : their burnt offer- 
 ings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine 
 
216 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer 
 for all peoples. 1 
 
 Even Hellenism, though it became the arch- 
 enemy of Judaism, was also the object of much 
 Jewish friendship and conciliation. In Philo and 
 more particularly in Christianity the best ele- 
 ments, both Hebraic and Hellenic, of literature, 
 philosophy, and religion were fused amicably and 
 preserved. 
 
 1 Isaiah 56:3, 6, 7. 
 
XXII 
 
 A CARTOON OF NATIONALISM 
 
 VERY few Christian laymen can give an intelli- 
 gent reply to the question, What is the message 
 of the Book of Jonah ? The incident of the 
 "whale" has completely overshadowed the main 
 point of the writer, and having been made the 
 crux of orthodoxy, receives, as is unfortunately 
 the case with many speculative questions raised 
 by the Bible, more emphasis than does the really 
 significant moral teaching. There is a strange 
 agreement between believers and sceptics in re- 
 jecting it as a miracle; the former do so by elab- 
 orate arguments to prove that it could have hap- 
 pened naturally, the latter by frank disbelief. 
 But even those who accept the story of the Book 
 of Jonah as literally true often take it scarcely 
 seriously, but with a smile at the submarine ex- 
 periences of the ill-starred prophet. And herein 
 is the real misfortune, not that they smile at the 
 story, but that they smile at the wrong place. 
 For there is real humor in the book, but the 
 humor, as we shall see, is the grim humor of 
 absurd human narrow-mindedness. 
 
 The Book of Jonah receives its place in the Old 
 
 217 
 
218 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 Testament canon because of the person of its 
 hero. "Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet, 
 who was of Gath-hepher," is mentioned casually 
 by the Book of Kings in connection with the ex- 
 tension of the kingdom of Israel under Jeroboam 
 the Second. He was, therefore, a contemporary 
 of Amos and perhaps of the other prophets of the 
 eighth century B. c. His home was in the hills of 
 lower Galilee near the Nazareth of later times. 
 No further record of his preaching is given, and 
 the book that bears his name not only was not 
 written by him but does not even give, as do 
 most of the books of the prophets, the outline of 
 his message. It is, rather, a narrative about 
 Jonah and appears to have been written several 
 centuries later. As in the Book of Daniel, and as 
 frequently in the later Jewish and even modern 
 writings, the author has selected not a purely fic- 
 titious character but some real person of the past 
 as the basis of his story, and has filled in the set- 
 ting from his historical imagination. In Jonah 
 the setting is far from detailed. Nothing is said 
 of Israel's history or conditions, and concerning 
 Nineveh only its size and its wickedness are men- 
 tioned. The story is told with the utmost sim- 
 plicity and to our Occidental eyes with a kind 
 of grotesqueness. The successive stages of the 
 story are mechanically brought on as by a deus ex 
 machina without much regard for natural proc- 
 esses. The incident of the gourd is really as 
 
CARTOON OF NATIONALISM , 219 
 
 strange as that of the fish. It is to be noted that 
 just as Jehovah sent out the storm and "prepared 
 a great fish to swallow up Jonah," and spake to 
 the fish to vomit out Jonah, so he "prepared" in 
 turn a "gourd/' "a worm," and a "sultry east 
 wind" to teach a final lesson. 
 
 To our modern mind the realism of the psychol- 
 ogy of the story contrasts most favorably with 
 this Oriental artificiality of plot. The sailors in 
 the storm are described with real dramatic skill. 
 Their religious fear amid danger and their regard 
 for Jonah and his God, if not entirely according 
 to our ways of thought, are nevertheless fully in- 
 telligible. So is the loving-kindness of Jehovah 
 for the great, ignorant masses of Nineveh and his 
 compassion even for cattle. And it is in the char- 
 acter of Jonah, drawn in a few sketchy lines, that 
 the real teaching of the book is to be found. 
 
 The narrative is simple: Jonah, the prophet, is 
 commanded to preach against Nineveh. At first 
 he tries to escape this duty by taking ship for 
 Spain (Tarshish), at the opposite end of the earth, 
 but is brought back. The second time he per- 
 functorily obeys the command and immediately 
 the city repents. But why did Jonah disobey? 
 Stubbornness, laziness, timidity, fear of being dis- 
 credited, can hardly be the reasons. It is appar- 
 ently because he really wished Nineveh to be 
 destroyed and was afraid that if he preached the 
 city would repent and be spared by God. This is 
 
220 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 shown in the peevish "I-told-you-so" when after- 
 ward he says to Jehovah: 
 
 Was not this my saying, when I was yet in my 
 country? Therefore I hasted to flee unto Tarshish; 
 for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, 
 slow to anger, and abundant in loving-kindness, and 
 repentest thee of the evil. Therefore now, O Jehovah, 
 take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better 
 for me to die than to live (4:2, 3). 
 
 Jonah is represented as a man of selfish, narrow 
 interests. When he is given a message of doom 
 to a foreign city he refuses to preach it, lest the 
 city should repent and be saved. Finally, com- 
 pelled against his will to be the instrument of 
 such a truly merciful mission, he is angry and 
 sulks despondently as though life were not worth 
 living. He is disgusted to have become, perforce, 
 himself the savior of those whom he would gladly 
 have seen destroyed. He is chagrined, not be- 
 cause his prediction did not come true, but be- 
 cause his own intolerant ill-will for the Ninevites 
 is discredited by their sincere and ready response 
 to his half-hearted warning. It is an almost ludi- 
 crous contrast that is presented, not unlike that 
 of the Pharisee and the publican in the New Tes- 
 tament parable: inside the city the whole popu- 
 lation, king and people, and even cattle, repenting 
 with fasting and sackcloth; outside the city the 
 querulous prophet sitting and waiting with mali- 
 
CARTOON OF NATIONALISM 221 
 
 cious hope. Each is thinking of God's possible 
 forbearance, the one imploring it, the other de- 
 ploring it. 
 
 Two other contrasts accentuate the wilfulness 
 of Jonah's hatred of Nineveh. One is this same 
 impartial benignity of Jehovah, which is the hope 
 of penitents but the despair of the self-righteous; 
 the other is Jonah's own concern over the destruc- 
 tion of a simple gourd vine. Both are brought 
 into relief in the closing verses. When the gourd 
 is destroyed Jonah is just as angry as when the 
 city was saved, and again he says: "It is better 
 for me to die than to live." 
 
 And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry 
 for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, 
 even unto death. And Jehovah said, Thou hast had 
 regard for the gourd, for which thou hast not labored, 
 neither madest it grow; which came up in the night, 
 and perished in a night; and should not I have regard 
 for Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than 
 sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between 
 their right hand and their left hand; and also much 
 cattle? (4:9-11). 
 
 Thus the story of Jonah becomes, like the 
 story of Ruth, a parable, or a tract, to meet the 
 national exclusiveness and racial pride of the 
 author's times. This writer did not outspokenly 
 oppose the current patriotic conceit. To do so 
 is often ineffective, and even dangerous. But he 
 uses two methods of correcting it indirectly. 
 
222 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 First, like Amos and other prophets, including 
 Jesus himself, he shows God's own catholic loving- 
 kindness for other nations than the people of his 
 special choice, and implies that a similar catho- 
 licity is required of men. He uses theology as 
 the teacher of ethics. His second method is 
 caricature. In Jonah he gives us the current 
 nationalism in a reductio ad dbsurdum. Nine- 
 veh, the capital of an aggressive military despot- 
 ism, was the classic historical enemy of the chosen 
 people. Jonah represents the acme of national 
 antipathy. That Nineveh is guilty the author 
 freely confesses. God knew its guilt and yet 
 wished to save it. But Jonah is too good a pa- 
 triot for that. Though God himself commands 
 it, he will take no part in giving aid or comfort 
 to the enemy. He is fully aware of God's broader 
 sympathy. But he condemns it and bends every 
 effort to avoid sharing it. He will defy God 
 rather than be like him. He neither believes 
 nor wishes to believe any good of the Assyrians. 
 He knows they are wrong, and he is glad they 
 are. He would leave them to their deserts. He 
 wants justice, not mercy, and he wants it to the 
 bitter end. He has sympathy enough, where 
 sympathy agrees with his own interests sym- 
 pathy even with an ephemeral gourd that might 
 have saved him a headache; but for innocent 
 alien populations of thousands of ignorant and 
 misguided human beings he feels only petulant 
 
CARTOON OF NATIONALISM 223 
 
 rage. In extreme type, Jonah is the natural out- 
 come of the moral pride of Pharisaic Judaism, or 
 of the more modern national prejudices artificially 
 fostered by war. 
 
