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THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
 DALLAS • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
THE 
 
 IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 IN RABBINICAL LITERATURE 
 
 BY 
 
 J. ABELSON, M.A., D.Lit. 
 
 PRINCIPAL OF ARIA COLLEGE, PORTSMOUTH 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1912 
 

 COPYRIGHT 
 

 
 PKEFACE 
 
 The following pages treat of an aspect of ancient Jewish 
 theology which has, as yet, received an all too scant 
 attention. Indeed, the number of modern books dealing 
 with Jewish theology, whether as a whole or under any 
 of its many constituent aspects, is absurdly small. A 
 few distinguished names leap to the mind at once. Bnt 
 admirable and thorouo;h as is the work of these scholars, 
 the output is by no means commensurate with the scope, 
 importance, and complexity of the subject. As a result 
 of this barrenness of production, the theology of Rabbinic 
 Judaism — and hence Judaism itself — has never yet had 
 the good fortune to be weighed in the scales of absolute 
 fairness. The average Jew, unable to read the originals 
 for himself, is, through a shortage of text-books, quite 
 incompetent to pronounce an opinion of any worth upon 
 the religion which has meant so much for his fathers 
 and for the world. The average Christian does pro- 
 nounce opinions, but as these opinions are drawn, neither 
 from the orio^inals nor from the few Jewish scholars who 
 have written on these topics, they are invariably one- 
 sided and incomplete. I believe that the' silence of Jews 
 about their own theology has been construed by many 
 non-Jews into a proof that they really have no theology 
 worth writing about. 
 
 
vi THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 The present work is a humble attempt to fill up a 
 small portion of this lamentable gap. I am painfully 
 conscious of how faultily this filling up has been done 
 by me. I know full well how infinitesimally small a 
 portion of the gap has really been filled up. But let 
 the reader attribute these defects to the poorness of 
 my ability. Let him not impute them to an imagined 
 sterility of my subject. The rashness of my attempt 
 became more and more apparent to me as the work grew 
 under my pen. But perhaps a justification may lie in 
 my having merely done the rough work of breaking 
 down the fence of a field hitherto unnoticed and un- 
 trodden. Others, after me, may enter with more ease 
 than I have been able to do. And the fruits of their 
 labours will be far more satisfying than anything which 
 I can ever hope to gain credit for. 
 
 It is a pleasant duty to oflfer my heartiest thanks to 
 two kind friends, who in addition to correcting many 
 errors, gave me all kinds of help and encouragement 
 while the book was passing through the press. To Mr. 
 Claude G. Montefiore my obligation is exceptionally heavy. 
 Not only did he evince a generous interest in the pro- 
 gress of the book, but he also read through the proofs 
 with a most painstaking diligence, writing down for 
 my benefit a number of observations, comments, and 
 criticisms, which, coming from a mind so overflowing 
 with Biblical and theological learning, have proved an 
 asset to the book, as well as an education to myself 
 generally. To Mr. Israel Abrahams, the learned Eeader 
 in Rabbinic Literature at Cambridge University, my 
 gratitude is due for having given me the first hint as 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 to the necessity and possibility of writing a work on 
 the subject of Immanence from the particular standpoint 
 adopted. Mr. Abrahams, although hard pressed at the 
 time with other literary labour, also read through the 
 proofs and jotted down from the well-spring of his 
 original mind a wealth of notes, comments, and counsels, 
 many of which I have incorporated either in the text or 
 in the notes which follow each chapter. 
 
 I ought to add that part of the substance of the 
 Introduction and of Chapters I. -VI. appeared in the 
 Hihhert Journal for January 1912. It is here reprinted 
 by kind permission of the Editor. 
 
 J. ABELSON. 
 
 July 8, 1912. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAOF. 
 
 Introduction ....... 1 
 
 CHAPTER n 
 
 how does the hebrew bible present the subject of 
 
 Divine Immanence and Transcendence ? . . .46 
 
 CHAPTER m 
 
 Some Post-Biblical Views of Divine Immanence (outside 
 
 Rabbinic Literature) . . . . .55 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 The Shechinah — General View . . . .77 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 The Shechinah as Light or other Material Object . 82 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Shechinah Personified — (A) The "Face of the Shechinah" 98 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 (B) General Personification . . . . .104 
 
X THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 (C) The Personified Shechinah as the Immanent God in 
 
 Palestine, the Temple and the Synagogue . .117 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 (D) The Personified Shechinah as the Immanent God in 
 
 Israel , . . . . . .126 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 (E) The Shechinah and Sin . . . . .135 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 (F) The Shechinah and the Torah . . . .143 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 (G) The Shechinah and the Word . . , .146 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 (H) The Memra . . . . . .160 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 The Holy Spirit . . . . . .174 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 In what Respects is the Rabbinic Treatment of Holy 
 
 Spirit an Adv^vnce upon the Old Testament Treatment? 205 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 Materialistic Conceptions of the Holy Spirit in Rabbinical 
 
 Literature . . . . . .212 
 
CONTENTS xi 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 V\UE 
 
 Personification of Holy Spirit .... 224 
 
 CHAPTER XYIII 
 
 Holy Spirit and Prophecy from the Eabbinic Standpoint (1) 238 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 Holy Spirit and Prophecy from the Rabbinic Standpoint (2) 258 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 Holy Spirit as Ideal ...... 268 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 Holy Spirit in its Relation to non-Jews . . .275 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 The General Rabbinic Conception of God . . . 278 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 Rabbinic Doctrines op Sin and Evil from the Standpoint 
 
 OF Divine Immanence ..... 304 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 Rabbinic Views of Prayer from the Standpoint of Divine 
 
 Immanence . . . . . . .321 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 The Compatibility of Mysticism and Rabbinic Theology . 340 
 
xii THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chronology and Development . . . .357 
 
 APPENDIX I 
 
 On the Interchanging of the terms " Shechinah " and 
 
 "RuAH Ha-kodesh" . . . . ,377 
 
 APPENDIX II 
 
 On the Connexion between " Kabod " (Glory) and Shechinah 380 
 
 INDEX ....... 383 
 
JIB-NT h^h jIB'NT 
 
 or DV »3iN "ina 
 Tiyi inay Vdw 
 
 DVn TIDJ? I'BSB'd'? 
 
 (From the Dtwdn of A bH- 1- Hasan Je,huda 
 Ha-Levi, edited for Mekize Nirdamim 
 by H. Brody. Berlin, 1911.) 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The present essay is an attempt at a work on the 
 Immanence of God in Rabbinical literature. The 
 two terms, "Immanence of God" and "Rabbinical 
 literature," require definition. I will deal with the 
 latter first. 
 
 People commonly understand Rabbinical literature 
 in two senses. Firstly, the narrower sense, comprising 
 the literary output of the Palestinian and Babylonian 
 Academies, which commenced in or about the century 
 preceding the rise of Christianity, and ended with 
 the age of the last Geonim in the eleventh century 
 — in other words, the literature familiarly known as 
 the Mishna, Midrash, and Gemara. Secondly, the wider 
 sense, which embraces the aforegoing epoch and, in 
 addition, the literature of the mediaeval commentators 
 and philosophers, the works of Rashi and Ibn Ezra, 
 Maimonides, Nahmanides, Karo, Isserles, the authors 
 of the Kabbalah, and a host of others contemporane- 
 ous with these and stretching down to about the 
 Mendelssohnian period. This ambiguity of the term 
 " Rabbinical " really arises from the uncertain and 
 elastic usage of the term " Rabbi." Whereas some 
 would understand "Rabbi" to refer to a teacher of the 
 Talmudic or Geonic age, like R. Akiba, R. Judah the 
 
 1 B 
 
2 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 Prince, and 1^. kiherira Gaon, others would claim that 
 title equally for Rashi, Maimonides, Ibn Gebirol, Nah- 
 manides, Abarbanel, Luria, and ever so many others of 
 the same category. In the course of this essay I am 
 confining myself to the narrower connotation. Had I, 
 in my search for material about the Immanence of 
 God, ventured into the larger field, I should have 
 found far ampler substance. For I should then have 
 comprehended the later Kabbalah in the scope of my 
 investigations ; and the later Kabbalah is the fullest 
 expression of Jewish mysticism. 
 
 Yet I feel convinced that no treatment of any aspect 
 of Talmudic mysticism — and the Immanence of God is 
 certainly an aspect of it — can in the last resort be said 
 to be complete which does not take within its purview 
 that luxuriant crop of sublime lore about God and the 
 universe which, intermixed with much that is not so 
 worthy, is the fascinating hall-mark of the mediaeval 
 Kabbalah. For the latter is really an integral portion 
 of Talmudism. It is part of its flesh and blood. How 
 these mystical doctrines became incorporated in the 
 Talmud, whether and how far they are the result of 
 Jewish contact with non-Jewish systems of thought and 
 belief, it is not needful here to consider. M. Franck in 
 his book La Kahhale has made thorough-going investi- 
 gations on this very head. Anyhow, we know that these 
 mystical allusions are embedded in the texture of the 
 Talmud, and it is therefore totally wrong to follow 
 Graetz in regarding the mediaeval Kabbalah as a thing 
 per se, as something quite apart from its Talmudic 
 antecedents, as an unnatural child of the darkened 
 intellects of the Jewish middle ages. Neither is it right 
 to judge of its merits or demerits by the rationalistic 
 standards which Graetz and his school adopt towards it. 
 The mediaeval Kabbalah is a direct descendant of the 
 
I INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 Talmudic Kabbalah, and by the Talmudic Kabbalah one 
 means all those mysticpronouncementswhich lie scattered 
 and dispersed throughout the extensive realms of the 
 Talmudic literature. These mystic pronouncements, 
 no matter to which age they belong, are but various 
 presentations of Jewish feeling and Jewish thinking 
 about one and the same subject — God. The Jewish heart 
 has in all ages panted for union with the living God 
 even as the hart panteth after the water-streams. The 
 Jewish soul has never ceased to find a solace, such as the 
 mere world cannot give, in the realised joys of the near- 
 ness of God, in that mystic elation which the Psalmist 
 doubtless experienced when he exclaimed, " My soul 
 followeth hard after Thee : Thy right hand upholdeth 
 me" (Ps. Ixiii. 8). The Jewish mind has at all seasons 
 and in all ages meditated upon the meaning of all this 
 mystery ; and the Kabbalistic literature of each of 
 these successive ages is the delineation of these 
 problems and attempts at their solution in ways 
 which accorded best with their notions of Judaism 
 and religion generally. But it is one and the same 
 flowing stream emanating from one common source, 
 although certain new elements must have been gathered 
 up, and assimilated, in the course of its flow down 
 the acres. You cannot cut the stream of Kabbalah 
 into parts and say, "Here ends one part; here 
 commences another." Kabbalah is really the literature 
 of Jewish mysticism from about the first pre-Christian 
 century until almost recent times. In this scope there 
 would be included all the mysticism dotted about the 
 Talmudic and Gaooic literature, the French, German, 
 and Polish Kabbalah of the Middle Ages, and the 
 mysticism of the Hassidim. 
 
 But what is Mysticism ? I have just said that the 
 Immanence of God is an aspect or branch of Talmudic 
 
4 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 mysticism. But before a writer can attempt to enlarge 
 upon Immanence, he must make clear to himself and to 
 others what he means by mysticism. And when the im- 
 plications of mysticism have been laid bare, it is then, 
 and only then, possible to realise the contents and bear- 
 ings of Talmudic mysticism. Mysticism, then, might be 
 roughly defined as that phase of thought or feeling which 
 urges that God is a supreme, all-pervading, and all- 
 indwelling power in which all things are one. To the 
 mystic, God is not an external being or object merely to 
 be worshipped or thought about or spoken to in prayer. 
 God is an experience. The mystic embraces, experi- 
 ences God, as a living presence within his own soul. 
 Professor Edward C^ird in his book The Evolution of 
 Theology in the Greek Philosophers (1904), says : 
 " Mysticism is religion in its most concentrated and ex- 
 clusive form ; it is that attitude of mind in which all other 
 relations are swallowed up in the relation of the soul to 
 God." The mystic is conscious of God as an indwelling 
 Father in his own soul, as an indwelling spirit of good- 
 ness in the world. His aim and purpose is to know 
 this indwelling Father, to realise this spirit of goodness, 
 and by these means to unite himself to God in as close 
 a bond as it is possible for any human being to effect. 
 Professor Rufus Jones in his recent book, Studies in 
 Mystical Religion, gives the following excellent defini- 
 tion : " Mysticism is the type of religion which puts 
 the emphasis on immediate awareness of relation with 
 God, on direct and intimate consciousness of the Divine 
 Presence. It is religion in its most acute, intense, and 
 living stage." In fine, the mystic is he who lives 
 religion, not merely feels it or professes it. 
 
 Covering such a wide area as it does, the name 
 of mysticism is given to a great many diff'ering 
 tendencies of religious thought. Besides, mysticism on 
 
I INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 account of its dealing with abstractions, is a branch 
 of philosophy as well as religion. But what is of the 
 highest importance to emphasise here is the fact that 
 all forms of religion possess a mystical element. 
 Speaking in the Quarterly Revieiv for July 1909, the 
 late Father Tyrrell says : " If the tone of life is to be 
 deep and rich and not harsh and metallic it needs 
 a strong infusion of mysticism." Now there is no 
 known instrument that can make the tone of life deep 
 and rich, other than the instrument of religion. For 
 what is the acme of all religious teaching, but the fact 
 that man is face to face with God, that he hears His 
 voice and feels His presence, that he can only find his 
 truest sanctification, his being's highest and holiest joy 
 in drawing^ as near as he can to the love that radiates 
 from the Presence of God. There is no religion in 
 which the word " love," and the idea it stands for, does 
 not occupy a commanding place. And it is mysticism 
 that pushes love to the forefront. The mystic's ideal is 
 communion wath God. His soul reaches out in loving 
 yearning to embrace God. And he know^s that he has 
 found God, because he has felt the thrill of His answer- 
 ing love. Indeed it is hard to see how any religion 
 can resist the wear and tear of time, unless it 
 emphasises the emotional element far and away above 
 the intellectual. The reli2;ious man feels rather than 
 knows. To quote Father Tyrrell again : " Every one 
 is something of a mystic; no one is nothing but a 
 mystic."* By "every one" he probably means every 
 adherent to any religion, excluding the atheist. This 
 over-towering predominance of feeling in faith is the 
 burden of the well-known mystical lines of Tennyson : — 
 
 * This idea is echoed by Miss Evelyn Underhill in her recent book on 
 Mysticism (Methuen & Co., 1911), where she says (p. 84) : "No deeply religious 
 luau is without a touch of mysticism ; and no mystic can be other than religious, 
 in the psychological if not in the theological sense of the word." 
 
6 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep, 
 
 I heard a voice " believe no more " 
 And heard an ever-breaking shore 
 
 That tumbled in the godless deep ; 
 
 A warmth within the breast would melt 
 The freezing reason's colder part, 
 And like a man in wrath the heart 
 
 Stood up and answer'd " I have felt." 
 
 Moreover, no religion can dispense with the mystical 
 element, because no religion can disregard the great 
 fact of the soul. Religion tells us that the soul is 
 a spark of the Divine flame. Mysticism puts more 
 substance into the idea, complements it, by telling us 
 that the soul partakes of the Divine nature and finds 
 its final consummation in merging its identity in a com- 
 plete union with it. The soul, says the mystic, is ever 
 seeking God as the complement of its life and the per- 
 fection of its form ; and man, in as far as he has a soul, 
 partakes of the one central Divine Life. Furthermore, 
 a strong feature of religion's teaching is the fact that in 
 its conjunction with the body the soul is the superior 
 partner of the two. The soul is the seat of love ; the 
 body is the abode and instrument of sin. The soul 
 must be stronger than the body, because, in the sight 
 of God, love must vanquish sin. Mysticism elaborates 
 this teaching by declaring that man's love calls out the 
 Divine essence in response. God desires on His own 
 part to have communion with us. He wishes to mingle 
 His spirit with ours as a friend with a friend, or a father 
 with a child. In fact, our communion with Him is only 
 possible because He has, so to speak, taken the initiative, 
 and implanted in our hearts the germs of that over- 
 flowing love which He bears to us. But in order that 
 this communion should be complete, the bar of our lower 
 self must be removed. There must be a total self- 
 surrender to God on man's part, otherwise he cannot 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 possibly be united to God. In this way, mysticism is 
 really reinforcing religion's universal preaching on the 
 necessity of the suppression of sin before man can claim 
 the title of a child of God. 
 
 Yet one further point. Mysticism may be said to 
 express the inmost core of religion because in its in- 
 sistence upon the Fatherhood of God it ipso facto con- 
 veys the sterling truth of the brotherhood of men. It 
 is thus the great incentive to works of altruism, to self- 
 sacrifice on the noblest scale. The true mystic can 
 never be a self-centred individual. The man who is 
 conscious of his mystic union with the spirit of God, 
 must recognise the image of God in every fallen brother. 
 Sympathy, love, benevolence, mutual helpfulness and 
 encouragement must be the practical outcome whether 
 of the individual mystic or of the community in whose 
 fundamental beliefs and hopes mysticism is enshrined. 
 Jews claim this prerogative for Judaism ; Christians 
 claim it for Christianity. Both sects adduce instances 
 from their theologies as well as from their histories to 
 prove their contentions. And the fact that of all the 
 world's faiths, it is just these two that are the con- o 
 cornitants "oT TEe highest grades of~civilisation and '^ 
 enlightenment, goes~'a long way"to w'ar"ds~sl3iowmg the 
 indispensableness of mysticism to religion. lFls~^he 
 former that makes the latteFa living^power. 
 
 To demonstrate, as I am attempting to do in this 
 essay, that the theology of Talmud and Midrashim is 
 coloured with a considerable tinge of mysticism is to 
 vindicate for Eabbinic Judaism two claims which are 
 made by present-day Christian thinkers for Christianity 
 exclusively.* As a result of the investigations I have 
 made in my own special province I feel that Judaism 
 
 * It should be said, by the way, that Buddhism is usually credited 
 with possessing some mysticism. 
 
8 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 may just as strongly and justifiably urge these claims 
 as do the followers of Christ. Let us see what these 
 claims are. 
 
 Firstly. It is maintained that a religion can only 
 hold its ground to-day, provided its fundamental 
 doctrines and demands are in keeping with the findings 
 of modern empirical science. One of the most obvious 
 tendencies of the religious thinking and writing of 
 to-day, is that of shifting the centre of gravity of 
 religion away from the idea of " authority " to the 
 idea of " experience." Traditional rules and dogmatic 
 formulae do not extract the homage of men or hold 
 sway over their minds and bodies in the manner or 
 degree that they did in a former age. Obedience to 
 tradition and dogma is becomings mingled with a 
 conscious and unlovely scepticism. Religious facts are 
 getting to be treated more and more after the fashion of 
 the phenomena of science, of Astronomy and Geology, of 
 human Physiology and Psychology. We seek empirical 
 evidence of God : what we crave for is first - hand 
 experience of the Divine Presence. We want to weigh 
 and examine things which we ourselves know and see 
 and feel, while accepting little which comes from any 
 other channel, no matter how hoary it may be with the 
 veneration of past ages. What then, on this under- 
 standing, is the final test of the rightness or wrongness, 
 the credibility or falsity of a religious fact ? It is the 
 ability of the individual to experience this fact. In 
 other words, right religion is an experience — an ex- 
 perience which embraces the entire personality of man 
 and transcends all the limits of definition and explana- 
 tion. We live religion, and not merely think it or feel 
 it, or express it in words. And it is by taking the 
 noblest types of men and women who have lived 
 religion, and noting the records of their first-hand 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 experiences in this domain, that we can lay down for 
 ourselves the surest lines on which to base our own 
 religious conduct. In short, we derive our religious 
 ideals not from books or formulae, but from persons. 
 It is just this profound tendency of modern thought 
 that is leading people not only to lay more stress on 
 the importance of studying the mysticism which belongs 
 to all forms of religion, but to radically modify the 
 estimate hitherto held of the value and nature of 
 mysticism. To the average cultured mind, mysticism 
 used always to be associated with something abnormal ; 
 to be a mystic was to be a sufferer from some peculiar 
 disease not easily understood, and hysteria was an in- 
 evitable accompaniment. That there is some amount of 
 truth in this view can be seen from a recent work like 
 that of Baron Von Hiigel on The Mystical Element of 
 Religion. His treatment of the subject is a piece of 
 abstruse metaphysical speculation. And yet whom 
 does he select as the person in whose life he studies all 
 these far-reaching and profound doctrines ? It is Saint 
 Catherine of Genoa, a woman " in whom we have to do 
 with a highly nervous, delicately- poised, immensely- 
 sensitive and impressionable psycho-physical organism 
 and temperament" . . . (vol. i. p. 220). "And this 
 temperament involved an unusually large subconscious 
 life. All souls have some amount of this life, but many 
 have it but slight and shallow ; she had it of a quite 
 extraordinary degree and depth" (ibid. p. 221). Von 
 Hiigel's study is an able presentation of one side of the 
 truth. That there is another side is proved in the recently 
 published book, by Dr. Rufus Jones, Studies in Mystical 
 Religion. The author shows in a scientific spirit, to 
 which no one can hesitate to give his acquiescence, how 
 there are in reality two types of mystical experience. 
 The first is that which is within the line of normal 
 
lo THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 healthy life. The second falls into the category of 
 pathological phenomena. " It is true," says he, " that 
 great mystics have often possessed peculiar psychical 
 constitutions. They have sometimes exhibited the 
 phenomena of hysteria and sometimes they have beyond 
 question been pathological and have experienced ab- 
 normal states due to an unstable nervous system." 
 But yet the author finds a healthy explanation of even 
 these abnormalities. These mystics, says he in effect, 
 peculiar people though they unquestionably were, built 
 up an environment for themselves, an environment 
 which had no meaning and no value for any one else, but 
 which had a striking life-value for themselves. The 
 " correspondence " between them and their environing 
 reality meant health to them, although to the outsider 
 it appeared topsy-turvydom. We have an illustration 
 in Biblical literature of this phenomenon. Ezekiel is 
 the great mystic among the prophets. It is probably 
 for this reason that he is one of the most original figures 
 in the sacred literature of Israel ; and it is probably also 
 on account of the under-valuation and neglect of the 
 importance of the mystical element, that Ezekiel has 
 never been appreciated as much as he deserves, with the 
 result that the text of the book has been transmitted in 
 so poor and neglected a form. 
 
 Now, the distinguishing characteristic of Ezekiel 
 is his ecstasy. Chap. iii. 26 attributes a kind of 
 paralysis of the tongue to him. This was a physical 
 abnormality. Other chapters abound in bits of auto- 
 biography which tell us of his mental aberration at 
 certain points of his career when the "hand of God" 
 was strong upon him. Now, are these statements of 
 his pathological experiences to be taken literally ? 
 Certainly they are. Only we must judge them from 
 Ezekiel's own standpoint and not from ours. To us 
 
INTRODUCTION ii 
 
 they appear as painful inflictions, dismal states of ill- 
 health, the very thought of which makes us shudder. 
 But they need not have been so to Ezekiel. They may 
 have accorded well with his own version of the meaning 
 of his environment. They may have been, and probably 
 were, ecstasies not of sorrow but of joy, not of pain but 
 of health. It was merely his own particular way of 
 realising the happiness of communion with God. 
 
 It is a deeper recognition of these possible points of 
 view from which mysticism may be looked at that is 
 nowadays leading people more to appreciate than to 
 depreciate it, as was hitherto the almost unbroken 
 custom in the case of even cultured folk. And it is 
 this same fact that is also urging a steadily increasing 
 contingent of students to study the lives and w'orks 
 of the great mystics of the past — Jewish, Christian, 
 and others. 
 
 But, to come now to my point. The apologists for 
 Christianity to-day attempt to bring it into line with 
 modern empirical science by showing how the wonderful 
 power and irresistible fascination which Christ wielded 
 over primitive Christianity were due primarily and 
 essentially to His direct experience of God ; and how 
 this experience of God gradually found its way into the 
 hearts of His followers, binding them together in a 
 fellowship with the Divine, raising them to the level of 
 feeling themselves the objects of a constant incoming of 
 the Divine Life, partakers of the Holy Spirit, which filled 
 them within and enveloped them without, and in which 
 they lived and moved and had their being. Well, 
 assuming that this is a correct deduction from the 
 written records, what has Rabbinical Judaism to say 
 for itself? Must it confess its exclusion from such an 
 inheritance ? Is it shorn of the prerogative of having 
 enjoyed the mystical experience of union with God such 
 
12 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 as is claimed by the first stages of Christian history ? 
 Truly enough, it has no commanding, immortalised, 
 semi-divine personality at its head such as Christianity 
 has ! But this does not vitally afi"ect the question. 
 Can Judaism show that at an epoch more or less con- 
 temporaneous with Christ and the Apostolic age, its 
 adherents also had experiences of a Divine Presence 
 fillino; them and encirclinoj them and folio winoj them 
 
 o o o 
 
 whithersoever they went? If it can, then it, too, 
 can lay claim to being a mystical religion. And it, 
 too, can bring itself into line with the findings of 
 modern empirical science. The object of the present 
 essay is to push forward this claim for Judaism by 
 illustration and argument from the Eabbinic writings ; 
 and thus to found an established place for it in the 
 company of the scientific faiths of the world. 
 
 Secondly. There is a widespread impression that the 
 Jewish theological thinkers and teachers of O.T. as 
 well as N.T times confined their horizon wholly to the 
 transcendence of God. It was left, say they, for Pauline 
 and Johannine Christianity, with their mystical teachings 
 on the Holy Spirit which dwells in man and unites him 
 with God, to complement and correct this one-sided view 
 of religion ; and thus, by bridging the gulf between God 
 and man, to give the world the first complete understand- 
 ing of the truest and worthiest relationship between man 
 and his heavenly Maker. One of the pivots on which 
 this contention rests is the Rabbinic view of angels. In 
 post-prophetic times angelological speculation reached a 
 very high degree of luxuTiance among the Jews. The 
 Jewish theories of the nature and function of angels, 
 it is argued, were devised as a mechanical means for 
 bridging the chasm between man and God, because from 
 the O.T standpoint God was not regarded as being in 
 immediate contact with man, and Rabbinic Judaism 
 
I INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 found itself forced by the necessities of its own thought 
 to make good this deficiency, but without success. But 
 a study of the O.T. and the Rabbinic writings has con- 
 vinced me of the two following facts : (l) That the view 
 of God taught by the O.T. is certainly not so exclu- 
 sively transcendental as is generally imagined. There 
 are a great many strong and unmistakable glimpses of 
 the immanent view. These shall be detailed and dwelt 
 upon in their proper place. Passages of a deistic 
 tendency like that of Isa. xl. 22 are indeed common : " It 
 is He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the 
 inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers ; that stretcheth 
 out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as 
 a tent to dwell in." But why ignore the doctrine of the 
 spirit, w^hich although rather inchoate and indistinct, 
 is nevertheless asserted in more than one verse of the 
 Psalms or the Proverbs or Job ? * And one is not quite 
 so sure that the O.T. angels are merely the intervening 
 media between man and God, and that they cannot be 
 made to subsist wdth a high conception of Deity. We 
 must not forget, in this connection, the sacredness which 
 to the Jewish mind, from earliest recorded times down 
 to the present day, hedges round the Divine name. A 
 variety of devices, circumlocutions of many sorts are 
 invented to prevent its usage whenever possible, because 
 usage is synonymous with irreverence. Now, some such 
 idea as this, permeates the employment of angels in the 
 O.T. as it undoubtedly enters into the Rabbinic usages 
 of Shechinah and Holy Spirit, as I shall show later on. 
 The Jew became loath to describe God as mixing too 
 freely and frequently with men — and in describing 
 anything the name must inevitably be used — but it 
 does not follow, as a consequence, that he did not 
 
 * And in several other books of the O.T., as is fully shown in Volz's 
 work, Der Geist Gottcs (1910). 
 
14 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 continue to harbour the idea and cherish the helief of 
 God's close contact with men. But as lie thought 
 it sacrilege to put the belief into words, he was 
 forced to fall back upon a substitute. This substitute 
 was the angel. The train of servitors and ministrants 
 which the O.T. designates as angels, ought rather to be 
 looked upon as emanations of God, traces of His work- 
 ings in the world of nature and of man rather than as 
 indications of His aloofness and inaccessibility. The 
 subject is by no means an easy one, but I feel sure there 
 is much plausibility in this latter view. (2) Investiga- 
 tion has made clear to me that the O.T. doctrines of 
 angels, its frequent references to the spirit of God, its 
 occasional references to the Holy Spirit, and its few 
 other stray and spasmodic hints on the Immanence 
 of God, are the immediate forerunners, one might 
 say, the parents of the Eabbinic doctrines of Shechinah 
 and Holy Spirit, terms which, as will be shown in this 
 essay, connote the Rabbinic teachings on the Immanence 
 of God. It is for this reason that in my treatment of the 
 Holy Spirit I have given such a large preliminary space 
 to the O.T. teachings on the spirit. The former is a 
 direct development of the latter and cannot be under- 
 stood without reference to it. The two taken in con- 
 junction form one complete whole. The conclusion has 
 accordingly forced itself upon me that on the subject of 
 Divine Immanence, Judaism has had nothing to learn 
 from Christianity. The Rabbins evolved their own 
 doctrines of Immanence by their studies of the O.T. 
 and more so by their interpretations of their own life- 
 experiences in the light of O.T. teaching. Even had 
 Paul never lived, the Jew would still have been the 
 heir to the belief in a Father that indwells him 
 and indwells the universe. There is a mysticism in 
 Rabbinical literature which is a source of perennial 
 
I INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 streno^th to the relio-ion of the Jew and a oruarantee of 
 its continuity. 
 
 The practical outcome of the current denial of the 
 Immanent idea to Rabbinic Judaism is seen in the 
 comparison usually drawn between the " inwardness " 
 of the Christian faith and the " outwardness " of 
 traditional Judaism. Even an acute thinker like 
 Professor Henry Sidgwick, on p. 114 of his History 
 of Ethics, contrasts the "righteousness of the Scribes 
 and Pharisees" with the "inwardness" which, says 
 he, " is the distinctive feature of the Christian code." 
 The implication is, that the " righteousness of the 
 Scribes and Pharisees " was merely an external punc- 
 tiliousness in ceremonial observances of all kinds which 
 left the heart untouched, and implied no underlying 
 spiritual content. That this is an inaccurate account 
 of Pharisaic Judaism has been demonstrated to the hilt 
 by Mr. C. G-. Montefiore, in the Ninth Lecture of his 
 Hihhert Lectures (1892), as well as by Dr. Shechter in 
 his Aspects of Rahhinic TJieology, and others. Rabbinic 
 Judaism certainly has a good deal of the outward yoke 
 about it. But it lays quite as much emphasis upon, 
 and ascribes quite as much beauty to, the necessity of 
 the inward call. That which we of to-day regard as 
 a yoke need not necessarily have been a yoke to the 
 Jew of Talmudic days. We have to let the past speak 
 for itself and not import our own sentiments into it. 
 If it be a fact that, as Dr. Shechter laconically puts it, 
 " To the Jew, God was at one and the same time above, 
 beyond and within the world, its soul and its life," 
 then who will arise and deny the virtue of inward- 
 ness to Rabbinic Judaism ? A theology which posits 
 a far-off God, separated from man by an unfathomable 
 distance, could never give that large scope to the 
 doctrine of Repentance which we find in the pages of 
 
i6 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 the Rabbins. This doctrine is of itself sufficient to 
 stamp Judaism as a religion of the heart. And if 
 mysticism is " religion in its most acute, intense, and 
 living stage " (Jones's Studies in Mystical Religion, 
 1909, p. xv), then must Rabbinic Judaism hold a fore- 
 most place in the category of mystical religions. For 
 few could have realised the Presence of God more 
 acutely, more intensely than the Rabbinic Jew, who 
 aimed at sanctifying even the smallest details of the 
 physical life, because he regarded nothing as being too 
 humble to come within the purview of Him, whose 
 glory fills the universe, and whose word is the main- 
 stay of all. 
 
 In the present essay I have treated mainly of 
 the aspect of Divine Immanence which the Talmudic 
 sages envisaged under the names " Shechinah " and 
 " Ruah-ha-Kodesh " (Holy Spirit). And in the case 
 of the former 1 have been attracted to compare 
 and contrast many a point in Jewish Hellenistic 
 literature — particularly in Philo and the Wisdom 
 of Solomon — with what I considered to be a parallel 
 idea expressed by the Rabbinic Shechinah. But I have 
 all along felt this one very great difference between 
 the two sets of thought — a difficulty which makes 
 me exceedingly pessimistic as to the ultimate literary 
 value of that portion of the essay — viz. that whereas 
 in the Hellenistic writings, the ideas relative to Im- 
 manence are couched in more or less philosophical lan- 
 guage and conceived in a distinctively speculative vein, 
 the Shechinah ideas (and the same applies to the Holy 
 Spirit ideas) are of a naive and untechnical character. 
 They are practical sayings, with nothing of the 
 speculative, nothing in the nature of abstraction about 
 them. I had, accordingly, to meet the difficulty of 
 comparing and contrasting a host of unphilosophical 
 
I INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 expressions, with statements which are part and parcel 
 of a set philosophy. In fact, this has been one of 
 the trying features of my subject all along. The Rabbis 
 were not metaphysicians, and Hebrew is a language of 
 concrete not abstract terms. Immanence is a philo- 
 sophical idea. To demonstrate therefore how, from 
 the artless and ofttimes childlike lanojuao-e of the 
 Haggadah, it is possible to infer that the Rabbins had 
 real glimmerings of a theology known only to the 
 trained philosophic thinker, is no light task. And yet, 
 on further reflexion, the difiiculty need not be so great 
 after all. For, firstly, one must not forget that an 
 element of the childlike pervades the mysticism of all 
 lands and every age. It is discernible even in the most 
 highly-developed and deeply-philosophical branches of 
 mysticism. From a psychological standpoint it is only 
 what one would expect. A phenomenon of mind in 
 which the emotions play so predominant a part as they 
 do in mysticism, must of necessity lead one back to 
 the primitive springs of human thought and conduct. 
 All other intellectuality cannot but be an after- 
 growth and expansion of these. As Dr. Rufus Jones 
 points out in his book to which I have previously 
 alluded, the characteristic mystic of the Middle Ages, 
 Meister Eckhart, is himself a remarkable example of 
 the union of a profoundly speculative mind and a 
 simple childlike spirit (p. 217). What the Rabbinic 
 literature gives us is the simple childlike spirit divorced 
 from profound speculation. And then, secondly, the 
 basic thouofht of Immanence is that of the Omni- 
 presence of God. The old-world Rabbi did not trouble 
 himself about the problems which may arise when the 
 doctrine is applied all round to the things of the 
 ordinary life. But this did not make him one jot less 
 of a believer in the validity of the doctrine ; neither 
 
 C 
 
i8 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 does it detract aught from the value and significance 
 of his expressed thought about it. The Immanence of 
 God may have been to him quite as much of a reality 
 as it was to a Plotiuus although he did not, because he 
 could not, express himself so deeply on the matter. 
 When R Simeon Ben Yohai in the Baraita (Megillah 
 29a) said, " Come and see how beloved are Israelites 
 before God, for whithersoever they journeyed in their 
 captivity the Shechinah journeyed with them," or when 
 R. Judah, in Deut. Rabba ii. 10, declaims on the 
 "nearness" of God because, as he says, "although 
 the distance from earth to heaven is a 500 years' 
 journey, yet when man whispers or even meditates a 
 prayer, God is at hand to hear it," they were but giving 
 expression, equally with the mystics of other ages and 
 nations, to an instinctive conviction that there is a 
 Divine Goodness and Power and Love active and 
 efficient everywhere throughout the universe, and that 
 man is at all times in union with, and in the presence 
 of, an Infinite Spirit and Personality. There is a 
 passage in the first chapter (Tirr^rr ii?m) of the n^T^^J 
 mm^n " Heart Duties " where Bahya (a Spanish- 
 Jewish philosopher of the eleventh century) remarks 
 as follows : 
 
 1N2DN TON •'hSn inS'Dni 101N n^nw D^DDnn p n!jp hs nDMi 
 .iSi2 iDo h'Dr^^ riNin n^i mnoD inj^qn nS ton in 
 
 "It is related of a certain sage that, in the course 
 of his prayer, he used to say as follows : ' Oh ! my God, 
 where shall I find Thee, but verily where shall I find 
 Thee not ? Thou art hidden and canst not be seen, 
 but, forsooth, all things are filled with Thee.' " All this 
 is simplicity itself, but it holds the core of the mystical 
 idea. It is the quintessence of the doctrine of the 
 Divine Immanence. 
 
I INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 The idea of Immanence involves the relation 
 between matter and spirit, body and soul. The dis- 
 tinction between body and soul was a fact known to 
 the earliest ages of mankind. Even the savage had 
 a crude conception of it. But it remained for a later 
 and more philosophical age to recognise the true 
 import of the antithesis between the two. As far as 
 Jewish literature is concerned, there are to be found 
 in the Midrash two rather crude but, nevertheless, 
 telling attempts at portraying this antithesis. These 
 are (1) a passage in Tanhuma Vayikra vi. as follows :^^^ 
 In the time to come the Holy One, blessed be He, 
 will bring the soul and ask, " Why hast thou trans- 
 gressed the precepts ? " It answers, " It is the body 
 that is the transgressor, not I. Since I left the body 
 am I not perfectly spotless ? " Then God goes to the 
 body and says, " Why hast thou sinned ? " It answers, 
 " It is the soul that is the sinner, not I. Since the 
 soul has left me, canst Thou find any iniquity in me ? " 
 What does the Holy One do ? He brings them both 
 together, joins them together and judges them as one. 
 This is illustrated by the parable of the blind gardener 
 and the lame. The latter says to the former, " I see 
 some nice fruit in this garden. Take me on your 
 shoulders as I cannot walk, and we shall then get 
 the fruit and divide it between us." This was done. 
 After a time the royal owner of the garden misses the 
 fruit. He accuses the lame man of having eaten it. 
 But the latter replies, "Have I legs to carry me thither? " 
 Then he accuses the blind man. But the latter answers, 
 " Have I eyes to see ? " How does the king solve the 
 dilemma ? He places the lame upon the shoulders 
 of the blind, and judges them as one. And so God 
 brings the soul and deposits it in the body as it is 
 said, '* He shall call unto the heavens from above, and 
 
20 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 to tlie earth that He may judge His people." "He 
 calleth unto the heavens," this refers to the soul. 
 " And to the earth that He may judge His people," 
 this refers to the body. What we have here is an 
 elementary representation from the ethical standpoint 
 of the relation between the ideas of body and soul, 
 matter and spirit, heaven and earth.^^*^ (2) A passage 
 in Tanhuma Bereshith v., as follows : Hadrian asks 
 Aquila upon what the universe rests. Aquila replies 
 that it rests upon spirit, and as a proof he has a camel 
 brought to him. He places a load upon its back and 
 orders it to rise. It rises. He then orders it to sit, 
 and it sits. Next he places on the camel a burden 
 more than it is accustomed to carry, and also has a 
 rope twined round its neck. Hadrian pulls one way 
 and Aquila another, and the camel is strangled. 
 Then Aquila says to Hadrian, " Bid the animal rise." 
 Hadrian replied, " What ! You have killed him and 
 you ask me to bid the carcase rise ! " " Yes," replies 
 Aquila, "but what have I done? Have I really killed 
 the beast? Do not his body and all his parts appear 
 to be sound and in the same condition as before ? " 
 " Ah ! " replies Hadrian, " but you have taken the 
 breath out of its body." " Very well," answers Aquila, 
 " now you see what I mean. The camel and the 
 burden on its back were sustained simply and solely by 
 the breath of its body. You can easily understand that 
 what sustains the whole universe and holds together 
 the infinite number of the elements composing it, is 
 the breath of God." ^^^ Here what we really have, is 
 an illustration of the mystery which the ancient world 
 attached to the idea of the soul's identity with the 
 breath of the body. It is the view of the earlier 
 books of the Bible. In Genesis ii. 7 God is repre- 
 sented as breathing into man's nostrils the breath of 
 
r INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 life/^^ Here the " Neshamah," although it has a spiritual 
 basis as being man's endowment from the Creator, 
 nevertheless possesses the physical significance of breath. 
 And in Genesis ix. 4, as well as in Leviticus xvii. 11, 
 the " Nefesh " is actually conceived of as inseparably 
 connected, if not wholly identified with, the life-blood. 
 The Midrash quoted above, reproduces this crude 
 conception. And this is particularly strange, seeing 
 that already, in some of the later books of the 
 Bible, the higher idea of a disembodied soul having 
 its own individuality had already taken root. For 
 example in Proverbs xx. 27, "The spirit of man is a 
 candle of the Lord." In Job xxxii. 8, " Verily there 
 is a spirit in man." In Ecclesiastes xii. 7, " The spirit 
 shall return unto God who gave it." 
 
 From the modern standpoint the relation between 
 matter and spirit may be viewed in different ways. 
 These are (1) as ever-coexistent facts in experience. 
 At first thought, the sights and sounds of the universe 
 are entirely independent of us. Nature seems to assert 
 her laws without waiting for our bidding. The sun 
 rises and sets, the tides ebb and flow, the flowers bloom 
 and fade, day and night alternate in unbroken regu- 
 larity quite regardless of our wishes or prejudices. 
 But yet this is only seemingly so, for, after all, we only 
 know these things as facts when we bring them into 
 relation with our consciousness. The mind has to 
 assimilate the sense-experience given it by the outside 
 world, and for this purpose it has to exert the forces 
 of attention and discrimination, analysis and synthesis, 
 comparison and analogy. The external world is worked 
 upon and coloured by our mind or spirit, so that when 
 we say we know or feel a thing, this is only true 
 relatively to the mind. From this point of view, then, 
 to speak of mind and matter or spirit and matter 
 
22 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 as separate entities is an abstraction. They are a 
 compact indivisible whole, issuing in what we familiarly 
 term experience. (2) Although matter seems to be so 
 largely the passive object of mind or spirit, subserving 
 it and being taken up by it at every turn, and moulded 
 and fashioned in all ways, yet mind or spirit is de- 
 pendent upon matter for ever so many of its complex 
 and subtle processes. At the bottom of spirit lies 
 consciousness, and how would this be possible were it 
 not for the blood which nourishes the brain, and for 
 the food taken into the body which forms and enriches 
 the blood ? — in other words, matter. Art with all its 
 spiritual associations, with all its sublime powers to 
 elevate and purify the human soul, would never have 
 been possible were it not given to the mind to portray 
 upon the material canvas the moving panorama of the 
 facts and the thoughts, the foibles and the virtues, the 
 joys and the tragedies of material existence. Such an 
 idea as Love — how is this brought about but by the 
 instrumentality of matter ? If there were no material 
 world of sorrow and suffering, of sin and of pain, there 
 would be no arena for the exercise of Love's invincible 
 charms. What is character but the effect on man's 
 spirit of his material environment ? The common task, 
 the daily round, the particular vocation of the man, 
 the type of friend he consorts with, the books or 
 newspaper he reads, the locality or street in which 
 he dwells, — all these material things are the fashioning 
 instruments from beneath whose weight character 
 emerges. Man in this sense is a machine-made animal. 
 The machine is matter. (3) Every discussion of the 
 relations between spirit and matter involves a double 
 usage of the word spirit. Firstly, the spirit of man. 
 Secondly, the Supreme Spirit of the universe, i.e. God. 
 The relations between this Supreme Spirit and the 
 
I INTRODUCTION 23 
 
 world of nature and mankind have been the theme of 
 poets and philosophers of all ages ; the material world 
 was to them the visible expression of God's handiwork. 
 The Divine footprints were discernible everywhere. 
 Matter was instinct with a religious message. As 
 Mrs. Browning said : — 
 
 Earth's crammed with Heaven, 
 And every common bush afire with God. 
 
 Aurora Leigh. 
 
 Or take AVordsworth's remark about 
 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 
 And rolls through all things. 
 
 Lines im-itten above Tintern Abbey. 
 
 Or, better still, take that classic passage from Words- 
 worth's Excursion where the poet describes how even 
 as a boy, the wanderer was prepared to receive from 
 Nature the lesson of the existence of a loving God : — 
 
 He looked — 
 Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth 
 And ocean's liquid mass, in gladness lay 
 Beneath him : — Far and wide the clouds were touched, 
 And in their silent faces could he read 
 Unutterable love. Sound needed none, 
 Nor any voice of joy ; his spirit drank 
 The spectacle : sensation, soul, and form, 
 All melted into him ; they swallowed up 
 His animal being ; in them did he live. 
 And by them did he live ; they were his life. 
 In such access of mind, in such high hour 
 Of visitation from the living God, 
 Thought was not ; in enjoyment it expired. 
 
 The literature of Assyria and Babylonia, the ancient 
 Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Vedas of India, the Neo- 
 Platonic philosophy, all breathe these ideas of God being 
 expressed and mirrored in the world of matter ; and the 
 
24 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 Old Testament writers harp on the same theme con- 
 stantly. " The heavens declare the glory of God ; and 
 the firmament showeth His handiwork." ^*^ " Thou com- 
 passest my path, and my lying down, and art acquainted 
 with all my ways. For there is not a word in my 
 tongue, but, lo, Lord, Thou knowest it altogether." ^^^ 
 " Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit ? or whither shall 
 I flee from Thy Presence ? . . . The darkness and the 
 light are both alike to Thee."^^^ " Thy way is in the 
 sea, and Thy path in the great waters, and Thy foot- 
 steps are not known." ^^^ "He stretcheth out the north 
 over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon 
 nothing. He bindeth up the waters in His thick clouds. "^^^ 
 " The pillars of heaven tremble, and are astonished at 
 His reproof." ^''^ " Lo, these are parts of His ways."^^°^ 
 " Lord, when Thou wentest out of Seir, when Thou 
 march edst out of the field of Edom, the earth trembled, 
 and the heavens dropped, the clouds also dropped water. 
 The mountains melted from before the Lord, even that 
 Sinai from before the Lord God of Israel." ^^^^ " The glory 
 of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of 
 Carmel and Sharon ; they shall see the glory of the 
 Lord, and the excellency of our God."^^^^ In Talmudic 
 and Midrashic literature we find statements like j'^Ntt) *tdSd 
 HDD ^b^Di^ n^^'Dti) «^n -^idd DipD. " No place but has the 
 Shechinah in it, not even a humble bush";^^^^ or the naive 
 utterance about God in nature in the tale of Rabban 
 Gamliel acting as host to other Rabbis at a feast in 
 honour of his son. Gamliel offers a cup of wine to R. 
 Eliezer, but he refuses it.^^*^ He offers it to R. Joshua and 
 he accepts it. When Eliezer remonstrates with Joshua 
 for allowing a great man like Gamliel to wait upon him, 
 Joshua replies that he has a precedent for this in a 
 greater man than Gamliel, viz. Abraham, who personally 
 attended to the wants of his guests. Whereupon Zadok, 
 
INTRODUCTION 25 
 
 another member of Gamliel's academy, interposes with 
 the remark, " How long will ye lay aside the honour of 
 the Omnipresent and engage in honouring human beings? 
 God causes His wind to blow, vapours to ascend, brings 
 down rain, causes the ground to sprout, and prepares a 
 table before every one. Shall not then R. Gamliel think 
 fit to be our host?" This seems a short and very 
 prosaic summary of the beautiful poetry of the 104th 
 Psalm. The allusions to God as the Light of the World 
 are legion. For example : " How did God create 
 light ? He wrapped Himself in a white garment and 
 caused the world to be brilliant with His light (p^mm 
 
 The whole universe as being a reflexion or repro- 
 duction of God's image is well given in the following : ^^^^ 
 niri njj n"ipn Sin rsmyi mis -12 mi -i»i i^d d'^iijiji) imDi 
 mojn pi3^D HDin m*i -i©i iSo "^T) d^dh 12"i2?^ -idini n^oi 
 
 imTi W^pn biN niri nmii? imis ]^n D"n nw:i . . . fiDii?^ ?iii>i 
 ntDii? Nini W^pn bm imis nih mn DH^n . . . rr^^^i. r^\D^s 
 iD^N rr'^npn Sin . . . n^nnn Dhpni:^ mi itDi iSd . . . mis 
 . . . idSii?i D^priD Mih Nim idSii? n-ii nnS nih nSn ]d 
 Here we have several ideas : (l) w^ater as expressing 
 the Divine workman's hand ; (2) the birds of the air 
 (plDli?'' pji:;), the natural species, expressing a similar note ; 
 
 (3) the world of mankind an image of the Divine ; 
 
 (4) the world of nature as a manifestation of God's 
 praise and exaltedness. Another favourite idea is that 
 of the Universe as God's throne or God's footstool, 
 based on Isaiah Ixvi. 1, "The heaven is my throne, and 
 the earth is my footstool " ; or on Isaiah vi. I shall 
 quote several more illustrations later on. They all go 
 to show, that in the conception alike of ancient, as of 
 modern, thinkers the larger world of nature as well as 
 the small inner w^orld of man are, so to speak, strung 
 
26 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 upon a Divine Thread, a structure built upon, and 
 supported by, a fundament of Divinity ; in short, they 
 are a manifestation of a universally diffused Divine 
 Spirit. 
 
 But the relations between this Supreme Divine Spirit 
 and the Universe and man are not a fact to be explained 
 in a few words. Great systems of thought and belief 
 have been built upon the differing interpretations which 
 have been applied to this relationship. Of these systems 
 the two most important are (1) Pantheism, (2) Deism. 
 Pantheism takes its stand upon the premiss that God is 
 equally present in every part of His creation. The 
 following is the definition given by a recent writer on 
 the subject : " So far from tolerating any doubt as 
 to the being of God, it denies that there is anything 
 else. For all objects of sense and thought, including 
 individual consciousness, whether directly observed in 
 ourselves, or inferred as existing in others, are, according 
 to Pantheism, only facets of an infinite Unity which is 
 ' altogether one ' in a sense inapplicable to anything 
 else. Because that Unity is not merely the aggregate 
 of all the finite objects which we observe or infer, but is 
 a living whole, expressing itself in infinite variety. Of 
 that infinite variety our gleams of consciousness are 
 infinitesimal parts, but not parts in a sense involving 
 any real division." ^^^^ The crucial point in this, as in all 
 definitions of Pantheism is the fact that it assumes one 
 and the same level of Divine revelation in every atom 
 of the material universe. This the Theist denies. He 
 will not endorse the assertion that God reveals His 
 presence equally in every one of the steps in the ladder 
 of being. As Dr. Inge says : " We all believe in the 
 omnipresence and immanence of the Deity, but we could 
 not endorse the words of the Indian philosopher who said, 
 ' The learned behold God alike in the reverend Brahmin, 
 
INTRODUCTION 27 
 
 in the ox and in the elephant, in the dog and in him who 
 eateth the flesh of dogs,' nor Pope's line that God is ' as 
 full, as perfect in a hair as heart.' "^^^^ The fatal error 
 of Pantheism is the fact that it posits a God who is in 
 the world but who is not above it. In other words, it 
 assumes the immanence but excludes the transcendence 
 of God. This makes it really indistinguishable from 
 materialism.* Deism is the logical opposite of Pantheism. 
 Whereas the latter errs in too exclusive an insistence 
 upon the immanent aspects of Deity to the total ex- 
 clusion of the transcendent aspect, the former makes 
 quite the opposite mistake of envisaging the Deity 
 solely from the transcendent aspect to the total exclusion 
 of the immanent standpoint. Deism regards natural 
 law as all-sufiicient, and the perfect Deity who made 
 the world, sits above it in perfection and isolation — 
 an interested but passive spectator. As long as the 
 world goes round well without a hitch, God surveys 
 it from the heavens with complacency. Should any- 
 thing go wrong, then and then only does He interfere 
 and set the machinery all right again. It is these occa- 
 
 * " Pantheism is only a polite form of atheism. The truth of Pantheism 
 lies in its destruction of the dualist antithesis of God and the world, in its 
 recognition that the world exists in virtue of its own inherent forces." — Haeckel, 
 TJie Riddles of the Universe, p. 103, R.P.A. edition. Quoted in Sir Oliver 
 Lodge's Life and Matter. 
 
 Baron Von Hiigel in his sketch of the spiritual character of Catherine of 
 Genoa speaks of her faith in " the diversity, multiplicity and depth " of godliness 
 which distinguish men. " They will necessarily, even if they all be fully faith- 
 ful to their call, possess Him in indefinitely and innumerably various degrees 
 and ways." This conviction, says he, " prevents any touch of real Pantheism or 
 Indifferentism from defacing the breadth of her outlook " {The Mystical 
 Element in Religion, i. p. 233.) 
 
 The accusation of Pantheism has been laid at the door of many a writer on 
 mysticism, and the unbiassed reader is often offered the alternative of substantiat- 
 ing or refuting the charge. This is well exhibited in the case of lleister 
 Eckhart, the profoundest of all German mystics. His ideas of the distinction 
 between "God" and the "Godhead," of the relation between the soul and 
 the Godhead, of the nature of human and Divine personality, come very near 
 the perilous edge of Pantheism, and it is not by any means easy to redeem him 
 from the charge. See Inge, Christian Mysticism, p. 161, also Rufus Jones, Studies 
 in Mystical Religion, chap. xii. See also chapter on Theism and Pantheism in 
 vol. ii. of Martineau's Study of Religion. 
 
28 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 sional Divine interferences in mundane affairs that were 
 regarded by Priestley and his followers as " evidences of 
 God's interest in the world and mankind. But God's con- 
 cern went not one jot beyond this.* Such was one of the 
 main tenets of the Deism which in the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries found a great stronghold in England 
 and France. For the present it is enough to say that a 
 deistic universe in this sense does not express the views 
 of Judaism whether from the Biblical, post-Biblical, 
 mediaeval philosophic, or modern standpoint. Here it 
 may especially be emphasised that the transcendent 
 view of God as preached by Deism is being more 
 and more shattered by the teachings of modern 
 scientific and philosophic thought generally. This 
 thought bases itself on the great fact of intelligence, will, 
 purpose, in nature. And it draws the irresistible con- 
 clusion that at the back of it all there must be one 
 great unifying, Infinite Intelligence that we call God. 
 Professor Momerie says: "If we proceed to analyse 
 our experience and to ask what is implied in the terms 
 knowledge and existence, we shall see that in the very 
 possibility of experience, there is implied the unceasing 
 activity of an infinite and eternal Personality essentially 
 similar to our own."^^^^ In other words, our knowledge 
 of the material world — nay, even the very being of 
 that world — is dependent on the existence of God. And 
 again he says : " Corresponding then to the constructive 
 activity of our own mind which enables us to know the 
 material world as a system of relations, there must be 
 the constructive activity of another Mind, essentially 
 akin to our own, which produces and maintains the 
 system of relations that we know. In other words, 
 
 * In Kimlii on Amos iii. 2 there is a curiously similar idea of God's non- 
 interference with the nations except when some great crisis arises. Kimhi 
 quotes a few Rabbinic parallels to this idea. 
 
INTRODUCTION 29 
 
 the intelligence, of which our mental constitution is 
 the outcome and to which we owe subjectively the very 
 possibility of knowledge, is, at the same time, objectively 
 the source of that orderly relation amongst phenomena 
 which alone makes them possible objects of experience. 
 Our limited consciousness implies the existence of a 
 consciousness that is unlimited, the life of every finite 
 personality bears undeniable testimony to the necessary 
 existence of an infinite Personality." Momerie is here 
 voicing: the modern scientific immanent character of 
 the Deity. God is eternally present, eternally active, 
 ceaselessly and perpetually manifested in the world 
 around us. And, as a recent writer ^^^^ points out, 
 even Herbert Spencer's " Infinite and Eternal Energy 
 from which all things proceed," to which Spencer 
 applied the epithet of " absolute," confirms this con- 
 clusion. How can one accurately describe as absolute, 
 an energy which underlies all things ? The uphill task 
 of modern religious thought is to demonstrate that 
 this immanent force is a Personality, a Personal God 
 possessed of the two outstanding attributes which we 
 regard as inseparable from a human personality.* These 
 are (l) Intelligence; (2) Love. Among other modern . 
 
 * When employing a term like personality in this connexion we must be 
 cai'eful to know its exact meaning. Some jieople confound the idea witli that 
 of materiality, i.e. when speaking of God as a personality they imagine that it 
 is necessary to invest Him with a tangible form. But of course the personality 
 of God does not mean or imply a bodily personality. The body is not the 
 criterion of personality at all — not of human personality either. What gives 
 personality is life, consciousness, will, affection, the moral sense, etc. When a 
 man possesses these, he is a personality ; without tliem he is either a corpse or 
 an idiot. When therefore we assign personality to God, it is on the under- 
 standing that He possesses these attiibutes ; no idea of physical compass or 
 dimension must or need enter. See Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, vol. 1. 
 chap, xlvi., where the author explains the anthropomorphisms of the Bible as 
 an accommodation to the poverty of human speech. The lower senses, says 
 he, are merely ascribed to God to show tliat He exists. But His personality 
 is something far subtler, deeper and more embracing than these sensual 
 characteristics. Of. Martineau's remark {A Study of Religiun, vol. ii. 2nd 
 edit. p. 183, 1889): "As the parts of our nature which thus enter into 
 relation with God are precisely those which make us 'Pcrsoiis' and distinguish us 
 
so THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 writers who have set themselves to a demonstration of 
 tliis truth, we may single out for mention J. R. Illing- 
 worth from the theological standpoint, and Sir Oliver 
 Lodge from the standpoint of science. Illingworth gives 
 an analysis of the successive stages by which, commenc- 
 ing with Animism, there blossomed out the full concep- 
 tion of Divine Personality as presented in the Old and 
 New Testaments. His arguments for the proof of this 
 Personality are the following : Firstly, the Cosmological 
 argument. This is, to use his own words, " the argu- 
 ment derived from the belief that we recognise in the 
 universe without us certain qualities of infinitude, reality, 
 causation, independence and the like which have no 
 counterpart except in the region of our own personality, 
 and can only, therefore, be interpreted as attributes of 
 a person." ^"^^ Secondly, the teleological argument, or 
 argument from evidences of design in the world. The 
 adaptations which we notice all round us in the world 
 of nature suggest the presence of a directing, indwelling 
 reason which is comparable only to the " continuous 
 consciousness which co-ordinates all the functions of our 
 being, manifesting itself in every thought or word or 
 deed." In other words, consciousness, intelligence, 
 design, purpose are the hall-marks of personality in 
 man. Therefore they are the hall-marks of personality 
 in God. Thirdly, the moral argument — the voice of 
 conscience, the "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not" 
 within the human breast. This cannot possibly be the 
 invention of other men. It commands and urges and 
 forbids, praises and blames in a way that no mere 
 man-made law or social ordinance could do. Yet, says 
 
 from other ' living things ' it is difficult to see why the same term should not 
 be given to the corresponding attributes of rational and moi'al Will in Him. . . . 
 Here it is that the God, immanent through the universe besides, and operating 
 by determinate methods alone passes into transcendent existence . . . and 
 establishes moral relations with beings whom He has endowed with a certain scope 
 of similar volitional causality." 
 
INTRODUCTION 31 
 
 Illii]gwortli, " with all its independence of human author- 
 ship, it has the notes of personality about it. . . . It 
 educates our character with a nicety of influence irre- 
 sistibly suggestive of paternal care. . . . And the inevi- 
 table inference must be that it is the Voice of a Personal 
 God."* 
 
 It will at once be noticed that no endeavour is 
 made in Illiugworth, to deduce the possession of the 
 attribute of Love in the personality of God ; and 
 unless this is done, the whole argument is really un- 
 proven. For this purpose, Christian writers generally 
 have recourse to the Incarnation. But from a Jewish 
 standpoint this is quite unnecessary. It can be reached 
 by quite another road. God as Reason and God as 
 Love are not mutually opposed. The Psalmist certainly 
 did not think them antagonistic, or how could he 
 have said, " Righteousness and justice are the founda- 
 tion of Thy throne ; loving-kindness and truth shall 
 go before Thy face"?^^^^ The truth seems to be that 
 they are each and equally an aspect of the Divine 
 Nature. God from the standpoint of reason is the 
 Judge of the whole earth. From the standpoint of 
 mercy He is the Father who " doth not afflict willino-ly 
 nor grieve the children of men." ^-^^ In Rabbinic 
 phraseology the ^n mo is never dissociated from 
 the D^'Dmrr mo. Punishment was never considered 
 by the Jew as the act of a vindictive Judge. It was a 
 pledge of God's merciful interest in him, a sinner, urging 
 him to abandon his evil course. God so loved him 
 
 * "But there is a moral presence of His Spirit to our minds, which places 
 us in relations to Him more intimate and sacred. Surely there occur to every 
 uncorrupted heart some stirrings of a diviner life ; some consciousness obscure 
 and transient it may be, but deep and authoritative, of a nobler calling than we 
 have yet obeyed ; a rooted dissatisfaction with self, a suspicion of some poison 
 in the will, a helpless veneration for somewhat that is gazed at with a sio-h as 
 out of reach. It is the touch of God upon us. His heavy hand laid upon our 
 conscience and felt by all who are not numb with the paralytic twist of sin " 
 (Martineau, Endeavours after the Christian Life, chap, on "The Besetting God "). 
 
32 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 that He could say, " Return, ye wayward children ; I 
 will heal your waywardness." ^'^*^ The metaphors and 
 similes in the Old Testament depicting God as the 
 lovinsf Father are too numerous to mention. The verse 
 " Whom the Lord loveth He correcteth, even as a father 
 the son in whom he delighteth," ^^^^ shows clearly enough 
 how to the mind of this ancient writer, pain was not the 
 punitive measure of a judge, but a discipline of love. 
 And it is exactly in this light that Jewish teachers 
 regard the subject to-day.^"'''^ Suffering is the whole- 
 some discipline inflicted on us by a God in whom 
 love and reason are combined. Surely the assertion 
 of the Personality of God can have no stronger cor- 
 roboration than this.^-*^"^ 
 
 Thus the following conclusions emerge : our answer 
 from the modern standpoint to the question, What are 
 the relations of the Supreme Divine Spirit to the universe 
 and man, must be, that this Spirit is a personal God 
 possessed of intelligence, reason, will, purpose, and love, 
 who is the Power behind all phenomena. He is Omni- 
 present. Every particle of creation reveals Him. He 
 is eternally active. And it is by this eternal activity 
 and eternal self- manifestation that He is directly 
 known to us. Here we have our definition of Imma- 
 nence. It is at once an answer to (a) Pantheism, 
 which is synonymous with materialism ; {h) the rational- 
 istic Deism of the eighteenth century, which, with its 
 too great leaning upon transcendence, placed God out- 
 side the world and deprived Him of any influence 
 therein ; (c) a good deal of modern Agnosticism, which 
 derives many of its arguments from the professed 
 inability to reconcile many theological teachings, as 
 e.g. Biblical miracles. Inspiration, with the universally- 
 accepted dogmas of modern science. God indwells 
 His creation. He is the Infinite Power and Infinite 
 
I INTRODUCTION ^3 
 
 Love manifested in and through this finite world of 
 things and men. This is the way in which the best 
 modern thinking presents God/^"^ This is the meaning 
 of the phrase " Divine Immanence." 
 
 But there is something more to be said. We have 
 searched for and found our definition of the idea of 
 Immanence, and yet we cannot leave the matter here. 
 There is another pressing phase of the subject with 
 which we must make our reckoning. We must have 
 a clear understanding of the exact relations which 
 Immanence bears to Transcendence. The fatal blot on 
 the teachings of the Pantheist is the fact that he 
 denies the Transcendence of God. Does Immanence 
 deny this Transcendence also ? Or, to put it more 
 explicitly, can any Immanent theory of the Deity be 
 said to hold its ground while totally excluding the 
 Transcendence theory ? In answer to this query, it 
 seems pretty certain that any Immanent theory which 
 does not ipso facto involve the claims of Transcendence, 
 is really indistinguishable from Pantheism. It is merely 
 Pantheism masquerading under another name. As a 
 matter of fact, there is some lack of clearness and 
 unanimity in the modern exponents of Immanence ; 
 and that several among the latter are mere Pantheists 
 though unconscious of it, and though they would rebut 
 the accusation with the uttermost vehemence were it 
 laid at their door, is to me, beyond doubt. I cite in 
 this connexion the views of the Rev. R. J. Campbell, 
 one of the most uncompromising among modern ex- 
 ponents of the Immanence doctrine. It is difiicult 
 from his writings to know where and how to draw 
 the line of -^iemarcatio^ between Immanence and Pan- 
 theism. Thus,""Ee'1iises expressions like " The highest 
 of all selves, the ultimate self of the universe is God " 
 {New Theology, p. 34). " The word God stands for 
 
34 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 many things, but to present-day thought it must 
 stand for . . . the unitary principle implied in all 
 multiplicity" (ibid. p. 17). Now, a theology of this 
 kind seems to me neither religious nor ethical. It is 
 not religious for the following reasons : — (a) It leaves 
 no room for the Personality of God. God, in this 
 theory, is merely an absolute principle, merely another 
 and grander name for the universe, apart from which. 
 He has no existence or significance whatsoever. You 
 cannot render religious homage to the " ultimate self 
 of the universe." You cannot feel religious trust in 
 a metaphysical idea. You cannot make an eff"ort at 
 communion with an abstraction. (b) It excludes a 
 vital dogma like that of the Fatherhood of God, the 
 indispensable corner-stone on which three great faiths 
 of the world, Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammed- 
 anism, rest. It leaves no room for the feeling of love 
 or obedience towards that Infinite Power, which, as 
 many of us believe, trusting to what we hold to be 
 the evidence of our own souls, is ever welling out in 
 unbounded mercy and love towards us. (c) It con- 
 flicts with the idea of Prayer. Prayer must be directed 
 to a person. You cannot pray to a unitary principle 
 or to a universal life. You cannot worship that which 
 is only a higher manifestation of yourself No such 
 conceptions of deity will ever provoke the yearnings 
 of the soul or satisfy its prayerful aspirations ; and it 
 is not ethical, because if God is the ultimate self of 
 the universe, then His manifestations must be equally 
 in the evil and the good, in the virtuous and the 
 vicious. All men and things must equally reveal 
 Him : the sinner as much as the saint, the honest man 
 no more than the thief, the coward no less than the 
 hero. All moral distinctions are annihilated. 
 
 Wherein lurks the fatal error in the presentation 
 
I INTRODUCTION 35 
 
 of such views of Immanence ? It lurks in the fact 
 that the "indwelling" of God in man and the world — 
 which is the meaning of Immanence — is so prone to be 
 confounded with the identity of God with man and the 
 world. Here is a dilemma from which it is not easy 
 to escape. Many a mediaeval mystic was, through this 
 very cause, pronounced heretical and his writings con- 
 demned. Their overweighted insistence upon Imma- 
 nence always laid them open to pantheistic suspicion. 
 Much of Jewish mediaeval mysticism likewise bore the 
 brunt of unstinted abuse from staunch orthodox 
 authorities, because in laying itself open to a pantheistic 
 interpretation it appeared to be in flagrant contra- 
 diction to the accepted dogmas about the Jewish God.* 
 What, then, must be the interpretation of Imma- 
 nence which, while avoiding the lurking pitfall of 
 Pantheism, brings it into line with the root-tenets of 
 religion ? The answer can best be given by quoting the 
 remarks of two distinguished modern writers on the 
 subject. In his Personal Idealism and Mysticism 
 (p. 45) Dean Inge, speaking of the dijfferences between 
 Stoicism and Alexandrian Judaism, says : " If we would 
 avoid Pantheism, we must worship a God who is above 
 as well as in the world." In his book on Divine 
 Im,m,anence Illingworth says : " On this analogy, then, 
 the Divine Presence which we recognise in Nature will 
 be the presence of a spirit, of a spirit which infinitely 
 transcends the material order, yet sustains and indwells 
 it the while. We cannot indeed explain the method 
 either of the transcendence or the indwelling, but we 
 come no nearer to an explanation by attempting . . . 
 
 * " Unless safeguarded by limiting dogmas, the theory of Immanence, taken 
 alone, is notoriously apt to degenerate into Pantheism ; and into those 
 extravagant perversions of the doctrine of deification in which the mystic holds 
 his transfigured self to be identical with the Indwelling God " (Evelyn Under- 
 bill, Mysticism, p. 119). 
 
36 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 to obtain simplicity by suppressing either aspect of 
 the only analogy that we possess" (p. 40). In other 
 and simpler words, we only do justice to the Deity 
 when we view His existence from the immanent and 
 transcendent aspect combined. It is worthy of note, 
 by the way, that Father Tyrrell strongly maintained 
 this standpoint when, in describing Christianity (see 
 Quarterly Review for July 1909), he said it was "a 
 religion that is institutional, mystical, and rational . . . 
 optimistic, yet pessimistic, transcendent yet imma- 
 nent. . . ." Tyrrell might just as well have been 
 describing Judaism here. There are two truths from 
 which there is no escaping. These are (1) God is in 
 man ; (2) God is greater than man. Unite these two 
 propositions in a mutually fair proportion, and you 
 get a faith redeemed from the mists and shadows of 
 Pantheism and materialism, you get a doctrine of 
 Immanence which is compatible with the essence of 
 religion. To my mind, it was just this way of re- 
 garding the Immanent doctrine, viz. as existing side 
 by side with the transcendent conception of God — 
 it was just this view that was given expression to by 
 the Psalmist when he declared, " Thou hast beset me 
 behind and before, and laid Thine hand upon me " * 
 (cxxxix. 5). The first half of the verse expresses the 
 truth of the all-encompassing nature of God, but yet 
 with the intermingled idea of His aloofness. His distance. 
 God is behind and before, but He is not necessarily near 
 or accessible. The second half, " and laid Thine hand 
 
 * So the Revised Version. In this sense of besetting or besieging a town, 
 the verb is used in Dent. xx. 12, 19 ; 1 Kings xx. 1 ; Isaiah xxix. 3. The 
 LXX, Peshitto, and the Vulgate, however, interpret it a.5 formasti vie, making 
 the root -ii:i = ns'. But as Baethgen {Die Psalmen, 1897) points out, the 
 statements about the creation of man in this Psalm do not commence until 
 verse 14. Besides, as he says, this ides, <"->rms part and parcel of the teaching 
 of Divine Omnipresence which comn.ences at verse 7, "Whither shall I go 
 from Thy Spirit, etc." God besets man on all sides, so that he cannot escape 
 from His gaze. 
 
I INTRODUCTION 37 
 
 upon me," alludes to man as a product from the hand 
 of God, pervaded with His energy. His Spirit and 
 His power operating within him, possessing and reveal- 
 ing, — ^just as any piece of work by the craftsman or 
 artist must possess and reveal, — the mind, spirit, and 
 power of the maker. It is the Immanent view. 
 
 And that just this view of Immanence, as an ever- 
 present fact in everlasting combination with Transcen- 
 dence, is the only one which consists with Eabbinic 
 theology, can be seen from the three following con- 
 siderations. Firstly, it is axiomatic in the Judaism 
 of the Rabbins that God is the Creator of the universe. 
 Now creation, view it from whatever standpoint you 
 like, must of necessity imply a far-reaching difference 
 between Creator and creature. It stands to reason that 
 the Creator of the universe must transcend the universe. 
 And yet, as it is the object of these pages to show, God's 
 Shechinah walks and fills the world, it fills Synagogue, 
 Temple, and Holy Land. It is an ever-constant protector, 
 counsellor, and friend. God's Holy Spirit is resident in 
 the heart of the Torah student and of the man of saintly 
 works and pure thoughts. It speaks from beneath the 
 pages of Holy Writ and is man's unseen inspirer to 
 the worthiest and the best. Thus Immanence and 
 Transcendence coalesce into one another, component 
 parts of the same whole. Secondly, the variegated host 
 of expressions which I have attempted to piece together 
 as denotinof Rabbinical views on the Immanence of God 
 all have one common feature, viz. that they characterise 
 the complete aversion to creating an identity between 
 man and God. There is a phrase in Rabbinical theology 
 which speaks of msvS mis no~TD, " comparing the form 
 to the Former." This may be described as the terminus 
 ad quern to which the Rabbins went in this province 
 — comparing but not identifying. The Shechinah 
 
38 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 abides with. Israel. The Holy Spirit inspires the saints 
 and prophets. But it is always God's spirit, God's 
 Shechinah. Investigation has convinced me that ever 
 so many passages speaking of Shechinah and Holy 
 Spirit in a highly personified sense, can be paralleled in 
 different parts of the Talmud and Midrash, by passages 
 of exactly the same import, but which speak of God's 
 "Shechinah," "God's Holy Spirit." What does this 
 prove, but that to the old Rabbinic mind there was 
 always a, very real glimmering that however all-pervad- 
 ing and all-embracing God may be in an immanental 
 sense, He is yet marked off from the world by some not 
 easily discernible line of separation ? He is after all 
 God, not Man ; He transcends man and is immeasurably 
 greater than man's little world. And likewise with the 
 Rabbinical views of God's fatherhood and God's nearness. 
 There is an obtruding element of the transcendent idea 
 in them all. To say that the bond which links man to 
 God is analogous to that subsisting between parent and 
 child, is to create the closest possible tie between the 
 Deity and the world. And yet it is nothing more than 
 a case of resemblance. A child resembles its parent 
 but is not identical with it. A long chain of events 
 separates the one from the other. And yet again, on 
 the other hand, it is just the realised sense of the 
 Fatherhood of God which is one of the basic factors 
 that constitute man's experience and conviction of the 
 Immanence of God. The Jew believed that God was 
 at one and the same time, above, beyond, and within 
 the world : 
 
 Closer to him than breathing, nearer than hands and feet, 
 
 simply because he believed in God as a father. In 
 this way, again, do immanence and transcendence 
 complement one another. Apart, they supply no 
 
INTRODUCTION 39 
 
 working creed. Thirdly, Prayer occupies a place of 
 unique importance in the Rabbinic theology. As if 
 to emphasise this importance to the highest pitch 
 imaginable, the Rabbins picturesquely say that God 
 Himself actually prays. But prayer is only possible 
 when the Deity is comprehended under the double 
 aspect of the transcendent and the immanent. It is 
 futile to pray to a merely transcendent God because 
 He is too far removed to hear or interfere. To the 
 Pantheist, prayer is an absurdity. You must, perforce, 
 pray to a person, you cannot pray to the universe or 
 the totality of being. Besides, from the Rabbinic stand- 
 point, praying to the Deity and praising the Deity are 
 on a par. They are warp and woof of one texture. 
 A glance at the traditional liturgy of the synagogue 
 confirms this assertion. As much space is taken up 
 with the laudation and glorification of the Deity, as 
 with supplication and petition to Him. And it is 
 almost as illogical to praise and exalt an impersonality 
 as it is to pray to it. That the portrait of an im- 
 manent God never appeared complete to the minds of 
 the old Talmudic masters unless it contained a sensible 
 admixture of the element of transcendence, is seen from 
 the remark in Deut. Rabba ii. 10, to which I have 
 previously alluded, viz. that although the distance from 
 earth to heaven is immeasurable, yet so marvellous is 
 the efficacy of prayer, that even when it is whispered, 
 even when it is inwardly meditated without outward ex- 
 pression whatsoever, God is at hand to hear it. Here 
 we have the doctrine of Immanence, God's proximity to 
 man, nay, God's indwelling in man, because how other- 
 wise could He know of the prayer before it is on the 
 suppliant's lips ? And yet a touch of extreme transcen- 
 dence is imported by the statement that God is in 
 the heavens, which are separated from the earth by an 
 
40 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 unfathomable span. But all this was an honest, outspoken 
 summing up of the truth as they perceived and felt it. 
 
 In fine, a course of clear thinking on the problem 
 makes it evident, that the only safe way for the mystic 
 to prevent himself falling into Pantheism, lies in a 
 linking-up of these two inseparable phases of the God- 
 head. There is a most strange resemblance on this very 
 head between a Midrashic passage and a passage from one 
 of the sermons of Eckhart. The former is in Genesis 
 Rabba iv. 4, and commences, '^Di t^no "i n« hi^m "rnx TnD, 
 "A certain Cuthsean once asked K Meir." He asked 
 him if it were possible that God, of whom it is said that 
 He fills heaven and earth (Jer. xxiii. 24), could speak to 
 Moses from such a narrow compass as that between the 
 two staves of the ark (Numbers vii. 89)? "Take a 
 large mirror," says the Rabbi — " when you look at your- 
 self in it you appear large. But take a small one and 
 then you appear small. If a human being can change 
 himself like this at his own bidding, how much more so 
 can God ! When He wills it, He can fill heaven and 
 earth ; and when He wills it. He can compress Himself 
 into the smallest conceivable space." Here we have a 
 picture of Transcendence and Immanence in a working 
 unison. God transcending heaven and earth ; but God 
 at the same time localising Himself into the tiniest spot. 
 Eckhart builds likewise on the simile of a mirror. He 
 says : "I take a vessel of water, put a mirror in it and 
 place it in the sunlight. The sun sends out its light 
 without losing any of its substance, and the reflexion of 
 the mirror sends back sunlight. Sun and reflexion are 
 the same thing. So it is with God. God with His 
 own nature, His essence. His Godhead is in the soul, 
 and yet He is not the soul (i.e. He is infinitely more 
 than the soul. The soul sends back a divine reflexion 
 to God so that they both are the same light)." This is 
 
I INTRODUCTION 41 
 
 quoted from Eckhart in Dr. Rufus Jones's Studies in 
 Mystical Religion, p. 231. What these two extracts 
 have in common is the idea of the greater and the less, 
 such as Immanence and Transcendence can be seen to 
 imply, when put, as here, into pictorial representation. 
 Imagine a large sphere and somewhere within it a 
 smaller sphere. The smaller is not inseparable from 
 the larger ; the larger includes the smaller and a great 
 deal besides. The smaller is what it is by reason of its 
 being an integral portion of the larger. " God is the 
 place of the world, but the world is not His place," is 
 the Rabbinic paradox which closely matches the senti- 
 ment of Eckhart. To gain the correct perspective of 
 the Deity, one has no alternative but to view Him from 
 this combined dual standpoint. 
 
 When therefore, in the following pages, I make the 
 attempt at showing that the Immanence of God was 
 an element in the Rabbinic conception of Him, it is 
 on the assumption that Transcendence is always a co- 
 factor with Immanence. Rabbinic Judaism is often 
 flouted for its weakness and insubstantiality, because 
 of its insistence upon Transcendence to the utter neglect 
 of Immanence. It is to demonstrate that Immanence 
 has not been neglected by those teachers, but that it 
 is a considerable feature of their doctrines, that this 
 book has been written. 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTEE I 
 
 (1) There is a longer and more elaborate form of this jmrable in 
 Leviticus Rabba iv. 5 : tacked on to it, is another parable of a priest who 
 has two wives, one a jhd na and the other a "jKntt" na. Trouble arises 
 over the eating of some " Terumah," which, of course, would be per- 
 mitted the former, but forbidden to the latter. The ensuing quarrel 
 between the two women illustrates, says this Midrash, the feud between 
 soul and body at the time of the Judgment. But eventually it is the 
 soul that is arraigned before the bar of justice, and the body is let off 
 
42 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 scot-free. This shows a higher grade of Rabbinic thought than the 
 passage from the Tanhuma. In T. B. Sanhedrin 91a there is a shorter 
 form again, which belongs to the memorable debates between Antoninus 
 and Rabbi Judah, the Prince. The former seems to challenge the 
 Rabbinic conception of punishment after death, by alleging that it 
 is very easy for both body and soul to exculpate themselves. Rabbi 
 Judah's answer gives the right relationship between the two, by the 
 parable of the blind man and the lame. 
 
 (la) Baron Von Hugel in his great treatise, The Mystical Element of 
 Religion, vol. ii. pp. 122-123, points out, how in the New Testament 
 theology about body and soul, whereas the Synoptists nowhere declare 
 the body to be an evil, "an inevitable prison-house or a natural 
 antagonist to the spirit," St. Paul does draw a strong line of demarca- 
 tion between body and soul to the great depreciation of the former, 
 as when he declares, " Unhappy man that I am ! who can liberate me 
 from this body of death?" (Rom. vii. 24) ; or, "In my flesh dwelleth no 
 good thing" (Rom. vii. 18). That St. Paul drew the idea, as Von 
 Hligel says, from the Wisdom of Solomon ix. 15, "For a corruptible 
 body weigheth down the soul, and the earthly frame lieth heavy on a 
 mind that is full of cares," is quite probable ; but can it not also be 
 taken as an indication of St. Paul's indebtedness to Rabbinism ? Besides, 
 as the writer whom we are quoting says further, " This attitude . . . 
 represents only a passing feeling ; for if we pressed it home we could 
 hardly reconcile it with his doctrine as to the reality and nature of the 
 body's resurrection." The preponderating Rabbinical view is that of the 
 body's resurrection, i.e. body and soul conjoined in one organism. See 
 T. B. Sanhedrin 90b, " If a grain of wheat put into the groimd just as 
 it is, spring up in manifold vesture, how much more may we expect the 
 pious, who were buried in their garments, to return again clothed as they 
 were ? " Later Jewish thinkers realised the incongruities and crudities 
 involved in this teaching, and made attempts to spiritualise the idea of 
 Resurrection. Thus, Maimonides identified it with the immortality of 
 the soul (see his Introduction to Sanhedrin x.), and although he com- 
 posed his famous treatise on the Resurrection, this was merely done in 
 order to silence the venom of the then champions of extreme orthodoxy, 
 who complained that he had practically ignored this great subject in 
 his Moreh. He obviously regarded the old Rabbinic views of bodily 
 resurrection as of minor importance. 
 
 (2) The relations between Aquila and the Emperor Hadrian are a 
 pet theme of the Haggadic narratives. Until recently it was only 
 possible to get an idea of Aquila's Greek translation of Scripture from 
 the scattered fragments of Origen's Hexaplar. But in 1897, F. T. 
 Burkitt in examining the mass of Dr. Schechter's Geniza treasures, came 
 across some fragmentary MSS. of Aquila's original translation (and 
 published them entitled, Fragments of the Books of Kings, according to the 
 Translation of Aquila, Cambridge, 1897). Legend has busied itself with 
 accounts of Aquila's conversion to Judaism. See Tanhuma on d'ciscd v. ; 
 Genesis Rabba xxx. 12 ; T. B. Abodah Zarah 11a. In T. B. Gittin 56b 
 allusion is made to a certain Onkelos, apparently Onkelos of Targum 
 
NOTES 43 
 
 fame, who was oib'dt .tdhk 12, the son of Titus's sister. Aquila is always 
 alluded to as the son of Hadrian's sister. Seeing the looseness with 
 which the Rabbinical literature often handles the names of Roman and 
 Greek monarchs and places, some authorities are inclined to regard the 
 name Onkelos as another form of Akilas or Aquila, and Titus as a 
 mistake for Hadrian. Others, however, maintain that Onkelos and 
 Aquila were two different persons who lived at different times. (See 
 especially Friedmann's Onkelos and Akilas, passim,) 
 
 (3) The distinction in Biblical, as well as Rabbinical, literature 
 between Ruah, Nefesh, and Neshamah is exceedingly difficult to fathom. 
 Of course, an equal degree of difficulty surrounds the vernacular usage 
 of such ideas as "Soul," "Body," and "Spirit." As an illustration of 
 the difficidty let me quote from The New Theology, by Rev. R. J. 
 Campbell. On p. 34 he thus defines the terms : " The body is the 
 thought-form through which the individuality finds expression on our 
 present limited plane. The soul is a man's consciousness of himself as 
 apart from all the rest of existence, and even from God ; it is the bay 
 seeing itself as the bay and not as the ocean. The spirit is the true 
 being thus limited and expressed ; it is the deathless Divine within us." 
 The distinctions here drawn are certainly ingenious and smack of 
 modernity. But they are merely Mr. Campbell's own arbitrary assump- 
 tions, and those who will reject them may possibly outnumber those 
 who will accept them. What is there to prevent another preacher from 
 manufacturing another set of definitions and distinctions ? As for the 
 Hebrew terms, a distinction is sometimes drawn by saying that Ruah 
 denotes the more elementary primitive idea of " breath," whereas the 
 other two refer to the more advanced conception of spirit or soul, as 
 active in the body and intimately associated with it. But this is upset 
 by the Ruah in Ecclesiastes xii. 7 (cp. Job xxxii. 8), where the usage 
 is anything but primitive. And similarly in Ezra i. 5, where God 
 " raises up the Ruah of Ezra " to build the Temple. It has here a 
 developed religious and ethical import (cp. also Psalm li. 12 ; Ezekiel 
 xviii. 31, xxxvi. 26, etc.). Again, in Proverbs xx. 27, Neshamah has a 
 spiritual significance (as also in Isaiah Ivii. 16), whereas in Isaiah ii. 22, 
 xlii. 5, and ever so many more passages throughout Holy Writ, it has 
 the primitive meaning of physical breath. Again, the word Nefesh, 
 although commonly translated " Soul," and regarded by the average 
 reader of the Bible unacquainted with Hebrew, as alluding to the 
 spiritual side of man's nature, is very often a mere synonym for life 
 or body. In Talmudic literature there is also, as I have said, no clear- 
 cut distinction between these terms ; but noteworthy is the preferential 
 iisage of Neshamah to signify the soul in its truly spiritual sense. Prof. 
 Marti in his commentary on Isaiah liii. 12 shows from the phrase nnn 
 ivsi mo"? myrt icn (where myn lit. = pouring out) the close connexion of 
 Nefesh with the blood, i.e. the physical, bodily side of man ; in Isaiah 
 xlii. 5, where Neshamah and Ruah occur in one and the same verse, 
 Marti says that they both mean "breath," "den Lebens-odem der den 
 Menschen bei der Erschaffung von Gott eingehaucht wurde." Ibn Ezra 
 connects Neshamah with Shamaim, " Heaven," and regards Nefesh and 
 
44 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 Euah as the outward manifestations of tlie purely spiritual and invisible 
 Neshamah. There is an interesting quotation of Ibn Ezra's view in the 
 0"n nam of Manasseh ben Israel (part ii. chap. iv.). 
 
 (4) Psalm xix. 1. 
 
 (5) Psalm cxxxix. 3. 
 
 (6) Psalm cxxxix. 7-12. 
 
 (7) Psalm Ixxvii. 19. 
 
 (8) Job xxvi. 7. 
 
 (9) Job xxvi. 11. 
 
 (10) Job xxvi. 14. 
 
 (11) Judges V. 4-5. 
 
 (12) Isaiah xxxv. 2. 
 
 (13) Exodus Rabba ii. 5. ... It is the answer given by R. Joshua, 
 son of Korlia, to a heathen, who had asked him why God chose such a 
 place as a bush out of which to speak to Moses. In Numbers Rabba 
 xii. 4 it is Rabban Gamliel who is asked the question. 
 
 (14) Sifri to Deuteronomy 38. T. B. Kiddushin 32b. See also 
 Mechilta nn'"3. 
 
 (15) Yalkut on Psalm civ. 
 
 (16) Genesis Rabba vii. 1. Tanhuma on ymn. Yalkut on Psalm 
 Ixxxvi. 
 
 (17) J. Allanson Picton on Pantheism: its Story and Significance 
 (1905), p. 10. But see pp. 309-340 in vol. ii. of Von Hugel's Mystical 
 Element of Religion. 
 
 (18) Inge, Personal Idealism and Mysticism (Paddock Lectures, 1906), 
 in the chapter on " Sources and Growth of the Logos-Chris tology." 
 
 (19) Momerie, Belief in God, in chapter on "The Infinite Personality." 
 
 (20) J. Warschauer in The New Evangel, pp. 49-55. 
 
 (21) Illingworth, Personality Hiiman and Divine, Lecture IV. 
 
 (22) Psalm Ixxxix. 15. 
 
 (23) Lamentations of Jeremiah iii. 33. 
 
 (24) Jeremiah iii. 22. 
 
 (25) Proverbs iii. 12. 
 
 (26) A favourite Rabbinic saying showing that pain and suffering 
 are the disciplinary aspects of a God of Love is that which runs : " God 
 never smites Israel until He has created the remedy for the wound before- 
 hand." In other words, healing is one of the preordained remedies of 
 God. It is from this point of view that Rabbinical literature views two 
 other important teachings of Judaism, viz. Repentance and Prayer. 
 Thus it is said in T. B. Pesahini 54a that " Repentance was called into 
 existence even before the world was created." Suffering and misfortune 
 are the inevitable results of man's sins, but man is not necessarily pinned 
 down for ever to the cruelties of a harsh retribution. The possibility of 
 a brighter lot was decreed for him by the Creator even before the crea- 
 tion of the heavens and the earth. If man exercises " Teshubah," i c. 
 Repentance, which implies that he betters his attitude towards God, then 
 God's attitude towards man becomes changed for the better. This is the 
 preordained plan of God, and is a clear illustration of what not only the 
 old teachers in Israel, but some of the best modern Jewish theologians, 
 
I NOTES 45 
 
 understand by a God of Love. And the same train of tliought applies 
 to Prayer. T. B. Rosh Hasliana 1 6a remarks "i3i mn'? npv^ nB\ " Prayer 
 avails a man both before and after the signing of the Divine decree." 
 It is one of God's preordained plans, that the genuine prayer of even the 
 most hardened sinner should restore him to the Divine Grace. This 
 is only possible, under the conception of God as the highest embodiment 
 of what we mean by Love. 
 
 (26a) The difficulties clustering round the problem of personality, 
 whether from the psychological, or theological standpoint, are many and 
 great. As Dr. Frank Ballard says in his dissertation on The True 
 God (R. Culley, 1907): "It is frankly acknowledged by psychology 
 that no satisfactory definition, no adequate concejition of human 
 personality is forthcoming. What constitutes individuality in all its 
 fulness, no man living can say. ... It would then be sheer irrationality 
 to attempt for the divine that which is not possible for the human. To 
 confess bewilderment as to the apprehension of the finite, and then 
 demand comprehension of the infinite, is the very extreme of self 
 contradiction." 
 
 (27) In his little volume entitled The Substance of Faith, on p. 89, 
 Sir Oliver Lodge remarks : " The Christian idea of God is not that of a 
 being outside the universe, above its struggles and advances, looking on 
 and taking no part in the process. ... It is also that of a God who 
 loves, who fears, who suffers, who keenly laments the rebellious and 
 misguided activity of the free agents brought into being by Himself as 
 part of Himself, who enters into the storm and conflict and is subject to 
 conditions as the Soid of it all." Had Sir Oliver Lodge ventured to give 
 this as the Jewish view of God, he could not have stated it more correctly. 
 The idea of God keenly lamenting " the rebellious and misguided activity of 
 the free agents brought into being by Himself as part of Himself," gave 
 rise to the poetic imagery which is scattered throughout the Talmud and 
 Midrash in the form of parables about a king and his only son (or only 
 daughter). Prosaically, the subject is treated from various standpoints 
 in the several Midrashim which deal with the cosmogony of Genesis or 
 the ethics of the old Jewish sacrificial system of Leviticus. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 HOW DOES THE HEBREW BIBLE PRESENT THE SUBJECT 
 OF DIVINE IMMANENCE AND TRANSCENDENCE? 
 
 Rabbinic literature is more than an appendage to the 
 Hebrew Bible. It is a commentary on it. Hence the 
 investigator into any department of Rabbinic thought 
 must, perforce, have recourse to the original, viz. the 
 Hebrew Bible. It wants little knowledge of Old Testa- 
 ment lore to know that the view of God which was 
 uppermost in the minds of its inspired writers was 
 Transcendent, not Immanent. God's dwelling is far 
 removed from the haunts of man, high above in the 
 highest heavens, unapproachable, shrouded in a secrecy 
 that no mortal gaze can penetrate. One very early 
 instance of this is perhaps to be found in Genesis xxxii. 
 30, where Jacob asks the name of the mysterious " man " 
 who wrestled with him until the breaking of the day ; 
 and the pregnant reply given is, " Wherefore is it that 
 thou dost ask after my name ? " A mysterious secrecy 
 hedged round the names of angels as well as the Divine 
 Name in the Bible. This is frankly admitted in Judges 
 xiii. 18, where the angel replies to the inquiring Manoah, 
 " Why askest thou thus after my name, seeing it is 
 secret ? " This is certainly a hint at God's unknowable 
 nature. We have it again in Exodus iii. 14, "And 
 God said unto Moses : I Am that I Am, and He said. 
 Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I Am 
 
 46 
 
cH.ii IMMANENCE & TRANSCENDENCE 47 
 
 hath sent me unto you." The "Name" of God ia 
 frequently used in the Bible as an equivalent for God. 
 Thus Exodus iii. 15, "This is my name for ever, and 
 this is my memorial for all generations " ; Exodus ix. 16, 
 " And that my name may be declared throughout 
 all the earth"; Psalm cxxxv. 13, "Thy name, 
 Lord, endureth for ever ; and Thy memorial, Lord, 
 throughout all generations" can only be satisfactorily 
 explained in this sense. God's distance from man 
 gives the Psalmist many a theme for metaphor and 
 simile. Take Psalm ii. for example. Its dominating 
 idea is that of a huge concourse of men at one spot, 
 from the most distant parts, in order to ventilate their 
 grievances against one, who is the author of their troubles, 
 and whose views are diametrically opposed to theirs. 
 It is God who is their butt. Yet, is He in the same 
 plight as a human master would be under such trying 
 circumstances ? Certainly not ! He is quite outside 
 the reach of His opponents' mischief " He that sitteth 
 in the heavens laugheth ; the Lord holdeth them in 
 derision." His distance. His unfathomable distance, 
 guarantees His absolute immunity. Isaiah in xl. 22 
 makes use of a similar metaphor to illustrate another 
 idea. He says, " It is He that sitteth upon the 
 circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as 
 grasshoppers ; that stretcheth out the heavens as a 
 curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in." 
 The Divine Being is here a magnified man. How 
 effective is the language of Isaiah Iv. 8, " For my 
 thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways 
 my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are 
 higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your 
 ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." We have 
 here three ideas. God is far. God is incomparable. 
 God is unknowable. And all these ideas are asfain 
 
48 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 reproduced in the Book of Job. " G-od is great and we 
 know Him not " (xxxvi. 26). " Canst thou by searching 
 find out God ? canst thou find out the Almighty unto 
 perfection ? It is high as heaven ; w^hat canst thou do ? 
 deeper than sheol ; what canst thou know?" (xi. 7, 8). 
 ** Behold, I go forward, but He is not there ; and back- 
 ward, but I cannot perceive Him : on the left hand, 
 where He doth work, but I cannot behold Him : He 
 hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see Him " 
 (xxiii. 8,9). This distant isolation of God is even used, 
 by Elihu, to illustrate to Job God's immunity from the 
 efiects of man's wickedness or goodness. " Look unto 
 the heavens, and see ; and behold the clouds, which are 
 higher than thou. If thou sinnest, what doest thou 
 against Him ? or if thy transgressions be multiplied, 
 what doest thou unto Him ? If thou be righteous, what 
 givest thou Him ? or what receiveth He of thine 
 hand ? " (xxxv. 5-7). Even so late a writer as the 
 author of Ecclesiastes said (v. 2), "Be not rash with 
 thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter 
 anything before God : for God is in heaven, and thou 
 upon earth ; therefore let thy words be few." This 
 seems an echo of the naive transcendent view of the 
 Deity enthroned as a king, immeasurably higher than 
 any mortal can aspire to, and before whom men must 
 walk with bated breath.* 
 
 But yet the Bible is not without its indications of 
 the contrary view. Not that one will expect to find in 
 
 * In chap. viii. of his Hibbert Lectures (1892), Mr. C. G. Montefiore 
 alludes to this passage of Ecclesiastes as one which is often quoted to show how 
 in Judaism's view the transcendence of Deity meant His total separation from 
 men and nature. Mr. Montefiore combats this view by showing how in the 
 post-exilic Judaism the idea of "Heaven" was gradually becoming emptied of 
 its purely local signification. We to-day speak of " God in heaven," but this is 
 not prejudical to the idea of the nearness of God. Heaven is merely part of one 
 of God's titles ("Our Father in Heaven"), and the most convinced upholder 
 of the Immanent view finds nothing antagonistic or repugnant in its usage. In 
 Ben Sira vii. 14 this passage in Ecclesiastes is taken simply as a warning 
 against redundancy in prayer. 
 
