Judea won the Promised Land Palestine climate prehistory Abraham's people the Jews in Egypt the exodus the conquest of Kingdom a buckle or a Montesquieu eager to interpret history through geography might have taken a handsome leaf out of Palestine 150 miles from Dan on the north to Beersheba on the south 25 to 80 miles from the Philistines on the west to the Syrians Arameans ammonites Moabites and on the east one would not expect so tiny a territory to play a major role in history or to leave behind it an influence greater than that of Babylonia a Syria or Persia perhaps greater even than that of Egypt or Greece but it was the fortune and misfortune of Palestine that it lay midway between the capitals of the Nile and those of the Tigris and Euphrates this circumstance brought trade to Judea and it brought war time and again the harassed Hebrews were compelled to take sides in the struggle of the empires to pay tribute or be overrun behind the Bible behind the plaintive cries of the psalmist's and the prophets for help from the sky lay this imperiled place of the Jews between the upper and nether millstones of Mesopotamia and Egypt the climatic history of the land tells us again how precarious a thing civilization is and how its great enemies barbarism and desiccation are always waiting to destroy it once Palestine was a land flowing with milk and honey as many a passage in the Pentateuch describes it Josephus in the first century after Christ still speaks of it as moist enough for agriculture and very beautiful they have abundance of trees and are full of autumn fruits both wild and cultivated they are not naturally watered by many rivers but derived their chief moisture from rain of which they have no wand in ancient days the spring rains that fed the land restored in cisterns are brought back to the surface by a multitude of wells and distributed over the country by a network of canals this was the physical basis of Jewish civilization the soil so nourished produced barley wheat and corn the vine throw bonnet and trees bore olives figs dates or other fruits on every slope when war came and devastated these are officialy fertile fields or when some Conqueror exiled to distant regions the families that had cared for them the desert crept in eagerly and in a few years undid the work of generations we cannot judge the fruitfulness of ancient Palestine from the barren wastes and timid oasis that confronted the brave Jews who in our own time returned to their old home after eighteen centuries of exiled dispersion and suffering history is older in Palestine than Bishop Ussher supposed Neanderthal remains have been unearthed near the Sea of Galilee and five Neanderthal skeletons were recently discovered in a cave near Haifa it appears likely that the musterion culture which flourished in Europe about 40,000 BC extended to Palestine at Jericho Neolithic floors and hearts have been exhumed that carry back the history of the region down to a middle Bronze Age 2,000 to 1600 BC in which the towns of Palestine and Syria had accumulated such wealth as to invite conquest by Egypt in the 15th century before Christ Jericho was a well walled city ruled by kings acknowledging the suzerainty of Egypt the tombs of these kings excavated by the Garstang expedition contained hundreds of Buzz's funerary offerings and other objects indicating a settled life at Jericho in the time of the Hyksos domination and a fairly developed civilization in the days of hatshepsut and Tut most the third it becomes apparent that the different dates at which we begin the history of diverse peoples are merely the marks of our ignorance the tell el-amarna letters carry on the general picture of Palestinian and Syrian life almost to the entrance of the Jews into the valley of the Nile it is probable they're not certain that the Habiru spoken of in his correspondence were the Hebrews the Jews believed that the people of Abraham had come from war in Samaria and had settled in Palestine circa 22,000 BC a thousand years or more before Moses and that the conquest of the Canaanites was merely a capture by the Hebrews of the land promised them by their God the amra field mentioned in Genesis chapter 14 verse 1 as king of shinar in those days was probably a map all father of Hammurabi and his predecessor on the throne of Babel there are no direct references in contemporary sources to either the exodus or the conquest of Kingdom and the only indirect reference is the steely erected by Pharaoh Merneptah circa 1225 BC part of which reads as follows the Kings are overthrown saying Salaam wasted his - he knew the hit Heartland is pacified plundered is Canaan with every evil Israel is desolated her seed is not Palestine has become a widow for Egypt all lands are united they are pacified everyone that his turbulent is bound by Kingma nepeta this does not prove that Merneptah was the Pharaoh of the Exodus it proves little except that Egyptian armies had again ravaged Palestine we cannot tell when the Jews entered Egypt nor whether they came to it as Freeman or a slaves perhaps they followed in the track of the Hyksos whose semitic rule in egypt might have offered them some protection Petry accepting the Bible figure of 430 years for the stay of the Jews in Egypt dates their arrival about 1650 BC their eggs at about 12:20 BC we may take it as likely that the immigrants were at first a modest number and that the many thousands of Jews in Egypt in Moses this time with