XXIII 
 
 THE LITERATURE OF 1 SUPPRESSION 
 
 THE conflict of cultures which we have traced 
 both in the settlement of Canaan and in post- 
 exilic Judaism reached a new stage in the era of 
 the Seleucid control. The prophets and patriots 
 of early Israel were conscious of the difference be- 
 tween Israel's standards and those of the peoples 
 round about, and had repeatedly asserted the 
 need of maintaining their own national standards 
 against the natural incursions of foreign influence, 
 both political and religious. In the exile this 
 need became even more acute, as we have seen 
 in a preceding chapter. Without political unity 
 and independence the distinctive civilization of 
 Israel was threatened with eclipse by the national 
 cultures of their more powerful masters, or ab- 
 sorption in the growing denationalization of the 
 newer cosmopolitanism. Under the Persian em- 
 pire many Jews had accepted Aramaic, the lingua 
 franca of southwestern Asia, in place of their 
 native tongue, and had adopted many of the 
 religious, industrial, and cultural elements of 
 their tolerant and broad-minded masters. It was 
 impossible to resist a culture that was so pervasive 
 and catholic. 
 
 224 
 
LITERATURE OF SUPPRESSION 225 
 
 Still more was the breakdown of distinctive 
 nationalism inevitable in the era which followed 
 Alexander's conquest when he and the other 
 Macedonian generals who inherited and divided 
 his empire became the conscious and active prop- 
 agators of Hellenic culture. The natives usually 
 accepted gladly a share in the task of Helleniza- 
 tion. At royal request, we are told, the Jews of 
 Egypt converted their scriptures into a Greek 
 classic or accepted citizenship or responsible offices 
 in the city-states. Not only in foreign lands and 
 Greek cities, like Alexandria and Antioch, were 
 the Jews influenced by Hellenic culture, but even 
 in Palestine the same tendency was making head- 
 way. Of course there were rigorists among the 
 Jews conservatives intolerant of all innovation, 
 religious zealots protesting against alien worships, 
 national patriots of the stamp of Elijah or Nehe- 
 miah. But the new element which changed the 
 whole problem of the conflict of cultures was the 
 use of force by the Hellenizers. 
 
 The processes of gradual denationalization 
 which preceded the Maccabean era were sponta- 
 neous, natural, and often subconscious. What- 
 ever victories the cultures of Persia and Greece 
 had secured had been made by the political pres- 
 tige of their exponents and their own inherent 
 merits and conveniences, not by the use of the 
 sword. The splendid civilization of Greece in 
 more or less superficial form was already conquer- 
 
226 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 ing the East and was destined soon to lead cap- 
 tivity captive in the West. Even Rome yielded 
 to the spell of Greece. Among the Jews the in- 
 fluence was less than perhaps anywhere else, but 
 there, too, Hellenization seemed inevitable. There 
 was, of course, an anti-Hellenic party in Jerusa- 
 lem, but among the common people the drift 
 toward newer customs was natural and willing, 
 and the leaders of the aristocratic state-Hhe 
 priestly families and the men of education and of 
 wealth openly espoused the new culture, its 
 athletics, its politics, its language, and its dress. 
 They were proud to be philhellenes. They be- 
 came scornful of the older ways but not intol- 
 erant. Such intolerance as existed was mostly 
 on the other side. 
 
 To the hated Antiochus Epiphanes (175-164 
 B. c.) are attached the odium and the folly of a 
 new policy in international relations the en- 
 forced imposition of an alien culture and the 
 attempted denationalization of Judaism. The 
 story as told by the Books of Maccabees may be 
 colored with legend and prejudice, and it is pos- 
 sible that the movement once started had other 
 and more violent sponsors than the ill-fated 
 Antiochus. But whatever its origin and history 
 the effort at enforced Hellenization had momen- 
 tous consequences. 
 
 Politically it was a challenge to the nation, 
 and resulted in the revival of national life. As 
 
LITERATURE OF SUPPRESSION 227 
 
 often happens, their methods of coercion worked 
 the very reverse of what the Hellenizers desired. 
 The least interference from outside at once crys- 
 tallized the Jewish people into new national self- 
 consciousness and power. Those who were for- 
 merly drifting to Hellenism revolted at the first 
 hint of enforcement and rallied round the nation- 
 alists. All new unrest, all old conservatism, was 
 focussed by the definiteness of the issue. The 
 spirit of earlier days was revived, and the hope of 
 national independence was not only aroused but 
 actually realized. In the astonishing early suc- 
 cess of the Maccabean revolt one can still see writ 
 large the inevitable consequences of any effort to 
 superimpose a new culture on a foreign nation by 
 the use of force; while in the subsequent secu- 
 larization of the Hasmonean dynasty one can 
 read the equally ironical destiny that ultimately 
 defeats the very purposes of those who would 
 defend spiritual ideals against such aggressions 
 by the use of force. Both Antiochus and the 
 Maccabees failed. Victory lay chiefly with those 
 who practised passive resistance a phenomenon 
 which, together with martyrdom and with perse- 
 cution, secured its first great historical examples 
 at this era. Under the stress of disaster and sup- 
 pression a new and powerful loyalty was kindled. 
 Men were stirred to defend not merely their homes 
 and persons, but their principles and ideals. And 
 they believed that resolute allegiance to these; 
 
228 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 objects of devotion could not be quenched by fire 
 or sword. The soul of man could be free and the 
 soul of the nation could be free amid persecution 
 and suppression. The supreme power of reason 
 and of truth was discovered. 1 This new loyalty 
 was often attended with the faith of despair, often 
 with hope, often, also, alas, with violent hatred. 
 But it is this sentiment rather than the martial 
 victories of Judas that left upon the pages of . the 
 Old Testament the national ideals of the age. 
 
 For the expression of these ideals two new lit- 
 erary forms came into current use the apocalypse 
 and the historical romance. Both of these forms 
 have roots in the earlier literature the one in 
 prophecy, the other in history but both of them 
 became the favorite media of nationalist propa- 
 ganda. To a certain extent the circumstances 
 determined their form. Both of them were fic- 
 tion, and both of them thereby escaped the pun- 
 ishment of more direct pamphlets. Like the fic- 
 tion of autocratic Russia, they were able to instil 
 ideals of political revolution without interference 
 by the strict censorship of secret police or by 
 open suppression. 
 
 The novelette or patriotic hero-tale was easily 
 developed from the pragmatic histories of Juda- 
 ism. Already full and reliable records had been 
 edited in the interests of certain national ideals. 
 
 1 See the philosophic discussions in IV Maccabees and 
 I Esdras 3:1-5 : 6. 
 
LITERATURE OF SUPPRESSION 229 
 
 Many less authentic traditions still unrecorded 
 lent themselves to similar treatment, and it was 
 possible to create about mere names or memories 
 of the past or customs of the present, edifying 
 tales of ancient patriotism. A historical setting 
 not unlike that present to the author could easily 
 be found and described with a little superficial 
 use of the imagination. Anachronisms and con- 
 fusions could scarcely be avoided entirely, and can 
 usually be detected in literature of this type. 
 Two themes in particular are characteristic of 
 these romances the fidelity of Jews to their 
 national and religious customs in the face of per- 
 secution, and their signal triumph over their foes. 
 This triumph, as has been said, is not merely the 
 victory in battle. It is often due to the devices 
 of clever men or the miraculous intervention of 
 God. The deaths of the persecutors are often 
 dwelt upon in the spirit of gleeful revenge, and as 
 illustrations of the inevitable nemesis that must 
 ever await the enemy of the Jews. In the Books 
 of Maccabees, where this motif appears, no- 
 tably in the stories of the death of Antiochus 
 Epiphanes 1 and of the death of Nicanor, 1 the situ- 
 ation is largely historical, but in the stories of 
 Judith and of Esther there is a large element of 
 invention. In both the latter a Jewess is the 
 savior of her race from the hands of those who 
 
 1 1 Mac. 6:1-17; II Mac. 9:1-29. 
 2 II Mac. 15:1-37. 
 
230 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 would destroy it, and the agent of divine ven- 
 geance upon its foes. In Judith the names used 
 by the author are pseudonyms and stand for 
 really historical persons. - Thus Nebuchadnezzar 
 represents Antiochus Epiphanes; the Assyrians, 
 the Syrians; Nineveh, Antioch; and Arphaxad, 
 Arsaces of Persia, with whom Antiochus went to 
 war. 1 In Esther, on the contrary, the names are 
 mostly Persian, like the setting, but, except 
 Ahasuerus (= Xerxes), appear to be names of 
 gods ! The story of 777 Maccabees seems to be 
 a combination of truth and fiction, or, rather, a 
 confusion of several ancient stories, due, perhaps, 
 to its effort "to combine in a single picture as 
 many features as possible, all tending to the 
 glorification of the faithful Jew. We thus have 
 brought together in a single canvas the frustrated 
 attempt to enter the temple, the saving of the 
 king's life by a Jew, the attacks on religion and 
 attempts to Hellenize, affecting both the Jews in 
 Alexandria and in Egypt as a whole, the testimo- 
 nies to their great influence and unswerving loy- 
 alty, the marvels of divine intervention, and the 
 vengeance on renegades." 2 Many of the stories 
 which Josephus tells of this period, for example, 
 that of Joseph, the tax-gatherer, who got the bet- 
 ter of the Gentiles both in securing a contract 
 
 1 Charles, Religious Development between the Old and New 
 Testaments, p. 193. 
 
 2 Emmet, in Charles, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the 
 0. T., 1,160 /. 
 
LITERATURE OF SUPPRESSION 231 
 
 from court and in inflicting heavier taxes upon 
 them than upon his fellow countrymen, have at 
 least passed through this spirit of the patriotic 
 tale. 1 
 
 The faithfulness of the Jews to their own cus- 
 toms is also illustrated in some of the books we 
 have mentioned. In Judith it is carefully noted 
 that in spite of the difficulties in the way the 
 heroine was faithful to the national customs, 
 especially the observance of the food regulations 
 and of the sacred seasons. In Esther Hainan's 
 excuse for destroying the Jews was the fact that 
 "their laws are diverse from those of every other 
 people; neither keep they the king's laws: there- 
 fore it is not for the king's profit to suffer them." 
 It was, of course, the refusal to sacrifice to foreign 
 gods and to eat forbidden food that produced the 
 martyrs of the Maccabean age. The stories of 
 those faithful who refused to Hellenize are found 
 idealized in the sixth and seventh chapters of 
 II Maccabees and in the later version of IV Mac- 
 cabees. 
 