.1 IMMANENCE & TRANSCENDENCE 49 
 
 the Bible any sentence or phrase which presents the 
 Immanence of God in any philosophical sense, or with 
 any of the implications of modern scientific thought. 
 The Bible teaches no philosophy. It is not a text-book 
 of science. What one can find there is a few indications 
 of Immanence from the simple standpoint of Omni- 
 presence. One turns in the first instance to the 
 magnificent lines of Psalm cxxxix.* " Whither shall I go 
 from Thy Spirit ? or whither shall I flee from Thy 
 face ? If I climb up into heaven, Thou art there ; or 
 make Hades my bed, lo ! thou art there ! If I lift up 
 the wings of the dawn, and settle at the farther end of 
 the sea, even there Thy hand shall lead me, and Thy right 
 hand shall hold me." ^^^ All this seems many stages 
 of thought in advance of the sentiments from the 
 Psalms which we have previously quoted. So do the 
 following quotations from Deuteronomy : " For the Lord 
 thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp, to deliver 
 thee, and to give up thine enemies before thee ; therefore 
 shall thy camp be holy that He see no unclean thing in 
 thee and turn away from thee " (Deut. xxiii, 14).t 
 " For this commandment ... is not hidden from thee, 
 
 * In his recent book, Der Geist Gottes (Tubingen, 1910), Professor Paul Volz 
 (on page 146) characterises this 139th Psalm as "der Lied der giittlichen 
 Allgegenwart und AUwissenheit, in dem monotheistische Geschlossenheit und 
 pantheistische Stimmung besonders schiin vereinigt siud. " He goes on to say- 
 that in the conception of the author of the Psalm, the Spirit of God is a cosmic 
 power . . . akin to the idea of "the face of God" which characterises the self- 
 revelation of God in the cosmos. Volz's next remarks are important. He says : 
 "sie erinnert in ihrem Wesen und Wirken an die iiltere VorsteUung vom 
 iibersinnlichen, den Kosmos durchwallenden Ruh-element (Ezech. Gen. 1, 2), 
 ist aber hier monotheistisch mit Jahwe verkniipft und bekommt dadurch eine 
 innerliche sittliche Farbung ; sie ist zugleich eine Art beobachtendes, die 
 Ordnung hiitendes Organ. . . . Ruh ist an iind fiir sich das Pantheistische, 
 AUdurchwaltende, aber sie ist Ruli Jahwes. Die Allgegenwart Jahwes wird 
 durch die Ruh zwar nicht verbiirgt. . . ." In short, Volz wishes to make it clear 
 — what I shall all along endeavour to make clear — that the usages of Spirit, 
 Shechinah, etc., as hypostases are consistent with the strictest monotheistic 
 conception of God. Cp. Briggs {^International Critical Commentary) on this 
 139th Psalm. 
 
 t Reading through the proofs, Mr. C. G. Moutefiore makes the following 
 adverse comment here : " It is not the case that the historic order of develop- 
 
 E 
 
50 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 neither is it far off. It is not in heaven. Neither is it 
 beyond the sea. . . . But the word is very nigh unto 
 thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest 
 do it" (Deut. xxx. 11-14). 
 
 There is a powerful reproduction of these ideas in 
 a passage of the second Isaiah, as follows : " For thus 
 saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, 
 whose name is Holy ; I dwell in the high and holy 
 place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble 
 spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive 
 the heart of the contrite ones" (Ivii. 15). This is a 
 very apt commingling of the two aspects of God. He 
 is aloof and unapproachable ; but yet He is near, in 
 the very recesses of man's heart. This idea seems to 
 be further spiritualised in the remark of Elihu (Job 
 xxxii. 8) : " Verily there is a Spirit in man ; and the 
 inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding." 
 The usage of Ruah as the Divine Spirit within man is 
 very rarely met with in the O.T. It reminds one of 
 the Ruah Ha-Kodesh or Shechinah of Rabbinic literature 
 and of Wisdom in the Apocrypha. Elihu uses it as his 
 excuse for interposing in the debate of men older in 
 years than he. It is not years, says he, that are 
 man's prerogative and give him his right to speak. 
 Man's distinguishing mark is his possession of the Spirit 
 within. Hence flows his wisdom, his authority, and 
 his sense of justice. Professor Karl Marti in his com- 
 mentary on Isaiah Ixiii. 9, 10, thinks that the phrase 
 im~rp nn in verse 10, "His Holy Spirit," implies the 
 later or Rabbinic and Apocryphal significance of the 
 Holy Spirit.<^> 
 
 ment was as you maintain (1) God far otf, (2) God near. As a matter of fact, 
 Yahweh was very near in old days. He moved away from Sinai and lived with 
 Israel, in clouds and pillars, in the ark, etc. The quotation from Deut. xxiii. 
 14 does not specially rei)resent advanced thought. It is quite antique. God 
 became far off rather late, and then by Immanence He had to be made ' near ' 
 again." 
 
II IMMANENCE & TRANSCENDENCE 51 
 
 Closely associated with our subject, although not 
 an integral part of it, is the constantly-recurring Biblical 
 representation of God as the Father — in the first place 
 as the Father of Israel. But the idea can be con- 
 sistently extended to include the whole of mankind. 
 The Fatherhood of God is certainly an aspect of His 
 Omnipresence ; it is an incontestable proof of His near- 
 ness. It would be futile to give here all the Biblical 
 instances of God as Father. They can be gathered 
 from any Concordance. I will only quote a few 
 characteristic examples : " Like as a father pitieth his 
 children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him."^^^ 
 " But now, Lord, Thou art our Father ; we are the clay 
 and Thou our Potter ; and we all are the work of Thy 
 hand." ^^^ " For I am a Father to Israel, and Ephraim is 
 my first-born." ^^^ " Have we not all one Father ? Hath 
 not one God created us ? " ^^^ Conversely some charac- 
 teristic examples can be quoted of the usage of " son " in 
 relation to the Father. "Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my 
 first-born son." ^'^ " He shall build a house for my name ; 
 and he shall be my son and I will be his Father." ^^^ 
 " Is Ephraim my dear son ? Is he a pleasant child ? 
 For since I spake against him I do earnestly remember 
 him still." ^^^ " I w^ill say to the North, Give up; and 
 to the South, Keep not back : bring my sons from far, 
 and my daughters from the ends of the earth." ^^°^ 
 
 To summarise. The Hebrew Bible presents God 
 at times under the Transcendent, and at times under the 
 Immanent, aspect. The elements making up the Tran- 
 scendent aspect are (i.) God's Name as being unknowable; 
 (ii.) the idea of secrecy surrounding God, as mentioned 
 frequently in Biblical books ; (iii. ) God's Throne in the 
 heavens at a great distance from man; (iv.) God as 
 magnified human king enwrapped in isolation ; (v. ) God 
 as Creator of heaven, earth, and all their hosts, having 
 
52 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 made which, His activity has ceased. On the contrary, 
 the elements which point to His Immanence, so far as the 
 Hebrew Bible is concerned, are (i.) His Omnipresence; 
 (ii.) the nearness of His "Word";^^^^ (iii.) His unique 
 nature of being able to dwell with the humble and con- 
 trite, while at the same time having His abode in the 
 lofty heavens ; (iv.) His Spirit, as being the producer of 
 man's wisdom and holiness ; (v.) His Fatherhood, which 
 involves an amount of interposition in human affairs. 
 
 The transcendent view is paramount. But the 
 indications of the other view amount to something 
 more than a negligible quantity. It may be asked. 
 Can we give the name of Immanence to such ex- 
 pressions ? If we confine the term to its stringent 
 modern application to the Deity as "indwelling" 
 His creation, and as being manifested both to the 
 mind and eye in every element of animate and 
 inanimate creation, then it is difficult to see how the 
 Biblical phraseology brings this out. But if we give 
 a wider and looser connotation to " Immanence," — and 
 this is admissible if only on the grounds that the Bible 
 is no metaphysical or theological treatise, — we can at 
 any rate assert, that there is an indication of this 
 doctrine within the pages of the Old Testament. 
 After all, what better summing up of the Psalmist's 
 thoughts can be given, than to say that the one aim 
 and end of his being was to live in the constant 
 realised presence of God ? "I have set the Lord before 
 me constantly " was no mere rhetorical flourish. The 
 Psalmist felt it as a truth. " All my bones shall say, 
 Lord who is like unto Thee ? " An outburst such 
 as this would be impossible did not the author feel that 
 God the Father, the Protector, the source of all Love 
 and Compassion, had spread His tabernacle, so to speak, 
 in the very inmost recesses of his being, lifting him 
 
II IMMANENCE & TRANSCENDENCE 53 
 
 up to ever higher and higher peaks of goodness and 
 usefulness. And a declaration like " the heavens 
 declare the glory of God, and the firmament telleth 
 the work of His hands " is a clear testimony to God's 
 evident manifestation in the world of nature.* These, 
 and the other illustrations which have been given before, 
 are a sufficient guarantee that although the Transcendent 
 view of the Deity predominates in it, the Hebrew Bible 
 is no stranger to some of the most general conceptions 
 which underUe the doctrine of the Immanence of God. 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER II 
 
 (1) Of Psalm cxxxix. Ibn Ezra says : " This Psalm is very glorious ; 
 in these five Books there is none like it." In his Bible for Home Reading, 
 vol. ii. p. 164, Mr. C. G. Montefiore quotes the comments of the " Four 
 Friends " as follows : " No human pen or tongue has ever expressed more 
 vividly or profoundly the idea of the omnipresence of God. In all 
 places, in all time, man is beset and encompassed by God, in Him we live 
 and move and have oiu- being ; oiu- every thought is guided ; our everj' 
 thought controlled. . . ." 
 
 (2) The only other passages in the O.T. where the phrase " Holy 
 Spirit" occurs are in Isaiah Ixiii. 11, "Where is He that put His Holy 
 Spirit within them ? " and in Psalm li. 11, " Cast me not away from Thy 
 presence ; and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me." Prof. Marti j^arallels 
 these with the passage in Acts vii. 51, "Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised 
 in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Spirit " ; and in Ephesians 
 iv. 30, "And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God." In these instances, 
 says he, the Holy Spirit "ist hier als ein selbstandiges Wesen, als eine 
 Art Hypostase gedacht." In fact he shows how, in this chapter the 
 peculiar phrase, DyB-in v:s ixhoi, " and the angel of His presence saved 
 them " (which translation he utterly rejects) points to the later usage of 
 " angel " and " face of God " as expressing the personal presence of God 
 in the world. 
 
 (3) Psalm ciii. 13. 
 
 (4) Isaiah Ixiv. 7. 
 
 (5) Jeremiah xxxi. 9. 
 
 * "If indeed," says Mr. C. G. Montefiore {Hibbert Lectures, 1892) "the 
 Psalter, that monument of post-exilic piety from Ezra to the Maccabees, taught 
 a distant God, eighteen centuries of Christian piety would not have been able 
 to use it as a medium of religious edification " (p. 428). 
 
54 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap, n 
 
 (6) Malachi ii. 10. 
 
 (7) Exodiis iv. 22. 
 
 (8) 1 Chronicles xxii. 9. 
 
 (9) Jeremiali xxxi. 19. 
 
 (10) Isaiah xliii. 6. 
 
 (11) In his Personal Idealism and Mysticism, p. 39, Dr. Inge seems 
 to take it too much for granted that the " Word " of the O.T. is identical 
 with the Memra of the Targum. As a matter of fact, the Memra applies 
 to ever so many more ideas, and is foiuid in the Targum in places where 
 the text of the Bible makes no mention whatsoever of the " Word." 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 SOME POST-BIBLICAL VIEWS OF DIVINE IMMANENCE 
 (outside RABBINIC LITERATURE) 
 
 The Biblical idea of God's relation to the world and man 
 underwent considerable modifications at the hands of the 
 Greek- Jewish philosophers who sought to blend Judaism 
 with Hellenism. These modifications are mostly apparent 
 in books of the Alexandrian Apocrypha, such as the 
 Wisdom of Solomon, the Letter of Aristeas, and the 
 fragments of Aristobulus/^^ But most of all in Philo, 
 who, in his exposition of the Old Testament, introduces 
 philosophical ideas which belong partly to Jewish 
 thought and are partly appropriated from Hellenic 
 philosophy. Ueberweg, in his History of Philosophy 
 (vol. i. p. 223), enumerates the "traits common to 
 the speculations of the Jewish-Greek philosophers and 
 the Neo-Pythagoreans, the later Platonists and Neo- 
 Platonists." The particular trait which concerns the 
 present subject is " the theory of intermediate potencies 
 or beings through whom God acts upon the world 
 of phenomena." The question had begun to force 
 itself upon these thinkers, How is it that God, though 
 enthroned on high and removed far from the terrestrial 
 sphere, still shows traces of Himself as working in 
 the world ? And they answered it by assuming an 
 all - active, all - penetrating spirit or principle in the 
 universe, holding all its parts in order and symmetry. 
 
56 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 and showing itself in man as conscience. It is at once 
 God and not God. That is to say, while being a 
 manifestation or reflexion of the Deity, it is not the 
 Deity Himself. And again, although it is something 
 other than the Deity, it is not an independent Per- 
 sonality. It is, if we may use the expression, an 
 extension of God. 
 
 Thus in the Letter of Aristeas, as Ueberweg points 
 out, a distinction is made between the power or govern- 
 ment of God, which is in all places (Bia ttuvtcov iariv, 
 irdvTa TOTTov TrXrjpoi), and God Himself the greatest of 
 Beings, the Lord over all things, who stands in need of 
 nothinsT and is enthroned in the heavens. Aristobulus 
 in his Orphic poems speaks of the Biblical writings as 
 being inspired by the Spirit of God. The world is 
 acted on by the Power of God although He is invisible, 
 and His throne in heaven has no contact with earth. 
 But when we come to the Wisdom of Solomon and the 
 writings of Philo we have far more substantial material 
 to work upon. In the Wisdom of Solomon the step from 
 the Transcendent to the Immanent view of the Deity 
 can be seen under the following aspects : — 
 
 (a) The usage of the Stoic doctrine of the Divine 
 " Pneuma " which pervades all parts of the universe 
 and is the ever-active principle of life. For example, 
 " For wisdom is more mobile than any motion ; yea, 
 she pervadeth and penetrateth all things by reason of 
 her pureness." ^^^ 
 
 For she is a breath of the power of God, 
 
 And a clear effluence of the Glory of the Almighty, 
 
 For she is an effulgence from everlasting light 
 
 And an unspotted mirror of the Working of God." * 
 
 * Chapter xxiv. of Ben Sira lias similar allusions to the Immanence of 
 Wisdom. But there is this difference, viz. that whereas in this passage of the 
 Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom is represented as in some measure an active agent < 
 in the creation of the world, in Ben Sira the idea is more localised. Wisdom, 
 
Ill POST-BIBLICAL VIEWS 57 
 
 One notices a strong parallelism between several 
 ideas here and those to be found in Rabbinic literature. 
 For instance, the idea of wisdom as an " effluence of 
 the Glory of the Almighty " might be paralleled over 
 and over again by the common expression mtl?D n^i'V"^ 
 '^D1 "inD^DD, which is usually rendered as " God causing 
 His Shechinah to dwell," but literally rendered should 
 be " God unloosening His Shechinah, i.e. setting it free " 
 (the Aramaic " shara " = to unloosen, let go free). The 
 word " effluence " = " flowing out," and implies the idea 
 of " setting free." The close association of " Kabod," 
 "Glory," with "Shechinah" is of common occurrence. 
 In the Greek they are both often indiscriminately trans- 
 lated by 86 ^a}^^ In Luke ii. 9, the words " the glory 
 of the Lord shone round about them" are rendered by 
 So^a Kvpiov . . . (cp. Ephesians i. 6, 80^7?? t^<? 'x.^^piro'i 
 avTov, also 2 Corinthians iv. 6). In Targum Jonathan 
 on Exodus xxxiii. 22, we get the two words used 
 dependently upon one another, "^nrDtn -ip'' ini^on "^n^i, 
 " when there passes the glory ("ip"' = Aramaic for Hebrew 
 ~niD) of my Shechinah." This is like the passage 
 quoted above from Wisdom. The idea of wisdom 
 as " light " resembles the frequent metaphorical usage 
 of Shechinah as light. Cp. for example Aboth De Rabbi 
 Nathan ii. tit'dw -^dd ^h^ iTiiDo m^xn f'^t^n^, The face of the 
 Shechinah lights up the whole earth. In Numbers Rabba 
 ii. 5, " May God cause His face to shine upon thee, i.e. 
 may He give unto thee of the light of the Shechinah." 
 Even the idea of wisdom as " pervading and penetrating 
 all things," although it is unquestionably not a Jewish, 
 but the Stoic conception of the " Pneuma," can yet be 
 
 after having "Come out of the mouth of the Most High," and after having 
 ''walked in the bottom of the deep," sought and found rest only in Israel. 
 It "took root in an honourable people, even in the portion of the Lord's 
 inheritance." Ben Sira is of course Palestinian, whereas the Wisdom of Solomon 
 is Alexandrian. This sufficiently accounts for the difference in the two views. 
 
58 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 almost paralleled by the following Eabbinic statement 
 from T. B. Haggigah 12a : "By means of tbe light which 
 Grod created on the first day man may look from one end 
 of the universe to the other." Light here is probably 
 identical with Shechinah, as can be seen from the con- 
 tinuation of this passage/^^ There is an all-pervading 
 " Shechinah " as well as an all-pervading " Pneuma." ^^^ 
 
 (b) The usage of Wisdom sometimes as identical 
 with Deity, and sometimes as an aspect of, extension of, 
 or created thing subject to, Deity. In vii. 7 we read, 
 " I called upon God and there came to me a spirit of 
 wisdom." Here wisdom is the object, a gift of God to 
 man. But in x. 1 we read, " Wisdom guarded to the end 
 the first-formed father of the world. . . . And gave him 
 strength to o;et dominion over all thincfs." Here wisdom 
 seems an equivalent for God. It is a personality. All 
 this bears striking resemblance to Rabbinic modes of 
 thousfht which will be considered later. We shall see 
 how ofttimes the Shechinah is spoken of as " God's 
 Shechinah," i.e. a property of Deity, and how, on the 
 other hand, it is frequently used as an independent 
 spiritual entity. An example of the latter usage is a 
 phrase like " receiving the face of the Shechinah." And 
 the same is the case with the Rabbinic usage of the 
 Holy Spirit. The expression in T. B. Sotah 11a, 
 "lDi immiD OTipn ni"!, " The Holy Spirit announces to 
 them, ' The more shall they multiply and the more 
 shall they grow'" (Exodus i. 12), is a personification of 
 the "Ruah." On the other hand, in T B. Megillah 
 12b, the remark is made of Esther, that "she clothed 
 herself with the Holy Spirit," wdiere Ruah is meant 
 to be the Spirit of God immanent in the world, so that 
 man can, as it were, snatch a portion of it and enwrap 
 himself in it. 
 
 (c) Wisdom is the immanent protector and redeemer 
 
Ill POST-BIBLICAL VIEWS 59 
 
 of mankind. It is man's anchorage in time of trouble. 
 The whole of chapter x. of the Wisdom of Solomon is 
 taken up with this theme, ending with the remark, 
 *' Because Wisdom opened the mouth of the dumb ; and 
 made the tongues of babes to speak clearly." All this 
 corresponds closely to the Rabbinic usage of the 
 immanent Shechinah. Thus in T. B. Megillah 29a (and 
 elsewhere very frequently) it is said : " Whitherso- 
 ever Israel was banished the Shechinah followed him." 
 In T B. Sabbath 12b we read : " How do we know 
 that the Shechinah supports the sick ? Because it is 
 said (Psalm xli. 4), ' The Lord shall support him upon 
 a bed of sickness.' " (In other passages the reading is 
 to the effect that the Shechinah is "above the head" 
 of the sick person.) In T. B. Sotah 30b there is 
 a passage to the following effect, " At the hour of 
 Israel's ascent from the Red Sea the people com- 
 menced their song. How was the singing done ? The 
 infant nursed upon the knees of its mother, together 
 with the suckling babe, no sooner beheld the Shechinah 
 (nD-'DQjn HN iNiti? ]rD) than they raised themselves up, 
 exclaiming, ' This is my God and I will glorify Him.' ..." 
 There seems the closest possible resemblance between 
 the passage quoted from Wisdom and this passage from 
 the Talmud. 
 
 (d) The difficulty of reconciling the immanent 
 Wisdom with the fact of the existence of sin. Thus 
 " Wisdom will not enter into a soul that deviseth evil, 
 nor dwell in a body that is held in pledge by sin " (i. 4). 
 "Therefore can nothing defiled find entrance into her" 
 (vii. 25). But these seem contradicted by the state- 
 ment in XV. 2, " For even if we sin we are Thine." 
 One meets the same difficulty in Rabbinic literature. 
 Thus in T. B. Sotah 3b there is the following passage : 
 " R. Hisda said that before Israel sinned the Shechinah 
 
6o THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 iibode with every individual Israelite, as it is said 
 (Deut. xxiii. 14), 'For the Lord Thy God walketh in 
 the midst of thy camp.' But when Israel sinned it 
 departed, as it is said (ihid.), ' that He see no unclean 
 thing in thee and turn away from thee.'"^^^ On the 
 contrary we are told (T. B. Rosh Hashanah 17b) : "I 
 am the Lord before man sins, I am He after man 
 sins." (Based on the repetition of the Tetragrammaton 
 in Exodus xxxiv. 6.) These two quotations seem to 
 exactly parallel those from Wisdom. 
 
 (e) It has been frequently pointed out by Jewish 
 students of the Apocrypha that Wisdom at times shows 
 an un-Jewish proximity to being a Personality. The 
 most salient passage is xviii. 14-16 : — 
 
 For while peaceful silence enwrapped all things 
 
 And night in her own swiftness was in mid-course, 
 
 Thine all-powerful word leaped from heaven out of the Royal 
 
 Throne, 
 A stern warrior into the midst of the doomed land. 
 Bearing as a sharp sword thine unfeigned commandment ; 
 And standing it filled all things with death ; 
 And while it touched the heaven it trode upon the earth. 
 
 The " Word," that "leaps out from heaven" like a 
 warrior with a sharp sword reaching up from earth to 
 heaven, certainly comes very near deification. But the 
 same sort of expression can be found in Rabbinic literature, 
 in spite of the fact that the Rabbins made the unalloyed 
 unity of the Deity the corner-stone of their teaching, 
 and were never tired of insisting upon the duty of 
 avoiding any semblance of nntDT Tim (" two divinities ") 
 in their interpretations of Scripture. Does not the 
 Shechinah walk and talk ? Several instances will be 
 given later on of dialogues between the Shechinah and 
 man.^^^ And similarly with the Holy Spirit. And 
 further, these very ideas in Wisdom seem a poetic ren- 
 dering of several Midrashic passages on the revelation 
 
Ill POST-BIBLICAL VIEWS 6i 
 
 at Sinai. The "Word" is the "Voice" at Sinai. 
 In Exodus Rabba xxviii, and xxix. the "Voice" is 
 strongly personified. It deals death to Israel as well 
 as to the idolaters. God is the Warrior in whose train 
 are myriads of angels. The Voice fills earth and 
 heaven. It is split up into all the tongues of the globe, 
 and conveys an intelligible message to all classes 
 irrespective of age or sex. The " Word" again appears 
 frequently, with personified attributes, as the Tim 
 ("Dibbur") or -idnd ("Ma'amar"), the latter being the 
 Talmudic equivalent for the Targumic Memra. 
 
 Coming now to Philo, it is by no means easy to say 
 what were his most habitual views in reference to God's 
 relationship to the universe and man. The matter is 
 complicated by the singular fact of Philo's twofold 
 education and sympathies. His education was Greek. 
 His genius was Oriental. He loved Greek wisdom, and 
 he loved the Hebrew faith as well. He was a pious Jew. 
 Philo gives us a Greek skeleton, and clothes it with a 
 blend of Greek and Hebrew flesh. He was too devoted 
 a lover of Jewish thought to give the Old Testament any 
 disparagement in his writings, but he presses it into a 
 framework of philosophy which is essentially Greek. 
 And the allegorising process enables him to give the 
 appearance of unity and consistency to his expositions 
 of Scriptural doctrine. ^'^^ Philo's views of God are 
 to be found scattered throughout the whole of his 
 writings. On the question of the transcendental or 
 immanent conception of God he is not always con- 
 sistent. ^^"^ He sometimes leans to the one view and 
 sometimes to the other.* As a true disciple of Plato 
 
 * " Quand Philon parle de la creation et des premiers principes des etres, 
 de Dieu et de ses rapports avec I'univers, il a evidenimeut deux doctrines qu'aucun 
 effort de logique ne pourra jamais mettre d'accord. L'une est siraplement le 
 dualisme de Platou, tel qu'il est enseigne dans le Timee ; I'autre nous fait penser 
 ^ la fois a Plotin et a la Kabbale " (Franck, La Kahbale, p. 221). 
 
62 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 he thinks of God as existing neither in time nor 
 space. ^^''^ He cannot be conceived by man. He is 
 self-suflScient, and has no relations with any other 
 being. These ideas of God's transcendence and His 
 preclusion from any activity in the world are to be 
 met frequently in Philo. Thus : " But God has given 
 nothing to Himself, for He has no need of anything ; 
 but He has given the world to the world, and its 
 parts He has bestowed on themselves and on one 
 another, and also on the universe. . . . He merely has 
 regard to His own everlasting goodness, thinking the 
 doing good to be a line of conduct suitable to His 
 own happy and blessed Nature. So that if any one 
 were to ask me what was the cause of the Creation 
 of the world, having learnt from Moses, I should answer, 
 that the goodness of the living God, being the most 
 important of His graces, is in itself the cause." ^^^ How 
 strangely irreconcilable does this philosophic isolation of 
 God sound by the side of a passage like the following 
 on the Providence of God. " The fifth lesson that 
 Moses teaches us is, that God exerts His Providence for 
 the benefit of the world. For it follows of necessity that 
 the Creator must always care for that which He has 
 created, just as parents do also care for their children. 
 And he who has learnt this, not more by hearing it than 
 by his own understanding, and has impressed on his own 
 soul these marvellous facts which are the subject of so 
 much contention, namely, that God has a Being and 
 Existence . . . and that He exercises a continual care 
 for that which He has created, will live a happy and 
 blessed life stamped with the doctrines of piety and 
 holiness." ^^'^^ Philo was too devoted a Jew to forget 
 or ignore the distinctively Jewish doctrine of God's 
 fatherhood — a fact which the Jew gathered theoretic- 
 ally from his Bible, and realised practically in the 
 
m POST-BIBLICAL VIEWS 63 
 
 fortunes of his own and his people's life. With such 
 strong Jewish attachments, one must expect that Philo 
 could not be content with the conception of the 
 transcendent isolation of the Creator ; that he could 
 only find satisfaction in the belief that God is near 
 and that He and His Goodness fill the universe. Philo 
 speaks of an Immanent God in a great many passages. 
 His idea of Immanence is probably the result of Stoic 
 influence ; ^^^^ but it may also have been brought 
 about by his studies of the Palestinian Midrash. Philo 
 was influenced by Palestinian exegesis in two ways.^^'^ 
 Firstly, he paid more than one visit to Jerusalem,^^^^ 
 the home of the Palestinian teachers of the Law. 
 Secondly, the persecutions of Hyrcanus ^^*^ caused some of 
 the Palestinian Rabbins to flee for safety to Alexandria, 
 and in this way Palestinian teaching probably became 
 known in Alexandria before the time of Philo/^^^ Philo 
 has much to say about the ceaseless workings of God 
 in the world, one of the underlying conceptions of 
 Divine Immanence. Commenting on the phrase in 
 Genesis " And God finished His work on the seventh 
 day," he says, " God never ceases from making some- 
 thing or other. But as it is the property of fire to burn, 
 and of snow to chill, so also it is the property of God to 
 be creating. And much more so, as He Himself is to 
 all other being^s the Author of their workingr. . . . For 
 He makes things to rest which appear to be producing 
 others, but which in reality do not eflect anything. 
 But He Himself never ceases from creating." ^^^^ There 
 is a strong parallel to this idea in Genesis Eabba xi. : 
 
 iSn d:?i iSn d:; hs^D nS« □"'prn^n, " God ceased from 
 the creation of His world, but He ceased not from 
 creating good and bad men. His activity with these 
 is ever-constant." The Midrash limits God's endless 
 
64 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 labour to tlie creation of the variegated characters 
 of man. Philo widens the idea to embrace every- 
 thing. [It would require investigation in order to fix 
 the exact date of the above Midrash. One could then 
 know whether Philo drew upon it, or vice versa. Or, 
 of course, it is possible to assume that they are both in- 
 dependent of one another, and that Philo is merely 
 echoing a piece of his Stoic doctrine.*] We shall consider 
 some more instances. In the midst of a curious inter- 
 pretation of the word rrD"'N in Genesis iii. 9 he remarks, 
 " For since you have thought that God was walking in 
 the Garden, and was surrounded by it, learn now that in 
 this you are mistaken, and hear from God who knows all 
 things that most true statement that God is not in any 
 one place. For He is not surrounded by anything, but 
 He does Himself surround everything." ^^^^ A duplicate 
 passage is the following : " For let not such impiety 
 ever occupy our thoughts as for us to suppose that God 
 cultivates the land and plants paradises, since if we were 
 to do so, we should be presently raising the question of 
 why He does so ; for it could not be that He might 
 provide Himself with pleasant places of recreation and 
 pastime or with amusement. Let not such fabulous 
 nonsense ever enter our minds. For even the w^hole 
 world would not be a worthy place or habitation for 
 God, since He is a place to Himself, and He Himself is 
 full of Himself, and He Himself is sufficient for Himself, 
 filling up and surrounding everything else which is 
 deficient in any respect, or deserted, or empty. But 
 He Himself is surrounded by nothing else, as being 
 Himself one and the Universe." ^^^^ All such passages 
 
 * I see, on further reference, that the author of this statement is "R. 
 Phinehas in the name of R. Hoshaiah." The latter's dates are roughly about 
 A.D. 200, so that he comes long after Philo. Prof. Bacher, in J.Q.E. iii. 357, 
 attempts to show how Hoshaiah from his familiarity with Origen may have 
 imbibed many of Philo's ideas. It is obvious from the tone of several of his 
 Haggadic utterances that Hoshaiah had a knowledge of philosophy. 
 
in POST-BIBLICAL VIEWS 65 
 
 are like elaborations of the great Rabbinic dictum on 
 Immanence: io"ipD oS^i? fNi 'dSi2> hw lo^po Nin, "God 
 is the place of the world, and the world is not His 
 place." The next passage strongly reminds one of the 
 Immanent teaching of the 139th Psalm. "Can a 
 man then or any other created animal hide himself 
 from God ? Where can he do so ? Where can he hide 
 himself from that Being who pervades all places, whose 
 look reaches to the very boundaries of the world, who fills 
 the whole universe, of whom not even the smallest portion 
 of existing things is deficient ? " ^^^^ Another and more 
 important department of Philo's views on Divine Imman- 
 ence is his theory of the Logos. Yet he seems to make 
 the Logos mean different things at different times. One 
 can therefore give no concise definition of it, unless it 
 means the immanent Reason of God in the world and 
 man. Philo taught that God's presence is manifested 
 in every man. " Every man in regard of his intellect 
 is connected with Divine Reason, being an impression 
 or a fragment or a ray of that Blessed Nature." ^"°^ Again, 
 " Let every one on whom the Love of God has 
 showered good things, pray to God that he may have 
 as a dweller within him the Ruler of all things, who 
 will raise this small house, the mind, to a great height 
 above the earth, and will connect it with the bounds of 
 heaven." ^^^^ And again, " For when he uses the expres- 
 sion, ' He breathed into his face the Breath of Life,' he 
 means nothing else than the Divine Spirit proceeding 
 from that happy and blessed Nature sent to take up its 
 habitation here on earth for the advantage of our race, 
 in order that, even if man is mortal according to that 
 portion of him which is visible, he may at all events be 
 immortal according to that portion which is invisible. "^^^^ 
 Just as Philo speaks of God as dwelling in man and 
 the universe, so he speaks of the Logos as being inherent 
 
 F 
 
66 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 in man and all things. Take e.g. his very beautiful 
 interpretation of Psalm Ixi. 10, " The course of the 
 river makes glad the City of God." " What city ? For 
 the Holy City which exists at present, in which also 
 the Holy Temple is established, is at a great distance 
 from any sea or river, so that it is clear that the writer 
 here means figuratively to speak of some other city 
 than the visible City of God. For in good truth, the 
 continual stream of the Divine Logos, being borne on 
 incessantly with rapidity and regularity, is diffused 
 universally over everything, giving joy to all. And in 
 one sense he calls the world the City of God, as having 
 received the Whole Cup of the Divine draught. . . . 
 But in another sense he applies the title to the soul of 
 the wise man in which God is said also to walk as if 
 in a City, ' For ' says God, ' I will walk in you, and 
 I will be your God in you ' (Leviticus xxvi. 12)." ^^^^ In 
 this sublime passage the Logos and God are inter- 
 changeable terms, and the implication seems to be that 
 we are in God as well as God is in us. The Logos is 
 used in so many senses. It is the Mind of <Jjrod, the 
 Wisdom of God, the Glory of God, the Agent of God 
 in the creation of the world, " For it is the Divine 
 Logos which divided and distributed everything in 
 nature." ^"^^ " For the Logos of the living God, being 
 the bond of everything, as has been said before, holds 
 all things together, and binds all the parts and prevents 
 them from being loosened or separated." ^^^^ The Logos 
 is the Image of God. " For even if we are not yet 
 suitable to be called the sons of God, still we may 
 deserve to be called the children of His eternal image, 
 of His most sacred Logos ; for the image of God is 
 His most ancient Logos." ^^^^ And more important than 
 all the foregoing for the student of Rabbinic literature 
 is Philo's use of the Logos in what is very largely the 
 
Ill POST-BIBLICAL VIEWS 67 
 
 Biblical and Rabbinic sense of inSo angel. There is 
 a plurality of Logoi (and not only one Logos), just as 
 in the Bible the ano-els are the numerous bands of God's 
 agents, who do His behests and speak to man ; and 
 just as in the Talmud and Midrashim (largely through 
 the influence of Babylonian and Persian angelologies) 
 the angels are the personified working forces of the 
 Deity in the life of the world and man. Thus, the 
 Logoi help man to virtue and righteousness. " For 
 God, not condescending to come down to the external 
 senses, sends His own Logoi or angels for the sake of 
 giving assistance to those who love virtue. But they 
 attend like physicians to the diseases of the soul . . . 
 offering sacred recommendations like sacred laws, and 
 inviting men to practise the duties inculcated by them. 
 . . ."^-'^ When HaQ-ar flees to the desert she is met 
 by " the angel, that is the Logos of God," and being 
 recommended what to do, she is guided by the Logos 
 in her return to her mistress's house.^'"®^ The Logoi seem 
 to be the assistants of God in the making of man. 
 Philo, in attributing Divine Immanence to man in 
 general, fell into the difficulty of not being able to 
 reconcile this fact with the existence of evil in man.^^®^ 
 If the Divine presence had a place in every man's heart, 
 then the evil which bad men do must be God's work just 
 as well as the good. To overcome this difla.culty, Philo 
 assigned the cause of man's creation to his ministers 
 — the Logoi. " The expression ' Let us make ' indicates 
 a plurality of makers. Here the Father is conversing 
 with his own powers {i.e. his Logoi or ministers) to 
 whom he has assigned the task of making the mortal 
 part of our soul. . . . He thought it necessary to 
 assign the origin of evil to other workmen than himself 
 — but to retain the generation of good for himself 
 alone." ^^°^ To the student of Rabbinical literature 
 
68 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 Philo's views on these and other kindred points come 
 as no surprise. They are to be found constantly in 
 the Midrashim. Whether Philo is the debtor to the 
 latter or vice versa is a moot point. As Freudenthal ^^^^ 
 has pointed out, the coincidence of ideas in both 
 literatures need not necessarily stamp either as the 
 borrower from the other. They may have arisen in- 
 dependently in Palestine and Alexandria respectively. 
 Philo's view of the Logoi as angels, i.e. as certain 
 " powers " of God sent down to earth to minister to 
 man and help him to virtue, is strikingly similar to 
 the Rabbinic conception. The field of the latter is 
 so extensive and variegated, that it is difficult to fix 
 upon any representative quotations. It would need 
 a whole essay to itself. Philo's attempt to withdraw 
 God from contact with evil by making the Logoi 
 largely instrumental in the creation of man is elabo- 
 rated in interesting ways in Genesis Rabba viii. 3, 4. 
 The plural form " Let us make man " is there justi- 
 fied in several ways. One authority says that man's 
 creation was the result of a consultation between 
 God and heaven and earth. Another, that it was 
 the result of a similar consultation between God and 
 His already created work of the preceding five days. 
 Another gives the consultation as between God and 
 His own Heart. Then follow some significant parables. 
 " It may be likened unto a king unto whom his architect 
 erected a palace. He looked at it, but it pleased him 
 not. With whom should he be angry ? Should it not 
 be with the architect ? " Again, " It may be likened unto 
 a king whose trafiic was done by means of his agent. 
 But when the king lost his money with whom should 
 he be angry ? Should it not be with the agent ? " The 
 aim of these parables is to shift the blame for the evil 
 in man away from the shoulders of the Creator just 
 
in 
 
 POST-BIBLICAL VIEWS 69 
 
 as is done by Philo. Philo holds the Logoi, who are 
 God's ministers, responsible. The one Midrash gives 
 the responsibility to heaven and earth which, according 
 to the Biblical as well as Eabbinical teaching, are the 
 messengers of God. The other Midrash, which gives 
 the responsibility to God's Heart, seems to be introduced 
 merely for the purpose of tallying with the quotation 
 " And He was grieved in His heart." I do not see 
 how the heart of God can by any logic be regarded as 
 anything outside Him. But further on there is the 
 explicit statement, i^d3 ptUNin dtn riNin^ nik) tm^wi 
 mtun ^dnSoid, " When God was about to create the 
 first man He took counsel with the ministering angels." 
 This leaves no doubt. A more philosophical Midrash 
 (which is repeated in Yalkut on the words ^^2^p•' nS d'^i? 
 ioDtUDi D^i?tt)-i, Psalm i.) represents God as associating 
 Himself with the D'^ornn''' d, " the attribute of mercy," 
 in His creation of man. If God knew that the way 
 of the wicked would perish, why did He create the 
 wicked ? ^^^^ And the reply is that the creation of the 
 latter is only the result of God's association with the 
 D^cjmn "d. The Rabbinic usage of D^omn "d and 
 jnn ''d had much in common with Philo's Logoi. Like 
 the latter, it helps man and pleads for him in the hour 
 of his perplexity or when punishment threatens. 
 
 Yet one other aspect of Philo's views on the Im- 
 manence of God from the standpoint with which we are 
 here concerned, is his usage of the Logos as intercessor 
 between man and the Deity. The Logos is at times 
 described as the High Priest ^^^^ because, like him, it is 
 the expiator of sins. In another place it is described 
 as UeT'n'i (suppliant). " And this same Logos is con- 
 tinually a suppliant to the immortal God on behalf of the 
 mortal race which is exposed to affliction and misery ; 
 and is also the ambassador, sent by the Ruler of all to 
 
70 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 the subject race."^^^^ And again as irapaKXT^To^ (Paraclete). 
 " For it was indispensable tliat the man who was 
 consecrated to the Father of the world should have as 
 a paraclete, His Son, the Being most perfect in virtue 
 to procure forgiveness of sins, and a supply of unlimited 
 blessings." ^^^^ In all these, the Logos is a very strong 
 hypostasis of the Deity. The idea was largely taken up 
 by Christianity and worked out in the Fourth Gospel. ^^''^ 
 It went too near impugning the strict monotheism 
 of Judaism to be taken up and seriously cherished by 
 Jews.* And yet, one comes across Rabbinic utterances 
 which have a striking resemblance to Philo's words ; 
 and even though, as was said before, this does not 
 necessarily prove borrowing or imitation, it at any 
 rate shows that Philo's hypostasisation of the Logos 
 is a method of exposition not unknown to the Talmud 
 and Midrashim. Thus, in numerous instances, the 
 
 * And yet, as if to emphasise the truth of monotheism and counterbalance 
 any possible suggestion tliat these " Middot" are independent entities, we have 
 the famous passage in T. B. Berachoth 7a, where the question is asked, "What 
 does God's prayer consist of?" And the answer is that it consists of the 
 words, ' ' May it be the will from before me that my compassion overcome 
 my wrath, that my mercies be rolled upon my attributes ('nno 7j; 'cm i?iJ'i) 
 and that I may show myself towards my children with the attribute of 
 mercy. . . ." This passage is often described by Christian critics of Rabbinism 
 as grotesque. But that this is an undeserved criticism is readily seen by 
 any one who realises that it is one of the oft-repeated and emphatic safeguards 
 of the Jewish monotheistic idea. The "Middah" is not God. And God is 
 not the " Middah," but a loving father whose one all-absorbing aim is to 
 have cause to exercise His love. The "Middah" may degenerate into being a 
 philosophical principle like the Logos of Philo. But a God who is a loving 
 father is the highest phase of that personal God, which is the basis of Rabbinic 
 theology. 
 
 Another clear illustration of the Rabbinic safeguarding against any infringe- 
 ment of the Unity, is afforded by the Targum on Psalm Ivi. 11. Here the two 
 Hebrew words for God ("Elohim" and the " Tetragrammaton ") occur in two 
 independent phrases in one and the same sentence, as the utterance of one and 
 the same man. The Targumic author evidently suspected the danger of a 
 possible dualistic interpretation. To avert this, he accoi'dingly paraphrases the 
 first word for God by kh^ni xri mo^j ' ' by the attribute of justice which belongs 
 to God," and the second word for God by """i pom mon, i.e. "by the attribute 
 of mercy which belongs to God." 
 
 For parallels between these ideas and those of Philo, see the chapter on 
 ' ' Die Hypostasen-Spekulation, ' ' in Bousset's Religion des Judenthums im neutesta- 
 mentlichen Zeitalter. 
 
Ill POST-BIBLICAL VIEWS 71 
 
 D^Dmn "d ("Attribute of mercy") is represented as a 
 personality, speaking, pleading before God for an erring 
 individual, or for a whole nation that has sinned. In 
 the Targum on Lamentations i. 1, the pin^D (" Attri- 
 bute of justice") pleads (cp. Targum on Koheleth x. 8). 
 One of the important functions of angels is to intercede 
 for the sinner or the sick. And the Holy Spirit so 
 very frequently plays the role of the paraclete. There 
 is a very fine passage in the Song of Songs Rabba 
 (viii. 12) where this is well illustrated. It is as follows : 
 " When the Israelites eat and drink, and bless and 
 praise God, He listens to them and derives satisfaction. 
 But when the nations of heathendom eat and drink, 
 and blaspheme God, and provokeTIim to anger by their 
 immoral talk, then God thinks' of destroying the whole 
 of creation. Thereupon there enters the Torah and 
 speaking in defence of Israel it says, ' Sovereign of 
 the universe, instead of looking at these who blaspheme 
 and provoke thee to indignation, look at thy people 
 Israel, who praise and bless and adore thy great Name 
 by the Torah, and with Psalms and Hymns.' After the 
 Torah there enters the Holy Spirit and says, ' Flee 
 away, my beloved God, flee from the heathens and 
 attach thyself to Israel only.' " Here both the Torah 
 and the Holy Spirit are strongly personified. Another 
 passage in which personification is still more striking 
 is in the Sifri on n^iin nxn, page 148 (Friedmann's 
 edition), and it represents a chorus singing the praises 
 of the Deity. The singers are the Holy Spirit and 
 Israel. " Israel says, ' There is none like the God of 
 Jeshurun ' ; ^^"^ and the Holy Spirit says, ' The God of 
 Jeshurun.' Israel says, ' Who is like unto thee among 
 the Gods ? ' and the Holy Spirit says, ' Happy art 
 thou, Israel, who is like unto thee ? ' Israel says, 
 ' Hear, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one ' ; 
 
72 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 and the Holy Spirit says, ' And who is like thy people, 
 Israel, one nation in the earth ? ' Israel says, ' As the 
 apple among the trees of the forest ' ; and the Holy 
 Spirit replies, ' As the rose among thorns.' Israel says, 
 ' This is my God, and I will glorify Him ' ; and the 
 Holy Spirit says, ' This people which I have formed 
 unto me.' Israel says, ' For thou art the glory of 
 their strength ' ; and the Holy Spirit says, ' Thou art 
 my servant, Israel, in whom I shall be glorified.' " 
 In this characteristic passage the Holy Spirit is the 
 Comforter, the great encourager par excellence. It 
 lays before God the claims of Israel to be considered as 
 the people nearest Him. It is an intercessor in a very 
 similar sense to that of the Logos. This branch of 
 the subject will be further considered in dealing 
 with the conception of the Holy Spirit in Rabbinic 
 literature. 
 
 One of the reasons why Philo exerted a greater 
 influence on Christianity than on ^Judaism, was the 
 fact that his doctrine of God collided somewhat with 
 Judaism's stringent notions of the Unity of God. 
 But there is another, and perhaps greater, reason. 
 Philo's God is too impersonal ; He is too much of a 
 metaphysical entity. Philo does not teach religion, 
 but theology — theology with all its speculativeness, 
 with all its aloofness from the tasks of the everyday 
 world. The immanent God of Philo is a philosophi- 
 cal principle. The immanent God of Judaism is a 
 person. At the basis of the Jewish hearts' longing 
 and panting after God, was the unshaken consciousness 
 that He is a father with a father's compassion for 
 His children. No other theory of faith would suit the 
 Jew. Here is the supreme line of cleavage between 
 Rabbinism and Philonism. It is just this warm, 
 personal note that will be observed, now that the 
 
m POST-BIBLICAL VIEWS Tz 
 
 reader passes on to consider how the Immanence of 
 God is taught in the pages of Kabbinical literature.* 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER III 
 
 (1) In the books of the Palestinian Apocrypha such as Ben Sira, 
 Baruch, Tol)it, etc., there is very little development of the Biblical view 
 of God which, as pointed out, leans mostly to the side of tran- 
 scendentalism. Ben Sira's desire to keep to the beaten track of the old 
 Biblical theology and not venture into pastures new, may possibly be 
 hinted at in his lines : 
 
 Seek not things that are too hard for thee, 
 
 And search not out things that are above thy strength ; 
 
 The things that have been commanded thee, think thereupon. 
 
 For thou hast no need of the things that are secret. 
 
 (iii. 21, 22). 
 
 That Ben Sira was a true Palestinian in this respect, is seen from the 
 fact that the above-quoted lines form one of the few extracts from Ben 
 Sira to be found quoted in the Palestinian Talmud (see Talmud Jerusalem 
 Haggigah II.). It is also found in Genesis Rabba viii. 2, this Midrash 
 being also an early Palestinian product. 
 
 (2) Wisdom of Solomon vii. 24-26. 
 
 (3) Nahmanides in his commentary on Genesis xlvi. 4 has a long 
 dissertation on the meanings of Kabod and Shechinah in refutation of 
 Maimonides' view {Guide of the Perplexed, i. 27) that Shechinah is 
 N-133 1133, " a created Divine Glory." To Nahmanides the two terms were 
 absolutely identical, both meaning Divine Immanence or the immediate 
 Divine Presence. 
 
 (4) The continuation of the passage is, " When God looked at the 
 generation of the Deluge and that of the dispersion (nj'^sn nn) and saw how 
 perverse their works were. He hid the Light from them. For whose sake 
 did He hide it ? For the sake of the good men in the time to come . . . 
 etc." It is quite clear that Light here has the full spiritual connotation 
 of Shechinah, especially as the Talmud so frequently speaks of the 
 Shechinah as abiding only in the company of the pious and as departing 
 no sooner evil enters into existence. 
 
 (5) In Wisdom of Solomon vii. 29, 30 and viii. 1 there is a repetition 
 of the same theme showing the same parallelism with Rabbinic ideas, 
 significantly enough, in the anecdote (mentioned in T. B. Sanhedrin 39a) 
 where Gamliel is asked by a heathen, " How many shechinah are there ? " 
 
 * On this passage, Mr. Israel Abrahams writes to me thus : " Does not Philo 
 again and again compare God to a father ? You quoted some passages above, 
 and there are many others. I do not think your study of Philo has been deep 
 enough. Especially here, you are quite wrong. Philo is full of warmth. And 
 as for the figure of father and children, it is often found in Philo." 
 
74 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 Gamliel's answer is, " As the sun whicli is one of tlie myriad servants of 
 God giveth light to all the world, so in a much greater degree does the 
 Shechinah." No better way of illustrating what Shechinah is, commends 
 itself to the mind of the sage, than that of using the metaphor of light. 
 And we get the same thing in T. B. Hullin 60a, when R. Joshua ben 
 Hananya replies to Hadrian who had expressed a wish to see the Jewish 
 God : " If thou art not able to look upon (the sun) a servant of God, how 
 much less mayest thou gaze upon the Shechinah." 
 
 (6) A more categorical assertion is the following in Genesis Eabba 
 iii. 6 : " God never conjoins His name with evil, but only with good." 
 The Name is probably here used identically with Deity as in Exodus 
 iii. 15, ix. 16 ; Psalm cxxxv. 13, etc. 
 
 (7) In Exodus Rabba xviii. 5 the angels Michael and Samael hold a 
 court with the Shechinah as Judge. In T. B. Haggigah 16b, Berachoth 
 43b, the sinner is represented as "crowding out the feet of the Shechinah." 
 And numerous other passages which I shall instance as we go along. 
 
 (8) A good typical example of Philo's blending of Greek and Hebrew 
 ideas in his Biblical exegesis is his comparison of the four rivers mentioned 
 in Genesis ii. 11-14 to the four Virtues, viz. Prudence, Temperance, 
 Courage, and Justice (Vol. I. "Allegories of the Sacred Laws," xix.-xxiii.). 
 It is interesting to place this by the side of his remarks on the burning bush 
 (Exodus iii. 2-6) : " For the burning bush was the symbol of the 
 oppressed people and the biu'ning fire was the symbol of the oppressors, 
 and the circumstance of the burning bush not being consumed was an 
 emblem of the fact that the people thus oppressed would not be destroyed 
 by those who were attacking them. . . . The Angel again was an emblem 
 of the Providence of God. . . ." (Vol. III. "Life of Moses," xil.). Philo 
 here exactly rejiroduces the Rabbinic trend of ideas. 
 
 (8a) Philo's inconsistency as well as his indebtedness to Plato is well 
 expressed by Von Hiigel {Mystical Element of Eeligion, ii. p. 69) thus : 
 " Already Philo had, under Platonic influence, believed in an Ideal man, 
 a Heavenly Man ; had identified him with the Logos, the word or Wisdom 
 of God ; and had held him to be in some way ethereal and luminous, 
 never arriving at either a definitely personal or a simply impersonal con- 
 cei^tion of this at one time intermediate Being, at another time this 
 supreme attribute of God." From a Jewish standpoint, one can assert 
 that it is just this absence of clear doctrines about God that accounts for 
 the comparatively scant influence which Philonic thought had on the 
 Rabbinical schools. 
 
 (8b) Plato finds no place for a personal God in his scheme of 
 philosophy ; Platonic ideas are all of a general kind, necessarily devoid 
 of determination, hence impersonal (see Von Hiigel, i. p. 16). 
 
 (9) Vol. I. " On the Unchangeableness of God," xxiii. 
 
 (10) Vol. I. " On the Creation of the World," lxi. 
 
 (1 1) An unmistakable instance of Stoicism is Philo's remark : " Every- 
 man in regard of his intellect is connected with Divine reason, being an 
 impression of, or a fragment or a ray of that blessed nature ; but in 
 regard of the structure of his body he is connected with the universal 
 world " (Vol. I. " On the Creation of the World," Li.). These ideas are 
 
Ill NOTES 75 
 
 paralleled by the Stoical teaching of the human soul as an emanation of the 
 world sold. 
 
 (12) Philo's relations to the Halacha and Haggada, whether as 
 recipient or as giver, have been investigated by, among others, Z. Frankel, 
 in his book on The Influence of the Palestinian Exegesis upon the 
 Alexandrian Hermeneutics ; B. Ritter, Philo and the Halacha ; Sieg- 
 fried, Philo of Alexandria as Exponent of the Old Testament. The 
 assumption on the part of all these writers seems to be, that the 
 resemblances between Philonic and Eabbinic ideas do not necessarily 
 imply borrowing on either side. The same ideas may have been in 
 vogue in Palestine and Alexandria concurrently. 
 
 (13) Graetz, History of the Jews (Eng. trans.), vol. ii. chap. vii. 
 
 (14) Graetz, History of the Jews (Eng. trans.), vol. ii. chap. iii. 
 
 (15) In T. B. Niddah 69b allusion is made to the "twelve questions 
 which the men of Alexandria asked of R. Joshua ben Hauanya." The 
 latter was a Palestinian, and it is quite possible that the questions were 
 addressed to him while making a sojoiu'n in Alexandria. 
 
 (16) Vol. I. " The Allegories of the Sacred Laws " (Book I.), iii. vii. 
 
 (17) Vol. I. "The Allegories of the Sacred Laws" (Book III.), xvii. 
 
 (18) Vol. I. " The Allegories of the Sacred Laws" (Book I.), xiv. 
 
 (19) Vol. I. "The Worse plotting against the Better," xlii. See 
 also Vol. II, " On Dreams being sent by God," xi. xxxi. (Book I.). 
 
 (20) See Note 11. 
 
 (21) Vol. IL "On Fugitives," xiii. 
 
 (22) Vol. I. "On tlie Creation of the World," xlvi. 
 
 (23) Vol. II. "On Dreams being sent from God" (Book IL), 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 (24) Vol. II. " Who is the Heir of Divine Things," xlviii. 
 
 (25) Vol. II. " On Fugitives," xx. In Philo's allegorical identifica- 
 tion here of the High Priest with the Logos we get another typical 
 instance of his blending Greek with Hebrew ideas. 
 
 (26) VoL II. " On the Confusion of Languages," xxviii. 
 
 (27) Vol. II. "On Dreams being sent from God" (Book I.), xii., ibid. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 (28) Vol. II. " On Fugitives," i, 
 
 (29) Vol. I. " On the Creation of the World," xxiv. 
 
 (30) Another way which Philo adopted to get out of the difficulty is 
 his ingenious theory of the two original Adams : (1) the Heavenly, (2) the 
 Earthly. The former is the Scriptural first man who was made in the 
 image and likeness of God ; he is imperishable, " an idea or a genus 
 perceptible only by the intellect." The latter is man as we see him now 
 in the races of the world, imperfect and corruptible. Philo deduces hLs 
 former view from the account of man's creation in Genesis i. 26, and his 
 latter view from Genesis ii. 7. But an intermingling of Greek and 
 Rabbinic doctrine is here very apparent. Philo is following Plato's well- 
 known theory of ideas and combining with it the basic thought contained 
 in several Midrashic statements about the absolute perfection of the first 
 man " who reached from Earth to Heaven " and was wonderfully gifted, 
 in ever so many other ways. (See the Midrashim on the various 
 
76 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap, m 
 
 passages in the early part of Genesis dealing with, the Creation and fall 
 of man,) 
 
 (31) Freudenthal, Hellenistische Studien, ii. 
 
 (32) Genesis Eabba viii. 4. 
 
 (33) See Note 25. 
 
 (34) Vol. II. " Who is the Heir of Divine Things," XLll. 
 
 (35) Vol. III. " Life of Moses," xiv. (Book III.). 
 
 (36) Besides the Gospels, see 2 Corinthians iv. 4, 1 Corinthians 
 viii. 6; Colossians i. 15, 16; Ephesians i. 10, etc., where all these 
 Philouic ideas of the image, intercessor, etc., are applied to Christ. The 
 usage of the " Word " in St. John's Gospel as the eternal qnickening 
 spirit in creation, the world principle, has affinities to the Greek term 
 Logos, which in general Greek philosophy signifies both word and 
 reason ; it seems also to resemble in many respects the Logos of Philo ; 
 and again it bears a striking relation to the Memra of the Targumic 
 literature as well as to the Talmudic identification of the " Word " with 
 the Torah. Thus, take the opening verse of St. John, " In the 
 beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word 
 was God." The Rabbins (in Genesis Rabba i. and other places) in com- 
 menting on the Psalmist's utterance, " By the word of the Lord were 
 the heavens made " (Psalm xxxiii. 6), say that the Word here is the 
 pre-existent Torah, pre-existent to aid God's purpose in creating the 
 world, ahian nx Nini mina b'3D :\2pn. According to T. B. Pesahim 54a, 
 the Torah was " one of the seven things fashioned before the creation of 
 the world." In other j^assages it is spoken of as " the glorioiis treasure 
 hidden in the Divine store-house from the first six days of Creation." 
 
 (37) There seems some doubt about the correct reading here. Fried- 
 mann in his note on this passage says that the word " Jeshurun " in the 
 first line is to be taken as an abstract noun from Josher = " uprightness." 
 In the second line it is the epithet of Israel. So that the sense of the 
 passage would be, that Israel calls God a God of uprightness, and the 
 Holy Spirit follows this up with the complimentary remark to Israel, 
 that this very God of uprightness is the God of no other nation than 
 Israel. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE SHECHINAH — GENERAL VIEW 
 
 G-RAETZ was riglit when he spoke of the Talmud as a 
 " Daedalian maze in which one can scarcely find his 
 way even with the thread of Ariadne." ^^^ The Rabbins 
 described it as an ocean on which only the experienced 
 swimmer might dare to venture. The difficulties of 
 Rabbinic literature are the inconsistencies of many of 
 the doctrines to be found there. One must always be 
 prepared for surprises when studying it. It embodies 
 such a huge medley of opinions which it simply states 
 as they were uttered, and leaves unreconciled, scattered, 
 not strung upon any particular thread. Thus, no one 
 will deny that angelology is a subject which embraces 
 a very large space in the Talmud and Midrashim. But 
 yet it is unsystematised. There is no clearly defined 
 doctrine of angels. There is a congeries of opinions, but 
 no one canonical opinion which is finally authoritative 
 and demands acceptance. It is the same with such a 
 highly important subject as sin. No one can say that 
 the Rabbins took up a decisive final attitude towards 
 the theology of sin. And yet they thought strongly 
 and abundantly about it. Of course, after wading 
 through a mass of disconnected, and often mutually 
 contradictory, statements one detects a common purpose 
 and sentiment. One can draw inductions and form 
 conclusions. But it involves considerable research. 
 
 77 
 
78 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 And tlie conclusions arrived at, must always be under- 
 stood as being the views of the individual investigator. 
 In short, there are doctrines of sin, but no doctrine. 
 
 An exactly similar diflfuseness of treatment charac- 
 terises the subject to be dealt with here, viz. the 
 Immanence of God as depicted by the terms Shechinah, 
 Holy Spirit, etc, etc. The scattered elements have 
 to be taken up and classified under different heads. 
 It has to be remembered, that the teachers whose 
 utterances are recorded in Rabbinic literature embraced 
 a period covering several hundreds of years ; and there- 
 fore in collating the statements on any particular topic 
 we must make allowances for age. It has to be re- 
 membered, too, that the ancient Rabbins were not 
 philosophers. They went nearer poetry than philosophy. 
 The poetic vein is discernible in many Haggadic passages. 
 They spoke with simplicity of language and spontaneity. 
 They did not elaborate systems of thought. He that 
 expects to find any philosophical presentation of Divine 
 Immanence in Rabbinic literature, will be disappointed. 
 But that the Rabbins had notions of this Immanence, 
 and gave expression to them, is without doubt. These 
 notions they envisaged in the following ways : by ex- 
 pressions concerning (a) the omnipresence of God ; (h) 
 the omnipresence of the Shechinah ; (c) the constant 
 presence of the Shechinah in Israel ; (d) the universality 
 of the Shechinah as spiritual light ; (e) the Holy Spirit 
 in man ; (/) the Holy Spirit in Israel ; (g) the Holy 
 Spirit in prophetic usage ; (h) the Bath Kol ; (^) nature 
 and functions of angels. 
 
 To deal with the Shechinah first. What is the 
 etymology of the word ? It is a noun from " Shachan " 
 = to dwell ; but wherever it is found in Targumic 
 or Talmudic literature it is always in the sense of 
 God's dwelling-house, the abiding of God in a certain 
 
IV THE SHECHINAH— GENERAL VIEW 79 
 
 spot. Thus in Numbers xxiv. 6 the Jerusalem Targum 
 has the phrase: "just as the heavens which God has 
 spread out for His abode " ; in Psalm 1. 9 the Targum 
 Jonathan supplements the original text (id tit'Id npi^ 
 nS) with the words : " from the day that the house 
 of my dwelling has been in ruins," alluding to the 
 cessation of the sacrificial order after the fall of 
 Jerusalem. In Psalm Ixv. 2 Onkelos renders the 
 phrase : ]r2n d^hSn by p^si n^nDOm n nh^n = " God 
 whose abode is in Zion." From meaninsr the abode 
 
 O 
 
 of God, the Shechinah gradually came to mean God 
 Himself. The material element was dropped, and the 
 spiritual idea alone was retained. Shechinah became 
 coined as a new word signifying the Godhead quite 
 apart from any notion of place. How this was de- 
 veloped in Rabbinical literature will soon be seen. 
 In the Targumic literature several instances occur. 
 In Exodus xvii. 7 Onkelos gives : "Is the Shechinah 
 of God among us or not?" In Numbers v. 3 the 
 phrase " I dwell among them " is rendered by Onkelos 
 as : " My Shechinah dwells among them." (Jonathan 
 has i^mi^p n3^D2? = the Shechinah of the Holy One.) 
 In Exodus xix. 18 the Jerusalem Targum translates 
 »«! '^n vhi} ~n^ -iQ?« ''3DD as : " because there was re- 
 vealed thereon the Glory of God's Shechinah in a 
 flame of fire." In Jeremiah xxxiii. 5 the hidinsr of 
 God's face appears in Onkelos as the taking away of 
 the Shechinah. In Psalm xliv. 10 the words " and 
 thou goest not forth with our armies " are rendered as 
 " thou causest not thy Shechinah to dwell in our 
 armies." And in the same Psalm, verse 25, we have 
 a passage in Onkelos identical with the one just 
 quoted from Jeremiah. A more telling usage, showing 
 the omnipresence and immanence of the Deity, is 
 Onkelos's rendering of Psalm xvi. 8, " I have set the 
 
8o THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 Lord before me continually ; because His Sbechinah 
 dwells upon me, I shall not be moved." The second 
 portion of the verse, which tells of the ever-present 
 dwelling of the Shechinah upon the speaker, is 
 tantamount to, and paralleled by, the first part, in 
 which he tells of the constant presence of God. The 
 word "^D-^o^D, " on my right hand," was evidently under- 
 stood by Onkelos to mean " He [i.e. the Shechinah] 
 is on my right hand." This is a clear personifica- 
 tion of the Shechinah, which is regarded as an in- 
 dependent entity, such as is often the case in the Talmud 
 and Midrashim. That the usage of aKTjvT] in the New 
 Testament is a reference to the Rabbinic Shechinah, 
 as is often maintained, seems to be true in some cases 
 but not in all, e.g. the allusion in Hebrews viii. 2, 
 Kal T^<? a-Kr)vrj<i T?}? aXrjdcvi]^, Can hardly refer to the 
 Shechinah, because a phrase such as " a Minister of 
 the true Shechinah " is quite foreign to Rabbinic modes 
 of expression. The phrase in Acts xv. 16, " and I 
 
 will build again (tt^v aKTjvrjv Aa^lB tvv ireTrrooKvlav) the 
 
 tabernacle of David which is fallen down," is merely 
 a quotation of Amos ix. 11, and the Hebrew there for 
 tabernacle is hdd which = a hut. But the allusion in 
 John i. 14, where the Logos is said to have "dwelt 
 among us" (iaKijvcoa-ev iv rjfitv) seems a probable re- 
 ference to Shechinah ideas ; and this is borne out 
 when one looks at the usage in that chapter of words 
 like "light," "word," "son," "glory," all of them 
 reminding one of the usage in Rabbinic hterature 
 of Shechinah, Or, Kabod, Yekara (in Targumic) and 
 the sonship of the Messiah. The passage in Revelation 
 xxi. 3, " Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and 
 He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, 
 and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God," 
 seems but a reproduction of Ezekiel xxxvii. 27, 28, 
 
IV THE SHECHINAH— GENERAL VIEW 8i 
 
 where ''DDmo and ^tnipo are used indiscriminately to 
 mean tabernacle or sanctuary, but in a localised sense. 
 Ezekiel is foreshadowing a re -establishment of the 
 Jewish kingdom in the heart of Palestine with David 
 sitting upon the throne. The re-existence of the Temple 
 is, of course, a sine qua non ; it is the indispensable 
 symbol of national status. Hence, God will establish 
 His sanctuary in the midst of Israel. It is these ideas 
 that are bodily reproduced in Revelation xxi. 3, and 
 there is no hint whatsoever of the Rabbinical view of 
 the spiritual Shechinah. 
 
 An examination of Shechinah passages throughout 
 the greater portion of the realm of Rabbinic literature, 
 suggests the following classification of the various 
 senses attaching to the word. I tabulate them as 
 follows (and have discussed them in this order) : — 
 
 (I.) Conception of Shechinah as Light or other 
 material object. 
 
 (II.) Shechinah used in a personified sense under 
 the following aspects : — 
 
 (a) Face of Shechinah. 
 
 (6) " Cloud," " Wings," etc., of Shechinah. 
 
 (c) As the Immanent God in Palestine, Temple, and 
 Synagogue. 
 
 {d) As the Immanent God in Israel. 
 
 (e) Shechinah and Sin. 
 
 (/) Shechinah and Torah. 
 
 {g) Shechinah and Word (Dibbur). 
 
 (Jh) The Memra of Targumic literature. 
 
 NOTE TO CHAPTER IV 
 
 (1) Graetz;, History of the Jews (Eng. trans.), vol. iii. p. 481. 
 
 G 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE SHECHINAH AS LIGHT OR OTHER 
 MATERIAL OBJECT 
 
 The Rabbins pictured their ideas of the Immanence of 
 God by the figure of material light. The Shechinah is 
 universal light. Sometimes it is universal only as far 
 as Israel is concerned, sometimes it is universal in the 
 fullest sense of the term. It is also ofttimes used to 
 denote the omnipresence of God in the Temple. To 
 materialise the Shechinah as light, is a short step to 
 materialising it as any other substance. This, also, the 
 Rabbins did. 
 
 (A) As Light 
 
 In T. B. Sabbath 22b the light of the Menorah is 
 a " testimony unto all who come into the world, that 
 the Shechinah rests in Israel." (Repeated in Menahoth 
 86b.) 
 
 In Exodus Rabba xxxvii. 3, " He who does a 
 ' Precept ' acts as though he lights a candle before 
 God." ^^^ The allusion here is rather to the Torah, 
 which, like the Shechinah, is so frequently figuratively 
 represented as light. 
 
 In Aboth De R. Nathan, chap, ii., the phrase in 
 Ezekiel xliii. 2, " and the earth sinned with His glory," 
 is interpreted as : " this is the face of the Shechinah." 
 
 82 
 
cH.v THE SHECHINAH AS LIGHT 83 
 
 There is an association here, of Shechinah with " Kabod " 
 ("glory ") which will be considered later (see Appendix 
 11. ). This same Midrashic passage has an interesting 
 allusion to the universally-reaching powers of the angel 
 Gabriel's voice ; and this voice is inferior to the uni- 
 versality of God's Voice. The " Voice of God " is, in 
 Kabbinic literature, a companion idea to the Shechinah. 
 Like the latter, it is immanent in man and the world. 
 
 In Numbers Rabba xi, 5 the Biblical phrase " May 
 the Lord cause the light of His countenance to shine 
 upon thee " (Numbers vi. 25) is interpreted as " May 
 He give thee of the light of the Shechinah." (Similarly 
 in Sifri on Nm3, edit. Friedmann, p. 12.) 
 
 In Numbers Rabba xii. 8 there is a comment on 
 Leviticus ix. 24, in which allusion is made to the 
 dazzling brightness of the Shechinah. When the people 
 saw it, they fell on their faces, the Ught being too strong 
 for them. 
 
 In Numbers Rabba xv. 2 the windows of Solomon's 
 Temple were d^dij^n D^'DiptD, i.e. " narrow within but 
 wide without," in order that the light of the Temple 
 might go out and illumine the world. Here light is 
 certainly meant in the spiritual sense, and most prob- 
 ably to be regarded as identical with Shechinah. (See 
 T. B. Menahoth 86b.) 
 
 Ibid. XV. 5, there occurs the phrase, niN N^irr rrriN 
 ah^2} h\D, " Thou art the Light of the World," alluding 
 to the Deity.* Cp. with familiar New Testament 
 expression, John viii. 12. 
 
 Ibid. XV. 9. The sun and the moon obtain their 
 
 * Cp. what is said in an article by G. Margoliouth in J.Q.R. July 1908, 
 on the doctrine of the Ether in the Kabbalah. The idea of iin (primal light) 
 which in Rabbinical literature is, as we see, so much mixed up with mystical 
 teachings about God, seems to me to be the starting-point of the Kabbalistic 
 ideas of niN (primal light), ■l'^^e (primal ether), and mipj (condensation point) as 
 tliey appear in the works of Moses de Leon, Abraham Abulaiia, Recanati and 
 others. Cp. idea of the "Spark" in the mysticism of Meister Eckhart. 
 
84 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 light " from the sparks of the light of above," i.e. the 
 abode of God. The passage goes on, " great is this 
 light for not all creatures possess it ; only one in a 
 hundred." This looks like an allusion to the soul or 
 conscience or Divine Spark immanent in man only, 
 who forms about " one-hundredth part " of the general 
 creation. 
 
 Deuteronomy Rabba xi. 3 alludes to an imaginary 
 dialogue between Moses and Isaac, in which Isaac is 
 told that his eyes became dimmed through the dazzling 
 light of the Shechinah, which he saw when stretched 
 out on the altar, whereas Moses " spoke with the 
 Shechinah face to face " and met with no such fate. 
 
 Tanhuma on Nmn "^D has the following passage: 
 "Whence did Moses obtain his horns of glory ? [alluding 
 to Exodus xxxiv. 29] ; the sages replied, ' From the 
 cave, as it is said, " And it shall come to pass while 
 my glory passeth by that I will put thee in a cleft of 
 the rock."' This means that God placed his hand 
 upon him, and from that he obtained the horns of 
 glory " (as it is said in Habakkuk iii. 4, " He had horns 
 coming out of his hand ; and there was the hiding of 
 his power " ). All these passages figure the Deity as 
 light. The Midrash continues, " And there are some 
 who say that at the time when the Holy One taught 
 Moses the Torah, Moses gained his horns of glory 
 from the sparks which shot out from the mouth of 
 the Shechinah." Here we have a personification of the 
 Shechinah, and of its association with something stronger 
 than ethereal light, viz. material fire. Many such 
 examples have still to be given. 
 
 Tanhuma on Nt&D speaks of the Tabernacle as 
 being filled " with the light of God and His glory." 
 Here we get a juxtaposition : light and glory ; and 
 both are mere synonyms for Shechinah. 
 
V THE SHECHINAH AS LIGHT 85 
 
 Yalkut on Song of Songs gives the following from 
 the Midrash iiia ircwD. " Two sparks of fire used to 
 shoot out from between the two staves of the ark 
 [during the Israelites' pilgrimage through the Desert] 
 and used to burn up the serpents and scorpions, the 
 thorns and briars. . . . When the nations used to see 
 the smoke they used to exclaim, ' Who is this coming 
 up from the wilderness ? ' They used to observe the 
 miracles God did for them . . . and how He in His 
 glory lit up the way for them . . . and used to say, 
 ' Who is this that looketh as the Dawn ? What nation 
 is this whose equipments consist wholly of the light of 
 God?' (d^hSn ilNi n^w^nmn ^d»)."^-^ This is a very 
 crude presentation of the immanent idea. 
 
 Closely resembling the usage of Shechinah as light 
 is the usage of the phrase " Ziv Ha-Shechinah," i.e. 
 " the shining of the Shechinah." The two are some- 
 times interchanged in the different parts of Talmud 
 and Midrash. The word is used in other connexions 
 as well, e.g. Onkelos on 1 Kings vi. 1 translates the 
 words "in the month Ziv" as n-^dsd vt, "the shining 
 [or blossoming] of the flowers." In T. B. Sotah 49a 
 we get : " the shining splendour of wisdom, of priest- 
 hood." (For the examples, see Levy's Worterhuch, 
 page 213.) Instances of the usage of "Ziv Ha- 
 Shechinah " are the following : — 
 
 Song of Songs Kabba iii. 8 compares the liJin hriM^ 
 being full of the " Ziv " to a cave by the sea. The sea 
 rushes in and fills the cave, but the sea suffers no 
 diminution of its waters. It is as full as before. Just 
 so the tent of the congregation. The Divine presence 
 filled it, but it filled the world just the same.* 
 
 * There is a passage in the Confessions of St. Augustine which has a curious 
 resemblance to this simile of the sea and the cave. It reads thus : " But Thee, 
 O Lord, I imagined on every part surrounding and penetrating it, but in every 
 
86 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 Numbers Eabbaxxi. 16 states that tbe angels are fed 
 on the " Ziv " (similar in Tanhuma on onDD). Koheleth 
 Eabba viii, 3 attributes the "Ziv" to the Israelites 
 when they stood at Sinai. (The Pesikta on mo noj-iD 
 connects this statement with the verse in Ezekiel xvi. 
 14, It is a material idea — splendour of countenance.) 
 
 Mechilta on *nn"' (edit. Friedmann, p. 66) speaks of 
 the houses of the Israelites being filled with the " Ziv" 
 at the time when they stood before Sinai to receive the 
 Law. (A longer form of this, together with the part 
 played by Jethro and Balaam, is given in the earlier part 
 of nn'' and also in T B. Zebahim 116a.) In Yalkut 
 Koheleth viii. (based on the Sifri) the " Ziv " is given 
 to them not in their homes, but while standing at Sinai. 
 The following remark is added : " But no sooner did 
 they exclaim, ' These are thy Gods, Israel,' than they 
 were made the enemies of God." The Shechinah departed 
 from them. 
 
 Yalkut on Joshua xxii. (from T B. Moed Katan 9a) 
 attributes the possession of the " Ziv " to the Israelites 
 when dismissed to their homes after witnessing the 
 dedication of Solomon's Temple (1 Kings viii. 66).^^^ 
 Yalkut on Psalm viii, (from T. B. Sabbath 88a) gives 
 the legend of Moses in conflict with the angels, when 
 the former was about to receive the Torah. Moses fears 
 that he might be burned by the angels' breath, but God 
 protects him by spreading the "Ziv" over him (this 
 being the Rabbinic interpretation of Job xxvi, 9).* 
 
 direction infinite ; a3 if there were a sea, everywhere and on every side, through 
 unmeasured space, one only infinite sea ; and it contained within it some sponge, 
 huge but infinite ; that sponge must needs in all its parts be filled from that 
 unmeasured sea, so I imagined Thy finite creation full of Thee, the Infinite." 
 
 * It is worth remarking here that in the mysticism of Plotinus (born 
 A.D. 205, at Lycopolis in Egypt) the master mind of Neo-Platonic mysticism, 
 one meets with a similar figurative representation of soul or mind as being "an 
 overflow" from God, or as "radiating from God as light does from a luminous 
 body which sends its light into the darkness but yet suff'ers no diminution of 
 itself in the process." 
 
V THE SHECHINAH AS LIGHT 87 
 
 Yalkut on Psalm xlv. gives the saints in the glorious 
 future, the privilege of feeding on the " Ziv." But 
 the food is to be spiritual, not material. Cp. this with 
 the Leviathan legends in Rabbinic literature. The 
 Midrash continues " and they will receive no injury." 
 This is connected with what we had before, about the 
 association of Shechinah with fire. It belongs to a 
 crude, early order of ideas. 
 
 There is an interesting passage in the Commentary 
 of Nahmanides on Exodus xvi. 6, bearing strongly on 
 the mystical aspect of the "Ziv." He quotes the 
 Rabbinic interpretations (given in T B. Yoma 75b) of 
 the Psalmist's phrase : " Man did eat angels' food" 
 (Psalm Ixxviii. 25). In this Yoma passage R. Akiba 
 explains the manna (Exodus xvi.) as "food which the 
 ministering angels eat." But R. Ishmael raises an 
 objection by asking, " Do then the angels eat ? Is it 
 not said of Moses when he was in heaven that he neither 
 ate bread nor drank water ? " Ishmael accordingly 
 explains D''~i^nx nnS as n^ni^Ni ^hi2W nnh, " bread which 
 assimilated itself in the limbs." Nahmanides elevates 
 these diifering opinions of Akiba and Ishmael to a 
 higher plane, by putting a spiritual-mystical interpre- 
 tation upon them. According to Akiba, says he, " the 
 eaters of the manna and the ministering angels were 
 fed by one and the same food." And what was this 
 food? It was the "Ziv." The latter is the ordinary 
 angels' food, and it became the food of the Israelites 
 of the time through the fact that, as he says, " the 
 manna was one of the products of the Higher Light 
 (i.e. \^'hsr^ tinh nTrSino) which became materialised, 
 i.e. took on physical properties by the will of God." 
 According however to R. Ishmael, says Nahmanides, 
 there was no material manna whatsoever. The eaters 
 of it subsisted entirely and solely upon the ]-)''hsn TiNn 
 
88 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 liDSi?. This is the only way, continues Nahmanides, 
 in which you can explain the Rabbinic statement 
 about the manna suiting itself to the taste of every 
 individual Israelite, " for the soul in its process of 
 thinking joins itself to the Higher Beings, finding 
 therein the true delights of Life and obtaining favour 
 from before Him." In other words, the manna-eaters 
 were men, whose spiritual faculties were developed 
 to so high a pitch, that their sustaining nourishment 
 was the union of their soul with the Divine. Nah- 
 manides dilates, in a similar strain, upon the remark 
 of the Mechilta on Exodus xvi. 25, " to-day ye 
 shall not find it in the field," i.e. says the Mechilta, 
 "Ye shall not find it in this life, but ye shall find 
 it in the life to come." Not all the Israelites, 
 at this epoch, says Nahmanides, had reached the 
 high spiritual stage of subsisting upon the " Ziv," i.e. 
 complete union with God. After the emancipation 
 from Egypt, however, and when at the crossing of 
 the Red Sea, it was possible " for a maid to have 
 visions such as were not vouchsafed even to Ezekiel 
 the prophet," the necessary high spiritual stage was 
 attained. This spiritualisation of the "life-to-come" 
 idea follows the lines of Maimonides' theology (see 
 his Introduction to last chapter of T. B. Sanhedrin). 
 Nahmanides, however, is unwilling thus to abandon 
 absolutely the generally accepted view of the " life to 
 come," and he accordingly brings his exposition into 
 line with the Rabbinical dictum about there being no 
 eating nor drinking in the life to come, but only the 
 saints sitting with crowns upon their heads and enjoying 
 the " Ziv." " Ye shall find it in the life to come." The 
 worthy Israelite will find his manna, i.e. his source 
 of continued vitality, even after death ; he will find it 
 in that blessed union with the Shechinah for which he 
 
THE SHECHINAH AS LIGHT 89 
 
 has qualified himself iu ascending stages of spiritual 
 saintliness. He will wear the crown upon his head ! 
 Does not the prophet predict that "in that day 
 the Lord of Hosts shall be for a Crown of Glory " 
 (Isaiah xxviii. 5) ? There will be a complete merging of 
 the human life and the Divine life.* 
 
 The Yalkut on Ezekiel xUii. (from Genesis Rabba 
 Ixxxiii. ) gives two versions of the creation of light. ( 1 ) 
 God wrapped Himself up in a garment the splendour of 
 which lit up the world from end to end. (2) The source 
 and fountain-head of light was the Temple at Jerusalem 
 (based on verses in Ezekiel xliii. 2, where the word 
 " Glory " bears the twofold meaning often assigned to 
 it by the Rabbins, viz. (a) the glory of God ; (6) the 
 Temple at Jerusalem). There is a spiritual significance 
 attaching to these phrases about light, and they belong 
 to the department of Shechinah ideas (for repetition of 
 this, see Yalkut on Psalm civ.). 
 
 Yalkut on Psalm Ixxii. states that just as the sun and 
 moon light up the world, so in the future will the pious 
 light up the world, as it is said (Isaiah Ix. 3), "And 
 the nations shall come to thy light." It is noteworthy 
 that not only is the influence of the Deity compared to 
 light in respect of its omnipresence and all-pervasive- 
 ness, but also the influence of good men possesses the 
 same immanent power on the world.f 
 
 Another materialistic description of the Shechinah is 
 that which ascribes wings to it — the " Wings of the 
 
 * In the language of mysticism, "Life is an eternal Becoming, a ceaseless 
 changefulness " (from Miss Underhill's Mysticis'm., p. 35). 
 
 t With this Rabbinical usage of fire, light, etc. in association with Shechinah 
 may be compared the mystical allusions to lamps of tire, lightnings, etc. in the 
 N.T. Apocalypse, e.g. "And there were seven lamps of fire burning before the 
 throne, which are the seven spirits of God " (iv. 5). Probably the symbolism of 
 Zechariah iv., the seven-branched candlestick and the symbolic interpretation 
 given it by the prophet, lie at the bottom of this passage. So also jirobably 
 does Psalm civ. 4, "His ministers a flaming fire." But its usage here to 
 denote an aspect of Divine agency in the world, has resemblances to Shechinah 
 ideas Avhich are too obvious to be overlooked. 
 
90 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 Shechinah." As the Rabbins were fond of representing 
 the presence of the Shechinah as confined to Israel, to 
 the exclusion of the nations of the world, the " Wings of 
 the Shechinah " came to be a term denoting proselytism. 
 To bring any one under the wings of the Shechinah 
 commonly means to introduce a non-Israelite into the 
 fold of Israel. But this is by no means the exclusive 
 significance of the expression. It often bears the wider 
 meaning of the protective aspect of the Divine omni- 
 presence or immanence. 
 
 The Mechilta on nf?tDi (ed. Friedmann, page 56) I'^D 
 has the following passage : " R. Joshua said that when 
 Amalek came to injure Israel and prevent him from 
 abiding beneath the wings of his Father in heaven, 
 Moses exclaimed, ' Sovereign of the universe, this mis- 
 creant is about to destroy thy children from underneath 
 thy wings, who then will be left to read and study the 
 Torah which thou hast given them ? ' " 
 
 R. Eliezer Ha-Moda'i said that when Amalek came 
 to injure Israel and prevent him from abiding beneath 
 the wings of his Father in heaven, Moses exclaimed, 
 " Sovereign of the universe, thy sons are about to be 
 scattered to the four corners of heaven, as it is said, ' For 
 I have spread you abroad as the four winds of heaven, 
 saith the Lord ' (Zech. ii. 6), will this miscreant come to 
 exterminate them from beneath thy wings ? " In this 
 Midrash we singularly get the direct expression " wings 
 of God " rather than the more usual " wings of the 
 Shechinah," There is no notion of proselytism. The 
 " wings " are God's omnipresence in Israel, His fatherly 
 immanence. There are several versions of the old 
 Rabbinic commentary on Genesis xii. 5, "And the 
 souls which they had gotten in Haran." The ^m^, 
 " they made " (literally), is explained as : " they caused 
 them to enter under the wings of the Shechinah." 
 
THE SHECHINAH AS LIGHT 91 
 
 This in some instances is made identical with proselytism, 
 but in others it rather means that the omnipresence 
 of God became a reality to them. Thus Genesis Rabba 
 xxxix. 14 has the former view; so has Genesis Rabba 
 Ixxxiv, 4, and also Song of Songs Rabba i. The later and 
 broader view is seen in Aboth De R. Nathan, chap, 
 xii., and in the Tanhuma on iS ']hS*^ The latter graphi- 
 cally narrates how the weary and footsore strangers 
 whom Abraham welcomed into his home were wont, 
 after they had finished their meal, to begin praising and 
 blessing their generous and true-hearted host. No ! he 
 would reply, " do not bless me, but rather Him who 
 gives His food and drink to all creatures and has put 
 His spirit into them." " But where is He ? " they w^ould 
 ask in astonishment. Abraham would reply, " He rules 
 over heaven and earth. He killeth and maketh alive ; 
 He woundeth and healeth ; He formeth the foetus in its 
 mother's womb, and bringeth it out to the light of the 
 world ; He causeth the trees and flowers to spring up ; 
 He bringeth down to the grave and bringeth up again." 
 By these means He initiated them into the fear of God 
 and the practise of morality. This long passage on the 
 omnipresence of God seems to be an expansion of, or 
 commentary on, the phrase in the other Midrashim about 
 "entering under the wings of the Shechinah."^^^ The 
 Sifri on nD~inn n^n speaks of " Moses lying dead in 
 the wings (^q:ii) of the Shechinah " (Friedmann points 
 out here that the reading in the corresponding passage 
 in Yalkut is the usual "^D3Dn not ^dii which is uncommon). 
 The soul of the great law-giver lies enwrapped in the 
 great world-soul. 
 
 Yalkut on Jeremiah chap. li. speaks of the descen- 
 dants of Nebuchadnezzar as w^anting to enter under 
 the wings of the Shechinah. Upon which the angels 
 exclaim, " Sovereign of the universe, wilt thou take under 
 
92 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 thy wings the children of that wicked one who laid 
 waste thy holy house and set fchy Temple in flames?" 
 Judging from the general drift of the whole context, 
 there seems to be the proselyte idea here. 
 
 Yalkut on Job xx. 27, " The heavens shall reveal 
 his iniquity ; and the earth shall rise up against him," 
 has the following : " Thus said Moses to the Israelites, 
 ' Perhaps you want to fly away from the wings of the 
 Shechinah or to disappear from the earth ! No ! the 
 heavens will write down [your evil desire] and the earth 
 will make it known, as it is said, "The heavens shall reveal 
 his iniquity ; and the earth shall rise up against him." ' " 
 Here the phrase " Wings of Shechinah " unquestionably 
 points to God's immanence in the world. 
 
 The Tanna Debe Elijahu on ^h rhw (quoted by Yalkut 
 on same passage) has a remarkable passage on the entry 
 of the twelve spies into Palestine, and concludes with 
 the sentence : "I call heaven and earth to witness that 
 it was not in the mind of the Holy One to slay ten 
 princes of Israel ; for they ran after Moses and Aaron 
 until they entered under the wings of the Shechinah." 
 Here " wings of the Shechinah " cannot have a proselyte 
 meaning, as the princes were Israelites. It seems to 
 be perhaps a poetical expression for " life." They were 
 sufiered by God to live, i.e. God took them under 
 the wings of His Shechinah.* It is the manifestation 
 of God's protective care which covers the world, just 
 as the wings of the bird cover and protect her young. 
 It seems obvious, that the various epithets attached to 
 the word " Shechinah " came in course of usage, to apply 
 to many ideas other than those originally intended. 
 
 The next materialised description of Shechinah, is 
 that which depicts it by the figure of a cloud — the 
 
 * Or it may be an allusion to death ; we have instances in Rabbinical 
 literature of men seeing Shechinah at the hour of death. 
 
V THE SHECHINAH AS LIGHT 93 
 
 Cloud of Shecliinah. The allusions to this are not very- 
 copious.* The idea is based on Exodus xl. 34-38, the 
 cloud of the Tabernacle. A parallel phrase and one 
 which occurs rather more frequently is " clouds of 
 glory " — Kabod being often synonymous with Shechinah. 
 (See Appendix 11.) 
 
 Tanhuma on inoi tells that the " cloud of the 
 Shechinah " did not descend upon the Tabernacle until 
 Moses said, " Return, Lord, unto the many thousands 
 of Israel" (Numbers x. 36). It continues: "The 
 clouds of glory were surrounding it" {i.e. the Tabernacle, 
 or possibly Moses), and the Holy Spirit exclaimed 
 by Solomon, " Thou art beautiful, my beloved, 
 as Tirzah " (Song of Songs vi. 4). " Why as Tirzah 
 (rriiinD) ? because I am appeased (n^inriD) unto thee." 
 The juxtaposition of all three Rabbinic expressions 
 of Divine immanence, Shechinah, Kabod, and Holy 
 Spirit is significant. Yalkut on Song of Songs, 
 " His left hand is under my head, and His right hand 
 doth embrace me" (chapter ii. verse 6), says "this 
 alludes to the clouds of Shechinah which surround Israel 
 above and below." We could not get a more explicit 
 statement of God as being immanent in Israel.f 
 
 We now take miscellaneous materialistic descriptions 
 of Shechinah, 
 
 In T. B. Sotah 9b "the Shechinah was beatingf 
 before Samson like a bell" (iitd vddS n»pa?pD). This 
 is a commentary on Judges xiii. 25, " And the Spirit of 
 
 * See Oesterlyand Box, The Religwnand Worship of the Synagogue, p. 191, 
 where it is pointed out that in Exodus xxxiii. 9 it is the cloud that is depicted 
 as speaking with Moses, and that the R.V. emendation of "the Lord" before 
 "spake" is incorrect. But see Rashi ad loc. The R.V. is in agreement with 
 Rashi's view. 
 
 t In the sense that God is brought down from lonely heights. Israel, 
 surrounded by Him "above and below," is, as it were, shrouded, encased in 
 divinity. It is in this sense that many oncoming references to ' ' surrounding " 
 have to be understood. 
 
94 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 the Lord began to move him." * Samson is said by the 
 Rabbins (in this passage in Sotah) to have been imbued 
 with the spirit of prophecy which possessed the patriarch 
 Jacob. Eashi {ad loc.) interprets the idea of the bell 
 by remarking *' to accompany him [Samson] whither- 
 soever he went." The Shechinah filled Samson's 
 environment. God's presence was real to him every- 
 where. 
 
 In Song of Songs Rabba ii. the Shechinah is visible 
 from between the shoulders and fingers of the priests 
 at the time they pronounce the priestly benediction 
 upon Israel. (See also Numbers Rabba xi. 2.)^^^ 
 
 In Tanhuma on mo "'~inN there is a curious ex- 
 pression about Aaron's rod as n3"'Dt2?i nno, " scenting the 
 Shechinah." It was this, according to the Midrash, 
 that caused it to bring forth fruit. The following 
 remark then occurs : " Dry sticks scented that [or Him] 
 which was the Life of the World." The Shechinah is 
 here parallel to the " Life of the World," an unmis- 
 takable allusion to the Deity as the immanent life of 
 the universe.f 
 
 The idea of being injured by the Shechinah or 
 escaping injury from it is fairly common. We saw 
 something of this when dealing wdth the materialised 
 conception of Shechinah as light or fire. In Yalkut 
 on Song of Songs i. there occurs the following : " Why 
 does he compare the Holy One to a bundle of myrrh " 
 (Song i. 13)? Because the whole world is not large 
 enough to contain Him, and yet He can compress the 
 Shechinah into the narrow space between the two staves 
 of the ark. You will find that God loves Israel more 
 
 * The Hebrew for " to move him " belongs to the same root as the Hebrew 
 for " bell." 
 
 t An idea to be found frequently in the Jewish Liturgy. See Authorised 
 Daily Prayer Book (ed. Singer), p. 17, p. 127, etc. See also poem conmiencing 
 njiDNm miN.T in the Day of Atonement Liturgy (Morning Service). This com- 
 position is brimful with the developed Kabbalistic ideas of the IMiddle Ages. 
 
V THE SHECHINAH AS LIGHT 95 
 
 than the ministering angels, for the latter can only 
 approach God at an intervening distance of fifteen 
 cubits, as it is said (Isaiah vi.): "Seraphim stood 
 above him," but the Israelites stood in the Tabernacle, 
 and not one among them was injured. There are 
 several ideas here : — 
 
 (1) The ark was pervaded with the omnipresence of 
 God. 
 
 (2) The paradox (often repeated in the Kabbinic 
 literature and dwelt on by Philo) of the world being 
 too small to hold God but yet the space between the 
 Ark's staves being large enough (cp. Genesis Kabba 
 iv. 5), It is clear that the later Kabbalistic doctrine 
 of "Zimzum" ("contraction") took its start from this 
 Rabbinic idea. 
 
 (3) The identification of Shechinah with God. 
 
 (4) The Israelites ranking above the angels in 
 respect of nearness to God. 
 
 (5) The Shechinah as an expression for God's 
 immanence in the Tabernacle. 
 
 (6) The idea of being hurt by the Shechinah. 
 Another good instance of the last idea is to be found 
 
 in Yalkut on Isaiah on the verse " And the Lord shall 
 blot out tears from ofi" all faces" (xxv. 8). "In this 
 world he who sees the face of the Shechinah is ^ioidhd 
 l^irri (i.e. gradually wastes, dies away), as it is said, 
 " For no man shall see me, and live " (Exodus xxxiii. 20). 
 The Midrash verifies the statement by quoting 
 Ezra viii. 15, "And I viewed the people and priests, 
 and found there none of the sons of Levi." * A remark 
 of the same drift is that of Yalkut on Isaiah xxxv., " At 
 
 * I cannot discover the ground on which the Midrash bases its deduction 
 from tliis verse of Ezra. Mr. Israel Abrahams suggests the following : "The 
 Levites in exile mutilated their fingers in order to prevent themselves from 
 playing the harps and singing the songs of the Lord on the land of the stranger " 
 (see Rashi on T. B. Kiddushin, 69b). 
 
96 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 the time when God reveals His Shechinah to Israel, 
 He does not reveal it there all at once, because the 
 Israelites would not be able to endure that great boon, 
 and would all die off suddenly. . . . But what does 
 God do ? He reveals it to them bit by bit. At first 
 He causes the desert to rejoice (Isaiah xxxv. 1); after- 
 wards, He makes it blossom as the rose (ihid. 1) ; after 
 that again, the glory of Lebanon is given it [ibid. 2), 
 until finally, all the people see the glory of God 
 {ibid. 2). It is obvious from these remarks, that the 
 Rabbins discerned a religious message in the world of 
 nature. They saw God in the blossoming field as well 
 as in the solitude of the desert. And yet, as we saw 
 before, they materialised the Shechinah so very much. 
 
 Yet another specimen of this materialisation is to 
 be found in Yalkut on inS27m commenting on verse 
 " Rise up. Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered " 
 (Numbers x. 35). Moses sought to let the Israelites 
 know that the Shechinah was with them because he 
 had had the Divine promise, " Behold, I send an 
 angel before thee" (Exodus xxiii. 20).^^^ When God 
 promised him that " My presence shall go with thee " 
 (Exodus xxxiii. 14), Moses comes and says to the people, 
 " Arise and journey, for verily the Shechinah is in the 
 Ark." The people replied, "We do not believe this." 
 Immediately, Moses exclaimed, " Rise up, Lord, let thine 
 enemies be scattered" (Numbers x. 35). Forthwith 
 " the Ark trembled with movement and the people 
 believed." This movement was the movement of the 
 Shechinah, which, in this passage, is looked upon as the 
 material indwelling of God in the midst of Israel. 
 
NOTES 97 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER V 
 
 (1) In T. B. Posahini 5a we get the question, " To what may the 
 saints be likened in comparison with God ? " And the answer is, " As 
 a candle before a torch." 
 
 (2) In the Midrash Yelamdenu on inS5;na there is a more lengthy form 
 of this serpents and scorpions tale. There is added to it one of the king- 
 parables so common in the Midrashic literature. 
 
 (3) T. B. Berachoth 64a assigns the " Ziv " to every one who 
 " partakes of a meal at which a ' Talmid lialiam ' is present." This is 
 part of an oft-recurring Rabbinic idea. The pious student of the Torah 
 possesses a special degree of Divine Immanence ; and he is able, so to 
 speak, to shed this godliness upon those in contact with him. Thus the 
 proverb, ij^c'? 3id pns*? 3ia, " "Well-being to the saint implies well-being to 
 his neighbour ; M2vh 'in yo'-i'y 'ix, " Woe to the sinner means woe to his 
 neighbour," holds a purely religious as well as ethical import. 
 
 (4) In Tanhuma on nW'i Ruth's change of faith is expressed by 
 nj'Dcn '£333. Here we get the pure proselyte idea ; so also in Tanhuma 
 on nn', where Jethro is described as follows : " He was an idolatrous priest, 
 but came and cleaved to Moses and entered underneath the wing of the 
 Shechinah." Still there is no reason to assume that Jethro actually 
 became a proselyte. The Rabbis held conflicting views on the point 
 According to Exodus Rabba i. 35, xxvii. 2, Jethro merely abandoned 
 idol- worship because he thought it foolish. According to Mechilta on 
 nn' Jethro gave Zipporah as wife to Moses, on condition that he brought 
 up their eldest son in the worship of idols ; and Moses swore to respect 
 this condition. Jethro could not surely have desired such an object had 
 he abandoned idolatry. 
 
 (5) The Yalkut on Isaiah xli. (and again on Psalm ex.) has the 
 broader view (based on the verse "i3i mina Tj;n 'o) of Abraham sitting on 
 God's right hand (Psalm ex. 1) and stirring up the nations to come under 
 the wings of the Shechinah. This may mean either mere abandonment 
 of idolatry, or a recognition of a universalistic Deity. 
 