the consequence of a high birthrate as in all periods the more they afflicted them the more they multiplied and grew the story of the bondage in Egypt of the use of the Jews as slaves in great construction enterprises their rebellion and escape or emigration to Asia has many internal signs of essential truth mingled of course with supernatural interpolations customary and all the historical writing of the ancient East even the story of Moses must not be rejected offhand it is astonishing however that no mention is made of him by either Amos or Isaiah who's preaching appears to have preceded by a century the composition of the Pentateuch Manito an egyptian historian of the 3rd century BC as reported by Josephus tells us that the Exodus was due to the desire of the Egyptians to protect themselves from a plague that had broken out among the destitute and enslaved choose and that Moses was an Egyptian priest who went as a missionary among the Jewish lepers and gave them laws of cleanliness modeled upon those of the Egyptian clergy Greek and Roman writers were Pete this explanation of the Exodus but their anti-semitic inclinations make them unreliable guides one verse of the biblical account supports ward's interpretation of the exodus as a labor strike and the king of Egypt said unto them wherefore do ye Moses and Aaron let the people from their works get you unto your burdens Moses is an Egyptian rather than a Jewish name perhaps it is a shorter form of ammos professor Garstang of the Marston expedition of the University of Liverpool claims to have discovered in the royal tombs of Jericho evidence that Moses was rescued precisely in 1527 BC by the then princess later the great Queen Hatshepsut that he was brought up by her as a court favorite and fled from Egypt upon the accession of her enemy Tut most the third he believes that the material found in these tombs confirms the story of the fall of Jericho Joshua chapter 6 he dates this fall circa 1400 BC and the Exodus circa 1447 BC as this chronology rests upon the precarious dating of scarabs and pottery it must be received with respectful skepticism when Moses led the Jews to Mount Sinai he was merely following the route laid down by Egyptian turquoise hunting expeditions for a thousand years before him the account of the forty years wandering in the desert once looked upon is incredible now seems reasonable enough in a traditionally nomadic people and the conquest of Canaan was but one more instance of a hungry nomad horde falling upon a settled community the conquerors killed as many as they could and married the rest slaughter was unconfined and to follow the text was divinely ordained and enjoyed Gideon in capturing two cities slew 120,000 men only in the annals of the Assyrians do we meet again with such hearty killing or easy counting occasionally we are told the land rested from war Moses had been a patient statesman but Joshua was only a plain blunt warrior Moses had ruled bloodlessly by inventing interviews with God but Joshua ruled by the second law of nature that the superior killer survives in this realistic and unsentimental fashion the Jews took their promised land to Solomon in all his glory race appearance language organization judges and Kings Saul David Solomon his wealth the temple rise of the social problem in Israel of their racial origin we can only say vaguely that they were Semites not sharply distinct or different from the other Semites of Western Asia it was their history that made them not they who made their history at their very first appearance they are already a mixture of many stocks only by the most unbelievable virtue could a pure race have existed among the thousand ethnic cross currents of the Near East but the Jews were the purest of all for they intermarried only very reluctantly with other peoples hence they have maintained their type with astonishing tenacity the Hebrew prisoners on the Egyptian and Assyrian reliefs despite the prejudices of the artists are recognisably like the Jews of our own time there too are the long and curved hit height nose the projecting cheekbones the curly hair and beard though one cannot see under the Egyptian caricature the scrawny toughness of the body the subtlety and obstinacy of spirit that have characterized the Semites from the stiff-necked followers of Moses to the inscrutable veterans and tradesmen of today in the early years of their conquest they dressed him simple tunics low crowned hats or turbine like caps and easygoing sandals as wealth came they covered their feet with leather shoes and their tunics with fringed captain's their women who were among the most beautiful of antiquity painted their cheeks and their eyes were all the jewellery they could get and adopted to the best of their ability the newest styles from Babylon Nineveh Damascus or Tyre Hebrew was among the most majestically so ngerous of all the languages of the earth despite its gutturals it was full of masculine music foreign all described it as a quiver full of arrows a trumpet of brasses crashing through the air it did not differ much from the speech of the Phoenicians of the Moabites the Jews used an alphabetic into the Phoenicians some scholars believe it to be the oldest alphabet known they did not bother to write vowels leaving these for the sense to fill in even today the Hebrew vowels are mere points adorning the consonants the invaders never formed a united nation but remained for a long time as 12 more