 The other new type of literature that belongs 
 to the new patriotism is the apocalypse. The 
 word means revelation and the form of the writing 
 is usually the report of a dream or vision. As the 
 author of the novelette usually selected some his- 
 torical person as the hero, so in the apocalypse 
 an approved leader of Israel is the authority for 
 1 Josephus, Antiquities, XII, 4. 
 
232 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 the revelation. In fact, since the apocalypse pur- 
 ported to be a prediction of the future, an ancient 
 worthy was essential as a pseudonym. There 
 were two reasons, one the current belief that spon- 
 taneous prophecy was extinct, the other the de- 
 vice of giving the predictions credibility by in- 
 cluding in the form of prediction the history of 
 many past years. The apocalypse, like the his- 
 torical romance, aimed to inspire courage and 
 patience among the persecuted. It revealed the 
 hand of God running through history, and it 
 assured the faithful that the final and decisive 
 act was near when they should be rewarded and 
 their persecutors punished. Apocalypse thus in- 
 herited the moral standards and the national hope 
 of prophecy. It could scarcely be better sum- 
 marized than in the prophetic passage: 
 
 " Write down the vision and make it plain upon tablets, 
 That he may run who reads it. 
 For the vision is still for times yet to be appointed; 
 Yea, it hastens to fulfilment and shall not fail; 
 Though it linger, wait for it; 
 For it shall surely come, it will not tarry. 
 Behold the wicked his soul fainteth in him, 
 But the righteous he liveth by his faithfulness." 1 
 
 But the written form of apocalypse, its extrava- 
 gance of symbolism, its angels and dualism, its 
 speculative interests in cosmology and in the 
 future life of the individual, were all new features, 
 1 Hab. 2:2-4 (Kent's translation). 
 
LITERATURE OF SUPPRESSION 233 
 
 due either to the circumstances of the times or to 
 the new interests and influences of the writer's 
 day. 
 
 It would be impossible to review in full all the 
 examples of these types of literature. Of the 
 historical romances we have already mentioned 
 several; one of them, Esther, is still in our Old 
 Testament canon. Of the apocalyptic literature 
 we have also some representatives in our Bible, 
 but here, again, the bulk of the material belongs 
 to other canons than that which we have inherited. 
 Much of the prophetic writing was already tend- 
 ing to apocalypse. Ezekiel and Zechariah are 
 filled with its machinery of angels, visions, and 
 symbols. But for apocalypse proper we shall 
 have to turn to the latest additions to Isaiah 
 (e. g., 24-27) and Zechariah (9-14), and to the 
 great apocalyptic literature which, beginning 
 with the second century, blossomed so profusely 
 in Judaism and was carried over into Christianity 
 to meet the kindred needs of the early church's 
 darkest hours. 
 
 There is one volume, however, which, if not the 
 pioneer, is at least an early and excellent example 
 of both these types of literature, and it may be 
 well for us to examine it more closely. The Book 
 of Daniel, it is now pretty generally agreed, is a 
 work not of the Persian but of a later period. In 
 authorship it is probably composite, as it is in 
 language. Much if not all of it belongs in date 
 
234 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 precisely to the early years of the Maccabean 
 revolt. Its stories, although associated with an 
 ancient figure, Daniel, 1 and furnished with a 
 setting in the days of Nebuchadnezzar and the 
 waning power of Babylon, are nevertheless but a 
 thin disguise for the experiences of the Maccabean 
 martyrs. Daniel and his friends are of the strait- 
 est sect of the Jews. They will not eat the 
 king's meat, but confine themselves to a strictly 
 "kosher" diet. Yet they prosper physically and 
 in favor with God and man. Like Esther and 
 Joseph, they receive special favor and recognition 
 from the king. At last they are brought up 
 against the challenge of conscription of conscience. 
 The proscribing of all worship except that of 
 Nebuchadnezzar's golden image, and of all prayer 
 except to Darius the king, are two covert parallels 
 to the Seleucid's plans to enforce Hellenization. 
 But the spirit of resolute fidelity to national insti- 
 tutions, of quiet passive resistance against intoler- 
 ance and persecution, fortifies and finally justifies 
 the heroes. It is noteworthy, however, that here, 
 as in Esther and as possibly under Antiochus 
 Epiphanes himself, the instigators of these difficul- 
 ties are not the royal persons themselves but their 
 officers and other malicious enemies of the Jews. 
 And here, as there, the faithful Jews are rewarded 
 and see the fate which they have escaped visited 
 upon those who had tried to trap them. Yet 
 . 14:14,20; 28:3. 
 
LITERATURE OF SUPPRESSION 235 
 
 their courage is mere unflinching obedience, their 
 stand is taken with no assurance of rescue. In 
 the face of almost certain execution as conscien- 
 tious objectors, they make this defiant reply: "If 
 our God whom we serve be able to deliver us, he 
 will deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, 
 and out of thy hand, O king. But if not, be it 
 known unto thee, king, that we will not serve 
 thy gods, nor worship the golden image which 
 thou hast set up." 1 It was this spirit more than 
 the victories of Judas or the political diplomacy 
 of Jonathan that conserved the national ideals of 
 Judaism in the days of their severest testing. 
 
 The apocalyptic passages of Daniel are a series 
 of parallel visions in the second and also in the 
 last six chapters of the book. They are symbolic 
 outlines of the world's history from the time of 
 Daniel through the crisis of 165 B. c. Four suc- 
 cessive kingdoms are represented by the four 
 materials of the image which the king saw, or by 
 the four beasts of DaniePs vision. The last of 
 them is the divided empire of Alexander, after 
 which " shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom 
 which shall never be destroyed, nor shall the sov- 
 ereignty thereof be left to another people; but it 
 shall break in pieces and consume all these king- 
 doms, and it shall stand for ever." This is sym- 
 bolized not by a beast but by "one like unto a 
 son of man coming with the clouds of heaven." 
 Daniel 3:17, 18, margin. 
 
236 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 This is the "kingdom of the saints of the Most 
 High." It marks the triumph of the Jewish 
 national hope. 
 
 But it is plain that the author's chief interest 
 is not in the future Golden Age but in his own 
 time, the closing period of the fourth kingdom. 
 In Chapter XI, for example, he traces elaborately 
 and fully the succession of Seleucid kings (horns), 
 their wars and alliances with the Ptolemies, 'and 
 especially the career of Antiochus Epiphanes, 
 and his sacrilege and persecutions in Jerusalem in 
 league with the apostate Hellenizing Jews. These 
 are "the abomination of desolation" and the 
 great tribulation, but they are the prelude to the 
 time of the end. The author ventures an exact 
 prophecy of the duration of this trial 1,290 or 
 1,335 days. A more general calendar prophecy 
 is the explanation of Jeremiah's seventy weeks 
 which divide the interval from the fall of Jerusa- 
 lem to the full end into seventy seven-year periods 
 seven weeks to the rebuilding of Jerusalem, 
 sixty-two more under the anointed prince until 
 the destruction of city and sanctuary, and a final 
 week or half week (three and one-half years) of 
 unmitigated woe. 
 
 But these outlines of culminating sorrow were 
 not intended as threats. They were words of 
 consolation for those who could plainly see that 
 they, themselves, were living in the last days. 
 They were a counsel of patient endurance and 
 
LITERATURE OF SUPPRESSION 237 
 
 hope. "Blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh 
 to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty 
 days." The arrogant king that magnifies him- 
 self above every god shall come to a miserable 
 end, and they that are wise, though they shall 
 fall by the sword and by flame, by captivity and 
 by spoil many days, shall at last shine as the 
 brightness of the firmament. 
 
 Such, in brief, was the Hebrew literature of 
 suppression. In its composite fiction, in its spirit 
 of revenge, in its grotesque symbolism, it has lit.- 
 tle of attraction in the present day, in either form 
 or contents. The secret hatred of Syria or Rome 
 need no longer be concealed under fictions and 
 analogies, and faith no longer needs the assurance 
 of numerical enigmas or edifying romances. But 
 this literature is still a monument to a deep and 
 admirable national self-consciousness that braved 
 the threats of a forced denationalization and won 
 its permanence through the power of the written 
 word. As compared with the methods of the 
 warriors, these exponents of passive resistance 
 proved afresh that the pen is mightier than the 
 sword. And however one may regret that Hel- 
 lenism and Judaism, the two great complemen- 
 tary cultures of antiquity, when they first met, 
 met as implacable enemies instead of sympathetic 
 friends, one can still be thankful for the high 
 courage of those Hebrew patriots who out of the 
 darkest experiences of life still held fast to the 
 
238 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 national heritage which seemed threatened, and 
 learned to trust in God and in the ultimate tri- 
 umph of his will in the destiny of both men and 
 nations, whether by evolution or by miracle, 
 whether in this world or in the world to come. 
 