 (6) A glaring instance of the material conception of Shechinah is 
 also furnished by a passage in T. B. Megillah 29a. " The father of 
 Samuel and Levi were once sitting in the synagogue of ' Shef Ve-Yatib,' 
 in Nehardea. They suddenly heard a sound of movement. It was the 
 Shechinah coming. They at once rose and went out. R. Shesheth (who 
 was blind) was once sitting in the same sjoiagogue, and when the 
 Shechinah came, he did not go out. Then the ministering angels came 
 and struck terror into him. . . ." In the end R. Shesheth addresses 
 the Shechinah, and the latter advises the angels to cease from vexing him. 
 The ideas here are (a) the Shechinah is something material that can be 
 heard and seen ; (b) it is a Person to be addressed and prayed to. 
 
 (7) Noteworthy here is the identification of Shechinah with angel, 
 just as we saw Philo identify the latter with Logos or Logoi. 
 
 H 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 SHECHINAH PERSONIFIED 
 
 The Shechinah has a " Face," m^Dtun ^dd. It often 
 speaks and acts, sings with joy or cries with grief, 
 admonishes and remarks and encourages, becomes angry 
 and appeased again, in just the same way that a human 
 being does all these things. No dualism of deities is 
 thereby intended. The sinfulness of recognising nvT»"i"l 
 ("two divinities") was reiterated by the Rabbins with 
 untiring emphasis. This personification is probably 
 the old Biblical anthropomorphic description of God 
 carried over to the Shechinah. The immanent presence 
 of God in Israel, in the world, and in man is a per- 
 sonality, and is looked upon and described as possessing 
 all the attributes which are commonly associated with 
 personality .^^^ 
 
 (A) The "Face of the Shechinah" 
 
 In T. B. Barachoth 64a, " He that goes out from 
 the synagogues and enters the House of Study to 
 engage in the Torah will have the merit of receiving 
 the Face of the Shechinah." 
 
 In T. B. Sanhedrin 103a, " There are four classes of 
 men who will never receive the Face of the Shechinah, 
 viz. scoffers, hars, hypocrites, and calumniators. 
 
 Leviticus Rabbi xxiii. 13, "He that sees the naked- 
 ness of another's body and does not feast his eyes 
 
SHECHINAH PERSONIFIED 99 
 
 thereon, will be worthy to receive the face of the 
 Shechinah." 
 
 T. B. Sukkah 45b, " The world will never have less 
 than thirty-six saints who will receive the Shechinah 
 every day." 
 
 Leviticus Rabba xxx. 2, also the Tanna Debe Elijahu 
 ii. give another version of the aforegoing passage as 
 follows : " There are seven classes of saints who will in the 
 future time receive the Face of the Shechinah. . . ." ^^^ 
 
 Song of Songs Rabba ii., as also Mechilta on "nn"^ 
 (reproduced in Yalkut ad loc.) has "He who visits the 
 ' Haber ' acts as though he received the Face of the 
 Shechinah." ^^^ 
 
 Numbers Rabba xix. 18, Tanhuma on npn has 
 the follow^ing quaint assertion : " All the saints who 
 will be descended from Adam wdll suffer the primordial 
 Divine decree of death. But before their death they 
 will see the Face of the Shechinah and reprove Adam, 
 saying, ' It is thou that hast been the cause of death 
 to us ! ' " * 
 
 * The idea of seeing the Shechinah when man is at the point of death 
 occurs in Rabbinic literature in various forms and presents some difficulties. 
 As far as my investigations go, I conclude that it is the result of the combination 
 of several ideas, Biblical and post Biblical. These are (1) an idea such as is 
 found in Judges xiii. 22, " And Manoah said unto his wife, We shall surely die, 
 because we have seen God " (cp. ibid. vi. 22). Just as there are passages in 
 the O.T. where God is represented as walking and talking familiarly with men, 
 so there are places, like the one here, which show that it was, at one time, a 
 firm belief that to see God meant death to man. (2) Mystical ideas found 
 occasionally in the Psalms, e.g. "For Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell or 
 sheol ; neither wilt Thou suffer Thy pious one to see corruption. Thou wilt 
 show me the path of life : in Thy presence is fulness of joy ; at Thy right hand 
 pleasures for evermore " (Psalm xvi. 10-11). In the moment of highest mystical 
 rapture, the good man feels that death will not be the evil that men imagine, 
 not merely a prolongation of life in another form, but a heightening of life to 
 the highest possible stage, a life in God. IVIan will then attain his highest bliss, 
 his truest goal, he will live in the contemplation of the Shechinah. The O.T. 
 is not plentiful in this exalted teaching of the spiritual life of man after death. 
 But if one reads several passages, particularly of the Psalms, from this mystical 
 standpoint, one can easily see that the Jews of those epochs had undoubted 
 glimmerings of it, and knew how to give expression to it. It is quite easy to 
 see, how the characters of Elijah and Enoch who " were not, because God took 
 them," must have impressed themselves upon the ancient Jews as the highest 
 
loo THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 Deuteronomy Eabba vii. 8 declares that in the 
 days of Moses the ordinary Israelite had the privilege 
 of being spoken to by the Shechinah " Face to face " ; 
 a privilege not even accorded in later times to Ezekiel 
 the Prophet. 
 
 Yalkut Psalm xvii., "How great is the virtue of 
 charity ! If a man gives only one coin to a poor 
 brother, he becomes worthy to receive the Face of the 
 Shechinah." 
 
 Ihid. " Even the evil-doers, provided they have 
 given alms to the poor, will have the merit of receiving 
 the Face of the Shechinah." * 
 
 Exodus Eabba v. 9 has a peculiar usage of pDi!J"iD "n, 
 " two faces " (cl12^D = Greek 'rrpoaw'irov)^^ The question 
 discussed is, "How did the voice [at Sinai] issue forth?" 
 And the reply is, that it went out in pDisiD it, on 
 the one hand putting to death the idolatrous nations 
 who would not accept it, and on the other hand, giving 
 life unto the Israelites who accepted the Torah. The 
 probable explanation of the phrase is, as the author of 
 the commentary n»D n"^ says pDio ^3mi = "in two 
 difterent styles." To the Israelites the Voice had a 
 quickening vitalising tone. To the idolaters it sounded 
 as a death-knell — and in fact became the harbinger of 
 death. But what one has to notice is the peculiar 
 tendency to personification. The Voice of God had 
 " Faces." This shows that the " Voice " was often 
 
 and sublimest types of life divinely led ; and it is quite natural to suppose, that a 
 spiritual life of this kind after death, was the aspiration cherished by the best 
 and worthiest souls among them. The Rabbins seem to have adopted some 
 such doctrine as this, and individualised it still further. The meritorious Jew 
 beholds the Shechinah at death, i.e. no Sheol or Gehinnom awaits him — these 
 ideas belong to a lower strata of Biblical and Rabbinic thought ; he passes into 
 the world of Divine light and life, there to get that nearness to God which it is 
 80 hard to get while in the coils of the ordinary mortality. I am aware, how- 
 ever, that the views of the best Christian scholars to-day are opposed to any 
 8uch theory as this. 
 
 * Here we have an instance of what we alluded to in a previous note, viz. 
 the seeing of Shechinah when man is at the point of death. 
 
VI SHECHINAH PERSONIFIED .ici 
 
 conceived by the Rabbins in the same immanent sense 
 as the Shechinah. There are numerous examples of 
 this in Rabbinic literature/^^ * 
 
 An even more strikinsf instance of the " Face " 
 not of the Shechinah but connected with it, is the 
 following from Tanhuma on inn. Manasseh, King 
 of Israel, makes an idol and places it in the Holy 
 of Holies (2 Chronicles xxxiii. 7)/^*^ God resents this, 
 and says that Manasseh's object in placing the idol 
 there was " to drive out Me from the Holy House." 
 At first the idol had only one pjis-id and it was placed 
 in the western corner of the Temple. The Shechinah 
 then w^ent to another corner from which the " Face " 
 could not be seen. When Manasseh saw this, he made 
 four pDiiiiD to the idol, in order that the Shechinah 
 might be utterly banished from the Temple. This 
 ascription of a ?i12-id to an idol is extraordinary ! It 
 shows clearly that these forms of personification of the 
 Shechinah have a strongly materialist basis. The afore- 
 going Midrash also points to one distinctly-marked 
 department of Rabbinic thought on Immanence, viz. the 
 Immanence of God in the Temple, ^^^ 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTEE VI 
 
 (1) The phrase d'Je: '^npa, literally "receiving the face of," is also iised 
 of ordinary social intercourse, and means " to receive a friend," or " to 
 visit the house of a friend," as e.g. the Eabbinic injunction that " It is 
 the duty of every man to visit the house of his master on the festival" 
 
 * This curious intermingling of visual with auditory sensations is a striking 
 feature of mystical experience. For an excellent psychological analysis of the 
 subject, see Miss Underbill's chapter on "Voices and Visions" in her book on 
 Mysticism already alluded to. "Plotinus," says Miss Underbill, "sees the 
 Celestial Venus, Suso the Eternal Wisdom, St. Theresa the humanity of Christ, 
 Blake the strange personages of his prophetic books " (p. 326). Interpreting 
 the Israelitish encampment at Sinai from the same standpoint, we can very well 
 say, that so overcome were the Israelites with the momentousness of the Revelation, 
 that in their profound state of mystical reverie, they objectivised the Voice, 
 giving it a pictorial form, while at the same time hearing it as a distinct 
 articulate inward voice. 
 
I02 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 The Tanhuma on Ncn 'd has the remark : " He that visits (or receives) an 
 old man acts as though he were to receive the face of the Shechinah." 
 Here the two ideas are conjoined. 
 
 (2) It is to be noted that clustering round the usage of ny^c-n ■•:s there 
 is nearly always the idea of futurity. The phrase usually runs hnph I'ny 
 nrDB-n -:3, " will, in the future, receive the face of the Shechinah." What 
 is this future ? It is difficult to answer. The phrase seems to cover and 
 convey a variety of meanings. As will be seen from the instances 
 given, it often alludes to the bliss of a future life after death. God 
 will be immanent in the soul of the departed saint. Mortal spirit 
 will mingle with immortal. The human soul will become part of the 
 Divine world -soul. The phrase, "But the soul of my lord shall be 
 bound in the bundle of life with the Lord thy God" (1 Samuel xxv. 29), 
 an idea oft repeated in parts of the Jewish liturgy to-day, seems to have 
 a similar meaning. The passage in T. B. Sanhedrin 103a (same in T. B. 
 Sotah 42b) about the "four classes who will not receive the face of the 
 Shechinah, viz. the scoifers, the liars, the hypocrites, and the calumniators," 
 also seems to allude to the spiritual condemnation of their souls after 
 death. In fact, the Rabbinic interpretation of " cutting off of the soul " 
 seems to belong to exactly the same order of ideas as this of " not receiving 
 the face of the Shechinah." Where no futurity is alluded to, as in a 
 remark like that of T. B. Sabbath 127a, "The entertaining of strangers 
 on Sabbath is a greater virtue than that of receiving the Face of the 
 Shechinah," the allusion seems to be either to the appearance at the 
 Temple festivities on the three great festivals of the year (the Temple 
 being the place where the Shechinah was particularly immanent) or to 
 attendance at synagogue (which also is always described as pervaded by 
 the Shechinah). A saying like this, about the high sanctity implied in 
 the entertainment of strangers at home, is a good specimen of Rabbinical 
 ethical teachings. A home where charity is dispensed is holier than even 
 Temple or synagogue. 
 
 Further, the fact that " receiving the face of the Shechinah " may 
 allude to the appearance of the Israelite at the Temple festivities on the 
 three great Festivals, is patent from a statement like the following in 
 Aboth De R. Nathan xii, vipai ny^e/n ':s h'^pnh pa'^im ywicef din 'n ihn. 
 . . " These are the men who forsake their silver and their gold, and go 
 up to receive the Face of the Shechinah in the Temple." 
 
 (3) For a comprehensive sketch of the nature and history of the 
 inn in the Talmud, see the excellent article "Haber" in the Jewish 
 Encyclopcedia, vol. vi. 
 
 (4) The word n ( = Greek 8vo) is sometimes spelt ri, which is more in 
 accord with phonology. The phrase o'siisna m occurs very frequently in 
 connexion with the Rabbinic legends about the formation of the first 
 woman. Cp. T. B. Erubin 18a, jib-ki.t DnnS i'? vn psi^n£3 m, "Adam had 
 originally two faces." Out of one of these. Eve was created. Similarly 
 T. B. Berachoth 61a. 
 
 (5) See Exodus Rabba xxviii. 6. 
 
 (5a) In. T. B. Sanhedrin 103b there is a slightly different version of 
 Manasseh's idol. 
 
VI NOTES 103 
 
 (6) The ascription of a " Face " to the Shechinah is sometimes also 
 expressed by the word pjip'x (Greek fiX^^> €LX(i>vt'OV = image). It is the 
 Jerusalem Targum for men = " likeness " (see Genesis Rabba xL 5, 
 Leviticus Rabba xxiii. 12, where it is used of a painter). But in the 
 following passage in the Tanhuma on mc "n it is used of the image of 
 God which is immanent in the world. " If a mortal king engraves his 
 image upon a ta])let, the tablet is larger than the image. But God is 
 great, and yet His image is greater than the whole world." God is in 
 the world but is greater than it ; the world is only a part of God. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 (b) general personification 
 
 T. B. ^AGGIGAH 15b, also in T. B. Sanhedrin 46a, ''When 
 man is in trouble what does the Shechinah say ? " 
 I'lTiD "'D^p, •'tUNiD -"^hp " I feel a weariness in my head ; 
 I feel a weariness in my arm." (See Rashi in Sanhedrin 
 46a for etymology of "'iSp, a strange term.) The under- 
 lying idea in a statement like this seems to be the ever- 
 constant presence of the Shechinah when man is in 
 trouble. Man is so closely hedged round by the Divine 
 that the latter even feels the pain of the former. 
 
 T. B. Sotah 5a, " The Shechinah mourns over the 
 proud man." The elucidation of this saying is given 
 in an adjoining passage, which reads as follows : " If a 
 man is proud, God says ' that man and I cannot dwell 
 together. There is no room in the world for both of 
 us.' " The existence of the sin of pride creates a con- 
 stant warfare between the immanent Deity who fills 
 the world and the possessor of pride. Pride attempts 
 to oust this Deity, but is conquered and laid low by 
 it. The Shechinah accordingly " mourns " over its 
 victim. ^"^^ 
 
 Genesis Rabba xlvii. 6 alludes to Abraham speaking 
 in companion-like manner with the Shechinah. The 
 angels come to engage Abraham in conversation with 
 them. " No," says he, " let me first take leave of the 
 Shechinah who is greater than either of us." Here the 
 
 104 
 
CH. VII GENERAL PERSONIFICATION 105 
 
 Shechinah is represented as in the world : Abraham 
 holds communion with the omnipresent Deity. Genesis 
 Rabba xlviii. 9 speaks of " the Shechinah waiting for 
 them " (in allusion to the three men coming to visit 
 Abraham in Genesis xviii. 2)/"^ Exodus Rabba ii, 5 
 speaks of the Shechinah as being inside the burning 
 bush and speaking with Moses. This adoption of the 
 bush as the meeting - place between Moses and the 
 Shechinah is intended, says the Midrash, to teach 
 mankind " that no spot on earth is unoccupied by the 
 Shechinah, not even a bush." This is a clear enuncia- 
 tion of the doctrine of God's Immanence in the universe. 
 
 Numbers Rabba v. 1, in a dissertation on the verse 
 "Cut ye not off the tribe of the families of the Koha- 
 thites from among the Levites " (Numbers iv. 18), 
 speaks of the Shechinah as nni ni?iiD, " attacking 
 them" (the Kohathites). The Kohathites in their 
 over-zeal to carry the Ark exceeded the bounds of 
 mutual self-respect. This was sin for which punishment 
 was certain. There is an inevitable collision between 
 sinfulness and God who fills all space.* 
 
 Deuteronomy Rabba i. 17 has the following: 
 " When the enemy came to lay Jerusalem waste there 
 were in Jerusalem sixty myriads of demons. They were 
 stationed at the entrance to the Temple and ready to 
 attack the invaders. But when they saw that the 
 Shechinah looked on in silence (and made no attempt 
 to defend the holy House) they gave way before the 
 enemy and allowed them a free entry." Here is the 
 Personified Shechinah whose abode and home was the 
 Temple. The Shechinah here, as in numerous passages, 
 is a term for the Immanence of God in the Temple.^^^ 
 
 Closely associated with the foregoing is the Midrash 
 Rabba of Lamentations (Introduction 25), where there 
 
 * See, further on, chapter on relation between Shechinah and Sin, 
 
io6 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 is a curious representation of the Shechinah dwell- 
 ing three and a half years on the Mount of Olives, 
 with the object of inducing the Israelites to repent. 
 But in vain. The Shechinah in despair exclaims, 
 "I will go and return to my place" (Hosea v. 15). 
 It is concerning that hour that it is said, " Give 
 glory to the Lord your God, before He cause 
 darkness" (Jeremiah xiii. 16). Darkness came in the 
 shape of the ruin of the Temple and Holy City. The 
 Shechinah " returning to its place " expresses the fact 
 of the immanent God of the Temple abandoning it. 
 Hence its ruin. The introduction of the figure of 
 "darkness" shows, as was said before, the common 
 portrayal of the Shechinah as material light. 
 
 But perhaps the finest personification of the 
 Shechinah as the immanent God of Jerusalem and the 
 Temple is to be found in the Introduction to Lamenta- 
 tions Rabba xxv. (also found in a shorter and more 
 prosaic form in T. B. Rosh Hashana 31a, and in Aboth 
 De R. Nathan, chap, xxxiv.) : "The Shechinah made 
 ten journeys : 
 
 (1 
 
 (2 
 (3 
 
 (4 
 (5 
 (6 
 (7 
 
 (8 
 
 (9 
 (10 
 
 From cherub to cherub. 
 
 From cherub to the threshold of the House. 
 
 From the threshold of the House to the 
 
 Cherubim. 
 From the Cherubim to the Eastern Gate. 
 From the Eastern Gate to the Court. 
 From the Court to the roof. 
 From the roof to the Altar. 
 From the Altar to the wall. 
 From the wall to the city. 
 From the city to the Mount of Olives. ..." 
 
 R. Aha said it may be likened unto an earthly 
 monarch who one day went out of his palace in great 
 
VII GENERAL PERSONIFICATION 107 
 
 anger. Every now and then lie returned to the palace, 
 and embracing its walls and its pillars he would say- 
 tearfully, " Hail ! beloved palace of mine ; Hail ! 
 house of my sovereignty ; Hail ! house of my 
 glory ; Peace to thee from now and evermore ! " Even 
 so was it with the Shechinah. When the Shechinah 
 departed from the Holy Temple it kept returning at 
 intervals, embracino^ and kissinsj its hallowed walls and 
 pillars, and bitterly weeping, it kept exclaiming, " Peace 
 to thee, my hallowed shrine ! Peace to thee ! abiding 
 place of my sovereign power; Peace to thee! residence of 
 my glory ; Peace to thee from now and for ever more." 
 
 Mechilta on nStt?l, edit. Friedmann, p. 24 (same in 
 T. B. Sotah 15a, Tanhuma and Rabba on n^tDl, and 
 reproduced in Yalkut ad loc.) speaks of the Shechinah 
 as being engaged in the burial rites of Moses. But 
 here, as very often, Shechinah may be merely another 
 expression for God. Still, it is not far-fetched to 
 interpret it as alluding bo the Immanence of God. 
 Moses was so saturated with the Divine presence that 
 the latter even remained with him intact at his death. 
 According to Tanhuma on pnriNl the Shechinah ever 
 " walked " on the right hand of Moses (based on Isaiah 
 Ixiii. 12). This is another way of showing Moses' 
 ceaseless Divine environment. And this remained until 
 the last rites connected with his burial had been 
 completed. 
 
 Yalkut on Numbers iii. 15 tells of the Shechinah 
 walking in front of Moses (at the time of the numbering 
 of the people) and saying to him, " There are so-and-so 
 many children [of the tribe of Levi] in this tent." 
 
 Sifri on inSi^ni Numbers x. 33, " And the Ark of 
 the Covenant of the Lord went before them in the three 
 days' journey, to search out a resting-place for them," 
 declares that this is an allusion to the Shechinah which 
 
io8 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 walked before the Israelites in their march, clearing 
 and safe-guarding the road for them. The Shechinah is 
 likened to an idip"'I:d3n, a king's representative lieutenant, 
 who is charged with making all necessary preparations 
 for the royal suite/^^ 
 
 The following illustrations show how the Shechinah, 
 strongly personified, is used as an interchangeable term 
 with " God," expressing Divine Immanence. 
 
 Frequently where one passage in Kabbinic literature 
 has the word " Shechinah," a parallel passage somewhere 
 else uses the term " God." And more than this. 
 Frequently the two terms are used indiscriminately in 
 one and the same passage. 
 
 First may be given passages which deal with God's 
 universality, His filling the world. 
 
 T. B. Sanhedrin 39a. The passage commencing Vn 
 ^N^'bni "-h nDiD Nirrrr. R. Gamliel is asked by an infidel 
 how many Shechinah are there in existence, seeing that, 
 according to the Jews' belief, wherever ten men are 
 gathered together there the Shechinah is.^^^ Gamliel's 
 reply is to the efi"ect that the Shechinah is God, who is 
 everywhere. There is one and one only sun, which 
 lights up every nook and corner of the universe. How 
 much more so is it the case, that the one only God 
 makes His presence known and felt everywhere. 
 
 T. B. Baba Bathra 25a. " How do you know that 
 the Shechinah is everywhere ? " The answer is derived 
 in characteristic Talmudic fashion from Zechariah ii. 3, 
 " And, behold, the angel that talked with me went forth, 
 and another angel went out to meet him " (see Eashi 
 Baba Bathra 25a). A longer and more fanciful form of 
 the same idea, is the one subjoined to it. God's mes- 
 sengers are not as man's. When the latter have executed 
 their message, they have to return to the sender and 
 inform him of the fact. But God's messengers need not 
 
VII GENERAL PERSONIFICATION 109 
 
 return to their sender. He is accessible to them in 
 whatever spot they may chance to go (quoted also in 
 Mechilta on ni). Genesis Rabba Ixviii. 9 (and to be found 
 passim in Rabbinic literature, as in Philo), says, " Why 
 is God called ' place ' ? Because He is the place of 
 the world, and the world is not His place." Similarly, 
 "Why is God called 'a dwelling-place' (Psalm xc. 1)? 
 Because He is the dwelling-place of the world, and 
 the world is not His dwelling-place." The relations 
 between God and the world, are quaintly compared 
 with those subsisting between the horse and its rider. 
 The horse is subservient to the rider and not vice 
 versa* So the world is subservient to God. God is 
 upon it, and in it, and moulds it as He wills. This is 
 a very fine dictum of the Rabbins on the world as. 
 spirit. If all these sayings are compared with a state- 
 ment like, " There is no spot on earth unoccupied by 
 the Shechinah," it is clear that the Immanence of God is 
 identical with the Immanence of the Shechinah. 
 
 Another interestino; view of the aforeo-oinof is that 
 of T. B. Berachoth 10a (given in slightly altered form 
 in Leviticus Rabba iv. 8).^''^ It takes the form of a 
 comparison between God and the soul. Just as the 
 soul fills the body, so God fills the world.f Just as the 
 
 * i.e. The rider is dependent upon the horse for whatever he wants to do, 
 and yet he is gi-eater than the horse ; any success that attends his errand is 
 due to him and not to the horse ; in the last resort it is he that holds the 
 horse ; the horse does not hold him. He far transcends it. 
 
 t This analogy between God and the soul has a larger import than would 
 at first thought appear. It really touches the root-problem of Immanence. It 
 is true that the soul fills the body, but only in the sense that its energies flow 
 through the body. But in reality it far transcends the body. It is not inside 
 the body in any physical sense. The body is merely its organ and its instru- 
 ment. Exactly so with God and the world. The traces of Divine action are 
 everjr^vhere. But there are spheres of Divine action which transcend the limits 
 of the universe. The Immanence of God is accordingly not opposed to the 
 idea of the Transcendence of God. Unless we admit this, we land ourselves 
 in Pantheism. God is not coterminous with the universe as Pantheism would 
 say. He is in the universe and above it, at one and the same time. This 
 Rabbinic analogy between God and the soul has thus a true philosophical 
 bearing, although couched in the usual childlike language of the Rabbins. 
 
no THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 soul bears the body, so God endures the world. Just as 
 the soul sees but is not seen, so God sees but is unseen. 
 Just as the soul feeds the body (i.e. spiritually, in- 
 tellectually) so God gives food to the world. 
 
 Other forms of the same idea are the following: 
 Song of Songs Rabbi i. " The throne of God exerts its 
 sway from world's end to world's end." A truly poetic 
 description of Omnipresence.'^ Song of Songs Rabba 
 iii. 8 : comparison of the Shechinah to a cave by the Sea. 
 The sea rushes into the cave, filling it, but the sea is 
 just as full as before. So the Shechinah pervades the 
 Tabernacle, or the Temple, but yet is quite as immanent, 
 all-pervasive in the world at large. 
 
 Deuteronomy Rabba ii. 10, God is both far and 
 near. Far, because the distance of earth to heaven is 
 " a five hundred years' journey." Near, because when 
 man utters or even meditates a prayer, God is at hand to 
 hear it, as it is said, " Thou that hearest prayer, unto 
 Thee shall all flesh come." <^^ (Psalm Ixv. 2). As the 
 commentary HDiriD ''no points out, "it" = Nil"' i^i^n i^ 
 ^SsriDrr = He that prays approximates to God, God is 
 
 * A more common designation of the "Throne" in Kabbinic literature as 
 well as in the Jewish Liturgy is " Kisse Ha-Kabod." "The throne of Glory," the 
 " glory" being a synonym for Shechinah, the omnipresent manifestation of God. 
 In T. B. Haggigah 12b and 13a there is a considerable amount of matter on 
 this point, the pivot on which it rests being Psalm Ixxxix. 14, "Justice and 
 judgment are the habitation of Thy throne : mercy and truth shall go before 
 Thy face." All these ideas of justice, throne, mercy, truth, face, figure so pre- 
 eminently in the mediaeval Kabbalah ! There is to be found within the 
 large domain of the Rabbinic writings, a higher and a lower, a more spiritual 
 and a more material line of thought about the Throne. Thus in T. B. 
 Sabbath 88b when Moses ascends the mount to receive the tables of stone, 
 the angels object ; whereupon God tells Moses to take a firm stand by holding 
 on to the throne. This is a very materialistic conception. On the other 
 hand, the saying of R. Eliezer (in Sabbath 152b) about the souls of the righteous 
 being concealed under the throne, certainly sounds a high S2)iritual note. 
 There is a fine remark in the Zohar (on Genesis xlv. 27, based on a similar 
 idea to be found in the Talmud) about the likeness of Jacob being engraven on 
 the throne. This is a beautiful piece of mystical teaching. The oneness 
 of man and Deity which is the result of the highest communion between man 
 and God, could not be more poetically summai-ised ! See also Kimhi on 
 Isaiah Ix. 13, — one of the rare instances of a mystical quotation by Kimhi, 
 
vir GENERAL PERSONIFICATION iii 
 
 at his side ; He is with him. If this is so, in spite of 
 God's immeasurable distance from earth, the remark can 
 only be plausibly interpreted in the sense of the Divine 
 Immanence in man. When man prays, he arouses the 
 Divine element that is imbedded in him, that is part 
 of his natural constitution. 
 
 Euth Rabba v. 4 speaks of the saints as dwelling 
 " not in the shadow of the morning, nor in the shadow 
 of the wings of the north, nor of the wings of the sun 
 of Chayott, or Cherubim, or Seraphim, but only in the 
 shadow of Him through whose word the world was." 
 It is a quaint picture of God as overshadowing, brood- 
 ing over, the universe ; and the saints nestle within the 
 sphere of this Divine world-embrace. 
 
 An important Rabbinic idea found in different 
 forms in many places in Talmud and Midrashim, is to 
 the effect that the Divine voice at Sinai came to 
 each one ^'ni "i^ f?D roi, " according to the comprehension 
 of each." ^^^ This is a commentary on the Psalmist's 
 expression (xxix. 4), " The voice of the Lord is power- 
 ful." It was not the outwardly audible voice of God, 
 for the universe would be unable to endure this. It 
 was the inner voice as each one comprehended it. At 
 the time of the Revelation on Sinai every man felt a 
 Voice within him — a Voice which gave him the counsel 
 which best answered his own needs. We have here, a 
 very fine attempt on the part of our ancient teachers, 
 to strip the Biblical account of the Revelation of its 
 materialistic dress, and to spiritualise the whole episode. 
 The God of Sinai was the sacred Divine Voice within 
 as well as without man.* 
 
 * I am aware that this interpretation is open to question. I find much 
 support, however, from the way in which the Midrashim attribute the origin of 
 the prophetic power among Israelites to the fact of their having received the 
 Voice at Sinai (see particularly Exodus Rabba xxviii. 6). It shows that accom- 
 panying and corresponding to the " outwardness " of the Voice, there must have 
 been an " inwardness " in the hearers. 
 
112 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 An interesting instance of how the Eabbins actually 
 deduced a series of important ceremonial laws, from the 
 fact of God's omnipresence, is given in the Sifri on Nsn ^D, 
 " For the Lord thy God walketh in the midst of thy 
 camp" — "hence we learn [says Sifri] that man may 
 not read the ' shema ' inside a wash-house, nor may he 
 enter a bath if he has Phylacteries or Hebrew books in 
 his hands." Although God is everywhere, the emblems 
 which proclaim His holiness must not intermingle with 
 impure agencies. ^^^ 
 
 A similar instance to the aforesaid is that of T. B. 
 Kiddushin 31a (repeated in Yalkut on Isaiah vi.), 
 *' Man is prohibited from walking four cubits with a 
 proud mien, because it is said, 'The whole earth is 
 full of His glory.' " The sin of pride amounts to a 
 denial of God's Immanence in the world. ^^"^ E. Hun a 
 in the same passage relates that he never walked four 
 cubits with uncovered head because he recognised that 
 the Shechinah was above his head. The " Shechinah " is 
 here an equivalent to the Immanent Deity. E. Isaac 
 says in the same connexion, " He who sins in secret 
 acts as though he were pressing against the feet of the 
 Shechinah." The underlying idea of the latter passage 
 is that the immanent God permeates all space. When 
 sin comes on the scene it naturally collides with this 
 Divinity. The sinner is thus the antithesis to the 
 immanent God. 
 
 The Yalkut on Jeremiah chap, xxiii. v. 24, " Can 
 any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see 
 him, etc.," . . . illustrates God's Immanence in the 
 universe by the figure of an architect who planned a 
 city full of caves and subterranean passages. After 
 a time misfortune befell the citizens, and they hurried 
 to deposit secretly what valuables they possessed inside 
 these dark places. Whereupon, the architect said, 
 
vii GENERAL PERSONIFICATION 113 
 
 " You may strive to bide your possessions as you will, 
 from one another or from the enemy. But you can 
 hide naught from me. For I have planned not only 
 the city, but also the secret hiding-places." ^"^ * 
 
 To the preceding instances which have been intended 
 to show what the Rabbins thought on the fact of God's 
 Immanence (whether by the usage of the term " God " 
 or " Shechinah," both being interchangeable), I add 
 the following series of quotations which deal with His 
 immanent activity in man and the world. 
 
 Genesis Rabba xi. 11, "God on the seventh day 
 ceased from the creation of His world, but not from the 
 creation of good and evil men." 
 
 Genesis Rabba viii. 13, "God blesses bridegrooms. 
 He adorns brides. He visits the sick, He buries the 
 dead."^^^^ This is a graphic way of showing God's 
 close participation in the afiairs of man. He is mth 
 us in our joy, as He is with us in our pain and sorrow. 
 
 Genesis Rabba xlix. 3, " No day passes unless God 
 is rrSiJO hw "r^ni TTDhn ojino, i.e. introduces a new law in 
 the Beth Din of Above. The Rabbins were fond of 
 representing God as presiding over a court composed 
 of angels. The drift of the saying would therefore 
 seem to be, that God is daily creating new rules and 
 regulations for the guidance of mankind. No day but 
 reveals the activity of God's finger in mundane events. 
 This activity at times takes on almost a humorous 
 turn. Because God, or rather, because His Shechinah is 
 so beneficently imbedded in man and the world, — He is 
 the universal marriage-maker. It can be no other than 
 the Divine hand which will bring man and woman 
 together in the bonds of love, although separated from 
 one another by immeasurable distances. AVhat a bizarre 
 
 * i.e. Just as an architect may be said to be immanent in his sketches and 
 plans, or just as a poet is immanent in his poems. 
 
 I 
 
114 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 statement is the following, although very true to 
 experience : iiii^oi ]N^nD 'n"i"pn . . . thn -iidd iS^d« 
 . . . (Genesis Rabba Ixv. 2). And for the same 
 reason the successes and failures of men are the results 
 of the Divine plans brought to bear unremittingly upon 
 the things of the world/^^^ " God is engaged in making 
 ladders upon which one man climbs to success, but down 
 which another descends to failure " (Genesis Rabba Ixviii. 
 4). Leviticus Rabba xxvii. 5 speaks of God's ceaseless 
 activity in the interests of the wronged and persecuted. 
 Commenting on Ecclesiastes iii. 15 fi~n3 nw mpi"' DTr'pNni, 
 it adduces several Biblical examples of Divine inter- 
 ference for the sake of the persecuted, no matter 
 whether the latter be a worthy or unworthy man/^*^ 
 
 Genesis Rabba Ixxvii. i. tells how God allows His 
 beneficent work to be anticipated by good men. This 
 is a similar idea to God causing the Shechinah to rest 
 upon men possessed of certain qualifications. The work 
 of good men is a phase of God's immanent beneficent 
 activity in the world.^^^^ 
 
 A favourite Rabbinic expression is that of man, 
 under certain circumstances, being " a co-worker with 
 God in the work of creation." The Mechilta on nn"' 
 ascribed this function to Moses in his judicial capacity.^^"^ 
 The basic idea is that of God's immanent activity in 
 the world. When man adds his quota of usefulness he 
 ipso facto becomes a co-worker with God. The sum 
 of Divine blessedness in the universe is increased. 
 
 A quaint portrayal of God's immanent activity in 
 nature is the following : " Man can only fashion an image 
 on dry land, but God can do so in water also. When 
 man builds a dwelling, he can only place the dwellers 
 in the upper and lower stories : but God can place 
 them in the hollow also. ..." 
 
 But the boldest and most pictorial representation of 
 
VII GENERAL PERSONIFICATION 115 
 
 these same immaneut ideas of Divine activity is that of 
 Yalkut on Exodus xxxi., where the Almighty is repre- 
 sented as declaring, " From the day of the world's 
 creation even unto this hour I sit upon the Throne of 
 my G-lory, spending one-third of the day in study of 
 Torah, the other third in executing justice, and the last 
 third in practising benevolence and giving sustenance 
 to all mundane creatures." If this passage means 
 anything at all, it alludes to the Divine implanting of 
 these virtues in the hearts of mankind. God's day is 
 eternity, His throne is the universe. The study of the 
 Torah is the emblem of righteousness, truth. The Divine 
 tendencies making for righteousness, truth, benevolence 
 are ingrained in the world ; they are the traces of God, 
 which are part and parcel of the texture of the human 
 soul. 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTEE VII 
 
 (1) In Aboth. De R. Nathan, chap, xxxvi., it is said, " All the time 
 that the Israelites are immersed in immorality (nmyn D'^-ns) the Shechinah 
 keeps away from them, as it is said, ' That He see no unclean thing in 
 thee, and turn away from thee' (Deut. xxiii. 14)." Here the Deity is the 
 personified Shechinah, and there is the antithesis between Shechinah 
 and sin. 
 
 (2) In Genesis Rabba xlviii. 1 on the passage Genesis xviii. 1, the 
 Shechinah stands and allows Abraham to be seated. 
 
 (3) We treat of this subject further on. 
 
 (4) In his edition of the Sifri, Friedmann has an interesting note on 
 noip'BJN. It = ante Caesar. 
 
 (5) That the Shechinah resides in the company of ten, is in T. B. 
 Berachoth 6a. 
 
 (6) See also for same, Deuteronomy Rabba ii. 37, Tanhuma on 
 ntv "n (a much curtailed form). 
 
 (7) Exodus Rabba xxi. 4 has a long excursus on this verse from 
 Psalm Ixv. It gives some beautifully poetic sentiments on Prayer. 
 
 (8) It is found in the Mechilta, Tanhuma, Pesikta De R'Kahana, 
 and Yalkut in their comments on Exodus xix. and xx. (the Revelation on 
 Sinai), as well as in Exodus Rabba v. 9 and xxix. 1. In Exodus Rabba 
 xxxiv. 1 this idea of "ai "n h2 n32 is elaborated by the remark, " God does 
 
ii6 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap, vn 
 
 not come to man oppressively, but commensurately witt man's power of 
 receiving Him." 
 
 (9) A good view of tlie Rabbinic ideas of ceremonial purity and 
 impurity in conjunction with tbeir ideas of God's omnipresence is to be 
 obtained from T. B. Beracboth 22-25. In Tanliuma on nbti o there is 
 a similar combination of ritual ideas, with the teaching of the Divine 
 omnipresence. The Eoman emperor asks R. Akiba why God is permitted 
 to work on the Sabbath ? Why just as on week-days ? He " causes 
 the winds to blow, the clouds to ascend, the rain to fall, the sun to 
 shine, etc." And the answer which Akiba gives is that God dwells in a 
 n^n'n mn by Himself. No one else is with Him and cannot be, because 
 the whole earth is filled with His glory. Therefore in doing the things 
 He does on the Sabbath, He is merely carrying out the kind of work 
 which the Rabbins call ^it:'?B, and hmha is permitted in a Tn'n niB'n on the 
 Sabbath. 
 
 (10) The author of the Dnia.i Vya (Jacob Ben Asher, fourteenth 
 century) in his comments on Exodus xvi. 20 has an interesting homiletical 
 remark on the word d-;;i. Unlike Rashi (who associates it with nBi = 
 worm) he dwells on its connexion with on = to be high, i.e. to be proud, 
 haughty. Connecting this again with the passage in Ezekiel x. 4, 
 " Then the Glory of the Lord went up from the Cherub . . ." where 
 the word for " went up " is dti [from the same root, and the Rabbinical 
 interpretation refers it to the departing of the Shechinah, see T. B. Rosh 
 Hashana 31a ; Lamentations Rabba, Introduction xxv. ; Aboth De R, 
 Nathan 34], he dwells on the fact that the haughty man causes the 
 Shechinah to depart, because he as much as belies the existence of the 
 Shechinah. The end of such a man, continues he, in a moralising strain, 
 is that, just like the manna (in Exodus xvi.), he " breeds worms and 
 stinks" (where the same root dti is employed). 
 
 (11) This Yalkut Midrash seems a reproduction of Tanhuma on ncj 
 (Numbers v. 12). 
 
 (12) That God buries the dead is curiously derived by the Rabbins 
 from Deuteronomy xxxiv. 6, "And He buried him in the valley" ; the 
 first " He" alludes to God. See T. B. Sotah 9b, 14a. 
 
 (13) C]). Genesis Rabba Ixviii. 3, 4, for God as the marriage-maker 
 and the fiasco of the woman who thought to do likewise. 
 
 (14) Rashi on Eccles. iii. 15 reproduces this view. God seeks 
 eternally to punish the evil-doer. What advantage has he therefore out 
 of his evil, seeing that in the end he must be caught in the Divine net and 
 receive his retribution ? 
 
 (15) Exodus Rabba xii. 1 says in a similar sense, "God strengthens 
 the strength of the righteous in order that they should do His Mdll." 
 
 (16) Mechilta on nn' "s ; T. B. Sanhedrin 7a ; T. B. Sabbath 10a. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 (c) THE PERSONIFIED SHECHINAH AS THE IMMANENT 
 GOD IN PALESTINE, THE TEMPLE AND THE SYNAGOGUE 
 
 It is only to be expected that the immanent God of the 
 universe should, in the minds of the Rabbins, be in an 
 even truer and more emphatic sense, the immanent God 
 of the Holy Land. And that God should be immanent 
 in Temple and Synagogue, is a doctrine, the foundation 
 of which, is seen in nearly all the more familiar pass- 
 ages of the Bible and the Jewish Prayer Book. The 
 possibility of an unevenness in the distribution of 
 Immanence, or, in other words, the question whether it 
 can feasibly be said, that God is present in any one 
 place in a greater and higher degree than He is present 
 in any other place, is a matter upon which the Rabbins 
 did not stop to think. For, as has been said before, 
 the Rabbins were no philosophers. They spoke from 
 the heart, not from books. They elaborated no systems 
 and laid down no categories. The gems of the Talmud 
 and Midrash make better poetry than philosophy. We 
 can understand on many grounds how, when treating 
 of such themes as God in the Temple or the Synagogue, 
 in the Holy Land and amidst the praises of Israel, 
 these old Rabbinic theologians should assume the 
 mantle of the poet, and give out their message under 
 the halo of the poet's imagination. But yet, although 
 the Rabbins do not seem to have felt any insuperable 
 
 117 
 
ii8 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 inconsistency between Grod being supremely immanent 
 in the Temple, Palestine, etc., and His Immanence 
 in the universe generally, there can be no question 
 that they noted the difficulty. This can be seen from 
 many passages. Genesis Rabba iii. 9 (and more fully in 
 Numbers Rabba xiii. 6, also quoted in brief in Yalkut on 
 ^D^D2?, Tanhuma on mpD, and T. B. Sabbath 87b)* says 
 that from the first day of creation, God was desirous 
 of dwelling, not above but within the universe (miNna 
 vm"^ii Di? TnS). But He did not do so until the 
 Tabernacle was erected. Then the Shechinah rested 
 within it, and God said, " Let it be written that this 
 day the world was created." " And," continues the fore- 
 going passage, " that day (on which the Tabernacle was 
 erected and consecrated) was, among other things, 
 m'^DmS jitDNi, i.e. the First day of the Shechinah's 
 existence in the universe." ^^^ The basic idea here seems 
 to be, that God's Immanence in the Tabernacle was, so 
 to speak, the origin, source, and fount of His Immanence 
 in the world. The world received this privilege through 
 the Tabernacle. 
 
 A passage of a kindred nature but of another trend 
 is that of Exodus Rabba xxxiv. 1 : " When God said 
 unto Moses, ' Make me a tabernacle,' he (Moses) began 
 to wonder, and exclaimed, ' God's Glory fills the upper 
 and lower worlds, how can a tabernacle suffice to hold 
 Him ? ' And more than this, Moses saw, by prophetic 
 inspiration, that Solomon would one day build a Temple 
 more spacious than the Tabernacle, and yet Solomon 
 would have to exclaim, ' Behold, heaven and the heaven 
 of heavens cannot contain Thee ; how much less this 
 house that I have builded ? ' 'If Solomon's Temple 
 was too small, will not my tabernacle be too small ? ' . . . 
 Then God replied, ' Your thoughts are not as my 
 
 * There is much to the same effect also in Pesikta Rabbati. 
 
SHECHINAH IN PALESTINE 119 
 
 thoughts, ... I can come down if I so will, and make 
 the Shechinah abide in the smallest possible compass, 
 even in a space of one cubit by one cubit.' " ^^"^ Numbers 
 Rabba xii. 3 adds the following significant remark : 
 *' God who dwells in the nh^s hm nno secret recesses 
 of the universe, who sees and is not seen, He is yhh 
 niiNnD "iD^iii, i.e. He desires to dwell in our shadow." 
 If there is any possible difficulty in reconciling the fact 
 of God's immanence in the small space of the Taber- 
 nacle or Temple with the fact of His Immanence in 
 the world at large, the Rabbins forestalled and ex- 
 plained it by saying that it is God's will that it 
 should be so. 
 
 Another quaint attempt to solve the difficulty is 
 that of a passage in Sifri on ipi?. The question is 
 there asked, " Does God seek the welfare of Palestine 
 only? Does He not seek the welfare of the lands as 
 well ? " And the reply given is as follows : " Speaking 
 from a human standpoint, God only seeks the welfare of 
 Palestine ; and as a consequence of His seeking Palestine's 
 welfare, He also seeks that of all other lands wdth it." ^^^ 
 
 From this point of view, then, God's Immanence in 
 the universe generally, is a corollary of His Immanence 
 in the Holy Land. The same Midrash dwells in a 
 similar strain, on the relation between Divine Immanence 
 in Israel and in all Mankind. The latter is a favour 
 granted as a consequence of the former. And so with 
 the Temple in Jerusalem and all other places. It is 
 said of the former, " And mine eyes and mine heart shall 
 be there perpetually" (I Kings ix. 3). Yet, is it not 
 also said, " The eyes of the Lord run to and fro through- 
 out the whole earth" (Zechariah iv, 10)? But the 
 latter is a favour granted in consequence of the former.^^^ 
 
 There is no philosophic reasoning here. It is a 
 good specimen of the Rabbinical style of exegesis. 
 
I20 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 Yet another striking passage on God's Immanence 
 in the Temple and, as a consequence of this, in the 
 universe generally, is to be found in Exodus Rabba ii. 2, 
 " Until the Temple was destroyed the Shechinah abode 
 in it ; after its destruction the Shechinah departed and 
 ascended up to heaven, as it is said, ' The Lord hath 
 established His throne in the heavens' (Psalm ciii. 19)." 
 R. Eliezer, however, said that the Shechinah never left 
 the Western Wall, as it is said, " And mine eyes and 
 mine heart shall be there perpetually" (1 Kings ix. 3), 
 and as it is further said, " I cried unto the Lord with 
 my voice, and He heard me out of His holy hill" 
 (Psalm iii. 4) ; although it is in ruins it is nevertheless 
 the holy hill, the holiness remains still. What does 
 Cyrus say ? He says, " And build the house of the 
 Lord God of Israel, He is the God which is in Jerusalem " 
 (Ezra i. 3). Cyrus hereby implies that although the 
 Holy City was as yet in ruins, nevertheless God was 
 there still. R. Aha said that the Shechinah never 
 departed from the Western Wall, as it is said, " Behold, 
 He standeth behind our wall" (Song of Songs ii. 9), 
 and it is further written, " His eyes behold, His eyelids 
 try, the children of men " (Psalm xi. 4). R. Yannai said 
 although His Shechinah is in heaven, nevertheless His 
 eyes behold. His eyelids try, the children of men."^*^ 
 
 Thus we have three different opinions : — 
 
 (1) That after the fall of the Temple the Shechinah 
 left the universe entirely. 
 
 (2) That it abode in the Western Wall, i.e. that it 
 was still, so to speak, hovering round the spot once so 
 sacred, but went no farther.^^^ 
 
 (3) That it became the possession of the whole 
 world. The latter is the broad view of R. Yannai, when 
 he says that the Heavenly Shechinah still tries and 
 proves the children of men. God's Immanence, which 
 
VIII SHECHINAH IN THE TEMPLE 121 
 
 was concentrated in the Holy House, disseminated itself 
 universally after the House was no more. 
 
 According to a passage in Numbers Rabba i. 3, this 
 concentration of the Shechinah in the Temple was a 
 boon to mankind, saving them from death/*^^ R. Joshua, 
 the son of Levi, said, " that if the nations only knew of 
 what benefit the Tabernacle and Temple have been to 
 them, they would surround them with impenetrable 
 approaches''^ in order to guard them all the more 
 safely. And why so ? Because, before the erection of 
 the Tabernacle, the Word ('Dibbur') used to enter 
 the homes of the nations, and they were frightened to 
 death. . . . And so it was before the erection of the 
 Temple. . . ."(^> 
 
 The Tanhuma on nonn follows up this with the 
 remark : " Before the Temple was built the world stood 
 upon a throne of two legs ; but with the erection of the 
 Temple the universe received its proper and permanent 
 basis (dSii^h DDinD)." The meaning of this curious 
 saying probably is, that the world without God 
 immanent in it, is like a chair which has only two 
 legs to stand on — a useless chair. This immanent God 
 only reached the world via the Tabernacle or Temple. 
 
 A passage in the Introduction to Lamentations 
 Rabba, speaks of God weeping at seeing the destruction 
 of the Temple. God had previously said, " All the 
 while that I dwell therein the nations will be unable 
 to enter it." At His withdrawal the nations entered, 
 and then God said, " I have no longer an abode in the 
 earth, and my Shechinah shall therefore depart to its 
 original seat. . . . Woe is me ! AVhat have I done ? It 
 was for Israel's sake that I caused my Shechinah to dwell 
 below, but now (that I have seen their unworthiness 
 and sin) I have returned to my heavenly home." The 
 ideas in this passage are : — ( 1 ) That in Rabbinic usage, 
 
122 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 not only are God and Shechinali interchangeable terms, 
 but that Shechinah is often spoken of as one of the 
 qualities or possessions of the Deity ; thus the latter 
 speaks of "My Shechinah." (2) The Shechinah is 
 a boon given to the world only because of Israel. 
 The world enjoys the Divine Immanence only through 
 the original virtue of Israel. ^"'^ 
 
 A far more concise statement than any yet given 
 concerning God's Immanence in Palestine is found in 
 T. B. Yebamoth 105b (reproduced in Yalkut on 1 Kings 
 viii.), to the effect that "he who prays must direct his 
 eyes below but his heart above." ^^°^ 
 
 The eyes must be below, because God is immanent 
 in Palestine, as proved from 1 Kings ix. 3, " And mine 
 eyes and mine heart shall be there perpetually." The 
 heart must be above, because God is above, as it is 
 written (Lam. of Jeremiah iii. 41), " Let us lift up 
 our hearts with our hands unto God in the heavens." 
 The correct prayerful attitude is therefore the recognition 
 of God as everywhere, as filhng all space from heaven 
 to earth.* 
 
 The Immanence of God in the Synagogue is a 
 kindred theme to the preceding, and is treated in 
 Rabbinic literature by very much the same methods. 
 There is one long passage in T. B. Berachoth (6 and 7) 
 where the subject figures very prominently. Its main 
 ideas briefly summed up are : ( 1 ) God is in the 
 synagogue (derived from the Psalm Ixxxii. 1, " God 
 standeth in the congregation of the mighty ") ; (2) 
 when God does not find ten males in the synagogue 
 He is angry ; (3) God prays, and the synagogue is His 
 house of prayer (derived from Isaiah Ivi. 7, " Even 
 
 * And it is another illustration of the difference between Immanence and 
 Pantheism. In saying that man should look below when praying, the Rabbins 
 were careful to add the qualification that "the heart must look above." God, 
 said they rightly, is immanent but transcendent. 
 
vin SHECHINAH IN THE SYNAGOGUE 123 
 
 them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them 
 joyful in my house of prayer " ^"^) ; * (4) as a corollary 
 of the preceding, the prayer of man is only heard when 
 prayed in synagogue/^^"^ 
 
 A passage in Numbers Rabba xi, 2 represents God 
 as skipping (iSio) from synagogue to synagogue in 
 order to bless Israel/^"^ The same passage a little 
 further on speaks of God's glory (a synonym for 
 Shechiuah as we shall see later) as standing in the 
 synagogue at the time when the Israelites enter it 
 in order to read the " Shema." And more than this. 
 At the time when the priests in synagogue pronounce 
 their benediction, God stands at the back of them. He 
 is visible from between the shoulders and fingers of 
 the priests. 
 
 A variant of the last passage occurs in Deuteronomy 
 Rabba vii. 2, based on Proverbs viii. 34. God is present 
 at the door of the synagogue, and counts the steps of 
 the worshipper as he wends his way to the holy house, 
 giving him a separate reward for each additional step 
 that he takes. When man leaves the synagogue he has 
 not only had the merit of seeing the " Face " of the 
 Shechinah, but bears away also ever so many blessings.^^^^ 
 
 A passage in Yalkut on Ezekiel i. gives some quaint 
 mathematical figures regarding the distance of God from 
 the earth, and yet God hears prayers in the synagogue. 
 " From earth to the firmament is a distance of five 
 
 * For a very fine poetic-philosophic description of the Shechinah in the 
 Holy Land, see the Kusari of Jehuda Ha - Levi, chap. ii. 14-18. After 
 dwelling on the meaning of such terms as "Shechinah," "Glory of God," 
 "Angel of God," etc., and their connexion with prophets and prophecy 
 (d'k'dj.t "ji'N D•K^J Dn2i hy d'Ssu moc onci, "these are names which apply to 
 things seen by the prophets "), the author proceeds to show how it was that 
 the immanence of God in Palestine had the inevitable result of causing that 
 country to be the first exclusive land for the use of prophecy. The way in 
 which he connects all three ideas — Palestine, Shechinah, Prophecy — is most 
 interesting. The Shechinah, he says, which existed in the first Temple was 
 the means by which all Israelites who had the necessary qualifications of mind 
 and soul attained the degree of prophecy (nVjono nh ]31c.t S3 nxn:'? y*:a n-r\). 
 
124 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 hundred years' travel. The distance from one extremity 
 of the firmament to the other, is another five hundred 
 years' travel. And yet God, though above these, is at the 
 side of the Israelite when he whispers a prayer into 
 His ear in synagogue." ^^^^ 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII 
 
 (1) This was one of the ten " Firsts " for which that day was 
 celebrated ("lai nrn mix hai nnay ncj?). 
 
 (la) The Tanhiuna on i<m has a slightly different version. When 
 God tells Moses to build the Tabernacle, He admits that He has His real 
 Tabernacle above, as it is said, ub'tpd oipn jicnid one ni33 ndd (Jeremiah 
 xvii. 12), and "i3i wip h3^'n2"n^ (Habakkuk ii. 20), etc. ; but His object is to 
 show His love for Israel : " For the sake of my love for you I will leave 
 the upper Temple {]yhvn ''ipon n'a), and will come down and dwell among 
 you." 
 
 A shorter form, based on the same version as that of Exodus Eabba 
 xxxiv. 1 given above, is to be found in the Pesikta Rabbati and Pesikta 
 De R. Kahana on Exodus xxv. 8. It is also quoted in Yalkut on 
 Psalm xci. 
 
 (2) The Mechilta, p. 1 (Friedmann), has the following: "The 
 Shechinah does not reveal itself outside Palestine (pN*? nisina), as it is 
 said, ' And Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish ' (Jonah i. 3). Could he then 
 flee from God ? Is it not said, ' Whither shall I go from Thy spirit 
 . . . ? if I ascend to heaven Thou art there, etc. etc' Also, ' They are 
 the eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth ' 
 (Zechariah iv. 10). Also, ' The eyes of the Lord are in every place, 
 beholding the evil and the good ' (Prov. xv. 3). Also, ' Though they 
 dig into hell, thence shall mine hands take them ; though they climb up 
 to heaven, thence will I bring them down . . . ' (Amos ix. 2-4). Also, 
 ' There is no darkness nor shadow of death, where the workers of iniquity 
 may hide themselves' (Job xxxiv. 22). But what Jonah said was 
 this : ' I will go outside Palestine, because there the Shechinah does 
 not reveal itself . . .' " One notices in this striking passage that an 
 antithesis is drawn between God and Shechinah. The latter is every- 
 where, but the former only shows itself in the Holy Land. 
 
 (3) Friedmann points out here that a better reading is nst-m "^'Dtya 
 (not nirnmDE'a). 
 
 (4) It is hard to see how R. Aha can prove that the Shechinah never 
 left the Western Wall by reference to the verse, " His eyes behold. His 
 eyelids try, the children of men " (Psalm xi. 4). But possibly the idea 
 of the Shechinah's constant presence at the Western Wall is to be taken 
 as synonymous with its constant presence in the world in general. 
 Though God is no more in the Temple, He is nevertheless outside it, i.e. 
 
NOTES 125 
 
 in the world where all men are : His eyes see and try all men. This 
 dictum of R. Aha would then agree with that of R Yannai. The latter 
 says distinctly: "Although He appears to have withdrawn His Shechinah,' 
 i.e. from the world, still it is there. 
 
 (5) Those two opinions are reproduced in a passage of the Yalkut on 
 1 Kings viii. " R. Samuel b. Nahmeni said that until the Temple was 
 destroyed, the Shechinah abode in the '^yn. After it was destroyed it 
 departed to heaven. R. Eliezer b. Pedath said whether it is destroyed 
 or not destroyed, the Shechinah does not stir from the spot, as it is said, 
 * And mine eyes and my heart shall 1je there perijetually.' " 
 
 (6) This is found also in Tanhuma on nonn. 
 
 (7) The Mid rash ic word used here is nvnanp, which the author of the 
 commentary n:i.i3 ni:n3, says, means a^ym nix-ioinj, " balconies in buildings." 
 Most probably it is a Hebraised plural of the Latin " castra " = camp. 
 
 (8) The Tanhuma derives these ideas from certain passages in the 
 prayer of Solomon at the dedication of his Temple. The idea of being 
 terrified by the Shechinah, or, as here, by the " Dibbur," is of frequent 
 occurrence. For several instances of this, see T. B. Sabbath 88b. 
 
 (9) In the Yalkut on Lamentations ii. God is represented as sitting 
 in the Temple while the flames encircle it. He is likened to a human 
 king whose place has been set on fire by the enemy. He sits inside it 
 so as not to show any fear or weakness to the enemy, until at last, at the 
 instigation of his friends, he takes his departure. 
 
 (10) The author of this statement in T. B. Yebamoth 105b is R. 
 Hiya, who was a Palestinian Amora. It is easy to infer, therefore, that 
 when he speaks of directing the eyes downwards during prayer, he must 
 mean Palestine. 
 
 (11) "It is not said in the house of their prayer (on'^sn), but in the 
 house of my prayer ('nVsn). Whence we learn that God prays." 
 
 (11a) That prayer is only heard when prayed in synagogue, is the 
 opinion of Abba Benjamin in T. B. Berachoth 6a. It is, of course, not 
 univei-sally accepted by the Rabbins. 
 
 (12) This idea of God "skijjping from synagogue to synagogue" is 
 found also in Song of Songs Rabba ii. on verse Dn;in hy j'^id. 
 
 (13) According to a passage in Exodus Rabba xxi. 4, the angels take 
 the prayers of the Israelites in synagogues and weave them into a crown 
 for the head of God. 
 
 (14) There are seven heavens according to Rabbinic theology. The 
 phrase ypii ypn '?3 'aiy = (literally) " thickness of each firmament." I have 
 translated it by " the distance from one extremity to the other," as thick- 
 ness would be unintelligible. The seven heavens are laid in separate 
 strata, one above another. The thickness of each stratiun is a matter of 
 five hundred years' travel. The distance intervening between this stratum 
 and the next above it, is again a matter of five hundred years' travel. 
 
 With this saying cp. Ben Sira, " The prayer of the humble pierces 
 the clouds" (xxxv. 17). 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 (d) the personified shechinah as the 
 immanent god in israel 
 
 Perhaps the finest and most poetic expressions on 
 Divine Immanence to be found anywhere in the pages 
 of Rabbinic literature, are those which speak of God's 
 ever- constant presence in the midst of Israel. This can 
 be accounted for by the fact, that the subject appealed 
 to the old Jewish teachers in a far more personal sense 
 than did the other questions regarding Immanence. 
 The Rabbinical epoch was a time of Jewish political 
 subjection. Judea was under the heel of Rome. The 
 one hope of the Jew, which absorbed and eclipsed all 
 his other hopes, was for the speedy advent of a redemp- 
 tion from all these troubles. And underlying that 
 hope, and fomenting it, was the innate confidence in the 
 Immanence of God in Israel. All those Biblical passages 
 which speak of God as walking in the midst of Israel's 
 camp, as dwelling in the midst of the praises of Israel, as 
 being ever-mindful of Israel's troubles, and of watching 
 over Israel with the love and solicitude with which 
 a father watches over and guards his own son, were 
 interpreted in a strictly literal and realistic sense. If 
 joy befell them, God was to be praised for having 
 brought it about. If sorrow, then God had not done it. 
 It was the just and deserved retribution for their 
 failure to realise the highest and best. God was the 
 
 126 
 
CHAP. IX SHECHINAH IN ISRAEL 127 
 
 ever-present and ever-near One. He was all love and 
 all forgiveness, and would " never willingly afflict nor 
 grieve the children of men." 
 
 The best-known of all the Rabbinic sayings on this 
 head, is that which speaks of the Deity following the 
 Israelites whithersoever they happened to be exiled. 
 It is found with great frequency, the versions differing 
 from one another in wording, but the meaning and 
 purport always the same. The commonest version is 
 that of T. B. Megillah 29a : " Come and see how beloved 
 are the Israelites before God ; for wherever they went 
 into exile the Shechinah followed them. When they 
 were exiled to Egypt, the Shechinah followed them, as 
 it is said, ' Did I plainly reveal myself to thy father's 
 house when they were in Egypt?' (1 Samuel ii. 27). 
 In Babylon the Shechinah was with them, as it is said, 
 ' For your sake have I [been] sent to Babylon ' (Isaiah 
 xliii. 14).^^^ And when, in the future, Israel will be 
 redeemed, the Shechinah will then be with them, as it 
 is said, ' The Lord thy God will turn thy captivity ' ^"^ 
 (Deut. XXX. 3), i.e. God will return with thy captivity." 
 A longer and fuller passage is Exodus Rabba xv. 16, 
 which fills up the intermediate experiences of Israel 
 between the Babylonian Captivity and the redemption 
 of the future. God was with Israel in their Persian 
 and Median exile, and in their Grecian and Roman 
 exile. And, concludes the Midrash, it was this un- 
 failing presence of God in their banishment and sub- 
 jugation that enabled them to rise superior to their 
 conquerors and prepare themselves for the triumph of 
 a great future yet to come.^^^ A parallel passage in 
 Numbers Rabba vii. 10 gives the variant reading 
 " the Shechinah is with them in their dispersion." This 
 is an important addition. God is present among scattered 
 Israel, in Israel of to-day. This is certainly an improve- 
 
128 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 ment on the original idea. A parallel passage in the 
 Mechilta ^^^ (edit, Friedmann, p. 16) has the following 
 important addition, n^-rs ^d12; ii"2.''pn ^3dS^ni»^ linN/'The 
 Israelites (at the time of their deliverance from trouble) 
 used to say unto God, ' Thou hast redeemed thyself.' 
 ' So close was the bond riveting Israel to God and, vice 
 versa, so fully merged was God in Israel, so complete 
 was the oneness of God and Israel, that in redeeming 
 Israel, God redeemed Himself. Israel was part of God 
 and God was part of Israel.' " ^^^ This has all the appear- 
 ance of paradox, but it is, for all that, an unmistakable 
 and great pronouncement on the Immanence of God in 
 Israel. 
 
 All those passages in the Bible which speak of 
 angels exercising guardianship over Israel, w^hether in a 
 collective or individual sense, are taken by the Rabbins 
 to be an indication of the ever-constant presence of the 
 Shechinah in time of trial or danger to Israel. This 
 seems to be the meaning of the assertion in Exodus 
 Rabba xxxii. 9, " Wherever an angel is seen, there the 
 Shechinah is seen." Another form of the same idea is 
 that of Exodus Rabba xxxii. 6, commenting on the verse 
 " The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them 
 that fear Him, and delivereth them " (Psalm xxxiv. 7). 
 It is to the effect that for every precept which a Jew 
 conscientiously performs, he has an angel given him as a 
 recompense. Thus, if he does one ' ' Mitzvah " ( " precept ' ' ) 
 he receives one angel ; if two, then two angels, and 
 so forth. If he performs a multiplicity of precepts 
 then God gives him ')H2'm:i ^sn, " half of His camp." The 
 possession of an angel is thus a synonym for the posses- 
 sion of such and such a degree of Divine Immanence. 
 The worthiest man is the man possessed of most angels, 
 i.e. possessed of the highest degree of God's Immanence. 
 And this is tersely summed up in a sentence of 
 
IX THE SHECHINAH IN ISRAEL 129 
 
 R. Simeon ben Yoliai (Genesis Rabba Ixxxvi. 6), 
 "Wherever the pious go, there the Shechinah accom- 
 panies them." * 
 
 According to a passage in Numbers Rabba i. 3 (to 
 which allusion was made before in connexion with Divine 
 immanence in the Temple), the ever-presence of God in 
 Israel is an indirect boon to the whole world. " Were 
 it not for Israel {i.e. for God's presence in Israel), the 
 rain would not come down, neither would the sun shine ; 
 and in the time to come, when the nations shall see how 
 
 * A passage such as this is important, in view of the constantly - made 
 allegation, that the post-exilic literature of the Jews tended in more and more 
 of a deistic direction, keeping God farther and farther away from direct inter- 
 vention and mingling in the affairs of the world. To bridge over the gulf, it is 
 alleged, the Jews of these times in^•ented (or introduced after borrowing) the 
 notion of angels to act as intermediary agencies between God and the world. 
 In this indirect way God influences the world while being Himself uninfluenced 
 by it. The number of Rabbinic dicta on the subject of angels is so great, and the 
 sayings are so variegated, that it is exceedingly hazardous to attempt to lay down 
 any hard-and-fast doctrine about them, except after a thorough-going study of this 
 large branch of Talmudic and Midrashic literature. One thing is certain even after 
 a superficial acquaintance — and that is, that there is not one doctrine but many. 
 Among these many doctrines is the one alluded to here, viz. an identiflcation of 
 the functions of an angel with that of the Shechinah. The angel is not the 
 intermediary nor the mediator, but is an emanation of the Divine, a portion of 
 the immanent God in His aspect of protector or patron ; and thus more or less 
 an equivalent of Shechinah. The falsity of the random statements usually 
 made about the Rabbinic angelology being merely a device for bridging over the 
 chasm between God and the world, is seen from such a passage as the following 
 (from Genesis Rabba xcvii. 2), "R. Samuel b. Nahman said that nons : i.e. the 
 earning of one's livelihood, is a greater thing than nSiNJ, i.e. redemption from 
 trouble. And M-hy ? because the latter is effected by means of an angel, as it is 
 said, 'The angel that redeemed me from all evil' (Gen. xlviii. 16), but the 
 former can only be brought about by God Himself, as it is said, ' Thou openest 
 thine hand and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.' " It is quite obvious 
 here, that the difl'erence between the two is not one of fact, but of degree. 
 Redemption by an angel, is not meant to be a different thing from redemption 
 by God, but only a different degree of care or providence exercised by God. 
 Both are aspects of the Divine omnipresent fatherhood, only the one is less 
 intense than the other. It is obvious from this, as from the passages quoted 
 above, that the Rabbins had ideas of varying degi-ees of intensity as to 
 the immanent providence of God. A man ha^ang one or two or three angels 
 given him, means merely the vouchsafing to man of increasing quantities of 
 Godliness, man's ascent higher and higher in the scale. The ilidrash already 
 quoted, has a further allusion to Joshua v. 14, "Nay, but as Captain of the 
 Lord of Hosts am I come." Joshua's visitor is an angel, and the Rabbins 
 interpret his words as meaning : "In every place where I am seen, there God is 
 seen." The angel is thus merely a visible Divine manifestation upon earth, 
 similar to the Shechinah (see Commentary n:in3 m^na ad loc). 
 
 K 
 
I30 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 God is in Israel, they will all anxiously come to ally 
 themselves with Israel, as it is said, ' In those days it 
 shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of 
 all languages of the nations, even 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 ' 
 (Zech. viii. 23)." 
 
 An imaginative Midrash in Lamentations Rabba 
 (Introd. 15) gives us a variant to the idea of the 
 Shechinah accompanying Israel in all the places of his 
 pilgrimage. " When the Israelites were in captivity 
 God used to go round the houses of the nations 
 and listen to what they were saying. ^'^^ And what 
 did He hear them saying ? How the God of Israel 
 had brought retribution upon such wrongdoers as 
 Pharaoh, Sisera, Sennacherib, etc., and how oS^ii^S 
 Nin ~ii73, i.e. God is always young." This latter idea of 
 the unchanging youth of the Deity seems to be a poetic 
 attempt to picture the Immanence of God as far as 
 Israel is concerned. God is with Israel, and ever the 
 same, whether yesterday, or to-day, or in the coming 
 time. An adjoining Midrash (Lam. Rabba, Introd. 16) 
 declares God to be the heart of Israel. A striking 
 illustration of these God-in -Israel ideas is afforded by 
 a passage in the Jerusalem Talmud Berachoth, piD 
 HNmrT (repeated in brief in Deuteronomy Rabba ii. 16). 
 A ship whose passengers consisted of heathens with the 
 exception of one only Jew, was once in great difficulties 
 when in mid-ocean. In the greatest dismay an appeal 
 was made to the Jew to pray to God for help. The 
 Jew prayed and the ship was saved. When the harbour 
 was reached, the passengers, feeling the pangs of hunger 
 badly, asked the Jew to disembark and get them some 
 food. But the latter replied, " Am I not a stranger 
 here as well as you ? I do not know this place any 
 
IX THE SHECHINAH IN ISRAEL 131 
 
 more than you do." To which they replied, " Is a Jew 
 a stranger anywhere ? Is not God with you wherever 
 you go ? Does not your Bible say, ' For what nation 
 is so great who hath God so nigh unto them ? ' " 
 (Deut. iv. 7). 
 
 Another passage in the Jerusalem Talmud (Ta'anith, 
 chap, ii), quoted also in Yalkut on Joshua v., gives this 
 God-in-Israel idea in the form of God being lotD finmn 
 ^Nim"'!, i.e. putting His name into fellowship with Israel. 
 God expressed the fear that Israel might lose his 
 identity by being swallowed up among the nations. 
 To avert this, He merged His name, i.e. Himself, in 
 fellowship with Israel.^'^ The parable given in this 
 connexion is curious and interesting. A king once had 
 a key belonging to one of his most cherished palaces. 
 One day fear seized him, lest this key might accidentally 
 become lost. What did he do ? He attached it to a 
 chain, thus making it more tangible and its loss more 
 easily perceptible. The case of Israel is analogous. 
 Left to himself, he might have perished unknown. 
 But with God merged in fellowship with him, his 
 eternity is assured.* 
 
 * I have already alluded to the mysteriousness with which in several parts of 
 the Bible, the name of God is hedged round. The earliest Kabbalistic and eosmo- 
 logical speculations of the Talmudic teachers arrived at all sorts of mystical con- 
 clusions, by means of the combination and permutation of the letters composing 
 the Divine name. So did the Sefer Yetsirah, the Zohar, and other mediaeval 
 Kabbalistic productions. 
 
 The idea here alluded to, of God and Israel in fellowship with one another, 
 is worthy of note. It occurs in different forms throughout Rabbinic literature. 
 It is worthy of note because of a somewhat similar usage of " fellowship " in the 
 New Testament. The Epistles of St. Paul, which are the earliest sources for an 
 historical picture of the primitive churches, make it clear that the first followers 
 of Christ did not constitute a church in the modern sense, but a fellowship. The 
 group of Jerusalem Christians depicted in Acts ii. is described in verse 42 of 
 that chapter as a Koivwvla, i.e. fellowship. This fellowship seems to have had 
 both a material and a mystical side. The former meant the binding together 
 of men for mutual help, strength, and consolidation (see 1 Corinthians xii. 
 14-26). The latter seems but an adaptation of the Rabbinic idea of Israel and 
 God being merged in one fellowship. Christ is made to take the place of God. 
 Paul's central idea that "he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit" has 
 certainly all the appearance of being a piece of teaching for which his Rabbinic 
 
132 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 But perhaps the boldest of the many attempts to 
 merge God in Israel is the passage in T. B. Berachoth 6a 
 (quoted also in Yalkut on ]DnnNi) where God is pictured 
 as laying " Tephillin," and the question is asked, "What is 
 inscribed on these Tephilhn ? " And the answer given 
 is, that there is inscribed upon them the words, " And 
 what one nation in the earth is like Thy people Israel ? " 
 The only feasible interpretation of this seems to be, that 
 it is an attempt to draw the closest possible approxima- 
 tion existing between Israel and the Deity. Israel's 
 Tephillin are the symbol of the bond of afifection between 
 him and God. God's " Tephillin " are the symbol of the 
 afifection between Him and Israel. God is so close 
 to Israel, that He loves to deck Himself with Israel's 
 ornaments. God is in Israel, so that Tephillin on the 
 
 upbringing was responsible. Those portions of the descriptions of this fellowship 
 in the New Testament, where the invasion of the Holy Spirit is referred to and 
 the consciousness of the continued presence of Christ (e.g. Matthew xviii. 20 ; 
 Acts ii. 2-4 ; 1 Corinthians x. 16, 17 ; ibid. v. 4, etc.), seem an elaboration, 
 for Christian purposes, of the Rabbinical mystical idea of fellowship. See 
 Mystical Religion, by Rufus M. Jones, pp. 20, 21. 
 
 An instance of the curious teachings (alluded to above), which the Kabbalists 
 deduced, not merely from the permutations of the various letters comprising the 
 Divine name, but also from the various synonyms for the DiWne name, occurs 
 in the NmvjKT nisd (Book of Mystery), one of the oldest fragments of the Zohar, 
 which affords a resumi of the most elevated teachings of the Zohar : ' ' "When a 
 man wishes to address a prayer to God, he may equally invoke either the Holy 
 names of God (rr'nn, rr, '■;t5', etc.) or the ten Spheres, i.e. the Crown, Wisdom, 
 Intelligence, Beauty, Grace, Justice, etc." All the Kabbalists agiee on this 
 point, viz. that the ten names of God and the ten Spheres are one and the 
 same thing. For, say they, "the spiritual part of these names are of the 
 essence of the Spheres " (quoted in Franck, La Kahhale, p. 79). 
 
 Bousset (page 344) jioints out the various usages of the Divine name in 
 Apocalyptic Literature, especially in the Books of Enoch. But his contention 
 that it is throughout " eine selbstiindige Wesenheit" is hardly borne out by the 
 examples he gives. The Divine name is the object of man's praise, man's love. 
 Man's prayers are directed to it. Men find their support in it ; the name is 
 mighty, through it is Israel saved. Bousset quotes all the passages containing 
 these ideas. They certainly contain a strong mystical flavour, but only in very 
 few instances can they be rightly said to approach personification. They 
 remind one more of the abundant references to the " name " in the Jewish Prayer 
 Book, which are no more than a reflection of the utter and unspeakable holiness 
 which in many O.T. passages is said to encompass the Divine name. (Cp. 
 Eccle. xvii. 10, xlvii. 10 ; Tobit iii. 11, viii. 5, xi. 14, xiii. 18, xiv. 9 ; 
 Psalms of Sol. viii. 26 ; 4 Es. iv. 25, x. 22, etc. — all quoted by Bousset.) 
 
THE SHECHINAH IN ISRAEL i 
 
 :)j 
 
 head and arm of an Israelite are Tephillin on the head 
 and arm of God/'^ 
 
 I now add a few aphorisms which express the 
 preceding ideas of God-in- Israel, in terse epigrammatic 
 lanofuao-e : — 
 
 "He who helps Israel, helps God" (Mechilta on 
 n^Dl, edit. Friedmann, p. 39). 
 
 " He who opposes Israel, opposes God" {ihicL). 
 
 " He who blesses Israel, blesses God " (Tanhuma 
 on ^n^i). 
 
 " He who hates Israel, hates God " (Sifri on in^i^ni). 
 
 " He who stands before a saintly man acts as though 
 he stands before God " (Yalkut on 1 Kings xvii.).^^^ 
 
 " He who boxes the ears of an Israelite does the 
 same to God " (Yalkut on Proverbs xx. from T. B. 
 Sanhedrin 58b). 
 
 " AVhen Israel do what is right, God is strengthened ; 
 when wrong, then God is weakened (Lamentations 
 Rabba i. 33)." Right - doing adds strength to the 
 Divine element which is in Israel. Wrong - doing 
 diminishes it. 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER IX 
 
 (1) nh22 'Bni-E* ddji'd'?, tlie word 'nnW to read 'nnW. 
 
 (2) inns- nx "^k "n 2m : it is not said 3'B*ni, " And He shall cause to 
 return," but 2sh (Kal), " and He sliall return," i.e. God will return with 
 erstwhile captive Israel when the latter goes into the greater freedom of 
 the Future. 
 
 (3) An instance of Rabbinic inconsistency is shown by a passage in 
 the Introduction to Lamentations Eabba xxix., where it is said as follows : 
 " Before Israel were redeemed from Egypt they dwelt by themselves, and 
 the Shechinah dwelt by itself. When they were redeemed, Shechinah 
 and Israel became one harmony, i.e. blended into one (nn.>< n'jidi.t icj,':). 
 But when Israel went into caj^tivity the Shechinah again separated from 
 them." This surely contradicts the statement that the Shechinah was 
 always with the Israelites in all their experiences. 
 
 (4) Sifri on in^iini has exactly the same wording as the MechUta. In 
 the Sifri on 'j;dd the phrase nnij "]d<sj; is omitted. It is also to be found in 
 
134 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD ch. ix 
 
 Song of Songs Eabba ii., and in Jerusalem Talmud Sukkah iv. HaL c. 
 Also in Yalkut on ■in'?j;n3 and on n3. In Exodus Rabba xxiii. 5 quite 
 other Biblical verses are brought into play. It is noteworthy, that in 
 the Liturgy, the passage recited on Tabernacles festival, idv m'73 n-ha nymnj, 
 is permeated from beginning to end with these ideas of God's Immanence 
 in IsraeL 
 
 (5) Expressed, as we have seen above, by the phrase " one harmony." 
 
 (6) This is given in the Yalkut on Ezekiel xxxvi. 20, icn D'un h^ nu'i 
 DC 1N3. The word nu'i referring to Israel is in the singular, hence it is 
 taken by the Rabbins to refer to God. God, while Israel was in exile, 
 went round to the houses of the nations, etc. A similar idea of God's 
 interest in Israel in the sight of the nations occurs in Tanliuma on nWa 
 on the verse, "And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of 
 cloud" (Exodus xiii. 21). " Is it not written, 'Do I not fiU the heavens 
 and the earth ? ' Again, ' The whole earth is full of His glory.' How then 
 can Scripture say that God walked before them ? It is in order to make 
 the nations know the love which God bears to Israel in order that the 
 nations may treat them with honour." 
 
 (7) The Yalkut on Song of Songs (verse, " My beloved went down 
 into His garden," vi. 2) has the following curious passage : " ' My beloved 
 went down into His garden.' This means that God goes down into His 
 World. ' To the beds of spices.' This refers to Israel. ' To feed in 
 the gardens.' This alludes to the nations of the world. ' To gather 
 lilies.' These are the saints. God withdraws the saints from among the 
 nations. It may be likened unto an earthly monarch who had a son 
 whom he loved above all others. To show his love for him, he planted 
 him a beautiful orchard. So long as the lad's conduct was pleasing, the 
 king wandered throughout the world in order to find the most jarecious 
 trees for the orchard. But when the lad offended, then the trees were 
 cut away. God does the same for Israel. As long as Israel does His will, 
 God travels far and wide amongst the nations, and wherever He alights 
 upon a saintly man amongst them, He brings him forthwith into Israel's 
 fold. But when Israel revolts, then He removes the good man from their 
 midst." (See for same, Jerus. Talmud Berachoth in ^nct^' 'd "s.) 
 
 (8) In his Studies in Judaism, Shechter has an essay on " The Child 
 in Jewish Literature," in which he alludes to a passage in the Midrash 
 where God is represented as giving instruction daily to a number of 
 prematurely deceased children. This belongs to the same order of 
 Rabbinical teachings as the above. So deeply ingrained is the Divine in 
 Israel, that the sacred duties of the Israelite are also the sacred duties 
 of God. 
 
 (9) Derived from the exclamation of Elijah (1 Kings xvii. 1), "As 
 the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand." The Midrash, 
 basing itself no doubt upon the fact that Elijah had hitherto not 
 imparted any Divine message whatsoever, asks, " Did then Elijah stand 
 before God ? " And the answer given is as follows : " In standing before 
 Ahijah the Shilonite he acted as though he stood before the Shechinah." 
 Serving a saint is equivalent to serving the Shechinah. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 (e) the shechinah and sin 
 
 It is obvious to the most superficial thinker, that it is 
 far easier to account for sin on the dualistic conception 
 of the relation of God to the world which emphasises the 
 Divine Transcendence, than on the view which insists 
 upon the Immanence. An offence against a God who 
 sits aloof from the world, is a phenomenon which needs 
 no explanation. But if God and His holiness are in the 
 world, and resident in the very heart of things and of 
 man, then all kinds of problems arise and press for 
 solution. If God dwells with and in man, then is not 
 man's sin also God's sin ? Or again, " Why does not 
 the indwelling God who is all-powerful prevent the sin ? " 
 Or again, " How can man's sin be displeasing to God, 
 seeinsf that the sin is committed in His sight and 
 with His present and previous knowledge ? " Modern 
 theology has its answers to these problems and several 
 kindred ones. It must here be inquired, how the Rabbinic 
 theologians regarded these difficulties, and what attempts 
 they made to reconcile the reality of sin with their 
 doctrines about the Shechinah as the immanent God of 
 the world, of Israel, of Palestine, and of man in general. 
 (1) There are passages showing how antithetical are 
 Sin and Shechinah. Sin ousts the Shechinah from its 
 place. The modern view of Immanence takes up a 
 similar position. God is in man and eternally prompts 
 
 135 
 
136 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 and empowers him to do right. But when he does 
 wrong, man is simply ousting God from within him. 
 He is choking his godly and Godward impulses. The 
 most striking passage in this connexion is Song of Songs 
 Rabba vi. : " The original abode of the Shechinah was 
 among the D"^Dinnn, i.e. among men. When Adam sinned 
 it ascended away to the first heaven. With Cain's sin 
 it ascended to the second. With Enoch to the third. 
 With the generation of the Flood to the fourth. With 
 the generation of the Tower of Babel to the fifth. With 
 the Sodomites to the sixth. With the sin of the 
 Egyptians in the days of Abraham, it ascended to the 
 seventh. Corresponding to these, there arose seven 
 righteous men who brought the Shechinah down, back 
 again to earth. These were Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, 
 Levi, Kehath, Amram, and Moses. R. Isaac said that 
 this is the interpretation of the verse (Psalm xxxvii. 29), 
 ' The righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein 
 for ever.' What do the wicked do ? They live 
 suspended in the air, because they have not caused the 
 Shechinah to dwell in the earth. But the righteous 
 shall dwell for ever on the earth, because they have made 
 the Shechinah abide therein for ever." A slightly 
 altered version is given in Numbers Rabba xii. 6 as well 
 as in Tanhuma on mpD, where, according to Rabba, the 
 Shechinah only came down to earth for the first time at 
 the erection of the Tabernacle. According to R. Simeon 
 bar Judah, the Shechinah came down to earth at the 
 time of creation, went away as soon as Adam sinned, and 
 returned with the erection of the Tabernacle.^^^ ^""^ ^"^ 
 
 It is this sense of conflict between Deity and sin 
 that is expressed in such maxims as " He who sins in 
 secret presses against the feet of the Shechinah " (T. B. 
 Kiddushin 31a), there being no room in the universe for 
 both God and sinner. " A man may not walk even four 
 
X THE SHECHINAH AND SIN 137 
 
 cubits with a proud mien, because the whole earth is full 
 of God's glory " (ibid.). Pride was always looked upon 
 by the Eabbins as the most heinous and unpardonable 
 of sins, equivalent to the sin of idolatry /^^ " God never 
 unites His name with evil in the way that He unites it 
 wdth good " ( Yalkut Ezekiel viii. ). Another and fuller 
 version of the latter is given in Yalkut 2 Kings vi. 
 *' The name of God is never mentioned in connexion 
 with evil, only with good." This is proved by a 
 quotation from Genesis i. 5, " And God called the light 
 day, and the darkness He called night " (in the Hebrew 
 the word for God precedes the word for light, but is 
 omitted before the word for darkness, the verb only 
 being used). And by another quotation from Genesis i. 
 28, " And God blessed them," whereas when He punished 
 our first parents Scripture says (iii. 16) and "unto the 
 woman He said, etc." (iii. 17) ; "And unto Adam He said, 
 etc." the name of God beino; omitted at the mention 
 of evil. These theories are based by the Midrash on the 
 interpretation of Psalm v. 4, " Evil shall not dwell 
 with Thee," i.e. says R. Johanan : " Thou dost not 
 drag after evil, neither does evil drag after thee, and 
 it does not abide with thee." ^*^ The root of l"ir is 
 taken to be n-iDi which — " to drag after," although 
 from the last three words of the sentence iSsn m~r rrD"'NT 
 it is clear that the correct root iii is also admitted. The 
 Rabbins were so fond of playing with words, that it is 
 not always easy to decide, whether their interpretations 
 based upon these plays are to be taken as maxims with 
 a serious ethical purpose, or as mere exhibitions of skill 
 in the use of words.^^^ 
 
 Another aspect of the conflict between Shechinah 
 and sin is afforded by an interesting remark in the 
 Pesikta Rabbati, edit. Friedmann, p. 21 (reproduced in 
 Numbers Rabba xii. 3 and in Midrash Tillim xci.), " Until 
 
138 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 the Tabernacle was erected the evil spirits (]''p^io) held 
 sway in the universe. But with the erection of the 
 Tabernacle the Shechinah came in to earth, and then 
 the evil spirits were dislodged and exterminated." ^"^ 
 
 There is another department of this important 
 subject, which at first sight appears to be the diametrical 
 opposite of the first. Instances have been quoted to 
 show the antithesis between Shechinah and sin, how 
 the Rabbins endeavoured to clear the Deity of all 
 possible contact with evil, God and sin being in their 
 opinion mutually exclusive ideas. ^^^ It is now desirable 
 to quote equally emphatic allusions to the Shechinah 
 countenancing sin and dwelling in contact with it. 
 This apparent contradiction is accounted for as follows : 
 An examination of all the passages bearing on the 
 subject, shows that wherever Shechinah and sin are 
 antithetical, the reference is either to the sin of an 
 individual or of a section of Israelites, whereas in all 
 those passages where Shechinah and sin are in consonance, 
 the allusion is to the sin or evil of the collective body of 
 Israelites. The underlying idea is only another form of 
 the emphatic assertion so constantly repeated through- 
 out the pages of Rabbinic literature, of the Immanence 
 of God in Israel. God dwells in Israel at all costs. 
 Whether Israel be in good or evil repute, God is there. 
 To ask the question how the Rabbins could harmonise 
 their doctrines of God's aloofness from evil, with their 
 doctrine of God's Immanence in Israel in spite of Israel's 
 wickedness, is to go beyond the scope of Rabbinic logic* 
 Consistency was not a marked feature of the latter. 
 
 * This is not to discredit Rabbinism in any sense. On p. 304 of Sanday 
 and Headlani's Commentary on Romans {International Critical Commentary) 
 the authors, after speaking of the ways in which St. Paul uses words in a sense 
 opposed to the original context, remark: "Where does the superiority of the 
 New Testament writers lie ? In their correct interpretation of the spirit of the 
 Old Testament. As expounders of religion they belong to the whole world ; 
 as logicians they belong to the first century." 
 
X THE SHECHINAH AND SIN 139 
 
 The Talmud is not a symmetric picture. It presents 
 not a doctrine, but a congeries of doctrines often at 
 variance with one another. The interest is centrifugal 
 rather than centripetal. It shows how many differing 
 themes may be elaborated out of one central subject. 
 It makes no attempt to wind these differing themes 
 round a common thread. Bearing this in mind, it 
 need occasion no surprise if it is possible to quote 
 numerous allusions to the idea of the Deity dwelling 
 with Israel in spite of Israel's impurity and sin. 
 
 One of the clearest statements on this head is 
 based on Leviticus xvi. 16, "And so shall he do for the 
 Tabernacle of the congres^ation that remaineth amoncf 
 them in the midst of their uncleanness." The Taber- 
 nacle (jDOo) = the Shechinah.^^^^ 
 
 " The Shechinah dwells with Israel even though 
 they be impure" (Yalkut on Ezekiel xxxvi. and 
 frequently). The Rabbins made much of the phrase in 
 Ezekiel xxxvi. 17, nmn j-indijod ; it is not the same as 
 no riNOiJoD ; a "Kohen" may keep company with the 
 former but must have no contact with the latter ; Israel 
 being likened by the prophet to the former and not to the 
 latter, may therefore always hope to be in the company 
 of God. A kindred idea is to be found in Exodus Rabba 
 XV. 5, where God is said to have revealed Himself 
 " in a place of idolatry, filth, and uncleanliness in order 
 to redeem Israel." ^^^ These ideas are an expansion of the 
 oft-recurring Biblical references to the sonship of Israel. 
 The Sifri on a passage in Deuteronomy (xxxii. 5) 
 says, " Although they [i.e. Israel] are full of blemishes, 
 yet they are called sons." ^^^^ The Yalkut on Lamentations 
 iii. 3 compares this sonship to the case of an earthly 
 monarch who yearns and frets for his son's company, 
 no matter what the latter's failings and offences may be. 
 
 Other aspects of treatment are the following : 
 
I40 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 Yalkut on Esther vi., " Does God sleep ? No. But 
 when Israel sleeps He feigns sleep, but when they do 
 His will, then the Guardian of Israel neither slumbereth 
 nor sleepeth." The idea of the Deity sleeping while 
 Israel is sinning is a pretty specimen of Midrashic poetry. 
 Tanhuma on nm tells how King Manasseh puts an image 
 of ]"'Q*i2iiQ '^T, " four faces," inside the Temple. The 
 Shechinah departs from the sinful scene in the deepest 
 disgust. But it departs, only to come back again 
 through the repentance of the Israelites. The great 
 Rabbinic antidote to sin is repentance. God is with 
 Israel in his sin, only because He has implanted within 
 him this virtue of repentance. Repentance is almost 
 a synonym for Shechinah. It is a Divine indwelling. ^^^^ 
 It is that alone which makes sin bearable, forgivable.* 
 
 * It is of great interest to note how much closer is this old-world Rabbinic 
 view of sin to the modern scientific-theological view than to the orthodox 
 traditional view of Christianity. This is exemplified in a work recently 
 published (Clarke and Co., 1909) by W. E. Orchard, D.D., entitled Modern 
 Theories of Sin. The author, after dwelling on the inadequacy of the Church 
 doctrines of grace, justification, atonement, etc., to explain the forgiveness of 
 sin from the standpoint of history and personal experience, establishes the 
 following data : (1) "The pain that man feels for his sin is the awakening to 
 the long-sufiering of God who . . . has drawn near to us, etc." Did not the 
 Rabbins poetically forestall this idea by their dictum about God being asleep 
 while Israel is in sin ? Is not this merely another way of describing His long- 
 suffering with sin? (2) "There could be no knowledge of our sin and no 
 penitence for it unless God had forgiven us sufficiently to dwell with us " 
 (pp. 144, 145). An exact echo of a host of Rabbinic statements on Repentance. 
 There is no notion here of an angry God, whose wrath with the world could 
 only be appeased, by the voluntary self-sacrifice of some divine individual who 
 took upon himself the whole guilt of mankind, in order to clear them of their 
 age-long guilt before God. The psychology of the religious consciousness does 
 not tally with this teaching. It tallies, however, with the Rabbinic view which 
 represents God as a father who is steeped in love for his wayward offspring, and 
 stretches out his hand the whole day long, to receive the erring one again in his 
 forgiving embrace ; and the erring one returns to the father. Why not ? Is 
 not the seed of filial love imi^lanted even in the worst specimen of a child ! 
 God has implanted this seed — Repentance — in the heart of the Israelite. This, 
 and this alone, is the latter's assurance that God is nigh unto him, that His 
 attitude toward him is gracious and not angry, that He takes pity on him, 
 and condescends in a nearness of fellowship to dwell again with him. Hence 
 forgiveness of God and repentance by man are obverse sides of the same shield. 
 The innate ability to produce the latter, is the signal that the former has been 
 achieved. There could be no penitence for sin, unless God had first vouchsafed 
 His forgiveness. Conversely, forgiveness of sin could have no meaning for us, were 
 it not for the fact of that Divine indwelling which expresses itself in repentance. 
 
NOTES 141 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER X 
 
 (1) There is another view in a long passage in Ahoth De R. Nathan 
 xxxiv. 
 
 (2) R. Isaac's idea of the wicked as suspended in the air seems to be a 
 fanciful way of stating the truth that the bad man's existence is a blank. 
 The Shechinah fills all space, heaven as well as earth. The godless man 
 must therefore exist in some region which is neither heaven nor earth. 
 This, in R. Isaac's naive conception, is the air. 
 
 (3) The Baraita quoted in T. B. Berachoth 27b gives instances of 
 offences committed by a disciple against his master, which cause the 
 Shechinah to go away from Israel. 
 
 (4) Tanhuma on vmn. The same antithesis between Deity and sin 
 is expressed in the remark, " Only angels of peace can stand before God. 
 Angels of anger are far from Him who is slow to anger." In T. B. 
 Sabbath 56a in connexion with the remark, viz. "All who say David 
 sinned (in connexion with Bathsheba) are wrong," the question is asked, 
 " Would the Shechinah be with him while sin was in his hand ? " 
 
 (5) The truth of this, is seen in these very Midrashic passages about 
 the name of God never being intermingled with the mention of evil. 
 The Rabbins are candid enough to upset their own very theories ! In 
 the very heat of their endeavour to prove how the name of God is never 
 associated with evil, they adduce instances to show the contrary (e.g, 
 Daniel ix. 14, " Therefore hath the Lord watched upon the evil, and 
 brought it iipon us "). It shows that their deductions are often verbal 
 rather than real ! 
 
 (6) This belongs to the department of Jewish angelology and 
 demonology, a vast province of old Rabbinic thought, but lacking 
 systematisation. An excellent summary is afforded by the articles of 
 Ludwig Blau and Kauffmann Kohler, in the Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. i. 
 
 (7) Another instance of this is the query in Sifri on yhiini, and 
 frequently, "Can God have any haters?" 
 
 (8) I have already dwelt on the connexion between Shechinah and 
 pts-D, and their relations to the New Testament usage of a-Krjvq. 
 
 (9) A kindred idea is that of Exodus Rabba xxiv. 3 on the verse 
 " And Moses caused Israel to journey from the Red Sea, and they went 
 out into the wilderness of Shur " (Exod. xv. 22). It remarks, "Although 
 Israel is in sin, God leads them like a shepherd his flock." 
 
 (10) This passage is ddid v:3 k"? i"? nns7, an extremely difficult verse to 
 translate. According to the Sifri quoted above, it should be rendered 
 thus : " When corruption is theirs (iS nns'), the blemish (i.e. sin) is not in 
 His sons," i.e. however sinful Israel shows himself, he does not forfeit his 
 sonship to God. 
 
 (11) This view of Repentance, as showing the Divine possibilities 
 latent in man, seems to me to underlie the batch of statements in Sifri on 
 nm which speak of jn iii mip and ]^n nu -inn'?, " before and after the Divine 
 decree." For instance, it is asked how can a statement like "0 Thou 
 that hearest prayer, unto Thee shall all flesh come " (Psalm Ixv. 2), be 
 
142 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap, x 
 
 made to tally with a statement like " Thou hast covered Thyself with a 
 cloud that prayer should not pass through " (Lam. of Jeremiah iii. 44) ? 
 Or how can an exhortation like "Seek ye the Lord while He may be 
 found " (Isaiah Iv. 6), be reconciled with " As I live, saith the Lord God, 
 I will not be inquired of by you " (Ezekiel xx. 3) ? Or a verse like 
 " For I have no pleasure in the death of Him that dieth " (Ezekiel xviii. 
 32), with the statement " Because the Lord was pleased to slay them " 
 (1 Sam. ii. 25) ? And the answer given is that God's leniency is available 
 only "before the Divine decree," i.e. before the irrevocable sentence has 
 gone forth ; after this, i.e. "after the Divine decree," man can only expect 
 a stern retribution. The underlying assumption right through this 
 teaching is the everlasting possibility of man's anticipating the Divine 
 decree. God waits for him. The " after the Divine decree " rarely or 
 never comes ! It is an indefinitely postponed point of time. Man has 
 it in him to make amends, and the door is always open, never closed. 
 Repentance is the Divine principle in man, the Shechinah or Divine 
 indwelling in man asserting itself. In his Mystical Element of 
 Religion (vol. ii. p. 68), Baron Von Hiigel quotes Romans vi. 12-14, 
 vii. 22, 23, viii. 4-13, to show how Paul's view of the Spirit as the 
 counter-working force within man, striving for complete domination over 
 the lusts of the flesh, stands in marked superiority over the Jewish O.T. 
 view, where the contrast is mainly between " the visible and transitory," 
 i.e. between the greatness of the eternal God and the weakness and 
 fallibility of man. This may be so, but it only goes to prove the 
 considerable advance in theological thought made by the doctors of the 
 post-Biblical Babylonian and Palestinian academies. For the golden hall- 
 mark of their teaching is just this, that the Spirit in man is stronger than 
 the anti- spirit lust; the whole Rabbinic doctrine of the efiicacy of 
 Repentance jiresupposes this. Von Hiigel points out how the synoptists 
 in utterances like " The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak," 
 and " Father, forgive them ; for they know not what they do," do not rise 
 above the inferior level of the O.T. view. In the variegated mass of 
 doctrine about sin, which one finds in Talmud and Midrash, one does 
 occasionally come across an opinion which tends to look at sin from a 
 similarly apologetic standpoint, sin as the inevitable result of folly, and 
 so forth, and therefore excusable. But the main trend of Rabbinic opinion 
 brooks no such dallying with sin. The Divine in man pleads for the 
 upright life; conversion to it is easy. God fore-ordained it. If man 
 refuses to listen to the higher call his refusal is sin, and no plea of weak- 
 ness or such like, can palliate or deny it. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 (f) the shechinah and the torah 
 
 The Torah and sin are the two opposite poles of 
 conduct. When spoken of in antithesis to Torah, sin 
 generally goes by the name of "the evil impulse." 
 This evil impulse is the inveterate enemy of the Torah, 
 prepared at any moment to fight it to the death. But 
 the Torah must be the ultimate victor. " Just as 
 water wears away stone, so the Torah will wear away 
 the evil impulse " (T. B. Sukkah 52b). " Just as iron 
 can be made into all sorts of vessels if cast into the fire, 
 so one can make the evil impulse useful by words of 
 the Torah; it is learned from Proverbs xxv. 21 that 
 if thine enemy be hungry {i.e. when the evil impulse 
 prompts thee) give him bread to eat {i.e. bread of the 
 Torah ; Pesikta De Pv. Kahana, edit. Buber 80b)." " If 
 this base fellow {i.e. the evil impulse) attack thee, drag 
 him to the ' Beth Hamidrash ' [where he will meet his 
 match in the Torah]" (Sukkah 52b).* If the Torah 
 wields so mighty, so invincible a power over evil, it follows 
 that its conscientious student, or practical observer, will 
 be a man of the highest and godliest impulses. The 
 Shechinah will be in him and with him. His triumph 
 over sin will in the last resort be the Shechinah's 
 
 * "There shall no strange god be in thee" (Psalm Ixxxi. 9). On which 
 the sages remark, " What is the strange god that is in the body of man ? 
 It is the evil impulse " (T. B. Sabbath 105b). This is a peculiar instance of 
 personification, or rather, deification. 
 