or less independent tribes organized and ruled on the principles not of the state but of the patriarchal family the oldest head of each family group participated in a council of elders which was the last court of law and justice in the tribe and which cooperated with the leaders of other tribes only under the compulsion of dire emergency the family was the most convenient economic unit in tilling the fields and tending the flocks this was the source of its strength its authority and its political power a measure of family communism softened the rigors of paternal discipline and created memories to which the Prophet talked back disconsolate Li and more individualistic days for when under Solomon industry came to the towns and made the individual the new economic unit of production the authority of the family weakened even as today and the inherent order of Jewish life decayed the judges doom the tribes occasionally gave a united obedience for not magistrates but chieftains or warriors even when they were priests in those days there was no king in Israel but every man did that which was right in his own eyes this incredibly Jeffersonian condition gave way under the needs of war the threat of domination by the Philistines brought a temporary unity to the tribes and persuaded them to appoint a king whose authority over them should be continuous the prophet Samuel warned them against certain disadvantages in rule by one man and Samuel said this will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you he will take your sons and appoint them for himself for his chariots and to be his horsemen and some shall run before his chariots and he will appoint them captain's over thousands and captain's over fifties and will set them to ear his ground and to reap his harvest and to make his instruments of war and instruments of his chariots and he will take your daughters to be confectionaries to be cooks and to be bakers and he will take your fields and your vineyards and your olive yards even the best of them and give them to his servants and he will take your men's servants and your maid servants and your goodliest young men and your asses and put them to his work he will take the tenth of your sheep and he shall be his servants and he shall cry out in that day because of your King which he shall have chosen you and the Lord will not hear you in that day nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel and they said nay but we shall have a king over us that we also may be like all the and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles their first king saw gave them good and evil instructively fought their battles bravely lived simply on his own estate at Galia pursued young David with murderous attentions and was beheaded in flight from the Philistines the Jews learned then at the first opportunity that Wars of succession are among the upon inches of monarchy unless the little epic of Saul Jonathan and David is merely a masterpiece of literary creation but there is no contemporary mention of these personalities outside the Bible this first King after a bloody interlude was succeeded by David heroic slayer of Goliath tender lover of Jonathan and many maidens half-naked dancer above wild dances seductive player of the harp sweet singer of marvellous songs and Abel King of the Jews for almost 40 years here so early in literature as a character fully drawn real with all the contradictory passions of a living soul as ruthless as his time his tribe and his God and yet is ready to pardon his enemies as Caesar was or Christ putting captives to death wholesale like any Assyrian monarch charging his son Solomon to bring down to the grave with blood the head of old shimei who had cursed him many years before taking Uriah's wife into his harem incontinently and sending Uriah into the front line of battle to get rid of him accepting Nathan's rebuke humbly but keeping the lovely Bathsheba nonetheless forgiving Saul almost seventy times seven merely taking his shield when he might have taken his life sparing and supporting mephibosheth the possible pretended to his throne pardoning his ungrateful son Absalom who had been caught in armed rebellion and bitterly morning that son's death and treasonable battle against his father oh my son Absalom my son my son Absalom would god I had died for the e o Absalom my son my son this is an authentic man of full and varied elements bearing within him all the vestiges of barbarism and all the promise of civilization I'm coming to the throne Solomon for his peace of mind slew all rival claimants this did not disturb Yahweh who take liking to the young king promised him wisdom beyond all men before or after him perhaps Solomon deserves his reputation for not only did he combine in his own life the epicurean enjoyment of every pleasure and luxury with a stoic fulfillment of all his obligations as a king but he taught his people the values of law and order and lured them from discord and war to industry and peace he lived up to his name for during his long reign Jerusalem which David had made the capital took advantage of this unwonted quiet and increased and multiplied its wealth originally the city had been built around a well then it had been turned into a fortress because of its exalted position above the plain now though it was not on the main lines of trade it became one of the busiest markets of the Near East by maintaining the good relations that David had established with