XXIV 
 
 THE MESSIANIC HOPE 
 
 THE ideals of Israel, as we have sketched them 
 through the successive centuries of national life, 
 contain a great variety of elements, and at the 
 same time a striking continuity of spirit. The 
 variety is due not only to the different tempera- 
 ments within the race, but to the different his- 
 torical experiences through which the people 
 passed. For while in these days, when history 
 is so often misrepresented as the mechanical 
 result of material and economic laws, one cannot 
 stress too emphatically the creative power of 
 ideals on national life, yet one must not overlook 
 the determining effect of historical circumstances 
 upon the ideals of the nation. 
 
 But the ideals of Israel, as we have repeatedly 
 declared, long outlived the situation which pro- 
 duced them, and in the later ages of Judaism 
 these accumulations of the past were imperfectly 
 combined in a composite national hope. Al- 
 though the immediate fulfilment of this hope was 
 always an urgent desire and often a confident 
 expectation, in later Judaism, much more than in 
 the earlier times, it bore little direct relation to 
 the present conditions. It was not merely a 
 next step in national evolution, but the ultimate 
 
 239 
 
240 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 ideal. Its immediate fulfilment was possible only 
 by a miracle. And for that reason it was either 
 unconsciously postponed into a vague future or 
 was transferred to another and heavenly world. 
 Such, at least, was the transformation which 
 the Jewish national hope experienced at the hands 
 of its post-canonical exponents, especially the 
 apocalyptic writers. But the Old Testament it- 
 self, to which our present study is limited, still 
 retained the more earthly ideal of a perfect state 
 on earth. Throughout the prophetic writings fre- 
 quent passages embody this expectation. Their 
 date and authorship are often uncertain; they may 
 cover several centuries. Two of the most exten- 
 sive belong to the period that is called the exile 
 proper: Ezekiel's "constitution of the restored 
 theocracy," and the anonymous prophecy or col- 
 lection of prophecies concerning Israel's restora- 
 tion that follow the prophecies of Isaiah. 1 But 
 many shorter passages, including certain poetic 
 sections in the historical books, and even some of 
 the Psalms, belong to this class of writing, whether, 
 as some still maintain, they are of pre-exilic date, 
 or whether they belong to that lengthened exile 
 and subjection of the Jews that continued to the 
 Maccabean era and beyond it. 
 
 The chief elements in the Hebrew Utopia are 
 
 *Ezek. 40-48; Isaiah 40-55 or 40-66. For a convenient 
 collection of the miscellaneous prophetic material on this 
 subject see the closing sections of Kent's Student's Old Testa- 
 ment, Vol. 3. 
 
THE MESSIANIC HOPE 241 
 
 simple and familiar. It will be a nation enjoying 
 all the forms of prosperity that experience and 
 imagination can suggest. Politically the Hebrews 
 will become not only independent but trium- 
 phant. They will be the rulers of the world, and 
 Jerusalem will be the centre of a world empire. 
 The lurid features of this programme were ex- 
 pressed by the euphemistic promise that they 
 should see their desire upon their enemies. A 
 crushing victory will be followed by universal 
 and permanent peace. The tribute of all nations 
 will flow into their treasuries, nature itself will 
 yield richer and more frequent harvests. Death 
 will be postponed beyond four-score years of 
 labor and sorrow to the six-score years of the patri- 
 archs, or else will be abolished entirely. Sorrow 
 and sighing, disease and suffering, will disappear. 
 Moral improvement will correspond to the ma- 
 terial advantages, although few passages lay em- 
 phasis upon it. It will not be freedom from 
 temptation but a fuller achievement of present 
 standards and a cleansing by suffering and by 
 grace. "A fountain shall be opened . . . for sin 
 and for uncleanness." The remnant which is 
 left shall be thoroughly pure. Only the faithful 
 shall remain a people humble and poor. Jeru- 
 salem's blood stains shall be purged from her 
 midst, "by the breath of judgment and by the 
 breath of burning." 1 Violence, deceit, and idol- 
 13:1; Zeph. 3:12; Isaiah 4:4 (Kent's translation). 
 
242 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 atry shall disappear. Justice shall reign in high 
 places. 
 
 But upon no feature of this hope for the ideal 
 nation have Christian scholars looked with greater 
 interest than upon the figure of the Messiah, or 
 anointed ruler. From his title the whole expecta- 
 tion is called Messianic, even when, as is often 
 the case, there is no explicit reference to him. In 
 fact, the material in the prophets gives us but few 
 passages that were originally intended as pic- 
 tures of the expected Messiah. In many prophe- 
 cies he is omitted entirely, in some he is not an 
 individual but the nation as a whole. In fact, 
 he holds no such central place in the Old Testa- 
 ment as he holds in the early Christian interpre- 
 tation of it. Even in Judaism he seems to have 
 assumed central importance chiefly with the 
 political effort of the Maccabees and in the three 
 centuries that followed until the revolt of Bar- 
 Cochba (165 B. C.-132 A. D.). And yet in his 
 person is summed up much of the best idealism 
 of the whole national hope. 
 
 Most often he is associated with David, the 
 ideal Hebrew monarch. He is either a David 
 rediviviis or a prince of the Davidic house who 
 shall renew the memories of his ancestor. He 
 comes again from Bethlehem a branch springing 
 up from the stock of Jesse, like a shoot from the 
 roots of a fallen tree. In familiar passages the 
 supreme qualities and service of this ideal ruler 
 are described: 
 
THE MESSIANIC HOPE 243 
 
 "The spirit of Jehovah shall rest upon him, 
 A spirit of wisdom and insight, 
 A spirit of counsel and might, 
 A spirit of knowledge and the fear of Jehovah. 
 
 He will not judge according to what his eyes see, 
 Nor decide according to what his ears hear; 
 But with righteousness will he judge the helpless, 
 And with equity will he decide for the needy in the 
 
 land. 
 
 He will smite an oppressor with the rod of his mouth, 
 And with the breath of his lips will he slay the guilty. 
 Righteousness, will be the girdle about his loins, 
 And faithfulness the band about his waist" (Isaiah 
 
 11:2-5, Kent). 
 
 "And dominion shall rest upon his shoulder; 
 And his name will be Wonderful Counsellor, 
 Godlike Hero, Ever-watchful Father, Prince of Peace. 
 To the increase of his dominion and to the peace 
 
 there shall be no end, 
 
 On the throne of David and throughout his kingdom, 
 To establish and uphold it by justice and righteous- 
 ness 
 
 Henceforth and forever. The jealousy of Jehovah 
 will accomplish this" (Isaiah 9:6, 7, Kent). 
 
 " Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion I 
 Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem I 
 Behold thy king will come to thee; 
 Vindicated and victorious is he, 
 Humble, and riding upon an ass, 
 Upon the foal of an ass. 
 He shall cut off chariots from Ephraim, 
 And horses from Jerusalem; 
 The battle bow shall also be cut off, 
 
244 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 And he shall speak peace to the nations; 
 His rule shall be from sea to sea, 
 From the river to the ends of the earth" (Zech. 9:9, 
 10, Kent). 
 
 Such, in brief summary, was the scope of the 
 varied predictions of national destiny and of the 
 ideal ruler who should realize them in his own 
 person. But when one turns from an analysis of 
 this hope to a consideration of its effective power, 
 one is impressed by its extraordinary longevity 
 and influence. Through various vicissitudes of a 
 whole millennium there burned constantly this 
 undying optimism. And for a millennium and a 
 half longer it continued in the form of apocalyptic, 
 by which "the courage and persistency of the 
 Jews in their faith, their indomitable hope under 
 persecution, their scorn of death, were all nour- 
 ished from the time of the Maccabees down to 
 the thirteenth century A. D." l The assurance of 
 the nation's destiny grew rather than diminished 
 in the course of time. Neither could success 
 ever entirely fulfil it nor disaster destroy it. 
 Even in the times of severest strain and discour- 
 agement the exiles of Israel were "prisoners of 
 hope." 2 Such an idealism was not the unique 
 possession of Israel. "All nations that are worth 
 anything," as an American historian reminds us, 
 
 ^Charles, Religious Development between the Old and New 
 Testaments, p. 44. 
 2 Zech. 9:12. 
 
THE MESSIANIC HOPE 245 
 
 "always have had and always will have some 
 ideal of national destiny, and without it would 
 soon disappear, and would deserve their fate." l 
 The striking thing about the nationalism of the 
 ancient and of the modern Hebrew is the strength 
 and flexibility of this perennial hope. 
 