 143 
 
144 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 triumph over sin. It is in this sense that the Rabbins 
 often speak. There is a passage in Yalkut Lamentations 
 iii. which says that the " Talmid Hacham" who sits 
 in private and studies Torah, has God actually sitting 
 with him and joining in his meditations. Similarly, 
 Yalkut on Song of Songs i., in commenting on the 
 verse i. 2, " Let him kiss me with the kisses of his 
 mouth," declares that " when two colleagues sit and 
 study the Halacha together, it is as if they kiss God."^^^ 
 The passage in T. B. Berachoth 6a (repeated in 
 Yalkut on Psalm Ixxxii.) about the Shechinah abiding 
 in the midst of two or even one when studying 
 the Torah is very familiar.^^^ Yalkut on Psalm Ixviii. 
 instances the fact, that when five elders proceed to 
 intercalate the year, God places His Shechinah among 
 them, so that they may get enlightenment in the 
 Halacha, and not err. It is probably on this basis 
 that the Kabbins founded their ideas so often expressed 
 about God introducing new Halachas daily in His 
 Celestial Beth Din (see Genesis Rabba xlix. 2, Yalkut 
 on Job xxxvii.), or about God's holding the Torah in 
 His right hand (Deuteronomy Rabba iv. 4), or of the 
 taking counsel with the Torah before creating the world 
 (Tanhuma on Genesis i. 1), or the extraordinary 
 statement in Tanhuma on D''yi2 about the Torah 
 being extant on the arm of God before the creation of 
 the universe. An even more curious passage is that 
 of the Yalkut on 2 Samuel xx. (from the Tanna Debe 
 Elijahu) : " If a man possesses good morals and a 
 knowledge of Hebrew reading (n"ipd) only, then there 
 is given him one angel solely to guard him, as 
 Scripture says, ' Behold I send an angel before thee.' 
 If one has studied the Torah, the Prophets, and the 
 Hagiographa, then two angels are vouchsafed unto 
 him, as Scripture says, ' For He shall give His angels 
 
XI THE SHECHINAH AND THE TORAH 145 
 
 charge over thee, to guard thee in all thy ways.' But 
 if one has studied the Torah, Prophets, Hagiographa, 
 the Mishna, Midrash, Halacha and Haggada, then God 
 Himself has charge over him." The Midrash enforces 
 these statements by a parable, the point of which is to 
 show the ever-present Divine protection which hedges 
 round the good man. It is important to note the idea 
 of the angels as being, so to speak, an inferior degree 
 of Divine Immanence in the world and man. The man 
 of secondary merits receives the angel. The first-class 
 saint or student of the Torah has the privilege of the 
 highest of all forms of guardianship, that of the 
 Shechinah. 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER XI 
 
 (1) Cp. T. B. Berachotli 64a, "He that partakes of a meal at which 
 a ' Talmid Haliam ' is seated, acts as though he partook of the 
 Shechinah." 
 
 (2) It is interesting to note the strong personification of Shechinah 
 in this passage in T. B. Berachoth 6a. The question is there raised, " If 
 it be true that the Shechinah abides in the company of three who study 
 Torah, what necessity is there to point out that it abides also in the 
 company of ten who study Torah ? Surely the latter can be taken for 
 granted ? And the answer is, " When ten study Torah, the Shechinah 
 takes its seat by their side as soon as they enter the study-house, even 
 before they actually seat themselves down. But in the case of three, the 
 Shechinah is not with them until they have thoroughly seated and 
 arranged themselves for study." 
 
, CHAPTER XII 
 
 (g) the shechinah and the woed 
 
 In the course of an examination of Rabbinic passages 
 bearing on Shechinab, one alights upon many an allusion 
 to the "Word" (in Hebrew "Dibbur" or "Ma'amar"), 
 and it soon becomes noticeable that there is a kinship 
 between the two. The personification is equally strong 
 in both. The " Word " at once reminds us of the 
 Targumic Memra/^^ which is perhaps the most note- 
 worthy feature of the Targum literature. And one is 
 led on to think in this connexion of the Logos of Philo 
 and the "Word" of St. John's Gospel. But close 
 study very soon dispels the idea that the latter two 
 terms are identical with Memra or Shechinah or 
 Dibbur. Philo's Logos differs in at least three im- 
 portant respects from the Rabbinic conceptions. These 
 are (1) that it is a piece of metaphysics, a philo- 
 sophical term quite foreign to Rabbinic methods of 
 interpretation. (2) That it is impersonal, whereas the 
 Rabbinic terms stand for a Personal God, a father into 
 whose ears man can pour the tale of his troubles, and 
 receive a comforting reply. (3) The Logos is often 
 the intermediary between man and God, the " paraclete " 
 of humanity, whereas the Rabbins repudiated in the 
 strongest possible language, any intervening personality 
 between man and his Maker.* 
 
 * As Bousset says (page 346): " Der Logos Philos hat mit der oben 
 erwahnten rabbinischen Spekulation wenig gemein." Volz {Der Gcist Gottes, 
 
 146 
 
CH. xii THE SHECHINAH AND THE WORD 147 
 
 The most frequent usage of the " Word " is in 
 connexion with cosmology. The foundation to work 
 upon is the Psalmist's expression, " By the word of the 
 Lord were the heavens made" (xxxiii. 6). Genesis 
 Rabba xii, 2 says, "Not by labour and not by toil did 
 God create His world, but by the word." Ihid. xvii. 1 
 has the familiar saying about the world having been 
 created by ten Words (rmnNO mt&i?n).^''^ The Word 
 here is an aspect of God's creative energy .^^^ But it 
 need not of necessity point to any immanent Divine 
 activity in the world. As it stands in the passage just 
 quoted, it might with equal justice be interpreted in a 
 transcendent sense. The world was created by the 
 Word, after which it retired absolutely from the scene. 
 But there is an important passage in the Sifri on 
 HDil (quoted also in Song of Songs Rabba i. 3), in 
 which the " Word " is strongly personified, and is merely 
 another aspect of the Rabbinic teaching about Divine 
 Immanence in Israel, of which I have spoken in 
 connexion with Shechinah. " The Word emerged from 
 the right hand of God and went to the left of Israel ; 
 thence returning, it surrounded the camp of Israel, which 
 was eighteen miles by eighteen miles ; thence returning 
 it went round from the right of Israel to the left of 
 God, who received it on His right, and afterwards engraved 
 it on the tablet ; and its voice resounded from one end 
 of the world to another, fulfilling the statement of 
 Scripture, ' The voice of the Lord divideth the flame 
 of fire' (Psalm xxix. 7)." Rabbi Moses Alshech ^'^ 
 
 Tubingen, 1910) says : " Mag Philo diesen seinen Zentralbegriff vom Stoizismus 
 oder von der agyptischen Speculation oder von beiden iibernonimen haben, 
 jedenfalls zeigt das Verhaltniss von Logos und gottlichen Pneunia in Philo, dass 
 der alexandrinische Denker sicli mehr mit der griechisch-iigyptischen als mit 
 der ATlich-jiidisclien Begriflswelt beriihrte." There are, however, as we 
 have seen, a few allusions to the o'nmn r\-\D as well as to angels in Talmudie 
 literature which run very near to the paraclete idea of Philo, similarly in the case 
 of Memra, particularly in the Jerusalem Targum. 
 
148 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 in his commentary on the Song of Songs, as \^e\\ as 
 in the commentary on the Midrash Rabba h"\p rrD*', takes 
 the passage in a strictly spiritual sense as showing 
 the triumph of the Divine in man over the unworthy 
 side of his nature, the promptings of his evil im- 
 pulse. Another passage in Song of Songs Rabba vi. 3 
 represents the "Word" as interceding before God 
 on behalf of the Israelites, who were frightened to 
 death when they heard the first syllables of the Ten 
 Commandments on Sinai. The commentator before 
 mentioned, here explains the " Word " as being identical 
 with an angel, on the basis of the remark in T. B. 
 Haggigah 14a, " from every word which comes out of the 
 mouth of the Almighty there is created an angel." ^^^ 
 
 Deuteronomy Rabba ix. 9 relates a conversation 
 between Moses, shortly before his death, and Joshua, in 
 which the former asks the latter, " What did the Word 
 say unto thee ? " Joshua replies, " At the moment 
 when the Word revealed itself unto thee, didst thou 
 know what it said unto thee ? " Here " Word " seems 
 the exact equivalent of Divine inspiration.^^^ 
 
 Sifri on in':>i>nn, commenting on the passage (Numbers 
 xii. 8) on the words mTni n^ rrN-ioi, says that the allusion 
 is to ni"T n«-iD, " The sight of the Word." The Word was 
 a physical reality to Moses in his inspired moments. 
 
 That the Rabbins conceived the "Word" as closely 
 akin to the Shechinah ideas, is seen from a passage to be 
 found in Mechilta,^^^ p. 1, edit. Friedmann (quoted also in 
 brief in Yalkut Ezekiel i. and in Tanhuma ni), where it 
 is pointed out, how the Shechinah, by successive stages, 
 became narrowed down from being the possession of all 
 lands, to being the possession of the Temple at Jerusalem 
 only. And it is noticeable how Shechinah and 
 "Dibbur" are indiscriminately used in the course of 
 the discussion. ^^^ Like the Shechinah the " Dibbur " 
 
XII THE SHECHINAH AND THE WORD 149 
 
 only exists in place of purity.* They are both similarly 
 and equally antithetical to sin. 
 
 XOTES TO CHAPTER XII 
 
 (1) "Memra" is confined to the Targximim. It never occurs in the 
 Talmud or Midrashim. " Dibbiir " and " Ma'amar " are iLsed inter- 
 changeably in the Midrash, although the latter is more frequently- 
 employed where cosmology is spoken of. The word " Sliechinah " occurs, 
 of course, frequently in the Targum (and often like Memra, with the 
 sole purpose of avoiding any semblance of anthropomorphism), but it has 
 nothing like the frequency of Memra. Wherever the Memra is not 
 introduced for the sole jiurpose of avoiding anthropomorphism, it is to 
 express the manifestation of the Divine 2:)ower or Divine Wisdom in the 
 universe and in man. In these respects its meaning and force are largely 
 paralleled by those of Shechinah. 
 
 (2) See T. B. MegiUah 21b ; Aboth v. 1. 
 
 (3) In Deuteronomy Rabba v. 13 there is a curious play upon words 
 in the case of ■i3T = Word, and n i^n = Pestilence. God .says that just as 
 He brought the world into life by the word, so He can remove it from 
 life by the pestilence. 
 
 (4) Moses Alshech was Rabbi in Safed in the second half of the 
 sixteenth century. He was a disciple of Joseph Karo. He wrote 
 homiletical commentaries on the Bible, and was widely celebrated as a 
 preacher. 
 
 (5) The Yalkut on Song of Songs i. says, " One angel goes forth before 
 every ' Dibbur,' and asks every Israelite in turn whether he accepts such 
 and such a particular ' Dibbur ' and all that it implies." 
 
 (6) This usage of " Dibbur " in the sense of prophetic inspiration is 
 found particularly in the Rabbinic dictum (given in Grenesis Rabba Hi. 5 
 and other places), " God reveals Himself to heathen prophets only by a 
 half Dibbur." 
 
 (7) See Friedmann's remark on the opening verse of the Mechilta. 
 Instead of ■"3'nn he reads "li'^n, and quotes the authority of the " Kol Bo " 
 for the reading in the Haggada of Passover night "la'^.i 's hn di:n, in 
 deference to the phrase in Jeremiah v. 1 3 ; it is, he says, the equivalent of 
 the Targumic Memra. 
 
 (8) But in Friedmann's edition of Mechilta this indiscrimination is 
 corrected. He manages to keep the two exjiressions distinct from each 
 other. But the similarity in their meanings is quite obvious from the 
 context. 
 
 * The Shechinah, as has been mentioned before, also exists, under certain 
 conditions, in places of impurity. I have been unable to discover any passages 
 which say this of the " Dibbur." 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 (h) the memra 
 
 Several phases of Rabbinic teaching about Divine 
 immanence are comprehended in the connotation of 
 the word " Memra." But the usage of this word is 
 confined exclusively to the Targumic literature. The 
 Rabbinic equivalent is " Ma'amar," but it is rarely 
 employed, and even then, its significance is not identical 
 with Memra. The latter seems to be a transliteration 
 
 of the Syriac )>i Sn)Sf> which = " word " in the general 
 sense, without any theological reference whatsoever.^^^ 
 
 The Targumim are a branch of Rabbinic literature ; 
 both Onkelos and Jonathan ben Uziel were pupils of the 
 Talmudic doctors,*'"^ and although there is much difi'erence 
 of opinion among scholars like Graetz, Friedmann, and 
 Bacher as to the exact identity of Onkelos and Jonathan 
 and their relations to the works which bear their names, 
 there is no doubt whatsoever that the Targumim are a 
 product of the activity of the Palestinian academies. 
 The frequent deviations from the literalness of the 
 Scriptural text, and the abundance of purely Midrashic 
 methods of interpretation, prove this.^^^ 
 
 The Targumic usage of the Memra,^*^ although it has 
 resemblances to the Rabbinic connotation of Shechinah, 
 nevertheless constitutes a new departure. It enters 
 into the relations between the human and the Divine, 
 
 150 
 
CHAP, xiii THE MEMRA 151 
 
 between God, man and the world, to an even greater 
 extent than the Shechinah. The view commonly 
 taken that the Memra is an expedient for avoiding 
 the ascription of anthropomorphism to the Deity, is 
 only half the truth/^^ As a matter of fact, the 
 Targum is guilty of many anthropomorphisms. This 
 has been shown by (among others) M. Ginsburger in 
 an essay in the Zeit. f. p7'ot. Theologie, 1891, entitled 
 " Die Anthropomorphismen in den Targumim." He lays 
 down the following rule, which is a very valuable guide 
 to the study of the Memra : " Whenever a relation is 
 predicated of God, through which His spiritual presence 
 an earthly being must be assumed, the paraphrase 
 with Memra is employed." Ginsburger rightly argues 
 that the Memra is no mere term of convenience, no mere 
 mechanical artifice thrown in at random, for no more 
 than the outward purpose of stripping the Deity of 
 corporeality. It has a deep and real theological import. 
 Some such view as this was also held by Nahmanides. 
 His ideas on the point are of great interest, and are given 
 in a passage of his Commentary on the Bible (Genesis 
 xlvi. 4), where he subjects the rationalistic tendencies 
 of Maimonides to very strong criticism. Nahmanides 
 argues, that if the sole object of the Targumic authors 
 in their usages of the terms Memra, Shechinah, Yekarah, 
 etc., were the avoidance of anthropomorphism, why do 
 we find such literal renderings as '^n N^ipl, " and God 
 called," or "and God spake," "rs ^Sdt?<'> Surely to 
 attribute speech to God is to regard Him in the guise 
 of a man ? ^'^ * Nahmanides quotes further instances. 
 In Exodus xiv. 31 Onkelos renders the verse as : 
 " And Israel saw the might of the great hand." If this is 
 not anthropomorphic, what is ? Again, Exodus xxxi. 18 
 
 * It should here be said, as Mr. Israel Abrahams has pointed out to me, that 
 Maimonides was of opinion that our current Targum texts do not always contain 
 the original readings. His opinion is substantiated by many modern scholars. 
 
152 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 is literally translated as " with the finger of God " ^^^ ; 
 similarly Deut. iv. 34, " with a strong hand and an out- 
 stretched arm," is literally rendered. And in Deut. xi. 
 12 Onkelos has no hesitation in speaking of the " eyes " 
 of God as being constantly upon the land " from the be- 
 ginning of the year even to the end of the year." On 
 the otlier hand, argues Nahmanides, there are many 
 instances where the Targum inserts the word Memra 
 (or Shechinah), even when there is no danger of 
 anthropomorphism.^^^ In Exodus xvi. 8, " Your murmur- 
 ings are not against us, but against the Lord " ; here 
 the murmurings are made to be " against the Memra 
 of the Lord," although there is no necessity for the 
 addition. To murmur against God, does not imply 
 corporeality on His part. Similarly in Genesis ix. 
 16, 17, Exodus xxxi. 17, the rainbow and the Sabbath 
 respectively are a sign between man and the Memra ; and 
 in Genesis xxxi. 49, 50, where "Mitspah" and "the heap" 
 are the witness between Jacob and Laban on the one 
 hand, and the Memra on the other. From these and 
 other examples, Nahmanides rightly draws the two 
 following conclusions : (a) that there is no systematic 
 avoidance of anthropomorphism in the Targum literature ; 
 (6) that the Memra has a deep theological or mystical 
 significance. It is noteworthy that he does not 
 particularise this significance. He says simply, " their 
 secret is known to students." ^^^^ But a knowleds^e 
 of Nahmanides' general theological system leaves no 
 room to doubt, that he was here alluding to what is 
 the key-stone of his teaching, viz. the Immanence 
 of God. God's presence in the world was a reality 
 to Nahmanides ; and his constantly reiterated views 
 on such things as creation, miracles, the soul, the Torah, 
 etc., all hinge upon his unyielding belief in the closest 
 contact between the Deity and the World.^^^^ 
 
XIII THE MEMRA 153 
 
 Nahmanides has struck the right note. An ex- 
 amination of nearly all the passages in the Targumim 
 where the word is used, leads to the conclusion that the 
 Memra has mystical bearings ; it connotes relationships 
 between the Deity and the world which are part and 
 parcel of Rabbinic thought on these matters/^"^ 
 
 The Memra is the development of the Psalmist's 
 simple but great utterance, " For He spake, and it was ; 
 He commanded, and it stood fast " (Psalm xxxiii. 9). It 
 is the expounding of the " Word " from the Jewish point 
 of view. All things exist by virtue of the word [i.e. 
 Memra) of God. It permeates everything, brings every- 
 thing into the realm of being, conditions everything. It 
 is the immanent manifestation of God in the world of 
 matter and spirit. Divine wisdom, Divine power, 
 Divine love. Divine justice, all these do not abide in the 
 highest heavens, isolated, unapproachable, unknowable. 
 They are imbedded in the scheme of things that we can 
 see and feel and touch and know. They are a part of 
 the constitution of man and the world. Man and the 
 world are a fragment of them. The Memra comprises 
 and expresses these teachings. 
 
 The various significations of the Memra may be 
 classified as follows : — 
 
 (A) The Memra as Divine Wisdom, Power, 
 AND Love 
 
 The immanent God of Judaism is, as was said at the 
 beginning of this book, the all-pervading divine per- 
 sonality who is a mixture of wisdom, power, and love. 
 To these must be added a fourth, viz. justice ; but this 
 must be dealt with separately. The oft-repeated Biblical 
 and Rabbinical portraiture of God as a father, with the 
 father's compassion for the children, is unintelligible 
 without this assumption. 
 
154 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 I. Genesis. — In iii. 8, " And they heard the voice 
 of the Memra walking in the garden." It is interesting 
 to note that Nahmanides says that the words allude to 
 " the manifestation of the Shechinah in that place," 
 a significant identification of Memra and Shechinah/^^^ 
 
 In vii, 16 the Jerusalem Targum has, "And the 
 Memra closed the door of the ark in his [Noah's] face." 
 
 In XV. 1, "Fear not, Abram, my Memra shall be 
 strong unto thee." 
 
 Idem verse 6, " And Abram believed in the Memra 
 of God." (^*> 
 
 In xxviii. 20, 21, "If the Memra shall be my help." 
 " And the Memra of God shall be unto me for a God." 
 Nahmanides remarks on the latter verse, " There is 
 a secret in this context." By this he means that it 
 possesses a mystical connotation. 
 
 In XXXV. 3, " And I will make there an altar to the 
 God who answered me in the day of my trouble and 
 whose Memra was my support on the way that I went." 
 
 II. Exodus. — In iii. 12, " And he said. Verily my 
 Memra shall be thy support" (same in Pseudo- 
 Jonathan). 
 
 In iv. 12, "And now, go, and my Memra shall be 
 with thy mouth " (Pseudo- Jonathan has, " And I, with 
 my Memra, shall be with the speech of thy mouth"). 
 Similarly in iv. 15. 
 
 In xii. 29, " And it came to pass in the middle of 
 the night that the Memra of God smote all the first-born, 
 etc." So in Pseudo-Jonathan, but not found in ordinary 
 edition of Onkelos. 
 
 In xiv. 31, "And the people feared the Lord and 
 they believed in the Memra of the Lord." So Onkelos. 
 Pseudo- Jonathan has, " And they believed in the name 
 of the Memra of the Lord." Possibly, there is an 
 allusion here to the Rabbinic belief in the miracle- 
 
xiii THE MEMRA 155 
 
 performing power of tlie Divine name (see e.g. T. B. 
 Makkoth 1 1 a)/^^^ In the Kabbalistic system of cosmology 
 the combinations of Divine names play a large part/'**^ 
 In T. B. Yoma 73b, it is stated that when the Urim and 
 Thummim were consulted, the letters of the Divine name 
 were lit up, and brought into such a combination, as to 
 make the answer intelligible. Not only the names of 
 God, but those of the angels as well, constitute a funda- 
 mental part of the Jewish mysticism of both Talmud 
 and Kabbalah/^'^ 
 
 In xvi. 8, " Not against us are your murmurings, 
 but against the Memra of God."^''^ 
 
 In xix. 17, "And Moses brought forth the people 
 towards the Memra of God." So Onkelos. It is note- 
 worthy that Pseud o- Jonathan renders " towards the 
 Shechinah of God," thus again showing the close 
 association between the ideas. 
 
 In XX. 1 it is noteworthy that both Onkelos and 
 Pseudo- Jonathan render literally " and God spake." 
 But the Jerus. Targum has " and the Memra spake." 
 
 In XXV. 22, " And I shall prepare my Memra for 
 thee there." 
 
 In xxxiii. 22, " And I shall protect thee with my 
 Memra until I pass." It is noteworthy that in Pseudo- 
 Jonathan we get the two phrases "Memra" and 
 "^riD-'Dt!? "ip"' in the same sentence. The latter is the 
 rendering for the Hebrew "'iiiD, " my glory," and the 
 former for "'DD, " my hand." Thus, the Shechinah would 
 seem to be the glory of the Immanent God in the 
 general sense ; the Memra would be an aspect or 
 particular expression of this, viz. the protection or 
 providence of the Immanent God.^^^^ 
 
 III. Leviticus. — In v. 21 Pseudo-Jonathan has, " If 
 a man sin and speak falsehood against the name of 
 the Memra of God." Here there is again the mystical 
 
156 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 personification of the Name which we have just alluded 
 to. Onkelos has simply, " before God." In xx. 23, 
 " For all these things have they done, and my 
 Memra has removed them afar." The Memra is the 
 punitive agency, which must be considered later on. 
 
 In xxvi. 46, " These are the statutes and the judg- 
 ments and the laws which the Lord gave between His 
 Memra and the children of Israel." 
 
 IV. Numbers. — In x. 35, " Reveal Thyself now, 
 Memra of God, in Thy great anger, and let the enemies 
 of Thy people be scattered" (Pseudo -Jonathan). 
 Onkelos renders exactly as in the Biblical text. The 
 Jerusalem Targum is identical in meaning, though not 
 in phrasing, with Pseudo-Jonathan, but it has the 
 following significant addition, "and cause the glory of 
 Thy Shechinah to rest among them." It is interesting 
 to observe here, how the Shechinah is secondary, and not 
 parallel to, the Memra. The Memra is to shed the 
 Shechinah upon Israel. (A similar instance of the 
 Memra leading the people to glory is Isaiah Ixiii. 14, 
 " As a beast goeth along in the plain, thus the Memra 
 of God led them." ^"°^ Here Memra is the translation of 
 the Hebrew " Ruah," " spirit.") 
 
 In xiv. 9, " And the Memra of God is our help, 
 fear them not." 
 
 Ibid. 11, "And how long will they not believe in 
 my Memra ? " ^^^^ 
 
 In xxiii. 8, " How shall I curse those of the house 
 of Jacob, seeing that the Memra of God has blessed them ? 
 How shall I make small those of the house of Israel, 
 seeing that the Memra of God has made them great ? " 
 
 In xxiii. 21, "The Memra of the Lord their God is 
 their help, and the Shechinah of their king is among 
 them." Here the two terms are used in a parallel sense. 
 (Compare Hosea ix. 10, where the Memra finds Israel 
 
XIII THE MEMRA 157 
 
 in the wilderness, as a vine planted by a well of water ; 
 also Hosea xi. 4, w^iere the Memra is the good plough- 
 man, who lightens the yoke from the backs of the 
 oxen.) 
 
 V. Deuteronomy. — In i. 32, "And in this thing 
 ye do not believe in the Memra of the Lord your God " 
 (also i. 30, " The Memra of the Lord your God who 
 walketh before you shall make war for you "). In iv. 
 33, " Hath any people heard the voice of the Memra 
 of God speaking from the midst of the fire ? " (similar 
 idea in iv. 36). In v. 35, " I was standing between the 
 Memra of God and between you." In v. 11 (Pseudo- 
 Jonathan), " Oh, my people, sons of Israel, swear not 
 one of you in the name of the Memra of the Lord 
 your God." 
 
 In V. 21 (Pseudo-Jonathan), " And ye said. Verily the 
 Memra of the Lord your God hath shown you the 
 ' Shechinah ' of His glory, and the greatness of His 
 praise. And the voice of His Memra have we heard 
 from the midst of the fire ; this day have we seen that 
 the Lord speaketh with a man in whom is the Holy 
 Spirit, and he liveth." It is remarkable that we have 
 here all three phases of Divine Immanence which we 
 are investigating, viz. the Shechinah, Memra, and the 
 Holy Spirit. 
 
 In xxxiii. 7 there is a direct invocation to the 
 Memra as follows : " Hear, Memra of God, the 
 voice of Judah's prayer, and be a stay and 
 support to him from his enemies " (Jerus. Targum, 
 ad loc). 
 
 (B) The Memra as Divine Justice 
 
 It is the Memra who is always the subject of 
 swearing or oathtaking. Either the Memra takes the 
 oath, or God swears by His Memra. This is the way in 
 
158 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 which Targumic literature describes Divine fidelity to 
 Divine promises whether to reward or punish. 
 
 In Genesis vi. 6, " And God turned from His 
 Memra by which He had made man in the land, and He 
 said by His Memra to break their strength according to 
 His will" (Onkelos)/^^^ Jerusalem Targum has the same, 
 except that it ends up, " and He brought affliction 
 upon them by His Memra." 
 
 In Genesis viii. 21, "And God said by His Memra, 
 I will not again curse the ground for the sake of 
 man, etc." 
 
 In Genesis xx. 3, " And the Memra of God came 
 to Abimelech in a dream of the night." 
 
 In Genesis xxx. 23, xxiv. 3, xxii. 16, we get the 
 Memra as the subject of the oath. 
 
 In Exodus xxxii. 13 same as in Genesis. 
 
 In Exodus xxxii. 35, "And the Memra of God 
 plagued the people" (Jerusalem Targum). The just 
 retribution which falls upon the heads of the calf- 
 worshippers is effected by the Memra. 
 
 In Leviticus xxvi. 30, the Hebrew, " And my soul 
 shall abhor you," is rendered, " And my Memra shall 
 remove you afar off." The Memra here is the avenger 
 of the wayward Israelites (cp. Isaiah i. 14 ; Ezekiel 
 xxiii. 18). 
 
 In Numbers xiv. 30 we have again the Memra as 
 the instrument of the Divine oath (cp. Ezekiel xx. 5). 
 
 In Deuteronomy ix. 3, " And thou shalt know this day 
 that the Lord thy God passeth before thee ; His Memra 
 is a devouring fire." So Onkelos renders. Pseudo- 
 Jonathan instead of " He passeth before thee," has, " The 
 Shechinah of His glory walketh before thee." ^^^^ 
 
 I think one can safely make the following deductions 
 from this short exposition of the usage of Memra : 
 
xiir THE MEMRA 159 
 
 (1) That besides being a mere artifice for avoiding 
 anthropomorphism, the Memra has, to the minds of the 
 Targumic authors, some real theological connotation, 
 
 (2) That it connotes tlie manifestation on earth and 
 among men of several aspects of Divine power, goodness, 
 wisdom and justice. The "Word" is a world-permeat- 
 ing force, a reality in the world of matter or mind, the 
 immanent aspect of God holding all things under its 
 omnipresent sway. (3) That it has affinities in meaning 
 to both Shechinah and Holy Spirit, except that these, 
 as can be readily seen from the examples given, are 
 more generally used in the Targumim to denote the 
 Immanent Deity from the standpoint of glory, majesty, 
 etc., whereas the Memra more frequently signifies 
 the immanent creative, controlling, guiding principle 
 rather from the standpoint of force than of love, 
 although, of course, it often appears in the latter senses 
 as well. (4) That it has affinities with the employment 
 of "wisdom" in the Apocryphal literature. Just as 
 the Memra is punitive and will brook neither evil nor 
 evil-doers, so also " Wisdom will not enter into a soul 
 that deviseth evil ; nor dwell in a body that is held in 
 pledge by sin " (Wisdom of Solomon i. 4-5), and it brings 
 just retribution on tyrants and oppressors. " Their 
 enemies she drowned, and out of the bottom of the deep 
 she cast them out" (x. 19). Just as the Memra is the 
 great healer and preserver of the saints, so also " Thy 
 word, Lord, healeth all things" (Wisdom xvi. 12), and 
 " Thy word preserveth them that put their trust in Thee " 
 (xvi. 26). (5) That it is not used as an intermediary 
 between man and God ; and this accords with the 
 Rabbinic anxiety to avoid all possible suspicion of 
 teaching the existence of two beings having equal 
 or nearly equal Divine powers. ^"^^ A passage such as 
 that already quoted from Deut. xxxiii. 7, " Hear, 
 
i6o THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 Memra of God, the voice of Judah's prayer," is to be 
 explained, by supposing that the Memra is artificially 
 inserted here to avoid the anthropomorphism, or (and 
 this is a more likely solution) that the Memra here is 
 the Deity in His aspect of Love, God as the receiver 
 of the prayer of the just. 
 
 Bearing this in mind, it is rather surprising to 
 find that Philo is almost less Jewish in his doctrine 
 of God than the author of the Gospel of St. John. 
 Philo in many a memorable passage boldly declares 
 his Logos to be an "Intercessor," a "Paraclete" of 
 humanity. In the rare cases in which the Memra is 
 found to bear such a sense, the passages are of not 
 much importance. And as for the sections in the 
 Fourth Gospel, where Jesus is depicted in an intercessory 
 role, these are shown as having a decidedly Rabbinic 
 colouring. In note 36 in Chapter III. it has been shown 
 how close is the correspondence between the ideas of the 
 opening verse of the Fourth Gospel, and the many Rab- 
 binical sayings about the eternity and pre-existence of 
 the Torah. But even more pronounced is the corre- 
 spondence between the ideas of both prologue and body 
 of that Gospel, with the theological import of the Tar- 
 gumic Memra. In the prologue the "Word" is the 
 essence of the immanent God in the universe and man. 
 It is the agent and quickening spirit in creation, the life 
 of all that lives and the light of all that shines. In 
 some of the most striking declarations of Paul there 
 is the very same conception in regard to the Messiah 
 (Christ). Thus, "Through him are all things" (Pom. 
 xi. 36). He is "Life-giving Spirit" (1 Cor. xv. 
 45). "Christ is all, and in all" (Col. iii. 11). His 
 reign is co-extensive with history. He is " the first- 
 born of all creation." He is " before all things, and in 
 him all things hold together" (Col. i. 15, 17). 
 
XIII THE MEMRA i6i 
 
 Now, what are the theological connotations which 
 are assio^ned to the Memra in the Taro^umim ? The 
 examples adduced, prove that the Memra points to a 
 Divine manifestation in the affairs of the world, that 
 in the mind of the old-world Targumic author, it 
 expressed the unfailing and infallible Presence of a 
 Godhead who is mercy and wisdom and power and love 
 all in glorious combination, revealing themselves in all 
 the chequered incidents of the life of Israel, in order to 
 sustain God's people in their upward path towards 
 riorhteousness. It is with teaching of this nature, that 
 the Fourth Gospel seems to accord. Of course, I 
 assume that the modern critical view of the Fourth 
 Gospel is the correct one, viz. that it is a book written 
 with a theological, rather than a historical, purpose, that 
 it is a subjective interpretation of an idea, or series of 
 ideas, rather than an objective presentation, a chronicle 
 of events. 
 
 I will now take some parts of the Gospel in detail. 
 The remark in i. 1, "The Word was with God, and 
 the Word was God," so far from lending itself to the 
 Christological interpretation of the identity between 
 God and Jesus, seems to aim at conveying an idea just 
 the reverse. It has been shown from our study of both 
 Shechinah and Memra, that although the Rabbins 
 personified these terms, speaking with the greatest 
 freedom of them as the visible manifestations of Deity 
 in the objective world, they yet left no stone unturned 
 to prevent any belief in anything but the unique and 
 incomparable unity of God. The Gospel seems to bring 
 out just this insistence on the Divine unity, " The Word 
 was with God, and the Word was God. The Word was 
 in the beginning with God. All things were made by 
 Him ; and without Him was not anything made that was 
 made." It is an exact reproduction of the Rabbinic 
 
 M 
 
i62 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 emphasis upon everytliing having been made by the 
 " Ma'amar," based on the Psalmist's declaration, " For 
 He spake, and it was " (Psalm xxxiii, 9), with the proviso 
 that this " Ma'amar " must not detract one iota from 
 the absolute Unity of Deity. The Gospel's allusions to 
 the metaphor of light in the next few verses seem to be 
 a further harping on the same Midrashic string. The 
 manifold figurative portrayal of the Shechinah as 
 Light has already been mentioned. The ideas of 
 "the Word made flesh" (i. 14) and "the only begotten 
 of the Father" [ibid.) seem also to be an echo of 
 mystical statements found in Rabbinic thought. In 
 T. B. Pesahim 54a we get an enumeration of seven 
 persons or things which were created before the world 
 came into existence. These are (l) the Torah, which is 
 called "the firstling of His way" (Prov. viii. 22) ; (2) 
 the throne of glory which is " established of old " (Psalm 
 xciii. 2) ; (3) the sanctuary : " From the beginning is 
 the place of our sanctuary" (Jer. xvii. 12); (4) the 
 garden of Eden (Rabbinical interpretation of mpcj in Gen. 
 ii. 8); (5) Gehenna : " Tophet is ordained of old" (Isaiah 
 XXX. 33) ; (6) Repentance : " Before the mountains w^ere 
 brought forth, or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and 
 the world" . . . Thou saidst, "Return, ye children of 
 men " (Psalm xc. 2-3) ; (7) the name of the Messiah : 
 " Before the sun His name sprouts forth as Yinnon, the 
 Awakener" (Psalm Ixxii. 17 Rabbinical interpretion).^'^^ 
 This pre-existence * "of the name of the Messiah" has 
 
 * It is worth while comparing this Rabbinic enumeration of seven pre- 
 existent things with the N.T. Apocalypse passages, such as i. 4, "And from the 
 seven spirits which are before His throne," and iv. 5, "And there were seven 
 lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God." 
 That the Apocalypse in its present form can be traced to a mmiber of sources 
 more or less loosely held together in a mechanical union, seems to be the 
 opinion of the best modern German scholars, such as Pfleiderer, Weizsiicker, 
 Spitta, etc. [although Swete in his edition of the Apocalypse (Macmillan, 1907) 
 seems to argue for a unity of authorship]. And they also agree in this, viz. 
 that many of these sources are Jewish. [Cp. e.g. a phrase like, "Hurt not the 
 earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we shall have sealed the servants 
 
THE MEMRA 163 
 
 a strong bearing on the Gospel idea under consideration. 
 In John viii. 58 Jesus says, " Before Abraham was, 
 I am." One can clearly see then, that the " Word " 
 
 of our God on their foreheads" (vii. 3); the idea of "sealing the servants of 
 God" is the Talmudic idea found in T. B. Rosh Hoshana 16b cniDJ D'pns 
 □"n'? nn'^N'? D'cnmi DunD>] The succeeding verse (vi. 6), "And before the throne, 
 as it were a glassy sea like unto crystal," seems to have affinity with tlie Rabbinic 
 seven things before the creation of the world, in so far as it is clearly 
 reminiscent of the earliest verses of the first chapter of Genesis, where we lind 
 the waters above the tinnament answering to the waters below it. Beyond 
 these upper waters, therefore, lay the throne of God, which pre-existed to the 
 universe (cp. for same idea. Book of Enoch xiv. 9, Secrets of Enoch, edit. 
 Charles, p. 4). There is an interesting allusion to these seven pre- 
 existences in the Syriac Odes mid Fsulms of Solomon, edited from MSS. and 
 translated by Dr. Rendel Harris (Cambridge University Press, 1909). It 
 occurs in Ode iv. thus : ' ' For Thy sanctuary Thou hast designed before Thou 
 didst make other places ; that which is the elder shall not be altered by those 
 that are younger than itself." Dr. Harris says (p. 91) : "The writer of the Psalm 
 if not of Jewish origin is, at least, Jewish in sympathy ; he holds the Jewish be- 
 lief that the sanctuary at Jerusalem was older than the world in which it stood ; 
 it was, according to Rabbinic teaching, prior to all the created things." What 
 called forth the Psalm, may be, according to Dr. Harris, "some unknown 
 movement to carry on the Jewish worship outside the desolated and proscribed 
 sanctuary, or the closing of the Jewish Temple at Leontopolis in Egypt, which 
 was, perhaps, itself in the first instance built under the pressure of the situation 
 which resulted in the desecration of the Temple at Jerusalem by Antiochus 
 Epiphanes." In this Ode again there is an allusion to sealing : " For Thy seal 
 is known ; and Thy creatures know it ; and Thy [heavenly] hosts possess it ; and 
 the elect archangels are clad with it." This compares well with the N.T. 
 Ajjocalypse passage (vii. 3) quoted above, which, as we said there, has decided 
 Rabbinic affinities. It is hard to see why Dr. Harris should so emphatically 
 deny the possibility of a Jewish authorship of this Ode in the collection. It 
 may be true enough that, as he says, ' ' there are no Scripture references in the 
 Ode." But the whole style breathes the spirit of the O.T. and the Rabbinical 
 writings. 
 
 Since writing the aforegoing I have had the opportunity of reading Harnack's 
 critical review of Rendel Harris's work, entitled Mn jiidisch-christliches Psalm- 
 buck aus dem ersten Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 1910). Harnack's thesis is that the 
 Odes emanate from a Jewish hand, and have received Christian interpolations 
 here and there. While admitting, as he does (see p. 29), that more than 
 one hand has been at work on this particular Ode ("So dass man schwer 
 glauben kann, dass die beiden Stiicke urspriinglich eine Einheit gebildet haben "), 
 he does not so severely exclude the Jewish possibility as R. Harris throughout 
 does. 
 
 During the interval between the publication of Harnack's work and the 
 present date (1912) this scholar's views have been the subject of considerable 
 discussion. The main current of learned opinion flows in the direction of 
 Rendel Harris's conclusions, that the Odes are Christian rather than Jewish. 
 Thus, in the Journal of Theologiral Studies for January 1912, Father Conolly, 
 in an able examination of the Odes, maintains that they are entirely Christian. 
 In the Expositor for January 1912, Professor Wensinck of Utrecht argues for tlie 
 Christian view by a comparison between the Odes and some points in the 
 writings of Ephraeni. In the Theologisclie Literaturzcitumj for .January 1912, 
 
i64 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 which was " in the beginning," and afterwards " was 
 made flesh" and became the Christ, is an echo of the 
 Rabbinic teaching about the pre-existence of Messiah/"*^^ 
 The idea of sonship in relation to God, is developed in 
 Rabbinical literature on the basis of many statements in 
 the Old Testament, and is quite free from any theological 
 or dogmatic significance. It is a Hebrew idiom, which 
 conveys nothing more than the truth of the spirituality of 
 man. Every Israelite, every member of the human race, 
 enjoys God's fatherhood ; it is " spirit " and not physical 
 descent which puts man in the filial relation to his 
 Father in heaven. But there is this exception, viz. that 
 in certain passages in Rabbinic literature, the Messiah 
 is singled out for special sonship. Thus T. B, Sukkah 
 52a makes God address Messiah, son of David, in the 
 words of Psalm ii. 7, 8, " Thou art my Son, ask of me, 
 etc." (cp. also Genesis Rabba xliv. 8). Similarly, the 
 " Son " of Psalm Ixxx. 17 is rendered by the Targum as 
 " King Messiah." 
 
 It seems to be just this exceptional usage of son 
 in a Messianic sense, that was adopted by the Fourth 
 Gospel, and made the basis of a dogma which has had 
 the most far-reaching efi"ects for Christianity. But can 
 we go further, and give a Rabbinic authorship to the 
 special phrase " Only begotten Son," used more than 
 once in the Fourth Gospel ? In his Tei'minologie 
 der judischen Schriftauslegung, Professor Bacher 
 shows how the Hebrew root irf is frequently used in 
 Rabbinical literature as a synonym for ~ini (chosen, 
 elect).^^^^ The Gospel translation " only begotten Son " 
 
 Professor Montgomery has a paper on ' ' The Quotations from the New Testament 
 in the Odes of Solomon." Curiously enough, where Harnack and Sjiitta discover 
 essentially Jewish teaching, Montgomery finds citations from the New Testa- 
 ment. Further, he tries to show that the quotations from the Old Testament, 
 are chiefly drawn from those books with which the early Church was most 
 familiar, viz. the Psalms and certain portions of the Wisdom Literature. 
 
THE MEMRA 165 
 
 corresponds to the Hebrew i^rc used in this specialised 
 sense. So that the phrase " only begotten Son " may 
 possess no doctrinal connotation. 
 
 Although I would not go to the length of Giidemann,* 
 who says (in Monatsschinft, 1893, pp. 345-356) that 
 the whole of the Fourth Gospel was written by a born 
 Jew, I do maintain that it is the work of one who 
 was thoroughly saturated with the Jewish Apocalyptic 
 as well as the Palestinian Rabbinic teachings in the 
 first century a.d., and being saturated with these 
 teachings, one of his objects was to demonstrate, that 
 a belief in the angelic lore of the Jews, as well as the 
 prevalent ideas about God's Shechinah and " Word," 
 does not in any degree imply dualism of Deity. 
 Judaism's foremost truth that "God is one" is an 
 unassailable stronghold. But, lest this oneness of God 
 might lead to a too narrow and exclusive view of the 
 Divine transcendentalism of some of the Biblical 
 writers, he aimed at showing, by means of a string 
 of deftly - worded parables and striking epigrams, all 
 clustering round the name of Jesus, the reality of the 
 other aspect of God, viz. the immanent aspect. Thus, 
 the Messiahship of Jesus sinks comparatively into the 
 background, and there is found, instead, an exposition 
 of God's fatherhood (vi. 29-46, xiv. 2, xv. 8-10, etc.), 
 through which alone life, salvation, and resurrection 
 
 * Giidemann's view is also that of the late Bishop Westcott in his recently 
 published Gospel according to St. John (Murray, 2 vols). He says : ' ' The 
 conclusion towards which all the lines of inquiry converge remains unshaken, 
 that the Fourth Gospel was written by a Palestinian Jew. ..." But Schniiedel 
 in his newest book, The Johannine Writings (Black), declares it to be the 
 work of some unknown Ephesian. Harnack, again, in his recently edited Odes 
 of Solovwn, swings back to the older view of its Jewish origin. He says 
 (p. 106): " dieser Johannes mag, bevor er Christ wurde, bereits ein judischer 
 Mystiker gewesen sein." 
 
 Since writing the above, I see that in the opinion of the writer of the 
 Introduction to the Gosi)el of St. John in the Century Bible (Rev. J. A. 
 M'Clymont), the Gospel is the work of " some Jewish Christian who was 
 thoroughly conversant with the state of things in Jerusalem and Palestine" at 
 that epoch. 
 
i66 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 are obtainable.* This all-embracing, all-permeating 
 Divinity in tbe affairs of life is, as has been already 
 shown, the burden of the message of a large part of 
 Rabbinic theology. Inge, speaking of the permanent 
 value of the Logos -Christology, says (quoting from 
 the late Prof. Wallace of Oxford) : " The Veil is rent 
 away which in days of ignorance hid God and made 
 Him an unknown God ; clad Him in thick darkness 
 
 * Harnack in his essay on the Odes of Solomon asserts : " So ist er fiir die 
 hohere Kritik des Johannes Evangeliuins epochemachend, weildiese jiidischen Odeu 
 (nicht erst die christliche Bearbeitung) bereits all wesentlichen Stiicke der johan- 
 neischen Theologie samt ihrer religiosen Klangfarbe enthalten. Die Tat des 
 ' Johannes ' sie mit Jesus Christus zu verkniipfen iind sie zu noch grosserer 
 Erhabenheit und Werbekraft zu bringen, bleibt gewaltig genug ; aber sie erschopft 
 sich auch ganz wesentlich hierin " (Vorrede v.). Thus, the Fourth Gospel is, as I 
 in these pages have maintained, a Christianised version of Jewish mystical ideas 
 which were afloat in Palestine in the early Christian centuries. Harnack on 
 p. 118 asks the question, " What do we learn from these Odes on the subject of 
 the history of the rise of Christianity ? " And he replies, " Wir lernen aus den 
 Oden (1) in einem entfernten Zweige des Judentums einen religi'sen Indi- 
 vidualismus kennen, wie wir ihn bisher kaum geahnt haben. . . . Dass dieser 
 Indi\4dualismus in seiner Freiheit von allem Mythischen . . . und Cere- 
 moniosen in seiner spirituellen Reinheit und in seiner relativen Loslcisung von 
 der nationalen Religion eine wiclitige Yorstufe des Christentums ist, ist klar. 
 Zwischen den jungsten kanonischen Psalmen der Weisheit und den Psalmen 
 Solomos und den Testamenten der XII. Patriarchen einerseits und dem 
 Individualismus eines Paules, Johannes, Ignatius, anderseits finden diese Oden 
 ihre Statte." It is refreshing to hear, from so great an authority as Harnack, 
 that the Gospel which, among the four, is by consent the most spiritual, was 
 inspired by some "entfernten Zweige des Judentums." If this be true, who 
 shall henceforward be bold enough, be unhistorical enough, to speak of Pharisaism 
 as though it were all formalism, ceremonialism, nationalism, etc., with no 
 thought for the inwardness which must be a vital constituent of all religions ? 
 (2) Harnack says that we learn from these Odes that "die Conceptionen von 
 Licht, Wahrheit, Leben, Glaube, Liebe, Hoffnung, von Erkenntniss und 
 Unverganglichkeit, von Pradestination und neuer Geburt (bis zu Formulierungen 
 hin, die als Eigentum des ' Johannes ' bzw. auch des Apostels Paulus gelten 
 und daher als Erzeugnisse des Geistes Christi eschienen) nicht ' christlich ' 
 sondern bereits vorchristlich sind. " And by " vorchristlich " he implies, as he 
 says further on (p. 119) " Es hat, wie wir nun gelernt haben, im Spiitjudentum 
 einen Kreis von Mystikern gegeben, der in den religiosen Erfahrungen und Ideen 
 lebte, die die Grundlage der johanneischen Tlieologie bilden." Harnack will 
 not even have it that the Logos of the Prologue of the Gospel is essentially 
 Greek, and apart from the Prologue, says he, there is nothing really Hellenic 
 about the Gospel. What the author of the Fourth Gospel has done is to make 
 Christ "die personliche Verkiirpei-ung " of these current Jewish mystical notions ; 
 and he has preserved as we have maintained, the strict Jewish monotheistic 
 teaching. Harnack's view as to the Odes has been disputed, but this does not 
 destroy the force of his opinion as to the Jewish associations of the Fourtli 
 Gospel. 
 
XIII THE MEMRA 167 
 
 and terrors of the mount, saw Him invisible in excess 
 of light, and heard Him whispering indistinctly in 
 the separate events of history, a factor incalculable, 
 mysterious, awful." ^^^^ We might apply exactly the 
 same phraseology to the revolution effected in the 
 religious life of the Jew, once the immanent view of 
 God, as expressed in the Kabbalah, gained the ascend- 
 ancy in the Middle Ages over the exaggerated dry 
 formalism of Talmudical dialectics/"^^ And the Kabbalah 
 is, after all, but a normal and legitimate outgrowth 
 of the old Rabbinic hterature. The Shechinah of the 
 Talmud, the Metatron ^^°^ of the Gaonic-mystical litera- 
 ture, the "active intelligence" of Gabirol and Mai- 
 monides, the "Ten Sephiroth " ^^^^ of the Kabbalists are 
 all warp and woof of one and the same texture — they 
 are homogeneous elements of Jewish thought concerning 
 the Divine Immanence. 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER XIII 
 
 (1) See Levy N. H. Worterbuch and M. Jastrow's Dictionary. A 
 Targumic synonym for Memra is " Dibbura," which is rarely found. 
 When found it is nearly always in the Pseudo-Jonathan and not Onkelos, 
 e.g. Genesis xxviii. 10, "m .xnm mm '^V^n p, " For the reason that the 
 'Dibbur' was desirous of speaking with him." Similarly Exodus xxxiii. 11, 
 Numbers vii. 89, all in Pseudo-Jonathan. Cj). Talmudic phrases like 
 " Out of every ' Dibbur,' which escapes from God's mouth, an angel is 
 created" (T. B. Haggigah 14a); "The Dibbur was not with Moses" 
 (B. Bathra 121b) until the rebellious Israelites had perished (Deuteronomy 
 iL 16). 
 
 (2) R. Jeremiah (or, according to another version, R. Hiya bar Abba) 
 said, " The Targum to the Pentateuch was composed by the proselyte 
 Onkelos at the dictation of R. Eliezer and R. Joshua (T. B. Megillah 3a)." 
 Jonathan ben Uziel is named as Hillel's most prominent pupil (Sukkah 
 28a ; B. Bathra 134a). There is an elaborate article on this interesting 
 but difficult subject by Bacher in vol. xii. of the Jewish Encyclopo'dia. 
 See also M. Friedmann, Onkelos and Akylas, pp. 96-104. Introduction 
 to 13^ nrn:, by Dr. N. M. Adler ; Field's great work, Origenis Hexaplorum 
 quae supersunt, Oxford, 1875, is a mine of information for this knotty 
 problem concerning the relations between the Greek and Aramaic 
 versions. 
 
i68 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 (3) In the Targumim, one finds not only the exact reproductions of 
 Rabbinic translations of verses of the Bible, but also Halachas, as e.g. 
 in Deut. xxi. 8, " Be merciful, O Lord, unto Thy people Israel," which 
 Onkelos renders : " The priests shall say. Be merciful, O Lord, unto Thy 
 people Israel," which is a Mishna to be found in T. B. Sotah 46a. 
 
 (4) Of course Memra does not always carry a theological connotation. 
 It sometimes means the ordinary words of men in ordinary speech. For 
 instance, "according to the commandment of Pharaoh" (Genesis xlv. 21) 
 is given as, " By the Memra of Pharaoh " ; or " He will not hearken 
 unto our voice " (Deut. xxi. 20) is rendered, " He will not receive our 
 Memra." 
 
 (5) Maimonides seems to have taken this view, for which he was 
 severely criticised by Nahmanides in his Commentary on the Pentateuch 
 (Genesis xlvi. 4). Abarbanel, however, in his Commentary on the 
 Moreh defends him. In chap, xxvii. of his Moreh, Maimonides says : 
 " Onkelos the proselyte, who was thoroughly acquainted with the Hebrew 
 and Chaldaic languages, made it his task to ojipose the belief in God's 
 corporeality. Accordingly any expression employed in the Pentateuch 
 in reference to God and in any way implying corporeality, he paraphrases 
 in consonance with the context." The implication here is, that the 
 periphrasis with Memra would have, as its sole object, the avoidance of 
 anthropomorphism. This is shown by Nahmanides to be false. Weber 
 in his Jiidische Theologie, 1897, pp. 180-184, attempts a sketch of the 
 subject of anthropomorphism, but his points of view are too biassed for 
 acceptance. Maybaum's work. Die Anthropomorphien und Anthropopathien 
 bei Onkelos (Breslau, 1870) sets up elaborate rules for guidance in our 
 understanding of the subject, but they do not seem to hold good always. 
 The difficulty is, as Bacher points out, that there is no uniformity 
 in the printed versions of the Targumim. It is often impossible to say 
 whether a word found in one version of Onkelos does not really belong 
 to another version of Pseudo-Jonathan and vice versa. 
 
 (6) If the sole object were the avoidance of anthropomorphism, says 
 Nahmanides, it should have been rendered either "n mp p ncNrri or xnpi 
 "m Nnp' or "n 'ynm, 
 
 (7) Similarly in Genesis viii. 21, "And the Lord smelt a sweet 
 savoiu'," the Targum has, " And the Lord accepted with pleasure, etc." 
 After all, one cannot see less anthropomorj)hism in saying that " God 
 accepts " than that " God smells." 
 
 (8) Chapter Ixvi. of the Moreh (Part I.) is devoted to an exposition of 
 the phrase " finger of God " in Exodus xxxi. 1 8. Maimonides sees here 
 the difficulty of maintaining the theory he had previously laid down. 
 Pushed for an explanation, he says that the phrase " finger of God '' is 
 identical with " written by the word of God," and if this latter phrase 
 had been used it would have been equal to " written by the will and 
 desire of God " ("n ysni). But surely this is merely a case of begging the 
 question ! Once you interpret these human acts of God in terms of will 
 or desire on the part of God that such and such should take place, then 
 the whole structure of the problem of anthropomorphism is blown away 
 like a house of cards ! Maimonides goes on to admit that " it would have 
 
XIII NOTES 169 
 
 been more reasonable to say ' written by the Memra of God.' " And lie 
 then suggests that just as the " stars in the spheres " were made by the 
 direct will of God, not " by means of an instrument," the writing may also 
 have been produced by His direct will, not " by means of an instrument." 
 This is in accordance with Maimonides' theory of distinctions between 
 things created by the immediate Divine action and those fashioned by 
 what he calls t<i3j nix, " a light specially created for the purpose." It is 
 just this latter that is the butt of Nahmanides' attack, since Nahmanides 
 holds the view of the presence and work of God in all parts of creation : 
 the immanent view. 
 
 (9) See Moreh I. chap, xlviii. Speaking of the Targumic usage of 
 nKT = "to see," Maimonides remarks, "His renderings vary in a remark- 
 able manner, and I am unable to discern his principle or method." 
 Maimonides eventually frames certain principles which he imagines 
 Onkelos to pursue, but these he confesses are weakened by obvious 
 exceptions to the rules. His remark, " It appears to me that in these 
 passages there is a mistake which has crept into the copies of the Targum, 
 since we do not possess the Targumim in the original manuscript of 
 Onkelos," is an excellent anticipation of the modern critical reading 
 of Targumic literature. An instance of the ditficidties which the 
 student meets on this head is well afforded by the following. Nah- 
 manides (Genesis xlvi. 4) quotes the verse, " The Lord thy God He 
 passeth before thee " (Deut. xxxi. 3) as being rendered literally by 
 Onkelos. But this is not the case in the versions we have. In Onkelos 
 the Memra is inserted, Pseudo-Jonathan has Shechinah. This shows 
 editing. There can also be no doubt that the Targumim contain many 
 extraneous elements (see Professor Bacher's article " Targum " in voL xii. 
 of Jeioish Encyclopedia). 
 
 (10) This remark of Nahmanides is modelled on Daniel xii. 10, 
 i3'3' D'y^E'sni. The "Maskilim" is a title given to the Kabbalists 
 (c'^aipc) who studied the Sefer Yetsirah, a Mishna-like text-book of the 
 Gaonic period, containing mystic doctrines of God's relation to the 
 universe. Nahmanides frequently uses another expression ]n 'ynv in a 
 similar sense. This is because the Kabbalah is called mnoj na^n (" hidden 
 wisdom ") and the initials of these two words make up the word jn. The 
 phrase is an ingenious adaption of the two words in Ecclesiastes ix. 1 1. 
 
 (11) See Weiss, Dor iv. 12 et seq. ; Perles in Monatsschrift vii. 81 
 et seq. ; Shechter's essay on Nahmanides (in Studies in Judaism, i. pp. 120 
 et seq.). 
 
 (12) It is interesting to note how Nahmanides reduces Maimonides' 
 argument about Shechinah to a reductio ad absurdum. The latter 
 maintains that Shechinah is a mystical kind of light — ni^j tix or xna: nuD 
 — a mystical halo of glory which is something external to the Deity 
 {Moreh i. 27). If this were true, says he, liow can the rendering 
 of Jonathan b. Uziel on Ezekiel iii. 12, n'nrDE' n'3 -inxo "m Nip' ina, be 
 justified ? The "m Nip' and the n'm'DB- n'a nnx would be external to one 
 another ; if the former means God, as it certainly does, then the latter 
 cannot. It must mean some adjunct to God. How then can the term 
 -i'-i3, " blessed be," be applied here ? To invoke a blessing upon an 
 
I70 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 adjunct to the Deity is equivalent to idolatry, and surely Ezekiel could 
 not be guilty of this oflfence ? 
 
 (13) Nalimanides here quotes a passage from Genesis Rabba on this 
 verse, where R. Abba b. Kahana says that the peculiar usage of the 
 Hithpael I'^nno (and not the Kal iVno) shows that it is an allusion to the 
 going away of the Shechinah on account of Adam's sin. But he 
 (Nalimanides) disagrees with this view, and says that it is an allusion to 
 the revelation of the Shechinah. Cp. Onkelos on Isaiah vi. 8. 
 
 (14) Cp. Onkelos on Jeremiah xxxix. 18, xlix. 11. 
 
 (15) Cp. the remark in Exodus Rabba i. 29 where an opinion states, 
 with regard to Moses smiting the Egyptian, " he pronounced the name 
 of God over him and slew him." In Song of Songs Rabba i. 4 the 
 Israelites at Mou.nt Sinai are said to have received a wonderful rod on 
 which the cmsan oc (Tetragrammaton) was engraved. The legends of 
 the negotiations between Solomon and the demon Asmodeus contain 
 allusions to the powers exercised by the Divine Name. 
 
 (16) The subject also proved a fascinating one to the mediaeval Jewish 
 philosophers. Ibn Ezra on Exodus iii. 15 has an elaborate excursus in 
 which he characteristically brings his astronomical, mathematical, and 
 grammatical powers to the elucidation of the subject. Jehuda Ha-Levi 
 devotes much space to it in the Kusari (iv. 1-3) ; so does Maimonides, in 
 his Moreh i. 61, also in his Yad ; section " Yesode-ha-Torah," vi. 2. 
 
 (17) The names of the angels were a favoiu'ite study of the Essenes. 
 See J.Q.R., 1898, pp. 1-45, for Conybeare's translations of the Testament 
 of Solomon. All sorts of magical cures were effected by a knowledge of 
 these names. (See Blau's work, Das alt-judische Zcncberwesen, passim.) 
 The Alphabet of E. Akiba, which is a Midrash on the names of the letters 
 of the Hebrew alphabet, treats also very largely of the mysteries of the 
 names of God. In his Beth-Hamidrash, iii. 12-49, 50-64, Jellinek has 
 published the two extant versions of the Alphabet. The mediaeval Kabbalists 
 never tired of harping on the theme. What Graetz (Eng. trans, iv. p. 5) says 
 of the Kabbalistic system of Abraham Abulafia (1240-1291) is true of all 
 these systems generally : " To decompose the words of Holy Writ and 
 especially of the all-hallowed Name of God, to use these letters as inde- 
 pendent notions (Notaricon) . . . these were the means of securing 
 commimion with the Spirit-world." 
 
 (18) Cp. Onkelos on 1 Kings viii. 50 ; Isaiah i. 2, 16; Hosea v. 7, 
 vi 7. 
 
 (19) Nahmanides on Exodus xxxiii. 14, which belongs to the same 
 context, says, " It is impossible to understand this passage unless one has 
 previously acquainted himself with the esoteric doctrines of the Torah." 
 
 (20) See Marti, Isaiah Ixiii. 14 ; also Ibn Ezra ad he. 
 
 (21) It is curious that in Numbers xv. 31, " For He hath despised the 
 word of the Lord," whereas Onkelos uses Memra, the Jerusalem Targum 
 gives HND-ip ND^nE, " the first Commandment," alluding to the first of the 
 Ten Commandments, which was infringed by this act of blasphemy, the 
 punishment for which is "cutting off" according to Rabbinic law (T. B. 
 Sanhedrin 64b). Neither Targum seems, however, to attach any 
 theological sense to the " Word." 
 
xm NOTES 171 
 
 (22) Cp. similar usage of .T^D^■:a an in 1 Samuel xv. 11. 
 
 (23) Of course the Targuniim use other expressions in a very similar 
 significance to Memra. These are (1) Shechinah, as I have frequently 
 pointed out. (2) Yekara, e.g. Pseudo-Jon. xii. 23 (cp. this with xii. 29 ; 
 in latter it is Yekara, wliereas in the former, it is Memra which smites). 
 Onkelos and Pseudo-Jon. on Genesis xxviii. 13, xvii. 22 (on this latter 
 Nahmanides makes the mystical remark "that the Patriarchs are the 
 chariot of God," and ends up with the phrase pa' S'at'Dni, which is the 
 usual indication of Nahmanides that he is drawing a Kabbalistic inter- 
 pretation from the words of Scripture). (3) Yekar Shechinah (usually in 
 Onkelos it is spelt ip', but in Pseudo-Jon. it is also frequently ip'x). See 
 Onkelos, Numbers x. 33, 34, Pseudo-Jon. xiv. 14 ; also Exodus xxxiii. 22 
 (Jerushalmi), Leviticus xvi. 2 (Pseudo-Jon.), etc. 
 
 (24) Travers Herford in his Christianity in Talmud and Midrash, 
 London, 1903, points out how the polemics of the Rabbis in the period 
 of the rise of Christianity were directed mainly against dualism 
 (page 395). 
 
 (25) Sometimes as many as nine pre-existent things are enimierated, 
 the two additional ones being (a) the Patriarchs, (b) Israel (based on 
 Psalm Ixxiv. 2, "Thy congregation which Thou hast created from the 
 beginning"). Some sources mention also a tenth — the Holy Land, "the 
 bn rm£3j;E'NT first of the dusts of the world" (Proverbs viii. 26 curiously 
 literal rendering of the Hebrew). See for all these T, B. Nedarim 39b ; 
 Genesis Eabba i. 3 ; Pirke R. Eliezer iii. ; Midrash Tillini Psalm Ixxiv. ; 
 Sifre Deut. 37, etc. 
 
 In Apocalyptic literature, especially the Slavonic Enoch (R. H, 
 Charles, 1896), the Apocalypse of Baruch {idem 1896), and 2 Esdras 
 there are many parallel sayings. 
 
 (26) The Spirit of God which moved upon the face of the waters 
 (Gen. i. 2) is the Spirit of the Messiah (Genesis Rabba viii. 1). The 
 Pesikta Rabbati (Friedmann's edition, Vienna, 1880), p. 161b, referring 
 to Psalm xxxvi. 9, " For with Thee is the fountain of life ; in Thy light 
 shall we see light," as well as to Genesis i. 4, says, " God beheld the 
 Messiah and His deeds before the creation of the world, but He hid Him 
 and His generation under His throne of glory." In the Slavonic Enoch 
 there are several statements to the effect that Messiah was hidden and 
 preserved by God (xlii. 6-7, xlvi. 1-3, etc.). For this idea of "hiding" 
 cp. what is said in T. B. Haggigah 12a about God hiding the primaeval 
 light for the benefit of the saints in the future time. Here again we 
 have, by the way, a linking up of the ideas of Light and Messiah. 
 
 (27) For this usage of th' see Levy's and Jastrow's Dictionaries. 
 Onkelos on Genesis xxvi. 10 renders cyri nnx by Noya nn'm, "the dis- 
 tinguished one among the people " (followed by Rashi ad loc). See also 
 Genesis Rabba xcix. 11, "Dan shall judge his people as one (nnxa) of the 
 tribes of Israel," i.e. D'^aB-ac ^^vDa " as the most prominent, elect, among 
 the tribes, viz. Judah." The term inron cv applied to God means " the 
 Distinguished Name," i.e. the Tetragrammaton which is marked off by a 
 special sanctity from the other Divine names. In T. B. Sanhedrin 60a 
 Rashi distinctly says that it is an equivalent of E-i^tcn cr. S. Munk in 
 
172 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 liis translation of Maimonides' Moreh (vol. i. chap. Ixi.) is of opinion 
 that the ty-iiBon Dts- meant " le nom de Dieu distinctement prononce," but 
 this is very improbable (see Dr. Friedlander's note in vol. i. of his Guide 
 of the Perplexed, p. 226). It has been pointed out by (among others) 
 Bacher in his Terminologie, p. 71, and in his article "Shem-Ha-Meforash" 
 in vol. xi. of the Jewish Encyclopcedia, that the Sifri on Numbers vi. 27 
 has " Shem-Ha-Meforash," whereas on the same passage T. B. Sotah 38a 
 has " Shem-Ha-Meyuhad." This goes a long way towards disproving the 
 view of Munk. There is a similar usage of " Yahid " in the Babylonian 
 Talmud as e.g. Yoma 23a, "the Yahid may eat and drink as soon as it 
 gets dark." Here it signifies " the learned," those specially distinguished 
 for their religious and intellectual pre-eminence. In Ta'anith 10a there 
 occurs the remark, " It is not every one who wishes to make himself a 
 Yahid that may do so." The sense is similar. 
 
 (28) Personal Idealism and Mysticism, p. 91. Inge's view of the 
 Fourth Gospel is excellently summed up in his words : " The life, death, 
 and resurrection of the Word of God were not a solitary event, not an 
 unique portent, but the supreme vindication of an universal law. It is 
 exemplified and re-enacted in little, in every human soul among the 
 elect" (p. 82). 
 
 (29) This must not be taken to mean that the Kabbalah superseded 
 the Talmud. Both were cultivated side by side, as is proved by the fact 
 that such eminent Talmudists as Nahmanides, Joseph Caro, Isserles, 
 and others were students and admirers of Kabbalah. There need be no 
 natural repugnance between these two departments of Jewish scholarship. 
 Wherever the two are antagonistic to one another, as was the case with 
 the followers of Sabbatai Tsevi (1626-1676), and later with the Baal- 
 Shem and his pupils, who founded the sect known as the " Hassidim," 
 the movement was largely an artificially engineered one, becoming 
 ultimately a party matter, and degenerating, in many instances, into an 
 unmeaning and unlovely extravagance in religious belief and practice. 
 (See Shechter's essay on " Chassidim " in Studies in Judaism, i. pp. 
 52-56.) 
 
 (30) References to Metatron are to be found in Talmudic and Mid- 
 rashic literature as well as in the Apocalyptic Midrashim, which have 
 been collected by Jellinek in his Beth-Hamidrash, and in the Zohar. 
 He, more than any other of the vast hierarchy of semi-Divine beings, 
 seems to have been invested with cosmic functions and usually called 
 " prince of the world." (See T. B. Hullin 60a.) There are some 
 interesting remarks on the subject in a Tosefoth on T. B. Hiillin 60a 
 where the author rejects the view that Metatron is identical with Enoch, 
 as held by some authorities (cp. the role played by Enoch in the 
 Apocrypha), and refers to a quaint passage in the Liturgy for the last 
 day of Tabernacles (min nnoe'), which reads, " Metatron the mighty prince, 
 he who was changed from flesh into fire, the giver of instruction to the 
 children of him who was handed over to the fire [Abraham]." The 
 phrase "giver of instruction" is an allusion to T. B. Aboda Zarah 3b, 
 where Metatron is described as sharing with God in the work of giving 
 religious instruction to the school children. With this groundwork of 
 
XIII NOTES 173 
 
 wonder-working, it is easy to understand how, in rnediajval Jewish 
 mysticism, Metatron came to play a prominent part not unmixed with a 
 cousiderable amount of i)ure superstition. Bousset on pp. 347-348 has 
 some interesting remarks on the relations between Metatron, Enoch, and 
 the Christian ideas of " son of man," " son of God," etc. etc. 
 
 (31) The Ten Sephiroth are part of the doctrine of "emanation," 
 which is the corner-stone of the mediaeval Kabbalah. It figures prom- 
 inently in the philosophy of the Alexandrian Neo-Platonists, and was 
 adopted l)y many mediaeval Jewish thinkers, e.g. Ibn Gabirol, as the 
 basis of tlieir theological speculations. Although belonging, as I have 
 said, to the same order of thought as the Talmudic Shechinah or Memra, 
 it marks a distinct advance upon them in so far that it is a carefully 
 worked-out philosophical idea. It maintains that God being unchange- 
 able. He cannot be regarded as the Creator of existent being.s, since the 
 act of creating involves change. Therefore the world is the result of the 
 "emanations," the successive outfiowings from the Deity. The world 
 and mankind are thus an embodiment, a revelation of God. 
 
CHAPTEE XIV 
 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS * 
 
 In the Biblical, Apocryphal, and Rabbinical literature 
 three expressions are sometimes used as synonyms and 
 sometimes with differing connotations, viz. : (1) Spirit, 
 (2) the Spirit of God, (3) the Holy Spirit. The two 
 former abound in the Old Testament both in its pre- 
 exilic and post-exilic books ; and also in the Apocrypha. 
 They are not commonly met with in the Talmud and 
 Midrash. It is the "Holy Spirit" that is found in 
 these latter writings. It is found occasionally also in 
 the Apocrypha ; but in the Old Testament there are 
 only two references to it. These are (1) Psalm li. 11, 
 " Cast me not away from Thy presence, and take not 
 Thy Holy Spirit from me"; (2) Isaiah Ixiii. 10, 11, 
 " But they rebelled, and vexed His Holy Spirit. . . . 
 Where is He that put His Holy Spirit within him ? " 
 
 It is necessary to know something of the relationship 
 between these three terms, because, belonging as they 
 do, to differing branches of Jewish literature, they stand 
 for different phases of thought and doctrine. 
 
 Spirit is m~i and in the LXX Trvevfxa. But the LXX 
 ofttimes has another rendering, and this gives us the 
 clue to the many-sided interpretation which must be 
 
 * My object in this chapter is rather to bring out the Rabbinic (and 
 Targumic) methods of interpreting the O.T. aUusions to Spirit. 
 
 174. 
 
CHAP, x.v THE HOLY SPH^IT 175 
 
 placed on the usage of Spirit in the Old Testament. It 
 is sometimes rendered dve^io^, sometimes Ovfj,6<i, sometimes 
 TTvoi], and twice by ^vx^]* To go minutely and scien- 
 tifically into the correlations of these terms, and to 
 examine their relation to the Hebrew synonyms, m~i, iODD, 
 and nnm:, would require a whole essay to itself — and it 
 is an essay well worth attempting. What I intend 
 doing is, to tabulate the diff"erent senses in which the 
 word " Spirit" (mi) occurs in the O.T, noting some of 
 the most striking characteristics as they occur. 
 
 (1) In the mere physical sense of wind. Examples 
 are too numerous and well known to mention. ^^^ A^.B. — 
 It ought, however, to be noted here that in the opinion 
 of the Targum and of Ibn Ezra the phrase in Genesis 
 i. 2, "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face 
 of the waters," should be translated, " And a wind of 
 God moved upon the face of the waters." 
 
 The Targum on the passage is, "And a wind from 
 before God blew upon the face of the waters " ; and Ibn 
 Ezra's opinion is j'Dni n^Sc? invn ~nni7i ''n ^n rtMn -\i2d 
 D"^Dn my^h ''rr, i.e. " the text makes the wind belong 
 to God, because it was a messenger of His will to dry 
 up the waters," Ibn Ezra obviously basing his idea on 
 Psalm civ. 4.^"^ And yet the Eabbinical interpretation 
 would seem to accord rather with the ordinarily accepted 
 rendering " Spirit" and not " wind." 
 
 [This interpretation is given in T, B. Haggigah 
 12a as : " The Throne of Glory was standing in the 
 air and ' brooding ' over the face of the water by means 
 of the breath of the mouth of God and by His Word, 
 as a dove that broods over its nest." In a note on 
 a previous page, I have already dwelt on the mysticism 
 associated with the "Throne" in Rabbinic literature. 
 In his article on " Holy Spirit" in Hastings' Dictionary 
 
 * According to Hatch, also al/xa. 
 
176 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 of the Bible, Dr. Swete, quoting from Cheyne's Origin 
 of the Psalter, p. 322, says that " it is not the wind, but 
 the Divine energy, that is regarded as vitalising the 
 germs which the Divine Word is about to call forth." 
 This is an apt commentary on the Rabbinical view. 
 It gives a rationalistic explanation of the mystical idea 
 about the " Throne brooding " over the chaos of the 
 first Creation.] 
 
 (2) From the wide sense of wind as it blows over 
 the universe, it is narrowed down to denote the wind 
 of man's body, i.e. the breath ; and as breath is the 
 fundamental vital principle, we get the combination 
 n^Tr nil, "the spirit or breath of life" (Genesis vii. 15, 
 22) ; m''N 12)1 Sd nn, " the spirit of the whole flesh of 
 man " (Job xii. 10). All these senses are purely physical. 
 Particularly noteworthy in this connexion is the 
 expression in Psalm Ixxviii. 39, " For He remembered 
 that they were but flesh ; a wind \i.e. a breath] that 
 passeth away, and cometh not again." Life is a breath. 
 When the breath gives out, so does the life. 
 
 (3) The idea of the life-principle in man leads on 
 to the psychological manifestations of that principle. 
 Hence mi, " Spirit," comes to denote some of the higher 
 aspects of human nature. These are (a) the emotional, 
 as e.g. Genesis xli. 8, " And it came to pass in the 
 morning, that his spirit was troubled"; Exodus vi. 9, 
 " But they hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of 
 spirit, and for cruel bondage"; Proverbs xxv. 28, "As 
 a city that is broken down and without walls, so is 
 he that hath no rule over his spirit." A beautiful 
 simile for the utter desolation which awaits a career 
 of unrestrained passion or emotion ! Hosea v. 4, 'For 
 the spirit of whoredoms is in the midst of them, and 
 they have not known the Lord." Here the sensual 
 emotion is depicted as the bar to the knowledge of 
 
XIV THE HOLY SPIRIT 177 
 
 God. (h) The volitional, as e.g. Deut. ii. 30, " For the 
 Lord thy God hardened his spirit, and made his heart 
 obstinate." The hardening of the "spirit" is the 
 deadening of the volitional capacity. Numbers xiv. 24, 
 " But my servant Caleb, because he had another spirit 
 with him, and hath followed me fully, him will I bring 
 into the land." Here spirit = intention, will. Similarly 
 2 Chronicles xxxvi. 22 (identical phrase also in Ezra 
 i. 1), "The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king 
 of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all 
 his kingdom." The " stirring of the spirit" is the 
 rousing of the beneficent motive in man. Again, in 
 Psalm li. 19, " The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit," 
 we have an allusion to the necessity of the resignation 
 of man's will to the Divine will. And the behaviour 
 of the man whose will leads him into unprofitable paths, 
 is termed in Ecclesiastes i. 14 mi r\M}i, i.e. "vexation of 
 spirit" (this translation assumes "n^si to be connected 
 with the root 2?"i = evil ^^^ : another rendering of the 
 phrase is "feeding on wind" ; in this case mi has the 
 purely physical sense that I have spoken of, and as 
 is alluded to in Hosea xii. 2, " Ephraim feedeth on 
 wind ").(^) 
 
 Following on this psychological usage of " spirit " 
 as a phase of the emotional and volitional aspect of 
 mind, we get a compound usage where the word is 
 tacked on to another noun which exactly particu- 
 larises the nature of the " spirit." For example, " the 
 spirit of wisdom" (Exodus xxviii. 3). This means that 
 department of the emotional or volitional aspect of 
 mind which shows itself in wisdom. " The spirit of 
 ■udsdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and 
 might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the 
 Lord" (Isaiah xi. 2). According to Marti, the high 
 stage of religious and moral equipment here alluded 
 
 N 
 
178 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 to, as characterising the ideal king, will be consequent 
 upon his being filled with that highest spiritual 
 element denoted in the immediately preceding words, 
 " And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him." 
 A similarly high grade of character, brought to pass as 
 the result of a Divine gift, is denoted by the expression 
 " spirit of grace and supplications" in Zechariah xii. 10. 
 And then we get the application of this compound 
 usage of " spirit" to the exactly opposite side of human 
 disposition, viz. the undesirable intentions and emotions. 
 Thus in Numbers v. 14 we read of the " spirit of 
 jealousy." In 1 Samuel xvi. 23, xvii. 10 we read of 
 the " evil spirit." In 2 Chronicles xviii. 22 the " spirit 
 of lying" is spoken of. Isaiah xxix. 10, in a character- 
 istic metaphor, alludes to the pouring out on the people, 
 of the " spirit of deep sleep," upon which Marti makes 
 the comment that here " m~i als etwas Materielles 
 gilt." Zechariah xiii. 2 speaks of the cutting off 
 of the prophets and the " spirit of un cleanness," the 
 latter no doubt alluding to the base impulses which 
 prompted the exercise of the prophetic art at the 
 time when the author wrote. ^^^ 
 
 (4) The next upward step in the connotation of 
 " Spirit " in the O.T. is its recognition as a Divine 
 principle in human nature. The preceding senses have 
 been psychological. They correspond to character, 
 motive, impulse, will, intention, in so far as these 
 sway and determine the conduct of men and their re- 
 lations to one another. We now come to the theo- 
 logical aspect of the word, its bearing on the highest 
 and holiest of the relationships which encompass man, 
 viz. his relationship to the Deity. An appropriate 
 start might be made with the expression in Numbers 
 xxvii. 16, " The Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh." 
 As it stands, in its bald literalness, this phrase is hardly 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 179 
 
 intelligible. But the right meaning is suggested by 
 the Pseudo-Jonathan Targum which rendered it thus : 
 "The 'Memra' of God who rules over the soul of 
 man, and from whom is given the soul-spirit to all 
 flesh." Here we have a clear hint as to the linking 
 up of the Divine with the human spirit. The human 
 spirit belongs to God and is " given " by Him. Being 
 a gift it has to be, at some time or another, restored 
 to its oriofinal owner. ^^^ And thus the Psalmist is moved 
 
 o 
 
 to exclaim, " Into Thine hand I commit my spirit," ^'^^ 
 while the author of Ecclesiastes xii. 7 speaks of the 
 spirit returning " unto the God that gave it." It is 
 doubtful whether the wTiter meant to convey some 
 clearly-conceived idea of a personal immortality or of 
 some spiritual resurrection. 
 
 (5) This leads to the final inquiry as to the nature 
 and constituent elements of spirit in such recurring 
 expressions as " Spirit of God." It is important, in 
 discussing this subject, to adopt the method of classi- 
 fication. One has to classify the O.T. references to 
 the Divine Spirit in respect of its relations to (a) the 
 nation ; (6) the individual ; (c) the world.^'*^ In re- 
 spect of (a) it would be necessary to make sub- 
 divisions so as to differentiate between the w^orkings 
 of the spirit in the various representative sections of 
 the nation, as e.g. kings, prophets, Messiah, etc. And 
 in the case of {b) investigation w^ould have to dis- 
 tinguish those references where the Spirit is, as it 
 were, fitful, occasional, ecstatic, from those where it is 
 permanent, an internal ethical endowment continuous 
 in its efiect. 
 
 I shall adopt this classification, but as this whole 
 subject of the spirit in the O.T. is only here introduced 
 in an introductory sense, i.e. as opening the way to a 
 better understanding and interpretation of the " Holy 
 
i8o THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 Spirit " as an aspect of the Immanence of God in the 
 Rabbinical writings, I shall only be able to deal with 
 representative aspects of the theme, and cannot attempt 
 to quote all the passages that are to be found. 
 
 Take first {a) The Relation of Divine Spirit to the 
 Nation : — 
 
 (1) As inspiring acts of heroism in the Judges, 
 e.g. " And the Spirit of the Lord began to move him 
 [Samson] at times in the camp of Dan, between Zorah 
 and Eshtaol" (Judges xiii. 25). The Targum on the 
 passage is wonderfully explanatory Niiii rm nNTtni 
 "n DTp ]D HTiiDprif?, i.e. " and the spirit of might from 
 before God commenced to strengthen (i.e. fortify) him."^^^ 
 It has a similar rendering of xiv. 6, xv. 14; cp. 
 Judges xi. 29. 
 
 (2) As inspiring acts of heroism in the King, 
 e.g. 1 Samuel xi. 6, where Saul helps the men of 
 Jabesh Gilead against Nahash the Ammonite. As an 
 instance of the careful discrimination by the Targum, 
 of the various senses of Spirit, I may mention that 
 whereas here, as in the instance previously quoted, it 
 renders it *' Spirit of might," there are several other 
 passages in 1 Samuel where the very same Hebrew phrase 
 is rendered hniid m"i, i.e. "spirit of prophecy." This is the 
 case in x. 6, xvi. 13,^^^ xix. 20, 23, the prophetic aspect of 
 the Spirit being more in accordance with the context. 
 
 (3) As inspiring various characters connected with 
 the cult or government of ancient Israel. For example. 
 Exodus xxxi. 3, where it is said of Bezaleel, " And I 
 have filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom, and 
 in understanding ... to devise cunning works, etc." ^^°^ 
 The correct ordering of the Tabernacle, which was to be, 
 for Israel, the instrument for encompassing the Shechinah 
 in the midst of the nation, was brought about through 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT i8i 
 
 this endowment of Bezaleel with the " Spirit." 
 Numbers xi. 17, " And I will take of the spirit which is 
 upon thee, and put it upon them " (the seventy elders). 
 The "spirit" here would probably mean the Divine 
 inspiration of the capacity for government, although, 
 according to the Pseudo-Jonathan Targum, it refers to 
 the Spirit of prophecy.^"^ 
 
 (4) As an endowment to the nation directly from 
 God, sometimes in a prophetic, and sometimes in a more 
 general, sense, sometimes as a promise for the future, and 
 sometimes as a possession of a past age. Thus, Isaiah 
 xliv, 3, " I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and my 
 blessing upon thine offspring." Judging from the 
 preceding half of the verse, and from the parallelism, 
 the Spirit here would have affinity with the " blessing 
 of Grod," and would probably allude to a combined moral 
 and physical regeneration. According to Marti, it is a 
 physical quickening of the nation and not a spiritual 
 quickening. " Die moralische Regeneration ist nicht 
 erwahnt," says he [Das Buch Jesaja, p. 300) ; and he 
 goes on to compare it with Ezekiel xxxvii. 1-14, which, 
 in his view, is only a promise of material regeneration. 
 But such a standpoint is hardly tenable. To interpret 
 thus, any of the prophecies of Ezekiel which refer to 
 the golden future of exiled Israel, argues insensibility 
 to the underlying spirit of Ezekiel's message. Dillmann 
 is far more to the point. He says {Der Prophet Jesaja, 
 Leipzig, 1890, on page 400) : " The Spirit and the bless- 
 ing of God, these are typified by the water which God 
 pours out upon the physically, politically, and spiritually 
 dead nature. The acquiring of the Spirit {Begeistung) 
 is for Israel a preparatory condition of the fulfilment of 
 his mission." ^^'^ The Targum goes to the opposite 
 extreme of Marti's view, and renders " my Holy Spirit," 
 a purely spiritual endowment. 
 
i82 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 I now take (b) The Relations of the Divine Spirit 
 to Man. I subdivide as follows : — 
 
 (1) It can be an occasional, fitful inspiration. 
 These instances are all more or less prophetic or 
 ecstatic. They abound largely in Ezekiel. Thus in 
 ii. 2, " And the Spirit entered into me when he spake 
 unto me, and set me upon my feet." The allusion is 
 to one of the ecstatic states into which the prophet 
 lapses at the time of the receipt of the message. 
 In Ezekiel iii. 12, 14, "Then the Spirit took me up, 
 etc.," there is a curious and weird combination of 
 the spiritual and material aspect of the Spirit. The 
 Divine inspiration which seizes the prophet, acts like a 
 wind to lift him off his feet and remove him from one 
 place to another. In viii. 3 an even more impressive 
 picture on the same theme is drawn. And so xi. 1, 
 24 and other passages. The Rabbis took an extra- 
 ordinarily serious view of the mystic experiences of 
 Ezekiel. They treated them as Divine secrets, from 
 which the masses must be held back at all costs. 
 Whether they held that the prophet experienced these 
 strange happenings in actual waking life, or whether 
 they believed them to be his own written description of 
 ecstatic visions that came to him, it is not easy to say. 
 Suffice it to say, that mediaeval Rabbinic commentators 
 are unanimous in the latter view.^'^^ To them, it is 
 a highly coloured description of the inner and outer 
 workings upon man, of the prophetic aspect of God's 
 Spirit. And modern scholars who see in Ezekiel 
 the " father of Apocalypse," and a wealth of symbolism 
 which makes his book rank as one of the most original 
 in the sacred literature of Israel, are but corroborating 
 and developing these views along the old lines. 
 
 The only other books of the O.T. where we get 
 sudden and ecstatic seizures of the Spirit upon in- 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 183 
 
 dividuals, are Numbers and 1 and 2 Chronicles. Thus 
 in 1 Chronicles xii. 18 the Spirit comes upon Amasai, 
 " who was chief of the thirty, and he said, Thine are 
 we, David, and on thy side, thou son of Jesse." The 
 identity of Amasai is doubtful : he is probably either 
 Amasa or Abishai. But whoever he may have been, 
 it is clear that we have here an instance of a sudden 
 unexpected inrush of the Divine inspiration upon the 
 leader of a troop of warriors. This is the " heroic " 
 aspect of the Spirit previously alluded to. In 2 
 Chronicles xv. 1-7, closely following upon an account 
 of the wars of Asa, King of Judah, with the Ethio- 
 pians, there is a sudden break in the narrative ; and we 
 are told that " the Spirit of God came upon Azariah 
 the son of Oded," and he delivers before Asa and the 
 men of Judah a vivid harangue, in which he depicts 
 the results of Israel's apostasy in previous ages, and 
 exhorts them to be henceforth strong and earnest in 
 the service of God. Now, who Azariah the son of Oded 
 was cannot be ascertained. Whether his exhortation 
 can correctly be described as prophecy is open to 
 question on two grounds. Firstly, there is nothing 
 about it, which would place it on a higher pedestal 
 than the address which might be given by any preacher, 
 who wished to present a statesmanlike view of 
 matters to his audience. Secondly, much obscurity 
 clusters round the phrase in verse 8, which reads 
 N^i^n "nil' HNnDn^ which as it stands is an impossible 
 Hebrew construction. And yet we are told that his 
 speech is prompted by the Divine Spirit. We can 
 only infer that this is another instance of the " ecstatic " 
 usage of Spirit. Some momentarily overpowering 
 Divine impulse takes possession of the man at the 
 hour when, in his thinking, there is some high crisis 
 in Israel's affairs. 
 
i84 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 In the Book of Numbers, the typical example of 
 this fitful, unexplained, and unanticipated appearance 
 in man of the Spirit of God, is Balaam (xxiv. 2). It is 
 under its influence that his intention to curse melts 
 into the ecstatic desire to bless. Can Balaam be 
 designated a prophet ? Not from his recorded words 
 or actions in the Bible, unless we regard as prophecy 
 the few passages in which allusions are made, in difiicult 
 and ambiguous Hebrew, to far-off future events in the 
 history of Israel/^*^ But, strangely enough, the Eabbins 
 thought him a prophet. The Targum reflects their 
 view, by unreservedly rendering the phrase in xxiv. 2 as, 
 " And there rested upon him the Spirit of prophecy from 
 God." What Moses was to Israel (in the prophetic 
 capacity) that was Balaam to the heathens, says the 
 Talmud. In a passage in Numbers Eabba xx. 19 the 
 profession practised by Balaam is thus interestingly 
 graduated. He was first a mere interpreter of dreams. 
 He then proceeded to the higher degree of diviner. 
 From this, he graduated to become a possessor of the 
 Holy Spirit. But he afterwards fell back again to the 
 status of a diviner, as is proved by Joshua xiii. 22, 
 " Balaam also the son of Beor, the soothsayer, did the 
 children of Israel slay with the sword." 
 
 (2) Our second subdivision deals wdth the relations 
 of Divine Spirit to man, where the spirit is a permanent, 
 inborn endowment with a continuous ethical significance. 
 In the Book of Psalms, there is one good instance in 
 cxliii. 10, " Teach me to do Thy will ; for Thou art my 
 God : Thy spirit is good ; lead me into the land 
 of uprightness." This is the A.V. rendering. The 
 Rabbinic commentators invariably translate it, " Thy 
 good spirit shall lead me, etc.," in spite of the difficulty 
 involved in the omission of the definite article in the 
 word. The Targum adopts this view too, and renders 
 
XIV THE HOLY SPIRIT 185 
 
 it as "Thy Holy Spirit shall lead me, etc."(^'> The 
 Spirit here is the inward possession of God's grace. 
 Thus equipped, the Psalmist feels himself fitted to 
 enter " the land of uprightness," i.e. to take his place 
 among the best, God's elect. There are numerous 
 examples in the Book of Isaiah. A striking instance 
 is xi. 2, where of the Messianic ruler it is said, " And 
 the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit 
 of wisdom . . . and of the fear of the Lord." This 
 conception of the Spirit is extremely comprehensive. 
 " It assumes varied forms to meet the varied duties 
 and relations of life to be sustained by the Messianic 
 ruler," ^^''^ It is important, by the way, to notice the 
 generalising of the connotation of prophecy, the widen- 
 ing of the area covered by the word. It is wrong to 
 restrict the term to the capacity of foretelling the 
 future, or to this capacity combined with the gift or 
 endowment of a special kind of inspiration not vouch- 
 safed to ordinary men. As we have seen from more 
 than one preceding quotation from the O.T. — and 
 particularly when viewed in the light of the Targumic 
 translation — prophecy consists in the possession of a 
 higher insight into the wdll of God, the infusion into 
 man of a more than ordinary power and knowledge 
 and discernment, enabling him to perform what is 
 right, good, and true more effectually than he who 
 lacks the gift. This is the basis of the frequent identi- 
 fication of " Spirit of God " with prophecy. And 
 this is why the Targum here, as in other places, makes 
 the identification. Thus its rendering of xii. 2 is, " And 
 there shall come forth a King from the sons of Jesse, 
 and a Messiah shall spring up from among his sons' 
 sons. And there shall rest upon him the spirit of 
 prophecy from God." The Targum reflects the Eabbins 
 of the Talmud and Midrash. Whether the Rabbins, 
 
i86 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 however, associated Proplietism with the Messiah, is a 
 moot point which I shall touch on later. But if 
 they did, then it was this spiritual-regenerative sense 
 of the term that they were thinking of In Isaiah 
 xlii. 1, which is the first of the "Servant " passages, 
 the infusion of the Spirit of God into him is the first 
 condition of his Messianic-prophetic mission. This view 
 assumes that the verses 1-4 are Messianic, as does the 
 Targum, which renders verse 1, "Behold my servant 
 the Messiah, I will draw him near me ... I will 
 place my Holy Spirit upon him. ..." And the evident 
 and widespread results of the spirit-imbued servant are 
 that "he shall bring forth judgment ('Mishpat') to 
 the nation." By this phrase "Mishpat" is meant, as 
 Marti points out, the popularisation of religion through- 
 out the world.^^^^ Thus, the permanent abiding of the 
 Spirit in an individual, brings about its permanent 
 continuance in all men ; and this involves a religious 
 and ethical regeneration. But what is the exact 
 significance of Spirit in Isaiah lix. 21, "My Spirit that 
 is upon thee . . . shall not depart out of thy mouth 
 . . ." ? It does not seem to bear the same meaning as 
 in thi' " Servant " passage we have just been examining, 
 where the word has so many prophetic associations. 
 The attempt made by some of the Jewish commen- 
 tators to range the words "my Spirit" and "my 
 words," as alluding respectively to the Prophets 
 and the Law, is ingenious but far-fetched. The most 
 likely interpretation is that of Duhm, who takes a 
 strictly ethical view of the Spirit here. It is the 
 abiding Spirit " des Gehorsams und der Demut." The 
 Israelitish trait in which, according to the second Isaiah, 
 God finds His chiefest delight is humility, as manifested 
 in obedience to His word. 
 
 Leaving Isaiah and coming to the Minor Prophets, 
 
XIV THE HOLY SPIRIT 187 
 
 we meet with an outstanding instance of the far-reaching 
 inward and outward ethical efficacy of the Spirit, in 
 Zechariah iv. 6, " This is the word of the Lord unto 
 Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but 
 by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." The prophetic 
 or Messianic interpretations of spirit do not fit the 
 context here. The allusion is, plainly, to the mystical 
 Divine energy flowing into man, and empowering him 
 to act greatly and overcome superhuman obstacles 
 triumphantly. Unto whom will the spirit here spoken 
 of be vouchsafed ? According to Rashi it will be to 
 the Darius who is alluded to in Ezra vi, 9 as having 
 given the decree for the building of the Temple and 
 for supplying the Jews with " wheat, salt, wine and 
 oil," and other things for the purposes of the restored 
 sacrificial ordinances. But the more tenable view, and 
 the one adopted by most commentators ancient and 
 modern, because it is the one which most readily springs 
 from the context, is that Zerubbabel is the person here 
 referred to. The work which Zerubbabel has in hand 
 he will accomplish, not by human might or power, 
 but by the Spirit of God aiding and cheering and 
 invigorating him. There is a distinct air of mysticism 
 about the whole of the passage from Zechariah. 
 The vision of the candlestick is strongly reminiscent 
 of the Biblical as well as Rabbinical portrayal of 
 the light of God, the " Shechinah," the " Kabod," 
 which is all -pervading and universal. The number 
 " seven," the most mystical of all the numerals, is 
 employed with suggestive frequency. The " seven 
 eyes" upon one stone (iii. 9) are the seven eyes of God, 
 which "run to and fro through the whole earth"; in 
 other words, they are God's immanence. Upon the 
 ** stone " (iii. 9), which may either be the first or 
 foundation-stone of the Temple, or that alluded to in 
 
i88 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 iv. 7, which was the final coping-stone of the entire 
 fabric, God will "engrave the graving" (iii. 9). This, 
 taken out of its symbolic trappings, would seem to be 
 a reference to the concentration, the focussing of the 
 Divine Providence within the precincts of the Sanctuary, 
 an idea met with in different ways in both Bible and 
 Talmud/^^^ In iv. 2 the candlestick has seven lamps, 
 and " there are seven pipes to each of the seven lamps " ; 
 presumably it was through these that the oil flowed 
 from " the bowl upon the top of it " into the lamps 
 for lighting. One is readily tempted to look upon the 
 symbolism of the "bowl upon the top of it" as the 
 supreme and initial fountain of Divinity which pours 
 its beneficence through " the seven pipes," i.e. through 
 the variegated channels of men and creation generally, 
 and becomes embedded in the universe. When, in iv. 6, 
 the riddle is unravelled, and the symbolism is explained 
 to be the Divine promise to Zerubbabel, that whatever 
 he will henceforth accomplish will be the result of the 
 intervention and instrumentality of the " Spirit," we 
 see how readily the contents of the whole of chap. iv. 
 hang together and form one complete picture. The 
 Divine Spirit radiates through the world, and in- 
 fluences the heart of man. In one instance, it incites 
 Zerubbabel to undertakings of the highest ethical and 
 religious importance. 
 