King Hiram of Tyre Solomon encouraged Venetian merchants to direct their caravans through Palestine and developed a profitable exchange of agricultural products from Israel for the manufactured articles of tyre and sidon he built a fleet of mercantile vessels on the Red Sea and persuaded Hiram to use this new route instead of Egypt in trading with Arabia and Africa it was probably in Arabia that Solomon mined the gold and precious stones of Oh fear probably from Arabia that the queen of sheba came to seek his friendship and perhaps his aid we are told that the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was six hundred threescore and six talents of gold and though this could not compare with the revenues of Babylon Nineveh or tyre it lifted Solomon to a place among the richest potentates of his time some of this wealth he used for his private pleasure he indulged particularly his hobby for collecting concubines though historians undramatic Lee reduces 700 wives and 300 concubines to 60 and 80 perhaps by some of these marriages he wished to strengthen his friendship with Egypt and Phoenicia perhaps like Rama seized the second he was animated with the eugenic passion for transmitting his superior abilities but most of his revenues went to the strengthening of his government and the beautification of his capital he repaired the Citadel around which the city had been built he raised forts and stationed Garrison's at strategic points of his realm to discourage both invade and revolt he divided his kingdom for administrative purposes into twelve districts which deliberately crossed the tribal boundaries by this plan he hoped to lessen the clannish separatism of the tribes and to weld them into one people he failed and Judea failed with him to finance his government he organized expeditions to mine precious metals and to import luxuries and strange delicacies for example ivory Apes and peacocks which could be sold to the growing bourgeoisie at high prices he levy tolls upon all caravans passing through Palestine he put a poll tax upon all his subject peoples requiring contributions from every district except his own and reserved to the state and monopoly of the trade and yarn horses and chariots Josephus assures us that Solomon made silver as plentiful in Jerusalem as stones in the street finally he was all to adorn the city with a new temple for yaver and a new palace for himself we gather some sense of the turbulence of Jewish life from the fact that before this time there had been apparently no temple at all in Judea not even in Jerusalem the people had sacrificed to Yahweh and local sanctuaries or uncrewed altars in the hills Solomon called the more substantial burgers together announced his plans for a temple pledged to it great quantities of gold silver brass iron wood and precious stones from his own stores and gently suggested that the temple would welcome contributions from the citizens if we may believe the chronicler they pledged for his use 5000 gold talents 10,000 silver talents and as much iron and brass as he might need and they with some precious stones were found gave them to the treasure of the house of the Lord the site chosen was on a hill the walls of the temple Rose like the Parthenon continuously from the rocky slopes the design was in the style that the Phoenicians had adopted from Egypt with decorative ideas from Assyria and Babylon the temple was not a church but a quadrangular enclosure composed of several buildings the main structure was of modest dimensions about 124 feet in length 55 in breadth and 52 in height half the length of the Parthenon a quarter of the length of Chartres the Hebrews who came from all Judea to contribute to the temple and later to worship in and forgive ibly looked upon it as one of the wonders of the world they had not seen the immensely greater temples of Thebes Babylon and Nineveh before the main structure Rose a porch some 180 feet high overlaid with gold gold was spread lavishly about if we make credit our sole authority on the beans of the main ceiling on the posts the doors and the walls on the candelabra the lamps the snappers the spoons the censors and a hundred basins of gold precious stones were inlaid here and there and two gold-plated cherubim guarded the Ark of the Covenant the walls were of great square stones the ceiling posts and doors were of carved cedar and olive wood most of the building materials were brought from Phoenicia and most of the skilled work was done by artisans imported from Sidon and tyre the unskilled labor was herded together by a ruthless corvée of 150,000 men after the fashion of the time so for seven years the temple rose to provide for four centuries a lordly home for yaver then for thirteen years more the artisans and people labored to build a much larger edifice for Solomon and his harem merely one wing of it the house of the forest of Lebanon was four times as large as the temple the walls of the main building were made of immense stone blocks 15 feet in length and were ornamented with statuary reliefs and paintings in the Assyrian style the palace contained halls for the royal reception of distinguished visitors apartments for the King separate quarters for the more important wives and an arsenal as the final basis of government not a stone of the gigantic edifice survives and its site is unknown having established his kingdom solomon settled down to enjoy it as his reign proceeded he paid less and less