 The basis for this dauntless optimism was 
 neither national conceit nor blind utopianism, 
 but a religious faith. It was the faith in Jehovah 
 that carried them through the first struggle of 
 their history, and it was the same faith that in- 
 spired them until the end. In the words of a 
 recent writer: 
 
 Jehovah was the God of Israel, and Israel the people 
 of Jehovah, from the day of the great deliverance from 
 Egypt. Out of that national faith sprang the hope of 
 the nation, its confidence in Jehovah's ultimate pur- 
 pose to bless His people. One of the wonderful things 
 in the religion of Israel is the vitality of this hope 
 through changing fortunes, and amid overwhelming 
 disasters, as displayed in its adaptability and recupera- 
 tive powers, its reinterpretation of the methods of God 
 without forfeiture of faith in His redemptive purpose. 
 That which the New Testament declares of a single 
 generation is not less true of the thousand years of 
 Israel's varied history: "This is the victory that hath 
 overcome the world, even our faith." . . . Because 
 Israel belongs to Jehovah, and can depend on Him, it 
 has a future. The hope in this future, springing from 
 the faith in Jehovah, again and again brings renewed 
 
 1 E. D. Adams, The Power of Ideals in American History, 
 p. 68. 
 
246 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 strength, and becomes the chief instrument in the 
 maintenance of the "national" existence. It is true 
 that the nationalism which made faith and hope 
 strong sometimes narrowed love to the circle of Israel, 
 or even of faithful Israel. Moreover, the forms in 
 which the hope of the future clothed itself are often to 
 us strangely inadequate to a spiritual religion. Yet it 
 is to Israel's hope that we owe the bringing in of the 
 Christian hope; for that hope is the pulse of Israel's 
 vital strength, the inspiration of its continued life., 1 
 
 And when one goes back a step farther and 
 seeks for the basis of this faith, one meets again 
 a great richness in the Hebrew ideals. It is not 
 that hope really needs an explanation beyond the 
 mere fact of human nature or that an inherent 
 optimism is wont carefully to scrutinize the 
 grounds of its confidence. Faith creates its own 
 foundation by experience. "Faith is the giving 
 substance to things hoped for, a test of things not 
 seen." 2 And yet the Hebrew assurance that 
 Jehovah would bless them was grounded through- 
 out on the nature of God, as with changing em- 
 phasis they conceived him. In the first instance, 
 no doubt, their hope in him was because of his 
 national preferences; he would save them because 
 they were his peculiar people. It would be for 
 his own glory. But as the prophets exalted 
 Jehovah above the level of a merely national pa- 
 
 1 H. Wheeler Robinson, The Religious Ideas of the Old Tes- 
 tament, pp. 184, 186. 
 2 Hebrews 11:1, margin. 
 
THE MESSIANIC HOPE 247 
 
 tron, their confidence in him was transferred to 
 other grounds. When they declared that his 
 gracious treatment of Israel had been or would 
 be for his name's sake, they meant more than the 
 vindication of his power among the gods of the 
 other nations. They meant that his treatment 
 would demonstrate his character. The prophets 
 appealed also to Jehovah's pride or jealousy, 
 which would not suffer him to live below the 
 highest level that they expected of him. And 
 when they pictured the satisfaction of their hopes 
 they would add, "The zeal of Jehovah will accom- 
 plish this." They appealed to his love of Israel, 
 and to his justice in requiting their foes and in 
 rewarding their own faithfulness. They looked 
 back to the beginning of their history as more 
 than an accident or temporary whim of Jehovah. 
 He had separated them from among all the peo- 
 ples of the earth to be his inheritance. 1 They 
 had come to look upon their reciprocal relations 
 with Jehovah as a covenant in which Jehovah 
 and Israel each voluntarily accepted the other. 
 And God will be faithful to his part of the con- 
 tract, as faithful as "the laws of nature": 
 
 If ye can break my covenant of the day, and my 
 covenant of the night, so that there shall not be day 
 and night in their season; then may also my covenant 
 be broken with David my servant, that he shall not 
 have a son to reign upon his throne (Jer. 33:20, 21). 
 
 1 1 Kings 8:53. 
 
248 NATIONAL IDEALS , 
 
 The term covenant to the modern mind sug- 
 gests a treaty in which each party's undertakings 
 are contingent upon the fidelity of the other, and 
 this feature was frequently present in prophetic 
 predictions of blessing. But many of God's 
 promises were looked upon by the Hebrews as 
 unqualified and absolute. Unfaithfulness might 
 delay them, and faithfulness might bring them 
 near, but nothing could cancel them. God had 
 sworn with an oath and would not repent. His 
 election of Israel was an unalterable relation. 
 His promises were yea and amen forever. Thus 
 as an ultimate destiny the national hope of Israel 
 rested upon nothing less than the promises of 
 God. 
 
 But the Hebrew was convinced that God not 
 only wished their triumph, but that he could do 
 whatever he would. They trusted his ability as 
 well as his fidelity. With their enlarging idea of 
 Jehovah's sphere went hand in hand an enlarging 
 conception of his power. Nothing was too hard 
 for him. He could save by many or by few. All 
 the nations were in his hand. He was the creator 
 of things and controlled the course of history. 
 The future would manifest his purposes as the 
 past had manifested them. Thus the Hebrew 
 hope rested upon the lessons of history. History 
 was interpreted spiritually and as the revelation 
 of God's purpose. What God has done, God can 
 do. He saved Israel from Egypt; he can save 
 
THE MESSIANIC HOPE 249 
 
 them from Babylon. He made a great nation of 
 a little one; he can do it again. All the forces of 
 nature are in his hand. He can transform even 
 defeat into success. 
 
 It is this reliance upon God as the basis of the 
 national hope that explains a feature of that hope 
 that we have already alluded to. Though the 
 Old Testament writers consistently confine their 
 expectation to this earth, they lay little emphasis 
 upon the human leader or leaders through whom 
 their hope is fulfilled. The Messiah is not the 
 initiator of reconstruction nor the real creator of 
 the ideal state. He is, after all, only an agent 
 anointed and appointed by God. He is second 
 and subservient to God, exalted, to be sure, 
 among men, yet merely the agent of Jehovah. 
 Frequently, as we have said, the Messiah is con- 
 spicuously absent from the outline. His place is 
 more than filled by God. God, himself, is often 
 spoken of as the true king among his people, a 
 conception which continued from an early period 
 even through the New Testament. Whenever 
 men fixed their minds on the immediate political 
 achievement of their national hope they thought 
 chiefly of the agent of liberation, and many of 
 them followed wandering fires of those who cried, 
 "Lo, here I" and, "Lo, there I" It was this false 
 expectation that gave Jesus the most eager and 
 the most embarrassing personal popularity. But 
 whenever men sought to found their hope not on 
 
250 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 political machinations but on the more fundamen- 
 tal ideals of faith, then, like Jesus himself, they 
 turned their thoughts away from the programme 
 of a Messiah to confidence in the purpose of God. 
 Therefore, though neither phrase occurs exactly 
 in the Old Testament, its final national ambition 
 and expectation is not so well expressed by the 
 usual term, "the Messianic hope/' as it is by the 
 rabbinic and Christian term, "the Kingdom* of 
 God." 
 
XXV 
 
 NATIONALISM TRANSCENDED 
 
 THE ideal of nationalism contains many fea- 
 tures that seem hostile to the best interests of 
 mankind. It often fosters hatred, cruelty, and 
 egoism. An Oriental poet, Rabindranath Tagore, 
 has freshly reminded us of the unlovely features 
 of our own western nationalism. And in the 
 World War we have seen the recrudescence of the 
 spirit of predatory patriotism in all its conceit 
 and jealous ugliness. In studying the older 
 nationalism of the Jews we have found many self- 
 ish, material, divisive forces which made the 
 race the enemy of all others. The present writer 
 would not be misunderstood as favoring all the 
 national ideals which it has been his duty to 
 record. On the contrary, he would suggest that 
 the value of all such narrow loyalties lies chiefly 
 in their contribution to still higher forms of alle- 
 giance. And just such a surpassing of its own 
 frontiers is happily one of the inevitable results of 
 any intensified loyalty. To define limits is at 
 once to transcend them. So the growth of na- 
 tionalism slowly prepares the way for interna- 
 tionalism. 
 
 To trace this transcending of nationalism in 
 
252 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 late Judaism and in Christianity is a task that 
 lies beyond the confines of this sketch, which has 
 been limited to the Old Testament. That Chris- 
 tianity became the heir to all the best ideals of 
 Judaism, without the limitations of race and 
 nation, is a familiar fact, and one that explains 
 its superior catholicity and ecumenical power. 
 But it may be proper as a summary of our pres- 
 ent study to gather together some of the inter- 
 national suggestions and implications that meet 
 us even before the closing of the canon of Hebrew 
 Scriptures. 
 