 I now turn to (c) TJie Relation of the Divine 
 Spirit to the World. In Genesis i. 2, vi. 17, vii. 15 and 
 many other places in the O.T. the spirit has the 
 physical meaning of wind, breath. In Ecclesiastes it 
 is figuratively carried over to denote vanity. With 
 all these material senses we are not concerned. It 
 is with the ethical usage of the term that we have 
 to do. 
 
XIV THE HOLY SPIRIT 189 
 
 The opening chapters of Genesis deal explicitly with 
 the creation and formation of animal and human life, 
 and the phrases " spirit of life " or " breath of life " 
 which we encounter there repeatedly, denote, in their 
 rather naive ways, the origin of vitality in all sentient 
 beings. In Genesis ii. 7 and ii. 9 the very same word 
 ns^l (" and he formed ") is employed of both the 
 creation of man and the animals. Man in the former 
 passage becomes a " living soul," and in the latter 
 passage, the very same epithet is applied to every 
 beast of the field and every fowl of the air that was 
 brought to Adam. The allusions are, most probably, to 
 that sense of spirit which denotes the foundation of all 
 created life : the physical basis of vitality, which ranges 
 from its highest point in man to its lowest in the 
 "meanest creature that breathes" — and it is all and 
 equally an emanation from God.^^^^ But now, how about 
 Genesis vi. 3, " And the Lord said. My Spirit shall not 
 strive with man for ever, for that he also is flesh " ? 
 Is " spirit " here another term for vitality, or is it a 
 reference to the embodiment of spirituality, the endow- 
 ment of Divinity in man as a part of creation ? The 
 Targum of Onkelos would seem to favour an interpreta- 
 tion on the lines of the former view. It paraphrases 
 thus : " And the Lord said. This wicked generation shall 
 not exist before me for ever, seeing that they are but 
 flesh, and their works corrupt. If they repent I will give 
 them a respite of one hundred and twenty years." The 
 " spirit " here = the generation, age — a purely physical 
 notion. In the other Targum, however — the Pseudo- 
 Jonathan — we have a far more elaborate paraphrase, 
 which wanders away from the point, but gives a 
 decidedly theological complexion to the subject. " Have 
 I not set my Holy Spirit in them," it declares, " in order 
 that they may perform good works ? But they have 
 
I90 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 done evil works. Therefore did I give them a respite 
 of one hundred and twenty years, in order that they 
 should repent ; but they w^ould not." The spirit here 
 becomes the " Holy Spirit " of Rabbinical literature — a 
 Divine implanting, the incitement to good works, the 
 instigator to repentance ; and what a vital part does 
 repentance play in determining man's attitude to God 
 and His Spirit which is outside as well as inside man ! ^^°^ * 
 
 * Curiously enough, Rashi interprets "spirit" in this verse from Genesis as 
 an aspect of God, resident only in God and not in man. From his com- 
 mentary on the passage one infers that he would thus translate and paraphrase 
 it: "And the Lord said, My spirit shall not comjilain and strive within me 
 for ever on account of man." I.e. there is an argumentation going on within 
 God, which leaves Him in a state of indecision as to whether to spare man or 
 destroy him ; this perjjlexity of spirit within God will not go on for ever, but 
 will be definitely resolved. Quite another line of interpretation is hit upon by 
 Nahmanides, who says as follows : ' ' The reason why God says that His Spirit 
 shall not remain in man for ever, is, that man is, after all, but flesh, like all 
 flesh that creepeth upon the earth, whether fowl, cattle or beast, and he is not 
 fitted to have the Spirit of God within him. The infereuce we can draw from 
 this subject is, that God made man upright, so that he might be as the minis- 
 tering angel, by means of the soul with which He dowered him. But lo ! 
 man is dragged along after the flesh and after bodily desires, even in the same 
 manner as are the beasts that perish. And therefore the Spirit of God shall 
 no more endure in him, for he is corporeal and not divine ; but if they {i.e. 
 mankind) repent, then will He prolong their days. This resembles the passage, 
 ' For He remembered that they were but flesh ; a nn that passeth away, and 
 Cometh not again ' (Ps. Ixxviii. 39)." So far Nahmanides. Much of what 
 is said here is cryptic, like a good deal else of this writer. He is the equal 
 of Ibn Ezra in respect of veiled utterances and abrupt quotations, the connexion 
 of which with the main thread of the discourse, is by no means always easy to 
 fathom. In this instance, it seems to run counter to all we know of Nah- 
 manides' theology to credit him with literally intending to teach that man has 
 no Divine Spirit within him, or that man is ':si:, "corporeal " or material, and 
 not 'nVx, ' ' godly " or Divine. The most probable explanation of the diSiculty 
 is, that these latter terms are only meant in a comparative sense. Man's 
 spiritual gifts on the day of Creation were, according to Nahmanides, of the 
 same high order as those of the angels. By the present decree they were 
 lowered. Man being corporeal cannot avoid the taint which the flesh necessarily 
 involves. It is this warfare eternally waged between flesh and spirit which 
 reduces the latter to a lower pedestal. But yet the Spirit of God is in man. 
 To assert the contrary would be to negative the position which the philosojiher 
 systematically takes up in his Commentary on the Pentateuch. Or, again, it is 
 quite likely that the sage is taking "Spirit" here in its physical sense of 
 vitality. It is the rs: which, as we see from the quotation, is the spiritual 
 element, not the nn. As man misuses the vtiy by reason of his corporeality, 
 his mi must, as an act of justice, be curtailed, i.e. his term of life must be 
 lessened. This interpretation has one merit which the other lacks, viz. that 
 it falls better into line with the quotation from Psalm Ixxviii. Man's vitality 
 abides not, and therefore he is but a nn (breath), that passes away and never 
 comes again. 
 
XIV 
 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT 191 
 
 In the Book of Isaiah there are a few passages 
 bearing on this head which need examination. For 
 instance xxxiv. 16, " Seek ye out of the book of the 
 Lord, and read : no one of these shall be missing . . . 
 for my mouth it hath commanded, and his spirit it 
 hath gathered them." What is "spirit" here? The 
 context speaks of Edom's future desolated country 
 which is to be the abode of wild animals and demon 
 shapes. A variegated host of these are mentioned, and 
 they are dramatically pictured as flocking together in 
 their multitudes to settle down on the doomed land, 
 not one of them missing because all were brought 
 together by the Spirit. What is this spirit ? According 
 to the Targum, which renders it rr"'mi;"iii, it denotes the 
 Divine will. The Divine will sets in motion the wild 
 animal creation, so that it may come to prey upon 
 Edom. Rashi ingeniously finds a parallel for this 
 expression in Psalm xxxiii. 6, " By the word of the 
 Lord were the heavens made ; and all the host of them 
 by the breath of His mouth " ; he would therefore seem 
 to take " Spirit " as largely identical with " word " and 
 refers back to the first chapter of Genesis where the 
 whole array of created beings springs into existence at 
 the word of God, or, as the Rabbins have phrased it : 
 " The world was created by the powder of ten Divine 
 utterances." ^^^^ Spirit would thus, in Rashi's concep- 
 tion, be an equivalent of the Targumic Memra which 
 so largely denotes Divine action in the world. 
 Amonof modern scholars Marti agrees with the 
 Targumic view stated above. He says, " Unter dem 
 Geist, der die Tiere nach Edom versammelt, ist Jahwes 
 Willen zu verstehen, der sich eben in der Prophetie 
 der Verf.s Ausdruck verschafft hat " (p. 246). Duhm 
 (p. 229) seems to echo Rashi when he says, "Jahwes 
 Geist, sein mal 'ak, sein logos, hat die Tiere versam- 
 
192 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 melt." Dillman again (p. 306) takes up more of an 
 omnipresent, immanent view of the Divine Spirit here. 
 He says, " Sein Hauch, d.i. Geist, durch welchem er 
 alles in der Welt wirkt." 
 
 Another instance in Isaiah of the same openness 
 to the double translation of rrn as breath or spirit of 
 men is found in Ivii. 16, "For I will not contend for 
 ever, neither will I always be wroth : for the spirit should 
 fail before me, and the souls which I have made " (A.V.). 
 The syntactical translation of the Hebrew here is by no 
 means easy. A phrase like " the Spirit shall fail before 
 me " is either exceedingly ambiguous or meaningless. 
 Modern scholars are strongly in favour of interpreting 
 Ruah and Neshamah as synonymous, and both having 
 the broad and general meaning of " Lebenskraft " or 
 ** Lebensgeist," i.e. vitality, the life principle of created 
 beings generally. An eternally angry God, says the 
 prophet, would be a contradiction to the world ; for then 
 all life would fail before Him. We should have chaos. 
 This view of the animate and inanimate world as existing 
 not by their own deserts, but as a result of the ever tolerant 
 mercy and compassion of God is not strange to the O.T. 
 Psalm ciii. has several such teachings. " He hath not 
 dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us after our 
 iniquities " (verse 10). Again, " Like as a father pitieth 
 his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him. 
 For He knoweth our frame ; He remembereth that we 
 are dust" (verses 13, 14). And many others. God 
 pities the weakness of His creation and His anger 
 becomes love. But the Talmudic and Taro^umic in- 
 terpretations both give the Ruah here a spiritual turn 
 and each in a different way. The latter says, 
 " Verily I shall in the future restore the spirits of the 
 dead." This is an instance of the not frequently 
 recurring allusions to immortality in the Targum ; the 
 
XIV THE HOLY SPIRIT 193 
 
 word 5iiioi>'' being taken in the sense of " to cover, 
 clothe," as in Psalm Ixv. 13, Ixxiii. 6. The soul will 
 again be clothed in the vestments of the body. The 
 Talmud in Yebamoth 62a, Aboda Zara 5a, Niddah 13a, 
 by an ingenious but strained interpretation deduces the 
 novel idea of the pre-existence of the soul. 
 
 Before making any final deductions as to the varying 
 trends of theological thought which are reflected in 
 these several O.T. usages of Divine Spirit, two excep- 
 tional instances in the O.T. where the phrase " Holy 
 Spirit " occurs must be examined. These are, Isaiah 
 Ixiii, 10, 11, and Psalm li. 11. The tendency among 
 modern critics is to regard them as personifications. 
 Marti strongly holds this view. He classes the phrase 
 with that of Acts vii. 51, " Ye do always resist the Holy 
 Ghost " ; and Ephesians iv. 30, " And grieve not the 
 Holy Spirit of Grod, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of 
 redemption." But it is hard to see how any conclusive 
 argument can be drawn from these two N.T. quotations. 
 They are obviously mere repetitions of the phrase in 
 Isaiah. The idea of " resisting " {avrinrLTrreiv) the Holy 
 Ghost is present in the Hebrew "no which clearly has that 
 meaning here as well as in Numbers xxvii. 14, nWND 
 "•D DTT'iD — the resisting of the Divine word at the 
 waters of Meriba in Kadesh. The idea of " grieving " 
 is present in the Hebrew in2:>i, the noun of which, viz. 
 nsi; which = grief, sorrow, is of frequent occurrence. 
 Both verbs govern a direct accusative as can be seen 
 from Numbers xxvii. 14, and from Psalm cvi. 33, 
 "Because they were rebellious against His spirit"; or 
 Isaiah iii. 8, " To provoke [lit. to rebel against] the eyes 
 of His glory." It is difficult to see why Christian inter- 
 preters should just fix upon the two usages of mi we 
 are considering, as personifications. One might just as 
 well argue that the word " my mouth," in Numbers 
 
 
 
194 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 xxvii. 14, or that the " spirit," in Psalm cvi. 33, 
 or that the " eyes of His glory," in Isaiah iii. 8 
 are personifications ! Besides there is the phrase 
 rrn nii^ui in Isaiah liv. 6, " grieved in spirit," an 
 epithet applied to a woman, showing that grieving the 
 spirit may apply to human as well as Divine Spirit : 
 you may cause grief to the temperament of man ; you 
 may cause grief to the temperament of God. This is 
 all that the phrase asserts. It is impossible to see 
 where any theory of personality can enter. The 
 statement of Stephen in Acts vii. 51, instead of reveal- 
 ing, as J. Vernon Bartlet says {Century Bible, Acts, 
 p. 204), " his new sense of the Holy Spirit at work 
 in the souls of men in connexion with the Messianic 
 outpouring at Pentecost and since," really corresponds 
 with the Rabbinic view. What is Stephen credited 
 with saying in the next verse ? " Which of the prophets 
 did not your fathers persecute ? " Now this juxtaposition 
 of the two verses is significant because the Targumic 
 interpretation of Isaiah Ixiii. 10, " But they rebelled, and 
 vexed His Holy Spirit," refers it to the rebellion of Israel 
 against the prophets," n^ffi-np ^^n: no^o hi} ir^nxi itid ]13^n% 
 i.e. " and they rebelled and stirred up anger against the 
 words of His holy prophets." Is it not manifest that 
 Stephen and the Targum are relying on the same ex- 
 egesis ? Again, in verse 11, " Where is he that put his 
 Holy Spirit within him ? " (referring back to Moses and 
 the " him" being Israel), the Targum renders : " Where 
 is he that caused to dwell amongst them [i.e. the 
 Israelites] the words of His holy prophets ? " Prophet 
 is here used in the broad Rabbinic sense which 
 would include the patriarchs of Grenesis in the category 
 of God's prophets. And Moses in his capacity of law- 
 receiver and spiritual leader of Israel, is regarded by the 
 Targum as establishing and consolidating the words 
 
XIV THE HOLY SPIRIT 195 
 
 of prophecy among the ranks of the Israelites. There- 
 fore " the Holy Spirit " in these two verses of Isaiah 
 is another name for prophecy. And to say that Israel 
 rebelled against and resisted prophecy, accords with a 
 great deal of the teaching of O.T. history. 
 
 The conclusion we arrive at is therefore this : that 
 in verse 10 the epithet, "His Holy Spirit" denotes 
 Divine Spirit which operates upon man, coming as an 
 inspiration to him and showing its traces in different 
 ways — one great way being that of prophecy. In this 
 particular instance it has reference to the stubborn 
 rebellion which Israel, according to several records of 
 the O.T. ofttimes practised towards the eiforts and 
 admonitions of the prophets. So the Targumic para- 
 phase. Or, keeping to a more literal path, the rebellion 
 " against his Holy Spirit " may be an equivalent state- 
 ment for rebellion " against Him," just as the words 
 "My name," or "My glory," "His glory," are frequent 
 substitutes for the Deity Himself. Again, in the 
 case of verse 11, "Where is he that put his Holy 
 Spirit within him ? " the allusion may be to Moses 
 in his role as the bringer of all the messages of the 
 prophets before him, to the people of Israel. Or it 
 may refer to Moses as he is represented in Numbers 
 xi. 16-29, where he is the fountain from which prophecy 
 emanates, first to the seventy elders and then to sundry 
 members of the community. Or it may epitomise the 
 eternal spiritual service which Moses, by his conspicuous 
 leadership, rendered the Israelites. On this latter inter- 
 pretation, the Holy Spirit would be about identical 
 with the outpouring of the Spirit alluded to in Joel 
 ii. 28, and would denote a general heightening and 
 intensifying of the religious spirit, a degree of truer 
 conviction of the reality and nearness of God and His 
 influence upon men and the universe — a consummation 
 
196 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 which all the records of Holy Writ unequivocably attri- 
 bute to Moses. 
 
 To come now to Psalm li. 11. The disposition to 
 regard the Holy Spirit as a personification is not so 
 strong as in Isaiah Ixiii. 10, 11. Neither Cheyne nor 
 Budde look at it as a personification. Budde (who 
 takes the view that this is an Exilic Psalm in which 
 the poet voices the sin-laden consciousness of the 
 Jewish community) sees in it an allusion to the 
 ever -constant presence of God in Israel. Just as 
 in the Isaiah passage, so here, says Budde, " Gottes 
 Angesicht und sein heiliger Geist im Parallelismus 
 stehen." By the "presence of God" Budde under- 
 stands the Divine revelation which, starting at Sinai 
 and finding expression in the prophets, manifested itself 
 in diverse ways in the body of the Jewish nation. It 
 is in this sense that, differing from Marti, he expounds 
 the phrase vdd inSd in Isaiah Ixiii. 9.^^^^ It is " der Engel, 
 in dem Gottes Angesicht erscheint, in dem er in Person 
 gegenwartig ist, also ebenfalls eine Offenbarung Gottes." 
 In other words, an angel is a revelation of the Person 
 of God, which was a reality to the heart and mind of 
 Israel in spite of recurrent shortcomings, and which 
 inspired them to a higher range of thought and 
 conduct than characterised the contemporary heathen 
 world. And this, says Budde, is a parallel idea to 
 that of the Holy Spirit alluded to here. Israel has 
 the Holy Spirit because in him God's revelation to 
 the world was made manifest. " Israel is the nation 
 of Revelation because he has God's Holy Spirit." Thus 
 Budde strikes quite a new and original note. The 
 Holy Spirit for whose retention the author of Psalm li. 
 so devoutly prays is the ever-presence, the imman- 
 ence of the Divine in Israel, a fact which was mani- 
 fested to the world in all the variegated stages of his 
 
XIV THE HOLY SPIRIT 197 
 
 history. It is a forerunner of the " Shechinah " of 
 Rabbinism, 
 
 As a matter of fact, a reference to the Rabbinic 
 comments on the verse shows a close analogy with 
 Budde's theory, excepting that the Rabbins uncritically 
 regarded the Psalm as in its entirety a prayer of 
 David. The Rabbinic view is given in T. B, Yoma 
 23a. According to Rab (Abba Arika) David suffered 
 leprosy for six months, as an expiation of various sins 
 he had wilfully committed, as, e.g. the taking of Uriah's 
 wife, the numbering of the people (2 Samuel xxiv,), etc. 
 As a consequence of his unclean condition " the Sanhe- 
 drin separated themselves from him and the Shechinah 
 withdrew itself from David." ^"^^ For the return of the 
 Sanhedrin David prayed in the words of Psalm cxix. 
 79, " Let those that fear Thee turn unto me, and those 
 that have known Thy testimonies." For the return of 
 the Shechinah, David prayed in the words of our Psalm 
 li. 12, " Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation : and 
 uphold me with Thy free spirit." The analogy between 
 Budde's view and the Rabbinical view is, that the 
 whole drift of the Psalm is a petition for the vouch- 
 safing to men of those manifested traces of the 
 Divine love, which are given expression to in the 
 word Shechinah. 
 
 My conclusion is : that the two instances of the 
 Biblical phrase " Holy Spirit " besides containing all the 
 constituent ideas of the prevalent Biblical phrase 
 " Spirit of God," express also that deeper sense of 
 the abiding nearness of God to Israel, that mystical 
 perception that the Deity in His various aspects or 
 emanations " rests upon," or " hedges round," or " fills " 
 certain persons, or communities, or countries, a fact to 
 which the Rabbins gave the names of " Shechinah," or 
 " Ruah Ha-Kodesh.'* 
 
198 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 For the sake of conciseness, and to give greater 
 point to the arguments which follow, I summarise the 
 main heads of the constituent ideas which enter into the 
 term " Spirit of God " in the O.T. They are :— 
 
 Firstly. — The principle by which all things are 
 preserved. As the breath of God it is the basis of all 
 created life. It is co-extensive with nature. 
 
 Secondly. — It is the source of man's emotional and 
 volitional life. As such it is the basis of morality. 
 
 Thirdly. — It is an endowment to the king, inciting 
 him to rule in righteousness and equity. 
 
 Fourthly. — It is an endowment to various characters 
 connected with the cult and government of Israel, in- 
 spiring them to various worthy deeds and thoughts in 
 the interests of their fellows. 
 
 Fifthly. — It is an endowment to the nation of 
 Israel giving them the ever present possibility of 
 religious betterment and regeneration. 
 
 Sixthly. — It is a promised gift to the Israelites in 
 the future when wisdom and might and the fear of God 
 will be a greater reality. This is the Messianic aspect. 
 
 Seventhly. — It is the well-spring of prophecy. 
 
 Eighthly. — It is the soul, the immortal portion of 
 man which being part of the Divine life returns after 
 death to the God that gave it. 
 
 In the sense of Holy Spirit as it occurs in the two 
 passages in the O.T. that we have alluded to, it denotes 
 further : — 
 
 Firstly. — The universality of God's Spirit. 
 
 Secondly. — The self-revelation of God to man. The 
 Immanence of God in man. His abiding presence. 
 His nearness. 
 
 The main difference then, Biblically considered, 
 between "Spirit" and "Holy Spirit" is that the 
 latter is a deepening of the former. It teaches that 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT 199 
 
 Immanence of Divinity which is the subject of the 
 139th Psalm. It has not yet reached the stage of 
 being personified, as is the case with the Rabbinic ideas 
 of Shechinah and Holy Spirit and with the N.T. teach- 
 ing of the Holy Spirit. If there is anything in the 
 O.T which may be rightly characterised as an instance 
 of personification it is the "Wisdom" of the eighth 
 chapter of the Book of Proverbs. 
 
 In this eighth chapter, Wisdom is a Divine property, 
 an attribute of God. Just as it is man's guiding principle 
 in the preservation of his rightful attitude towards 
 himself and those about him, so with God it is His plan 
 wherewith He created the world and sustains it ever 
 since ; it is His master workman ^"*^ (viii. 30) ; the first of 
 His works (viii. 22). It presided over the birth of 
 nature, and its voice calls to men bidding them choose 
 the good and shun the evil. Wisdom is a cosmic 
 power, the all-encompassing intelligent will of God 
 manifesting itself in the creation and preservation of 
 the world, and as an eternal and unerring guide and 
 ruler of mankind.^"^^ 
 
 Now what distinguishes this conception of Wisdom 
 is the fact, that here Wisdom is, as it were, temporarily 
 detached from its Divine source and treated as a 
 Personality — a Personality which is related to the 
 whole universe, controlling the life of the human 
 race. This thought undoubtedly makes a great 
 advance upon anything previously written in Jewish 
 circles. Its effect upon the Apocryphal AVisdom of 
 Solomon and upon much of the speculative philosophy 
 of Philo is without question. But what is of import- 
 ance to point out is, that its detachment from its 
 Divine source was not meant by the writer to imply 
 " any theory of permanent distinctions within the Divine 
 nature each endowed with its own separate self- 
 
200 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 consciousness." ^^^^ Wisdom lias no personal life of its 
 own and points to no profound mystery in the Being 
 of God. Right through the passage viii. 22-36 it is 
 " God's " wisdom. The allusions to the Divine owner- 
 ship of wisdom are frequent. " The Lord possessed 
 me " ; " When He established the heavens, I was 
 there"; "Rejoicing in His habitable earth " : all these 
 passages clearly imply that wisdom is a quality 
 belonging to God, one of His attributes by which He 
 makes Himself known and felt in the world of men 
 and in the human heart, one of the elements in the 
 Divine nature which is most in sympathy with the 
 innate tendency in man to go on striving ever upward 
 and onward. Wisdom is, after all, only God's wisdom, 
 no matter how near an approach to personality there 
 may be in the various descriptions of the term ; and 
 in the same way " Spirit " is " God's Spirit " and " Holy 
 Spirit " is " God's Holy Spirit " ; and similarly right 
 through the Rabbinical literature, however near an 
 approach to a distinct personality there may be in the 
 Rabbinical handling of these expressions, there is always 
 the underlying assumption that the personification is 
 only used for the purpose of a particular doctrine, and 
 not for the teaching of any metaphysical divisions in 
 the Godhead. 
 
 To conclude this introductory chapter — which is 
 intended as a sketch of the O.T. treatment of " Spirit," 
 preliminary to and preparing the way for the Rabbinical 
 treatment of the " Spirit," let me briefly recapitulate 
 three main points : — ^"'^ 
 
 (1) Spirit in the O.T. is an emanation of God 
 finding a place in the world and in man. In the world 
 it is the basic upholder and preserver of all. The 
 natural world is an embodiment and a revealer of God's 
 spirit. It is perpetually renewed by God's spirit. In 
 
XIV THE HOLY SPIRIT 201 
 
 man it is a gift or endowment coming straight from 
 God, prompting man to goodness and righteousness, 
 and showing itself in its highest form in the prophetic 
 faculty. 
 
 (2) Holy Spirit in the O.T. teaches with more dis- 
 tinctness and emphasis, the truth of the manifestation 
 of God in Israel (in the Isaiah passage) and in an in- 
 dividual {i.e. the Psalmist in li. 11). 
 
 (3) Wisdom in Proverbs viii. reaches to the limits 
 of personification. A quality through which God acts 
 and through which He is known, is objectified. It 
 dwells and finds its special delight among men. This 
 brings us to the very doors of the Immanence doc- 
 trine. The Rabbinical doctrine of the " Holy Spirit " is 
 compounded of these teachings, with the admixture of 
 many new elements which these old sages drew either 
 from their own independent exegesis of the Scriptures, 
 or from their own personal observations and experiences 
 of the Spiritual life, or again, as a result of their inter- 
 mingling with extraneous nations and the consequent 
 additions to, and transformations of, their original 
 views. 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER XIV 
 
 (1) Swete, The Holy Spirit in the New Testament (Macmillan, 1909), 
 on page 1, says: "The Hebrew ' Ruali ' like the Greek 'Pneuma' and 
 tlie Latin ' spiritus ' originally had a physiological and not a psychological 
 value, denoting the human breath." From this, Swete goes on to show 
 how it came to acquire the higher meanings. 
 
 (2) Maimonides in the Moreh Nebuchim, i. chap. xl. translates, " And 
 the air of God moved." 
 
 (3) Cp. Psalm xxxiv. 18, "And saveth such as be of a contrite 
 spirit." 
 
 (4) The phrase nn myi suggests " the purposelessness and ineffective- 
 ness of all man's enterprises " (G. Currie Martin on Ecclesiastes in Century 
 Bible). 
 
 (5) Wellhausen says that they had become merely public demagogues. 
 
 (6) It is worthy of note that Rashi on this passage in Numbers 
 
202 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 adopts ratlier a physical interpretation. He is " the Lord of the Spirit 
 of all flesh," because He knows the different dispositions, temperaments 
 of men. 
 
 (7) Psalm xxxi. 5, cp. Zeehariah xii. 1. 
 
 (7a) For the idea of this classification, I am indebted to a little work 
 entitled Spirit in the New Testament, by E. W. Winstanley (Cambridge 
 University Press, 1908). 
 
 (8) Eashi takes loys"? as □•d:;s'7 laipa nn"?, i.e. an incidental, intermittent 
 visitation of the Divine Spirit. 
 
 (9) Rashi here has m}2i nn, thus differing from the Targum. 
 Probably Rashi was thinking of the warlike exploits mentioned in the 
 next chapter, whereas the Targum confined itself to its view of him as 
 a prophet. 
 
 (10) Nahmanides on this passage, in the midst of other interesting 
 remarks, quotes the Rabbinical statement about Bezaleel, ^k^^^ n'n yiy 
 pxn D'stj' [na in-i3:b' nrnixn rp^ih ; on this Nahmanides adds as follows : " The 
 Tabernacle hints at these [i.e. the Tabernacle has its archetype, as"*it 
 were, in the letters by which heaven and earth were created]. Bezaleel 
 understood the secret of it all." Thus, Nahmanides would make Bezaleel 
 a mystic. 
 
 (11) Both Rashi and Ibn Ezra here explain 'n'?sKi by the familiar 
 figure of a candle at which several other candles are kindled without 
 any diminution in its light. 
 
 (12) Some such ideas as these, seem to underlie the remark attributed 
 to Jesus in John iii. 5, " Except a man be born of water, and of the 
 Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." 
 
 (13) See Rashi's remark on Ezekiel i. 1, "And I saw visions of God." 
 It was, says he, m'xa nrNc xn'^piSDX iwd and ran n'^i oiSn pyD. 
 
 (14) Modern critics assign these Balaam prophecies to a comparatively 
 late date. Israel must by then, say they, have acquired a permanent 
 ascendancy over the other Canaanitish nations. See, for an interesting 
 study of the subject, Cheyne in Expository Times (1899), x. 399-402. 
 
 (15) Cp. the phrase in Nehemiah ix. 20, nnan inm. 
 
 (16) From Prof Whitehouse's Isaiah in Century Bible Series. 
 
 (1 7) Marti on this passage in Isaiah says : " Mishpat ist die Zusammen- 
 fassung aller Mishpatim, die Israel besitzt, also die sittlich religiose 
 Ordnung, die wahre Religion Jahves." He shows how similarly 
 the Arabic " ^q means both judgment and religion. 
 
 (18) Cp. the Rabbinic comment on the windows of Solomon's 
 Temple as being d'dibk o'sypof, i.e. wide from the outside but narrow 
 from the inside, so that the Divine light focitssed inside might be 
 disseminated broad-cast when it reached the outside of the Temple. 
 
 (19) Rashi, following the Midrash on this passage, points out 
 how in Genesis ii. 7, where the creation of man is alluded to, the 
 word ns"! is spelt with double " Yod," whereas in ii. 19, where it speaks 
 of the animal creation, the same word is spelt with only one " Yod " ; the 
 reason for this being that man possesses, as it were, two creations, one 
 in the past and the other in the future, at the time of the resurrection. 
 
XIV 
 
 NOTES 203 
 
 The beast will not enjoy the latter. Rashi would thus read a spiritual 
 interpretation into these early passages of Genesis. 
 
 (20) Genesis Rabba xxvi. 6 gives other interpretations of this 
 passage. It makes it allude to the resurrection of the dead. Thus : 
 " I will not put my spirit in them at the hour when I give the reward 
 of the righteous in the time to come." As the commentators explain, 
 this " reward of the righteous in the time to come," means the resurrection 
 of the dead. It is worthy of note that according to this, and many 
 another llabbinical statement, it is only the " righteous " who will enjoy 
 the resurrection ; and yet, one might cull ever so many references to a 
 resurrection in which all will participate. This is undoubtedly a dark 
 and difficult point. In all probability it marks different strata in the 
 development of the idea of resurrection among the ancient Jews. The 
 New Testament references are also by no means clear. Luke xiv. 14, xx, 
 35, speaks only of the resurrection of the just and worthy ; but John v. 
 29, Acts xxiv. 15, Rev. xx. 5 allude to the "resurrection of the dead" in 
 general. Resurrection of the dead early came to form part of the belief 
 in the Messianic advent. This is seen from the Rabbinic interpretations 
 of Ezekiel xxxvii., Isaiah xxvi. 19, Daniel xii. 2, etc. etc. Exactly when 
 the conjunction in these two ideas was effected, it is hard to say ; but it 
 is not hard to see how the conjunction should become the starting-point 
 of the broader teaching about a general resurrection. At the time when 
 the resurrection teaching was embodied in the Eighteen Benedictions of 
 the Jewish ritual, it must clearly have been the undisputed opinion of 
 the Jews that resurrection will be for all and not for a select few. 
 
 (21) Aboth v. 
 
 (22) Marti here substitutes (following the LXX.) i^ {i.e. messenger) 
 for the textual n^, and reads inSd in the absolute state (not ■n^'^o in 
 construct state as in text), and also he adopts the Ketib nS = " not " for 
 the Keri iV = " unto him." He translates the passage " Nicht ein Bote 
 oder Engel ; Sein Angesicht rettete sie." He adds by way of explanation : 
 " This contrast of messenger and angel on the one hand, and God's face on 
 the other shows that "n inSd is no longer, as formerly, the person of God 
 (' die Repriisentation Jahves ') but a substitute, and that the ' Face of God ' 
 denotes God Himself." A combination like vjd in^d, says Marti, is 
 impossible ; you get "n '3S or "n in'^d, but not "n 'J3 ikSd. 
 
 (23) According to Rabbinic tradition, the Sanhedrin originated 
 in the Mosaic period, the seventy elders of Numbers xi. 16-30 being 
 the first Sanhedrin. It existed from that time onwards without 
 interruption. But looking at the matter critically it must be argued, 
 from the fact that there is no passage in the pre-exilic books relating to 
 it, that no fixed body, answering in any way to what was understood by 
 a Sanhedrin, could have existed before the time of the second Temple. 
 In Nehemiah viii. 8 we read of an assembly which in the Talmud is 
 designated as the " great synagogue." But this could only have been an 
 occasional body. At a later date, which cannot be determined, this 
 occasional body was replaced by a standing body — the Sanhedrin. For 
 further information on this knotty point see Bacher's article " Sanhedrin " 
 in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. 
 
204 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD ch. xiv 
 
 (24) Hebrew pDN. The LXX. has apjjuo^ovcra = arranger or fashioner 
 of things. Eashi takes it as " foster-child " or " ward," based on 
 Lamentations iv. 5. But this is rather forced, as the word should 
 have read pox. But Rashi's view is favoured by the Targum. The 
 meaning " master- workman " or, as Cheyne says, that of " architect " or 
 "artist," is supported by the Apocryphal Book of Wisdom vii. 22, much 
 of which seems to have been borrowed from this chapter of Proverbs. 
 
 (25) " In one passage, animated by a fine enthusiasm. Wisdom 
 is a cosmic force, the nursling of God, standing by His side at the 
 creation of the world. This conception, foreign to the pre-Ezran O.T. 
 thought, suggests the period when Jews came under Greek influence." 
 Prof. Toy's article " Book of Proverbs " in Jewish Encyclopcedia. 
 
 (26) Montefiore, The Wisdom of Solomon (London, 1887). 
 
 (27) Volz {Der Geist Gottes, Tubingen, 1910) on pp. 159-165 gives 
 a good account of the hypostasisation of the Spirit in Philo and the 
 Jewish Apocryphal and Apocalyptic writings. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 IN WHAT RESPECTS IS THE RABBINIC TREATMENT OF 
 HOLY SPIRIT AN ADVANCE UPON THE OLD TESTA- 
 MENT TREATMENT ? 
 
 The main lines of advancement in the treatment of 
 the O.T. idea are the following : — 
 
 (1) The O.T. terms " Spirit of the Lord," " Spirit of 
 God," occasional terms such as " spirit of know- 
 ledge and the fear of the Lord " (Isaiah xi. 2), the two 
 usages of Holy Spirit in Psalm li. 11 (LXX. 7rv€v/j,a 
 TO ajLov) and Isaiah Ixiii. 10, 11, and the personified 
 usage of Wisdom in Proverbs viii., all these become 
 included in that one term of wide embrace — the 
 2?Tipn TIM, " Holy Spirit." This latter term covers 
 all the various aspects of spirit which are represented 
 singly by each of the O.T. expressions, and in addition, 
 it figures sometimes as but another name for God, but 
 more often as something distinct from God — sometimes 
 it is employed as a personality, sometimes it is con- 
 ceived mysteriously as some physical object, sometimes 
 it is but another name for the Divine inspiration 
 which made prophecy possible, and sometimes again it 
 is merely an equivalent term for the Books of the O.T. 
 in the sense that these enshrine for all time, the living 
 words of the Holy Spirit. But let it not be imagined 
 that the Rabbinic doctrine of the Unity of God is one 
 whit impugned by these usages. The Holy Spirit is 
 
 205 
 
2o6 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 God's Holy Spirit. It is not itself God ; it is a property 
 of God, it is an emanation of God, a visible, or rather 
 perceptible, trace of His workings in the world and in 
 the heart of man. It is the Rabbinic portrayal of God 
 in action, it is the emphatic declaration of the nearness 
 of God, His direct concern in the affairs of men, the 
 ever possible accessibility of man to His grace. 
 
 (2) Primitive both in its nature and in the manner 
 "^ in which the Rabbins expressed it, is the conception 
 
 of Holy Spirit under the figure of light or fire. The 
 same tendency was noticed in the Shechinah conception. 
 It is a materialist idea, but yet it has its mystical side. 
 Its advance on the O.T. idea consists in its recognition 
 as a separate entity. And not only is it materialised 
 as light and fire. It is also symbolised as wind, creat- 
 ing various startling noises — and this, not only in the 
 atmosphere surrounding certain personages, but inside 
 them, i.e. in several of their limbs and internal organs. 
 The mystical elements in all religions present these 
 phenomena. A typical illustration in the history of early 
 Christianity is the passage in Acts ii. 2, " And suddenly 
 there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty 
 wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting." 
 As Dr. Rufus Jones says, in his Studies in Mystical 
 Religion (page 8), when he speaks of mysticism in the 
 primitive fellowship of the early Christians, " The 
 Divine incoming was conceived as an invasion — as a 
 swiftly rushing wind — and the efi'ects looked for were 
 miraculous, sudden, and temporary." And just as many 
 of these strange experiences among the founders of the 
 Church can be justified and made palatable to modern 
 thought only when viewed from the standpoint of 
 mysticism, even so can we only give any real meaning to 
 the seemingly far-fetched pictures of spiritual experience 
 given us by Talmud and Midrash under cover of light, 
 
XV RABBINIC TREATMENT 207 
 
 fire, wind, etc., by the adoption of the mystical theory. 
 But of this more anon. 
 
 (3) The usage of Holy Spirit as a personality, 
 presents many points of perplexity. A survey of 
 the subject convinces one, that the phrase is often a 
 mere circumlocution for God. The Rabbins held very 
 stringent notions about the sanctity of the Divine 
 name. They thought that a too -frequent repetition 
 of it was tantamount to an infringement of its sanctity 
 — and this in spite of the fact that the repetition may 
 have been rendered absolutely necessary by the circum- 
 stances. Consequently a safe refuge was found in 
 the usage of either " Shechinah" or "Holy Spirit." It 
 is often a tax on one's ingenuity to discover whether 
 an allusion to the Holy Spirit is a mere substitute for 
 the Divine name, or whether it implies the deeper 
 mystical meanings of the Divine Immanence. And then, 
 again, in many a passage the Holy Spirit seems merely 
 another name for Torah ; and one can understand this 
 on the ground that according to Rabbinical opinion all 
 the Books of the O.T are one of the manifestations 
 of the activity of the Holy Spirit. But it is hard to 
 discriminate between the cases where it is merely an 
 equivalent for Torah or where it has a deeper con- 
 notation. 
 
 And then, again, there is the fact that in passages 
 which recur in Talmud and Midrash, whereas one of the 
 versions may contain the phrase " Holy Spirit," another 
 may report exactly the same thing of the " Shechinah." 
 This raises the difficult question of the exact difference 
 between the two. And the question is further compli- 
 cated by the hardship of knowing whether many a 
 passage in the N.T. which speaks of the Holy Spirit is 
 an echo of the Rabbinic Shechinah or Holy Spirit. It 
 sometimes seems to be the equivalent of one and some- 
 
2o8 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 times of another. It must be remembered that in Greek 
 So^a is the only equivalent for Shechinah, and yet it is 
 really not a true equivalent because it merely = " gleam 
 of light." It may be for this reason that the N.T. 
 often uses irvevfia ayiov for the Shechinah of the original 
 Hebrew or Aramaic. And this may possibly explain 
 further, why the irvevixa ayiov is so much more prominent 
 in the N.T, than mnpn n')! in Rabbinical literature — 
 of course speaking proportionately in each case. 
 
 (4) We saw how in the O.T. the presence of the 
 Divine Spirit in an individual or in Israel was often 
 interpreted, both by the ancient Jews in Targum and 
 Talmud, as well as by several modern Biblical scholars, 
 as the existence of the gift of prophecy in Israel or that 
 individual. This teaching has been expanded much, 
 in Rabbinical literature. Whereas in the O.T. it is 
 the gift only of the recognised prophets of the Canon, 
 or of sundry individuals of outstanding prominence, 
 or of the Hebrew nation at certain points of its 
 career, in Rabbinic as well as in all the Jewish 
 theology succeeding, it is, so to speak, popularised. 
 The Holy Spirit may be acquired by any one provided 
 he orders his life in conformity with the highest and 
 the best. It is not vouchsafed by Heaven miraculously, 
 i.e. without any sufficiently-evident pre-existing cause 
 — [and in the O.T. there is certainly this element of 
 the inexplicable about it] — but its existence in any 
 individual at any one epoch of time is the effect of a 
 clear cause. Thus, to give a few instances. In Yalkut 
 on Psalm xvii. we are told, " He who studies [Torah] 
 with the object of practising it will merit the gift 
 of the Holy Spirit." In other words, the Holy Spirit 
 is an asset which every man may gain, if only his 
 previous spiritual equipment warrants it. Again, in 
 Yalkut on Genesis xlix. it is said, " Whatever the saints 
 
 4 
 
XV RABBINIC TREATMENT 209 
 
 do, they do by the power of the Holy Spirit." Saintli- 
 ness means a comprehensive sense of conformity with 
 the letter and spirit of Judaism ; all have it in their 
 power to attain to it. ]\Iany a Talmudic sage was 
 vouchsafed the Holy Spirit ; thus in Leviticus Rabba 
 ix. 9 R. Meir figures in a curious anecdote as hdis 
 rr"ii, "gazing by means of the Holy Spirit." Several 
 more examples will be quoted later on. 
 
 And then, again, the Rabbins expanded the scope 
 of the Holy Spirit so as to include even pagans (under 
 certain conditions). This inclusion is quite unthought of 
 in the O.T., as well as is the question whether the Holy 
 Spirit can be vouchsafed to any one outside the Holy 
 Land. The difficult question of the relation between the 
 possession of the Holy Spirit by a nation or individual 
 and the consequent possession by that nation or 
 individual of the faculty of prophecy suggests itself 
 over and over again to the student of the Rabbinical 
 writings ; and it is nowhere satisfactorily answered. 
 Mediaeval theologians like Saadiah, Jehuda Ha -Levi, 
 Maimonides, Nahmanides all devote their attentions 
 to the subject. The Midrash imputes the possession of 
 the Holy Spirit to many of the prominent personages 
 in the Book of Genesis, even to women as Sarah, 
 Rebekah, etc. Are we to infer that they are, therefore, 
 to be considered as prophets ? It is not always possible 
 to answer this question definitely. 
 
 (5) Another striking development in the usage of 
 the Holy Spirit by the Rabbins may be noted under 
 the following heads : — 
 
 (a) It is the composer of all the books of the O.T. 
 The inclusion of a book in the Biblical Canon meant 
 necessarily that it must have been inspired or written 
 by the Holy Spirit. (See T. B. Megillah 7a ; Tosefta 
 Yadaim ii. 14.) ^'^ 
 
 P 
 
 •'^> 
 
2IO THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 (b) Single passages of the O.T. are the utterances 
 of the Holy Spirit, at certain crises in the experiences 
 of the individual or nation, or to confirm the truth of 
 certain utterances made by them. 
 
 (c) There is a peculiar relationship between the Holy 
 Spirit as manifested in the Pentateuch and the Holy 
 Spirit as manifested in the Prophets and Hagiographa. 
 The first seems to stand on a higher plane than the other 
 two ; a higher degree of inspiration attaches to them. 
 Seeing that " Holy Spirit " is so often identified with 
 prophecy, or if not identified, is the next step leading 
 to it, it is remarkably odd that the words of those who 
 were the Prophets par excellence should take a lower 
 status than the words of the Torah where the identity 
 of Holy Spirit and prophecy is only a Rabbinic assump- 
 tion. And, again, the relations between the Hagio- 
 grapha and Holy Spirit seem confused. According to 
 T. B. Baba Bathra (15a) many of the Hagiographa were 
 composed by the "men of the Great Synagogue," ^^^ the 
 Holy Spirit having ceased to exist with the demise of 
 Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi (see Rashi, ad loc). This 
 teaching would place the inspiration of the Hagiographa 
 on a lower rung again. 
 
 Subsequent chapters will deal in detail with these 
 various divisions. 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER XV 
 
 (1) Volz {Der Geist Gottes, Tubingen, 1910) quotes from Philo 
 (" Life of Moses," ii. 7), where he says that the authors of the Septuagint 
 were " not mere interpreters but hierophants and prophets, to whom it 
 had been granted ... to go along with the most pure spirit of Moses " 
 (p. 84). 
 
 (2) "inDK n'7'JDi '?N'3T ne/y D':m '?Npin' lans n^nj.T noaa 'cax. Strangely 
 enough there is here a mixing up of the Prophets and Hagiographa. 
 The reason, says " Tosafoth " on this passage, why Ezekiel is here denied 
 the authorship of his book, is because he lived px'? nsina outside the 
 
XV NOTES 211 
 
 bounds of the Holy Land, and the assumption of the Rabbins generally 
 was, as we have already noticed and shall further notice, that neither 
 Shechinah nor Holy Spirit exerted very much activity outside Palestine. 
 But Tosafoth rightly points out that Jeremiah was in Egyi)t when he 
 uttered several of his prophecies ! Why should he, then, not have been 
 placed in the same category as Ezekiel ? As a matter of fact, there seems 
 a great deal of arbitrariness about the classification in T. B. Baba Bathra 
 15a. One can hardly be expected to take it seriously and scientifically. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTIONS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 IN RABBINICAL LITERATURE 
 
 In no part of our inquiry do we get more incontestable 
 proofs of the existence of a strong subjective mystical 
 element in Rabbin ism, than in the department into 
 which we now enter. In this respect, Rabbinism is no 
 exception to the rule which characterises the subjective 
 aspects of all faiths. A glance at a book like Tylor's 
 Primitive Culture convinces one, of the inevitable 
 substratum of individual mystical experience which 
 played such a large part in the formation of the very 
 earliest revelations. It is quite a tenable theory that 
 when, in O.T. literature, Moses hears the voice speaking 
 out of the burning bush, or when Isaiah sees the Lord 
 sitting on a throne high and exalted, and listens to the 
 sound of the Seraphim in their laudation of the thrice- 
 holy Grod, or when Ezekiel in a fit of ecstatic rapture 
 at the marvellous sights revealed by the opened heavens, 
 falls upon his face and hears a voice speaking, these 
 men by their direct personal intercourse with a Divine 
 Presence were pioneers in making religion a living 
 power for the men of their own generation. Early 
 Christianity makes much of the sudden inrushing of 
 the Spirit in individuals and families whereby many 
 prophesied ; and " speaking with tongues " became a 
 common accomplishment of the first Christians. That 
 
 212 
 
cH. XV. MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTIONS 213 
 
 Saul of Tarsus was a mystic — though not exclusively 
 so — is too clear and too uncontested to need proof here. 
 The many autobiographical passages in his writings give 
 the plainest testimony of his proneness to spiritual 
 experiences of an extraordinary sort — although the 
 question whether these were the outcome of a physically 
 normal or abnormal constitution, is a problem upon 
 which there will ever be diversity of opinion. 
 
 Rabbinical literature likewise presents us with a 
 considerable budget of both visual and auditory pheno- 
 mena of an unusual sort, in which various Rabbis 
 played the parts of subject or object. God's Immanence, 
 His accessibility. His nearness, His all-encompassing 
 and all-embracing reality became so deep-seated a con- 
 viction to the minds of individual Rabbis here and 
 there, that the barriers separating the intellectual and 
 emotional aspects of mind broke entirely away, and 
 they saw with the eye, and heard with the ear, sights 
 and sounds from an unseen world, traces of a Presence 
 which impinged upon them, invaded them, filling them 
 with high and divine impulses, raising them to the 
 position of the elect whose state of life is a complete 
 unity of being with God. I refer to those older parts 
 of the Talmud which are generally styled rr'^Nin rrmi^D 
 and nnDio nwvn. The mysteries conveyed by these 
 terms became a source of perplexity to succeeding 
 generations of Jewish scholars. They saw danger in 
 them. A later Baraitha forbade the teaching of them to 
 any, except the most cultured (T. B. Haggigah 13a). The 
 reason commonly given for the prohibition is that these 
 sections of the Talmud comprised some secret esoteric 
 doctrine of early times which, probably on account of 
 its containing a strong admixture of foreign elements, 
 would, if spread among the masses, create an un- 
 desirable scepticism. But it would be nearer the 
 
214 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 truth to say that they denote, as is obvious to any 
 one who reads the originals, the subjective mystical 
 experience of individual Rabbis. They realised in 
 intellect and feeling the presence of God. Being in 
 an ecstatic state of emotion when the imaginative 
 faculties wield uncontrolled sway, their vision became 
 elaborated with all sorts of weird and fantastic addi- 
 tions. When returning to their normal conditions, they 
 described these phenomena to their friends and disciples 
 as actual occurrences. And they became enshrined 
 among the traditions of the people. But the Rabbis of 
 a later generation examined them. These legalistically- 
 trained sages were not slow in detecting the weak 
 spot, viz. that these occurrences were but the sub- 
 jective phenomena of individuals, and therefore had 
 no general external validity. Why, then, should the 
 people spend their time and energy in expounding 
 them, and diving into the secrets hidden beneath 
 their mysterious language ? Was it not more im- 
 portant that other matters of Halacha and Haggada 
 should hold the people's attention — matters of external 
 practise, points of ritual and moral teaching, doctrines 
 emphasising man's obligations to God from the stand- 
 points of external necessity and external authority ? 
 But subjective experiences always form the most 
 entrancing of reading. Yes, herein lies the danger. 
 Would-be devotees must be weaned from them, or 
 they may be mistaking the shadow for the substance. 
 Hence the Rabbinic interdiction. 
 
 My object in the preceding remarks has been to 
 show that the materialistic conceptions of Holy Spirit 
 of which I am about to treat (and those of Shechinah 
 treated of in the first part of this book) are either a 
 branch, or an outcome, of the subjective mysticism of 
 many an individual Rabbi whose first-hand experiences 
 
XVI MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTIONS 215 
 
 are indicated in the titles n"^tn.s~il "d and nnDio "d. 
 These mystical experiences of a few, became a matter 
 of knowledge among the many. If individual men, it 
 was argued, had had visions of God, these visions must 
 have had some material embodiment, and as the phrase 
 " Holy Spirit " was taken to mean the universal in- 
 dwelling of God in the world, His constant self-revelation 
 to man and man's ever-present capacity to see visions 
 of God, it follows that when the sages spoke of this 
 aspect of the Deity's activity by the employment of 
 the term "Holy Spirit" their language was largely 
 couched in terms of the material. 
 
 Instances of this material conception of Holy Spirit 
 take various forms : — 
 
 (A) As Light or Fire 
 
 There are three different words used largely in this 
 connexion. 
 
 They are (1) hdd, (2) rjDi, (3) pisn. 
 
 Examples of (1) are T. B. Megillah 14a, mm it nDD"" 
 oiiprr riMi nnDom riDD^ note NipD nnSi, " Iskah (in 
 Genesis xi. 29) is Sarah ; why was Sarah called Iskah ? 
 Because she looked (ttdd) by the Holy Spirit." Instances 
 of (2) are : Leviticus Rabba ix. 9, " R. Meir looked (nsis) 
 by the Holy Spirit " (in the quaint anecdote of the 
 extreme measures which Meir once took in order to 
 make peace betw^een husband and wife). Instances of 
 (3) are : Leviticus Rabba xxxii. 4, " The Holy Spirit 
 enlightened (psn) Moses" (in allusion to Leviticus 
 xxiv. 10-12 — the Midrash making Moses play a more 
 elaborate part than is assigned to him in the Scriptural 
 text). Other references where another form of this 
 same verb, viz. n^DS3, is used are Genesis Rabba Ixxxv. 9, 
 n'S ni HiiDSD, "the Holy Spirit illumined her" (viz. 
 
2i6 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 Tamar). Genesis Rabba xci. 7 has the same phrase 
 alluding to the brethren of Joseph when they exclaimed 
 " We are all one man's sons" (Genesis xlii. 11). 
 
 These illustrations are enough to make it clear that 
 the " Holy Spirit " was somehow associated with some 
 kind of visual sensation. The possessor of the Holy 
 Spirit actually saw some kind of light. 
 
 To strengthen the argument the following passages 
 may be further quoted : — 
 
 T. B. Makkoth 23a (cp. Genesis Rabba Ixxxv. 12 ; 
 Eccles. Rabba xiv. 16 ; Midrash Tehillim, Psalm xvii., 
 Psalm Ixxii.) we read : "iDi n"i ni'''D"in nioipiD n^'pmn, 
 " The Holy Spirit shone forth in three places : in the 
 court of Shem ; in the court of Samuel ; in the court 
 of Solomon." Here, obviously, the Holy Spirit is 
 materialised as a luminous body. That the passage 
 is capable of being interpreted in the higher intellectual 
 sense of enlightenment, or in any religious or ethical 
 sense implying Divine guidance, etc., vouchsafed to 
 those who sat in these courts, does not at all disturb 
 the ten ability of our theory. 
 
 Leviticus Rabba i. 1, vhv mim ^"'^ n^nm ni?t&i onDD 
 Dn"^D^D mniJii VDD vn, " At the time when the Holy 
 Spirit rested upon Phinehas the latter's face was 
 burning like flames." Here the material is not so 
 much liorht as fire. We saw much of this in our 
 
 O 
 
 " Shechinah " investigation. Clearly both departments 
 of our subject have this in common, viz. that the 
 mystical phenomenon of the Divine Presence was 
 materialised as light or fire.^^^ A reference to Leviticus 
 Rabba i. 1 will show the close association between this 
 "fire " idea ^"^ and the idea of an angel ; one order of 
 angels was the " Seraphim," whose essence was fire. 
 This again proves that the average opinion of Christian 
 theologians about the Jewish view of angels, viz. that 
 
XVI MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTIONS 217 
 
 the angels are mere intermediate links arbitrarily in- 
 troduced to bridge the gulf between a distant tran- 
 scendent God and the world, is partially false. The 
 angel is often a synonym for Shechinah or Holy Spirit, 
 and denotes the energising activity of a God im- 
 manent in the universe/^^ 
 
 Genesis Rabba xci. 6, 13dd np^riDD ^dv I3:i3tz? oi^o 
 ''iDl n'S. " From the day that Joseph was stolen the 
 Holy Spirit left him (Jacob) ; as a consequence, his 
 sense of sight became imperfect and his sense of 
 hearing also." This is a remarkable statement. The 
 Holy Spirit is here materialised as the inner light in 
 man's eye — the luminant which throws the image upon 
 the retina ; and it is the medium of man's hearing ; the 
 instrument which brings the auditory sensations to 
 the drum of the ear. ^^^ 
 
 (B) As Sound 
 
 The well-known passage in Acts ii. 2, which speaks 
 of the sudden heavenly sound of a " mighty rushing 
 wind," is a mystical experience to which there are 
 parallels in the regions of our present investigation.^^^ 
 And, by the w^ay, the next succeeding verse about the 
 appearance of " cloven tongues like as of fire " brings 
 out the close association of the two material ideas 
 of fire and sound in the case of the Holy Spirit in 
 Rabbinical literature. The one source of all these 
 "sound" passages is Ezekiel iii. 12, "The Spirit took 
 me up, and I heard behind me a voice of a great 
 rushing." But it is quite possible that the ambiguous 
 meaning of Ruah in Genesis i. 2, associated as it is 
 with the word ncmrD, " making a fluttering sound," 
 gave the impetus to much of this kind of speculation. 
 I have already alluded to the remarkable statement 
 
2i8 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 in the T. B. Sotah 9b about the " Shechinah making; a 
 ringing sound before Samson like a bell." Leviticus 
 Rabba viii. 2 develops the same extraordinary thought 
 in connexion with the Holy Spirit's influence upon 
 Samson. " As soon as the Holy Spirit began to knock 
 {wyw:ih = wpwph as Commentary n^inD m^nD points out) 
 Samson took two mountains and knocked them together 
 just as a man knocks two pebbles together." Further 
 on it is said, " At the time that the Holy Spirit rested 
 upon Samson, his hairs stood up and knocked against 
 one another like a bell, and their sound was heard 
 from Zarah to Eshtaol." 
 
 A curious association of sound and Holy Spirit is 
 alluded to in Yalkut on Psalm xxiv. " What is the 
 difference," asks the Midrash in effect, " between the 
 heading i^ih "iimtD and Ttmo T\ih> ? " And the answer it 
 gives is that in the former case David first played upon 
 his harp and then the Holy Spirit came unto him ; in 
 the latter case the Holy Spirit came first and then 
 David played his harp. This, of course, raises the 
 important question as to the relation, from the Biblical 
 standpoint, between music, prophecy, and spirit.* 
 
 From the general mystical standpoint, the ideas 
 of Shechinah and Holy Spirit are identical. There 
 are variations in detail, but the terms are used too 
 indiscriminately to permit of any general statement 
 as to the exact shades of difference implied. (See, 
 however, Appendix L) 
 
 There is a passage in the Commentary of that 
 delightful mystic of the Middle Ages — Nahmanides 
 — which touches my present subject so vitally, that 
 I cannot forbear from making a reference to it. It is 
 in his commentary on Genesis iii. 8, "And they heard 
 
 * Cp. T. B. Pesahim 117a where the same is said of the Shechinah. Cp. 
 also Jerusalem Talmud Sukkali 55a. 
 
XV, MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTIONS 219 
 
 thevoiceof the Lord God walking in the garden at the cool 
 of the day." He is in agreement with Ibn Ezra, and 
 at variance with Rashi in holding that the verb iSnnn 
 (" walking ") refers to the voice and not to God. It was 
 the voice that was walking in the garden of Eden. 
 And he puts this idea in the same category as the 
 phrase DDDinn ^riDSnnm, " And I will walk among you." 
 In other words, the Voice is the perceptible symbol 
 of an indwelling God. The phrase Dvrr mnS also 
 strikes Nahmanides as echoing the same mystical strain. 
 Whenever the Divine Presence makes itself known 
 there accompanies it the sound of a great and strong 
 wind, as it is said, " And, behold, the Lord passed 
 by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, 
 and brake in pieces the rocks, before the Lord " (1 Kings 
 xix. 11). Also, "Then the Lord answered Job out of 
 the whirlwind" (Job xxxviii. 1). The presence of God 
 made itself known to our first parents by wind-noises. 
 " But although these noises were not as strong as those 
 heard and felt mNiiDrr i>^c?d mnoi in a vision, as in the 
 case of other prophecies, so that Adam and Eve should 
 not be terrified, nevertheless the latter hid themselves 
 DiT'D'njJD "^DDD through their crafty and cunning devices." 
 What Nahmanides here expounds from the objective 
 standpoint, has been the subjective experience of the 
 mystics among the Rabbins, as well as among the 
 adherents of primitive Christianity. 
 
 (C) As OTHER Material Objects 
 
 In T. B. Haggigah 15a it is said : " Ben Zoma said 
 unto him [i.e. to R. Joshua b. Hananya, who was standing 
 on an ascent of the Temple, and was angry at Ben Zoma's 
 failure to rise before him], ' I was gazing at the space 
 between the upper and lower waters, and I see there 
 is only an interval of about three fingers' breadth 
 
220 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 between tliem, as it is said, And the Spirit of God 
 was hovering upon the face of the waters, i.e. as a dove 
 which hovers over her young, but does not touch 
 them.'" In Targum on Canticles ii. 12, the phrase 
 "voice of the turtle-dove" is paraphrased as "the 
 voice of the Holy Spirit concerning redemption." Cp. 
 Mark i. 10, " And the Spirit, like a dove, descending 
 upon Him"; also Matthew iii. 16, Luke iii. 22. In 
 Pesikta Eabbati, p. i (edit. Friedmann), Genesis Eabba 
 Ixx. 9, the Holy Spirit can be " draw^n up" like water 
 which is drawn from a well. Cp. Matthew iii. 11, "He 
 shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and fire," where 
 the two Rabbinic ideas of water and fire are combined. 
 On the latter point it should be added that in a passage 
 on page 55a of Jerusalem Talmud Sukkah — quoted also 
 in Ruth Rabba iv. 12 — the phrase mNimrr rr^l is said 
 to be applied to the second Temple, because it was from 
 the latter that the people " used to draw up, like water, 
 the Holy Spirit." The association with Ruth is a most 
 happy one. Boaz says to her (ii. 8, 9), " Go not to glean 
 in another field . . . but abide here fast by my maidens 
 . . . Have I not charged the young men that they 
 shall not touch thee ? and when thou art athirst, go 
 unto the vessels, and drink of that which the young 
 men have drawn." What is that which the " young 
 men have drawn " ? It is the Holy Spirit, which, 
 like the Shechinah, was focussed in the Temple. Thither 
 young and old came to quaff the invigorating draughts 
 of the Spirit's teaching and influence. The Rabbins 
 discerned in this advice of Boaz to Ruth, his desire 
 that Ruth should enter the fold of the Israelitish faith. 
 
 The third materialisation of the Ruah is denoted 
 by a passage in Leviticus Rabba xvi. 2. We meet 
 there with a curious commentary on Job xxviii. 25, 
 "to make the weight for the winds" (A.V.). The 
 
XV, MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTIONS 221 
 
 literal meaning of the verse, taken in consonance with 
 the context that precedes and follows, is probably that 
 " God weighed out the due quantity of air for the 
 world." Light though air is, yet its weight is seen to 
 be very real when we experience it in the form of 
 wind/''^ But in the above-mentioned Midrash, R. Aha 
 says ^pcjon nSn mitD id^n n^N"'i3rT h'j mitt?m n'S iS^dn, 
 " Even the Holy Spirit which rests upon the prophets 
 only rests by weight." In illustration we are further 
 told that " some prophesy to the extent of one book 
 and some to that of two." The allusion is probably 
 to what is said in T. B. Baba Bathra (15a) about 
 certain Biblical personages having composed more 
 books than one by means of the Holy Spirit. What 
 has to be observed, however, is the strongly material 
 sense in which Holy Spirit is conceived. It has weight 
 like an article of food or clothing. 
 
 This concludes the instances of materialistic re- 
 presentation of Holy Spirit which I have been enabled 
 to cull in the course of my investigations into some of 
 the more prominent realms of Rabbinical literature. 
 Viewed from an objective standpoint, the material re- 
 presentation of the Holy Spirit would seem to belong 
 to an inferior stratum of thought regarding the mystical 
 relation of God and man. From the subjective aspect, 
 however, they can be recognised as part and parcel of 
 the experience of the immanent Presence of God which 
 mystics in all ages have felt. 
 
 We now pass on to consider what objectively is a 
 more exalted conception of the meaning and work of 
 the Holy Spirit in Rabbinical literature. 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER XVI 
 
 (1) For this association of Holy Spirit witli fire, cp. Acts ii. 3, 4, 
 "And there appeared unto them cloven tongues, like as of fire, and it 
 
222 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 sat upon eacli of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, 
 and began to speak. . . ." This is certainly a reflexion of the Rabbinic 
 idea. When the fire sits upon them {i.e. □it'^j? mic in the Eabbinic 
 phraseology) they have the Holy Spirit and then begin to speak — ^just 
 as in the Rabbinic sense, when a man has the Holy Spirit he becomes, 
 in a sense, a prophet — prophecy being used in an extended sense. Swete 
 on p. 72 {Holy Spirit in the New Testament) speaks of the O.T. having 
 no " precedent " for this idea of tongues of fire in Acts ii. 3. This is so ; 
 but Rabbinic literature has much that is akin to it. 
 
 (2) In Tanhuma on pnnxi we get a phrase like B-iipn nn nmpn:, " the 
 Holy Spirit waxed cold." Such a word as nmpn: could only be applied 
 to something which is hot, fiery. 
 
 (3) Cp. Numbers Rabba x, 5 as follows : " During the interval when 
 the prophets were executing the Divine errand, the Holy Spirit resting 
 upon them used to inspire dread in those that looked upon them ; every 
 one stood in awe of them because they resembled angels." 
 
 (4) See Tosafoth on T. B. Baba Bathra 121a where he quotes 
 from the Tanhuma on 3b"i as follows : " The Shechinah did not rest 
 upon him, hj'db' v^u nmu- k^ qor '?j?, all the time that he was in mourn- 
 ing for Joseph." Another instance of identity of idea in Holy Spirit 
 and Shechinah. 
 
 (5) Baron Von Hiigel in his great work. The Mystical Element of 
 Religion (vol. ii. pp. 90-94), gives several instances from Neo-Platonic 
 mystical philosophy, of the usage of fire and light as symbols of God's 
 immanent action. Thus he quotes from Dionysius : " Let us then elevate 
 our very selves by our prayers to the higher ascent of the Divine 
 rays ; as though a luminous chain were susj)ended from the celestial 
 heights and reached down hither, and we, by ever stretching out to it 
 up and up . . . were thus carried upwards." Von Hiigel learnedly 
 points out how this simile of a luminous chain from heaven is to be 
 traced back through Plato {Theatetus 153 c, Republic x. 61b, 99 c) to 
 Homer. In the Iliad, viii. 17-20, Zeus tells the gods in Olympus that in 
 order to see all things that go on in the earth, they [the gods] " hang a 
 golden chain from heaven and seize hold of it." One notices in all this, 
 some strong traces of resemblance to the Biblical ideas of angels ascending 
 and descending from earth to heaven, etc. — and also of the general 
 missions of angels in the universe. Rabbinic mysticism might thus be 
 said to find itself very largely anticipated in its pronouncements upon 
 the nature and function of angels, and we have already pointed out the 
 proximity between the angel and the Shechinah or Holy Spirit. Von 
 Hiigel again, on pp. 69, 70 (vol. ii.) points out how Philo "had held Him 
 [God] to be in some way ethereal and luminous." And the same teaching 
 clusters round St. Paul. " St. Paul, under the profound impression of 
 the Historic Christ and the great experience on the road to Damascus, 
 perceives the risen heavenly Jesus as possessed of a luminous ethereal 
 body, a body of glory" (Acts xxii. 11). Von Hugel, following the N.T. 
 theologians, identifies this risen Christ with the " Spirit " alluded to in 
 2 Corinthians iii. 1 7 and in three other places. " In all four cases," says 
 he, " we get Christ or the Spirit conceived as an element, as it were an 
 
XVI NOTES 223 
 
 ocean of ethereal light, in which wouls are plunged and which penetrates 
 them." The Rabbinic notions of Holy Spirit as light, echo this beautiful 
 mystical thought. 
 
 (6) From Professor Peake's " Job " in the Century Bible. Professor 
 Budde says on the same verse : " Auch dem Winde hat Gott bet der 
 Schopfiing sein Maximalgewicht d.h. seine aiisserste bewegende Kraft 
 gegeben." Cp. St. John iii. 34, "For God giveth not the Spirit by 
 measure." 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 PERSONIFICATION OF HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 The Rabbinical aversion to a too-frequent usage of the 
 Divine Name is a truth too well known to need much 
 dwelling upon, at this stage of our inquiry. We have 
 seen how the objection really rests upon a twofold basis. 
 This consists of (a) the ever-constant possibility of the 
 '^^ infringement of that mysterious sanctity which hedges 
 round the name of God ; (6) the risk of giving counte- 
 nance to the doctrine of the existence of nr*it&"i '% " two 
 Divine Powers." Too much latitude in the pronounce- 
 ment of God's name whether in speech or literature might 
 lead, thought the Rabbins, either to careless, disrespectful, 
 irreligious handling of it, or to a scepticism as regards 
 the doctrine of the Unity. What the Rabbins taught to 
 others, they were foremost in carrying out themselves. 
 Hence a term like " Shechinah "or " Holy Spirit " or 
 "Kabod" (glory) is often inserted in the course of 
 a sentence where the word " God " might have stood 
 just as well. No further positive teaching is conveyed 
 l)y the usage of these particular modes of speech ; the 
 object is the purely negative one of keeping out what 
 might seem a too easy-going and glib usage of the 
 Divine name. But on the other hand, in many other 
 passages, though these various designations of God 
 may serve the purpose just alluded to, they also have 
 another and greater object as well, viz. to express 
 
 224 
 
XVII PERSONIFICATION 225 
 
 the nearness of the Deity to man, His concern in the 
 well-being or pain of man, His presence in the world 
 and man at certain crises in their experiences ; in other 
 words, Ilis Immanence — in so far as the primitive 
 thought of the ancient Rabbins may be said to have 
 had glimmerings of that theological idea. 
 
 Here a point must be mentioned which arrests 
 the attention of the student and often puzzles him. 
 According to the Rabbins all the Books of the O.T. 
 were composed by the Holy Spirit. This means that 
 the latter influenced their authors ; so that in uttering 
 or writing their remarks, they were to an extent the 
 passive tool of the Holy Spirit. The O.T. Holy Writ is 
 thus one of the great visible results of the activity of the 
 Holy Spirit. So much is this the case that the two are 
 often identified, i.e. Holy Spirit is another name for 
 Holy Writ and vice versa ; and where we get the phrase 
 *' Holy Spirit says," the meaning is equivalent to " Holy 
 Writ says." But, wliat is so very arresting, is the extra- 
 ordinary ways in which the Holy Spirit is personified 
 in all such passages. Not only does it quote single 
 verses or words of Scripture. It also cries. It holds 
 a duologue with God, or some person. It pleads. It 
 laments and weeps ; it rejoices and comforts.^'^ But 
 it always effects these things by introducing quota- 
 tions from Scripture. The explanation is this : Holy 
 Scripture is the Holy Spirit ; the Holy Spirit is God. 
 Hence all this pleading, crying, exhorting, blaming, 
 punishing, comforting, etc., on the part of the Holy 
 Spirit is a graphic attempt on the part of the 
 Rabbins to show the abiding presence of God by the 
 side of man.^^*^ The Deity is not merely transcendent ; 
 He is not isolated by immeasurable distance, by im- 
 penetrable walls, from the joys and woes of the world. 
 He mingles in it. When man does right. He is 
 
 Q 
 
226 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 next to him to cheer him on in his upward course. 
 When man sins, He is so near that the sin touches 
 Him ; and He reprimands man not only by chastise- 
 ments, but by making clear to him the folly of his 
 ways, by pleading with him for the choice of the 
 better path and the forsaking of the evil way. And 
 as with individuals so with communities. God is 
 present in Israel. His voice is audible. He is a 
 pleader, an advocate, and nothing escapes His ken. 
 
 Thus, Rabbinic personification of Holy Spirit is but 
 another means whereby to express the conception of 
 an Immanent God. 
 
 These general statements must now be illustrated in 
 detail : — 
 
 (A) The Holy Spirit as nniis "Crying" 
 
 Tanhuma on Genesis n^iibin "b v. reads : nn^ns n'^T 
 "132;"' "imN:D"i nSn r^^1 nS "t[ ms ni^ns r^^1 vh "n -^nn") idn ht "'d 
 p"iD^ ]D"i nm^ p imN. 
 
 " The Holy Spirit cries. Who is he that saith, and it 
 Cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not ? ^^ 
 Pharaoh commanded [the wholesale destruction of 
 Jewish male children] but God commanded it not ; on 
 the contrary, the more they afflicted them, the more they 
 multiplied and grew." 
 
 The Holy Spirit is here depicted as vitally concerned 
 in the preservation of the Jewish male babes from 
 destruction. " Pharaoh commanded." But a greater 
 power, an unseen Divine force was at work the whole 
 time, making Israel immune from Pharaoh's wiles. It 
 was the immanent Holy Spirit in Israel. Tanhuma on 
 Exodus N"nN") "b vii. reads: "The Holy Spirit cries, 
 and says, Wherefore I praised the dead which are already 
 dead, more than the living which are yet alive." ^^^ 
 
PERSONIFICATION 227 
 
 This is the oft-repeated Midrashic passage about the 
 inability of Solomon to convey the Ark into the Holy 
 of Holies. The difficulty was overcome only after 
 Solomon had prayed to God, asking Him to " remember 
 the mercies of David Thy servant " (2 Chronicles vi. 42). 
 The paternal merit of David turned the scales in 
 Solomon's favour. And the Holy Spirit attests the 
 greater virtue of the dead David than the living Solomon. 
 This passage shows that the Holy Spirit is conceived as 
 an ever-present Divine principle. Even though David 
 had passed away, it existed, so to speak, in the Davidic 
 environment. It came to the help of David's son in 
 the hour of the latter's perplexity. ^*^ 
 
 Tanhuma on Exodus d^i^dwd "b reads : " And the 
 Holy Spirit cries, So may all thine enemies perish, 
 Lord" (Judges v. 31). Aquila becomes a proselyte 
 to Judaism. Hadrian is enraged at his taking what 
 he considers so retrograde a step. Hadrian's minister 
 counsels the king forthwith to put him to death. But 
 Hadrian, strangely enough, thereupon admits that his 
 conversion to Judaism was a right act ; it was pre- 
 ordained for Aquila before his birth. In despair and 
 shame the minister, seeing his counsel set at nought, 
 jumps down from the roof of his house and is killed. 
 And the Holy Spirit exclaims, " So may all thine 
 enemies perish, Lord." 
 
 I hold that the Holy Spirit is here regarded as the 
 immanent Divine principle in Israel, safeguarding Israel's 
 honour and the life of those who attach themselves to 
 Israel ; seeing in the death of Israel's traducers the 
 realisation of the Divine sense of justice. 
 
 Tanhuma on Leviticus •^d^dq? "d reads : " The Holy 
 Spirit cries, Who hath woe ? Who hath sorrow ? . . . 
 they that tarry long at the wine (Proverbs xxiii. 
 29, 30)." The Holy Spirit here protesting against 
 
228 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 intemperance is clearly the innate Divine principle 
 immanent in man which urges him to shun the wrong 
 and choose the right. Tanhuma on Leviticus i^iisn "b 
 reads : " The Holy Spirit cries, and says unto him, 
 Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin," 
 
 Plagues come upon man, say the sages, as the Divine 
 retributive punishment for any slander that he utters 
 against his fellow-man. The Holy Spirit is the immanent 
 voice of God in man warning him against this sin. 
 
 Tanhuma on i^-nso ii. conveys a similar sentiment 
 to the preceding, based on Proverbs xxi. 23, " Whoso 
 keepeth his mouth and his tongue, keepeth his soul from 
 trouble." ^'^ 
 
 Lamentations Kabba i. 45 reads : " The Holy Spirit 
 cries, and says, For these do I weep (Lamentations i. 16)." 
 
 Vespasian, emperor of Rome, sends three ship-loads 
 of Jews and Jewesses to inhabit a certain immoral 
 quarter of the city of Rome. They shun the ordeal and 
 throw themselves into the sea. The Holy Spirit weeps 
 over their sad fate. The idea here is rather that of the 
 nearness of Grod than of His immanence — although, 
 as I have repeatedly indicated, nearness is one of the 
 essentials of the immanent idea. God is so near His 
 distressed people that their sorrows are His. It is a 
 form of the doctrine to which we have alluded before, 
 viz. that God is ^Nim^'i *iq2? f]nmD. " He merges His 
 name [i.e. His essence, Himself] in Israel." The close- 
 ness of the fellowship is so great that what causes 
 pain to Israel causes pain to God. 
 
 Lamentations Rabba i. 45 repeats the same ideas 
 on the basis of another tyrannous act perpetrated by a 
 Roman Emperor. 
 
 Exodus Rabba xv. 15 reads : " The Holy Spirit cries, 
 and says, But the eyes of the wicked shall fail, and 
 they shall not escape. . . ." 
 
PERSONIFICATION 229 
 
 The immanent God of justice brings things to such 
 a pass that all hope of escape should be cut off from the 
 Egyptians in their hot pursuit after the Israelites at 
 the Red Sea. 
 
 Numbers Rabba xv. 21 reads: " R. Isaac said, The 
 Holy Spirit cries, I hate the congregation of evil-doers." 
 
 We have here an expression of the inevitable clashing 
 between an immanent God and sin. When Moses 
 delays his descent from the Mount, the people express 
 extreme dissatisfaction (Exodus xxxii.). The elders 
 remonstrate with them for their infrratitude to the 
 intrepid leader who had wrought so much for them. 
 They slay the elders. Then Hur remonstrates, and 
 they slay him. Finally, they come to Aaron with the 
 request, " Make us gods that shall go before us." 
 Should Aaron demur they threaten him with the same 
 fate. 
 
 The spirit of murder combined with the spirit of 
 idolatry had taken possession of the Israelites. What 
 a cleavage between such vice and the Holy Spirit of 
 God which inhabits and informs the tent of Israel I 
 
 Song of Songs Rabba viii. 12 reads : Tiih ]"'D2D3 SN^m■'»D 
 IHN Di?i5i ni>"rn ihn Sipn n^in p^Di 2;Qtt) "p p-np^ nroDD 
 ^i:}m"'p x'l^p hi^iw^m'2 Sin . . . d^d^ii nitorn anh idin n":i"pii 
 no-n ni~r mn mniN"i nmi:i in~npn mi . . . ni?in ^midi 
 
 ... " When the Israelites enter the synagogues and 
 read the Shema with devotion, with one voice, one 
 mind, and one tone, God says unto them, ' ye 
 that dwell in the gardens, when ye read [your prayer], 
 then the companions, i.e. I and my host of angels, listen 
 to thy voice : cause me to hear it ' (Song of Songs 
 viii. 13). But when the Israelites read the Shema with 
 inattention and in a disorderly way without any unison 
 and with no devotion, then the Holy Spirit cries, and 
 
230 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 says, ' Make haste, my beloved, and be like the roe ' 
 (Song viii. 14), i.e. make haste away to the heavenly 
 host [there is a play upon words here, ■'is = " roe " and 
 Ni!i = "host" and noT = " to be like," and also "to 
 sing" or " praise "] ^'^^ who say Thy glory in unison, 
 with one voice and one melody, ..." 
 
 There is more than one difficulty here. The phrase 
 "0 ye that dwell in the gardens" is obviously a 
 reference to what is said in the same Midrash, vi. 2, on 
 the words " to feed in the gardens," nroDD tii "i'pn 
 ni2?TTD "^nn, " this means the synagogues and study- 
 houses." The garden -dwellers are the synagogue- 
 dwellers. 
 
 The following deductions seem to me fairly justified : 
 (a) The parallelism of " God " and " Holy Spirit " in 
 the two sections of the passage show the identity of 
 the two in the minds of the authors. (6) God, in His 
 immanent aspect as Holy Spirit, is intensely near the 
 Israelite when in prayer. He hears him and speaks to 
 him. There can be no closer communion between the 
 human and the Divine. (c) The stress laid upon 
 " unison " in prayer reminds one so much of the mystical 
 teaching of the Presence of God in the midst of com- 
 panies of men who come together for the high purpose 
 of studying the Torah — a conception frequently alluded 
 to in the Eabbinic writings, and which is akin to 
 the statement by Jesus (Matthew xviii. 20), " For where 
 two or three are gathered together in my name, there 
 am I in the midst of them." (d) The Holy Spirit — 
 who is God — counsels God to flee away from disunion, 
 i.e. it counsels itself to have done with Israel, when 
 Israel's ranks are weakened by disruption or discord. 
 This is but a graphic way of describing that mystical 
 fellowship with God which was always thought to be 
 a proud possession of Israel, and which never left him, 
 
PERSONIFICATION 231 
 
 whithersoever he wandered as exile — but which certainly 
 does leave him no sooner the collective tie is broken. 
 The higher union of God with Israel can only exist, 
 when the lower union of Israelite with Israelite is 
 thoroughly complete. 
 
 Song of Songs Rabba viii. 12 reads: "And the 
 Holy Spirit cries, Make haste, my beloved, i.e. make 
 haste away from the nations of the world, and ally 
 thyself with the Israelites." 
 
 This passage belongs to the same category of teach- 
 ing as the preceding. But there is an important 
 difference. Besides the Holy Spirit speaking and 
 addressing God, there is also the personified Torah. 
 When Israelites feast they bless and praise God, and 
 God is pleased. When heathens eat and drink, they 
 demoralise themselves and blaspheme God. God there- 
 upon is angry, and threatens to destroy the world. 
 Then the Torah enters, and by its plea averts the 
 threatened calamity. Lastly comes the Holy Spirit 
 counselling God, i.e. itself, to leave the unworthy 
 nations and make its exclusive abode in Israel. All 
 this may be regarded as a piece of that particularism 
 which is so pronounced a feature of much of Rabbinical 
 literature. It may, however, with equal propriety, be 
 looked upon as an indication of the problem which 
 every theory of Divine Immanence has to wrestle 
 with and solve for itself, viz. the reconciliation of an 
 immanent God with the great fact of sin. God's Holy 
 Spirit cleaves to Israel only because Israelites at their 
 meals and pastimes are sinless. At the feasts of the 
 nations, sin abounds ; sin and Holy Spirit are antagon- 
 istic ; hence the Holy Spirit flies away. 
 
 Continuous duologues in which the Holy Spirit is a 
 prominent actor are found occasionally. I have already 
 quoted a striking instance from the Sifri on n^n "d 
 
232 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 n^nin, p. 148 (Friedmann's edition), where a chorus, 
 in which the chief singers are the Holy Spirit and Israel, 
 proclaim the praises of the Deity. 
 
 Another instance which is typical is the following 
 from Esther Rabba x. 4. When Mordecai has turned 
 the tables upon Haman by making the latter accompany 
 him through the streets upon horseback as the man 
 whom the king delighted to honour, he triumphantly 
 chants verses 1-3 of Psalm xxx., "I will extol thee, 
 Lord ; for Thou hast lifted me up, and hast not 
 made my foes to rejoice over me. . . . Thou hast 
 kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit." 
 Mordecai's disciples thereupon join in with verses 
 4-5. Haman next quotes verses 6-7, " And in my 
 prosperity I said, I shall never be moved. . . . Thou 
 didst hide Thy face, and I was troubled." Esther enters 
 the chorus with verses 8-9. The hi^iw nD3D [collective 
 body of Jews] respond with the prayer in verses 10-11. 
 And the Holy Spirit finally comes upon the scene, 
 exclaiming in the final verse of the Psalm, " In order 
 that glory may sing praise unto Thee, and not be silent : 
 Lord my God, I will give thanks unto Thee for ever."^^^ 
 This delineation of the role played by the Holy Spirit, 
 seems to me but a picturesque way of describing the 
 great theological truth that God's Presence is with 
 the righteous man who is undeservedly wronged ; that 
 He vindicates justice, giving the evil-doer the fruit of 
 his evil ; the Deity who encircles and fills men, helps the 
 worthy man while waging a feud to the death with the 
 man of sin and violence. 
 
 (B) The Holy Spirit Speaking, Exhorting, etc. 
 
 The following instances show much the same trend 
 of treatment of Holy Spirit as the preceding, except that 
 instead of "crying" there is some milder expression, 
 
PERSONIFICATION 233 
 
 such as speaking or exhorting, etc. Numbers Rabba 
 xvii. 2, says : ''iDi iS moNi n"-i nnT, " The Holy 
 Spirit came forth and said unto him, Go, eat thy bread 
 with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart ; for 
 God now accepteth thy works " (Eccles. ix. 7)/®^ 
 
 The allusion is to 1 Kings viii., the dedication of 
 Solomon's Temple. In verse 65 it is said that Solomon 
 made a feast for all Israel, " seven days and seven days, 
 even fourteen days." On the eighth day {i.e. the day 
 after the end of the second seven days) he dismissed 
 them in great joy. This eighth day, say the Rabbins, 
 was the eighth day of Tabernacles.^^^ If so, what 
 about the observance of the Fast of Atonement? It 
 must have fallen within these fourteen days of revelry ! 
 Could the Israelites have desecrated the great Fast 
 Day by eating and drinking ? Yes ! they did. The 
 building of the Temple was an event of such exception- 
 ally great religious and national significance that even 
 the Day of Atonement could be set aside for its sake. 
 But the Israelites nevertheless felt pangs of distress. 
 It was hard to reconcile themselves to the belief that 
 they had committed no sin in so acting. But the 
 Holy Spirit comes forth to reassure them. 
 
 Holy Spirit is that inner voice of the Divine 
 element in man which rebukes him when he has done 
 wrong, but comforts and encourages him when right 
 is on his side. The Israelite returning home after his 
 fourteen days of merriment at Solomon's shrine, feels 
 smitten with the sin of having desecrated the Atone- 
 ment Day. But a higher voice within overrides the 
 remorse. The voice of the Immanent God tells him 
 that the offence is but a venial one under the circum- 
 stances. Let him be merry, not downcast, for God 
 accepts his work. 
 
 Tanhuma on pSl "d, Numbers xxiii. 1, says: 
 
234 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 " The Holy Spirit said, ' Better is a dry morsel, and 
 quietness therewith, than a house full of sacrifices with 
 strife' (Prov. xvii. l), i.e. better is it before God to 
 offer Him the ' meat-offering mingled with oil, and dry ' 
 (Lev. vii. 10) than a house full of sacrifices, accompanied 
 with the strife which you wish to introduce between me 
 and the Israelites."^''^ 
 
 The Midrash depicts Balaam's desire for seven altars 
 as being based upon the fact that seven altars were 
 erected to God by the seven saints, viz. Adam, Abel, 
 Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses. This was a 
 mark of their fidelity, and God accepted them. Why 
 should not the seventy nations erect altars to be 
 similarly accepted before God ? The Holy Spirit 
 objects to this on the grounds that envy and strife 
 would ensue between God and Israel, were God to be 
 served by as many as seventy altars of the heathens. 
 God prefers the humble meat-ofi"ering of Israel to the 
 holocaust of the nations. 
 
 This is a strong example of the " particularist " 
 doctrines of Rabbinism. God is immanent in the 
 M'hole world, in the seventy nations as well as in Israel ; 
 but His bond with Israel is, somehow, very mysteriously 
 closer than His bond with the other nations. Any 
 interruption of the fellowship between Israel and God 
 is tantamount to making strife between God and Israel, 
 and must be averted at all costs. Similarly in the 
 succeeding passages of Tanhuma (which comment on 
 Numbers xxiii. 4, " And God met Balaam ") the Holy 
 Spirit addresses Balaam and quotes Proverbs xv. 17, 
 " Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a 
 stalled ox and hatred therewith," which is interpreted 
 to mean that the humble Passover meal of unleavened 
 bread and bitter herbs, eaten by the Israelites, is preferable, 
 before God, to the oxen and bullocks offered as sacrifices 
 
PERSONIFICATION 
 
 23:) 
 
 by the seventy nations, the latter causing, as it were, 
 a bar between the fellowship of Israel and God. The 
 Holy Spirit's union with the seventy nations is incon- 
 sistent with its union with Israel. Similar instances 
 of this particularist tendency were noticed in the section 
 on the Shechinah. 
 
 Yalkut on Jeremiah i. 5 (quoted from the Pesikta 
 Rabbati, edit. Friedmann, p. 129a, b) says : "The Holy 
 Spirit said unto him [Jeremiah], Do I not love a lad that 
 has not as yet tasted sin ? I redeemed Israel from Egypt, 
 and called him a lad, as it is said, When Israel was a lad 
 then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt 
 (Hos. xi. 1)." Jeremiah struggles against the Divine call 
 to go out and prophesy. He instances the cruel treatment 
 which men like Moses, Aaron, Elijah, Elisha, suffered in 
 the execution of their prophetic missions. Besides, he 
 pleads youth as a bar. But all this is but the prompt- 
 ing of his lower self. Against this there rises the 
 higher self, the voice of the Divine within ; the Holy 
 Spirit, i.e. the immanent God, who finds lodgment in his 
 soul and ousts the unworthy impulse, addresses Jeremiah 
 with an exhortation to choose the right course. Yalkut 
 on Hosea xi. 3 [based on Mechilta, nSmn, chap, iv., see 
 Friedmann's edit. p. 30], has a striking comment, in this 
 connexion, on the words " I have taught Ephraim also to 
 go, taking them by their arms." It remarks : "Ttit ^n^:nn 
 D"'~iDN DN -\i:ih miiprr, " I have taught my Holy Spirit 
 to bless Ephraim." In what ways was Ephraim (i.e. 
 Israel in general) blessed by the Holy Spirit ? The 
 Mechilta passage expounds fully. It instances the 
 simile of the child journeying in the company of its 
 father, and attacked by various wild beasts coming 
 from all sides. The father adopts all sorts of means 
 for sheltering his beloved : he places the child before, 
 then behind, then above, then upon his shoulder, then 
 
236 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 spreads his mantle over him — no device being untried 
 when the child's safety is at stake. Such was exactly 
 the method of the Holy Spirit's dealing with Israel. 
 More is involved here than the mystical fellowship of 
 Israel with God. Fellowship implies accompaniment, but 
 not necessarily anything more. Here, however, the 
 Holy Spirit is protective as well. It is not only a 
 piece of that Divinity which allies itself with Israel and 
 fills the Israelitish camp in all the places whithersoever 
 it may wander ; it is also the supreme guardian, 
 preserving the nation from harm. The substance of 
 these Midrashic ideas is, of course, not new. They 
 are implied in Deuteronomy i. 31, xxxii. 11, Numbers 
 xi. 12, Isaiah Ixiii. 9. What however is new, and 
 peculiar to the Kabbinical exposition, is the ascription 
 of all these actions to the work of the Holy Spirit. 
 This was a natural development of O.T. ideas. The 
 Scribe and the Pharisee, the "Tanna" and the "Amora" 
 — these were direct heirs to the precious doctrines of 
 O.T. literature. And, in keeping the torch aflame, it 
 was but natural that they should throw light upon 
 hitherto dark places : that the application of their 
 intellects to the problems put before them, working 
 in combination with a rich spirituality of experience, 
 should result in growth, expansion, and development. 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTEK XVII 
 
 (1) The Yalkiit on Koheleth ch. vii. 27, commenting on the peculiar 
 usage of the feminine verb in the phrase n'^np mox, remarks : " At times 
 it [the Holy Spirit] speaks in the masculine, and at times in the 
 feminine." Clearly, it is here but a personified substitute for Holy 
 Writ. 
 
 (la) Cp. Volz, p. 168. " ' Statt der lebendigen Offenbarungstrager ' 
 hat der Geist Gottes nun ein standiges Organ, das heilige Buch ; 
 in diesem Bvich hat er einmal in vergangenen Zeiten gesprochen, 
 aber er spricht heute noch durch dasselbe : deswegen kann man von 
 
XVII NOTES 237 
 
 einem Bibelwort sagen 'der heilige Geist spricht' In alien diesen 
 Aussagen ist die Ruh ganz personhalf gedacht." 
 
 (2) Lamentations iii. 37. 
 
 (3) Ecclesiastes iv. 2. Another instance is in Koheletla Rabba x. 17. 
 
 (4) This Rabbinic legend of Solomon's inability to convey the ark 
 into the Holy of Holies occurs in various forms throughout the Talmud 
 and Midrashim. See T. B. Sabbath 30a, Moed Katan 9a, Sanhedrin 
 107a, Exodus Rabba viii. 1, Koheleth Rabba iv. 2, Yalkut on Psalm vii. 
 and xxiv., Pesikta Rabbati, edit. Friedmann, p. 6. 
 
 (5) See also Tanhuma on Genesis in verse " And it came to pass 
 when Isaac was old." 
 
 (6) Based on the phrase nSpn n'on iS (Psalm Ixv. 2). It is a strained 
 rendering. See commentary n:inD nunc on the passage. 
 
 (7) Another form of this Mid rash slightly altered in some details is 
 given in Leviticus Rabba xxviii. 6. 
 
 (8) This pronouncement is found in varying forms in T. B. Sabbath 
 30a, Moed Katan 9a, etc. It is worthy of note that in the latter 
 two cases it is not the " Ruah " spirit that speaks, but the " Bath 
 Kol " ; and the latter says : " Happy are ye in that ye are all destined for 
 the life of the world to come." What the " Bath Kol " exactly was, and 
 what its relation can be, to the Holy Spirit is a matter for special 
 research. 
 
 With this hortatory usage of personified Holy Spirit, cp. Hebrews x. 
 15, 16, "Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us : for after that 
 He had said before, This is the covenant that I will make with them, etc. 
 etc." ; also Acts xxviii. 25, 26, " And when they agreed not among them- 
 selves, they departed, after that Paul had spoken one word. Well spake 
 the Holy Ghost by Esaias the prophet unto our fathers, saying. Go unto 
 this people, and say. . . ." 
 
 (9) That it was the eighth day of Tabernacles is seen from 2 
 Chronicles vii. 8, 9. It is also said there that the first seven days 
 were devoted to the dedication of the altar, and the second seven to the 
 feast. This explains the odd iLsage of 'rcci cvi; here "it" = the eighth 
 day of the Festival of Tabernacles. The LXX here omits the words 
 "and seven days, even fom-teen days," thus making the festival of 
 dedication begin and end exactly with the Feast of Tabernacles ; and 
 accordingly the phrase, " on the eighth day he sent the people away," 
 fite in all right. 
 
 (10) This Midrash is also found in Numbers Rabba xx. 18. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 HOLY SPIRIT AND PROPHECY FROM THE RABBINIC 
 STANDPOINT (l) 
 
 This subject falls naturally within the scope of my 
 inquiry. It would, indeed, be passing strange, were it 
 not so. In the O.T. literature prophecy is the crown- 
 ing manifestation of the Spirit of God in man.^^^ 
 The prophet is a man whose life and thoughts are 
 determined by personal fellowship with God, and in- 
 telligent insight into His purpose. It has already 
 been shown how the idea of a fellowship with God is a 
 prominent constituent of the mysticism associated with 
 the Rabbinic conceptions of Shechinah and Holy Spirit. 
 We have now to see in what ways, and from what 
 standpoints, the Rabbins worked upon these closely- 
 associated Biblical doctrines of Prophecy and Divine 
 Spirit, what new vistas of teaching they opened up 
 as the result not only of their theoretical musings and 
 debates upon this branch of Holy Writ, but also of their 
 attempts to realise these dictates of Holy Writ in 
 their practical everyday life. 
 
 Something must first be said as to the bearings 
 of O.T. prophecy upon the subject of mysticism and 
 immanence. 
 
 In Exodus vii. 1 Aaron is called a " prophet " because 
 he is to be the spokesman or " mouth " of Moses. This 
 raises two points for discussion. (1) Seeing that 
 
 238 
 
cH.xvin HOLY SPIRIT AND PROPHECY 239 
 
 apparently the basic function of the prophet was that 
 of public speaking, was he also considered as necessarily 
 a predictor? (2) What must be the etymology of the 
 word N-^iD ? We take the latter first. Gesenius, follow- 
 ing Ibn Ezra (see latter's strictures upon Rashi's 
 derivation of the word in Exodus vii. 1), surmises that 
 the root is probably nid, which may be another form of 
 2?nD, and means " to gush," " effervesce." ^^^ A kindred 
 word is the Hiphil form ^^pri, also applied to prophecy. 
 Thus in Ezekiel xxi. 2 we get diit hi<( fiiani in the 
 middle of a verse, the whole of which is an injunction 
 to prophecy. In Amos vii. 16 the phrase pj^'ton nSi is 
 clearly a parallel to the phrase in the front portion 
 of the verse NiDn nSi. In Micah ii. 6 the phrase 
 pD"^io^ "iD^£3n hi^ is significantly rendered by the Targum 
 as HNinD ]iNi2nn ah. As far as the mere outward act 
 of utterance goes, the two words would seem to express 
 exactly the same idea. But there is a further idea 
 in the root ni:, which is absent from the v\iD2 root. 
 When words are said to gush out, to effervesce, from 
 the mouth of the speaker, there is the implication of a 
 certain attendant emotion. A new feature is brought 
 upon the scene. There is not only the outer word 
 to be accounted for ; the state of mind accompanying 
 and producing it has to be taken into cognisance. That 
 this latter feature plays a conspicuous part in prophecy 
 is proved beyond a doubt by even a cursory reference 
 to the experiences of the O.T. prophets. Take the case 
 of Saul and his meeting with what is in one place 
 (1 Sam. X. 10) described as a h:irt of prophets, and in 
 another as a npnS of prophets {idem xix. 20). The 
 physical and mental condition of these men showed 
 itself outwardly as a case of religious frenzy. What 
 arrests attention is not the substance of their message, 
 not the words they poured forth — as a matter of fact 
 
240 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 these are not even given in the Scriptural narra- 
 tives — but the abnormally intense excitement, the 
 unchecked transport of ecstasy under which they 
 laboured at the moment of prophesying. This naturally 
 gave them a licence to the perpetration of acts which 
 would have been undreamt of by them in their normal 
 state. They, for the nonce, put aside all the restraints 
 of the moral life and social custom. In 1 Sam. xix. 24 
 we read how Saul in one of these ecstatic moods actually 
 stripped himself of his garments and lay naked a whole 
 day and night. 
 