 In the first place, the experiences of their his- 
 tory brought to the Hebrews a greatly widened 
 political horizon. As the earlier writings tend to 
 confine attention to Palestine and its immediate 
 environs, the later books show the influence of 
 foreign ideas and races. Conquest and exile, 
 travel and trade, trained the Jews to think in 
 imperial terms. Nowhere is this more clearly 
 seen than in the enlargement of their national 
 hope. Modelled originally on their status quo 
 ante, or at most upon the zenith of national ex- 
 pansion under David, the restoration hope soon 
 surpassed these bounds. 1 The restoration of the 
 original Israel was not enough; only a far greater 
 empire could suffice. It was natural that this 
 super-state should be conceived primarily along 
 conventional lines as an empire like those of 
 Isaiah 49:6; 56:8, 
 
NATIONALISM TRANSCENDED 253 
 
 Nineveh or Tyre. The prophets pictured Jeru- 
 salem as the capital of a great military despotism, 
 as the metropolis of a huge international com- 
 merce. Even religious conformity was assumed 
 as the essential of such an organization, and Zion 
 was to become a house of prayer to all peoples. 
 
 But there were other conceptions of inter- 
 national relations than the imperialist ideals. 
 There were many who hoped that Israel's suprem- 
 acy would be not something imposed on the na- 
 tions, but their own free choice. They were will- 
 ing to trust the inherent superiority of their own 
 God and their religion to win for themselves the 
 exalted place that they deserved. By a kind of 
 survival of the fittest they awaited the time 
 when the earth should be filled with the knowledge 
 of Jehovah as the waters cover the sea. "In 
 those days," writes one of these seers, "ten men 
 shall take hold, out of all the languages of the 
 nations, they shall take hold of the skirt of him 
 that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you, for 
 we have heard that God is with you." 1 
 
 To fulfil such a destiny no great martial enter- 
 prises will be needed. Indeed, no great national 
 organization or effort is required. Even active 
 missionary campaigns are not contemplated. 
 God himself will draw the nations unto him. 
 The duty of Israel is personal faithfulness to its 
 ideals. Zerubbabel is to restore the nation, not by 
 
254 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 an army, nor by power, but by God's spirit. 1 To 
 the prophet of the exile, as to the author of Acts, 
 the duty of missions is the duty of a "witness." 
 As a missionary nation the Jews are to be God's 
 witnesses the bearers of his light. In the same 
 prophecy is incorporated that other splendid ideal 
 of international service, and the suggestion is 
 plain that it depends not upon the exercise of 
 authority, like that of the kings of the Gentiles, 
 but upon the humble and patient fidelity of the 
 divinely instructed teacher. 
 
 In another way nationalism was transcended 
 by the prophets through their new emphasis upon 
 morality. The transfer is most readily recognized 
 in their new conception of God, who is regarded 
 as more interested in righteousness than in Israel, 
 his own elect people. Such a moral interest runs 
 right across all national lines of prejudice, and 
 draws new lines between the righteous and the 
 wicked, irrespective of race or creed. It is indif- 
 ferent to the imagined advantages of Levitical 
 ritual. As an anonymous prophet declares, even 
 the Gentiles offer as pure a sacrifice and honor 
 Jehovah's name as greatly as do the Jews. 2 In 
 the books of Ruth and Jonah, as we have already 
 noted, occurs this same protest against religious 
 particularism. Even the great rivals of Israel 
 are not rejected in God's sight. God will own 
 them, also. 
 1 Zech. 4:6, margin. 2 Malachi 1:11. 
 
NATIONALISM TRANSCENDED 255 
 
 In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and 
 with Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth; for 
 that Jehovah of hosts hath blessed them, saying, 
 Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of 
 my hands, and Israel mine inheritance (Isaiah 19:24, 
 25). 
 
 The new emphasis upon ethics not only de- 
 stroyed national boundaries, it suggested new 
 classifications. Within Israel the prophets al- 
 ready are harbingers of a party, if not a class con- 
 sciousness. The moral line they draw often fol- 
 lows very closely the division between exploiter 
 and exploited, rich and poor, aristocracy and 
 proletariat. Of international class solidarity we 
 see as yet no suggestions. Yet the lawgivers 
 remind the slave owner that his fathers were once 
 serfs in Egypt, and they legislate against partiality 
 in law courts due to the poverty of the defendant 
 or to the multitude of his sympathizers, quite as 
 much as they deprecate bribery by the rich. 
 
 In geographical setting, also, the standards of 
 the prophets tended to transcend national limita- 
 tions. As far as the Old Testament is concerned, 
 the scene for these projected ideals was always 
 thought of as the earth. But it is the whole earth 
 that is to share the blessing and not merely the 
 limited area of Palestine and the familiar environs 
 of Jerusalem. Sometimes a complete transforma- 
 tion of the earth was included, with new laws of 
 longevity and fertility, and even the taming of 
 
256 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 wild animals. The poet calls this a new heaven 
 and a new earth. 1 But still it is a real sky and 
 earth and by no means supramundane. One of 
 the characteristics of the later Jewish idealism 
 found, also, in Christianity is the transfer of 
 this national and international hope beyond the 
 earthly sphere. In some cases, as in the Book of 
 Revelation, the old and the new ideal are com- 
 bined. There is first a temporary millennium 
 upon earth and later eternal life in heaven. But 
 it is the latter conception that finally prevailed. 
 Zion became a universal symbol. 
 
 In accordance with this transcendence of na- 
 tionalism, apocalyptic relied more and more on 
 the supernatural forces to realize the national 
 hopes. Already in Daniel we perceive that bat- 
 tles on earth between nations are really settled 
 by conflicts between their representatives in 
 heaven. God himself by miracle will establish 
 his kingdom rather than through the slow, pain- 
 ful, and erratic efforts of men. It would be inter- 
 esting to show the manifold effects upon national 
 idealism of this expectation of a miraculous inter- 
 position. In the modern premillennial hope we 
 can see something of its various implications. 
 Its shortcomings are well described in a recent 
 essay by Professor Porter of Yale. 2 Though " the 
 faults of materialism and of self-interest which 
 belong to the naive nationalism of Israel's begin- 
 
 1 Isaiah 65 : 17-25. 2 Religion and the War, p. 44. 
 
NATIONALISM TRANSCENDED 257 
 
 nings are still present in the conscious and 
 sophisticated other-worldliness of .the apocalyptic 
 hopes," nevertheless the prejudices become politi- 
 cal rather than religious, and the agencies are a 
 kind of divine intervention instead of the petty 
 diplomacy and warfare of human relationships. 
 In still another direction the tendencies in 
 Judaism were breaking the bonds of nationalism. 
 The age was, as we have declared, an era of in- 
 tensification of nationalism, but that tendency by 
 no means excluded the growth of individualism 
 as well. Indeed, the older view was that in this 
 era individualism was taking the place of nation- 
 alism, being characteristic of the post-exilic period 
 as the other was characteristic of the pre-exilic 
 consciousness. This view is well corrected by 
 Professor Knudson in a chapter previously quoted. 
 The exile neither ended nationalism nor created 
 individualism. "Nationalism and individualism 
 in their higher forms, instead of being mutually 
 antithetical, were really mutually complemen- 
 tary." * 
 
 And yet individualism in religion or politics is 
 naturally the destroyer of the narrower national- 
 ism. When the supreme relation in life is be- 
 tween man and a universal God or a universal 
 empire, other loyalties are wont to sink into 
 abeyance. Humanity, not nationality, is the 
 social group in which intenser individualism finds 
 1 Knudson, Religious Teaching of the Old Testament, p. 340. 
 
258 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 \ 
 
 its fellowship and expression. As Judaism and 
 the whole world discovered in the era of the 
 Roman Empire, cosmopolitanism in culture, indi- 
 vidualism in philosophy and religion, internation- 
 alism in politics, are natural concomitants. 
 
 At any rate, the age of which we speak shows 
 strongly in its literature the intensification of 
 individualism. As the national unit was expand- 
 ing into the larger international conception', at 
 the same time it was also making room for the 
 smaller personal unit. While Ezekiel and Jere- 
 miah differ in their international expectation, the 
 former excluding, the latter including, the Gen- 
 tiles, they agree upon their emphasis on personal 
 religion. The Book of Psalms shows, also, this 
 transformation. It is, no doubt, the national 
 hymn-book and probably many, even of the so- 
 called "I" Psalms, should be understood as the 
 collective expressions of national life. At the 
 same time other psalms have an unmistakably 
 personal sound. And by its intense feeling and 
 by its inevitable applicability to personal religion 
 the lyric rather than the social consciousness came 
 to predominate in the use of the whole psalter. 
 
 Jewish legalism, too, was increasingly personal. 
 No doubt the old patriotic motive continued in 
 Pharisaism the hope that all Israel, by keeping 
 the law for one day even, might secure its cor- 
 porate redemption. But since the law extended 
 so intimately into personal acts and even motives, 
 
NATIONALISM TRANSCENDED 259 
 
 it naturally created a greater personal self-con- 
 sciousness. The Jew was interested in his own 
 conformity and even in his own reward. 
 
 So even eschatology became personal. Per- 
 sonal immortality or resurrection, a doctrine 
 barely suggested in the Old Testament, was no 
 doubt greatly fostered by Persian, Egyptian, and 
 other foreign influences; but it, too, was a natural 
 outcome of forces native to Judaism. When the 
 national hope still burned brightly, personal re- 
 ward was simply a share in the national glory. 
 But what of those who had fallen asleep ? Must 
 their surviving comrades sorrow for them even 
 as the rest who have no hope? Naturally, the 
 only consolation that God could give to the mar- 
 tyrs was a share after death in the national 
 restoration. This is the view-point of the Book 
 of Daniel. But as the hope of national restora- 
 tion grew dim or vague or superterrestrial, the 
 ultimate fate of the individual came into the 
 foreground of interest. This question is also 
 characteristic of the religious movements of the 
 later Jewish era; and, as Professor Charles has 
 shown, the eschatology of the individual merged 
 with and finally overshadowed the eschatology of 
 the nation. "The eternal worth ascribed to the 
 nation was thus also attributed to the individual, 
 and the two were united in a final synthesis." 1 
 For the national questions of the new day, 
 1 Knudson, Religious Teaching of the Old Testament, p. 349. 
 
260 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 however, the Old Testament still has a message 
 of permanent value. But that message is not its 
 cruder nationalism, which in popular opinion 
 makes it either a contrast or a supplement to the 
 New Testament. What it shares with the New 
 Testament is its chief glory. "It is the pro- 
 phetic denial of national claims and hopes, not 
 the older and always prevalent assertion of them, 
 that constitutes the reality and truth of the Old 
 Testament hope. It is hope for Jehovah and his 
 righteousness, not for Israel and its glory." l And 
 this transcendent hope is not to be fulfilled either 
 by the dreams of national Weltmacht or by visions 
 of a divine cataclysm. It is to be realized by a 
 transformation of national character and ideals. 
 " The prophet's criticism of the national hope and 
 reinterpretation of it as the hope for righteousness 
 really struck at the heart of the materialism and 
 selfishness of the popular national hope, its false 
 pride and its denial of trust and of good-will 
 toward mankind." 2 And the same criticism and 
 reinterpretation of national ideals is needed again 
 to-day. Perhaps a real superstate would help 
 create much of the new spirit required patriot- 
 ism giving place to compatriotism, nationalism 
 to supernationalism. Certainly no mere formula 
 or compact can suffice alone. " Organization and 
 new machinery are needed. But to avail much, 
 reconstruction must proceed from within: New 
 1 Porter, op. tit., p. 41, *IW., p. 43. 
 
NATIONALISM TRANSCENDED 261 
 
 ideals stretching beyond frontiers; the realizing 
 of new duties; a wider outlook; less idolatry of 
 the State; more regard to society as something 
 larger than the State; an effort to rise nearer to 
 the height of the ancient conception of States as 
 so many mansions of one city." 1 
 
 To such supernationalism the many spiritual 
 hopes of the prophets lead us. But if we cultivate 
 the narrower nationalism, like that of Judaism, 
 with its arrogance and cruelty, we shall be mak- 
 ing ourselves unfit for the world society which 
 shall be the Kingdom of God. 
 
 2 Macdonell, in Contemporary Review, March, 1918. 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 THE story of Israel's experience, from whatever 
 special angle it be considered, is a tale of romance 
 that has perennial interest. But when it is exam- 
 ined as the development of great ideals, it is a 
 story of distinctly modern meaning. Not only 
 does it afford many parallels to situations in our 
 own national and international life: it supplies as 
 well a kind of perspective and direction for our 
 own study of modern problems. Over against 
 the pessimism that finds in history a mechanical 
 and unyielding process, an alternation between 
 incurable stagnation and irresistible revolution, 
 the career of the Hebrews shows the pliability of 
 the stuff that moulds a people's life. It shows 
 the developmental character of national ideals, 
 and the creative power of mere ideals in shaping 
 a nation's destiny. 
 
 In peculiar degree the experience of Israel is a 
 stimulus to the individual. In the courageous 
 leaders of its successive crises it makes manifest 
 the place of personal initiative in the guidance of 
 public opinion and action. And this influence is 
 quite as manifest in the examples of minority 
 patriots, the misunderstood and misused idealists, 
 as in the more prosperous and popular heroes of 
 military success and political orthodoxy. The 
 story of Israel is, as an early Christian writer ob- 
 
 262 
 
CONCLUSION 263 
 
 served, the story of men of faith, a series of indi- 
 viduals whose power was commensurate to the 
 obstacles which they overcame. 
 
 Finally the experience of Israel indicates by its 
 direction, if not by its achievement, something of 
 the goal that still awaits the approach of a slowly 
 perfecting national idealism. There was much in 
 the nationalism of Israel that illustrates, as it 
 has been used to justify, the baser limitations of 
 modern provincial chauvinism, national jealousy, 
 and political immorality. But as the religion of 
 the Old Testament prepared the way for that of 
 the New, so at least in its higher reaches its 
 political idealism contains the germs of the more 
 Christian statecraft and world order toward 
 which Christendom is so tragically groping. 
 Surely, in days of the world's direst need, this 
 message of guidance and hope which the Bible 
 contains should not be hidden under the covering 
 of scholarship or obscured by theology, but should 
 be proclaimed in the market-place and the forum 
 for all men to hear. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abel, 38 
 Abimelech, 30 /. 
 Adams, E. D., quoted, 244 
 Agriculture, of Genesis, 9 
 
 of Canaan, 26 
 
 its appeal to nomads, 32 /. 
 Ahaz, 121 f., 128 
 Amaziah, 108 /. 
 Amos, from the country, 40 
 
 his message, 101-110 
 
 comparison with Hosea, 
 
 116 /. 
 Antiochus Epiphanes, 226 /., 
 
 230, 236 
 
 Apocalypse, literature of sup- 
 pression, 228 
 
 definition of, 231 ff. 
 
 and Messianic Hope, 244 
 
 supernaturalism of, 256 /. 
 Arabia, origin of Hebrews, 8 
 
 nomad tribes of, 13 /. 
 Assyria, in Isaiah's time. 
 120 /. 
 
 revolt against, 128 /. 
 
 at siege of Sennacherib, 
 157-161 
 
 Baal, Phoenician. 155 
 Baals, prophets' condemna- 
 tion of, 41 /. 
 of Canaan, 27 /. 
 fusion with Jehovah, 36 
 conflict with Jehovah, 31, 
 
 37, 155 /. 
 Babylon, besieges Jerusalem, 
 
 162 jf. 
 
 hatred for, 175 /. 
 Baruch, 165 /. 
 Blood revenge, 11 
 
 Cain, 38, 58 
 Canaan, 56 
 
 invasion of, 14, 70, 143 
 superior civilization of, 25- 
 
 34 
 religious innovations of, 
 
 42 /. 
 Charles, R. H., quoted, 230, 
 
 244 
 
 Clan, see Tribe 
 Conscription, 77 /. 
 
 Damascus, anti-Assyrian co- 
 alition, 121 
 fall of, 128 
 Daniel, Book of, message, 
 
 233-238 
 
 supernaturalism of, 256 
 view on immortality, 259 
 David, 36, 39, 40, 63 
 his kingship, 75 /. 
 as type of Messiah, 76, 242, 
 
 252 
 
 Davidson, A. B., quoted, 167 
 Day of Jehovah, 105 /. 
 Deborah, Song of, 29, 46, 62, 
 
 69 
 Democracy, of the desert, 
 
 13, 40, 153 /. 
 in Canaan, 27 
 of the prophets, 40, 154 
 of Deuteronomy, 145 /. 
 Deuteronomy, 42, 70, 76, 85, 
 180 
 
 purpose, 49 
 histoi 
 
 >ry and message, 137- 
 149 
 
 national self-consciousness, 
 213 
 
 265 
 
266 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Diplomacy, substitute for 
 
 war, 67 /. 
 
 futility of, 126, 130 
 of Rabshakeh, 158,' 
 
 Ecclesiasticus, 5 
 Egypt, exodus from, 8, 17, 22 
 superficial contact with. 
 
 24 /. 
 
 alliance with, 128 /. 
 Isaiah's distrust of, 130 /., 
 
 158 
 
 Elijah, from the country, 40 
 revolutionary, 9 If. 
 prophet of warning, 153- 
 
 157 
 Elisha, revolutionary, 41 
 
 stories of, 150 
 
 Emmet, C. W., quoted, 230 
 Eschatology, see Apocalypse 
 Esther, 50, 229 /., 231 
 Exclusiveness, 50, 212 ff. 
 Exile, The, encourages na- 
 tional unity, 49 
 Jerusalem's condition dur- 
 ing, 173, 207 jf. 
 causes feeling of revenge, 
 
 174 /. 
 causes feeling of guilt, 
 
 180 /. 
 reconstruction literature of. 
 
 184-187 
 
 leadership of prophets dur- 
 ing, 187 /. 
 religion of, 211 
 Exodus, The, origin of Israel, 
 
 8, 17 
 
 story of, 17-23 
 
 parallels to, 105 
 
 Ezekiel, 48, 85, 193 
 
 personal religion of, 179 
 vindicated, 187 /. 
 date of, 190 
 priestly plans of, 193 
 
 Faith, denied in war, 72 /., 
 
 130 ff. 
 
 theme of Isaiah's teaching, 
 124-127 
 
 basis of Messianic Hope, 
 245 /. 
 