 Saul's prophesying is an instance of the lower or more 
 primitive grade of prophecy — that the O.T. depicts a 
 progressive series of strata of prophetic capacity is 
 known to every student of its pages. But even if we 
 take a typical instance of the higher class of prophecy, 
 we observe the same phenomenon. Isaiah falls into 
 this class ; and his experiences as depicted in chap. vi. 
 unmistakably point to the existence of an ecstatic 
 element of prophecy.^^^^ This chapter is Isaiah's 
 consecration-vision. It is a theophany, a remarkable 
 and vivid manifestation of God's Presence, by means of 
 which he is summoned to the great work of his prophetic 
 ministry. How intensely strong must his psycho- 
 physical faculties have been at that critical moment 
 when " the foundations of the thresholds were moved 
 at the voice of Him that cried, and the house was 
 filled with smoke " ! From the succeeding verses it is 
 apparent that the prophet was in a state of utter 
 prostration. And yet was this abnormal ? Was Isaiah 
 the prey of some mischievous delusive frenzy ? Un- 
 questionably not ! Frenzy there was, but it was not 
 delusive, it was not abnormal. God was merely fulfill- 
 ing Himself to him through these channels, just as the 
 " word of the Lord " had come, or was to come, to Hosea, 
 
xvin HOLY SPIRIT AND PROPHECY 241 
 
 Amos, Micah, Jeremiah, and other prophets. Under the 
 spell of the Divine hand, the prophet lies with all his 
 powers of mind and body dormant to everything except 
 that which the Divine master wishes him to see and to 
 feel and to experience. So close is the intercourse that 
 the soul of the prophet actually merges itself in God : 
 " He attains moments of exaltation in which God comes 
 specially near to him, and the Divine will becomes 
 specially clear." ^^^ He hears tones from a super- 
 sensuous world ; he sees shapes whose existence is real 
 only during the critical moment when the hand of God 
 is upon him. It is on an assumption like this that 
 we can best account for the highly -figurative and 
 picturesque language which characterises so many of 
 the prophetic visions. The particular errand on which 
 the prophet is to go ; the particular national de- 
 fect that he is to declaim against and remedy, these 
 are, as it were, epitomised in a picture which is flashed 
 upon the prophet during the brief moments of his 
 passive ecstasy. And he understands the meaning of 
 the mystery, instantaneously. He takes his cue un- 
 falteringly. He grasps the situation, and thus the 
 path is at once opened to the realisation of his God- 
 appointed mission. "The foundations of the threshold 
 were moved at the voice of Him that cried," 
 What is this but a flash-picture of the doctrine of the 
 Divine Immanence voiced in the preceding sentence, 
 " the whole earth is full of His glory" ? The " house" 
 which the prophet sees is nothing other than the uni- 
 verse in miniature. God's voice shakes the pillars 
 of the house because it is embedded in the recesses of 
 the house ; it is immanent in it in the same sense that 
 God's glory, His Shechinah, is immanent in the great 
 universe, and speaks out of every corner and crevice 
 in it. This great and far-reaching truth is flashed upon 
 
 R 
 
242 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 the screen of the prophet's vision by an instantaneous 
 process, and he is to go out to the world to preach and 
 proclaim it to the nations that walk in darkness. For, 
 after all, what constitutes the basic element of the 
 prophet's teaching if not this all -comprehending doctrine 
 of the Divine universality, that the world and mankind 
 are folded in the embrace of the everlasting arms ? 
 "And the house was filled with smoke." The phrase 
 is but a metaphorical portraiture of Divine wrath 
 directed against the prevailing human iniquity. Smoke 
 is a common Biblical metaphor for Divine anger. 
 Thus in Deuteronomy xxix. 20 we read, " The anger of 
 the Lord and His jealousy shall smoke against that 
 man." In Psalm xviii. 8, "There went up a smoke 
 out of his nostrils." Cp. also Psalm Ixxiv. 1, Psalm 
 Ixxx. 4. In the ecstatic moment, the prophet is the 
 plastic instrument in the Divine hand to do the latter's 
 bidding. The momentous fact of the Divine displeasure 
 and all that it entails, is instantaneously thrust upon 
 the prophet's soul ; and the prophet awakes from his 
 Divine communion equipped, in a measure that he 
 could not by any other means have been, for the 
 work to which God has called him. 
 
 One word more by way of qualification. Prophecy 
 is associated with a passive ecstatic state. We must 
 not make the mistake, however, of thinking that 
 the essence of prophecy consists absolutely in this 
 helpless, overpowered state of ecstasy. The personality 
 of the prophet is a great determining factor. Were 
 this not so, there would be very little to distinguish 
 him from the fidvTi<; of classical Greek, who gave out 
 enigmatical frenzied utterances, usually unintelligible ; 
 who was the ecstatic announcer of oracles whose secret 
 meaning could only be unlocked to the multitude by the 
 7rpo(f»JT7]<;, the sober-minded interpreter. It is true 
 
xviii HOLY SPIRIT AND PROPHECY 243 
 
 that God gives the inspiration. It is true that, under 
 the overmastering spell, it is the Divine will which 
 has to be done, not the prophet's. But the prophet has 
 to prepare himself for a consummation like this, by a 
 previous long-sustained series of acts of self-discipline. 
 His soul must be as " tried silver, purified sevenfold," 
 before he can be worthy of this highest and noblest 
 stage of Divine communion. God's secret is only with 
 the elect, not the unworthy. Before the prophet can 
 have the consciousness that God speaks with him in 
 order to give him new communications and com- 
 mands, he must know that God has been drawing 
 near to him in closer and closer communion. How 
 can he know this unless he has of set purpose ordered 
 his life upon the severest rules of purity and in- 
 tegrity ? This active element in prophecy is exempli- 
 fied with frequency in the pages of the O.T.* In 
 the Rabbinic literature it plays a dominating part.^^"'^ 
 There is a close association between prophecy and the 
 Holy Spirit (also in some cases there is a close 
 association between Shechinah and prophecy). The 
 Holy Spirit so frequently comes only after a certain 
 desree of ethical excellence has been attained. It does 
 not come at random, erratically, unaccountably, a 
 mysterious visitant totally inexplicable. It is the 
 crowning stage in a series of uninterrupted strivings 
 after the highest and the best. 
 
 o 
 
 As an aid to the understanding of the Rabbinic 
 treatment of the subject, it would be well to devote 
 some attention to the ideas which some of the great 
 mediaeval Jewish writers have given expression to, 
 in this connexion. I select two typical men whose 
 works have had the greatest influence in shaping 
 
 * I say "with frequency" advisedly. I know there are exceptions to the 
 statement. 
 
244 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 the course of both mediaeval and modern Jewish 
 theological thought. They are Moses Maimonides 
 and Jehuda Ha-Levi. There is a special appropriate- 
 ness in the selection of these two, on the following 
 grounds : — (a) A strong vein of mysticism colours their 
 differing philosophies. To make this statement about 
 Jehuda Ha-Levi will arouse no challenge. The domains 
 of poetry and mysticism are the nearest of neighbours. 
 But Maimonides, is he not a consistent rationalist? 
 Yes, he is ; but he is a mystic as well. It appears 
 to be one of the great distinguishing features of 
 his philosophic system, that he is able to blend the 
 rational and mystical views of Scriptural and 
 Rabbinical exposition with a logical consistency. 
 That the territories of rationalism and mysticism 
 are not so widely separated from, and not so irre- 
 concilably opposed to, one another as is commonly 
 supposed, is well illustrated by the instance of 
 Maimonides. His rooted objection to anthropomorphism 
 is a sample of the one ; the prominence which he gives 
 in his philosophy to the doctrine of i>Dm, " emanation," 
 proves the other. After all, it is only a mystic who 
 can speak of emanations.^'*^ (b) Both Jehuda Ha-Levi 
 and Maimonides take the Rabbinic literature as the 
 terminus ad quern, as it were, of their arguments. 
 Their final object is to fix Rabbinic Judaism upon a 
 substantial and satisfying basis, by showing how it 
 agrees upon all points with the facts of (1) the human 
 mind, (2) the general course of Jewish history. All 
 their arguments seem to converge round the one focus 
 of Rabbinism. And we accordingly find a rich harvest 
 of references to all parts of Rabbinical literature such as 
 we do not find in the works of the other mediaeval 
 philosophers like Ibn Gebirol and Hisdai Crescas. 
 Their interpretations throw a flood of light upon 
 
xvm HOLY SPIRIT AND PROPHECY 245 
 
 multitudinous points. No student can afford to ignore 
 them. 
 
 Let us now turn to Maimonides first (although this 
 is opposed to chronological order). 
 
 His views on prophecy and kindred themes are 
 found in his Guide of the Perplexed, Book ii. chaps, 
 xxxii.-xlviii. 
 
 I proceed to summarise them : — 
 
 Firstly, Maimonides seemed to favour the view 
 that there is a strong element of passive ecstasy in 
 prophecy. "In the moment .when the prophecy is 
 received, the functions of the bodily organs are sus- 
 pended."^*^ The prophet is wholly the passive instru- 
 ment in the Divine hand : " The senses also are nullified 
 in their action. The Divine emanation enters into the 
 speaking faculty of the prophet. This in its turn influ- 
 ences the imaginative faculty, so that it becomes perfect 
 and is then able to do its work." Maimonides, of course, 
 holds strongly that imagination is an essential element in 
 prophecy. A little further on he adds : " And at times 
 prophecy commences by a kind of prophetic vision ; 
 after that there is an increase of that trembling and 
 great excitement which are consequent upon the 
 perfection of the imaginative faculties ; then real 
 prophecy ensues." What is to be noticed here is the 
 allusion to the "trembling" and "excitement" — the 
 psycho-physical aspects. 
 
 Maimonides' view of the vital part played by the 
 imagination has the closest connexion with his view 
 — severely criticised by Abarbanel and others — that 
 the prophet's inspiration never, except in the sole 
 case of Moses, came to him in the waking state, but 
 always in a dream. ^"^^^^ The bi^iDrr Sdq? Active Divine 
 intellect " emanates " to man's intelligence and imagina- 
 tion. This act of communion on the part of the human 
 
246 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 with the divine is prostrating. Prophecy is the 
 momentary outcome of ecstasy. 
 
 But, secondly, granted that prophecy has these 
 strongly-marked physical characteristics which in the 
 long-run seem to indicate it as being the result of a 
 more or less natural process, has it no moral aspect 
 whatsoever? Does the personality of the prophet 
 count for nought ? Can any man become a prophet ? 
 Maimonides dilates at great length on these weighty 
 themes (see Guide of the Perplexed, Book ii. xxxii.- 
 xlviii.), and they bear very strongly upon the present 
 investigation into the Holy Spirit. 
 
 He states three different opinions, only to reject 
 the first two and adopt the third. I here quote 
 the main points of the three : — ( 1 ) God chooses whom- 
 soever He wishes, and vouchsafes the gift of prophecy 
 to him. Whether he be wise, foolish, young or old 
 does not matter. He must not be wholly bad ; he 
 must possess some good qualities n^io ppm ii£d n^p. 
 This is enough. (2) Prophecy is the highest perfection 
 of a natural faculty which is innate in man. This highest 
 perfection can only be reached, as he says, "tioS -ijin, 
 after a thorough-going devotion to study. Although 
 the faculty is innate in the race, it is only brought to 
 perfection on very rare occasions by an individual here 
 and there. Hence prophets are exceedingly rare, the 
 work of bringing the intellectual faculties to the 
 necessary high-pitch of perfection being extremely 
 exacting. But once the task is achieved the man becomes 
 nolens volens a prophet. The man who eats nourishing 
 food must inevitably make rich blood ; so the man 
 who raises his intellectual equipment to its natural 
 zenith, must inevitably become a prophet. Maimonides 
 of course assumes that a corresponding moral perfection 
 accompanies the intellectual. (3) Prophecy depends 
 
XVI., HOLY SPIRIT AND PROPHECY 247 
 
 on the attainments mentioned in (2) with the addition 
 of a special vouchsafing of the Divine AVill, i.e. Divine 
 inspiration. A man may be intellectually and morally 
 perfect, but yet may be unable to prophecy. His 
 circumstances, his environment, his particular mode of 
 life at the time, may be of such a character as to thwart 
 the Divine Will from giving the necessary revelation or 
 inspiration. Maimonides quotes as an illustration the 
 case of Baruch the son of Neriah (Jeremiah xlv.), who 
 received his full preliminary prophet's equipment from 
 Jeremiah, and yet the word of God comes to him and 
 says, " Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel, unto 
 thee, Baruch. . . . And seekest thou great things 
 for thyself? seek them not. . . ." (xlv. 2-5). These 
 "great things " that Baruch sought were the prophetic 
 gift ; but this he was doomed never to have. Prophecy 
 only arises at the call of a Divine fiat ; and the fiat is 
 arbitrary. 
 
 But it was said just now that circumstances, environ- 
 ment, etc., may thwart the oncoming of the prophetic 
 inspiration. What are these ? Maimonides here is in 
 agreement with the Rabbins who said mim rrNllDrr pN 
 iinn'i TtDi7 DDn Si? NS^<, " Prophecy only rests upon the man 
 who is wise, rich, and mighty," i.e. not only intellectual 
 and moral equipment is required, but also physical. In 
 fine, into the acquirement of the prophetic faculty there 
 enter the following factors: — (1) Physical strength, 
 so as to endure the strain involved in the moments of 
 ecstatic communion. (2) A training of the intellectual 
 faculties to the highest pitch of perfection, (3) Great 
 imaginative power. This is closely allied with emotion ; 
 the vision, etc., that the prophet beholds is the outcome 
 of emotional imagination. (4) Exceptional moral dis- 
 cipline. (5) The absence of all physical, intellectual, or 
 moral disturbances. There must be no pain, no sorrow, 
 
248 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 no feeling of degradation. (6) The will of God, into 
 which an element of the miraculous or unaccountable 
 always enters. Maimonides, by this latter provision, 
 takes prophecy outside the realm of mere physical 
 occurrence. In the last resort, there is no accounting, 
 on natural grounds, why of two men with exactly the 
 same outfit as defined above, one should become a prophet 
 and the other should not. Now, what bearing has all 
 this, what light does it throw upon, our investigations 
 into the Rabbinic conception of the connexion between 
 Holy Spirit and Prophecy ? The answer can best be 
 made by again adopting the method of summary 
 classification : — 
 
 (a) Prophecy is an emanation from the Active 
 Intellect to the intellect and imagination of man. This 
 assumes the doctrine of the Immanence of God. There 
 can be no emanation from a transcendent God. 
 The Rabbinic doctrine of Holy Spirit is also a very 
 strong phase of "emanation" teaching. God has set 
 His Holy Spirit in man. Man, i.e., possesses in himself 
 an " emanation " from God. Man's communion with 
 God is wholly brought about by the existence of this one 
 cord of communication with his Divine Maker. And 
 were God not immanent, any idea such as Holy Spirit 
 would be unthinkable. There is a quaint passage in 
 Aboth De R. Nathan xxxiv. as follows : " The Holy 
 Spirit is called by ten names, as follows : m^bn, ^tno, 
 jvm, HNiiD, N5UD, ^ii!5, mNsn, HTDN, i"ii-r, m^n." It 
 is at once noticed that nearly every one of these 
 synonyms for Holy Spirit has the closest association 
 with prophecy. The Targum on Isaiah xi. 2, " And the 
 spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him," has, " the 
 spirit of prophecy." 
 
 (6) Prophecy only comes as the culminating point of 
 a life of uninterrupted intellectual and moral discipline. 
 
Nvi.i HOLY SPIRIT AND PROPHECY 249 
 
 It is something to be striven after. Man does not 
 attain it without the expenditure of pain and energy. 
 Its acquirement is the hall-mark of a perfection such as 
 only the worthiest few can hope to reach. The state of 
 mind and body which renders the possibility of man 
 feeling himself to be in communion with God, in fellow- 
 ship with God, or of seeing visions of God, only comes 
 into beinof after lonor-continued exercise in the modes of 
 life which elevate man to the highest and most refined 
 pitch of humanity. The Rabbinic association of Prophecy 
 and Holy Spirit likewise emphasises all these points. 
 And so does the allied Shechinah doctrine. A good 
 illustration is given by the remark in Leviticus Rabba 
 XXXV. 7 : n'S S^npn^ n^^^ n^w^h n^n Si? -ra^Sn, " He who 
 studies with the ultimate object of putting his studies 
 into practical effect will have the merit of receiving 
 the Holy Spirit." This saying implies, that the Holy 
 Spirit is something to be won, not something which man 
 qua man carries about with him. It is the reward of 
 a long and toilsome search. 
 
 The necessity of this uninterruptedness in the striving 
 after perfection is so stringent, that even physical causes 
 over which man has no control, the ailments to which 
 man is heir, act as disturbing and preventive agencies. 
 Maimonides, as has been seen, makes much of these in 
 his discussion of the true conditions of prophecy. But he 
 is not original here ; he merely draws upon the Rabbinic 
 statements made about the Holy Spirit and Shechinah. 
 Thus he quotes, " Prophecy only rests upon him who is 
 wise, mighty, and rich." He does not give the exact 
 Rabbinic source of this quotation. But in T. B. 
 Sabbath 92a (and paralleled in T. B. Nedarim 58a) we are 
 told, " The Shechinah rests only upon him who is wise, 
 rich, mighty and of good stature." These two passages, 
 besides proving the close association betw-een prophecy 
 
250 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 and Holy Spirit, show the prominent part played by the 
 bodily organism in Rabbinic mysticism. During the 
 years that the patriarch Jacob bewails the loss of his 
 son Joseph, he is bereft of the Holy Spirit (see Genesis 
 Eabba cxi. 6), but when, amidst the joyous conscious- 
 ness that Joseph is yet alive, he " sees the waggons 
 which Joseph had sent to bear him " (Gen. xlv. 27), 
 then the Holy Spirit again returns to him (see Rashi ad 
 loc.) or, as the Targum paraphrases it, "There rests 
 upon him the spirit of prophecy." Only when the 
 physical organism is functioning in its healthy and 
 normal fashion, does the Holy Spirit find its congenial 
 soil in the soul of the man. 
 
 (c) From Maimonides' view, as well as from that of 
 the Rabbins, it would appear that prophecy is not 
 confined to the small class of men who are traditionally 
 recognised as ofiicial prophets, but that it is a Divine 
 endowment to which a far wider circle of men can 
 attain if only they order their lives to meet the 
 necessary exalted standard of requirements. Only let 
 a man, says Maimonides in effect, discipline his in- 
 tellectual and moral faculties to the extent demanded ; 
 he will then be in the condition to receive the Divine 
 message, if only God wills that he should. (The latter 
 proviso must never be left out of the reckoning.) One 
 main reason why so few men ever attain to the rank of 
 prophet is, that so few can successfully go through the 
 ordeal required for the vocation. 
 
 Maimonides is here again reflecting Rabbinic doctrine 
 upon this head. The latter gives the endowment of 
 the Divine Spirit to the patriarchs and their wives ; 
 hence they are said by them to "foresee" things, i.e. to 
 prophesy. Biblical celebrities like Joshua, Hannah, 
 the sons of Korah, Samson, David, Solomon, and 
 others all have the Holy Spirit and all have the 
 
 1 
 
xviH HOLY SPIRIT AND PROPHECY 251 
 
 prophetic gift. They attributed it even to Rabbinical 
 celebrities either of their own or an earlier generation. 
 Thus the Jerusalem Talmud Shebiit 38d ascribes the 
 faculty to R. Simeon b. Yohai. T. B. Yoma 39b 
 attributes the power to R. Yohanan ben Zakkai, I 
 shall dilate fully upon these points in a separate chapter. 
 Jehuda Ha - Levi's views are embodied in the 
 " Kusari." According to this mystic-philosopher, there 
 is the closest possible affinity between Shechinah and 
 Prophecy. The Shechinah was to Jehuda Ha-Levi as it 
 was to the Talmudic Rabbins the comprehensive term 
 for the Immanence of God in the Holy Land. Jehuda Ha- 
 Levi follows up this doctrine by confining the possibility 
 of prophecy only to Palestine ; and when the objection is 
 raised in the course of the dialogue, that it is possible to 
 instance several men who when prophesying were not 
 resident in the Holy Land, he replies " whoever pro- 
 phesied only did so either in it (in the Holy Land) or 
 concerning it" (Book ii. vii.-xiv.). He would deny the 
 appellation of prophet to all outside this category. 
 Truly enough Ezekiel prophesied " by the river Chebar," 
 but then Ezekiel had, previously to the Exile, lived 
 in Palestine, the land of prophecy. So had Daniel. 
 Jonah in fleeing " from before God " was really fleeing 
 from the land of prophecy in which he had been nurtured 
 (ibid. xiv. ). It is noteworthy that Jehuda Ha - Levi 
 follows the Rabbins in attributing the gift of prophecy 
 to a far wider circle than that of the traditionally 
 recognised O.T. prophets. He, too, styled the patriarchs 
 of Genesis, prophets. Thus he speaks of Abraham as 
 prophesying in Ur of the Chaldees, by reason of the 
 fact that he had received the Divine message to go 
 to the land of prophecy (Canaan). All this is due to 
 the mystical presence of the Shechinah. It was the 
 Shechinah that endowed the Jewish people with a kind 
 
252 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 of new inner sense. All the best men among them, the 
 nh^J.D as he repeatedly styles them, could acquire this 
 inner sense provided they led the life which would render 
 them fit and worthy. It is just on this head that the 
 mysticism of Jehuda Ha-Levi is most pronounced and of 
 the highest interest to the student. By means of a 
 system of vigorous self-discipline it was always possible 
 for the worthiest spirits among the Israelites to have 
 that degree of communion with God iniN d^'nii vnw T^ 
 
 nwpn rTN"iDi, " which enabled them to see God by the 
 medium of what is termed ' Glory ' or ' Shechinah ' 
 or ' Kingdom,' ' Fire,' ' Cloud,' ' Image,' ' Likeness,' 
 'appearance of the bow'" (Book iv. iii.). As the 
 commentators on this passage point out, there is 
 an indication here that Jehuda Ha-Levi's opinion was 
 that mystical communion with God really meant 
 seeing Him with the naked eye through the medium 
 of the aforementioned instruments. "Kingdom" is 
 an allusion to 2 Chronicles ii. 1, "To build a house for 
 the name of the Lord, and a house for His kingdom," 
 i.e. the kingdom of God's glory or Shechinah, which 
 was resident in the Temple. The " image " is a reference 
 to Ezekiel i. 26, " And upon the likeness of the throne 
 was the likeness as the appearance of a man above it." 
 The " appearance of the bow " is another reference to 
 the mysticism of Ezekiel i. 28. Jehuda Ha-Levi would 
 seem to part company here with Maimonides, who 
 regarded mystical visions of God more as inward than 
 outward, i.e. more realisable by the imagination than by 
 the external senses. 
 
 The " Kusari " does not employ the term " Holy 
 Spirit," but in its place it uses the phrase ^n^N pi?, 
 " the Godhead" or " divinity " or " divine emanation," 
 and it is probable that the Hebrew phrase is the 
 
xviii HOLY SPIRIT AND PROPHECY 253 
 
 equivalent for Holy Spirit. The Israelitish race became 
 selected by God to receive the Torah because so high 
 was the collective standard of their intellectuality 
 and morality that this TrbN pDi? was ever with them. 
 In other w^ords, so invaded were they with divinity, that 
 they were enabled to commune with God exactly as 
 prophets could. In fact they were prophets. (Book i. 
 xcv.) "The "^hSn pi7 rested on their numbers, so that 
 they reached, all of them, to the stage of the Word 
 ("Tim), and the pDi? passed over to their works, . . ." 
 In the same chapter the philosopher shows how 
 " the Divine substance," i.e. Divinity, was vouchsafed 
 to individuals here and there (□'•T^n'') from the time of 
 the first man till the Revelation on Sinai, but only to 
 individuals who were mD"'"iNn DniiDii DnN''-ini vr-chm 
 rhx^''y\ moDnm n'^o^n, i.e. perfect in their health and in 
 their morals, strong enough to live to a good age, strong 
 in wisdom and ability. This opinion is in agreement 
 with the reiterated Rabbinic idea, that in order that a 
 man should have the Holy Spirit, he must first render 
 himself perfect in morals, in intellectuality, and in body. 
 Jehuda Ha-Levi seems, however, to think that with the 
 twelve sons of Jacob there started this outpouring of the 
 " Inyan " upon the whole community of Israel. This 
 was the secret of their continued vitality throughout the 
 rigours of Egyptian slavery. After this time there were 
 again throughout Israel's history men here and there of 
 superior moral merit who were vouchsafed communion 
 with the Deity. He illustrates the idea by the analogy 
 of a good tree. If a seed or branch is taken from a 
 good tree and transplanted, the fruit produced at first 
 may not in any way resemble that of the original 
 tree ; it will probably be much inferior. But after the 
 branches have thickened and multiplied, and the tree 
 has grown to a healthy maturity, then in all probability 
 
254 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 the ensuing fruit will fully resemble that of the original 
 in sweetness and worth. Exactly so is it with the 
 Jewish race, Adam was created in the image and 
 likeness of God. This shows that he was endowed with 
 Divinity. He transmitted it to his descendants, several 
 were unworthy, and these it shunned. But the original 
 must inevitably come out. This it did, by showing 
 itself throughout the whole range of Jewish history in 
 the select few who shed lustre upon each succeeding 
 generation. In Book ii. xiv. (near the end) Jehuda 
 Ha-Levi expounds the same argument, showing how 
 the " Inyan " as prophecy filtered down from age to age 
 to the small set who were worthy. 
 
 One point is clearly recognisable throughout the 
 theology of the " Kusari," viz. that the Divine element 
 implanted in the great men of early Israel, enabling them 
 to commune with God, is a seed which is eternally 
 fructifying in his descendants. We, Israelites of 
 to-day, carry this seed of Divinity within our breasts. 
 We all of us have the possibility of that communion 
 with God, which was a characteristic possession of the 
 prophet. The prophet possessed it, because he rendered 
 himself worthy of possessing it. He reached the stage 
 of communion with God after a life-long effort to live 
 in the highest order of moral purity and intellectuality. 
 The same high consummation may be ours if only we 
 constitute our lives after the same exalted pattern. If 
 there be found among us here and there any who have 
 attained such a fellowship with God, then they stand in 
 the same category as the prophet.^'^^ 
 
 Now, to sum up. In what ways does Jehuda Ha- 
 Levi throw light upon the Rabbinic doctrines of 
 Prophecy and Holy Spirit ? In the following ways : — 
 
 (a) He uses the phrase "^rr'^N pi> in the sense of a 
 Divine emanation, a Divine outflowing to man. This 
 
xvi.i HOLY SPIRIT AND PROPHECY 255 
 
 is clearly but a natural development of the tm*ipn tim, 
 Holy Spirit. 
 
 (h) The " Inyan " must be possessed by man before 
 prophecy is possible. The Rabbins say the same of 
 the Holy Spirit. 
 
 (c) The " Inyan" can be possessed not only by the 
 recognised prophet but by all men who make themselves 
 morally and intellectually and bodily fit to receive it. 
 It must be striven after. The Rabbins say the same 
 of the Holy Spirit. They attribute its possession to 
 many others besides the traditional prophets ; and they 
 make its coming dependent upon the accumulated moral 
 worth of the recipient. 
 
 (d) There were times when the " Inyan " was an 
 inward endowment of the whole Israelite nation ; and 
 the return of such a time should be the ideal of Israel 
 in all ages. The Rabbins ofttimes speak of the Holy 
 Spirit as pervading the whole of Israel, or as forsaking 
 the whole of Israel. 
 
 (e) The Shechinah in Jehuda Ha-Levi's system has 
 the closest connexion with prophecy and the "Inyan." 
 Prophecy found its home, its only home, in Palestine, 
 because the latter was the land of the Shechinah par 
 excellence. The obvious inference is that the Jew can 
 only hope to reach that high stage of perfection 
 enabling him to be as the prophet, i.e. to have real 
 communion with God, by dwelling once again on the 
 land where the Shechinah dwelt. That all this has 
 the closest affinity with Rabbinic doctrine, is too obvious 
 to need dwelling upon here. 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 (1) See on tliis subject Volz, Der Geist Gottes (Tubingen, 1910), pp. 
 78-80. 
 
256 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 (2) See article " Proplietic Literature," in Cheyne's Encyclopcedia 
 Biblica. 
 
 (3) Volz (op. cit.) on p. 79 describes prophecy as embracing "ekstati- 
 sche Verzuckung, Weissagung, begeisterte Rede, iibernatiirliche Erkennt- 
 niss w.dgl." Volz bere also quotes several interesting passages from 
 tbe Antiquities of Josephus, in which the latter historian ascribes the 
 prophetic ecstasy to several Biblical characters, such as Saul, David, etc, 
 
 (3a) On this question of activity and passivity in prophecy, Volz 
 draws an apt contrast between the views held by the Palestinian 
 Rabbis and the Alexandrian Jewish scholars on the subject. He 
 remarks (j). 81): "Man reflektiert jetzt iiber die Passivitat des 
 Offenbarungsorgans, wobei die Rabbiner den Propheten starkere Selb- 
 standigkeit zumessen, wiihrend der Alexandriner wohl unter dem Einfluss 
 der ihn umgebenden Erscheinungen die Passivitat betont." As an 
 instance of the Rabbinic " Selbstandigkeit " he quotes T. B. Sanhedrin 
 89a : nnx p:JD3 D'NnJnn o'N'a: ':» j'ni d'n'3: naj*? nh^l! inx pjJD. " One style of 
 thought {i.e. according to Rashi, ' one style of exj)ression by the Holy 
 Spirit ') enters several prophets ; but no two prophets prophesy in one 
 style." In other words, the prophet is passive in his reception of the 
 spirit of prophecy, hence all prophets are alike in this respect ; but in 
 giving out the message, the prophet is active and moulds the message 
 according to his own will. As an instance of the other view he quotes 
 Philo. In his " Who is the Heir to Divine Things " (li. 52) Philo says : 
 " For a prophet says nothing of his own, but everything which he says 
 is strange and prompted by some one else. . . . He alone is a sounding 
 instnmient of God's voice, being struck and moved to sound in an 
 invisible manner by him." Again, in par. 53, speaking of inspiration, 
 he says ; " For the mind that is in us is removed from its place at the 
 arrival of the Divine Spirit, but is again restored to its previous 
 habitation when that spirit departs ; for it is contrary to holy law for 
 what is mortal to dwell with what is immortal." He quotes several 
 other passages in which Philo speaks in the same strain. Interesting in 
 this connexion is the passage in Josephus which runs : " Thus did Balaam 
 speak by inspiration, as not being in his own power, but moved to say 
 what he did by the Divine Spirit " {Antiquities, Book iv. ch. vi. 5). In 
 the same paragraph Josephus makes Balaam reply to Balak as follows : 
 "O Balak, if thou rightly considerest this whole matter, canst thou 
 suppose that it is in our power to be silent, or to say anything when the 
 spirit of God seizes upon us ? For He puts such words as He j)leases in 
 our mouths and such discourses as we are not ourselves conscious of." 
 
 (4) There is another fact about Maimonides, which to my mind 
 stamps him as a mystic, viz. the view he takes concerning certain 
 miracles of Scripture. He regards the wrestling of Jacob with an 
 angel, the speaking of Balaam's ass, the translation of Ezekiel from 
 Babylon to Jerusalem (Ezekiel viii. 3), Isaiah's walking naked and 
 barefoot (Isaiah xx. 2) as things which had no exterior reality at all, but 
 as mere subjective exjieriences, visions, dreams in the brain of the 
 prophets themselves. A rationalist would either deny the truth of these 
 things altogether or he would try to interjjret them on natural grounds. 
 
xvm NOTES 257 
 
 (5) M. Friedlander, Guide of the Pei-plexed, i. j). Ixx. Iiilioduction. 
 
 (6) For a further searching criticism of this theory of Maimonides 
 see the commentary of Nahmanides on Genesis xviii. 2. The latter 
 makes use of such an unsparing remark as : ainan onmo nnan.T nht<y 
 Dnn i'CK.nS'3 f|N ci'Dicy'? ^1DK. " Words like these [of Maimonides] con- 
 tradict Scripture. It is forbidden to give ear to them, much more to 
 believe in them." Nahmanides draws the distinction between seeing an 
 angel or hearing the words of an angel, and the state of mind which is a 
 concomitant of prophecy. The former, he says, is comprehended by the 
 subject when in a state of vision or dream. But not the latter. And 
 the two states are utterly distinct from one another. Abarbanel on 
 chap. xlii. of second book of the Moreh defends Maimonides against these 
 strictures of Nahmanides. 
 
 (7) Jehuda Ha - Levi concludes this argmnent (Book ii. 14) with 
 a passage bristling with similes of the boldest type. He says : 
 . . . "i3i 13 pann*? 'inic 'cS n£3is 123 'n'^xn }':y.ii. " The Divine Principle 
 waits, as it were, for him to whom it is meet that it should attach itself, 
 so that it should become his God, as was the case with the prophets and 
 the saints. It is just the same as the Active Intelligence which waits 
 for him whose natural powers have reached perfection, and whose soul 
 and moral qualities have reached that stage of equilibrium which enables 
 the Active Intelligence to apj^ly itself to them in the way of perfection. 
 It is just as the soul which waits for its entry into the foetus until the 
 latter's vital powers are sufficiently completed to enable it to receive this 
 higher state of things. It is in just the same way as Nature herself waits 
 for a temperate climate, in order that she might exert her effect upon 
 the soil and produce vegetation." 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 HOLY SPIRIT AND PROPHECY FROM THE RABBINIC 
 STANDPOINT (2) 
 
 Enough has now been said to show the close affinity 
 between the Holy Spirit and Prophecy, and how the 
 Rabbins for this reason attributed the prophetic faculty 
 to a far wider circle of individuals than those whom 
 we are accustomed to regard as prophets in the light of 
 O.T. teaching on the subject. Detailed illustrations 
 must now be given /'^ 
 
 In Genesis Rabba xxxvii. 7 we read : " R. Simeon 
 b. Gamliel said, The first fathers (i.e. Shem, Eber, 
 Peleg, etc., mentioned in Genesis x.) owing to the fact 
 that they employed the medium of the Holy Spirit, 
 used to name their children (at birth) after the name 
 of some event (i^tindh Dwh), but we who do not employ 
 the medium of the Holy Spirit name our children 
 after the names of our grandparents ("iD'^niiN nwh)." 
 The allusion is to the statement that Peleg (Genesis 
 X. 25) was so named " because in his days was the 
 earth divided." But, as one of the commentators on 
 this Midrash points out, this division of the earth 
 happened when Peleg was grown up ; therefore his 
 name at birth must have been a prophetic anticipation 
 on the part of his father. This prophetic power was 
 possessed by all the cd^idn-i, i.e. the Noachide families. 
 They saw into the future, hence they could keep alive 
 
 258 
 
CH. XIX HOLY SPIRIT AND PROPHECY 259 
 
 the memory of any coming event by embodying it in 
 a name. But Simeon b. Gamliel denies the possession 
 of this prophetic power by the Holy Spirit in his own 
 days, hence it w^as only the past that could be im- 
 mortalised in a name, not the future. The Midrash 
 follows up the statement by the remark, " R. Jos^ 
 b. Halafta said Eber was a great prophet." But 
 the fact that Simeon b. Gamliel speaks of the non- 
 existence of the Holy Spirit in his day is surprising 
 when put by the side of other statements emanating 
 from about the same date which show that it decidedly 
 did exist. Of course it is difficult to say which Simeon 
 b. Gamliel is meant here. There were two of that 
 name. Simeon b. Gamliel I. was President of the Great 
 Sanhedrin at Jerusalem in the last two decades before 
 the destruction of the Temple. Simeon b. Gamliel H. 
 was a Tanna of the third generation, and, as we gather 
 from T. B. Sotah 49b and parallel passages, he lived 
 at the time of the Bar Kochba revolt, i.e. the second 
 century a.d. Now, in Leviticus Rabba xxi. 8, we 
 get the phrase in the midst of a peculiar anecdote, 
 tui^pn mnn nn^pi? 'S hds, " R. Akiba saw by the Holy 
 Spirit." Akiba's dates, roughly, are from a.d. 50-130. 
 If, then, our Simeon be he who lived before the 
 destruction of the Temple, it seems strange that the 
 Holy Spirit being already then extinct, it should be 
 said to reappear in a man who lived after that time. 
 If, however, he be the Simeon who lived at the time 
 of Bar Kochba, then his dates are practically identical 
 with those of Akiba. Why, then, should the Holy 
 Spirit have been extinct in the one case while it 
 was extant in the other? Again, in Leviticus Rabba 
 xxxvii. 3 (cp. T. B. Erubin 64a, Jerusalem Talmud 
 Aboda Zara, chap, i.) Gamliel II. "sees by the Holy 
 Spirit." He lived at the beginning of the second 
 
26o THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 century a.d. I have already quoted E. Meir in this 
 connexion. He too belongs to the second century a.d. 
 The explanation of the difficulty seems to be this : 
 Holy Spirit is employed in Rabbinic literature as 
 an adjunct to prophecy in three distinct senses. 
 Firstly, it is a Divine emanation which inspired the 
 recognised prophets of the O.T and the writers of all 
 the books included in the O.T. canon. Secondly, it 
 inspired with a sort of prophetic sense several miscel- 
 laneous characters not only in O.T. Scripture but after 
 the close of the canon. Thirdly, it is a Divine endow- 
 ment akin to prophecy which any one may attain 
 provided he lives the life which leads up to this high 
 state of moral, religious, and intellectual perfection. It 
 is not merely a thing of the past. God's revelation of 
 Himself is not confined to any particular period of 
 human history. The worthy man in any age can reach 
 the highest stage of communion with God. For this 
 highest stage of communion is rendered possible, because 
 God's Holy Spirit is immanent in man ; thus, man can 
 reach this ideal in any age, provided only that his 
 merits warrant it. 
 
 R. Simeon b. Gamliel in the statement attributed 
 to him above, is clearly using the phrase rmi ]''t2?Gn2JD 
 ti?"r"iprT in the first of the three senses. With the 
 destruction of the second Temple, canonical prophecy 
 ceased. Nay, it ceased many years before the 
 destruction, so that whether our Simeon b. Gamliel 
 be he who lived two decades before the destruction 
 of the Temple, or he who lived at the time of the Bar 
 Kochba revolt is really immaterial to the argument. 
 The locus classicus, whence is derived the theory of 
 the cessation of prophecy in the time of the second 
 Temple, is the following statement, which occurs 
 many times in different parts of Rabbinical literature : 
 
XIX HOLY SPIRIT AND PROPHECY 
 
 201 
 
 ''"iDi ptDN-irr ;d idti pnnNrr n^i n^nm n^-in nwT:in (Song of 
 Songs Rabbaviii.seeNote(2), p. 267), " Five things which 
 existed in the first Temple were lacking in the second. 
 These were (a) Fire from on High, (/;) Anointing Oil, (c) 
 the Ark, (d) Holy Spirit, (e) the Urim and Thummim." <'> 
 That the Holy Spirit is here an allusion to canonical 
 prophecy is seen from a parallel remark which like- 
 wise occurs with great frequency : D"^3*nnN D"'N''n3 *inot!?o 
 Sntd^d tu-npn nn npoD ^dnSdi h^-idt ^in, " With the death 
 of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi the Holy Spirit 
 ceased in Israel." ^^^ The Rabbins regarded these 
 three as the only prophets of the second Temple. 
 Their deaths probably occurred in the early days of 
 the second Temple's existence ; hence the statement 
 that the " Holy Spirit " was wanting in the second 
 Temple. 
 
 The second sense of Holy Spirit is found in passages 
 such as the following : — 
 
 Most of the prominent characters, men and women, 
 in the Book of Genesis " foresaw" by the Holy Spirit, 
 i.e. the possession of the Holy Spirit meant the ability 
 to prophesy. Yalkut on Genesis xvi. attributes it to 
 Sarai, thus : " And Abram hearkened to the voice of 
 Sarai, i.e. to the voice of the Holy Spirit within her." 
 By the instrumentality of the Holy Spirit, Sarai foresaw 
 that Abram's taking Hagar to wife would result in 
 the birth of a son. 
 
 Genesis xxvii. 42 reads, " And these words of Esau 
 her elder son were told to Rebekah." Who told her? 
 Midrash Rabba on this passage answers by saying, 
 " The mothers (i.e. the wives of the patriarchs) were 
 prophetesses." Rashi, however, on the passage says, 
 " It was told her by the Holy Spirit." Now, Rashi 
 frequently quotes from Rabbinic sources without men- 
 tioning that they are Rabbinic. I cannot, however. 
 
262 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 find this passage in any of the Midrashim to which I 
 have access. Accordingly the remark is to be regarded 
 as Rashi's own interpretation of the Midrash Rabba 
 passage. And it proves my point. It proves that in 
 Rashi's mind, Holy Spirit and Prophecy were inter- 
 changeable terms. Another interesting reference is 
 verse 45 in the same chapter of Genesis, "Why 
 should I be deprived also of you both in one day ? " 
 Rashi on the passage here remarks, ''idi m npTT3 n"~i, 
 " The Holy Spirit cast itself within her [i.e. took 
 possession of her] and she prophesied." Rashi gives 
 his source as T. B. Sotah 13a. What do we read in 
 the latter ? The words npyi h\D nn^inD nD"^^pnD, " the 
 prophecy of Rebekah was fulfilled." The Rabbins 
 deduce from certain data that Jacob and Esau met 
 their death on one and the same day (or rather, that 
 the burial of both took place on the same day), and 
 that Rebekah in her exclamation " Why should I be 
 deprived also of you both in one day ? " had a sort of 
 prophetic dread that the death of both her sons 
 would happen on the same day. This point is merely 
 to show how, to Rashi, there is an identity between the 
 possession of Holy Spirit and the gift of prophecy. 
 
 Genesis Rabba Ixxv. 8, commenting on Genesis 
 xxviii. 1, pertinently asks the question, Why does Isaac 
 give his son a second Ijlessing, seeing that he had 
 already invoked upon him the blessing of Heaven in the 
 preceding chapter? The Midrash gets out of the difficulty 
 by saying that " Isaac sees by the Holy Spirit that his 
 sons would one day be exiled among the nations. He 
 therefore says to his son Jacob, ' Come and let me give 
 thee the blessings of exile. ^*^ May God return to thee 
 and gather thee from the places of thy captivity.'" 
 Genesis Rabba Ixx. 12, commenting on Genesis xxix. 11, 
 says, " Why did Jacob weep when he kissed Rachel ? 
 
XIX HOLY SPIRIT AND PROPHECY 263 
 
 It was because he foresaw by the Holy Spirit that he 
 would not lie with her in burial." 
 
 Genesis Rabba Ixxxiv. 19, commenting on the 
 words "an evil beast hath devoured him" (Genesis 
 xxxvii. 33), says : " The Holy Spirit gleamed (nii3!i3) 
 within him ; the evil spirit was the wife of Potiphar, 
 i.e. Jacob prophetically declared, by this remark about 
 an evil beast, the coming calamity to Joseph in 
 connexion with Potiphar's wife. 
 
 An interesting reference to the association between 
 Holy Spirit, Shechinah, Prophecy, and Urim and 
 Thummim is afforded by a passage in T. B. Yoma 71b : 
 " Every priest who spoke by the Holy Spirit, and 
 upon whom the Shechinah rested, consulted the Urim 
 and Thummim successfully" {i.e. all the priests who 
 had not these qualifications received no assistance from 
 the Urim and Thummim). Zadok (2 Samuel xv.) and 
 Abiathar are given as instances. The former had the 
 necessary qualifications of Holy Spirit and Shechinah. 
 The latter had not. As Rashi on the passage says, 
 Zadok was a -itt?D ;rTD, " a worthy priest," otherwise the 
 Shechinah and Holy Spirit would not have rested upon 
 him. It is exceedingly difficult to differentiate here 
 between the meaning of *' speaking by the Holy Spirit " 
 and "the Shechinah resting upon any one." The latter 
 phrase possibly refers to the inspiration of prophecy and 
 the capacity to utter it ; the former alludes to what 
 causes this capacity, viz. the fact of being filled with 
 the Presence of God. Thus, it was only he who already 
 possessed the equipment of prophecy, that could reap 
 any benefit from the Urim and Thummim. The 
 method of consultation by the Urim and Thummim is 
 given in several Talmudic and Midrashic passages, e.g. 
 Yoma 73b; Sanhedrin 16a; Baba Bathra 122a; 
 Targum Jonathan on Exodus xxviii. 30 ; Sifri Numbers 
 
264 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 141, etc. From all these passages it can be generally 
 inferred, that the Urim and Thummim were regarded 
 by the Rabbins as a materialised conception of the 
 Presence of God under the guise of light. It had 
 close affinity to Shechinah, which was familiarly con- 
 ceived as a mysterious light ; the Rabbinic explanation 
 of the word " Urim " as " those whose words give light " 
 substantiates the argument.^^^ The whole matter, then, 
 amounts to what has been said previously, viz. that 
 it is only he who has previously sought God that 
 can find Him. The priest, in order to receive the 
 prophetic message from the Divine Light, must 
 previously have cultivated the art of prophecy. This 
 he could only do by ordering his life after such an 
 exalted standard that the Holy Spirit could find 
 lodgment in him. 
 
 Yalkut on Song of Songs i. 11 declares that Jacob 
 on his death-bed by means of the Holy Spirit gave his 
 sons a prophetic forecast of the Tabernacle, and even 
 commanded them concerning the making of "the 
 middle bar" (Exodus xxvi. 28). 
 
 That Holy Spirit and Prophecy should associate 
 themselves in all sorts of ways and degrees round the 
 person of Moses in Rabbinical literature, is only to be 
 expected. It is, however, worth quoting here, an 
 illustration of the lengths to which the Rabbins at 
 times went in some of their assertions. It is in 
 Midrash Tan hum a on N^m "'D ""D : " Moses looked by 
 means of the Holy Spirit and foresaw that the Temple 
 would one day be laid in ruins, and that the bringing 
 of the first-fruits would cease ; he therefore arose 
 and instituted for Israel the three daily Prayers ; 
 because prayer is more beloved before God than all 
 good deeds and than all sacrifices, for so it is 
 written, Let my prayer be set before Thee as incense, 
 
HOLY SPIRIT AND PROPHECY 265 
 
 and the lifting up of my bands as the evening 
 sacrifice (Psalm cxli. 2)." This, by the way, is in- 
 consistent with the oft -repeated Rabbinic saying that 
 the three daily Prayers were instituted by the three 
 Patriarchs of Genesis. Yalkut on Joshua vii. (from 
 Jerusalem Talmud Sanhedrin vi.) makes Joshua at the 
 very outset of his career foresee by the Holy Spirit 
 that he would be called upon one day to divide the 
 Holy Land by lot among the tribes. 
 
 Ruth Rabha ii. (repeated in Yalkut on Deuteronomy 
 chap, i.) attributes the spirit of prophecy by means of the 
 Holy Spirit to Rahab who hid the spies, otherwise how 
 could she have foreseen that the pursuers would return 
 after exactly three days ? This ascription of the Holy 
 Spirit to Rahab, who is described in Joshua ii. as a 
 harlot, might seem strange. But the Rabbins make out 
 Rahab to have become a proselyte to Judaism after the 
 capture of Jericho. She married Joshua, and became 
 the ancestress of a line of priests and of prophets, of 
 whom Jeremiah was one (T. B. Megillah 14b). 
 
 Yalkut on 1 Samuel chap. i. 28, "As long as he 
 liveth he shall be lent (Sinc?) to the Lord," says that at 
 the moment she uttered this remark, Hannah was 
 inspired with the Holy Spirit. Accordingly, this 
 remark of hers was a prophecy. The Hebrew for 
 " lent " is the same as the Hebrew for " SauL" So that 
 what Hannah prophesied was, " As long as he liveth 
 there shall be a Saul to the Lord," i.e. Hannah 
 prophesied the rise of Saul, who would live as long as 
 Samuel and survive him. 
 
 Tanhuma on npn^'D makes Solomon prophesy by 
 the Holy Spirit the death of certain workmen sent him 
 by Pharaoh Necho to aid in the construction of the 
 Temple. 
 
 Yalkut on 2 Samuel xx. 22 makes David foresee 
 
266 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 by the Holy Spirit that Mordecai would be descended 
 from Shimei who had " cursed him with a grievous 
 curse." This was the reason why David pardoned 
 Shimei. 
 
 Yalkut on 2 Kings ii. says as follows ^^^ : " Before 
 the time of Elijah's disappearance, the Holy Spirit 
 was abundant in Israel, as it is said, ' And the sons 
 of the prophets that were at Bethel came forth to 
 Elisha, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the 
 Lord will take away thy master from thy head to-day ? ' 
 They then went and stood afar off and crossed the 
 Jordan. I might have thought that they were few in 
 number 1 Therefore it is said, ' And fifty men of the 
 sons of the prophets' (verse 7). I might have thought 
 that they were ignorant men (Q^:D'i''~rn). Therefore it is 
 said, ' thy master,' "[D^itn. It is not said ' our master,' but 
 ' thy master.' This shows that they were as wise as 
 Elisha, but when Elijah was taken away, the Holy Spirit 
 departed from them, as it is said (verse 16), ' And they 
 said unto him. Behold now, there be with thy servants 
 fifty strong men {i.e. not, as before, fifty men of the 
 sons of the prophets, but merely men of physical 
 prowess) ; let them go, we pray thee, and seek thy master 
 {i.e. not as before 'our master,' but 'thy master'). 
 This teaches that the Holy Spirit had by then departed 
 from them." 
 
 The close association, in the Rabbinic opinion, be- 
 tween Prophecy and Holy Spirit, is a point of great 
 importance to the student of early Christianity. From 
 the remark that "the Holy Spirit was abundant in 
 Israel" it is to be inferred, that the world did not 
 have to wait till the^ wondrous times of the birth of 
 Christ to see an outburst of prophetic power among men. 
 
NOTES 267 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER XIX 
 
 (1) See what Volz says on this point (pp. 116, 117): "So scheint 
 es doch unwiderlegbar, dass die grossten Rabbinen Pnenmatiker 
 waren. Sie hatten das pneumatische Element in sich, in ihnen 
 lebte das jnophetische Feuer, die wimderbare Weisheit, die gottliche 
 Froiumigkeit ; von der Dingen der Welt los, konzentrierte sich ihre Seele 
 aiTf den geistigen Beruf. . . ." Volz goes on to give instances of the 
 Rabbinic ascription of the prophetic power to many a Rabbi of the time, 
 and he associates with this the many recorded instances of the wonder- 
 M'oi'king powers of certain Rabbis. Thus, he points to the passage in 
 Jerusalem Talmud Schebiit ix. 38d where R. Simeon b. Yohai when in 
 a subterranean hiding-place could divine what was going on outside. 
 Also to T. B. Ta'anith 25b where rain falls at the intervention of Akiba ; 
 to T. B. Berachoth 34b where R. Hanina b. Dosa, by prayer, heals the 
 son of Gamliel the son of Jolianan b. Zakkai. In T. B. Yoma 39b 
 Johanan b. Zakkai prophesies the fall of the Temple forty years ahead ; 
 and Simeon the Just prophesies, from a certain fact that had befallen 
 him on the Day of Atonement, that the coming year would be his last. 
 Volz gives many more examples. 
 
 (2) This passage of nnai ncan not only recurs with frequency 
 but also with differing wording. In T. B. Yoma 2 lb the " anoint- 
 ing oil " is left out of the list and " Shechinah " is substituted. 
 In Numbers Rabba xv. 10 the word nna; "which were concealed," is 
 used. This points to the belief in the future restoration of the five. 
 Also in jjlace of the "anointing oil" and " Urim and Thummim" we 
 get the " candlestick " and " cherubim." Whether these variations are 
 merely accidental as being due to error, or whether they point to an 
 original larger list of which these form but a part, or whether they reveal 
 an identity of interpretation in the case of some of the terms, is a matter 
 for the investigator. 
 
 (3) See T. B. Sukkah 48a ; Sanhedrin 1 la ; Song of Songs Rabba viii. 
 
 (4) Quoted also in Yalkut on Micah v. 
 
 (5) For a concise description of Urim and Thummim and a good 
 summary of the various views held by scholars, as well as the relations 
 to Babylonian oracular consultations, the student should see Kennedy's 
 article " Urim and Thimimim " in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. 
 
 (6) Drawn by the Yalkut from Tosefta Sotah, xii. 5. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 HOLY SPIRIT AS IDEAL 
 
 So far I have shown how, in the theology of the 
 Rabbins, the possession of the Holy Spirit was the 
 highest spiritual equipment of certain distinguished 
 Biblical characters, of the authors of the Books of the 
 O.T., of prophet, prophetess, king, and sage. But, as 
 I have already hinted, the Rabbins did not relegate 
 the possibilities of the Holy Spirit to any one particular 
 section of time. Although strongly particularist in 
 many respects, there were others in which they were 
 emphatically universalist. This is one of them. The 
 possession of the Holy Spirit was not, for them, 
 limited to the past ; neither was it the exclusive property 
 of their own time. It was a gift from God for all 
 time, which every one could attain to, provided he 
 used the right means. And they expressed this as 
 a doctrine in the " imperative mood " as the gram- 
 marians would say. They laid it down as an axiom 
 that it is the religious obligation of every Israelite 
 to so sanctify his life that he should be worthy of 
 becoming possessed of God's Holy Spirit. It is the 
 supreme religious ideal which every Jew must strive to 
 realise. His first aim must, therefore, be to make his 
 physical life holy. Man must think of his body as well 
 as of his soul. In the opinion of the Rabbins, every 
 physical imperfection or derangement of the organism, 
 
 268 
 
cH.xx HOLY SPIRIT AS IDEAL 269 
 
 as e.g. sorrow, pain, etc., acted as a bar against the 
 accession of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 This last idea brings us face to face with one 
 distinguishing characteristic of Rabbinical ethics, viz. 
 the importance of the body in the leading of a holy 
 life. The body is God's, say the Rabbins, as well as 
 the soul. Hence, to be perfect as they understood 
 perfection, means to be sound both physically and 
 spiritually. And hence, any action which inflicts pain 
 or deprivation upon the body, is stigmatised as sinful. 
 Thus T. B. Ta'anith 11a, 22b declares, " He who subjects 
 himself to needless fasting and self-castigations, or even 
 denies himself the enjoyment of wine, is a sinner." The 
 Jerusalem Talmud Kiddushin iv. Halacha ii. says, 
 " Account will be taken from man for every lawful 
 enjoyment he refuses." Leviticus Rabba xxxiv. 3 gives 
 this teaching in anecdote form. Hillel takes a bath and 
 declares that he is performing a religious act. " How 
 is this?" ask his disciples. "Well," answers Hillel, 
 " at all theatres you will see the statues of kings. These 
 are regularly and industriously washed and cleansed by 
 men who receive a great reward for so doing. Now, 
 my body is created in the image and after the pattern 
 of God. If the image of a mere human king claims 
 such assiduous devotion, how much more so ought the 
 image of the Almighty King of Kings ? " 
 
 Such then being the ethical outlook of the authors 
 of the Rabbinical literature, it is easy to see why they 
 should have denied the Holy Spirit to man or nation 
 when they are in a state of physical imperfection. 
 Genesis Rabba xci. 6 says, " From the day Joseph 
 was stolen, the Holy Spirit departed from Jacob." 
 Sorrow is a bodily imperfection. The highest ethic 
 demands a bodily perfection as its first condition. 
 Hence the grief-stricken man cannot conform to the 
 
270 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 highest ethic. He is thus repugnant to the Holy Spirit. 
 When, however, Jacob receives the happy tidings that 
 his son is still alive, then "his spirit revives" (Genesis 
 xlv. 27), i.e. says Aboth De R. Nathan xxx., "the 
 Holy Spirit returns to him." 
 
 Yalkut on 2 Samuel xxii. quotes the following from 
 the Tanna Debe Elijahu Rabba ii. : " During the twenty- 
 two years that the Holy Spirit left David, King of 
 Israel, David used to shed tears every day, etc. etc. . . . 
 until at last he showed true repentance, when the Holy 
 Spirit came back again to him." The cause of this 
 departure of the Holy Spirit, was his sin with Bathsheba. 
 Sin is here looked upon, as a physical, as well as a spiritual, 
 defect. The man who has sinned, has rendered himself 
 organically imperfect, as it were. There is a passage in 
 T. B. Yoma 22b which speaks of David being afflicted, 
 on account of his offence with Bathsheba, with leprosy, 
 for a space of half a year, during which time he was 
 abandoned by his own court (p"nrrDD 13C)Q im-is), and 
 also by the Holy Spirit. David's sin is followed by a 
 bodily affliction — to the Rabbins suffering was the 
 consequence of previous sin — and his bodily organism 
 being thus tainted with an imperfection, he was ipso 
 facto rendered incapable of receiving the Holy Spirit. 
 
 Genesis Rabba Ix. 3 (quoted also in Tanhuma on 
 Tnpni) speaks of the Holy Spirit as departing from 
 Phinehas as a consequence of his sin in connexion with 
 the daughter of Jephthah. What the sin was, is given 
 in these Midrashic passages, as well as in T. B. Ta'anith 
 4b. There is the same idea here, of sin as physical 
 imperfection. 
 
 Yalkut Esther v. 2 says of Esther : " When she 
 approached the abode of idolatry [i.e. in the palace of 
 Ahasuerus] the Holy Spirit departed from her, and she 
 exclaimed. My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken 
 
XX HOLY SPIRIT AS IDEAL 271 
 
 me ? Why art Thou so far from helping me, and from 
 the words of my roaring ? (Psalm xxii. 1)." Here again 
 the taint caused by an approacli to an abode of sin 
 constitutes not only a spiritual, but also a bodily, 
 infirmity. Hence the Holy Spirit departs from Esther. 
 The verse from Psalm xxii. is interesting to the student 
 of the Gospels. 
 
 Such, then, are the physical or moral imperfections 
 which impede the Holy Spirit. A pure uncorrupted soul 
 in a pure uncorrupted body — such is the only soil con- 
 genial to it. The best and worthiest in Lsrael's past did 
 realise this exalted pitch of spiritual perfection. The 
 best and worthiest in the Israel of all time have the 
 possibility of realising it ; and the Holy Spirit will rest 
 upon them too. It must be the ideal striven after. 
 
 Many of the Rabbinical passages treat Holy Spirit 
 from this standpoint. 
 
 First place must be given to the celebrated dictum 
 of R. Phinehas b. Jair (second century a.d.). It is in 
 T. B. Abodah Zarah 20b ; and with some slight variants 
 in Mishna Sotah ix. 15. Phinehas is a firm believer in 
 man's perfectibility ; step by step he can ascend the 
 ladder of purity, until he reaches the highest consumma- 
 tion, viz. Holy Spirit (which leads to Resurrection of 
 Dead). His laconic utterance is as follows : " The 
 Torah leads to carefulness (nii^rn), carefulness to dili- 
 gence (mnt), diligence to cleanliness (nvpD), cleanliness 
 to abstemiousness (n^QJ^o), abstemiousness to purity 
 (mnta), purity to piety (niTon), piety to humility 
 (niDi?), humility to fear of sin (njoh hn'T'), fear of sin to 
 holiness (nmi-rp), holiness to the Holy Spirit {r^"'^\), Holy 
 Spirit to the Resurrection of the Dead." 
 
 The programme of R. Phinehas is ingenious. The 
 terms he uses require more than a little elucidation. 
 
272 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 A whole volume has been written on them, viz. the 
 Mesillat Yesharhn of Moses Hayyim Luzzatto. There 
 are three points particularly germane to our special 
 subject. They are : — 
 
 (1) It is noteworthy what a large part the physical 
 element plays here — the point previously alluded to. 
 The first condition of spirituality is bodily purity. 
 
 (2) The scale of discipline is such, that it is given 
 to every man to go through the stages successfully, if only 
 he wills it. Every man may become possessed of the 
 Holy Spirit. It is the culmination of what the religious 
 life should mean in the case of each individual living it. 
 It is the goal to be held ever in view. It is withheld 
 from no one who wins it. 
 
 (3) The statement that Holy Spirit leads to the 
 resurrection of the dead, is not easily intelligible. The 
 opinion of Luzzatto throws light upon it, however. 
 The possession of Holy Spirit, says he, leads man to 
 the state of spiritual exaltedness of men like Elijah and 
 Elisha who, according to the Scriptural narrative, were 
 able to resurrect the dead. These men were sharers in 
 the Divine nature to such an extent that they, as it 
 were, took on one of the great prerogatives of God, viz. 
 to impart life. God places His Holy Spirit in every 
 man worthy of it, and the man thus dowered reaches a 
 height of spirituality which, while at no point lifting 
 him out of the sphere of mortality, yet raises him to 
 that exalted level where the close kinship between the 
 human and the divine is most clearly manifested. 
 
 Leviticus Rabba xxxv. 7 has the following saying : 
 " He who learns with the intention of practically 
 carrying out his learning, will merit the receiving of 
 the Holy Spirit." " Learning," of course, refers to the 
 Torah. If any saying illustrates the widest possible 
 
XX HOLY SPIRIT AS IDEAL 273 
 
 dissemination of Holy Spirit, it is this one here quoted. 
 It is in the power of every one to study Torah. Nay 
 more, it is every one's paramount duty to do so, based 
 on the phrase, " And thou shalt meditate therein day 
 and night" (Josh. i. 8). But no right-minded man will 
 fail to put theory into practice ; his study w^ill aid him 
 to a more acceptable execution of his religious and 
 moral obligations. This is the aim of all culture. The 
 man possessed of Torah-culture in this sense, will receive 
 the Holy Spirit. And its attainment lies in every one's 
 power. 
 
 Tanhuma on inSi?ni places the acquisition of Holy 
 Spirit on other grounds : " From here thou mayest 
 learn that whoever sacrifices himself for Israel's sake 
 will, in the future, receive the merit of honour, greatness, 
 and the Holy Spirit." The incentive to this remark is 
 worth noting. The Rabbinic comment on Numbers xi. 
 16-17 is as follows : Moses is bidden to gather seventy 
 men who are to bear with him " the burden of the 
 people." He does not know whom to choose and whom 
 not. God tells him, thereupon, to choose those " whom 
 thou knowest to be the elders of the people, and officers 
 over them." These officers (n^i£o"im), say the Rabbins, 
 were they of whom it was said, " And the officers 
 of the children of Israel, which Pharaoh's taskmasters 
 had set over them, were beaten" (Exod. v. 14). They 
 were the officers who showed such exemplary self- 
 sacrifice, at that dark period of Israel's history, by per- 
 mitting themselves to be flogged rather than let their 
 subordinates suffer. For when the Egyptian task- 
 master found the tale of the bricks defective, the 
 Hebrew officer took the blame on himself rather than 
 betray any of his people — so the Tanhuma legend. 
 Moses selects these elders and officers, and God places 
 some of the spirit which is upon Moses, upon them. 
 
 T 
 
274 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD ch. xx 
 
 This was the reward, for their altruism. And this is 
 the reward, say the sages in our passage, which is 
 sure to come at all times and in every age to him 
 who shows the same self-sacrificing zeal for his people's 
 welfare. The patriotic ideal could not be placed on 
 a nobler basis than this. 
 
 The word "faith" (hdion) or "belief" is not found 
 with any frequency in Rabbinical literature. But of the 
 few sayings concerning faith which are found in Rabbinic 
 literature, those of Mechilta on the words " And they 
 believed in the Lord and in Moses His servant " (p. 33 
 of Friedmann's edition) are most striking. A saying 
 which concerns our present subject is : " R. Nehemiah 
 says, Whosoever taketh upon himself one precept in faith 
 is worthy that the Holy Spirit should rest upon him." ^^^ 
 Faith is here set down as one of the main avenues 
 leading to the Holy Spirit, R. Nehemiah's utterance 
 need not necessarily be confined to Jews alone. Let 
 only all men of any nation whatsoever, take upon 
 themselves the doing of one precept in faith — and this 
 potentiality is in accord with many an O.T. ideal — and 
 we shall then have that universal outpouring of the 
 Spirit upon all flesh which is prophesied by Joel (iii. 1-2). 
 This is certainly a realisable ideal. 
 
 NOTE TO CHAPTER XX 
 
 (1) It is an interesting study to compare this Mechilta passage on 
 Faith with that of Hebrews xi. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 HOLY SPIRIT IN ITS RELATION TO NON-JEWS 
 
 Though there is a strong particularist tendency in the 
 Eabbinic doctrines of the Holy Spirit, there are not 
 wanting indications of a universahstic treatment of the 
 question. The Rabbins did at times, under certain con- 
 ditions, enunciate the broad idea of God out-reaching the 
 bounds of the Jew and consenting to find His sanctuary 
 among men generally. Illustrations are : — 
 
 A remarkable passage in Numbers Rabba xx. 1 
 where the Midrash actually places the non-Israelite 
 prophet on an equality with the Israelite prophet in 
 respect of the possession of the Holy Spirit. Commenting 
 on the verse in Deuteronomy xxxii., "He is the Rock, 
 His work is perfect ; for all His ways are judgment," 
 it remarks, " God did not place in the mouths of the 
 nations what would serve them as a plea for the future, 
 enabling them to say, Why hast Thou kept us far away ? 
 But what did He do ? Just as He raised up kings, 
 sages, and prophets from the Israelites, so He raised up 
 these from the nations generally." As we have seen 
 from previous remarks, Holy Spirit always went hand 
 in hand with prophecy, in Rabbinic theology. It is 
 quite true that the Midrash here, as in several other 
 places, contrasts the defects of the heathen prophets 
 with the virtues of the Israelite prophet, but the very 
 fact that the Rabbins thought the former worthy of the 
 
 275 
 
276 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 name of prophet, is important. They even place Moses 
 and Balaam on one and the same pedestal I Thus, " God 
 raised up Moses for Israel and Balaam for the idolaters. "^^^ 
 But Balaam proved himself unworthy of the Holy Spirit: 
 he misapplied it to the attempted detriment of Israel. 
 It was for the latter reason, says this extraordinary 
 Midrash, that God finally withdrew His Holy Spirit 
 from non-Israelites, pho noS i^n^nS di?Si ''b hitod idS 
 ntDi? no HN-ii DHD 1D^ mw mD"i>D n'^ nipn. The peculiarity 
 of this Midrash is that it attributes the Holy Spirit to 
 the Gentiles, as well as to the Gentile prophets. But 
 the former had it only temporarily. At what time they 
 lost it, it is impossible to tell. 
 
 Balaam's extraordinary career is thus described 
 (Numbers Rabba xx. 7) : "At first he was an interpreter 
 of dreams ; from this, he turned to become a diviner ; 
 from the latter, again, he turned to become a participator 
 in the Holy Spirit." Thus, the most distinguished of 
 the prophets of heathendom, stood as near God as did 
 the most distinguished among the ancient prophets of 
 Israel. 
 
 There is, however, one little modification in the 
 Rabbinic teaching on this head — viz. that Balaam 
 and all pagan prophets {i.e. non-Israelite) were only 
 in possession of the Holy Spirit at night. Thus, in 
 Leviticus Rabba i. 13, R. Jose says that God only 
 revealed Himself to the heathens at night. This is an 
 allusion to the possession of the Holy Spirit by Eliphaz 
 — a non- Israelite. Also, pagan prophets only enjoyed 
 "iin "^sn, " half the Divine Word," whereas Israelite 
 prophets were the recipients of " the complete word." 
 But, anyhow, the great fact remains, that non-Jews were, 
 in certain senses, considered by the Rabbins as sharers 
 in the act of closest Divine communion which is con- 
 noted by the phrase " Holy Spirit." ^"^ 
 
XXI HOLY SPIRIT AND NON-JEWS 277 
 
 Yalkut on Judges iv. 4, quoting from the Tanna 
 Debe Elijahu Rabba, says : "I bring heaven and earth 
 to witness that the Holy Spirit dwells on a n on -Jew as 
 well as upon a Jew, upon a woman as well as upon a 
 man, upon maid-servant as well as man-servant. All 
 depends upon the works of the particular individual." 
 Of course, account must be taken of the fact that the 
 Tanna Debe Elijahu (both the Rabba and the Zuta) are 
 among the latest of the Midrashim, their date of re- 
 daction being about the end of the tenth century /^^ 
 
 Needless to say, in any consideration of this subject, 
 regard must be had for the historical background of the 
 Rabbinical literature. It is necessary to think of the 
 Maccabean revolution, the struggle against Hellenism, 
 the rise against Rome in the days of both Titus and 
 Hadrian. Times fraught with so much trouble and 
 suffering to the Jews, can hardly be expected to en- 
 shrine the broadest-minded literary expressions about 
 the " nearness " of God to the non-Jew. 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER XXI 
 
 (1) Cp. a far greater statement by R. Meir in T. B. Aboda Zara 
 26a, viz. ; "A non-Jew who is learned in the Torab is as great as the 
 High Priest." 
 
 (2) Cp. Sifri on Deut. xxxiv. 10, "There arose no prophet in Israel 
 like Moses, but there arose such an one among the nations. He was 
 Balaam." 
 
 (3) See Lector Friedmann's scholarly editions of Seder Eliahu Rabha 
 and Seder Eliahu Zuta, with annotations referring to all branches of 
 Rabbinical literature, and an exhaustive introduction dealing with the 
 relations of these Midrashim to preceding works. Vienna, 1900 and 
 1903. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 THE GENERAL RABBINIC CONCEPTION OF GOD 
 
 It has now, I hope, sufficiently been proved that 
 Rabbinic theology is deeply ingrained with a mystical 
 element. The quintessential feature of all mysticism — 
 the belief in the Immanence of God — is a characteristic 
 of the Rabbinic Judaism. The incoming of God 
 into human life, the implanting of the Divine life 
 within the human soul, the permanent presence of the 
 Divine Spirit accompanying, or acting in fellowship 
 with, a whole body of men or a whole race, — I have 
 quoted sufficient illustrations from the vast domains of 
 Talmudic and Midrashic literature to demonstrate the 
 tenacity with which the authors of the latter held 
 these truths, and their unshakable belief in the fact 
 that the people on whose behalf they spoke experienced 
 them. The Shechinah in all its different representations, 
 whether as fire or as cloud or as the wings of a bird, 
 really points to an inward and first-hand experience 
 of religion. It denotes the idea that the individual 
 Israelite, or the whole race of Israel, is actually en- 
 circled by the mystical presence of God, and lives 
 in a sort of organic union with God. The Jew 
 believed that the Shechinah floated about, as it were, 
 in his environment ; in other words, he believed that 
 his God was conjunct with all those of his race and 
 faith who did His will, and thus found refuge in Him ; 
 
 278 
 
CH. XXII THE RABBINIC GOD 279 
 
 there was a Divine life circulating through them and 
 expressing itself through them. I have also made it 
 clear, in my long excursus into the various significations 
 of spirit and Holy Spirit, how clearly the Rabbins 
 realised the seed of Divinity which we carry in 
 our breasts. The Holy Spirit is a Divine endow- 
 ment to man, an emanation of God, which is the 
 originator of the prophetic faculty, and which in the 
 case of all men makes known the will of God, and leads 
 man on to ever higher and higher flights of worthy 
 thought and noble action. It is the medium by which 
 men become aware of the nearness of God, of His Father- 
 hood, and of His ever -constant accessibility to their 
 desire to hold communion with Him. The numerous 
 illustrations I have adduced, of the graphic manner in 
 which the Holy Spirit is personified by the Rabbins 
 and plays a part in the variegated experiences of life, 
 all go to demonstrate irresistibly, how the idea of the 
 Divine Immanence is woven into the very structure of 
 their fundamental teachings. 
 
 Putting aside all the technicalities of the subject 
 which constitute the groundwork on which the arguments 
 have been built, let me now, in the pages that remain, 
 address myself to the broader and more comprehensive 
 aspect of the question. To what general results have 
 these investigations led ? On the evidence before us, 
 what are the right findings with reference to the 
 question of the Rabbinic conception of God ? 
 
 I shall first take the negative side of the answer 
 to the query. 
 
 Firstly, the Rabbinic God is not, as Weber and 
 others have insisted, a kind of Absolute, dwelling in 
 impenetrable aloofness from man and the world, merely 
 self-contained and bearing no relation to anything else, 
 a supramundane and therefore extramundane Being, a 
 
28o THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 transcendent God who made man and the world ages 
 ago, and has long retired from the scene like a super- 
 annuated workman, a far-off monarch whom no man 
 has ever seen, and whom none can know because of His 
 unfathomable distance. Assertions like these appear 
 totally groundless, when taken in conjunction with 
 the fruitful crop of the Shechinah and Holy Spirit 
 and Memra teachings which are set forth in this book. 
 Let it suffice to give two quotations which bear 
 directly upon this particular point. In the Mechilta 
 on n^tDi (edit. Friedmann, page 41) we read as follows : 
 . . . '^Di D"n -i2?i mo nnpn moD n^jd hnii n'ii. " Come, 
 see ! Not as the quality of man is the quality of God. 
 If two persons in distress cry for help at one and the 
 same time to man he cannot hear them (because their 
 combined voices confuse him). But with God, even if 
 all creatures in the universe were to come and pour out 
 their plaints altogether before Him, He would hear all." 
 How can it be said, after reading a passage of this sort, 
 that the Rabbinic God is a fcir-off Absolute, unrelated 
 to, and having no connexion with, the world ? What 
 more explicit pronouncement could one have as to the 
 accessibility, the nearness, the yearning love, of God the 
 Father, His answering sympathy with the woes of 
 suffering humanity, the everlasting arms capable of 
 supporting the limitless burdens of those who walk in 
 darkness and have no light ? Notice, too, the univer- 
 salistic spirit of the passage. The Divine love is not 
 for Jews only ; it is for the world. The other reference 
 is T. B. Sabbath 127a as follows : " Come, see ! Not as 
 the quality of man is the quality of God. With man 
 it is impossible for a mean man to say to a great 
 man, ' Wait for me.' But concerning God it is written, 
 ' Pass not away, I pray Thee, from Thy servant.' " There 
 are three elements in the thought here which bring 
 
XXII THE RABBINIC GOD 281 
 
 out our point. These are (1) God's ever-existent acces- 
 sibility. (2) The nearness of His love and grace to all. 
 It is only a bosom friend whom you love and of 
 whose responsive love you are assured, that you can 
 familiarly ask not to go away from you. (3) God is 
 more coudescendinsj to man than even man himself. 
 Eank, age, wealth create barriers between man and 
 man. But man's road to God is so open because so 
 near, and so near because so open. With sentiments like 
 these to its credit, it is clearly a libel to paint the 
 Rabbinical God as an unrelated Absolute or as a distant 
 and unheeding king. 
 
 Secondly, the Rabbinic conception of God is not to 
 be rejected as untenable, and as failing to meet the higher 
 demands of the religious consciousness, because it has no 
 dogmas expressing the intercommunication between God 
 and man in the senses conveyed by the Christian doctrines 
 of the Incarnation and the Atonement. With reference 
 to the Atonement, the Rabbins recognise no historic 
 breach between God and man which had such serious con- 
 sequences for succeeding ages, that man could only grope 
 his way back to the love and forgiveness of God by means 
 of the atoning self-sacrifice of some divine or semi-divine 
 man, at one particular epoch of the w^orld's history. In 
 T. B, Abodah Zarah 22b it is said that " the germ of 
 the [serpent's] poison left the Israelites from the time 
 they stood at the foot of Mount Sinai." This contrasts 
 with the very exceptional references in 4 Esdras iii. 
 21 and Wisdom ii. 24 which speak of the serpent's 
 poison, or the devil, as being transmitted from Adam 
 to all generations. On the contrary, the Rabbins 
 emphasise untiringly the spotless purity of the new- 
 born babe. " The good inclination," say they, " is thirteen 
 years older than the evil inclination " {because the 
 latter only begins to assert itself at thirteen, the age of 
 
282 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 puberty). In fact, the long category of ablutions in 
 connexion with the sacrificial code in the O.T. clearly 
 points not to a continuous state of man's impurity 
 before God, but merely to a temporary impurity, which 
 can be set right at man's will, because it is God's will 
 that it should be so set right. What can be more 
 conclusive on this head than the famous utterance of 
 Akiba : "Happy are ye, Israelites, in that He 
 before whom ye purify yourselves, and He who cleanses 
 you, is your Father in Heaven " ? Here we have the 
 clearest statement of a never-ceasing inflowing of God's 
 grace to man, provided man does his part in yielding 
 himself to God. As for the Incarnation, it can be 
 seen from the chapters on the Holy Spirit, how the 
 Rabbins, by their delineation of the Holy Spirit as an 
 ideal which every one has it in his power to reach, 
 provided he orders his life aright, recognised the 
 divinity of humanity. But they sternly repudiated 
 the converse side of the proposition — the humanity 
 of divinity. One of the chief motives underlying the 
 zealous insistence on the Divine Unity and the pains 
 and penalties attaching to the infringement thereof, 
 is just this safe -guarding against the dangers of 
 clothing the Divine in the garb of the human. 
 Side by side with the words " Shechinah " or 
 " Memra," we get " God's Shechinah," " God's Memra." 
 Why is this ? Because the Rabbins never desired 
 that the personification of God intended in these 
 terms — and which had as its object to express 
 the immanent workings of the all-directing, omnipresent, 
 and all-pervading Divine Principle — might be woefully 
 misconstrued into a false identity between man and 
 God. After all, it is only the trained philosopher who 
 can understand what is and what is not included in the 
 connotation of the word " person " as applied to the 
 
THE RABBINIC GOD 283 
 
 Deity. It is not easy to satisfy the man in the street 
 that God can be a person, with all the attributes of 
 personality, and yet be a spirit. 
 
 Rabbinical theology presents the truth of the self- 
 communicating love of God to man by quite other, and 
 less highly technical, means. In fact, it is, in this 
 respect, singularly free from elaborate dogmas. It 
 makes many simple, naive statements which it believes 
 to be true, because they were realised in both the racial 
 and individual consciousness. Thus, the Rabbinic Jew 
 said that God was his ever-constant and never-failing 
 Redeemer — and he said it because he felt it : he felt that 
 there was a Presence about him which overflowed with 
 unmeasured love for him and his people. It was some 
 such rooted conviction as this, which made him declare 
 that the Shechinah accompanied his people in all their 
 pilgrimages, that the Shechinah sustains the sick, that 
 an injury done to a fellow-Israelite is an injury done to 
 the Shechinah, that the Shechinah abides in Israel even 
 in the latter's impurity. And it was a similar axiom of 
 experience that produced the Rabbinic pronouncements 
 on man as a creature formed in the imao;e and likeness 
 of God. A child is formed in the image and likeness 
 of its father. Hence the great Rabbinic doctrine of the 
 Fatherhood of God. A child inherits the father's 
 disposition, the spirit of the one is part of, and corre- 
 sponds to, the spirit of the other. Hence the doctrine 
 of the Holy Spirit showing that man is related by a 
 real, though mystic, bond to the Divine Father, and 
 showing further that this spark of Divinity, which man 
 can make his own if only he will, is his ceaseless 
 admonisher and stay, his stimulus to what is highest and 
 best, an endowment from on high which makes him akin 
 with the prophets of old. But of this more anon. 
 
 Thirdly, the Rabbinic conception of God is not that 
 
284 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 of a rigid and narrow legalism. Were it so, there 
 would be no room in it for a spiritual life. It would 
 certainly be bereft of that mystical element which this 
 treatise has shown to preponderate so largely in it. In 
 his article on Mysticism in the Encyclopcedia Britannica, 
 Prof. Pringle-Pattison says, " The Jewish mind did not 
 lend itself to mysticism because of its rigid monotheism 
 and its turn towards worldly realism and statutory 
 observance " ; and again : " Mysticism instinctively 
 recedes from formulas, that have become stereotyped 
 and mechanical, into the perennially fresh experience of 
 the individual." But the professor is here obsessed 
 with the usual errors of the critics of Rabbinism. The 
 " rigid monotheism " of which he complains, is not 
 synonymous with a rigid transcendence of Deity. The 
 Rabbinic God had contact with the world : He ruled it 
 from within, as well as from without ; man's relations 
 to God were not external and accidental ; a mystic inner 
 bond existed between them ; God was not only viewed 
 as the creator of the cosmos, but as the Shechinah, and 
 the traces of Himself which were embedded in the 
 heart were the workings of the Holy Spirit. There is 
 of course, at first thought, a clashing between the ideas 
 of a religion of " statutory observances," or of " formulas 
 that have become stereotyped and mechanical," and the 
 ideas of a mystical religion. The religion of observances 
 seems to mean mere conformity to outward routine, 
 whereas the mystical religion seems based on the 
 perennially fresh experiences of the inner life of the 
 individual. But it is just the unique character of 
 the Rabbinical religion, that both these sides of re- 
 ligion are emphasised, and to the detriment of neither. 
 Rabbinism is a Religion of Law. It is honeycombed 
 with ceremonial formalism. The Jew who lives under 
 it, can only do his duty to it by fulfilling a great number 
 
THE RABBINIC GOD 285 
 
 of outward ordinances and commands. Obedience to 
 them must be unquestioning. They are the decrees 
 of the King, and only in loyalty to them can the 
 Rabbinic Jew satisfy the demands of his religious 
 consciousness. All this is very true, but it is only a 
 section of Rabbinism ; it is not the whole of it. There 
 is a complementary chapter ; the movement of man to 
 God and of God to man is conceived as somethinor more 
 than a series of outward acts ; there is mysticism as 
 well as ceremonialism ; and that the two went hand in 
 hand and never at any point conflicted, is amply proved 
 by the fact, that the abundant crop of teaching about 
 the Shechinah and the Holy Spirit is just as vital a 
 constituent of Rabbinic theology as is the more 
 abundant crop of its legalistic doctrine. There was 
 never any cleavage between the two, to the mind of 
 the Rabbinic Jew. They were warp and woof of one 
 texture. The term " legalism " is really a misnomer. 
 Every act of obedience to the Law had a mystical 
 basis. It was not mere obedience out of fear of 
 consequences. Neither did the obedience spring out 
 of utilitarian motives. " Be ye not like servants," 
 said Antio;onos of Socho, "who minister to their master 
 upon the condition of receiving a reward ; but be 
 like servants who minister to their master without 
 the condition of receiving a reward," Here lies the 
 gist of Rabbinic mysticism ; and although it met with 
 ever so many perversions when put to the touchstone 
 of practice, it is not fair to accept these perversions as 
 the norm and standard. The beauty of any piece of 
 doctrine lies in the highest, not in the lowest, uses to 
 which it can be put. " Peradventure thou mayest say," 
 says the Sifri, " Verily I will learn the Torah in order 
 that I may become rich, or that I may be called ' Rabbi,' 
 or that I may receive a recompense in the future world. 
 
286 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 Therefore doth Holy Writ say 'to love the Lord thy 
 God.' Let everything that thou doest, be done out of 
 pure love for Him." 
 
 These quotations demonstrate quite sufficiently for 
 our purpose, that what lay at the background of life 
 under the Law, was disinterested love for God, Keligion 
 is Law. Religion is Love. Both propositions were 
 true and simultaneously tenable to the Rabbins. By 
 his consciousness of the ever - present and ever - near 
 Shechinah, by his conviction that he carried within his 
 breast an immanent Holy Spirit which, if he proved 
 himself worthy, might raise him even to the status of 
 the prophets, the Rabbinic Jew realised his fellowship 
 with God. And he realised that God reciprocated this 
 fellowship. His human love echoed back the Divine love. 
 So that every outward ceremonial observance w^hich 
 his religion bade him perform was merely the index or 
 symbol of an inward mystical communion with Him in 
 whom " he lived and moved and had his being." 
 
 I turn now to the positive side of the matter. What 
 are the various strata of thought which go to make 
 up the Rabbinical conception of God ? 
 
 Firstly, the Rabbinic God is both transcendent and 
 immanent. I must here point out the difference between 
 the religion which the Rabbinic Jew derived from his 
 Book (the O.T.), and that which he learnt from his own 
 soul's experiences. In the former he was preponder- 
 atingly taught the truth of the Divine Transcendence. 
 But his individual and national experiences brought him 
 round to the truth of the Divine Immanence. The God 
 who sits upon the circle of the earth and views its 
 inhabitants as grasshoppers, underwent a great trans- 
 formation in the crucible of his mind and heart. He 
 was drawn nearer. Instead of the monarch wrapped in 
 impenetrable isolation, he became the Shechinah. No 
 
XXII THE RABBINIC GOD 287 
 
 longer the great Unapproachable, the great Unknowable, 
 He became the Father, with a Father's love for His 
 children. And His worship sprang not from a feeling of 
 external obligation, but from the impulse of the Holy 
 Spirit, that emanation of Himself which He had deposited 
 in the finite heart. Yet, although the Shechinah was 
 brought down to earth, its permanent residence was in the 
 heavens. The monotheistic idea was never for a moment 
 imperilled. ^^^ The possibility of the offence of recognis- 
 ingr more than one " Reshut " was never lost from view. 
 Although God was the " place of the world " and His 
 Presence filled the earth — ideas abounding in the 
 Synagogue ritual and borrowed from Rabbinical litera- 
 ture — yet was He differentiated by a superlative 
 sublimity from all human or terrestrial likenesses. Here 
 we have the transcendent and immanent ideas in 
 combination. And the vital importance of this com- 
 bination to the Rabbinic or any other religion, is seen 
 on very little consideration. For it is only through 
 experiencing the fact of Grod's Immanence that we 
 can gain the assurance of His Transcendence. The 
 Jew's fidelity to the God of his fathers all through 
 the medley of his historic vicissitudes is traceable to 
 this very cause. His belief in the God of the heavens 
 remained unshaken, only because he felt that there was 
 a God in his earth. If it is true of all men, it is doubly 
 true of the Jew, that 
 
 The God withoiit he findeth not, 
 Who finds Him not within. 
 
 Or as Goethe has more philosophically put it : 
 
 Was war' ein Gott, der nur von aussen stiesse, 
 Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen liesse ! 
 Ihm ziemt's die Welt im Inner n zu bewegen, 
 Natur in sich, sich in Natur zu hegen. 
 
288 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 The Jew sought God only because he knew that God 
 had already sought him and found him. Thus the 
 Divine Immanence was to him, as it must be to all 
 religionists, the starting-point of the spiritual life. But 
 it could only become the whole of the spiritual life by 
 combining with the Divine Transcendence. 
 
 Secondly, the Rabbinical God is intensely personal. 
 That a transcendent God — the God of the eighteenth- 
 century Deists — should be a person, presents no difficulty 
 to the understanding or imagination. It is just what 
 we expect of a God whose functions have ceased with the 
 creation of the universe, and who for all coming time 
 merely presides over it in an exalted and isolated un- 
 concern. But it is not so easy to appreciate personality 
 in a Deity who, though transcendent, is also at the same 
 time immanent. We have already, in earlier pages, 
 discussed what is, and what is not, implied in the attribute 
 of personality as ascribed to God, how it differs from 
 materiality, and how it saves religion from the pit- 
 falls of Pantheism. The Rabbinic God was personal 
 though not material. That the Rabbins looked at 
 personality as something quite independent of cor- 
 poreality, can be proved from a variety of passages. 
 One noteworthy passage is that of Yalkut on Psalm 
 xc. 1, "0 Lord, a dwelling-place hast Thou been unto 
 us in all generations." R. Isaac said, " ' We do not 
 know whether God is the dwelling-place of the world, 
 or whether the world is the dwelling-place of God.' 
 Moses, however, came [Moses being according to the 
 Rabbins the author of Psalm xc] and told us, ' 
 Lord, Thou art our dwelling-place' (i.e. that God is the 
 dwelling-place of the world — the world has its being in 
 God). R. Jos4 b. Halafta said, ' We do not know whether 
 the world is secondary (rrSsiD) to God, or whether God 
 is secondary to the world.' Moses, however, came and 
 
xxn THE RABBINIC GOD 289 
 
 declared, ' Behold there is a place with me.' This 
 proves that the world is secondary to God. R. Yudan 
 said, ' It may be likened to a strong man that rides on 
 horseback ; his armour is suspended on both sides of 
 the horse. The horse is secondary to the rider, the 
 rider is not secondary to the horse.' " There are 
 several constituent ideas in this remarkable passage. 
 They are (1) That while God is regarded as a Personality, 
 the object of adoration, He is yet spoken of in terms which 
 are anything but corporeal. He is the great indefinable 
 something in which the world lives and moves and 
 has its being. (2) That God is an immanent Force 
 behind all phenomena, as well as a Personality. This 
 is the underlying sense of the metaphor about the rider 
 and the horse : the rider is the all-directing, all-control- 
 ling power, and that power is invisible because it is 
 from within and not from without : it is not the outer 
 man that directs the horse, but the inward will, the 
 spirit of the man. (3) The combination of Trans- 
 cendence and Immanence in the Deity is clearly implied 
 in the similes. 
 
 That the Rabbins resolutely set their faces against 
 the ascription to God of any limitations of space — 
 in spite of their assiduous attempts to demonstrate 
 His personality, His fatherhood, etc., is seen in many 
 other ways. Thus in Song of Songs Rabba ii. 9 it 
 is said, " God resides between every act of praise 
 which emanates from the mouths of Israelites, as it is 
 said, Thou that dwellest amidst the praises of Israel." 
 And further on we read, " God dwells behind the walls 
 of synagogues and study-houses." And again, " God 
 looks from between the shoulders of the priests " ; 
 and again, " God is visible from between the fingers of 
 the priests." In all these instances we get a strong 
 portrayal of Immanence combined with personality. 
 
 u 
 
290 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 In the Mecliilta nhw:! (edit. Friedmann, page 38), 
 following upon a host of varying comments on the 
 universal appearances of the Shechinah, comes the 
 remark that God's many-sided work for Israel is done 
 "1DQJ1, i.e. not bodily, but by His Name. Here we 
 have the mystical usage of the Name, upon w^iich 
 I have said something in the earlier portion of this 
 work. It shows clearly, how emphatic the Rabbins 
 were in their aversion to any corporeal interpretation 
 of the personal Deity ; and how fully their minds had 
 grasped the idea, that personality is quite independent 
 of a tangible bodily framework. The same thing is shown 
 in such questions as, " How could God walk in the garden 
 of Eden ? How could God walk before the Israelites in 
 a pillar of cloud ? " and several more of a like character. 
 The answer invariably given, always aims at dissociating 
 Divine Personality from locality, and at the same time 
 reconciling Divine Immanence with Transcendence. 
 
 But again, if corporeality or confinement to space 
 is not necessary to the constitution of a Divine Per- 
 sonality, there are certain factors which undoubtedly 
 are necessary, nay indispensable. These are (1) 
 consciousness, (2) intelligence, (3) purpose. Does the 
 Rabbinic God possess these ? It is not sufficient to 
 retort that the passages just quoted, if they show 
 anything at all, show the very things which are now 
 demanded. They do show them, but only in part ; 
 they deal with only one fragmentary aspect of the 
 question ; they are satisfactory, only as far as Israel 
 is concerned. Does Rabbinic literature reveal a Personal 
 God who is conscious, intelligent, and purposive in the 
 universe ? This question, too, may be answered in the 
 affirmative. The repeated references found to the Deity 
 as the ]nrT mn clearly point in this direction. In Genesis 
 Rabba xlii. 2 the phrase Josmo pi? is interpreted by R. 
 
xxH THE RABBINIC GOD 291 
 
 Aha as being ahvj hw iD-'i? hihi, " the ball of the world's 
 eye," i.e. as he further says, Dh'^s1 ;nrr mo rrntDi?© pi?, 
 "the eye which performs the judgment in the uni- 
 verse." God, as the eye of the universe, is an idea 
 of telling import. The eye is the symbol for mind 
 in all its highest and deepest manifestations. In Genesis 
 Rabba xi. 9 God ceased from all His work (on the 
 Sabbath), but not " from the work of the righteous 
 and the unrighteous " ; He is i^n □i?i i^n di? Si?id, 
 " working both with these and with these." Certainly 
 an enigmatic utterance as it stands. But its drift is 
 not hard to discover. The Rabbins here touch the 
 profound philosophical question of evil versus Divine 
 goodness. If God is immanent in man, how is sin to be 
 accounted for ? But God works " with these and with 
 these," i.e. He is immanent in the sinner as well as in 
 the saint ; only the sinner is he who is waging a 
 constant warfare with the God within (as I have 
 before sought to prove from such remarks as, " He 
 that sins is pressing against the feet of the Shechinah," 
 i.e. trying to oust the immanent Divinity), whereas 
 the saint is he, who is amenable to the voices of 
 the ever-working Divinity that he carries within 
 him. And this Midrashic passage is quite unsectarian. 
 Or take again the idea in Numbers Rabba xiii. 6 : 
 " From the first day that God created His world, 
 He desired to dwell with His creatures in the nether 
 world." This desire was afterward realised, continues 
 this Midrash. Here we have all the attributes of 
 Divine Personality, consciousness, intelligence, purpose, 
 combined, and their arena is not Israel, but the world. 
 
 But for the most striking exemplification of all 
 the ideas here discussed, viz. the Divine Personality, 
 Transcendence and Immanence, purpose, consciousness, 
 etc., all in combination, recourse must be had to the 
 
292 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 Yalkut on Psalm cii. It is as follows : "As God fills 
 the world, so the soul fills the body. . . . God resides in 
 the innermost recesses, so does the soul. . . . God judges 
 the world, so the soul judges the body. . . . The soul 
 bears the body, so God bears the world. . . . The soul 
 is set on high in the body, so God is on high in the 
 world. The soul does not know its place, but God does, 
 as it is said. Blessed be the glory of the Lord from His 
 place. A certain man once asked R. Gamliel where 
 God was. The Rabbi replied, ' I do not know.' ' Is this 
 a specimen of your wisdom ? ' replied the questioner. 
 ' You pray to God every day and do not know where 
 His place is!' 'Ah!' replied Gamliel, ' you are asking me 
 of something which is a journey of three thousand five 
 hundred years' distance from here. Let me see if 
 you could tell me the location of a certain something 
 which you have with you by day and by night. Tell 
 me where is your soul V ' I do not know,' replied he. 
 ' Well,' answered the Rabbi, ' if you do not know of 
 that which you carry about with you at all times, how 
 can you expect me to know of that which is a journey 
 of three thousand five hundred years' distance hence ? ' 
 
 * If this be so, then,' retorted the interrogator, 'we idolaters 
 do the right thing in worshipping the work of our 
 hands, our idols whom we see at all moments rather 
 than the distant God of yours.' ' No ! ' replied Gamliel, 
 
 * the work of your hands cannot see you ; but God sees 
 the work of His hands. . . .'" It is unnecessary, after 
 all that has already been said, to enter into an analysis 
 of this pregnant saying. It demonstrates the truth of 
 the point of view for which I am here contending. 
 
 TJm'dly, the Rabbinical conception of God as 
 Shechinah and Holy Spirit, brings out an aspect of 
 Immanence which is laden with the weightiest of lessons 
 for the leading of the moral life generally. In the 
 
THE RABBINIC GOD 293 
 
 technical analysis which has here been made, of the 
 Shechinah and the Holy Spirit, it will be seen, on further 
 thought, that there are two distinct lines of teaching. 
 These are (l) Shechinah and Holy Spirit as an accom- 
 plished fact ; (2) the Shechinah and Holy Spirit as an 
 ideal, i.e. as a potentiality rather than an actuality. A 
 truth of a most far-reaching import underlies these two 
 separate aspects. For the critic of Immanence will 
 inevitably ask the question, If God's presence tills all 
 men and all things, then why seek God ? Why 
 pray ? And how is sin to be accounted for ? And 
 again, conversely. Does it not seem from the very fact 
 that prayer is so congenital an instinct of the human 
 soul, and from the fact that even the best of men so 
 often feel themselves forsaken of God, and continue the 
 quest of Him by a more and more intense career of 
 self-discipline and self-sanctification, — does it not seem 
 as if it were untrue to say that God is 
 
 Closer to us than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet 1 
 
 Now, here is a problem which, unless solved, brings 
 down the whole structure of our arguments with a crash. 
 But the theological treatment of the Rabbins does answer 
 it, God is the life of all life ; the world expresses His 
 impress ; He has set His Divinity, a portion of His 
 very self, in man. But this divine endowment is, if 
 the term may be used reverently, only the raw material. 
 Man has to work it up, has to bring it out to perfection. 
 If he does not do so, it remains mute, dormant, in- 
 effective, lifeless. The seed is there, but if the soil is 
 uncongenial and the atmosphere foetid, there can be no 
 flower. The man of evil possesses the Divine germ, 
 but it never reaches fruition. The worthy man is he 
 who aims at, and succeeds in, producing the finished 
 product. And to effect this latter, means an arduous 
 
294 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 and persevering struggle, a ceaseless round of all- 
 absorbing and all-embracing aspiration, an uninterrupted 
 series of endeavours to fulfil the unfulfilled, a con- 
 tinuous pursuit after an ideal. That the Rabbins 
 recognised and solved * the problem from this standpoint, 
 is seen from the chapter on Holy Spirit as Ideal, as 
 well as from scattered allusions in the chapters on 
 Shechinah. It is seen from such remarks as " He that 
 acts in such a way is worthy to behold the face of 
 the Shechinah, or " worthy of receiving the Holy Spirit." 
 Is this contradictory to the host of expressions emphasis- 
 ing the existence of the Shechinah or Holy Spirit in the 
 midst of Israel whether individually or collectively ? By 
 no means. These sayings merely assure us of the Divine 
 spirit which we carry about within us. But though we 
 possess the Spirit, we may not realise the possession ; it 
 is there, but we may be unconscious of it ; w^e thwart it, 
 wage w^arfare with it, quell it, unless we make the 
 struggle and the effort to bring ourselves to terms with 
 it. And the struggle and the effort mean the leading of 
 the religious and moral life, the right ordering of all our 
 faculties and powers to the end that we may be holy 
 even as God is holy. Thus, this twofold view of the 
 functions and nature of Holy Spirit and Shechinah 
 renders two distinct services. (1) It emphasises the 
 reality of sin, making its offensiveness all the greater 
 by showing it to be a wilful quenching of the light 
 which all men congenitally carry within them. (2) It 
 is a welcome admonisher to men, making them at all 
 points in life feel their unworthiness, realise their failure, 
 and urging them to raise themselves to a loftier and purer 
 condition of being. There is a celebrated saying in T. 
 