 Genealogies, of Genesis, 55 /. 
 Genesis, agriculture of, 9 
 
 national spirit of, 52 
 
 stories of, 53-60 
 Geography, determines politi- 
 cal unit, 27, 36 
 
 element in nationalism, 
 34, 210 /. 
 
 basis of genealogies, 55 /. 
 Gilbert, G. H., quoted, 71 
 Gordon, A. R., quoted, 113 
 Gunkel, H., quoted, 57, 58 
 
 Hellenism, 216 
 
 gradual influence of, 225 /. 
 forced denationalization 
 
 by, 226 ff., 234, 237 
 Hezekiah, 158-161 
 History, written to teach 
 ideals, 6 /., 51 ff., 150 jf., 
 180 
 
 controlled by Jehovah, 
 
 123 /., 130 /., 189,248 
 
 moulded by ideals, 239, 
 
 262 
 revelation of God's love, 
 
 113 /., 144 
 
 Hosea, 41, 48 and note 
 anti-war, 72 
 message of loyalty, 111- 
 
 118 
 
 Hospitality, of the desert, 11 
 of the law, 15 
 
 Immortality, 259 
 Individualism, growth of, 
 257 /. See also Religion, 
 personal 
 Internationalism of Jehovah, 
 
 98/., 104: ff., 125 f. 
 Isaiah, anti-war, 65 
 message, of faith, 119-127 
 of statesmanship, 128- 
 
 136 
 
 at siege of Jerusalem, 157- 
 161 
 
INDEX 
 
 267 
 
 Isaiah, II, hopeful outlook of, 
 
 189 /. 
 internationalism of, 196- 
 
 205 
 reconstruction ideals of, 
 
 194 /. 
 
 Israel, origin of name, 31, 56 
 destruction of, 126 
 identified witn Servant of 
 Jehovah, 202 /. 
 
 Jehovah, origin of name, 31 
 Jeremiah, 48, 137 /., 186 
 
 condemns sacrifice, 43 
 
 anti-war, 65 
 
 message, 162-172 
 
 vindicated, 187 jf. 
 Jerusalem, anti-Assyrian ne- 
 gotiations at, 121 /. 
 
 captured by Sennacherib, 
 129 
 
 centralization of eultus at, 
 147 
 
 escape from Sennacherib, 
 157-161 
 
 siege by Babylon, 163 
 
 fall of, 173 /., 207 
 
 during exile, 184 /. 
 Job, Book of, 182 
 Jonah, Book of, 50, 215 
 
 message, 217-223 
 Josephus, quoted, 82 
 Josiah, 49, 138 
 Judges, Book of, 30, 45/., 47 
 Judith, Book of, 229 /., 231 
 
 Kautzsch, E., quoted, 81 
 Kings, Books of, 48 
 
 prophetic authorship of. 
 
 150-161 
 Kingship, criticism of, 40, 41, 
 
 77 jf. 
 
 its adoption, 74 /. 
 of David, 75 /. 
 and theocracy, 80-87 
 in Deuteronomy, 139, 146 
 Jezebel's idea of, 154 
 Knudson, A. C., quoted, 181, 
 209, 257, 259 
 
 Lamentations, Book of, 
 
 173 tf. 
 Law, function of government, 
 
 85 
 
 during exile, 211 /. 
 becomes personal, 258 /. 
 Leadership, 262 
 of Moses, 20 
 of the prophets, 146 /., 
 
 150ff.,lS7ff. 
 Liberty, achieved in Exodus, 
 
 21 ff. 
 
 Loyalty, of the tribe, 15 
 Hosea's conceotion of, 111- 
 118 
 
 Maccabees, 86, 226-231 
 Macdonell, J., quoted, 260 
 Margolis, M. L., quoted, 73 
 Marriage, as religious meta- 
 phor, 115 
 Messianic Hope, 86 /., 182, 
 
 239-250 
 identification of Messiah, 
 
 202 .ff. 
 
 Micah, anti-war, 72 
 Militarism, 127. See also 
 
 War 
 
 Monarchy, see Kingship 
 Moore, G. F., quoted, 30, 80 
 Morality, 124 /., 254 
 Moses, patriot, 5 
 leadership, 20 
 influences on, 24 
 national unity under, 45 
 
 Nationalism, of the New Tes- 
 tament, 3/. 
 
 of the prophets, 3 
 
 of Paul, 4 
 
 in war, 61 ff. 
 
 of Isaiah, 125 /. 
 
 deepened by exile, 209 ff. 
 
 narrow, of Jonah, 217-223 
 
 breakdown of, 225 ff. 
 
 transcended, 251-261 
 Nehemiah, 50, 214 
 Nomad life, origin of He- 
 brews, 9, 24, 35 
 
268 
 
 INDEX 
 
 the clan, 10 
 vendetta, 11 
 
 influence on Hebrews, 12 
 hostility of, 14 /. 
 loyalty of, 15 
 
 contrast with Canaan, 25 jf. 
 gives place to higher civi- 
 lization, 32 
 distrust of innovation, 58 
 
 Passover, as national holiday, 
 
 21 
 
 Patriarchs, national types, 58 
 Patriotism, taught by stories, 
 
 51 ff. 
 
 of Genesis, 59 
 of war, 62 /. 
 of the prophets, 98 
 assumption of special priv- 
 ilege denied, 104 
 of Deuteronomy, 140 /. 
 of Jeremiah, 168 
 of II Isaiah, 198 
 narrow, of Jonah, 217-223 
 Patronymic, 56 
 Paul, internationalism of, 4, 
 
 50 
 
 Peace, 192 /. 
 
 Peake, A. S., quoted, 171 
 Peters, J. P., quoted, 153 
 Pharisees, origin of, 178 
 Politics, ideals of, in Canaan, 
 
 27 
 prophet's relation to, 119- 
 
 127 
 intention of Deuteronomy, 
 
 139 /. 
 religion becomes substitute 
 
 for, 177 /. 
 Porter, F. C., quoted, 256, 
 
 260 
 
 Preaching, 101 
 Priesthood, in war, 65 
 conflict with kingship, 84- 
 
 87 
 comparison with prophets, 
 
 94 /. 
 planned by Ezekiel, 193 
 
 Prophets, as reformers, 2 /.. 
 
 8^100 
 
 patriotism of, 5 
 leaders of revolution, 40 /., 
 
 44 
 
 criticize kingship, 41 
 attack Canaanite customs. 
 
 42 /. 
 
 in war, 64/., 69 #. 
 relation to politics, 119- 
 
 129 
 influence on Deuteronomy, 
 
 145 /., 146 /. 
 writing of history by, 150- 
 
 161 
 popularity of, during Exile, 
 
 179 /. 
 leaders of reconstruction, 
 
 187 ff. 
 emphasis on morality, 
 
 97#, 254 /. 
 
 internationalism of, 3, 255 
 Psalms, as national liturgy, 3 
 Messianic, 86 
 personal religion of, 258 
 
 Rabshakeh, 158 jf. 
 Rauschenbusch, W., quoted, 
 
 97 
 
 Rechabites, 38, 39 /. 
 Reconstruction, 184^195 
 Religion, of Canaan, 27 /. 
 
 in war, 63 ff. 
 
 as a theocracy, 80-87 
 
 in conflict with prophets, 
 92 
 
 social aspects of, 96 
 
 opposed to Amos, 108, 110 
 
 nationalized, 5, 147 /. 
 
 substitute for politics, 
 177 /. 
 
 during Exile, 211 /. 
 
 personal, 169 fi. t 178 /., 
 258 /. 
 
 in II Isaiah, 199 /. 
 Remnant, 134 /. 
 Repatriation, 191 /. 
 Revelation, 256 
 
 broadside against Rome, 4 
 
INDEX 
 
 269 
 
 Robinson, H. W., quoted, 245 Todd, J. C., quoted, 47, 49, 
 Rogers, R. W., quoted, 129 140 
 
 Ruth, 50, 215 Tribe, as unit, 10 
 
 loyalty of, 15 
 geographical divisions of, 56 
 
 Sacrifice, condemned, 43, 95 
 vicarious, 16, 201-205 
 human, 43 
 
 Samaria, fall of, 48, 128 
 Samuel, 40, 62, 77, 79, 93 
 Saul, 75, 79 
 
 Secession, not condemned, 48 
 Sennacherib, treatment of 
 
 Judah, 129 
 besieges Jerusalem, 157- 
 
 Servant of Jehovah, 196-205 
 Smith, G. A., quoted, 12, 13, 
 16, 46, 115, 213 
 
 Smith, W. R., quoted, 91, 97, War, 61-73 
 
 patronymic, 56 
 
 Unity, encouraged at Exodus, 
 19,45 
 
 absent in politics, 35, 45-50 
 
 in religion, 49, 141 
 Uriah, 165 
 
 Vendetta, 11 
 
 Wade, G. W-> quoted, 20 
 Wallis, Louis, quoted, 28, 36, 
 37 
 
 135, 136 
 Social injustice, relation to 
 
 national questions, 106/., 
 
 132 /. 
 
 Solomon, 75, 77 
 Sons of the prophets, 89 ff. 
 Stanley, A. P., quoted, 81 
 
 Theocracy, 80-87 
 
 denies God, 130 ff. 
 Wars of Jehovah, Book of the, 
 
 29,62 
 Welch, Adam C., quoted, 
 
 141, 143 
 Wilson, Woodrow, quoted, 
 
 Zedekiah, 166 
 
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