 * One of my learned critics here remarks : "The Rabbis solved the problem 
 practically as all men of i)iety do in all religions : they did not, for they could 
 not, solve it theoretically. The only practical solution is to live as if the 
 problem did not exist." Very weight}' words, these ! 
 
THE RABBINIC GOD 295 
 
 B. Yoma 39a which, somewhat enigmatically, seems to 
 sum up the situation tlius : " If man sanctifies himself a 
 little, God sanctifies him much ; if man sanctifies him- 
 self here below, God sanctifies him above." Man carries 
 a share of Divinity within him, but in order to realise 
 that Divinity he must put forward his own effort. 
 And every such efibrt avails. God does His part, 
 provided man does his. The fact of God's Immanence 
 in man raises him to ever higher stages of sanctity. 
 It has been already shown in preceding remarks, how 
 in the Rabbinic theology every one is a potential 
 possessor of just that quality which marked out the 
 prophet, viz. the Holy Spirit. We can all raise our- 
 selves to that highest of pinnacles where we approach 
 as near to the pattern of the Divine as our limited 
 mortality will permit. 
 
 Fourthly, the preceding considerations lead on to the 
 Rabbinic conclusion, that man can realise his union with 
 God only through works. It is not belief, not meditation, 
 not separation from the world's cares, that make 
 perfect the imperfect fragment of the Divine which 
 man carries about with him as man, but a life of con- 
 secrated action ; in other words, morality. Good deeds, 
 to the simple minds of the Rabbins, imply right faith. 
 Thus, they did not trouble themselves much about 
 "belief" or "faith" in the technical senses of 
 the words. They assumed them. The man who had 
 no faith was the " Epicurus," the " Min," the Apostate, 
 and was thus quite outside the fold, and outside 
 the scope and application of the Rabbinic doctrines. 
 Union with God was brought about, not by an act 
 or a series of acts of intellectual assent, but by the 
 striving of a lifetime. This striving consisted in 
 obedience to a code in which morality and religion 
 were inextricably combined. The Rabbins drew no 
 
296 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 line of demarcation, as is nowadays done, between the 
 spiritual or religious life and the moral life. Religion 
 to them included morality ; and there could he no true 
 morality unless it was at the same time religious. Out 
 of this combination, faith was born. Or rather, faith 
 to them, meant the practical exemplification in the 
 everyday life, of that state of being in which the highest 
 spirituality was interwoven with the highest morality. 
 Thus, faith was not an act or a series of acts, but a life. 
 It was the persistent climbing upwards to reach the 
 ideal, the tireless endeavour to sanctify every detail of 
 life because the Presence of God was everywhere. Faith 
 and works were not two separate compartments whose 
 relative merits were to be contrasted. They were one 
 texture, indivisible, a kind of chemical compound. The 
 man who had faith must ipso facto have had works. 
 The man of good works must also possess faith. Any 
 other alternative was unthinkable to the Rabbins. 
 
 The fact that this predominant importance of works 
 could subsist with that far-reaching infusion of mysticism 
 such as we have seen in the case of the Shechinah and 
 Holy Spirit, is a sufficiently powerful refutation of 
 Paul's criticism on Rabbinism, as it is also an equally 
 strong solvent of the reiterated opinions on the cere- 
 monial formalism of the Law, the outwardness of the Law, 
 and its burdensome nature. There is a passage in the 
 Pesikta De R. Kahana (Buber's edition 105a), where, by 
 way of comment on Exodus xix. 3, "And Moses went up 
 unto God," combined with Exodus xix. 20, " And the 
 Lord came down upon Mount Sinai," it is aptly remarked, 
 that prior to the giving of the Law, heaven and earth 
 were two totally separate things ; but once the precious 
 boon had been vouchsafed, earth went up to heaven 
 and heaven came down upon earth. The Law is, on this 
 view, the first agent which made possible the Immanence 
 
XXII THE RABBINIC GOD 297 
 
 of God. Through the Law God is near, His love is 
 realisable, coramunion with Him is a possibility. The 
 Sifri on Deuteronomy xxiii. 14, ** For the Lord thy God 
 walketh in the midst of thy camp, etc.," summarises the 
 whole philosophy of this Rabbinic doctrine by the 
 quaint pictorial remark, '* A man may not read the 
 
 * Shema ' when standing near a pail of the washers, 
 neither may he enter a bath nor a (^poTii) * tannery ' if 
 he has books or phylacteries in his hands. "^"^ Commenting 
 on the next words in the same verse, " to deliver thee, 
 and to give up thine enemies before thee," it remarks, 
 " If thou doest that which is Divinely ordered in this 
 context, the result will be that God will deliver thee 
 and give up thine enemies before thee." It continues, 
 *' And thy camp shall be holy." " Make it holy. Hence 
 said they, ' Man may not enter the Temple with his 
 staff, or with his shoes, or with the dust upon his feet.' 
 
 * That He see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away 
 from thee ' ; from here we learn that immoral actions 
 cause the Shechinah to depart." The sanctifying spirit 
 of religion attached to every detail of the everyday 
 life. The Presence of God was everywhere to the 
 Rabbinic Jew, and life must be lived with this unchang- 
 ing consciousness. God's will must be fulfilled at every 
 turn, and the Rabbinic Jew felt that he was fulfilling it, 
 and that he was being inwardly illumined at every step, 
 by a kinship and communion with the Divine. Whether 
 in the Temple, or the Synagogue, or the home, the 
 Rabbinic Jew was, as we see from the Sifri passage 
 just quoted, constantly and equally impinging upon the 
 Shechinah. Faith, to the Rabbinic Jew, was thus a 
 compound of the whole array of theoretical beliefs 
 which lay at the basis of his religion, together with 
 the consecration and spiritualisation of all the rela- 
 tionships in life which constitute what is ordinarily 
 
298 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 understood by morality. This conception renders 
 Rabbinism indifferent to the antithesis drawn by Paul 
 between faith and works. How could the mysticism 
 embodied in the Shechinah idea hold the commanding 
 place that it does in the Rabbinic religion, if it were true 
 that this religion was a mere code of mechanical and 
 formalistic legalisms, a kind of soulless deism ? 
 
 A final reflexion on the general Rabbinic conception 
 of God must be devoted to the question whether, from 
 the repeated and in nearly all cases exclusive, emphasis 
 upon the Immanence of God in Israel, it is possible to 
 detect the germ of a wider and more universalist 
 doctrine of Divine Immanence. The critics of Rabbinism 
 point to the emphasised nationalism of the Rabbinic 
 religion, the small sectarian compass within which, they 
 say, all its thoughts and teachings live and move. 
 God only exists for Israel, and the nations outside Israel 
 are outside God's ken, strangers to the Divine Love. 
 This, they maintain, is the fatal defect of Talmudic 
 theology ; and it is this which must utterly unfit and 
 disqualify it for all time, from the possibility of be- 
 coming: the foundation of a world-relioion. Whereas 
 Paul was able to rise superior to the labels and shackles 
 of creed and nationality, and exclaim, *' For there is no 
 distinction between Jew and Greek : for the same Lord 
 is Lord of all, and is rich unto all that call upon Him " 
 (Romans x. 12), the Rabbinic Jew could only think 
 of God in terms of His relationship to a particular nation 
 possessing a particular form of faith. There is a very sub- 
 stantial justification for this complaint. The student 
 of Rabbinic lore often comes across a beautifully- 
 fragrant flower of thought about the loving fatherhood 
 of God towards Israel His child ; and he feels disposed 
 to say to himself, " Ah, how much sweeter would 
 the flower have smelt had it had reference not to one 
 
THE RABBINIC GOD 299 
 
 people but to the world ! " The great majority of 
 the illustrations I have given in regard to the mysti- 
 cism implied in the Shechinah and Holy Spirit, show 
 how strictly the Rabbinic horizon was limited to the 
 Jew. I have already made reference to a passage 
 in Numbers Rabba i. 3 where it is said that, had it 
 not been for God's presence in Israel, the rain would 
 not come down, neither would the sun shine. Here 
 we reach the very apotheosis of particularism. God 
 is concentrated in Israel, and Israel only ; and only in- 
 directly, only through the instrumentality and ministry 
 of Israel, do the outside nations draw the nourishment 
 of life from the Divine author of life. I have quoted a 
 companion idea to the aforegoing, from the Sifri np^'s, 
 where it is declared that God's providence in the 
 universe generally, is only a corollary of His providence 
 in the Holy Land. 
 
 But the fact is equally patent, that the Rabbins 
 were by no means incapable of gleams of a wider outlook. 
 In spite of their partiality for the idea that God shows 
 special favouritism towards Israel, the Rabbins did not 
 show themselves averse to the broad universalistic spirit 
 of the Psalmist's declaration, " God is good to all " 
 (Psalm cxlv. 9). They were able to conceive of the 
 close affinities between the Divine and all the sons of man, 
 and could enunciate, not only the narrower truth of the 
 union of God with Israel, but the more comprehensive 
 one of the union of God with all humanity. In the 
 chapter entitled "Holy Spirit in its Relation to Non- 
 Jews," I have given examples of Rabbinic sentiment on 
 this head. I now proceed to supplement these with 
 further quotations. But before doing so, a few explan- 
 atory general remarks are necessary. 
 
 The doctrine of the Immanence of God is a branch, or 
 aspect of, mysticism. The distinctive note of mysticism 
 
300 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 is the fact that it brings religion into the closest 
 contact, not with authority or formulas or traditions, 
 but with the nature of man as man. It looks upon 
 the soul as the prime factor in religion, and it regards 
 man's awareness of God, his intimate consciousness of 
 the nearness of God, his innate striving after union 
 with God, as dependent upon the soul's possibility of 
 approaching God directly. Now, the possession of a 
 soul is not the prerogative of the devotee of any one 
 particular religion to the exclusion of others. All men 
 possess souls. It follows, therefore, logically, that 
 no religion which contains mystical elements ought 
 to claim, on behalf of its adherents, an exclusive 
 approach to the Divine favour, or, indeed, any 
 superiority in the realm of the spiritual life. To assert, 
 therefore, that Rabbinism gives a large place to mysti- 
 cism, while it, at the same time, shuts itself up to a mere 
 tribal view of God's relations to man, would be to make 
 a contradiction in terms. The main current of feeling 
 may have run in the direction of a confined Deity, one 
 whose crowning concern was with one particular nation, 
 but none the less there ran a decided under-current 
 of thought throughout all the Rabbinic speculations, to 
 the effect that God was exalted above all barriers of 
 race, and that He was near to every one that calls upon 
 Him, if only he calls upon Him in truth. It is one 
 of the paradoxes of the Rabbinical literature, that 
 nationalism is made to work on more or less harmonious 
 terms with universalism. Direct heirs, as the Rabbins 
 were, to the reiterated O.T. doctrine, that all the nations 
 outside Israel were heathens, and that as enemies of 
 Israel they were also the enemies of Israel's God, and 
 therefore outside the scope of God's love, they could still 
 accept this doctrine, and yet maintain also, higher 
 elements of thought about the Divine impartiality 
 
XXII THE RABBINIC GOD 301 
 
 towards all men, and the Divine self-revelation to the 
 choicest spirits of all faiths. 
 
 To come to illustration. In Genesis Rabba xxxiii. 
 3 there is a noteworthy comment on Psalm cxlv. 
 9, "The Lord is good to all; and His tender mercies 
 are over all His works." R. Levi says that God is good 
 unto all, and He has mercy upon all vniiD \nm who 
 partake of His attributes. R. Joshua of Siknin, in the 
 name of R. Levi, says, " God is good unto all, and He 
 gives His merciful powers (I'^tDmo) to all creatures.'^ 
 According to this passage, all mankind who partake of 
 the Divine attributes, are the objects of God's special 
 providence. This means that the exemplary characters 
 among all races and faiths have a share in the " near- 
 ness " of God. They possess Divine elements embedded 
 within them, are partakers of the Divine Life. The 
 mystical colouring is very strong here. And further, 
 the remark that " God gives His merciful powers to all 
 creatures," shows a broad universalist conception of the 
 Divine Lnmanence. It is equivalent to saying that 
 God indwells the human being, no matter what nation 
 he may belong to. 
 
 How free again, from all narrow sectarianism, and 
 how all - comprehensive a doctrine of Immanence is 
 taught by the remark, reiterated many times in the 
 Talmud and Midrash, that God is the place of world, 
 but the world is not His place. God is the larger life 
 of which the world is only a part. There is a realm 
 of reality which transcends, but at the same time com- 
 prehends, the world revealed by the senses. 
 
 And again, how free from any limitation of particu- 
 larism, is the remark of Numbers Rabba xiii. 6 (already 
 alluded to), that " From the first day of the creation of 
 the world, God was desirous of dwelling with His 
 creatures in the lower regions" (vnvnn qi^ TnS miNriD 
 
302 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 Q''Dinnni). Here we sound the depths of mysticism. 
 Humanity heaves towards God, and God responds with 
 a counter-heaving towards humanity. It is the essence 
 of what is implied by the Divine Love. Equally broad 
 and universalist is the interesting string of analogies 
 (to which I have also alluded earlier), between the soul 
 which is both transcendent and immanent as far as 
 the body is concerned, and the Deity who is at once 
 transcendent and immanent in His relations to the 
 universe and man. " Soul" here is not confined to the 
 Israelite ; neither is the universe bounded by the Jew. 
 It is an expression of the very core and centre of the 
 Immanent doctrine — ^God is the energy pervading the 
 universe, a power operating from within, but yet, as 
 creator. He is transcendent. Tanhuma on n^c&N-in has the 
 startlingly naive statement that '* From earth to heaven is 
 as wide as an angel's hand can stretch " (hw M^ noD n^d 
 ^nSd). There is little national egotism in the Kabbinic 
 sentiment. The higher life of spiritual religion must be 
 as inclusive as possible. And the ethical message im- 
 parted by this all-encompassing Divinity is that " man 
 may not walk even four cubits with a proud mien (noipn 
 HDipi) because the whole world is filled with His glory " 
 (T. B. Kiddushin 31a). The sin of arrogance is ignoble 
 equally in Gentile as in Jew, because it is, in each case, an 
 equal contradiction to the Divinity which embraces all. 
 
 I could quote more. But let these quotations sufiice. 
 They are typical. They substantiate the validity of 
 my contention, that Rabbinic mysticism does not 
 merely confine itself to the narrow groove of a par- 
 ticularistic nationalism. The Rabbins reserved the best 
 for their own. But they by no means lacked the far- 
 reaching and tolerant vision which distinguishes the 
 spiritual leaders and thinkers of other races and faiths. 
 Like them, they too believed, that there is an ineradi- 
 
thp: rabbinic god 303 
 
 cable soul of goodness in all men whoever they be ; that 
 above and beyond all the separating labels of the 
 families of human-kind, there is a Higher Unity which 
 holds all in one (-ommou grasp ; that, as a recent 
 writer eloquently expresses it, " in the deeps of their 
 being, all men partake of one central Divine Life."^'^^ 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER XXII 
 
 (1) The subject of nvw) 'nc and the part it played in the Jewish 
 gnosticism of Palestine in the last pre-Christian century is fully dealt 
 with in M. Friedliinder's work, Die reliyiosen Bewegungen innerhalb des 
 Judenfhtims im Zeitalter Jesu (Berlin, 1905), especially in the chapter 
 entitled " Der Minaismus" (pp. 169-234). Dr. Friedliinder collates all 
 the Rabbinic passages dealing with nu'a [which in his opinion signifies 
 Jewish gnostic speculation about God and the world derived from the 
 strong infiltration of Hellenic philosophy and cosmology among the Jews 
 of the pre-Christian epoch] and shows their connexions with various 
 Talmudic and Midrashic allusions to n'B-Nnn "d and naDiD "d, also to 
 " Metatron " and the famous passage about mis:'? iD:a: nj;3iN in T. B. 
 Haggigah 14 b. 
 
 (2) Cp. Mishna Berachoth ix. 1. 
 
 (3) Quotation from Jones's Studies in Mystical Religion, p. xxii. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 EABBINIC DOCTRINES OF SIN AND EVIL FROM THE 
 STANDPOINT OF DIVINE IMMANENCE 
 
 I HAVE already touched upon this subject lightly in 
 the chapter on " Shechinah and Sin." But many 
 problems were left unexplained which urgently call for 
 explanation. It is impossible to do justice to the 
 Rabbinic teachings in this province, without paying 
 some regard to the general theological questions 
 involved in the relationship between sin and an im- 
 manent God. 
 
 It has already been said, that it is far easier to give 
 a satisfying solution of the raison d'etre of evil in 
 the world, on the assumption that the God of the 
 universe is purely transcendent, than to give a com- 
 prehensible explanation of the existence of evil in a 
 world which is indwelt by God. Hosea (chap. iv. 1-2) 
 declares : " Hear the word of the Lord, ye children of 
 Israel : for the Lord hath a controversy with the inhabi- 
 tants of the land, because there is no truth, nor mercy, 
 nor knowledge of God in the land. By swearing, and 
 lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, 
 they break out, and blood toucheth blood." On the 
 deistic view of the universe, this description of society at 
 the very climax of moral depravity, this picture of the 
 world as the scene and playground of the most undivdne 
 agencies, can hardly be said to present any problem in 
 
 304 
 
CH. xxni SIN AND EVIL 305 
 
 theology whatsoever. The transcendent God of Deism 
 stands afar off from the machinery which He had Himself 
 produced ages ago. He has no longer control over it. 
 He is unconcerned for it. His omnipotence cannot 
 reach it. The wickedness of the world cannot, therefore, 
 be laid to His account, because He has no association 
 with the world. It is the result of the moral wayward- 
 ness of man. This explains everything. But from 
 the immanent standpoint, questions of the gravest per- 
 plexity arise. H Creation is saturated with the Divine 
 Presence, if God is eternally " near " man, and if man's 
 heart expresses the Divine Spirit which, although it 
 transcends man, can yet compress itself so as to find 
 lodgment in so small a space, then the query inevitably 
 springs to our lips, Why does God allow all this evil ? 
 The truth must lie in one of two ways. Either God 
 permits sin and condones it ; and then He cannot be 
 the all-pure and perfect Being ; or He is powerless to 
 prevent sin ; and in that case He is shorn of the 
 attribute of omnipotence. 
 
 Here is the most delicate of all the delicate spots 
 in Theism. It is the dilemma which puts religion 
 upon its trial. It is the supreme criterion by which 
 the validity of a religion, and its claim to recognition 
 and homage, is tried. If the existence of the eternally- 
 present, all - permeating, ever - good God cannot be 
 reconciled with the appalling amount of sin and evil- 
 doins wrought bv mankind, then all that religion 
 
 00./' o 
 
 teaches about God becomes a mere worthless myth, 
 and the foundations of all faiths are ruthlessly razed to 
 the ground. And that the vast mass of religious apathy, 
 apostasy, agnosticism, indifferentism, which presses with 
 its deadly weight upon all religions to-day, is largely 
 due to the scepticism engendered by the seeming 
 impossibility of solving our problem, is a fact too well- 
 
 X 
 
3o6 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 proved for any fair-minded onlooker to dispute. It 
 would not be true to say that the enigma is only of 
 modern growth. The Psalmist was unquestionably 
 a mystic, and yet even he was more than once con- 
 strained to ask, in all the bitter poignancy of baffled 
 hope and blank disappointment, why God hid His face 
 from him when his oppressers pursued him, although 
 guiltless and sinless. 
 
 At first sight it would seem that in the interests of 
 open-minded truth, some surrender must be made of one 
 at least of the claims upon which Divinity rests. These 
 claims are omnipotence, benevolence, and immanence. 
 But to do any such thing would be fatal ; it would 
 be giving our whole case away. A God who is not 
 omnipotent, or who is not benevolent or not immanent, 
 would be unworthy of worship. We must then direct 
 ourselves to the question, in what other way or ways is 
 a solution of the difhculty obtainable by theists ; and — 
 more specifically — how does Rabbinic theology envisage 
 the problem, how does it vindicate a just and loving 
 God, a Shechinah, a Holy Spirit, in the face of the 
 rampant sin of man and the perversity of the world ? 
 
 It is the fashion of some theologies, ancient as well 
 as modern, to oifer a solution of the problem by the 
 introduction of some kind of angelology or demonology. 
 The evil that man does, is the result of the prompting 
 of some almost semi-divine principle or power of evil. 
 This power of evil is a kind of Demiurge, a delegated 
 agent of God, whose special province it was, from the 
 very beginning of creation, to implant the evil impulse 
 in man. Thus, when man sins, it is in consequence, as 
 it were, of his being under the unlucky influence of this 
 personified Power of Evil, who although a messenger of 
 God, and accordingly commissioned to do His will, yet 
 somehow or other has the effect of bringing man into 
 
SIN AND EVIL 307 
 
 a state of impurity, and thus shut out from the presence 
 of God. Sin and Divinity are, on such theories, 
 reconciled by saying that sin is the handiwork not of 
 God but of His delegate. Both Philo and the Rabbinical 
 literature exemplify a great deal of this kind of reasoning. 
 One great plank in the platform of Philo's theology is 
 his reiterated assumption that matter is an evil. And 
 it becomes apparent, to even the superficial student of 
 his cosmology, that while trying to adhere as faithfully 
 as he can, to the literality of the Genesis narrative, he 
 is at the greatest pains to couch his description of the 
 creation of the world, in terms that would imply that 
 the Deity rather "formed" the world (in the Platonic 
 sense) than " created " it, because " creating " must 
 necessarily bring the Deity into contact with that 
 which is impure and of the nature of sin, viz. 
 matter. But, in those parts of his writings where 
 cosmology is not his subject — and when he has to give 
 countenance to the great question of the relation of 
 human sin to Divine goodness — Philo's ingenuity 
 invented another device for surmounting the difficulty. 
 He introduced his theories about the " Logoi." The 
 Logoi do not always mean the same thing in Philo. But 
 what is noteworthy and to the purpose is, the undoubted 
 fact, that arigels are a branch of the Logoi. " Those 
 beings whom other philosophers call demons, Moses 
 usually calls angels ; and they are souls hovering in the 
 air." ^^^ Angels, souls, and demons are things differing 
 indeed in name, but one and identical in reality. These 
 souls or anorels " the creator has been accustomed to 
 employ as handmaidens and servants in the administra- 
 tion of mortal affairs." As God is good, so all angels or 
 souls are originally all good. What creates bad angels 
 is the badness of the persons with whom they become 
 associated, " those other men who have disregarded 
 
3o8 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 wisdom, giving themselves up to the pursuit of unstable 
 things regulated by fortune alone, not one of which is 
 referred to the most excellent portion of ourselves, the 
 soul or the mind ; but all rather to the dead corpse 
 connected with us, that is to the body or the things 
 which are even more lifeless than that, such as glory 
 and money and offices and honours and all other things, 
 which, by those who do not keep their eyes fixed on 
 what is really beautiful, are fashioned and endowed 
 with apparent vitality by the deceit of vain opinion. "^^^ 
 Philo pushes his contention of the aloofness of the Deity 
 from all possible contact with evil, by assuming that 
 the bad angels are the result of the perversity of 
 man, and are no part of God's creation. But the 
 flaw in his reasoning, is easily discernible. Granted 
 that the bad angel has only become so, because of his 
 being conjoined with the man who is worldly and 
 material, Philo has not answered the question, Who 
 made such a man worldly and material ? In other 
 words, sin is unaccounted for, and the original problem 
 remains as unsolved as before. 
 
 Rabbinic theology largely delegates sin to the 
 work of certain classes of angels, with the object 
 of bridginff the chasm between the sinfulness of man 
 and the goodness of God. This delegation is mainly 
 seen in the several personifications of the " Yetser 
 Ha-Ra." In T. B, Baba Bathra 16a an identity 
 is established between Yetser Ha-Ra, Satan, and the 
 Angel of Death, AVhat is the business of any one of 
 this group ? It is notUD StoiDi . . . nh^i;^ ni?nm -nv. " It 
 comes down and misleads men [to sin], then it goes up 
 again [to heaven] and receives sanction to slay the 
 soul." In T. B. Berachoth 16b the personification of 
 the Yetser Ha-Ra is unquestioned, seeing that Rab 
 (Abba Arika) in his prayer puts it on the same footing 
 
xxm SIN AND EVIL 309 
 
 with "the evil man, the evil companion, and Satan." 
 In all those passages where the Rabbins attributed 
 personality to the Yetser Ha-Ra (and of course there are 
 several where they did not personify, and where it 
 is merely another word for sin), it was done with the 
 motive of ascribing the authorship of sin and impurity 
 to some principle or power, which, although delegated 
 by God, was yet other than He.* 
 
 But these Rabbinic attempts at the solution of 
 the problem fall quite as flat as Philo's. Argue as 
 strongly as you like, that sin is the handiwork of some 
 evil angel or rebellious semi-divine Principle, you do 
 not yet succeed in exonerating the Deity from partici- 
 pation in its cause. God is the creator of the angel, 
 and as such He must have willed that the angel should 
 behave in this particular way, and He must have 
 known the results that would supervene. The Rabbins 
 themselves could not have imagined that they had, by 
 any theory of delegation, discovered the solution of the 
 problem, because in spite of their reiterated attribution 
 of Personality to the Yetser Ha-Ra, they yet regarded 
 the latter as merely a passive tool in the power of the 
 Deity. One of the most emphatic examples of their 
 subordination of the Yetser to God is found in T. 
 B. Sukkah 52a, where God is spoken of as one day 
 exterminating (lit. = slaughtering "itomojl) the Yetser 
 Ha-Ra in the presence of saints and sinners. 
 
 We are, then, constrained to turn to quite another 
 method of reasoning for the reconciliation of the 
 facts of sin, with the theory of an immanent God. 
 A recent writer has presented the case very forcibly 
 thus : " What I have to say, leads back, through 
 
 * All these points are ably discussed from the Rabbinic standpoint in F. C. 
 Porter's essay on "The Ye^er Ha-Ra" {Vale Biblical and Semitic Studies, New 
 York, 1901). I regret that in writing on this subject, I did not have the 
 opportunity of consulting this lucid and accurate piece of work. 
 
3IO THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 Hegelianism, to the old Greek thinkers, and beyond them 
 again, to the wise men who lived and taught in the 
 East, ages before Jesus was born. It is that this 
 finite universe of ours, is one means to the self-realisa- 
 tion of the infinite. Supposing God to be the infinite 
 consciousness, there are still possibilities to that con- 
 sciousness which it can only know as it becomes 
 limited. ... To all eternity, God is what He is, and 
 never can be other ; but it will take Him to all eternity 
 to live out all that He is. In order to manifest even to 
 Himself the possibilities of His being, God must limit 
 that being. There is no other way in which the fullest 
 self-realisation can be attained. Thus we get two 
 modes of God — the infinite, perfect, inconditioned, 
 primordial being ; and the finite, imperfect, conditioned 
 and limited being of which we are ourselves expressions. 
 And yet these two are one, and the former is the 
 guarantee that the latter shall not fail in the purpose 
 for which it became limited. Thus to the question, 
 Why a finite universe ? I should answer. Because God 
 wants to express what He is. His achievement here is 
 only one of an infinite number of possibilities. 
 
 God is the perfect poet, 
 
 Who in creation acts His own conceptions. 
 
 This is an end worthy alike of God and man."'^' 
 
 To put the argument in simpler phraseology, What 
 the writer really means is this — God is only infinite and 
 omnipotent when considered in the abstract, i.e. as a 
 kind of absolute apart from the world. But when 
 considered in His relations to the universe and man. He 
 is limited and is not omnipotent. His omnipotence, 
 paradoxical as it may sound, is limited. The creation 
 of man involves a necessary limitation of Divine Power, 
 because in creating man, God has delegated to him a 
 certain fragment of Himself, a certain portion of His 
 
SIN AND EVIL 311 
 
 omnipotence. In this way man " expresses " God. 
 But he is not identical with God. That part of God, 
 with which as the result of the Divine self-limitation 
 he is endowed, may be used by him either for, or against, 
 God. Man's will is the Divine element in man, but it 
 may set itself in opposition to its Divine source ! 
 Out of the " infinite number of possibilities " which may 
 arise through this Divine self-implanting in man, that 
 which frequently happens is the wilful and wicked 
 rebellion of man against God. Man grieves and vexes 
 the Holy Spirit within him. But the question may 
 pertinently be asked, If God in order to express Him- 
 self took such an extreme step, as it were, of limit- 
 ing His omnipotence, why did He not prearrange it in 
 such a way that there should be no possibility of man 
 opposing Him, why did He not withhold the evil element 
 entirely, and make man a pattern of all-goodness, even 
 as He Himself is all-good ? The answer seems to be 
 that man is given by God, the choice between alterna- 
 tives of action. The good and the evil are set before 
 him, and he has the unfettered freedom to accept either. 
 It is only this freedom of choice that makes virtue 
 possible. It is only this power of individual initiative 
 that makes man a moral agent. As a recent writer 
 expresses it : " Moral good consists in right choosing. It 
 is right choosing that makes what we call character. 
 . . . Right choosirig : but if there is to be choosing 
 there must be two courses to choose between. If God 
 had made me so that I could not tell a lie, I could 
 not choose to tell the truth. I should tell the truth 
 automatically, as I breathe and sneeze and cough. But 
 that would not make character. It would not be 
 moral good. . . . And as, if His object with men is 
 to get moral good out of them, to make character, 
 God is obliged to leave the lie open to me as well as 
 
312 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 the truth, so also, throughout all the range of morals, 
 He is in like manner compelled, omnipotent though He 
 be, if He would have moral good evolved ... to leave 
 open to them the wrong as well as the right, the dis- 
 obedience as well as the obedience, the sin as well as the 
 virtue. And so, if moral good, character, righteousness, 
 be the supreme purpose of God with man, then even 
 omnipotence had to leave open the door to sin, the 
 greatest of the evils." ^^^ 
 
 And the outcome of this freedom of choice, of this 
 Divine evolution of man as a moral agent, is the great 
 fact of responsibility. If man has before him the two 
 paths, and he wilfully exercises his choice in favour of the 
 wrong path, then the responsibility is his, not God's ; the 
 blame for the sin rests upon his shoulders, not upon 
 the shoulders of God. Had God not given us the freedom 
 to choose between the two alternatives of righteousness 
 and sin, then morality would have been impossible. 
 But He wants us to be moral. He wants us to struggle 
 with and finally conquer our baser yearnings. He wants 
 us to raise ourselves on the " stepping-stones of our dead 
 selves to higher things," He wants us to draw near to 
 His service and be holy even as He is holy.^^^ He has 
 endowed us with the power to act this high part. He 
 has handed us the key for opening our hearts to this 
 noble choice, by having breathed into us a portion of 
 His Holy Spirit, and by having encompassed us with 
 the halo of His never- absent Shechinah. When we sin, 
 we are traitors to all these immanent Divine promptings. 
 We are kicking against these implanted Divine traces, 
 trying to obliterate them, oust them ; and the respon- 
 sibility for the sin is ours, not God's. 
 
 It is in some such way as this, that the current 
 theology of to-day attempts the reconciliation between 
 sin and the Immanence of God. And, coming now to 
 
SIN AND EVIL 
 
 d'j 
 
 my main point — it is the way of Rabbinic theology. 
 Let me attempt to explain the matter more clearly. 
 In T. B. Berachoth 33b it is remarked : " R. Hanina 
 said everything is in the power of Heaven save the 
 fear of Heaven." God's omnipotence is limited by man's 
 piety and impiety. These are outside the purview of the 
 Divine omnipotence and dependent solely upon the will 
 of man. In T. B. Sabbath 104a it is said : " R. Simeon 
 b. Lakish asked what is the meaning of the verse ' Surely 
 He scorneth the scorners ; but He giveth grace unto the 
 lowly ' (Proverbs iii. 34) ? " " It means that he who 
 wishes to lead an unclean life has the door open to him, 
 i.e. he is not opposed nor is he helped (see Rashi on 
 passage irri^DD-' nSi ^h^^^d^ nS p'?^ iD!ii'D p^"' Nin) ; but he 
 who wishes to lead a pure life is helped Divinely (Rashi 
 D^DQ?rr p Mi^^sD-")." Sin is here portrayed as entirely 
 in man's hand, outside the reach of omnipotence. 
 Man has the freedom of choice, and there is no 
 Divine interference. ^^^ The locus classicus for this 
 *' freedom-of-choice " teaching is the well-known Mishna 
 Aboth iii. 15, " Everything has been foreseen by God, yet 
 freedom of will has been given." The Rabbins firmly 
 believed that there would have been no meaning and no 
 virtue in morality, without this freedom of choice. The 
 Talmud contains the striking saying "ni:;^ inino h^iyn ^D 
 ^2^y^^ SiTi, " the greater the man is, the stronger is his 
 impulse to sin." ^"^ Not alone is sin here regarded as the 
 dragging-down tendency in all men, but it is actually 
 one of the marks by which a greater man is distinguished 
 from a lesser, and it is a feature of the constitution of 
 even the greatest among men. There are two different 
 strains of thought in Rabbinic literature which go 
 to prove their theory that morality is only made 
 possible through the possibility of man exercising 
 freedom of choice, in a conflict between good and 
 
314 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 evil motives. They are (1) statements on the Yetser 
 Tob and Yetser Ha-Ra, of which the following are 
 representative. Genesis Rabba ix. 7 : " R. Nahman, 
 son of Samuel son of Nahman, in the name of R. 
 Samuel son of Nahman, said, The words t^nd i*iio rran, 
 ' Behold it was very good ' {i.e. were it so written in 
 Genesis i. 31) would refer to the good impulse, but 
 the words tind ni£o rnrn, ' And behold it was very good ' 
 (as it is actually in Genesis i. 31) refer to the evil 
 impulse. Can then the evil impulse be truly said to be 
 very good ? This is a question ! The answer is Yes ! for 
 were it not for the evil impulse, man would not build a 
 house, neither would he get married, nor would he beget 
 children, nor would he follow any vocation in life. . . .* 
 R. Huna said, The words ' Behold it was very 
 good' {i.e. as before — were it written so in Genesis i. 
 31) refer to God's attribute of goodness, but the words 
 ' And behold it was very good,' refer to God's attribute 
 of punishment. Can then the attribute of punishment 
 be designated good ? The answer is Yes ! it is only 
 through it that men come to merit eternal life." The 
 implication of this paradoxical Midrash is this : Man 
 has an innate freedom of choice between the good and 
 the bad ; it is this fact that makes him a moral being. 
 But so necessary and indispensable is it for man's 
 morality, that he should ^ut forth the effort involved 
 in making this choice between the alternatives, that 
 even if, in some respects, he chooses the wrong alterna- 
 tive, the net result is not necessarily sin, for even an 
 occasional giving way to the Yetser Ha-Ra subserves a 
 high moral and religious purpose. But it is the struggle 
 
 * Yalkut on Psalm xxxvii. elaborates this idea. It is not the "Yetser Ha- 
 Ra" but " Kinnah " {nttip) that plays these parts. " Kinnah "= jealousy. 
 "Were it not for the existence of the sin of jealousy, the world would be 
 defunct. No man would plant a vineyard, nor would he build a house, nor 
 would he marry." It was Abram's jealousy of Melchizedec's philanthropy that 
 caused Abram's greatness. 
 
xxm SIN AND EVIL 315 
 
 involved in the choice that is the criterion.* Of course, 
 it must be remembered, in this connexion, that according 
 to the theology of the Rabbins, such acts as " building 
 a house," getting married, and begetting children are 
 not merely, as we nowadays regard them, part and 
 parcel of everyday morality, but facts of religion, 
 aspects of the religiously-led life answering the demands 
 of Heaven because they are ordained by Heaven. 
 The second part of the Midrash, justifying the doctrine 
 about a punitive God by reason of its being the 
 only means of causing man " to merit eternal life," 
 is a pictorial way of stating the great theological 
 truth, that pain is not a sign of Divine vindictiveness, 
 but a discipline at the hands of a merciful God. The 
 sufFerinffs of man are no contradiction to the Divine all- 
 
 o 
 
 goodness. They are portion of the larger plan of a God, 
 who, out of the very fact of His all-goodness, wants that 
 man may be the better induced to see wherein his own 
 soul's welfare resides, and thus ascend higher and higher 
 in the scale of religious and moral worth.^^^ 
 
 A more paradoxical form of this teaching is found 
 in a passage in Mishna Berachoth ix. (see also Sifri 
 on pnnN"), edit. Friedmann, p. 73), " And thou shalt love 
 the Lord thy God with all thy heart, i.e. T"!^"* ""^tiJi, 
 with thy two impulses, viz. the Yetser Tob and the 
 Yetser Ra."t The serving of God can only come to 
 man, as the outcome of the Yetser Tob's victory over 
 the Yetser Ra. It is in man's power to efifect this 
 victory, by means of his making the correct choice 
 between the alternatives. But while under the dominion 
 
 * This subject is admirably treated in a sermon by Mr. Israel Abrahams, on 
 pp. 102 et scq. oi Aspects of Judaism (M.a,Q,mi\\a,n, 1895). Mr. Abrahams quotes, 
 with telling effect, the passage in T. B. Berachoth 5a, " Ever let a man excite 
 (iut) his good yetser against his bad yetser." 
 
 t The reading here is not "Ha-Ra" but merely "Ra." Curiously enough, 
 the definite article ("Ha") is usually affixed to the "Ra," and usually omitted 
 from the "Tob." 
 
3i6 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 of his bad impulse, man is not necessarily cut off 
 from exercising his choice to serve God. Even the 
 Yetser Ra need not necessarily extinguish what ought 
 to be man's aspiring struggle to the possession of the 
 highest virtue. The evil is there, only that man may 
 mount, by means of it, to higher and better things. 
 
 (2) The Rabbinic teachings on Repentance delineate 
 the highest morality and religion as the fruits of a 
 rightful choice between two conflicting alternatives. 
 " Great," said one Rabbi, " is the efficacy of repentance, 
 for not even the most perfectly pious saint can stand 
 in the place where the repentant sinner stands." ^^^ 
 The basic thought underlying such a maxim is this : 
 The perfect saint is the man who has never experienced 
 the temptations of sin. He has never had to battle 
 within himself, as to which of the two conflicting 
 courses to take. Piety, rectitude, morality, religion 
 have all come to him naturally, as it were. They 
 are not the result of his soul's warfare with the 
 baser elements in his constitution, leading to a choice of 
 the better alternative. But the repentant sinner has 
 been in the thick of the battle and has emerged 
 victorious. He has exercised his God-given faculty 
 of freedom of choice. He has chosen virtue. He has 
 repented. The crux of repentance lies in this exercise 
 of choice. 
 
 But on further reflexion is not the perfect saint 
 who has never known sin a mere abstraction ? Do 
 we ever, except in the figments of our imagination, 
 meet with any one who has never experienced the 
 conflict between the motives of good and evil, and 
 who has never had occasion to hear the strains of that 
 indefinable inner voice which says Choose ? The 
 Rabbins were fully alive to the fact, that such a person 
 was an abstraction, an ideal figure. No man can be 
 
XXIII SIN AND EVIL 317 
 
 sinless. Therefore every man needs repentance. Hence 
 repentance is one of the corner-stones of Kabbinic 
 theology. It is the starting-point of all the virtues, 
 as the Rabbins understood them. It is the seed 
 out of which religious worth and moral goodness 
 grow. Without it, righteousness would be unthinkable, 
 and the barrier between man and God insuperable. 
 This teaching is illustrated over and over again in 
 the realms of Talmud and Midrashim. Repentance is a 
 feature in the work of all the world's best men ; it is 
 repentance, more than anything else, that has been the 
 prime fashioning and controlling influence. In T. B. 
 Pesahim 54a (cp. T. B. Nedarim 39b), it is one of seven 
 things created by God previous to the world's creation. 
 " Repentance reaches to the throne of God." " Repent- 
 ance brings healing to the world." " Repentance brings 
 nigh the redemption." These and many other similar 
 sayings in T. B. Yoma 86a, all point to the fundamental 
 efiicacy of repentance in the religious and moral 
 life of men. Perhaps the most remarkable is the 
 saying in Song of Songs Rabba vii. 5, " The King 
 Messiah is called Hadrach^^"^ {I'^iTi pNi in Zechariah 
 ix. 1) because he will lead all men in repentance 
 before God" (n'Vprr ^:dS ni^mni . . . T~i"rnS -i^ni?m). 
 The realisation of the Messianic coming was the acme 
 of spiritual hope to the Rabbis and their people. 
 I have already mentioned in a former portion of this 
 treatise, the potent mysticism which, in Rabbinical 
 literature, frequently attaches to names, particularly 
 the Divine name and the name of the Messiah. That 
 a Rabbi should actually derive the name of the Messiah 
 from his appointed mission as the great leader of men to 
 repentance, is a convincing demonstration of the Rabbinic 
 belief in the basic power of repentance in the religious 
 and moral life of mankind.^^'^ 
 
3i8 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 To sum up the argument in a few words. In 
 granting us freedom God has placed a fateful power 
 in our hands. He has opened the door to sin and 
 all the other evils that flesh is heir to. But God had 
 inevitably to act thus. It is the only means by 
 which man could take his true place as a moral and 
 spiritual being. It is the supreme testimony to the 
 benevolence of God, whose purpose it is that man 
 should, by his striving, by his failures, and his pains, 
 find out for himself the correct path which leads to 
 his physical, as well as spiritual, contentment. 
 
 And there is no contradiction between these facts 
 as they are, and the fact of an indwelling, immanent 
 God ! God abides among men. The technical term 
 by which this abiding is expressed, is Shechinah or Holy 
 Spirit. When men sin, they are ipso facto refusing to 
 listen to the inner voice of the abiding Shechinah 
 which urges them to choose the right and not the wrong 
 alternative. Sin is the stubborn resistance to that voice. 
 In the graphic language of the Midrash, the Shechinah 
 (and the same might be said of Holy Spirit) is ousted by 
 sin. Good men, however, are they who act in consonance 
 with the voice of the immanent God. Their characters 
 have been formed, refined, by the very fact of their 
 having been set down in a world where sin abounds, and 
 by the fact that they have chosen the right alterna- 
 tive. They bring the Shechinah back to earth again, 
 in the sense that they exactly express the Godhead 
 within them, and their example is the incitement to 
 an ever-increasing endeavour to make mankind the 
 focus, the receptacle of divinity. They are, to use the 
 technical expression, T\''i"'pn hm p|mm "i2?I'D, " Co-partners 
 with God." 
 
NOTES 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 319 
 
 (1) Philo, De Gigantibus," II. 
 
 (2) Another important aspect of angels in Philo is, of course, their 
 intercessory powers between man and God. In this respect, also, their 
 functions seem largely to coincide with that of the Logos. This is a 
 by no means easy branch of Philonic thought to understand. 
 
 (3) Rev. R. J. Campbell, The New Theology, pp. 22-23. 
 
 (4) R. A. Armstrong, God and the Soul^ ])p. 129, 130. 
 
 (5) Cp. lines of Browning : — 
 
 I can believe this dread niacliinery 
 
 Of Sin and sorrow (would confound me else) 
 
 Devised ... to evolve 
 
 By new machinery in counterpart, 
 
 The moral qualities in man — how else ? 
 
 To make him love and be beloved, 
 
 Creative and self-sacrificing too, 
 
 And this eventually god-like. 
 
 Quoted in R. E. Welsh. In Relief 0/ Doubf, p. 107. 
 
 (6) The Rabbins never really entered into the difficult problem 
 of reconciling their repeated statements on the Divine prescience with 
 their doctrines of the Freedom of the Will. They stated both em- 
 phatically but only spasmodically. They never faced the perplexities that 
 must arise from the double assumption. That Rabbinic theology is, on 
 the whole, a strong foe of Determinism is seen more particularly from 
 its teachings on Repentance. "Even before the world was created, 
 Repentance was called into being " (T. B. Pesahim 54a). This implies 
 that the very first act of creation was that of enabling man to change 
 his attitude towards God, for the better, i.e. freedom to use his will for 
 the better cause, with the implication of course that he had equal 
 freedom to refuse the call. Some of the modern determinist ethicists 
 make a great fuss about heredity as being the great bugbear to the 
 acceptance of freewill. There is much to be said for their view. The 
 Rabbins never touched this difficulty. God, said they, visits the 
 iniquities of the fathers upon the children only "when the children 
 follow the bad example of their parents." It did not seem to occur to 
 them that the children might possibly be dragged to do so involuntarily 
 as an effect of physical heredity. 
 
 The mediseval Jewish philosophers, however, like Saadiah, Jehuda 
 Ha-Levi, Maimonides, Hisdai Crescas, Joseph Albo and others faced 
 these metaphysical problems thoroughly, each one in his own way. 
 Maimonides deals with it in the Moreh, iii. 20, as well as in the con- 
 cluding chapter of his Eight Chapters. His conclusion is merely the 
 confession of human ignorance in face of the Divine secrets. Thus he 
 says : " To him therefore who foimds his argument in favour of pre- 
 destination on the omniscience and prescience of the Deity, we reply, 
 These His attributes and the manner in which they are exercised, are as 
 incomprehensible to thee as they are to us or to any other human bein» ; 
 and Holy Writ checks our impertinent inquisitiveness on these subjects 
 
320 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD ch. xxm 
 
 by admonisliing us, ' Can tliy researches define God ? Canst tliou 
 penetrate tlie purpose of the Ahnighty ?' (Job xi. 7)." (Translation from 
 Hebretv Review, vol. i. jj. 369. A free and none too acciu'ate translation, 
 but it expresses the ideas of the original.) 
 
 (7) In T. B. Sukkah 52a. 
 
 (8) Cp. T. B. Berachoth 5a the remark : " Pains purge the iniquities 
 of man." 
 
 (9) Cp. T. B. Berachoth 34b the remark : " What the prophets 
 prophesied referred only to the repentant sinners, but no eye hath yet 
 seen the perfect saint." The latter is a fiction. 
 
 (10) The connexion between imn and T"n.T is explained by saying 
 that the guttural letters "lynnx interchange. The student of Rabbinics 
 often comes across such methods of interpretations. The Commentary 
 njina nunc has a long disquisition on this passage in Song of Songs Rabba. 
 
 (11) For further references see the remarkably lucid monograph 
 on Repentance by Mr. C. G. Montefiore in J.Q.R. xvi. 209-257. There 
 are also several noteworthy quotations in Weber's Jiidische Theologie, 
 but one has to take them with caution by reason of Weber's dominant 
 desire to strip Rabbinism of spirituality and make it a religion of the 
 outward only. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 RABBINIC VIEWS OF PRAYER FROM THE STANDPOINT 
 OF DIVINE IMMANENCE 
 
 I HAVE had occasion many times to point out, that in 
 the Rabbinic religion, Transcendence and Immanence 
 form one combined aspect of the Deity. Deism is 
 repugnant to Rabbinism because it lays all its emphasis 
 upon the transcendent factor. Pantheism errs in the 
 other extreme. Resting itself as it does, upon the 
 exclusive doctrine of Immanence, it leaves no room 
 for a personal God, and it maintains (or runs close to 
 maintaining) an identity between God and the world, 
 which, for all practical purposes, amounts to a total 
 annihilation of religion. Is such an idea as prayer 
 possible to a Deist ? In giving the answer one would 
 have to distinguish between the fact of praying, and the 
 expectation of an answer to the prayer. As for the 
 latter, it is hard to see how it could fall within the 
 programme of the Deist. God has finished His work 
 in the world, and views its happenings with a far-off 
 concern. How can He intervene in the interests of His 
 suppliants, seeing that these interests hold no longer a 
 place in His mind ? But, yet, the fact of 'prayer to 
 the Deist is quite logically possible. An overwhelming 
 emotion of the moment might be the cause of some 
 broken heart pouring out its anguish, so that He might 
 possibly hear it, although when the emotion has subsided, 
 
 321 Y 
 
322 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 the suppliant would realise the impossible nature of his 
 act. But the fact might happen. Moreover, prayer 
 includes a good deal besides petition. It means the 
 adoration of God, it means the act of self-abasement at 
 the thought of the invincible holiness of God. And 
 the Deist might very well give expression to these 
 feelings. But to the Pantheist, prayer is not only 
 impossible, but its very act would involve a self- 
 contradiction. If God does not transcend the universe, 
 then He is nothing more than the universe ; and as we 
 are part of the universe and partially identical with 
 it, then we are part of God and partially identical with 
 Him. Accordingly it follows, that in praying to God 
 we are but praying to what is another name for our- 
 selves. It would be an act of self-worship ; and the act 
 of communion between ourselves and a Person greater 
 than ourselves — the chief constituent of prayer and the 
 corner-stone of every known religious system — is totally 
 absent. Then, again, from another standpoint, a basic 
 psychological factor in prayer is that movement of the 
 mind which culminates in aspiration. To pray is to 
 aspire, to aim at reaching something which one has not 
 yet reached. One of the favourite Biblical phrases 
 for prayer is that of " stretching out the hands," and 
 this is expressive of the physical concomitants of 
 the emotion of aspiration. The hands are thrust 
 forward as if to grasp something which, though dis- 
 tant, is yet attainable. Prayer thus involves always 
 an element of futurity. But the Pantheist, by the 
 very tenets of his creed, ignores or denies these factors 
 of aspiration or futurity. If God is so merged in the 
 universe that the most precious part of man, his soul, 
 is an integral constituent of God, then what need has 
 man's soul for the exercise of prayer? What need 
 has it to aspire ? What quest has it to make ? If it 
 
RABBINIC VIEWS OF PRAYER 323 
 
 already possesses God, then it has no need to set out 
 trying to get possession of Him. It has already reached 
 its goal before starting. Prayer can have no bettering 
 effects upon him who offers it, seeing that God is, at the 
 outset, as near the man who prays as He can be and as 
 He ever will be. To pray is to expect a condition of 
 thincjs different from what one has at the moment. 
 But if this condition of things is realised from the 
 first, then prayer is superfluous and impossible. 
 
 Thus prayer, in the highest and best sense, pre- 
 supposes a Deity who is at once transcendent and 
 immanent. The Rabbinic religion, as I have already 
 had occasion to state, several times, conceives of God 
 ever under these two aspects in strict combination. I 
 hope to show shortly how their doctrines about prayer 
 are framed on this assumption. 
 
 In modern times, one of the strongest barriers to the 
 belief in the utility of prayer is its supposed collision 
 with the established scientific truth of the uniformity 
 of Nature. Prayer, it is said, is based on the un- 
 scientific idea that there is something haphazard or 
 arbitrary in the ways of Nature. Rain is brought 
 about by certain atmospheric laws. Good health is the 
 result of obedience to sanitary laws. Death is determined 
 by physiological laws. Now, suppose some one prays to 
 God, asking His intervention in any of these, so that by 
 His instrumentality something should, or should not, 
 happen in these spheres, which by the very fundamental 
 nature of these laws must or T/msi not happen, as the 
 case may be, is it not totally absurd to think — so it 
 is often nowadays argued — that the indisputable reign 
 of law can be arrested by the caprice of an omnipotent 
 will ? Modern theologians, of course, have their answer. 
 What are the answers of Rabbinic theology to this 
 difiiculty ? 
 
324 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 According to the Eabbins, petition is only a part 
 of prayer. Prayer has always suffered from being 
 wrongly interpreted as a synonym for making requests. 
 It comprises ever so much more. There is a pregnant 
 saying on this head, in Deuteronomy Rabba ii. 1 as 
 follows : ni?itt) (1) \n *i^n"i, n^cn nN-)p2 niDimS n~i2)i? pnv i"n 
 HN^-ip (7), -i"iH^i (6), ni?^:iD (5), mi (4), rfpt^2 (3), np::^ (2), 
 D''3"i2nn (10), h^h^ (9), S"idd (8). R. Johanan said there 
 are ten synonyms for prayer : (1) and (2) cry (based 
 on Exodus ii. 23b, " And the children of Israel sighed 
 by reason of the bondage, and they cried (ipi?!5''"i) ; 
 and their cry (oni^iti?) came up unto God . . .") ; (3) 
 groaning (based on Exodus ii. 24, " And God heard 
 their groaning ") ; (4) and (5) cry and intercession (based 
 on Jeremiah vii. 16b, "neither lift up a cry (rr:i) for 
 them, neither make intercession " (i?lDn) to me) ; (6) and 
 (7) distress and calling (based on Psalm xviii. 6, "In 
 my distress ("isn ) I called (n~ipn) upon the Lord") ; (8) 
 "falling down" (based on Deut. ix. 18, "And I fell 
 down before the Lord"); (9) " executing judgment " 
 (based on Psalm cvi. 30, " Then stood up Phinehas, and 
 executed judgment" (SSd^i)) ; ^^^ (10) "beseeching" 
 (based on Deut. iii. 23, " And I besought (pnriNi) the 
 Lord, at that time, saying ").^"^ 
 
 Out of all these ten it is only the tenth (D''D*i3nn) 
 that belongs to the domain of pure request. Numbers 
 (1) (2) (3) merely refer to the simple act of com- 
 munion, the unloading of one's cares before God and 
 the conveying of them into His ear ; (4) and (8) are 
 the act of adoration, the word n^n, although trans- 
 lated "cry" in the A.V., literally = song, or song of 
 praise ; (5) refers to mediation ; (6) and (7) are of 
 the nature of aspiration ; (9) to righteous and just 
 dealing. This view is summarily put in a passage 
 preceding the Midrash just quoted, where we are told : 
 
RABBINIC VIEWS OF PRAYER 
 
 j^o 
 
 " I might have thought that man need only ask his 
 wants and that would suffice, but Solomon has already 
 made it clear in the words, ' To hearken unto the cry 
 and unto the prayer' (1 Kings viii. 28). Cry refers to 
 the adoration of God, prayer denotes the petition for 
 one's wants." Here " crying " and " praying " are really 
 meant to be the two constituent elements of prayer. 
 But it is noteworthy that not only does the adoration 
 element constitute half of prayer, but it also takes 
 precedence of the element of petition. 
 
 The point here is this : Petition, according to Rabbinic 
 ways of thinking, is only one department of prayer, 
 and not by any means the most important department. 
 Prayer is the spiritual action of the soul turned towards 
 God as its true and adequate object. It is a spiritual 
 intercourse with God. To utter requests, to tabulate 
 petitions, to compose prayerful words and songs is one 
 thing ; but to pray is to come into vital communion 
 with God. It is to have God by one's side : on one's 
 right hand, as the Scripture terms it ; it is to enter into 
 an actual fellowship with a Divine Companion ; it is to 
 experience the Presence of One with whom "eternal 
 strength and wisdom are." And, as a consequence, the 
 emotion that one experiences in prayer, is that of the 
 inrushing of a new life. A great refreshing comes over 
 mind and body, all sorts of potentialities and possibilities 
 are let loose so that the soul feels that it has a new 
 lease of vigour and energy, and the question whether 
 the prayer is objectively answered or not becomes of 
 quite secondary consequence. Prayer becomes its own 
 answer, its own reward. The assurance of the nearness 
 of God swamps all other considerations. Prayer is the 
 end as well as the means.* 
 
 * In T. B. Berachoth .32b there is a passage in the name of R. Hanina 
 recommending lengthy prayers (opn ninn inSsn px inVsni "inNnn bj). Another 
 passage is there quoted in the name of R. Johanan deprecating lengthy i>rayers 
 
326 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 Among the mediaeval theologians, Bahya has voiced the 
 mystical view of prayer in the following words : " It is meet, 
 my brother, that thou shouldst know that our object in prayer 
 is but the consummation of the soul's longing for God and its 
 humiliation before Him, coupled with its expressed exaltation 
 of the Deity, its bestowal of praise and gratitude upon His 
 name, and its casting of all its burdens upon Him." Fixed 
 forms of prayer were only invented, according to Bahya, in 
 order to guide the soul in its behaviour before its Maker, 
 because it is not given to every one to express his feelings 
 in words which would be seemly to the King of Kings. And 
 when language fails, thought also fails ; the only incentive to 
 thought is the ability to express thought. This, by the way, 
 is an accepted modern psychological truth. Therefore, says 
 Bahya, man's communion with God customarily runs along 
 the lines of stereotyped formulae of prayer. But this need not 
 he soP^ Prayer can be an affair of the heart, without any 
 words at all, "^^^ '^)^y^r^ Sn T"i2 "iD"'N p3^ni/*^ " The sub- 
 ject of the prayer requires no words in such a case where it 
 is possible to compose it entirely in the heart. The latter 
 comprises the essence of our communion, and is the stay 
 upon which our object in prayer must rest." In support of 
 this statement, Bahya quotes the Eabbinical ordinance : ni?l 
 '^^'^ *il^n imnn ^"ip S:>n pnin. " In the time of emergency, 
 he who is ritually unclean may meditate his prayer in his 
 heart, and need not say the necessary benedictions, neither 
 before nor after it." " Prayer," says Bahya in the same chapter, 
 " is a sign of God's good faith in thee and a pledge of His ; for 
 He has given its context into thy hand and placed it in thy 
 power." In this view, prayer is the movement of God to man 
 rather than the reverse. And this of course is perfectly 
 correct. For prayer is ultimately based on love, and " no soul 
 can possibly know that it loves God and not at once infer that 
 God loved it first ; ... if therefore we, imperfect and puny, 
 
 as leading to disappointment (nS 3N3 n'S ki «]id). The difficulty is got over by 
 saying that it all depends npon whether the suppliant is rtn p'vo. This, accord- 
 ing to Rashi, means that "he who prays looks anxiously forward to the fulfil- 
 ment of his request by reason of the lengthiness of his prayer." We seem to 
 have here a good instance of the mystical as opposed to the petitioning side of 
 Rabbinic prayer. Make a long prayer if you like, but don't do so because 
 you think you will gain something thereby ! See also T. B. Berachoth 55a. 
 
XXIV RABBINIC VIEWS OF PRAYER 327 
 
 in truth love Him who is unseen and dimly known, how much 
 more does He, who cannot overlook us, assuredly love us, not 
 indeed because we deserve it, but because it is part of His 
 own nature's perfection ? " ^^^ It follows from all Bahya's 
 arguments on this head, that the groundwork of prayer is the 
 felt inner necessity to pray. We pray, in the last resort, 
 because we feel that we ought to pray. It is not petition but 
 communion. It is not begging but thanksgiving. We want to 
 mingle our spirit with His, and prayer is the only instrument 
 for doing this. The very act of prayer gives us the assurance 
 that if we have any needs or requests to be fulfilled, they will 
 be fulfilled quite apart from the asking. The very adoration 
 of the Being who vouchsafes His loving companionship to us 
 at all times when we need Him, begets in us the consciousness 
 that He knows our burdens even without our uttering them. 
 And this adoration is prayer. 
 
 Let us now see how these ideas are reflected in the 
 Rabbinical teachings. In T. B. Ta'anith 2a it is said, 
 "'^y\ n'^ntn miii? ntt irw, " What service is heart-service ? 
 Prayer." If prayer is a heart-service, it cannot be 
 other than a seeking after God for what He is, and 
 not for what He gives. It is a panting, not for gifts, 
 but for the consciousness of the God-presence. In 
 T. B. Berachoth 30b, R. Eliezer says : D~rN "nc^ nh^:h 
 "iD"i losi? riN. " A man should take an estimate of himself 
 (previous to praying). If he finds that he will be able to 
 feel a real heart-devotion (plD^:'), then he may pray. If he 
 finds that he cannot, then he must not pray." For want 
 of a better word in English, the word ]iidS, or its noun 
 n:i"iD are invariably rendered " devotion." It is only in 
 the mysticism of the mediaeval Kabbalah, that justice is 
 done to the real drift of the word " Kavanah." This 
 can be seen by a glance at those Prayer- Books which 
 contain, either in marginal notes, or in the body of the 
 text, the "'isn "^d h:) ni3"iiD, " meditations according to the 
 view of R. Isaac Luria of blessed memory." The true 
 
328 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 " Kavanah " means the abandonmeDt, for the time 
 being, of all mundane thoughts and of all physical 
 necessities, in the unalloyed consciousness of a union 
 with God. What often passes now for " Kavanah " is 
 only a faint and ofttimes a spurious imitation of 
 the real thing. What the Rabbins actually intended 
 when they laid it down, as in T. B. Berachoth 13a, b, 
 that n^^iD niD"'i2 niso, or when R. Simeon, voicing 
 their view, remarked (Aboth ii. 18), "And when thou 
 prayest do not make thy prayer a fixed task " (I'lp), was 
 a mystical communion in which the soul bows down 
 in adoration before its Maker, without any necessary 
 thought of eliciting a favour.^^^ And it is some 
 such interpretation that best suits the recurring 
 Rabbinical saying about the reading of the " Shema " 
 being " a receiving upon oneself of the yoke of the 
 kingdom of heaven." The reading of the " Shema " 
 and the reading of nSon (Prayer), stand on very much 
 the same level in the Rabbinical codes. The prescrip- 
 tions hedging round each, are largely identical. Hence, 
 it is no undue deduction to say, that prayer in their 
 opinion is a " receiving upon oneself of the yoke of the 
 kingdom of heaven " * — a mystical expression for the 
 closest possible spiritual contact with God.^^^ 
 
 Other illustrations of the preceding views are the 
 following : In T B. Berachoth 29b, R. Eliezer permits a 
 brief prayer (in place of the statutory Eighteen Benedic- 
 tions) in the case of one who is in fear of attack from 
 brigands. And the prayer he suggests is this : " Do Thy 
 will in heaven above, and give contentment of spirit to 
 those who fear Thee beneath, and do that which is good 
 in Thine eyes. Blessed art Thou, Lord, who hearest 
 prayer." There is simple communion here without the 
 least notion of material gifts. In T. B. Berachoth 34b we 
 
 * In a passage in T. B. Berachoth 10b, prayer is actually so called. 
 
XXIV RABBINIC VIEWS OF PRAYER 329 
 
 read : "It was said concerning R. Hanina b. Dosa, that 
 when he used to pray on belialf of the sick, he used to 
 say, ' This one will recover and live, but that one will die.' 
 When they said to him, ' How do you know this ? ' he 
 used to reply, ' If my prayer is fluent upon my lips then 
 I know that it is accepted, but if it is not fluent, then 
 I know that it is rejected.' " This is one of the most 
 cogent illustrations possible, of prayer being an end 
 in itself, its own reward, the act of communion success- 
 fully accomplished and with no admixture of objective 
 expectation, 
 
 T. B. Sanhedrin 22b says : " He who prays must 
 regard the Shechinah as standing over against him, 
 as it is said (Psalm xvi.), ' I have set the Lord before 
 me continually.' " Taking " Shechinah " as denoting 
 the idea of an immanent God, it is clear, that the 
 object of this saying is to emphasise the nearness of 
 the Deity, the possibility of maintaining a close fellow- 
 ship with Him through the medium of prayer. God 
 is not the far-otf unapproachable monarch who has 
 to be petitioned. One can only commune with a 
 Shechinah, and not with a transcendent God. 
 
 The point, then, which we have attained by the pre- 
 ceding discussion is this : Firstly, it has been shown 
 that prayer, in the Rabbinic view, must be based on the 
 assumption of Transcendence and Immanence combined. 
 Prayer is always addressed to a Person, a Person far 
 mightier and far better than he who prays, a Person 
 whose power to help or save, far exceeds that which we 
 can attribute to any mundane being or to any of the 
 impersonal powers vested in the universe. Here is Tran- 
 scendence. But prayer gives also the assurance of 
 the nearness of God, His abiding fellowship and com- 
 panionship, and the ever-possible joys of communion. 
 The basis of prayer is the likeness of the human soul to 
 
330 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 God, and its capacity of love. For love is an emana- 
 tion of Grod, and makes prayer possible through love's 
 eternal longings for union with its source. Here is 
 Immanence. Secondly, it has been shown from the 
 numerous Rabbinical illustrations adduced, that com- 
 munion rather than petition, is a substantial constituent 
 of prayer, and that this communion is self-sufficient and 
 self-satisfying. The satisfaction of prayer is not always 
 the realisation of the outward. The communion is an 
 end in itself, and the thrill of new inward vigour and 
 blessedness that it infuses into the suppliant is often 
 the supreme answer to the prayer. 
 
 But is it not obvious to even the tyro in Rabbinical 
 literature, that the element of petition, although absent 
 from a large portion of both public and private prayer, 
 is present in very great degree in many instances, as is 
 clear from the traditional Jewish liturgy ? What answer, 
 then, does Rabbinic theology afford to the difficulty 
 created by the allegation of prayer being an attempt 
 to persuade the Deity to interfere with the reign of 
 inexorable natural law which holds sway in the 
 universe ? 
 
 Rabbinical thought is largely based upon the O.T. 
 idea that the natural phenomena of the world are 
 the messengers or agents of God. " Fire and hail ; 
 snow and vapour ; stormy wind fulfilling His word " 
 (Psalm cxlviii. 8). Natural law is part of God's regular- 
 ised working. It is what we see and feel of His free- 
 will as it acts on the universe. The uniformity of 
 nature proves the perfect symmetry with which the 
 moral and intelligent Artist of the universe works. To 
 think that God could not grant an event to come to 
 pass because it is contrary to what we know, is to 
 make the Creator a slave, bound hand and foot by 
 that which He has created. It is to limit His omni- 
 
XXIV RABBINIC VIEWS OF PRAYER 331 
 
 potence, curb His freedom, and deny His Transcendence. 
 If, however, we willingly concede Him these three 
 qualities, why should we hesitate to think that He is 
 capable of superseding the working of some lower 
 natural law, by the working of some higher natural law, 
 and thus fulfil the petition of one who prays to Him ? 
 Were we to adopt the immanent theory exclusively, 
 there would certainly be cause for hesitation and doubt, 
 because, as has been already shown, in any pantheistic 
 form of religious thought there is little room for prayer. 
 But with a theory of Transcendence and Immanence 
 combined, the position should be intelligible. If God 
 transcends the world, then there must necessarily be 
 certain portions of His workings that are entirely 
 beyond our ken — a goodly number of natural laws 
 *' doing the word " of the supreme Author of nature 
 must be, as yet, unrevealed to us. Surely this lack of 
 knowledge on our part gives us no passport to doubt 
 or deny. 
 
 A significant passage from Genesis Rabba xii. 1 runs as 
 follows : " It is written (Job xxvi. 14), ' Lo, these are as 
 parts of His ways ; but how little a portion is heard of 
 Him ? But the thunder of His power who can under- 
 stand ? ' R. Huna said all that thou seest is but part of 
 the ways of God. . . . But the thunder of His power who 
 can understand ? R. Huna said no man can under- 
 stand anything about the thunder at the time that it 
 comes out upon the world. . . . R. Huna further said, 
 if it is impossible to understand its [i.e. the thunder's] 
 workings, how much more impossible is it to understand 
 the working of the universe ? " It is upon this human 
 inability to grasp the whole of the Divine scheme of 
 things, that prayer is based. The proved uniformity of 
 natural laws is no contradiction to the idea that there is a 
 resourcefulness about an immanent and transcendent God 
 
S32 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 which men's ingenuity is too poor to explore. If only 
 we knew more, we should see harmony where now we 
 suspect opposition. Law is only our limited way of 
 conceiving the operations of the Divine World- Spirit. 
 God's work includes far more.* 
 
 But it will be asked, What about the " special provi- 
 dences " which figure so largely in the Rabbinic theology 
 of prayer ? How can these be brought into line with 
 the established modern notions not only of the un- 
 changeableness of natural law, but also, the unchange- 
 able goodness of God ? No one nowadays thinks of 
 regarding the Deity otherwise than from the stand- 
 point of the Psalmist's declaration, that " God is good 
 unto all, and His mercy is upon all His works." The 
 idea of God granting special favours, special privileges, 
 special exemptions to certain individuals or classes of 
 men in response to their prayers is becoming increasingly 
 hard to reconcile with the modern conceptions of the un- 
 varying universal Divine love and the unvarying wisdom 
 and justice of His decrees. If e.g. one man prays to be 
 vouchsafed a large share of worldly prosperity, and the 
 prayer is granted, it means that either God will exert a 
 special interference with the natural laws governing 
 the productivity of the soil, or with the economic 
 laws governing demand and supply, or it involves 
 taking away aught of what another man tries to get, 
 and the granting of preferential treatment to one above 
 another. In all these cases, even if the problem of 
 Divine intervention with law were got over in the way 
 stated above, we should still be faced with the duty of 
 explaining, how such prayers can be efticacious, when 
 they involve an assumption which conflicts with the 
 modern scientific conception of a good God ? 
 
 The problems raised were not unfamiliar to the 
 
 * See, on this point, the Pcsilfta liabhati (edit. Friedmann), p. 189. 
 
xx.v RABBINIC VIEWS OF PRAYER 333 
 
 Rabbins. The prayers which suggest these problems 
 may be classified as follows : — 
 
 (a) Private prayers by individuals for their own 
 private ends, such as health, prosperity, safety from 
 enemies, recovery from disease. The technical name 
 for these is rD~i!i n^"'NQ>, " asking for his necessities." 
 These prayers were mostly extemporised ; their sub- 
 stance depended on exactly what the individual felt at 
 the moment of prayer. But most noteworthy is the 
 fact, they were not to constitute the whole of a man's 
 petitions. They were to be inserted at certain points in 
 the canonical Eighteen Benedictions. The favourite 
 place for inserting them was within the benediction 
 called nhiin i?D^ti?. The following statement in T. B. 
 Berachoth 31a bears this out : " R. Hiya son of Ashi 
 said in the name of Rab, that although they [the sages] 
 said that a man must petition for his necessities in the 
 nhsn i?Di2?, yet, if, after his prayers [i.e. after the fixed 
 Eighteen Benedictions], he wishes to utter petitions as 
 long and numerous as the Abodah of the Kippur Day, 
 he is at liberty to do so." Thus, private petitions for 
 favours did not occupy the highest rung on the ladder 
 of prayer. 
 
 (h) Private prayers by individuals for needs of the 
 collective body of Israel. These consisted of (1) the 
 Eighteen Benedictions ; (2) certain additional petitions 
 for the collective welfare, of which we have some very 
 fine specimens on pages 16b, 17a of T. B. Berachoth, 
 including those of R. Eliezer, R. Johanan, R. Zera, R. 
 Hiya, Rab (Abba Arika) R. Judah the Prince, R. Saphra, 
 R. Alexandri, Raba, and R. Shesheth. It is noteworthy 
 that the staple of these prayers is for spiritual rather 
 than for material blessings. 
 
 (c) Public prayers in synagogues. These include 
 not only the " petition-for-favours " element, but also 
 
334 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 such constituents of purer prayer as adoration, thanks- 
 giving, confession, praise, aspiration, etc. 
 
 (d) Prayers by individuals or communities for the 
 granting of a special favour which involves some Divine 
 interference with the phenomena of the natural world, 
 chiefly rain, of which we have instances in T. B. 
 Ta'anith/'^ 
 
 This classification shows that (l) private petition 
 occupies a place of only secondary prominence ; (2) 
 prayer is for spiritual as much as for material blessings ; 
 (3) prayer counts, among its factors, other acts of 
 worship, as adoration, praise, etc., which, as has been 
 hitherto remarked, are part and parcel of all mystical 
 communion with the Deity. But we also find (l) the 
 idea of God being moved to grant special indulgences 
 as the consequence of some one's prayer, which must, in 
 the long-run, result in injury to some one else. Success 
 here must involve failure there. How can this be recon- 
 ciled with the conception of a uniformly good God ? (2) 
 The idea of God interfering with the universal rules 
 which govern natural phenomena, on the petition of an 
 individual or community or nation, whereby while the 
 suppliant or suppliants are revelling in the enjoyment 
 of a specially-vouchsafed boon, others are enduring the 
 pangs of drought or hunger or of some other defect or 
 excess of nature's visitations. 
 
 The answers which seem the most plausible are 
 as follows : — 
 
 (a) Prayers are mostly in the plural. It is the 
 community of Israel that prays. When material 
 benefits are prayed for, they are accordingly benefits 
 for the whole congregation. This conclusion can be 
 demonstrated from many ancient passages in the Jewish 
 Liturgy. Hence, the praying for extra boons involves 
 no injury to any section or individual of the body. 
 
XXIV RABBINIC VIEWS OF PRAYER 335 
 
 But, of course, when the broader issue of the inclusion 
 of non-Jews as well as Jews in the prayer is faced, then 
 the matter wears a different aspect. Rabbinism suffers 
 from the shackles of a communal individualism. To 
 the Rabbins a non-Jew was often a rebel against God. 
 This particularism can largely be explained and justified 
 on the grounds of the political and social treatment 
 which the Jews endured at the hands of a non-Jewish 
 environment. But the Rabbins often rose superior to 
 their national exclusiveness. And the very fact that they 
 could do so in some instances, sufficiently proves that 
 they might have done so in all instances, had material 
 circumstances not introduced an element of bitterness 
 and repugnance into their attitude. 
 
 (b) It will be noticed that in private prayers recited 
 by individuals, petitioning for worldly success or triumph 
 over enemies, in many instances the request is not that 
 the enemy should be crushed in the fray, but that God 
 should fill his heart with a different spirit, so as to turn 
 his opposition into love. The suppliant realised the 
 goodness of God to all, and what he wanted was that 
 all men should, by realising what this goodness meant, 
 become good themselves. Thus prayer becomes aspira- 
 tion : to pray for triumph in life's battle is to whisper, 
 as it were, into God's ear, asking Him to make all men 
 as brothers ; and where such love abounds, there is 
 plenty for every one, and happiness and triumph is the 
 portion of every one's cup. 
 
 (c) The Divine Fatherhood occupies a great place 
 in Rabbinic prayer. Men are in the position of 
 children towards their father. The child formulates 
 requests of all kinds, some which are rightful and 
 discreet, and therefore deserve to be answered ; others, 
 which to the greater wisdom of the father appear 
 obnoxious, and if answered would be fraught with 
 
336 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 injury either to the child or to others or to both, 
 must for ever remain unanswered. So it is with 
 prayers directed to the Divine Father. We throw 
 ourselves upon His wider knowledge.* We tabulate our 
 wants, and some of them are thoughtless and others 
 savour of greed. But all the while we know that God 
 will exercise His wisdom before granting them. We 
 know that He will only be moved to grant what is 
 expedient, and will certainly reject the supplication that 
 is importunate and unseemly. In fact, we believe that 
 God reads the wishes of our hearts even before we 
 express them in words.f And yet, we pray ! Why ? 
 Because we yearn to put ourselves en rapport with 
 God. We want to have conscious communion with 
 Him. We feel it an inestimable privilege to draw 
 ourselves so near Him, and to draw Him so near 
 us, by the cords of prayer. It is this very fact that 
 constitutes the quintessence, not only of the act of 
 prayer, but of the answer to prayer. Energies which 
 before were latent, now become operative. We feel that 
 we have transacted something ; and although we do 
 not know how, we are nevertheless assured that 
 there has been some objective response to our petition. 
 The final test in all these is, after all, our experience. 
 When the Jewish mother has uttered a prayer for 
 the recovery of her sick child, however deeply she 
 may realise the truth that God cannot be expected to 
 alter the laws of nature for her or her child's sake, yet 
 her experience is that of having effected something for 
 
 * As e.g. in T. B. Berachoth 29b: "The wants of Thy people Israel are 
 many, and their intelligence (cnim) is small." This is certainly a childlike 
 attitude. The child cannot tell his ailment to his father, cannot locate his 
 pain. And the father knows what is good and what is not good for the child, 
 far better than the child knows. 
 
 t T. B. Yebamoth 64a says, "God yearns for the prayer of the righteous." 
 This implies that God knows beforehand what the righteous suppliant desires 
 from Him, but yet He wants him to pray. God desires the communion with 
 man, hence man reciprocates it. 
 
XXIV RABBINIC VIEWS OF PRAYER 337 
 
 the better. And the volume of human testimony to 
 this experience is too considerable to be set aside as a 
 thin or of nought. 
 
 (c/) There is an interdependence of faith and works 
 in the Rabbinic theology. So in prayer, its ideal is 
 found in the closest possible combination with works. 
 Thus, we ask God for such and such a favour. To 
 expect it might, to the outsider, seem to expect some- 
 thing which is an unwarrantable interference with 
 the laws of nature. But what really happens is this : 
 the prayer is the great incentive to our endeavouring to 
 do our part in making possible the obtaining of that 
 for which we ask. We ask for fertile fields and fruitful 
 orchards. But, in the asking, we imply that we will do 
 our share of human labour in tilling the soil, watering 
 and manuring it, and studying the necessary climatic 
 conditions which govern the land. We ask for abundant 
 success in commercial enterprises. But the asking must 
 be accompanied by silent inner endeavour that we will 
 put forth the necessary act of will in so far as it is 
 incumbent upon us to do.^^^ And not only so, but it 
 implies that our act of will must be en rapport with 
 the Divine will. And thus prayer leads us on to a 
 self-sanctification in the conduct of life.* It encourages 
 us to look for results which lie quite outside the range 
 of ordinary expectation, provided we realise what a 
 power there lies in our own work. 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 (1) The Targum has '"^si " and prayed." The idea of judgment is 
 seen better in Exodus xxi. 22, d''7''?33 ;n3i. 
 
 (2) In Sifri on janriKi this passage is given, but with one or two 
 different expressions. Twelve names for prayer are there mentioned, 
 
 * Perhaps it is this aspect of the efficacy of i)rayer which is alluded to iu 
 T. B. Berachoth 32b, " Prayer is gi-eater than good deeds." For a full treat- 
 ment of the subject of Rabbinic prayer, the reader is referred to the able essay 
 by Israel Abrahams in J.Q.R. vol. xx. 
 
 Z 
 
338 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 not ten (see Friedmann's edition, p. 70). In Yalkut on same passage, 
 as many as tliirteen are enumerated. In Tanhuma (edition Buber) only 
 nine are given. 
 
 (3) See niizhn main in can jUB-n nj?B', chapter iii. Cp. W. G. Greg 
 {The Creed of Christendom, p. 122): "Communion with God, we must 
 ever bear in mind, is something very different from prayer for 
 specific blessings, and often confers the submissive strength of soul for 
 which we pray ; and we believe it will be found that the higher our 
 souls rise in their spiritual progress, the more does entreaty merge into 
 thanksgiving, the more does petition become absorbed in communion 
 with the ' Father of the spirits of all flesh.' " 
 
 (4) Cp. on fixed forms of prayer Maimonides, nSsn '"?.!, chapter i. 
 He says : n.tb' ni.t id it niso avn nVn • ■ • "m pnnn qin. The divisions 
 here are (i.) supplication, (ii.) praise, (iii.) petition for needs, (iv.) 
 gratitude, (v.) impromptu utterance (implied in ihd 's'? nnx hj, i.e. in 
 no fixed formula of prayer). It is clear that according to Maimonides, 
 petition only formed a comparatively small element in prayer. That 
 Maimonides was a great supporter of extemporaneous unfixed form of 
 prayer is seen from his following remarks, into which we shall not here 
 enter (i. 3). He gives, as the reasons for fixed prayers, the fact that 
 after the Exile the Jews became intermixed with many nations and thus 
 came to speak many languages. But the average Jew was never so 
 thoroughly conversant with any one language as to be able to give com- 
 plete utterance to his prayer in that language. And his Hebrew know- 
 ledge was none too great. Consequently he would intermix his Hebrew 
 wording with phrases belonging to other languages, and thus confusion 
 would arise. This gave the impetus to Ezra and his followers to fix the 
 Eighteen Benedictions. And after these came other prayers, so that there 
 was a fixed uniformity of prayer for all Israel and no one had to depend 
 on his own powers of extemporisation. 
 
 (5) F. W. Newman, The Soul, its Sorrows and Aspirations (6d. edition, 
 pp. 193-194). 
 
 (6) This idea of nm:: plays a great part in the Rabbinic maxims 
 and doctrines about Prayer. See e.g. Mishna Berachoth vi. about 
 the D'Jicxnn an^nn. Further references are given in the article 
 " Kavanah " in Jewish Encyclopaedia, vii. ; also at foot of the article on 
 Liuia in vol. viii. For n:m niDns msD cp. also T. B. Megillah 20a, 
 Hullin 31a, b. 
 
 (7) This interpretation of the exceedingly difficult phrase " Kingdom 
 of Heaven" is, of course, open to question. As a matter of fact, the 
 phrase seems to embrace not one or two but a number of differing 
 teachings. Bousset {Die Religion des Judenthums im N.T. Zeitalter, pp. 
 199-203) dwells on these. Thus, in the O.T. it refers at times to a 
 future kingship of God, and at times to a present one. Examples 
 of the latter are Psalm cxlv. 13, "Thy kingdom is an everlasting 
 kingdom, and Thy dominion endureth throughout all generations " ; 
 Daniel iv. 34, " Whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His 
 kingdom is from generation to generation." Examples of the former 
 are Obadiah 21, "And the kingdom shall be the Lord's"; Micah iv. 7, 
 
XXIV NOTES 339 
 
 " And the Lord shall reign over them in Mount Zion from henceforth, 
 even for ever " ; Zechariah xiv. 9, " And the Lord shall be King over all 
 the earth." These are only a selected few out of quite a number. In 
 Apocryphal and Apocalyptic literature, as Bousset points out, it also 
 bears the same double meaning. In all probability each of the O.T. 
 writei-s who used the phrase meant something different by it. In the 
 Rabbinical writings the A'ariations in meaning are greater. They may 
 be roughly classified as follows : (a) the acceptance of the Torah by the 
 Israelites at Sinai ; (6) the abandonment of idolatry ; (c) the advance 
 from slavery to freedom, i.e. the throwing off the yoke of man to assume 
 the yoke of the kingdom of God ; {d) the recognition by the Jew of God's 
 unity ; (e) the Jewish national hope in Roman times to be delivered 
 from the yoke of Rome ; (/) the Jewish longing for the universal 
 recognition of the Jewish God (as reflected in the " Kaddish " and 
 " Allenu " prayers, and New Year services). Examples of all these 
 could be easily culled from the domains of the Rablnnic literature. 
 It is however quite possible to ascribe a mystical meaning to many a 
 Rabbinic usage of the expression. In taking upon himself the Kingdom 
 of God, the Jew undoubtedly thought of the nearness of God to him 
 and of the Divine companionship which ever enshrouded him and 
 his race. Such is the view of Nahmanides in his commentary on Deut. 
 xxxiii. 5, " And he was king in Jeshurun." That it forms part of the 
 mysticism of prayer is seen from the passage in T. B. Berachoth 10b 
 where it is said : " Whosoever eats and drinks previous to praying, of 
 him it is said, And me hast thou cast behind thy back (1 Kings xiv. 9). 
 Do not say * thy back ' (^'ja) but ' thy pride ' (i'Kh), i.e. after priding himself 
 (with food and drink) this man takes upon himself the Kingdom of 
 Heaven." 
 
 (8) This subject is elaborated with great fulness throughout the 
 tractate T. B. Ta'anith. The whole of the second chapter deals 
 with the circumstances, conditions, ceremonials, etc., surrounding the 
 fasting which was indulged in by individuals and communities 
 in order to invoke the Divine gift of rain. The large miraculous 
 element, as in the tale of [viu p psnpj (one of three philanthropists in the 
 first century A.D., cVcnu vn pavVa ":, see Gittin 56a, Lam. Rabba i, 5, etc.) 
 in the third chapter, is another significant illustration of the point. 
 More noteworthy are remarks in the first chapter, like nD:-i3 Tn* S'ae'a nan 
 Q'aT S'^B-a (9a), or msj; 'jsa T'ln iS neny n'li'pn pnsii pns; ^ac nsSo (9b). The 
 Rabbins evidently drew a potent distinction between the relative efficacy 
 of private and public prayer. Whether their scattered remarks on this 
 head are merely the sporadic utterances of different teachers with no 
 connecting thread of a common thought, or whether they are the 
 expressions of different phases of some fixed theological theories on prayer, 
 is hard to prove. A collection of all the passages might possibly lead 
 one to the latter view. 
 
 (9) Significant is the remark in Aboth De R. Nathan xxi. (edit. 
 Schechter) that Gotl did not make His Shechinah to rest upon the 
 Israelites in the desert, until they had put their hands to the work of 
 the Tabernacle. 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 THE COMPATIBILITY OF MYSTICISM AND 
 RABBINIC THEOLOGY 
 
 Rabbinic theology possesses a strongly pronounced 
 mystical element, because, as the preceding pages have 
 tried to show, it teaches the doctrine of the Immanence 
 of God, and the Immanence of God is the central 
 core of mysticism. What has always to be borne in 
 mind is the distinction between what one might term 
 official mysticism, i.e. mysticism as an occult science, 
 the mysticism of the Kabbalah, its theosophy, the 
 doctrines of the professional mystics, and a plainer 
 and more general teaching about the possibility of 
 man's communion with God, and the reality of the bond 
 uniting God to man at all times. It is this broad 
 and comprehensive aspect of mysticism which has con- 
 stituted the staple of the present treatise, although, as 
 has already been shown earlier in these pages, many of 
 the recondite doctrines which pervade the mediaeval 
 Kabbalistic literature can be clearly traced back to the 
 Talmud and Midrashim. 
 
 Mysticism, of whatever phase, must by its very 
 nature be the most individualistic type of religion. The 
 mystic believes in God not because he has been taught 
 to believe in Him, whether by books or by men, but 
 because he can experience God. It is his own intellect 
 in combination with his own feeling that makes God 
 
 340 
 
CH. XXV RABBINIC MYSTICISM 341 
 
 a reality to him. There is a contact between human 
 spirit and Divine spirit. And this contact, to him, is an 
 immediate and self-verified conviction. It is something 
 that goes on in the silence of his own souL No one 
 else can know what it is in the way that he does. It 
 is a subjective fact. His neighbour may have it or 
 he may not have it. But what he knows and feels of 
 God is exclusively his. His worship of God and his 
 praying to Him are the result of his oivn realisation 
 of the Divine Presence in him and in the universe in 
 so far as he himself can judge. On these first-hand 
 perceptions — and on these alone — is his religion based. 
 All else is beside the mark. The religion of authority, 
 of tradition, of history, as embodied in books or codes, 
 makes no appeal to him. It is second-hand and doubtful. 
 Now, can such things be said of the Jew who lived 
 under an obedience to the religion of the Rabbis ? 
 The question is vital. One of the distinguishing marks 
 of Rabbinical Judaism, is its persistent and pervading 
 formalism. It is a superimposed discipline. It gives 
 little room for individual initiative. The individual has 
 to sink his own idiosyncrasies and merge himself in the 
 main body. The external plays a dominating part. 
 Authority looms large everywhere. History and 
 tradition lay down their prescriptions, and exact a 
 uniformity of homage. Experimental religion is over- 
 shadowed. The Jew has to believe that which his 
 brethren in faith believe. He has to pray the set 
 prayers which they pray ; he has to observe the 
 ceremonies, and respect the traditions, which they 
 observe and respect. In the face of these facts, how 
 can the existence of a mystical element in the Rabbinic 
 theology be consistently maintained ? 
 
 In the great work of Baron Von Hligel which has 
 already been alluded to more than once in these pages. 
 
342 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 there is an illuminating chapter (vol. i. chap, ii.) in 
 which he shows how all religions, as they emerge from 
 their common anterior stage of fetichism, gather round 
 them elements which belong to tradition, history, and 
 the social relations of men and nations generally. 
 " Never has religion," says he, " been purely and entirely 
 individual ; always has it been as truly and necessarily 
 social and institutional, traditional and historical." 
 The growth of religion amongst the paramount races of 
 mankind, is analogous to the gradual development, by 
 stages, of the powers of thought and feeling in the 
 human mind. The child accepts facts because they are 
 told him. This, that, and the other, are true or untrue, 
 desirable or the reverse, just because his father or nurse 
 or tutor tells him so. What makes its appeal to him 
 and imprints itself on his memory, are external scenes. 
 The words spoken by some one in authority over him 
 impress him, and elicit an unquestioning obedience. 
 He has not the faculty to individualise, to sift for 
 himself, to challenge what he has been told or what 
 he has seen by ideas or truths of his own formation. 
 These capacities come only with the next stage. As the 
 child grows into a youth, another factor comes into play 
 — the mystery of his personality. He refuses to take 
 uncritically what he sees and what others tell him. 
 He begins to argue and form opinions of his own. He 
 gets to understand that these opinions are his own, and 
 have no necessary relation with the opinions of others. 
 In this way he develops an outlook upon life. He 
 co-ordinates and classifies facts and ideas, sifting the 
 true from the false, the good from the bad. He 
 systematises. In short, he thinks. Then comes the 
 third stage, when the multiplicity of sense-impressions 
 combined with the complex processes of cognition 
 and reflexion issue in volition and emotion. Thinking, 
 
RABBINIC MYSTICISM 343 
 
 feeling, and acting, properly so called, are all brought 
 into existence. And then the human character is 
 completed. 
 
 But, although all this is a true and scientific account 
 of the natural history of the mind's growth, it must not 
 be supposed that these three stages never overlap. 
 They do. Some rudiments of the one are always to be 
 found in the other. The infant is not exclusively given 
 up to sense -impressions. Some germs of the higher 
 processes of cognition and will-power certainly invade 
 his mental world. And, conversely, the highest and 
 most elaborated volitional effort of the adult, is never at 
 any moment free from an admixture of the elementary 
 sense-impressions which characterise childhood. 
 
 Religions grow by stages analogous to these. There 
 is, firstly, the primitive stage, when men believed simply 
 because and as they were told. It was an uncritical 
 obedience to external authority. Tradition and legends 
 came to them out of the mists of an antiquity too far 
 back to be traced. They were shared equally by all 
 the members of the tribe or clan or nation. The religion 
 of one differed in no essential particular from that of 
 the other. In fact, it was just this common inheritance 
 that brought about a spirit of socialisation among the 
 members. The uniform obedience to the ancient 
 inherited traditional cultus, forged the link which bound 
 man to his neighbour in the arena of everyday life. 
 But, with the flow of time, a higher plane in the religious 
 existence was reached. Thought and literature began 
 to assert their sway. Men wanted to know the reason 
 for the things they accepted or rejected. Speakers and 
 writers arose to guide and educate men's thoughts, to 
 strengthen the consciousness of right and justice, to 
 allay unnecessary fears and doubtings, to eliminate 
 wrong and harmful conceptions. Religion, in short. 
 
344 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 became based on intellect. But yet another ascent had 
 to be made before religion came to full power. The 
 emotional feature appeared on the scene. Religion 
 must be believed in, not, as in the former cases, because 
 it is authoritative, nor merely because it consorts with 
 the reasoning powers, but because it is felt to be true, 
 it is felt to answer men's eternal longings and aspira- 
 tions. Here we have the individualising element. As 
 each man's emotions, needs, and longings must differ, so 
 must each man's religion differ. Each man lives his 
 religion in his own way. This is the dominant character- 
 istic of mysticism. And, to complete the analogy, there 
 is the same overlapping of the stages here, as we saw in 
 the case of the child's mind-growth. The rudimentary 
 and outward were never without the complexities and 
 elaborations of the advanced inward. And, on the 
 other hand, in the most highly developed fact of inward 
 speculative religion, there was the unfailing presence of 
 the crude and early conception. Combination always. 
 Separation never.* 
 
 The aforegoing is a free resume of Von Hiigel's 
 ingenious analysis. It is as true an account of the 
 evolution of the religion of Israel as of the evolution of 
 Christianity, though always on the assumption that the 
 three elements are never utterly apart, but ever exist 
 in some degree of combination or coalescence, at each 
 successive stage of the nation's life. 
 
 In early Israel the authoritative, external, formal 
 aspect of religion was embodied mainly in the sacrificial 
 code. It was a cultus handed down from father to son 
 
 * M. Loisy says : " Preceding worships never cease to maintain themselves, 
 in spite of everything, in higher and newer religions. Polytheism has a 
 tendency to survive in monotheism ; while fetichism, and even magic, are 
 able to lodge themselves more or less in religions which profess a theoretical 
 monotheism and which were established on that principle" {The Bcligion of 
 Israel, p. 50). 
 
 Dr. Farnell, dealing with the development of prayer from lower to higher 
 forms, expounds a similar view {The Evolution of Religion, pp. 164-173). 
 
RABBINIC MYSTICISM 345 
 
 throughout generations without a break. That the 
 sacrifices wielded a strong social influence, is seen from 
 numerous allusions throughout the O.T. They con- 
 stituted meals which had to be eaten in common,* They 
 brought priests and laity into the closest mutual contact. 
 Later Israel brings us to the religion of prophets and 
 psalmists. Here the intellectual side is uppermost. 
 Isaiah and Micah, Hosea and Amos in denouncing, as 
 they so unsparingly did, the sacrificial vogue of their 
 day, were in reality pleading for an abandonment of 
 formalism in favour of a religious rationalism. Instead 
 of thinking that God delights in thousands of rams, in 
 myriads of rivers of oil, they wanted the people to know 
 what is implied by the term " God," what ethical and 
 religious obligations and beliefs necessarily spring from 
 this knowledge. Not till the exilic period do we reach 
 the third and highest conception of religion. There are 
 unmistakable touches of mysticism in some of the exilic 
 Psalms as well as in the prophecies of the second Isaiah. 
 And later on, under Hellenistic influences, we meet with 
 the ideas of an immanent wisdom and an immanent 
 Logos ; while in Palestine not only were there the 
 Essenes with their rigorously contemplative and specu- 
 lative system of life and doctrine, but many an individual 
 teacher who taught the esoteric doctrines of the 
 n^jDNii "d and niDio "q. And flowing parallel with 
 all this — and continuing to flow long after the 
 others had ceased — was the stream of deep-seated and 
 widely-ramified belief in the " Shechinah " and " Holy 
 Spirit," and kindred teachings, to the elucidation of 
 which this treatise has so largely applied itself. 
 
 Here again the point to be emphasised is : that 
 these three elements ahvays intermingled in some 
 
 * Like the Greek iepeiof, the Hebrew nai has in the O.T. a twofold mean- 
 ing : (1) a sacrifice, (2) a feast (cp. Proverbs xvii. 1). See Mahaffy's Old Greek 
 Life, p. 32. 
 
346 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 degree or other. The sacrificial system, even in the 
 most primitive epoch which falls within the period 
 covered by the O.T., was accompanied by some rudi- 
 ments of inward spirituality. The Book of Deuteronomy 
 is, according to modern critics, a product of the pro- 
 phetic age, when religion became more a matter of 
 the inwardness of the individual mind than of the out- 
 ward conformity to a general norm or authority ; but 
 Deuteronomy could only proceed as far as to effect the 
 centralisation of the sacrificial cult in Jerusalem. It 
 could not suppress that cult altogether. The Eabbinical 
 epoch for the most part, embraces the time after the 
 cessation of sacrifices. Yet, the immense importance 
 of sacrifices could not be forgotten or even minimised. 
 It has already been shown how deep a mystical 
 element pervades the Rabbinic notions of Prayer. But 
 prayer was actually stated by the Rabbis over and 
 over again to be but a substitute for the defunct 
 sacrifice. See T. B. Berachoth 15a, 14b, Menahoth 
 110a, Ketuboth 105b, Yoma 71a and b. And looking 
 yet farther down the stream of Judaic thought, 
 the combination of these three currents is even more 
 conspicuous. It can be seen and studied in person- 
 alities, some of whom hold immortal place in Jewish 
 literature.* 
 
 Can mysticism, which is the most subjective type 
 of religion, consist with Rabbinism, which is a body of 
 objective teachings, in which formalism and tradition 
 demand a more or less general and uniform obedience ? 
 
 * Joseph Caro (1488-1575), as the codifier, j)ar excellence, of the Jewish 
 ritual and of the whole body of Rabbinic legalism, takes front rank as the 
 exemplar of the authoritative, traditional, external aspect of religion. But he 
 was yet an ardent and confirmed mystic. His Maggid Mesharim, w'ith its 
 heavenly visions and weird admonitions on all sorts of things, clearly shows the 
 extreme mystical bent of his mind. It is the most unbalanced book that one 
 could read! Nahmauides (1194-1270) was a rigid and dogmatic advocate of 
 the "six hundred and thirteen precepts of the Torah." But his mystical 
 enthusiasms are well known to every student of his works. 
 
RABBINIC MYSTICISM 347 
 
 But there is no known instance in the case of any of 
 the world's religions, where the combination has not been 
 known to exist — and to exist without involving even 
 a suspicion of self-contradiction.* A purely mystical 
 religion is as much an abstraction as a purely traditional 
 and formal one. But how is the co-existence to be 
 accounted for ? 
 
 It is to be accounted for in this way : As, according 
 to hypothesis, there must be a mystical element in all 
 religions, every man of religion must be something of a 
 mystic. The mystic relies for his knowledge of God 
 upon his own innate faculties. It is his innate moral 
 sense that makes him reverence God as righteous and 
 just. It is his innate sense of cause that makes him 
 fear God as the author of all, the omnipotent and 
 omniscient. There is another inborn spiritual sense 
 within him — call it a soul— that reveals to him the 
 stupendous fact, that God is a God of love. Now, 
 these natural endowments of man are, as it were, 
 the test of the truth or untruth of that other con- 
 stituent of religion, viz. the revealed, authoritative, 
 traditional, historical, etc. The latter is ever brought to 
 the touchstone of the former. Let us see how this arrange- 
 ment works in the case of the Rabbinic theology and 
 religion. Take the Bible. The Rabbinic Jew's belief 
 in its truth, his reverence for it as the word of God, 
 his readiness to obey its behests sprang, in reality, out 
 
 * Miss Evelyn Underliill says: "The view which regards the mystic as a 
 spiritual anarchist receives little support from history, which shows us, over 
 and over again, the great mystics as faithful sons of the great religious. Ahnost 
 any religious S3'stem which fosters unearthly love, is potentially a nursery ibr 
 mystics ; and Christianity, Islam, Brahmanism and Buddhism each receives 
 its most sublime interpretation at their hands. Thus, St. Teresa interprets her 
 ecstatic apprehension of the Godhead in strictly Catliolic terms. Thus Badime 
 believed to the last that his explorations of eternity were consistent with the 
 teachings of the Lutheran Church. Thus, the Sulis were good Mohammedans, 
 Philo and the Kabbalists were orthodox Jews. Thus Plotinus even adapted — 
 though with what difficulty ! — the relies of paganism to his doctrine of the 
 Real" {Mysticism, p. 115). 
 
348 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 of a combination of two inward convictions. These were 
 (1) the fact that the Bible is the Torah and contained 
 the words of God revealed to Israel, at a certain period 
 of the latter's history ; (2) the fact that the teachings 
 of the Bible about God, morality, and duty coincided 
 with, and were borne out and verified by, what his 
 first-hand spiritual experiences told him about these 
 matters. The first of these, he had been born into. 
 It was a part of his religion, which existed long 
 before he came into existence. And it was shared in, 
 by all who professed the same faith as he. The second, 
 he made for himself. It was the resultant fruit of the 
 usage of those powers of his, with which he was innately 
 dowered. It was his individual view. It was this indi- 
 vidual view which was the unremitting judge and critic 
 of the other. If that which he directly apprehended of 
 God, whether by his intellectual or spiritual sense, did 
 not tally with the external authority that told him that 
 the Bible was a divine book, then he must reject the 
 divinity of the Bible. If, again, his intellectual or 
 spiritual sense told him that the Bible was a divine book, 
 but that certain sections of it belonged to a lower order 
 of thought than that which he was accustomed to rever- 
 ence, and were the work of men of inferior moral and 
 intellectual calibre, then he must refuse homage to those 
 sections on the grounds that they conflicted with his own 
 intuitions of what was right, true, and godly. Such seems 
 to be the only logical outcome of the position. Now, 
 how did the Rabbins look at the Bible ? The Mishna 
 (Sanhedrin x. or in some versions xi.) says, that among 
 those who have no portion in the world to come is 
 " he who denies the divine origin of the Torah " ; a later 
 anonymous Baraita (T. B. Sanhedrin 99a) explains this 
 pronouncement to mean : " Even if he asserted that all 
 the Torah is of Divine origin except such and such a verse, 
 
XXV RABBINIC MYSTICISM 349 
 
 which was said not by God but by Moses." Here is a 
 typical instance of how the Rabbinic Jew bows to the 
 religion of authority— the external. But we knowthat this 
 bowing was spontaneous, natural, not forced or artificial. 
 How came this about ? Because that other element of 
 his religion, the intuitive and subjective, exactly tallied 
 with it. The Rabbinic Jew who lived the life advocated 
 by the ToTah, felt that that life, and no other, satisfied 
 most truly the deepest quest of his soul. The Torah 
 enacted certain ordinances, and made their obedience 
 obligatory to him. The Jew correspondingly felt that 
 his only means for bringing God near to him, and for 
 his realising this nearness of God, was this obedience. 
 It was only as a son of the Torah that communion 
 with God was possible to him. On any other grounds 
 it was unthinkable. It is probably, by the way, out 
 of these roots that there sprang the multitude of say- 
 ings scattered throughout the Talmud and Midrashim 
 (many of which are far too exaggerated to be either 
 logical or true) on the incomparable worth of the Torah. 
 Ideas such as that of Genesis Rabba i. about God 
 holding counsel with the Torah before creating the 
 world, or that of T. B. Abodah Zara 3b about God Himself 
 sitting and studying the Torah, merely reflect this view 
 of the Torah as answering the demands of inner as well 
 as outer religion. 
 
 Another example is the Sabbath. The Rabbinic 
 Sabbath is a grand specimen of what Von Hiigel 
 calls institutional religion. One can well picture the 
 baby of the Rabbinic epoch, born into an arena where 
 the strict formalism of the Sabbath reigns supreme. 
 As he grows from babyhood to boyhood and thence to 
 manhood, so the numberless ordinances of the " This 
 thou shalt do on the Sabbath," or, "This thoushalt not 
 do on the Sabbath," the hdnSd mnw to"S, grow round 
 
350 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 liim with an ever-increasing sternness. But with the 
 growth of the external obligations, there goes hand in 
 hand a corresponding quickening of his own subjective 
 impulses to look upon the Sabbath as the acme of 
 spiritual joy. In other words, the Jew felt inwardly, 
 that that which authority commanded answered exactly 
 to the promptings of his own breast. The Sabbath of 
 tradition was the counterpart of his own heart's Sabbath. 
 A good illustration of this feeling is afforded by a Baraita 
 in T. B. Betsa 16a : ** They said concerning Shammai the 
 Elder that throughout all his days whatsoever he ate 
 was in honour of the Sabbath. Should he alight upon 
 a fine beast, he would say, ' Let this be for the Sabbath.' 
 Should he afterwards find a finer one, he would leave 
 it and partake only of the first." To understand the 
 drift of this saying, one has to remember that the 
 Rabbinic precept about the honouring of the Sabbath 
 is based on the word imiDi, " and thou shalt honour it " 
 (Isaiah Iviii. 13), which was explained as meaning, 
 '^Di iiy:i niDDn imiD, that it was to be honoured by 
 our wearing better clothes, eating better food, etc. etc. 
 By the man of no ideals, this obligation would be 
 carried out mechanically. But to a Shammai, the observ- 
 ance of the Sabbath was the welcome opportunity 
 of a joyous union of the soul with God. Hence the 
 smallest act performed during the week, was felt to 
 have some bearing upon the Sabbath's sanctified joy. 
 Hence again the externality of the command to keep 
 the Sabbath became absorbed, eclipsed, lost, in the 
 inwardness of the response which it elicited. And the 
 same course of reasoning applies to the external, 
 authoritative, religious ordinances which depend on 
 signal events in the history of the nation. The Jew 
 commemorated the Passover because his Bible and his 
 Rabbinic teachers bade him do so. But this is onlv half 
 
XXV RABBINIC MYSTICISM 351 
 
 the truth. He commemorated the Passover because 
 there was a corresponding inward prompting which 
 told him, that the God who was with Israel in Egypt 
 was with him and with his race then, that there was 
 an immanent Shechinah in Israel. 
 
 Such is the explanation of the harmonious co- 
 existence of the traditional and mystical in Rabbinism. 
 The authoritativeness of the traditional element is of 
 the strongest possible. It is sacrosanct. It is of God. 
 Yet it would never have found the endorsement it 
 did, unless there w^ere hearts and souls attuned to 
 its apprehension as the word of God. 
 
 This interweaving of the mystic and the traditional 
 in Rabbinic Judaism, has proved the finest corrective 
 for mysticism, as well as the safest anchorage for 
 traditionalism. It preserved Rabbinic Judaism from 
 fossilisation. It saved the spiritual elements of prayer, 
 A Talmudic injunction like that of R. Meir that it is 
 the duty of every one to utter one hundred Benedictions 
 daily (T B. Menahoth 43b) might, by its very mechan- 
 ism, have dealt the death-blow to prayer among the 
 enlightened. But its possible evil effects w^ere counter- 
 balanced by the advice R. Hana b. Bizna (a Babylonian 
 Amora of third and fourth centuries) gave, in the name 
 of R. Simeon Hasida, to the effect that : "He that prays 
 must look upon himself as though the Shechinah were 
 standing over against him, as it is said, ' I have set 
 the Lord before me continually ' " (T B. Sanhedrin 22b). 
 The external command, " Pray because you are bidden," 
 is softened by the internal bidding, " Pray because 
 God is so near. He is the ever-present Shechinah." 
 Prayer thus retains its validity, because it is a blend 
 of the formalism of tradition, wdth individual inde- 
 pendence of feeling. A man prays because he wants 
 to, as well as because a rule tells him to. The modern 
 
352 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 critic of the Rabbinic formalism rather unfairly leaves 
 out of his reckoning the large place which the Rabbins 
 assigned to the mutual movement ever going on 
 between the human soul and God, which they desig- 
 nated as Love. Such phrases as "'i?i ni^ NDom, " God 
 requires the heart," or nSn ^w^^\ iS D^w^s nriNCt) no h'D 
 mrrNO, "Whatsoever ye do, let it be done out of love," 
 taken in conjunction with the many-sided usages of the 
 phrases "Shechinah" and "Holy Spirit," clearly point 
 to an emphatic insistence upon the subjective element 
 in religion. The point might afford ample material for 
 the theme of a separate monograph. 
 
 But, on the other hand, it is just the authoritativeness 
 of Rabbinism that has rescued its mysticism from the 
 gravest intellectual and moral dangers into which all 
 enthusiastic mysticism is apt to run. For what does 
 this authoritativeness in this particular connexion 
 amount to ? It amounts to an assertion of the trans- 
 cendent personality of God. God as lawgiver, as judge, 
 as father, is infinitely over and above man, and cannot 
 be compared with him. The Rabbinic Jew was made 
 to feel at every step, this extreme otherness of God. 
 What he had was, contact with God, the constant 
 companionship of God, ever-present possibility of union 
 with God, but never identity with God — that great 
 snare of so many a mystic. God was immanent, yet 
 transcendent at the same time. The gulf between 
 the human and the divine was never narrowed. 
 Perhaps the most potent illustration of this truth, is 
 afforded us by the old Rabbinic homilies on the Song 
 of Songs. The pivot on which all these homilies 
 turn, is the assumption that there is a real betrothal 
 between God and Israel. At one time Israel is the 
 bride, at another, the newly-wedded wife of God. The 
 reader breathes the atmosphere of the wedding-feast. 
 
RABBINIC MYSTICISM 353 
 
 A characteristic passage, and one wbicti epitomises the 
 subject well, occurs in Song of Songs Rabba iv. 10 
 (given also with some slight variations in Deut. Rabba 
 ii. 37) as follows: "In ten places [in the O.T.] are the 
 IsraeUtes designated as ' bride,' six here [i.e. in the 
 Song of Songs] and four in the Prophets . . . and in ten 
 corresponding passages, is God represented as arrayed 
 in garments (which display the dignity of manhood in 
 the ideal bridegroom). ..." It is unnecessary here to 
 reproduce the Scriptural allusions on w'hich these state- 
 ments are based. But, that they form a good specimen 
 of ever so many Rabbinic pictures, where the union of 
 Israel with God is likened to a marriage, is certain. 
 The mystical implications of them cannot be better 
 described than by quoting the w^ords of two eminent 
 English theologians. " But behind and after this," says 
 Francis William Newman in his book on The Soul, its 
 Sorrows and its Aspirations, " there is a mystery, 
 revealed to but few, which thou, Reader, must take 
 to heart. Namely, if thy soul is to go on into higher 
 spiritual blessedness, it must become a woman. ... It 
 must learn to love being dependent. ... It must not 
 have recourse to Him merely as to a Friend in need under 
 the strain of duty, the battering of affliction, and the 
 failure of human sympathy ; but it must press towards 
 Him when there is no need. It must love to pour out 
 its thoughts for the pleasure of pouring them out . . ." 
 (p. 190, People's 6d. edition). Again, says Newsman 
 (pp. 196, 197): "Spiritual persons have exhausted 
 human relationships in the vain attempt to express 
 their full sense of w^hat God (or Christ) is to them. 
 Father, Brother, Friend, King, Master, Shepherd, Guide 
 are common titles. In other figures God is their Tower, 
 their Glory, their Rock, their Shield, their Sun, their 
 Star, their Joy, their Portion, their Hope, their Trust, 
 
 2a 
 
354 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 their Life. But what has been said will show why 
 a still tenderer tie has ordinarily presented itself to the 
 Christian imagination as a very appropriate metaphor — 
 that of Marriage. The habit of breathing to God our 
 most secret sorrows, hopes, complaints and wishes, in 
 unheard whisper, with the consciousness that He is 
 always inseparable from our being, perhaps pressed this 
 comparison forward." How applicable to Rabbinic 
 theology are these beautiful words which Newman 
 would seem to confine to the theology of Christianity ! 
 R. A. Armstrong [God and the Soul, p. 163) says : 
 " The union of man with God must be like a marriage. 
 The more perfect the union of will and feeling between 
 man and woman in marriage, the more perfect is the 
 marriage. But the very essence of marriage consists in 
 the separate personalities of the two thus joined together. 
 It is the sense of union not with self, but with another 
 than self, that constitutes all the beauty and solemnity 
 of marriage. And in like manner it is the sense of 
 union with Another, even with God, always other than 
 self, however self be penetrated by God, that constitutes 
 all the truth and holiness of religion." 
 
 There can be no greater truism, as far as the Jew of 
 Rabbinic times is concerned, than that his union with 
 God was, as Armstrong has said, a union " with 
 another than self." He never for an instant forgot 
 that " however self be penetrated by God " yet was 
 God other and transcendently greater than he, his 
 Master, King, Shepherd, and Guide. In fine, the 
 " God-within " idea coalesced with the " God-without " 
 idea. The external, traditional, institutional element 
 in his religion, went hand in hand with his conviction 
 of the Immanence of God. 
 
 It is on these grounds that Judaism in the centuries 
 covered by the Rabbinical literature had no reason to 
 
XXV RABBINIC MYSTICISM 355 
 
 fear the dangers so often consequent upon mysticism. 
 But things were different in subsequent ages. The 
 truce was broken. Mysticism became a menace to 
 Rabbinism. The danger is reflected, for all time, in 
 the bitter feuds that raged between the Talmudists 
 and the Kabbalists. The career of Shabbatai Tsevi 
 (1626-1676) is an immortal illustration of the perils 
 of an unbalanced mysticism. It is not difficult to 
 detect and to analyse the underlying causes of this 
 dangerous degeneracy. Where mysticism is liable to 
 run amock is, in its mistaking the contact of man with 
 God, for the identity of man with God. There is a 
 twofold outcome of this mistake. Firstly, the extreme 
 mystic is prone to believe that not only his good, but 
 also his evil, disposition is part and parcel of Deity. 
 Sin becomes sanctified, hence a life of vice is justifiable. 
 Secondly, he is liable to excite in others a feeling of 
 worshipful veneration for himself, as though he himself 
 were some sort of deity, or, anyhow, a being far nearer 
 the sphere of the Divine than any one else. It is easy 
 to see how once such an impression gets a firm footing, 
 it can be used as a tool for efiecting the vilest kinds 
 of chicanery and immorality. The inglorious career of 
 Shabbatai Tsevi as well as the deception which marks 
 the public and private life of many a "Tsaddik" 
 among the Hassidim, and vitiates the conduct of many 
 of the Hassidim themselves, can clearly be traced to 
 this polluted source. 
 
 Rabbinism survived the trials and assaults of time 
 because, while judiciously blending with itself a measure 
 of that mysticism without which, as has been already 
 said, no religion can survive, it never allowed its main 
 stream to lose itself in a side -current of this kind. 
 What Baron Von Hiigel [Mystical Element of Religion, 
 vol. i. pp. 72, 73) so charmingly says of religion in 
 
356 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD ch. xxv 
 
 general, is thoroughly true of the religion of Judaism 
 during the Rabbinic era : " Only full trust, only un- 
 conditional surrender, suffice for religion. But then 
 religion excites and commands this in a person towards 
 a Person ; a surrender to be achieved, not in some thing 
 but in some one, — a some one who is at all only in as 
 much as he is living, loving, growing ; and to be per- 
 formed, not towards some thing, but towards Some One, 
 Whose right, indeed whose very power to claim me, 
 consists precisely in that He is Himself absolutely, 
 infinitely and actually, what I am but derivatively, 
 finitely and potentially." 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 CHRONOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT 
 
 The Rabbinical literature discussed in the preceding 
 pages covers many centuries. It includes (a) the 
 Talmud, (b) the Midrashim. The earliest date associated 
 with the former, is that of the pre-Tannaites or 
 " Zekenim Ha-Reshonim," starting with Antigonus of 
 Socho, who flourished about the first half of the third 
 century B.C., and was, according to the Mishna (Aboth i.), 
 the disciple and successor of Simon the Just. The last 
 of these were Hillel and Shammai. Following on the 
 demise of these, there commenced the period of the 
 Tannaim, lasting from the commencement of the 
 Christian era until about the first quarter of the third 
 century a.d. ; Hillel and Shammai belong to the last 
 pre-Christian century. As the references to the pre- 
 Tannaites in the Talmud are rare, in all probability 
 their influence upon their successors was small. Hillel 
 and Shammai, however, stand out as real forces in 
 the religious development of their age. With them, 
 and the band of Tannaim that succeeded to their 
 teachings, the Talmudic age proper may be said to 
 have commenced. Hence, the terminus a quo of 
 Talmudic literature must be assigned roughly to the 
 opening years of the first Christian century. The 
 terminus ad quem. is the close of the epoch of the 
 Saboraim, which, according to the famous letter of R. 
 
 357 
 
358 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 Sherira (edit. Neubauer in Mediceval Jewish Chronicles, 
 i. 180), would be toward the end of the second half 
 of the sixth century. Hence the Talmud, speaking 
 generally, covers a six hundred years' literary activity. 
 In the case of the Midrashim, the matter of dates is 
 rather more complicated. Account must be taken of 
 the great distance of time intervening between the 
 year or century when a particular Midrash assumed 
 final shape and redaction as a whole, and the year or 
 century when several independent passages inside that 
 Midrash were orally uttered by their particular authors. 
 Thus e.g. take a Midrash like the Tanhuma. The 
 researches of Buber have shown that three different 
 and independent collections are comprised in it. R. 
 Tanhuma (an Amora of the fourth century) was only 
 responsible for a small proportion of the material ; the 
 work was not edited till the fifth century. It used to 
 be thought, judging from internal evidence, that R. 
 Hoshiah (an Amora of the third century) was the author 
 of the Bereshit Rabba, Modern research, however, has 
 proved conclusively, that only the general outline of the 
 Midrash can be traced to Hoshiah ; the greater portion 
 belongs to the sixth century, or even later. In the case, 
 again, of such a work as the Tanna Debe Elijahu it is 
 comparatively easy to distinguish the early sections 
 belonging to the Amoraic period, from the later additions 
 which were written by an anonymous author who 
 redacted the whole work in the tenth century. And so 
 with several other works belonging to the Midrashic 
 literature. The researches of Zunz, Hoffmann, Bacher, 
 and others would lead us to stretch back the origin 
 of Midrash to the age of the " Soferim." These 
 *' Soferim " besides orally translating the Law into the 
 vernacular, added interpretations of their own, which 
 after being orally handled by successive generations 
 
XXV, CHRONOLOGY & DEVELOPMENT 359 
 
 became finally written down in the earliest Midrashim, 
 sucli as Sifra, Mechilta, Beresliit Rabba, etc. Indeed, the 
 early origin of much Midrashic literature is seen from 
 the fact that traces of it are to be found in many of the 
 pre-Christian Apocalypses, as well as in the Apocrypha, 
 the works of Josephus and Philo, and in some of the 
 lesser-known specimens of Jewish-Hellenistic literature.* 
 As regards the written Midrash, it is impossible to 
 fix a precise date. One can only speak of periods 
 or centuries or schools. The oldest are the schools 
 of R. Akiba and R. Ishmael, both of whom belong 
 to the Tannaim of the first and second centuries 
 A.D. The Mechilta, part of Sifra and Sifri, belong to 
 this age, and that there are Tannaitic elements in 
 Genesis Rabba is undoubted. The terminus a quo then, 
 in the case of Midrashic literature is the first century a.d. 
 The terminus ad quern, brings us right into the Middle 
 Ages, as Jellinek in his Beth-Ha-Midrash has proved. 
 But many of these late Midrashim are of little critical 
 value for purposes of tracing development of ideas, 
 seeing that they are mere excerpts or condensed forms 
 or repetitions of the earlier Midrashim. None of 
 them have been quoted or drawn upon in the present 
 treatise. Its survey ends chronologically w^th the 
 Yalkut (i.e. Yalkut Shim'oni), which Epstein has shown 
 conclusively (in Ha-Hoker, i. 85-93, 129-137) to 
 belong to the thirteenth century. But the Yalkut is 
 also no criterion as to development of thought, seeing 
 that it is a mere compilation from very nearly the 
 whole mass of preceding Midrashic literature. We are 
 therefore thrown back to the following conclusion : 
 
 * Professor Estlin Carpenter (The First Three Gospels, their Origin and 
 Relations) has, on pp. 12-20 (People's 6d. edit. 1909), some interesting 
 paragraphs on the nature of oral traditions in the early Church as well as 
 among the early Rabbins. Stores of accumulated learning were retained in 
 the memory, and passed on in this way from one age to another, there being 
 an aversion to their arrangement in written form. 
 
36o THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 that the output of Midrashic literature extended from 
 the first century a.d. right down to the thirteenth and 
 fourteenth centuries ; but that after the tenth century, 
 which saw the compilation of the Pirke De E. Eliezer 
 and the Tanna Debe Elijahu, the products in this field 
 contained little originality, being chiefly reproductions 
 and condensations of preceding teachings. 
 
 My survey, then, of what the Rabbins thought 
 and taught about the Immanence of God, embraces 
 no less than ten centuries. The pronouncements I. 
 have quoted about the Shechinah and Holy Spirit, 
 are spread over that long distance of time. Can 
 any stages of development be pointed out in this 
 huge and heterogeneous mass of doctrines covering all 
 these centuries ? The student of history will say at 
 once, and categorically, " Yes, certainly ! development 
 there must have been, and it ought not to be difiicult to 
 show it. The investigator could not possibly fail to 
 see it in the course of his work, if he did his work in a 
 methodical and scientific spirit." And, after all, this 
 retort, on the surface, appears a correct and justifiable 
 one. Suppose a student of Christian thought were to 
 compose a treatise dealing with such a subject as the 
 history of Original Sin from a.d. 1 to a.d. 900, would 
 it not be a vital part of his business to deal with the 
 development of the idea from stage to stage, and from 
 century to century ? Certainly. It is hard to see 
 how his treatise could claim consideration as a work 
 of science without it. Similarly, a treatise on the 
 Immanence of God in Jewish theology, as thought of 
 and taught during ten centuries, must take account of 
 diflerences of environment, difi"erences of religious and 
 theological outlook, differences m the constitution of 
 men's minds, which are inseparable from the history of 
 a long stretch of time. Doctrines and dogmas are the 
 
XXVI CHRONOLOGY & DEVELOPMENT 361 
 
 childreu of circumstances. They are moulded, evolved, 
 transformed under the stress of ever-changing forces. 
 And it is the duty of the historian to watch these 
 variations and evolutions in their successive relations to 
 one another, as well as to the parent idea. 
 
 But the effort to give a chronological survey of 
 Jewish thought on the doctrine of Immanence, is beset 
 with peculiar difficulties. It is questionable whether any 
 logically-correct analogy can be instituted, between the 
 history of a theological idea in Rabbinic literature, and 
 the history of the same idea in Christian literature. 
 And for the following reason : Christian theology of 
 any age, is dominated by some pre-eminent teacher who 
 both propagated his own strictly theological views, and 
 also reflected, in his own teachings, the theological views 
 cherished by his people. St. Paul was a great and original 
 thinker. He set a theological standard to his followers. 
 He is also to a large extent the reflexion of what was 
 thought and felt and aspired after, in the theological 
 world of his generation. And so with St. Augustine or 
 Luther, or any other paramount leader. But nothing 
 like this occurs in Rabbinical theology. Its great 
 men are great in Halacha, and not in the elucidation 
 and propagation of theological doctrines. This fact can 
 be seen in two ways. 
 
 Firstly, while the development of Halacha went 
 on apace, that of Haggada was practically stagnant. 
 Bacher has pointed out (Ag-Tan. i. 451-475 ; idem, Ag. 
 Pal. Amor. i. pp. viii et seq.) how there is practically no 
 difference between the Haggada of the Tannaitic and 
 that of the Amoraic age. But what a momentous 
 evolution took place during that time in the Halacha ! 
 The final redaction of the Mishna is the great product 
 of this transition. The significance of the Mishna for 
 the Halacha is everything ; for the Haggada it is 
 
362 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 almost nothing. Again, the activity of the Talmudic 
 authorities, as has been said previously, came to an 
 end in the sixth century with the cessation of the 
 Saboraim. This does not, however, imply that the 
 development of Halacha ceased, or even received a 
 set-back. On the contrary, the epoch of the Geonim 
 followed that of the Saboraim ; and the influence of 
 the Geonim in the field of the development of Halacha 
 was enormous. In vol. v. of his Geschichte, Graetz 
 shows how their Halachic expositions set the standard 
 for all the Jewish communities not only in the Moham- 
 medan countries of those days, but also in Christian 
 Europe ; their Responsa, which dealt with ritual and 
 legal questions, swayed the Judaism of the Diaspora. 
 But of the evolution or advancement of the Haggadah 
 during those centuries (i.e. down to the eleventh 
 century, the last Gaon of Pumbeditha, Hai, having died 
 in 1038) we know nothing. Moreover, real originality in 
 Midrashic output, ceased even before the tenth century. 
 The high-water mark of Midrashic exegesis was reached 
 in the sixth century ; from the sixth to the tenth 
 century such originality as there was, consisted in 
 revising or collecting, condensing or editing the materials 
 to hand ; no new schools of interpretation were estab- 
 lished, no new exegetical methods were devised ; there 
 was nothing that drew the attention, or answered in any 
 way to the changed religious demands, of the Diaspora. 
 Even the Pirke De R. Eliezer or the Tanna Debe 
 Elijahu, although they undoubtedly present features 
 which are absent from their early predecessors, never- 
 theless do not exhibit any of that richness of develop- 
 ment such as we notice in the contemporary Halacha. 
 And their significance for the Judaism of their epoch 
 or succeeding epochs w^as, in comparison, small. 
 
 But secondly, as has already been hinted, the men 
 
XXVI CHRONOLOGY & DEVELOPMENT 363 
 
 who left their mark on the Rabbinic period were 
 primarily Halachists. The immortal debt which the 
 Talmud owes to a man like Akiba, rests on his con- 
 tributions to Halacha, his genius in the sjstematisation 
 of the floating body of oral laws, his originality in 
 devising new hermeneutical principles for the deduction 
 of certain truths from the words of Scripture, by means 
 of which he gave to the Halacha the possibility of 
 continuous development. Akiba shines too in the 
 sphere of Haggada. But his teachings here are 
 spasmodic and fragmentary. They do not form a 
 system, a philosophy. They were never taken up as 
 a body, and worked upon or developed by succeeding 
 thinkers. The same thing is true of a famous Amora like 
 Rab (Abba Arika, third century a.d.). His disputes 
 with Samuel, his distinguished contemporary, are 
 perhaps the most forcible illustrations we can find, of the 
 Rabbinical dialectic method ; they are most intricate 
 and puzzling ; they are to be found in all quarters 
 of the Talmud. But they are all focussed round the 
 Halacha. Rab was fertile in Haggada too ; but it was 
 only a subsidiary subject with him. Every student 
 of Rabbinics knows of the Hawayot de-Ahaye tve- 
 Raha, i.e. the debates of Abaye (Amora, fourth 
 century a.d.) and Raba (ditto). For the Halacha 
 these knotty disquisitions are of the highest import. 
 They do not touch the Haggada. The philosophical 
 Hagojadist, the Amora who first endeavoured to reduce 
 the Rabbinical sayings on ethics and theology to ordered 
 and reasoned system, which would have lent itself to 
 considerable development and ramification at future 
 hands, was Simlai (third century a.d.). His resolution 
 (see T B. Makkot 23b, 24a) of the 613 precepts into 
 the one all-embracing fundamental principle of Faith 
 as stated by the prophet Habakkuk, "And the just 
 
364 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 shall live by his faith," offered a useful starting-point 
 for a logical and definite study of theology. But it 
 was never taken up, Simlai is only one among the 
 crowd of Amoraim. He is quite eclipsed by the 
 Halachists. 
 
 How true this point of view is, can be seen again 
 from the following consideration. The Incorporeality 
 and the Omniscience of God, His Spirituality, His 
 Providence, the Immortality of the Soul, the Freedom 
 of the Will, Divine Retribution, — all these fundamental 
 principles of Judaism have their fount and origin, after 
 the O.T., in the Rabbinical literature. The Jew who 
 denies e.g. the immortality of the soul, is surely con- 
 travening Rabbinism as much as the Jew who would 
 eat leavened bread on the eighth day of Passover or sound 
 the Shofar on the New Year's Day which fell on the 
 Sabbath. Yet, while we have a massive literature of 
 Halacha, Responsa, and Codifications dealing with, and 
 developing, these ritual institutions — a literature belong- 
 ing to both Talmudic and post-Talmudic centuries — the 
 development, elucidation, and attempted systematisation 
 of theological themes had to wait until the rise of 
 the Arabic- Jewish philosophy with Sa'adiah in the tenth 
 century. And even after Sa'adiah, there was no con- 
 tinuous and homogeneous stream of development. 
 Sa'adiah's successors worked out matters independently 
 of him and of one another. Each thinker gave his own 
 individual views. Bahya Ibn Pakuda, Jehuda Ha-Levi, 
 Abraham Ibn David, Maimonides, Gersonides and 
 Hisdai Crescas — all have one, and one only, point of 
 affinity, viz. that they model themselves on their common 
 teacher Aristotle (Ibn Gabriol is throughout a Platonist). 
 In all other respects each man speaks only for himself, 
 decides the theological problem entirely according to 
 his own individual opinion. And so it came about, 
 
XXVI CHRONOLOGY & DEVELOPMENT 365 
 
 that whereas in the early Christian Church we meet 
 with the three authoritative formulse of faith — the 
 Apostles' Creed, the Nicene, and the Athanasian — the 
 creeds and dogmas which were drawn up by the mediaeval 
 Jewish philosophers had no canonical validity. No 
 ecclesiastical sanctity attached to them which would 
 make them binding upon every Jew. They were only 
 drawn up in the systematic form of Articles of Belief, 
 because of the necessity felt by their authors, of com- 
 bating the theological attacks made on the citadel of 
 Judaism by the Karaites on the one hand, and by the 
 theories of faith current among the Mohammedans and 
 Christians on the other. The respect shown to them 
 arose out of the religious importance and the intellectual 
 brilliance of their authors. This, of course, meant a 
 great deal ; but it did not mean enough to enable the 
 formulation and j&xture of these Articles of Faith to 
 stand on the same level of a binding importance as the 
 contemporaneously-developed principles of the Halacha. 
 These, then, are the reasons which make the task of 
 showing development of theological ideas during the 
 many centuries covered by the Rabbinic period, not only 
 one of difficulty, but also of dubious worth. For the most 
 potent test of the inmost meaning and truest drift of the 
 literature of any age, is to be found in the interpretation 
 of the life of that age — literature being but the expres- 
 sion of life. No matter what view of things theoretical 
 investigation may afford, if we have reason to think on 
 other grounds that the life of an epoch was different, we 
 must not put too much trust in the investigation of the 
 written word. For our main object after all, is to get at 
 the life not the literature, and in the degree that we 
 ofttimes deduce literature from life, in that degree are 
 we often called upon to deduce life from literature. 
 Now, what do we know about life under the Rabbinic 
 
366 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 religion during those far-away centuries? We know, 
 that the life of the orthodox Jew was so ordered 
 by him as to accord with his ingrained belief that 
 " wherever Israel was there the Shechinah was." It 
 was not doubted. It was never controverted (except 
 from outside, as has been previously said). All the 
 Haggadic notions about the Immanence of God were 
 accepted on their face-value. The life of the home, of 
 the synagogue, of the community, was grounded and 
 fashioned on this assumption. To examine too inquisi- 
 tively into the Divine Nature was, as a matter of fact, 
 sternly reprobated as showing a dangerous want of 
 faith. No one really wanted to know what God was, 
 or what the Shechinah or Holy Spirit were, in their 
 absolute or essential nature. The reality of their 
 existence was experienced in the practical life. This 
 was all, and this was enough. The questioner was 
 the sceptic who refused to toe the line with his brethren 
 and was branded as a heretic. A statement in the 
 opening Mishna of T. B. Haggigah ii. says: "A man 
 who speculates on the four following things, it were 
 better for him had he never entered the world, viz. 
 that which is above and that which is below, that which 
 was formerly and that which is to be." If this remark 
 proves anything at all, it proves that in the Mishnaic 
 epoch religion was a simple affair which brooked no 
 abstract speculations on the mysteries of the Godhead. 
 The few who did pursue these abstractions were the 
 exceptions, in some cases the literary elect. But from 
 our general knowledge of the life during the whole of 
 the Rabbinic period succeeding the Mishna, we may 
 take it that this Mishnaic statement is exactly typical 
 of the popular feeling. 
 
 Enough has now been said about the reservations 
 which must be made in any attempt at setting up any 
 
XXVI CHRONOLOGY & DEVELOPMENT 367 
 
 theory of development in the immanental ideas of God 
 during the centuries covered by the present sketch. 
 There are, nevertheless, some apparent instances of 
 development — development which at the time may 
 have escaped consciousness, but which we, reviewing 
 the literature en masse at this distance of time, can 
 readily detect. 
 
 Firstly, there comes the primitive substratum of 
 immanental teaching in which the Shechinah is material- 
 ised. It is material light, fire, cloud, a bird with wings. 
 Quotations have been given showing how the light or 
 fire inflicted real physical injuries. As a material 
 body its movements necessarily create a noise, the locus 
 classiciis illustrating this being that of T. B. Megillah 
 29a, where the father of Samuel and Levi (Babylonian 
 Amoraim of the third century) sitting in the synagogue 
 of Shef-Ve-Yatib in Nehardea, hear the noise of the 
 coming of the Shechinah and immediately leave the 
 synagogue, probably out of fright, whereas R. Shesheth 
 (Babylonian Amora of third century) having had the 
 same experience on another occasion is undisturbed by 
 it. These material embodiments of Shechinah are to 
 be found in the later, as well as in the earlier, sections 
 of the literature. But with this difference, viz. whereas 
 in the earlier epochs they were the realised mystical 
 experiences of men, or, as in many instances, the 
 traditions about such experiences which took place in 
 the past, but were afterwards interpreted in a tangible 
 sense, in the later epochs of Rabbinical literature 
 these material terms became rather the symbols for 
 higher spiritualised teachings about Divine Imman- 
 ence. They were the poetical expression for the 
 spiritual idea rather than the believed-in materiahsation 
 of the idea. The Holy Spirit was also materialised 
 in the earlier conceptions, but not to anything like 
 
368 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 tlie same extent as the Shechinali — although on account 
 of the rather frequent loose interchange of the two terms 
 it is difficult to tell the exact amount of materialisation 
 which belongs to each. 
 
 Secondly, a development and refinement of the idea 
 is noticeable in the multitudinous statements about 
 God's Shechinah or God's Holy Spirit. The Rabbinic 
 mystic has here reached that stage when he can dissociate, 
 disentangle, the idea of the Deity as the Immanent 
 Power and Love embodied in material phenomena, 
 from the material phenomena themselves. He can e.g. 
 conceive of the Divine immanent justice meting out 
 punishment where necessary, without actually beholding 
 the material agent, such as fire, etc., for the execution 
 of that punishment. And the danger of a degeneration 
 into Pantheism through an identification of the Deity 
 with the world, is avoided by making the Shechinah 
 or Holy Spirit a possession, a kind of emanation of 
 God. It is always "God's Shechinah" or "God's 
 Holy Spirit." It is, in reality, the combination of the 
 transcendent and immanent aspects. The God, active 
 throughout the universe, whose traces are everywhere, 
 and who is so near to man that His answering love can 
 be evoked at all times, is also, at the same time, the God 
 who transcends the world and whose thoughts are not 
 our thoughts, nor His ways our ways. 
 
 Thirdly, there is the stage of Personification. It is a 
 passing on from such expressions as in^^DCJ rrnpri ma^n 
 h^ . . . " God caused His Shechinah to dwell . . ." to 
 those numerous passages where the Shechinah or Holy 
 Spirit speaks, walks, weeps, rejoices, etc. This denotes a 
 decided advance in the Immanent idea. What with all 
 the uncompromising repugnance of the Rabbins to any 
 idea which might in the remotest degree suggest a 
 plurality of persons in the Godhead, the cosmic phase of 
 
XXVI CHRONOLOGY & DEVELOPMENT 369 
 
 the Immanent Deity is nevertheless regarded fearlessly 
 and outspokenly as a person. But let it not be implied 
 that this personification ousted or superseded chrono- 
 logically the less-developed and earlier usage. The 
 student of Rabbinics knows full well that expressions 
 about Shechinah and Holy Spirit as personifications, 
 are found side by side with expressions, belonging to 
 the very same period of time, which refer to God's 
 Shechinah or God's Holy Spirit. But, anyhow, the idea 
 had developed, even if the mode of speaking about it, 
 had not. 
 
 Fourthly, there is, particularly in the case of 
 Holy Spirit, a broadening out of the idea that only 
 certain supremely gifted individuals, such as prophets, 
 possessed in themselves the touch of the Immanent 
 Deity. Instances have been adduced in this treatise to 
 show how the Rabbins occasionally assigned the Holy 
 Spirit to a wider sphere of persons (even to some women), 
 and long after canonical prophecy had come to an end. 
 The prophet was the possessor of the Holy Spirit as well 
 as of the mental and spiritual endowments. Neither of 
 these qualifications by themselves, would have made him 
 a prophet. It was the combination of the two. But 
 many men did make themselves possessors of the Holy 
 Spirit, provided they aimed at that spiritual perfection 
 which* is its indispensable preliminary. And all men can 
 do so. The same truth is enunciated in another way 
 — and in reference to the Shechinah as well. How can 
 such statements as these, telling us that the Shechinah 
 encompasses every Israelite, be made to tally with the 
 many pronouncements which declare that the Shechinah 
 (or Holy Spirit) only rests upon certain persons who are 
 equipped in certain mental and spiritual and even 
 physical respects ? The reply is, that there is a ground- 
 assumption to start with, that the Shechinah or Holy 
 
 2b 
 
370 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 Spirit is there with every man, but it does not come to 
 realisation unless certain requirements are fulfilled. In 
 the one case it is dormant. In the other it is vitally 
 assertive. To possess this vitally-assertive degree of 
 Divine Immanence is within the power of every one who 
 orders his life in pursuit of it. It is an ideal, but 
 always realisable. With such a doctrine to its credit, 
 Rabbinic theology reveals itself as being possessed of a 
 living message. To be Shechinah-possessed is to be no 
 idle dreamer. The nearness of God is realised only 
 in active obedience. Rabbinic mysticism does not 
 merely imply a temperament or a certain attitude 
 towards the speculative problems of religion. It implies 
 a life rich in outward service to all things that constitute 
 the practical demands of religion. 
 
 Fifthly, this broadening of the basis of the imma- 
 nent doctrine has another and even more important 
 phase. I have alluded to numerous passages where 
 the Shechinah is not made to extend outside the Temple 
 or the Synagogue or Palestine, and where both Shechinah 
 and Holy Spirit are only applicable to the Jew, the non- 
 Jew not being thought of as worthy of inclusion in the 
 privilege. On the other hand, I have quoted instances 
 not a few, where the Shechinah is regarded as the common 
 property of the whole world, and where the Holy Spirit 
 may be won by men of all nations. These quotations, 
 it is quite true, are comparatively rare. But the fact 
 that they exist, no matter in how small a measure, 
 shows that to the Rabbinic sages, theology was not merely 
 a matter of nationalism and particularism and nothing 
 else. They too, had very real ghmpses of that higher life 
 of direct relationship wdth G-od which it is possible for men 
 of all sects and at all times to acquire. The germ of uni- 
 versalist teaching is found in Rabbinic literature, and a 
 germ always develops. The logic of the first centuries, 
 
XXVI CHRONOLOGY & DEVELOPMENT 371 
 
 whether of Judaism or Christianity, was not the same as 
 our logic of to-day — or rather we ought not to judge 
 that logic by the standards we adopt to-day. No one, 
 for argument's sake, would deny that a progressive 
 development took place in the ideas of Christian tolera- 
 tion from the first to the tenth century. And yet what 
 an amount of bloodthirsty intolerance characterised 
 many events within that epoch. Would it then be 
 right to reverse the verdict and say that there could 
 have been no progressive development ? By no means. 
 The idea of progi'essiveness was tliei^e. It was 
 thought of and taught and emphasised. It was there 
 in germ. But the idea oft received a rude set-back 
 until it blossomed out into its full perfection. Our 
 position is exactly analogous. The claim of Rabbinic 
 theology, that in human fellowship with God " there 
 is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor 
 free, there is neither male nor female " but all can 
 be at one with Him, that claim does not depend for 
 its ultimate justification on the mere arithmetical 
 number of passages which can be adduced in its 
 support. It rests on the fact that there are such 
 passages. For once an idea gets a footing, growth and 
 development must inevitably and assuredly follow. 
 
 One reason why this development of the universalist 
 doctrine was comparatively stunted, was because the 
 Rabbinic era is the period of history when the Jews were 
 under the Roman rule. A state of tutelage in which the 
 superior power was often the oppressor, could not be 
 expected to generate the highest religious attitude 
 towards that governing power. Moreover, it made the 
 Jew ascribe to the world outside him, a too exaggerated 
 depravity. The many unkindly sentiments against 
 the non-Jew to be found in Talmud and Midrashim, 
 must be assigned to this cause. It must here again 
 
372 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 be remembered, tbat the logic of those early times 
 differed so materially in this respect from ours. And 
 yet, in spite of these adverse conditions, the overflowing 
 of Divine Immanence beyond the national borders of 
 Israel is implied in many Kabbinic sayings, which, though 
 not directly alluding to the subject of immanence, 
 have a strong kinship with it. How othermse could we 
 account for such a statement as that of T. B. Sukkah 
 55a ? " With what object are these seventy bullocks 
 sacrificed [on the Feast of Tabernacles] ? With the 
 object of atoning for the sins of the seventy nations." The 
 altar and the sacrifice were, in ancient Israel, the visible 
 symbol of the "nearness" of God to Israel. Yet here 
 the nations participate in this " nearness," The poetry 
 of this teaching is nowhere better given than in 
 T. B. Megillah 10b where an imaginative legend 
 portrays a Divine rebuke to the angelic hosts about 
 to sing a psean of triumph over the overthrow of 
 the Egyptians at the Red Sea : " The works of my 
 hands are sinking in the sea, and will ye sing a 
 song before me ? " This Rabbinic delineation of 
 the arch-enemy of the Jew as the work of God's hands, 
 and therefore an object of His pitying concern, is a 
 model instance of the freest, widest, and most tolerant 
 standpoint in religious philosophy. The Yalkut on nS 
 T^, quoting from one of the latest Midrashim, to which 
 allusion has been made in a previous page — the Tanna 
 Debe Elijahu — remarks : " God said unto Moses, ' Is 
 there any respecting of persons with me ? ' Verily, be 
 he Israelite, or be he Gentile, if he perform a precept 
 there is a recompense [for him] beside it." A developed 
 form of this doctrine is summarised by Maimonides as 
 follows : "Every man whatsoever of all who enter the 
 world, whose spirit hath prompted him, and endowed him 
 with the knowledge, how to separate himself to stand 
 
XXVI CHRONOLOGY & DEVELOPMENT Z7Z 
 
 before God to minister unto Him, and to work in order 
 to know God and to walk in that uprightness in which 
 God made him, truly such a man is sacrosanct (tmpriD), 
 he is a Holy of Holies ; and God shall be his portion 
 and his inheritance for ever and unto all eternity" 
 (Maimonides, Yad Ha-IIazaka, Rules of ^ivi nio^om, xiii. 
 3). Maimonides' pronouncement is no exotic, neither is 
 it the mere personal expression of his own independent 
 point of view bearing no relation to his predecessors in 
 thought. It is the natural outcome of the Rabbinic 
 inheritance which had come down to him, and which he, 
 by the help of his genius, retailed to his own time in 
 the spirit and with the interpretation that suited it. 
 Maimonides has added nothing which was not already 
 there, at least in germ. 
 
 That these ideas about religion as being a universal, 
 and not a national or local, thing should find strong 
 root in the literature under consideration, is not really 
 strange, for the Pharisees, the Halachists, and the Hag- 
 gadists were the lineal successors of the great prophets 
 of Israel who flourished in the eighth and seventh cen- 
 turies B.C. The Rabbins certainly imported a large 
 amount of legalism into the inherited prophetic religion. 
 But this did not imply that in inculcating legalism they 
 forgot spirituality. It is wrong to think, as is often 
 thought, that there is a necessary antagonism between 
 the two. The prophet whose ideas the Rabbins 
 seem to have most faithfully reflected is Jeremiah. 
 Jeremiah's message strikes the note of downheartedness 
 and depression. But there is an intermingling of the 
 most cheery optimism. He does not think that punish- 
 ment is God's last word to Israel. He is a man of 
 hope. He foresees a happy time for the exiles. And 
 this happy time he depicts in a passage which contains 
 the sublimated essence of his religious teaching. This 
 
374 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD chap. 
 
 passage occurs in chap. xxxi. 31-34, where lie speaks of the 
 New Covenant. In the days to come, God will replace 
 the Old Covenant, made at the exodus from Egypt, by 
 a new one, which will be this : that He will put His 
 law in the inward parts of the Israelites, and write it in 
 their hearts ; He will be their God, and they will be 
 His people. There will be no longer any need for them 
 to teach one another to know God. The covenant 
 being engraven indelibly on their souls, they will all 
 know God of themselves, without any outward in- 
 struction, from the least of them to the greatest of 
 them. And, as a necessary consequence, sin and 
 iniquity will be forgiven and forgotten. The leading 
 ideas in this familiar passage are : — (a) Religion is a thing 
 of the heart, obedience to an inward rather than an 
 outward prompting. (b) Religion is an individual 
 matter, a relation between an individual soul and its 
 maker. (c) If religion is individualist through the 
 truth of God being immanent in every heart, then it is 
 easy to see how it can transcend any one community 
 or nation, and become the property of many nations 
 and communities. In fine, there can be a religion of 
 humanity. 
 
 The large variety of mystical teachings which exist 
 in the Rabbinical literature proves, that Rabbinical 
 Judaism possesses most intensely human and most 
 broadly spiritual tendencies. But there is another 
 factor to be noted. Rabbinical Judaism is an amalgam 
 of a Jeremiah and an Ezekiel. Ezekiel's ideal was 
 that of a restored Israel in which the priestly 
 ordinances, the legalism and ceremonialism of Judaism, 
 would have full sway. Religion was a communal 
 affair, to which the individual owes an outward 
 allegiance. Jeremiah's ideal was that of every soul 
 having its own intimate intercourse with God. Resting 
 
XXV. CHRONOLOGY & DEVELOPMENT 375 
 
 on this twofold anchorage, Rabbinical Judaism was 
 saved from destruction. Its outwardness and its 
 inwardness were both necessary to its preservation. 
 Each corrected and supplemented the other. Modern 
 Judaism depends for its possibilities of future develop- 
 ment upon the correctly proportionated blending of 
 these two necessary tendencies. 
 
APPENDIX I 
 
 ON THE INTERCHANGING OF THE TERMS " SHECHINAH " AND 
 " RUAH HA-KODESn " 
 
 My exposition of the different senses in which these two 
 terms are used throughout the Kabbinical literature will have 
 shown that although they are far from being synonymous, 
 they yet bear a strong affinity to one another. Under the 
 circumstances, it is therefore not surprising to find them 
 employed interchangeably in many instances. Often what 
 is said in one place about the Shechinah is said in some 
 other place about the Holy SjDirit. Similar phraseology clusters 
 round them both in many passages. The following is a classified 
 list of some of the more prominent of these interchanges : — 
 
 (a) As material ohj'ect. In T. B. Sotah 9b when the 
 Shechinah rests on Samson his hairs stand up and knock 
 against one another with the sound of a bell. In Lev. Eabba 
 viii. 2 the same is said when the Holy Spirit rests upon him. 
 
 I have given instances of the materialisation of 
 Shechinah as light or fire. In Lev. Eabba i. 1 the same 
 material idea is used in describing the Holy Spirit, when we 
 are told that " at the time when the Holy Spirit rested on 
 Phinehas his face burned like a torch." In fact, the same 
 expression }>'^!^r7 (possibly connected with rT!i*i23 = a spark) is 
 occasionally used of both. 
 
 In T. B. Yoma 21a and 52b the Shechinah is one among 
 the five things wanting in the second Temple, In Song of 
 Songs Eabba viii. 3, Numbers Eabba xv. 10 it is the Holy 
 Spirit that is wanting, not the Shechinah. 
 
 (h) Personification. Both Shechinah and Holy Spirit 
 
 377 
 
Z7^ THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 are at times (1) mo'iN, "saying"; (2) nn"Ti2, "crying"; 
 (3) nS^-'D, " lamenting " ; (4) HTIDD = answering. 
 
 (c) Prophecy. The close connexion between Holy Spirit 
 and Prophecy has been indicated. In Koheleth Eabba i. 2 
 Amos is said to have become a prophet, because God placed 
 His Shechinah upon him (ij-^Jop pTH h^ n^n inD"'DtD Ti^mn n^I). 
 
 In Yalkut on Jonah i. there is a sentence distinctly 
 conveying the idea of the identity of Shechinah and Holy 
 Spirit as follows : nmtDl . . . Tl-'T] whr^ ''Sli?Q TiDN \1 nil"* 
 
 Here prophecy is clearly as much a result of the Shechinah as 
 of the Holy Spirit, In T. B. Pesahim 117a David's inspira- 
 tion for the composition of a certain Psalm comes from the 
 Shechinah. (Cp. also T. B. Yoma 71a.) 
 
 {d) Illustrations have been given, of the opposition hetween 
 Shechinah and Sin. In Tanhuma on TTipnil (and other 
 parallel places) Phinehas loses his Holy Spirit by reason 
 of his sin in connexion with Jephthah's daughter (see T, B. 
 Ta'anith 4a). 
 
 (e) As the Ideal. In Deuteronomy Eabba vi. 14 God 
 takes away His Shechinah from the Israelites by reason of 
 their sin, but in the time to come, when the heart of flesh shall 
 have been substituted for the heart of stone, His Shechinah 
 will again come back. The proof for this is taken from Joel 
 ii. 28, 29, the great "Spirit" passages. 
 
 In Leviticus Eabba xxxv, 7 the student of the Torah is 
 said to be " worthy of receiving the Holy Spirit." The word 
 " receiving " in connexion with the Shechinah is most 
 common, as has been shown. And the idea that the study 
 of the Torah is the means of bringing about the mystical 
 union between man and God implied in the term " Shechinah " 
 is to be found constantly in Talmud and Midrash. The 
 immanence of God is the ideal in so far as it represents the 
 realised consciousness of union with God. This can only be 
 brought about by a life of devotion to the Torah. The 
 immanence of God is real in so far as it exists in every man, 
 but is constantly thwarted by man's perversity. It is there, 
 but unrealised. 
 
 The well-known passages in Mechilta nf^tDl on the 
 
APPENDIX 379 
 
 idealism of faith are, in the Mechilta (as in the Tanhuma 
 parallel passage), associated with the Holy Spirit. Thus, 
 " Great is the faith with which the Israelites helieved in 
 Him who spake and the world was, and as a reward for their 
 faith, the Holy Spirit rested upon them and they sang 
 a song." But the parallel passage in Exodus Kabba xxi. 13 
 gives, as their reward, the fact that " the Shechinah rested 
 upon them." 
 
 The Yalkut on Jeremiah x. says, with a worthy universalism, 
 "causing the Holy Spirit to dwell upon mankind." But this 
 can be easily paralleled by the many passages where the 
 Shechinah is spoken of as dwelling among the D"'3innn, 
 earthly inhabitants in the broad sense. (See e.g. Numbers 
 Eabba xii. 6 ; Tanhuma on "'I'lpD.) 
 
 Hence the following deductions seem to be possible : — 
 
 (1) That the two terms, having so much in common, are 
 ofttimes used indiscriminately. 
 
 (2) That the term " Holy Spirit " is used far more sparingly 
 in Eabbinical literature than " Shechinah." Whether this 
 is owing to the adoption of Holy Spirit into the theology 
 of the N.T. and the Church Fathers, is a moot point. 
 
 (3) That where Holy Spirit is used as a parallel to Shechinah, 
 it is mostly to be found in the later rather than in the earlier 
 Rabbinical literature. This may possibly be accounted for by 
 the suggestion that the earlier Tannaitic Midrashim, like 
 Sifra, Sifre, Mechilta, as well as the teachings of the Tanuaim 
 and Amoraim to be found in the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, 
 were contemporaneous with the opening centuries of Christi- 
 anity, when the ideas of Holy Spirit in the Christian sense were 
 making great inroads among many people. The Jews would 
 accordingly be loath to use an expression, which might further 
 popularise anything connected with Christianity. The later 
 Midrashim, however, belong to a period when the breacli 
 between Judaism and Christianity was a long-accomplished 
 fact, and all controversy had long been silenced. Hence the 
 Rabbins and the people had nothing to fear from a free and 
 open usage of such an expression as Holy Spirit. But the 
 matter is really one that calls for further investigation. 
 
APPENDIX II 
 
 ON THE CONNEXION BETWEEN " KABOD " (GLORY) 
 AND SHECHINAH 
 
 Instances are found where " Kabod " (" Glory ") is the 
 synonym for Shechinah. But they are comparatively rare. 
 The N.T. Greek equivalent for both words is Bo^a, which, 
 though always translated " Glory," covers many of the 
 meanings implied in Shechinah. Thus, to mention only one 
 instance, in Acts xxii. 11, St. Paul tells of his experiences 
 on the road to Damascus, and speaks of his perception of the 
 risen Christ as " the glory of that light " (utto t^9 86^r]<i 
 rod (j)coro<i eKeivov). Here glory is undoubtedly materialised. 
 It is a body of light that Paul is talking about, as if it 
 were a substance that surrounds and penetrates him through 
 and through. It has been shown how Shechinah possesses 
 a series of mystical ideas like these of light. The favourite 
 figure by which Kabod is materially represented is that 
 of a cloud. Thus Yalkut on Song of Songs ii., alluding 
 to the verse in Song of Songs ii. 6, says : " These are the 
 clouds of [Kabod] Glory which surround Israel from top to 
 bottom." Instead of being bathed in a body of mystical 
 light, as the Shechinah idea implies, Israel is bathed in 
 a mystical body of cloud. In the ideal sense, associated 
 with the future, there is a passage in Tanhuma on onDD 
 which is couched in a similar phraseology to that which 
 often characterises Shechinah and Holy Spirit. It is as 
 follows : " God will in the future make for every saint a 
 canopy out of the clouds of glory, as it is said. ..." The 
 idea of DiSD!i (concentration of Divinity in one small spot) 
 
 380 
 
APPENDIX 381 
 
 which plays a large part in connexiou with Shechinah, also 
 plays a part in connexion with " Kabod." See Yalkut on 
 Job xxiii. xxxviii. ; also iSifra (edit. Weiss), p. 4 (where such 
 expressions are used as " not seeing the Kabod "). An 
 instance of a Halachic law derived from the mystical nature 
 of "Kabod" is that of T. B. Kiddushin 31a, where K. Joshua 
 b. Levi prohibits the walking of four cubits with pride because 
 God's glory tills the whole world ; and its identity with 
 Shechinah is proved from the statement which immediately 
 follows, where E. Huna says that he never walked four cubits 
 with uncovered head because the Shechinah was above his 
 head. See Mid rash Tillim on Psalm xc. for another description 
 of the immanence of the " Kabod " based on the words " He 
 shall abide in the shadow of the Almighty." The interchange 
 of Kabod and " Shechinah " is obvious in Tanhuma on "ilTDl, 
 where the phrase occurs HD'^DtDrr pi;, " the cloud of the 
 Shechinah " (cloud being the usual metaphor for " Kabod " 
 and not for Shechinah). In Tanhuma on ipi?, where the 
 legend is given of how Moses, on the eve of the Israelites' 
 departure from Egypt, tries to identify the coffin of Joseph, 
 there occurs tlie phrase : " The Shechinah is keeping back ; 
 Israel and the clouds of Kabod are keeping back for thee." 
 Obviously a parallelism is here intended ; further on in 
 the same passage of Tanhuma, there is a description of the 
 coming time when " Israel shall see God in His Kabod,'* 
 which tallies with the many passages where Shechinah and 
 Holy Spirit are spoken of in an exactly similar sense. 
 
 But if the " Kabod " has been largely eclipsed in the Tal- 
 mudic and Midrashic branch of Eabbinics by the "Shechinah," 
 it has maintained itself unimpaired in the Targumic branch. 
 Here it appears as " Yekara." The Yekara is used in 
 two ways: (1) as the equivalent Aramaic word for "Kabod," 
 as e.g. in Leviticus ix. 23, where the verse " and the 
 glory of the Lord appeared," is rendered ''m Nip"* "'^JtriNI ; 
 (2) as a parallel to some (though not all) of the meanings of 
 " Memra," to denote the Divine immanent activity in the 
 universe and man. Examples of this are : Genesis xxviii. 13, 
 where the phrase " and, behold, the Lord stood above it," is 
 rendered, " and, behold, the Yekara . . . stood above it " ; 
 
J 
 
 82 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 Genesis xvii. 22, "and God went up from Abraham," is 
 rendered, " and the Yekara . . . went up." Again, Genesis 
 xviii. 33, "and the Lord went," is rendered, " and the Yekara 
 . . . departed." In Exodus xxxiii. 23 the words "and I will 
 take away my hand," are rendered "^"ip'^ mm rr* "'"[I7N1, although 
 in the preceding sentence the same word "^DD is rendered by 
 " my Memra." This would seem to prove that Yekara and 
 Memra are to an extent synonymous. The exact relations 
 between the two, is a matter for further research. So also are 
 the relations between " Yekara " and " Shechinta " of the 
 Targum. " Shechinta " is found occasionally, as e.g. Exodus 
 xxxiv. 9, which is rendered by Onkelos, " Let the Shechinta 
 of God go among us." In Deut, xii. 5, Onkelos renders the 
 Hebrew for " to put His Name there," by " to cause His 
 Shechinta to dwell there." In the Exodus passage just alluded 
 to, it is hard to see why " Shechinta " should be used, seeing 
 that in Genesis xviii. 33 the Tetragrammaton in conjunction 
 with the very same verb (l'?"'l) is rendered by " Yekara." 
 Obviously there is a degree of synonymy again between these 
 two terms. To sum up the matter, both " Yekara " and 
 " Shechinta " would seem to be terms which at times denote 
 the same idea and at times denote different ideas. Both terms 
 seem to denote aspects of the teaching covered by the larger 
 and more comprehensive term " Memra." 
 
INDEX OF BIBLICAL AND RABBINICAL 
 PASSAGES QUOTED 
 
 A. OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 Genesis i. 2. 49, 175, 188, 217 ; i. 4. 
 171 ; i. 5. 137 ; i. 26. 75 ; i. 28. 
 137; i. 31. 314 ; ii. 7. 20, 75, 189, 
 202 ; ii. 8. 162 ; ii. 9. 189 ; ii. 11- 
 14. 74 ; ii. 19. 202 ; iii. 8. 154, 
 218 ; iii. 9. 64 ; iii. 16-17. 137 ; vi. 
 3. 189 ; vi. 6. 158 ; vi. 17. 188 ; 
 vii. 15. 176, 188 ; vii. 16. 154 ; viii. 
 21. 158, 168 ; ix. 9. 21 ; ix. 16-17. 
 152 ; X. 25. 258 ; xi. 29. 215 ; xii. 
 5. 90 ; XV. 1. 154 ; xv. 6. 154 ; 
 xvii. 22. 171, 382 ; xviii. 2. 257 ; 
 xviii. 33. 382 ; xx. 3. 158 ; xxii. 
 16. 158; xxiv. 3. 158; xxvi. 10. 
 171 ; xxvii. 42. 261 ; xxviii. 1. 262; 
 xxviii. 10. 167 ; xxviii. 13. 171, 381 ; 
 xxviii. 20-21. 154 ; xxix. 2. 262 ; 
 XXX. 23. 158 ; xxxi. 49-50. 152 ; 
 xxxii. 30. 46 ; xxxv. 3. 154 ; xxxvii. 
 33. 263 ; xli. 8. 176 ; xlii. 29. 216 ; 
 xlv. 21. 168 ; xlv. 27. 2.50, 270 ; 
 xlvi. 4. 73, 151, 168, 169 ; xlviii. 
 
 16. 129 
 
 Exodus i. 12. 58 ; ii. 23-24. 324 ; iii. 2-6. 
 74 ; iii. 12. 154 ; iii. 14. 46 ; iii. 15. 47, 
 74, 170 ; iv. 12. 154 ; iv. 22. 54 ; 
 V. 14. 273 ; vi. 9. 176 ; vii. 1. 238, 
 239; ix. 16. 47, 74 ; xii. 29. 154 ; 
 xiii. 21. 134; xiv. 31. 151, 154 ; 
 XV. 22. 141 ; xvi. 6. 87 ; xvi. 8. 
 152, 155 ; xvi. 20. 116 ; xvi. 25. 
 88 ; xvii. 7. 79 ; xix. 3. 296 ; xix. 
 
 17. 155 ; xix. 18. 79 ; xix. 20. 296 ; 
 XX. 1. 155 ; xxi. 22. 337 ; xxiii. 
 20. 96 ; XXV. 22. 155 ; xxvi. 28. 
 264 ; xxviii. 3. 177 ; xxxi. 3. 180 ; 
 xxxi. 17. 152 ; xxxi. 18. 151, 
 168; xxxii. 229; xxxii. 13. 158; 
 xxxii, 35. 158 ; xxxiii. 11. 167 ; 
 xxxiii. 14. 96, 170 ; xxxiii. 20. 95 ; 
 xxxiii. 22. 57, 171 ; xxxiii. 23. 382 ; 
 
 xxxiv. 6. 60 ; xxxiv. 9. 382 ; xxxiv. 
 
 29. 84 ; xl. 34-38. 93 
 
 Leviticus v. 21. 155 ; vii. 10. 234 ; ix. 
 
 23. 381 ; ix. 24. 83 ; xvi. 2, 171 ; 
 
 xvi. 16. 139 ; xvii. 11. 21 ; xx. 23. 
 
 156; xxiv. 10-12. 215; xxvi. 12. 
 
 66 ; xxvi. 30. 158 ; xxvi. 46. 156 
 Numbers iv. 18. 105 ; v. 3. 79 ; v. 12. 
 
 116 ; V. 14. 178; vi. 25. 83 ; vii. 
 
 89. 40, 167 ; x. 33-34. 171 ; x. 35. 
 
 96, 156 ; X. 36. 93 ; .\i. 12. 236 ; 
 
 xi. 16. 194, 203, 273 ; xi. 17. 181 ; 
 
 xiv. 9. 11. 156 ; xiv. 24. 177 ; xiv. 
 
 30. 158 ; XV. 31. 170 ; xxiii. 1. 
 233 ; xxiii. 4. 234 ; xxiii. 8. 21. 
 
 156 ; xxiv. 2. 184 ; xxiv. 6. 79 ; 
 xxvii. 14. 193, 194 ; xxvii. 16. 178 
 
 Deutorouomy i. 30. 157 ; i. 31. 236 ; i. 
 32. 157 ; ii. 16. 167 ; ii. 30. 177 ; 
 iii. 23. 324 ; iv. 7. 131 ; iv. 33. 
 
 157 ; iv. 34. 152 ; iv. 36. 1.57; v. 
 11. 21. 35. 157 ; ix. 3. 158 ; ix. 
 18. 324 ; xi. 12. 152 ; xii. 5. 382 ; 
 XX. 12. 19. 36 ; xxi. 8. 168 ; xxi. 
 20. 168 ; x.xiii. 14. 49, 60, 115, 
 297 ; xxix. 20. 242 ; xxx. 3. 127 ; 
 XXX. 11-14. 50 ; xxxi. 3. 169 ; xxxii. 
 275 ; xxxii. 11. 236 ; xxxiii. 5. 
 339 ; xxxiii. 7. 157-159 ; xxxiv. 6. 
 116 ; xxxiv. 10. 277 
 
 Joshua i. 8. 273 ; v. 14. 129; xiii. 22. 
 
 184 
 Judges v. 4. 5. 44 ; v. 31. 227 ; xiii. 18. 
 
 46 ; xiii. 22. 99 ; xiii. 25. 93, 180 ; 
 
 xiv. 6. 180 ; xv. 14. 180 
 
 1 Samuel i. 28. 265 ; ii. 25. 142 ; ii. 
 
 27. 127 ; X. 6. 180 ; x. 10. 239 ; 
 xi. 6. 180 ; XV. 11. 171 ; xvi. 13. 
 180; xvi. 23. 178; xvii. 10. 178; 
 xix. 20. 239 ; xix. 24. 240 ; xxv. 
 29. 102 
 
 2 Samuel xv. 263 ; xx. 22. 265 
 
 1 Kings vi. 1. 85 ; viii. 28. 325 ; viii. 
 
 383 
 
384 
 
 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 50. 170 ; viii. 65. 233 ; viii. 66. 86 ; 
 
 ix. 3. 119, ]20, 122; xiv. 9. 339 ; 
 
 xvii. 1. 134 ; xix. 11. 219 ; xx. 1. 
 
 36 
 2 Kings ii. 7. 16. 266 
 Isaiah i. 2. 170 ; i. 4. 158 ; i. 16. 170 ; 
 
 ii. 2. 248 ; ii. 22. 43 ; iii. 8. 193 ; 
 
 vi. 25, 95 ; vi. 8. 170 ; xi. 2. 
 
 177, 185, 205 ; xii. 2. 185 ; xx. 2. 
 
 256 ; XXV. 8. 95 ; xxvi. 19. 203 ; 
 
 xxvlii. 5. 88 ; xxix. 3. 36 ; sxix. 
 
 10. 178 ; XXX. 33. 162 ; xxxv. 1. 
 
 96 ; xxxv. 2. 44; xxxix. 16. 191 ; 
 
 xl. 22. 13, 47 ; xlii. 1-4. 186 ; xlii. 
 
 5. 43 ; xliii. 6. 54 ; xliii. 14. 127 ; 
 
 xliv. 3. 181 ; liii. 12. 43 ; Ixiii. 12. 
 
 107 ; Iv. 6. 142 ; Iv. 8. 47 ; Ivi. 7. 
 
 122 ; Ivii. 15. 50 ; Ivii. 16. 43, 192 ; 
 
 Iviii. 13. 350 ; lix. 21. 186 ; Ixiii. 9. 
 
 196, 236, 50 ; Ixiii. 10-11. 174, 193, 
 
 194, 195, 196, 205 ; Ixiii. 11. 53 ; 
 
 Ixiii. 14. 156, 170 ; Ixiv. 7. 53 ; 
 
 Ixvi. 1. 25 
 Jeremiah i. 5. 235 ; v. 13. 149 ; vii. 16. 
 
 324 ; xiii. 16. 106 ; xvii. 12. 124 ; 
 
 xxiii. 24. 40 ; xxxi. 9. 53 ; xxxi. 19. 
 
 54 ; xxxi. 31-34. 371 ; xxxiii. 5. 
 
 79 ; xxxix. 18. 170 ; xlv. 2-5. 247 ; 
 xlix. 11. 170 
 
 Ezekiel i. 1. 202 ; i. 26. 28. 252 ; ii. 2 
 182 ; iii. 12. 169, 182, 217 ; iii. 14 
 182 ; iii. 26. 10 ; viii. 3. 182, 256 
 X. 4. 116 ; xi. 1. 24. 182 ; xvi. 14 
 86; xviii. 31. 43; xviii. 32. 142 
 XX. 3. 142 ; XX. 5. 158 ; xxi. 2 
 239 ; xxiii. 18. 158 ; xxxvi. 17 
 139 ; xxxvi. 26. 43 ; xxxvii. 203 
 xxxvii. 1-14. 181 ; xxxvii. 27. 28. 
 
 80 ; xliii. 2. 82 
 
 Hosea iv. 1-2. 304 ; v. 4. 176 ; v. 7. 
 170 ; v. 15. 106 ; vi. 7. 170 ; ix. 
 
 10. 156 ; xi. 1. 235 ; xi. 3. 235 ; xi, 
 4. 157 ; xii. 2. 177 
 
 Joel ii. 28. 194 ; ii. 28. 29. 378 ; iii. 1. 
 
 2. 274 
 Amos. iii. 2. 28 ; vii. 16. 239 ; ix. 2-4. 
 
 124 ; ix. 11. 80 
 Obadiah i. 21. 338 
 Jonah i. 3. 124 
 Micah ii. 6. 239 ; iv. 7. 338 
 Habakkuk ii. 20. 124 ; iii. 4. 84 
 Zechariah ii. 3, 108 ; ii. 6. 90 ; iii. 9. 
 
 187; iv. 2. 188 ; iv. 6. 187, 188; 
 
 iv. 10. 119, 124 ; viii. 23. 130 ; 
 
 ix. 1. 317 ; xii. i. 202 ; xii. 2. 10. 
 
 178 ; xiv. 9. 338 
 Malachi ii. 10. 54 
 Psalms i. 69 ; ii. 47 ; ii. 7. 8. 164 ; 
 
 iii. 4. 120 ; v. 4. 137 ; xi. 4. 
 
 120, 124 ; xvi. 8. 79, 329 ; xvi. 10- 
 
 11. 99 ; xviii. 6. 324 ; xviii. 8. 247 ; 
 
 xix. 1. 44 ; xxii. 1, 271 ; xxvii. 
 29. 136 ; xxix. 4. Ill ; xxix. 7. 
 147 ; XXX. 1-3. 232 ; xxxi. 5. 202 ; 
 xxxiii. 6. 76, 147, 191 ; xxxiii. 9. 
 153, 162 ; xxxiv. 7. 128 ; xxxiv. 18. 
 201 ; xxxvi. 9. 171 ; xii. 4. 59 ; 
 xliv. 10. 79 ; 1. 9. 79 ; Ii. 11. 53, 
 174, 193, 196, 201; Ii. 12. 43, 197; 
 Ivi. 11. 70 ; Ixiii. 8. 3 ; Ixv. 2. 79, 
 110, 141, 237 ; Ixv. 13. 193 ; Ixxii. 
 17. 162 ; Ixxiii. 6. 193 ; Ixxiv. 1. 
 242 ; Ixxiv. 2. 171 ; Ixxvii. 19. 44 ; 
 Ixxviii. 25. 87 ; Ixxviii. 39. 176, 
 190 ; Ixxx. 4. 242 ; Ixxx. 17. 164 ; 
 Ixxxi. 9. 143 ; Ixxxii. 1. 122 ; Ixxxix. 
 14. 110 ; Ixxxix. 15. 44 ; xc. 1. 
 109, 288 ; xc. 2. 3. 162 ; xciii. 2. 
 162 ; ciii. 10. 192 ; ciii. 13. 53, 
 192; ciii. 14. 192; ciii. 19. 119; 
 civ. 4. 89, 175 ; cvi. 30. 324 ; evi. 
 33. 119 ; ex. 1. 97 ; cxix. 79, 197 ; 
 cxxxv. 13. 47, 74 ; cxxxix. ."/3 ; 
 cxxxix. 3. 44 ; cxxxix. 5. 36 ; cxxxix, 
 7-10. 49 ; cxxxix. 7-12. 44 ; cxli, 
 2. 265 ; cxliii. 10. 184 ; cxlv. 9. 
 299, 301 ; cxlv. 13. 338 ; cxlviii. 
 
 8. 330 
 
 Proverbs iii. 12. 44 ; iii. 34. 313 ; viii, 
 205 ; viii. 22. 162, 199 ; viii. 22- 
 26. 200 ; viii. 26. 171 ; viii. .30. 
 199 ; viii. 34. 123 ; xv. 3, 124 ; 
 XV, 17. 234 ; xvii. 1. 234 ; xx. 27. 
 
 21, 43 ; xxi. 23. 228 ; xxiii. 29. 30. 
 227 ; XXV. 21. 143 ; xxv. 28. 176 
 
 Job xi. 7. 8. 48 ; xii. 10. 176 ; xxiii. 8. 9, 
 48 ; xxvi. 7. 44 : xxvi. 9. 86 ; xxvi, 
 11. 44 ; xxvi. 14. 44, 331 ; xxviii. 
 25. 220 ; xxxii. 8. 21, 43, 50 ; xxxiv, 
 
 22. 124 ; xxxv. 5-7. 48 ; xxxvi. 26. 
 48 ; xxxvlii. 1, 219 
 
 Canticles i. 2. 144 ; 1. 13. 94 ; ii. 6. 
 
 380 ; ii. 9, 120 ; ii. 12. 220 ; vi. 4. 
 
 93 ; viii. 12. 71 ; viii. 13. 229 ; viii. 
 
 14. 230 
 Ruth ii. 8. 9. 220 
 Lamentations i. 1. 71 ; i. 16. 228 ; iii. 
 
 33. 44 ; iii. 37. 237 ; iii. 41. 122 ; 
 
 iii. 44. 142 
 Ecclesiastes i. 14. 177 ; iii. 15. 114, 116 ; 
 
 iv. 2. 237 ; v. 2. 48 ; ix. 7. 233 ; 
 
 ix. 11. 169; X. 8. 71 ; xii, 7. 21, 
 
 43, 179 
 Daniel iv. 34. 338 ; ix. 14. 141 ; xii. 2. 
 
 203 ; xii. 10, 169 
 Ezra i, 1, 177 ; i. 3. 120 ; i. 5. 43 ; vi. 
 
 9. 187 ; viii. 15. 95 
 Nehemiah viii. 3, 203 ; ix, 20. 202 
 
 1 Chronicles xii, 18. 183 ; xxii. 9. 54 
 
 2 Chronicles ii. 1. 252 ; vi. 42. 227 ; 
 
 vii. 8. 9. 237 ; xv, 1-7. 183 ; xviii. 
 22. 178 ; xxxvi. 22. 177 
 
INDEX 
 
 385 
 
 B, NEW TESTAMENT 
 
 Matthew iii. 11. 16. 220 ; xviii. 20. 132, 
 
 230 
 Mark i. 10. 220 
 Luke ii. 9. .57 ; iii. 5. 202 ; iii. 22. 220 ; 
 
 xiv. 14. 202 ; xx. 35. 202 
 John i. 1. 76, 161 ; i, 14. 80, 162 ; iii. 
 
 34. 223 ; v. 29. 202 ; vi. 29-46. 
 
 165 ; viii. 12. 83 ; viii. 58. 163 ; 
 
 xiv. 2. 165 ; xv. 8-10. 165 
 Acts ii. 2. 206, 132 ; ii. 3. 132, 221, 
 
 222 ; ii. 4. 221, 132 ; ii. 42. 131 ; 
 
 vii. 51. 53, 193, 194 ; xv. 16. 80 ; 
 
 xxii. 11. 222, 380; xxiv. 15. 203 ; 
 
 xxviii. 25. 26. 237 
 Romans vi. 12-14. 142 ; vii. 18. 24. 42 ; 
 
 vii. 22. 23. 142 ; viii. 4-13. 142 ; 
 
 X. 12. 298 ; xi. 36. 160 
 
 1 Corinthians v. 4. 132 ; viii. 6. 76 ; x. 
 
 16-17. 132 ; xii. 14-26. 131 ; xv. 
 45. 160 
 
 2 Corinthians iii. 17. 222 ; iv. 4. 76 ; 
 
 iv. 6. 57 
 Ephesians i. 6. 57 ; iv. 10. etc., 76 ; iv. 
 
 30. 53, 193 
 Colossians i. 15. 76, 160 ; i. 16. 76 ; i. 
 
 17. 160; iii. 11. 160 
 Hebrews viii. 2. 80 ; x. 15. 16. 237 ; xi. 
 
 274 
 Revelation i. 4. 162 ; iv. 5. 89, 162 ; 
 
 vi. 6. 163 ; vii. 3. 113 ; xx. 5. 203 ; 
 
 xxi. 3. 80 
 
 C. APOCRYPHA 
 
 Wisdom of Solomon i. 4. 59 ; i. 4-5. 
 
 159 ; ii. 24. 281 ; vii. 7. 58 ; vii. 
 
 22. 204 ; vii. 24-26. 73 ; vii. 25. 
 
 59 ; vii. 29. 30. 73 ; viii. 1. 73 ; ix. 
 
 15. 42 ; X. 59 ; x. 1. 58 ; x. 19. 
 
 159 ; XV. 2. 59 ; xvi. 12. 26, 159 ; 
 
 xviii. 14-16. 60 
 Ecclesiasticus iii. 21. 22. 73 ; vii. 14. 
 
 48 ; xvii. 10. 132 ; xxiv. 56 ; xxxv. 
 
 17. 125 ; xlvii. 10. 132 
 Tobit iii. 2. 132 ; viii. 5. 132 ; xi. 14. 
 
 132 ; xiii. 18. 132 ; xiv. 9. 132 
 
 D. APOCALYPTIC WRITINGS 
 
 4 Esdras iii. 21. 281 ; iv. 25. 132 ; x. 
 
 22. 132 
 Enoch xiv. 9. 163 
 Secrets of Enoch (edit. Charles, p. 4), 
 
 163 
 
 E. PHILO 
 
 On Giants, 319 
 
 Who is the Heir, etc. ? 75, 76, 256 
 
 Allegories of the Sacred Laws, 74, 75 
 Life of Moses, 74, 76 
 On the Unchangeableness of God, 74 
 On the Creation of the World, 74, 75 
 The Worse plotting against the Better, 
 
 75 
 On Dreams sent by God, 75 
 On Fugitives, 75 
 On the Confusion of Languages, 75 
 
 F. TARGUM 
 
 Genesis i. 2. 175 ; vi. 6. 158 ; (Jerus.) 
 
 vi. 6. 158 ; viii. 21. 168 ; xvii. 22. 
 
 171 ; xxvi. 10. 171 ; (Ps. Jon.) 
 
 xxviii. 10. 167 ; xxviii. 13. 171 ; 
 
 (Ps. Jon.) xxviii. 13. 171 ; xiv. 25. 
 
 27. 250; (Ps. Jon.) Ixii. 23. 29. 
 
 171 
 Exodus (Ps. Jon.) iv. 12. 154; (Ps. 
 
 Jon.) xiv. 31. 154 ; (Ps. Jon.) xix. 
 
 17. 155; vii. 7. 79; (Jerus.) xix. 
 
 18. 79 ; XX. 1. 155 ; (Ps. Jon.) xx. 
 1. 155; (Jerus.) xx. i. 155; (Ps. 
 Jon.) xxviii. 30. 263 ; (Jerus.) xxxii. 
 35. 158 ; (Ps. Jon.) xxxiii. 22. 57, 
 155 ; xxxiv. 9. 382 
 
 Leviticus (Ps. Jon.) v. 21. 155 ; (Ps. 
 
 Jon.) xvi. 2. 171 ; XX. 23. 156 
 Numbers v. 3. 79 ; x. 33. 34. 171 ; (Ps. 
 
 Jon.) X. 35. 156; (Jerus.) x. 35. 
 
 156; (Ps. Jon.) xiv. 14. 171 ; xv, 
 
 31. 170; (Ps. Jon.) xxiv. 2. 185; 
 
 (Jerus.) xxiv. 6. 79; (Ps. Jon.) 
 
 xxvii. 16. 178 
 Deuteronomy (Ps. Jon.) v. 11. 157 ; (Ps. 
 
 Jon.) V. 21. 157 ; (Ps. Jon.) ix. 3. 
 
 158 ; xi. 12. 152 ; xii. .5. 382 ; xxi. 
 
 8. 168 ; (Jerus.) xxxiii. 7. 157 
 Judges xiii. 25. 180 
 1 Kings xviii. 50. 170 ; vi. 1. 85 
 Isaiah i. 2. 16. 170 ; vi. 8. 170 ; xi. 2. 
 
 248 ; xii. 2. 185 ; xlii. 1. 186 ; Ixiii. 
 
 10. 11. 194 
 Jeremiah xxxix. 18. 170; xlix. 11. 170 
 Hosea v. 5. 170 ; vi. 7. 170 
 Psalms i. 9. 79 ; xvi. 8. 79 ; (Ps. Jon. 
 
 Ixv. 2. 79 
 Canticles ii. 20. 220 
 Lamentations i. 1. 71 
 Koheleth x. 8. 71 
 
 G. MISHNA 
 
 Aboth i. 357 ; ii. 18. 328 ; iii. 15, 313 ; 
 
 v. 1. 149 ; v. 203 
 Berachoth vi. 338 ; ix. 315 ; ix. 1. 303 
 Haggigah ii. 366 
 Sanhedrin x. 348 ; xi. 348 
 Sotah ix. 15. 271 
 
 2c 
 
386 
 
 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 
 
 H. TALMUD JERUSHALMI 
 
 Berachotb nKi-\n pna, 137 ; inci:' 'ry, 134 
 
 Ta'anith i. 134 ; ii. 131 
 
 Siikkah iv. 134 
 
 Schebiith ix. 267 
 
 Sanhedriii vi. 265 
 
 Aboda Zarah i, 259 
 
 Sotab i. 251 
 
 I. TOSEFTA 
 Yadaim ii. 14. 209 
 
 K. TALMUD BABLI 
 
 Beracboth, 5a. 315, 320; 6a. 115, 125, 
 144, 145 ; 7a. 70 ; 10a. 109 ; 13a 
 and b. 327 ; 14b. 346 ; 1.5a. 346 ; 
 16b. 308, 333 ; 17a. 333 ; 23b. 363 ; 
 
 24a. 363 ; 27b. 141 ; 29b. 328, 335 ; 
 
 30b. 327 ; 31a. 333 ; 32b. 337 ; 
 
 33b. 313 ; 34b. 267, 320, 328 ; 43b. 
 
 74 ; 61a. 102 ; 64a. 97, 98, 145 
 Sabbath, 7b. 132 ; 10a. 116 : 12b. 59 ; 
 
 22b. 82 ; 3a. 237 ; 87b. 118 ; 88a. 
 
 86 ; 88b. 110 ; 92a. 249 ; 104a. 
 
 313 ; 105b. 143 ; 127a. 102, 280 ; 
 
 152b. 110 
 Erubin 18a. 102 ; 64a. 259 
 Pesatim 5a. 97 ; 54a. 44, 76, 162, 317, 
 
 319; 117a. .378 
 Rosh Hashana, 16a. 45 ; 16b. 163 ; I7b. 
 
 60 ; 31a. 106, 116 
 Ta'anith 2a. 327 ; 4a. 270, 378 ; 10a. 
 
 172; 11a. 269; 22b. 269; 25b. 
 
 267 
 Yoina 21a. 377 ; 21b. 267 ; 22b. 270 ; 
 
 2.3a. 172, 197 ; 36a. 317; 39b. 267, 
 
 295 ; 52b. 377 ; 71a. 346, 378 ; 
 
 71b. 263, 346 ; 73b. 155, 263 ; 
 
 75b. 87 
 Sukkah 28a. 167 ; 45b. 99 ; 48a. 267 ; 
 
 52a. 164, 309, 320 ; 52b. 143 ; 55a. 
 
 372 
 Megillah 3a. 167 ; 7a. 209 ; 10b. 372 ; 
 
 12a. 58 ; 14a. 215 ; 14b. 265 ; 20a. 
 
 338; 21b. 149; 29a. 18, 59, 97, 
 
 127 
 Ketuboth, 105b. 346 
 Kiddushin 31a. 112, 136, 302, 381 ; 
 
 32b. 44 ; 69b, 95 
 Nedarim 39b. 171, 317 ; 58a. 249 
 Gittin 56a. 339 ; 56b. 42 
 Sotah 3b. 59 ; 5a. 104 ; 9b. 93, 116. 
 
 218, 377 ; 11a. 58 ; 13a. 262 ; 14a. 
 
 116 ; 15a. 107 ; 30b. 59 ; 38a. 
 
 172 ; 42b. 102 ; 46a. 168 ; 49a. 85 ; 
 
 49b. 259 
 Baba Bathra, 15a. 210, 211, 221 ; 16a. 
 
 308 ; 25a. 108 ; 121a. 222 ; 121b. 
 
 167; 122a. 263; 134a. 167 
 
 Sanhedrin, 11a, 267 ; 16a, 263 ; 22b. 
 
 329, 351 ; 39a. 73, 108 ; 46a. 104 ; 
 
 5Sb. 133; 60a. 171 ; 64b. 170; 
 
 89a. 256 ; 90b. 42 ; 91a. 42 ; 99a. 
 
 348 ; 10.3a. 98, 102 ; 103b. 102 ; 
 
 107a. 237 
 Abodah Zarah, 3b. 172, 349 ; 5a. 193 ; 
 
 11a. 42 ; 20b. 271 ; 22b. 281 ; 26a. 
 
 277 
 Menahoth 43b. 351 ; 86b. 82, 83 ; 110a. 
 
 346 
 Hullin 31a, 338 ; 31b, 338 ; 60a. 74, 
 
 172 
 Niddah 13a. 193 ; 69b. 75 
 Aboth De R. Nathan ii. 57, 82 ; xii, 91 ; 
 
 x.xi. 339 ; x.\-x. 270 ; xxxiv, 106, 
 
 141, 248 ; xxxvi. 115 ; xli. 102 
 Makkoth, 11a. 155; 2.3a. 216; 23b. 
 
 363 ; 24a. 363 
 Haggigah 12a. 58, 175 ; 12b. 110 ; 13a. 
 
 110, 213; 14a. 148, 167; 14b. 
 
 303 ; 1.5a. 219 ; 15b. 104 ; 16b. 74 
 Yebamoth 62a. 193 ; 64a. 336 ; 105b. 
 
 122, 125 
 Moed Katan 9a. 86, 237 
 Betsa 16a. 350 
 Zebahim 116a. 86 
 
 L, MIDRASHIM 
 
 Genesis Rabba i. 76, 349 ; i. 3. 171 ; 
 
 iii. 6. 74 ; iii. 9. 118 ; iv. 4. 40 ; 
 
 iv. 5, 95 ; vii. 1, 44 ; viii. 1. 171 ; 
 
 viii. 2. 73 ; viii. 3. 4, 68 ; viii. 4. 
 
 76 ; viii. 13. 113 ; ix. 7. 314 : xi. 
 
 63 ; xi. 9, 291 ; xi. 11, 113 ; xii, 1. 
 
 331 ; xii. 2. 147 ; x-vii. 1. 147 ; 
 
 xxvi. 6. 203 ; xxx. 12. 42 ; xxxiii. 
 
 3. 301 ; xxxvii. 7. 258 ; xxxix. 14. 
 
 91 ; xl. 5. 103 ; xlii. 2. 290 ; xliv. 
 
 8. 164 ; xlvii. 6, 104 ; .xlviii. 9 
 
 105, 115 ; xlix. 2. 44 ; xlix. 3 
 
 103 ; Ix. 3. 270 ; Ixv. 2. 114 ; Ixviii. 
 
 3. 4. 116 ; Ixviii. 4. 114 ; Ixviii. 9. 
 
 109 ; Ixx. 9, 220 ; Ixx, 12, 262 ; 
 
 Ix.xv, 8. 262 ; Ixxvii. 1. 114 ; Ixxxiii. 
 
 89 ; Ixxxiv. 4. 91 ; Ixxxiv. 19. 263 ; 
 
 Ixxxv. 9. 215 ; Ixxxv, 12. 216 ; 
 
 Ixxxvi. 6. 129 ; xci, 6, 217, 269 ; 
 
 xci. 7. 216 ; xcvii. 2. 129 ; xcix. 11, 
 
 171 ; cxi, 6. 250. 
 Exodus Rabba i. 29, 170 ; i, 35. 97 ; ii. 
 
 2. 120 ; ii. 5. 44, 105 ; v. 9. 99, 
 
 115 ; viii. 1. 237 ; xii. 1. 116 ; .\v, 
 
 5. 139 ; XV. 15. 228 ; xv, 16, 127 : 
 
 xviii. 5. 74 ; xxi. 4. 115, 125 ; xxi. 
 
 13. 379 ; xxiii. 5, 134 ; xxiv. 3. 
 
 141 ; xxvii. 2. 97 ; xxviii. 61 ; 
 
 xxviii. 6. 102, 111 ; xxix, 61 ; xxix, 
 
 1. 115 ; xxxii. 6. 9, 128 ; xxxiv. 1. 
 
 11."., 118, 124 ; xxxviii. 8. 82 
 
INDEX 
 
 387 
 
 Leviticus Rabba i. 1. 216, 377; i. 13. 
 276 ; iv. 5. 41 ; iv. 8. 109 ; viii. 2. 
 218, 377 ; ix. 9. 209, 215, 251 : 
 xvi. 2. 220 ; xxi. 8. 259 ; xxiii. 98 ; 
 xxiii. 12. 103 ; xxvii. r>. 114 ; 
 xxviii. 6. 267 ; xxx. 2. 99 ; xxxii. 
 
 4. 215 ; xxxiv. 3. 269 ; xxxv. 7. 
 249, 272, 378 ; xxxvii. 3. 259 
 
 Numbers Rabba i. 3. 121, 129, 299 ; ii. 
 6. 57 ; V. 1. 105; vii. 10. 127 ; x. 
 
 5. 222 ; xi. 2. 74, 123 ; xi. 5. 83 ; 
 xii. 3. 119, 137 ; xii. 6. 136, 379 ; 
 xii. 8. 83 ; xiii. 6. 118, 291. 301 ; 
 XV. 2. 5. 83 ; xv. 10. 267, 377 ; xv. 
 21. 229 ; xvii. 2. 233 ; xix. 18. 99 ; 
 XX. 1. 275 ; XX. 7. 276 : xx. 18. 
 237 ; XX. 19. 184 ; xxi. 16. 86 
 
 Deuteronomy Rabba i. 17. 105 ; ii. 1. 
 
 324 ; ii. 10. 18, 39, 110 ; ii. 16. 
 
 130; ii. 37. 115 ; iv. 4. 144 ; v. 
 
 13. 149 ; vi. 14. 378 ; vii. 2. 123 ; 
 
 vii. 8. 100 ; ix. 9. 148 ; xi. 3. 84 
 Song of Songs Rabba i. 91, 110 ; i. 3. 
 
 147 ; i. 4. 170 ; ii, 94, 99, 125, 
 
 134 ; ii. 9, 289 ; iii. 8. 85 ; iv. 10. 
 
 352 ; vi. 136 ; vi. 3. 148 ; vii. 5. 
 
 317 ; viii. 261, 267 ; viii. 3. 377 ; 
 
 viii. 12. 71, 229, 231 
 Ruth llabba ii. 265 ; iv. 12. 220 ; v. 4. 
 
 Ill 
 Lamentations Rabba i. 5. 339 ; i. 33. 
 
 133; i. 45. 228; xxv. 106, 116, 
 
 121 : xxix. 133 
 Koheleth Rabba i. 2. 378 ; iv. 2. 237 ; 
 
 viii. 3. 86 ; X. 17. 237 ; xiv. 16. 
 
 216 
 Esther Rabba x. 4. 232 
 Si/ri (edit. Friedmanu) : 
 
 on NB'j, 83, 141 ; Numbers vi. 27. 
 
 172 ; on inSynn, 107, 133, 141, 148; 
 
 on 'VDC, 133 ; on jinnNi, 337 ; on 
 
 apv, 119 ; on Ksn "D, 112 ; on Dent. 
 
 xxiii. 14. 297 ; on Deut. xxxii. 5. 
 
 139 ; on Dent, xxxiv. 10. 277 ; on 
 
 n^n^nnN-n, 71, 91, 147, 231 
 Afcchilta (edit. Friedmann) : 
 
 page 1. 148; page 33. 274; on 
 
 N3, 109 ; on nhc'2, 90, 107, 133, 
 
 235, 280, 290, 378 ; on Exodus 
 
 xvi. 25. 88 ; on nrr, 44, 86, 97, 
 
 99, 114, 115, 116 
 Tanfj,uma : 
 
 Genesis i. 1. 144 ; rrcKiD, 302 ; 
 
 -l'?-!'?, 91 ; niv "n, 102, 115 ; nnSin, 
 
 226 ; nStt-i, 97 ; 3B"i, 222 ; 'n'l, 
 
 133; NiNi vii. 226; ^3, 148; 
 
 nVra, 90, 107, 134, 379 ; nn-, 97, 
 
 115; c-L-sra, 227; c-uscs, 42; 
 
 TOi-in, 121, 125; xct '3. 81, 102, 
 
 116 ; nips, lis, 136, 379 ; ni,ti 
 
 vi. 18 ; -rets-, 227 ; ynin, 44, 141 ; 
 
 j;-ii-c, 228; mo nnx, 94; nn3, 101, 
 
 140 ; -131C3, 93, 381 ; xrj, 84, 116 ; 
 
 -nVi-nn, 273 ; npn, 97, 265 ; pSa 
 
 xxiii. 1. 233, 234 ; pSa xxiii. 4. 
 
 234; cm-s, 86, 380; pnnKJ, 107, 
 
 222 ; npi;, 381 ; o'aw, 144 
 Valtut : 
 
 i? ^S 372 ; Genesis xlix. 208 ; h2, 
 
 134 ; Exodus xxxi. 115 ; •vct:% 118 ; 
 
 Numbers iii. 15. 107 ; in'^V'i:!' 96, 
 
 134 ; Deut. i. 265 ; pnnxi, 132, 337 ; 
 
 Joshua V. 131 ; vii. 265 ; xxii. 86 ; 
 
 Judges iv. 4. 277 ; 1 Sam. i. 28. 
 
 265 ; 2 Sam. xx. 144 ; xx. 22. 265 ; 
 
 xxii. 270; 1 Kings viii. 122, 125 ; 
 
 xvii. 133 ; 2 Kings ii. 266 ; Isaiah 
 
 vi. 112 ; xxv. 8. 95 ; xxxv. 95 ; 
 
 xii. 97 ; Jeremiah i. 5. 235 ; x. 
 
 379 ; xxiii. 24. 112 ; Ii. 91 ; Ezekiel 
 
 i. 123, 148 ; viii. 137 ; xxxvi. 139 ; 
 
 xxxvi. 20. 134 ; xliii. 89 ; Ho.sea .\i. 
 
 3. 235 ; Micah v. 267 ; Jonah i. 
 
 378 ; Psalms i. 69 ; vii. 237 ; viii. 
 
 86 ; xiv. 86 ; xvii. 99, 208 ; xxiv. 
 
 218, 237 ; xxxvii. 314 ; Ixviii. 144 ; 
 
 Ixxii. 89 ; Ixxxii. 144 ; Ixxxvi. 44 ; 
 
 xci. 124, 288 ; cii. 292 : civ. 89 ; 
 
 Proverbs xx. 133 ; Job xx. 27. 92 ; 
 
 xxiii. 381 ; xxxvii. 144 ; xxxviii. 
 
 381 ; Song of Songs i. 94, 149; 
 
 i. 2. 144; ii. 6. 380; ii. 27. 
 
 92 ; vi. 2. 134 ; Lamentations ii. 
 
 125 ; iii. 144 ; iii. 3. 139 ; vii. 
 
 27. 236 ; viii. 86 ; Esther v. 2. 
 
 270 ; vi. 140 
 PesiJcta Rabbnti (edit. Friedmann) : 
 
 1). 6. 237 ; 21. 137 ; 129. 235 ; 
 
 161. 171 ; 189. 86 
 Pcsikta J)e Ii. Kahana (edit. Buber) : 
 
 p. 80. 143; 105. 296 
 Midr(i,sh TUlim : 
 
 Ps. xvii. 216; Ixxii. 216; Ixxiv. 
 
 171 ; xc. 381 ; xd. 137 
 Tanna Dcbc Elijahu : 
 
 -h nh«>, 92 
 Pirkc R. Eliezer : 
 
 iii. 171 
 
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