attention to religion and frequented his harem rather more than the temple the biblical chroniclers reproach him bitterly for his gallantry in building altars to the exotic deities of his foreign wives and cannot forgive his philosophical or perhaps political impartiality to the gods the people admired his wisdom but suspected in at a certain centripetal quality the temple and the palace had cost them much gold and blood and were not more popular with them than the pyramids had been with the working men of Egypt the upkeep of these establishment required considerable taxation and few governments have made taxation popular when he died Israel was exhausted and a discontented proletariat had been created whose labour found no steady employment and whose sufferings were to transform the warlike cult of yadi into the almost socialistic religion of the prophets 3 the God of hosts polytheism yave henotheism character of the hebrew religion the idea of sin sacrifice circumcision the priesthood strange gods next to the promulgation of the book of law the building of the temple was the most important event in the epoch of the Jews it not only gave Yahweh a home that it gave Judea a spiritual center in capital a vehicle of tradition a memory to serve as a pillar of fire through centuries of wandering over the earth and it played its part in lifting the Hebrew religion from a primitive polytheism to a faith intense and intolerant but nonetheless one of the creative Creed's of history as they first entered the historic scene the Jews were nomads Bedouins who feared the djinns of the air and worship rocks cattle sheep and the spirits of caves and hills the cult of the bull the sheep and the lamb was not neglected Moses could never quite win his flock from adoration of the golden calf for the Egyptian worship of the bull was still fresh in their memories and yave was for a long time symbolized in that ferocious vegetarian in Exodus chapter 32 verses 25 to 28 we read how the Jews indulged in a naked dance before the golden calf and how Moses in the Levites or priestly class slew 3,000 of them in punishment of their idolatry of serpent worship there are countless traces in early Jewish history from the serpent images found in the oldest ruins to the brazen serpent made by Moses and worshipped in the temple until the time of Hezekiah circa 720 BC as among so many peoples the snake seemed sacred to the Jews partly as a phallic symbol of virility partly as typifying wisdom subtlety and eternity literally because of its ability to make both ends meet veil symbolized in conical upright stones much like the Linga of the Hindus was venerated by some of the Hebrews as the principle of reproduction the husband at the land that he fertilized just as primitive polytheism survived in the worship of angels and saints and in the teraphim or portable idols that serve as household gods so the magical notions rife in the early cults persisted to a late day despite the protests of prophets and priests the people seem to have looked upon Moses and Aaron as magicians and to have patronized professional diviners and sorcerers divination was sought at times by shaking dice for him and threw him out of a box even a ritual still used to ascertain the will of the gods it is to the credit of the priests that they opposed these practices and preached an exclusive reliance on the magic of sacrifice prayer and contributions slowly the conception of Yahweh as the one national God took form and gave to Jewish faith a unity and simplicity lifted up above the chaotic multiplicity of the Mesopotamian Pantheon's apparently the conquering Jews took one of the gods of Canaan Yahoo and recreated him in their own image as a stern warlike stiff-necked deity with almost lovable limitations for this God makes no claim to omniscience he asks the Jews to identify their homes by sprinkling them with the blood of the sacrificial lamb lest he should destroy their children inadvertently along with the firstborn of the Egyptians he is not above making mistakes of which man is his worst he regrets too late that he created Adam or allowed Saul to become king he is now in them greedy irascible bloodthirsty capricious petulant I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy to whom I will show mercy he approves Jacobs use of deceit in revenge' himself upon Laban his conscience is as flexible as that of a bishop in politics he is talkative and likes to make long speeches but he is shy and will not allow men to see anything of him but his hind parts never was there so thoroughly human a God originally he seems to have been a God of Thunder dwelling in the hills and worshipped for the same reason that the youthful gorky was a believer when it thundered the authors of the Pentateuch to whom religion was an instrument of statesmanship formed this Vulcan into Mars so that in their energetic yabai became predominantly an imperialistic expansionist god of hosts who fights for his people as fiercely as the gods of the Iliad the Lord is a man of wars as Moses and David echoes him he teaches my hands to war yah they promises to destroy all the people to whom the Jews shall come and to drive out the hivite the Canaanite and the Hittites by little and little and he claims as his own all the territory conquered by the Jews he will have no pacifist nonsense he knows that even if the promised land can be won and held only by the sword he is a God of War because he has to be it will take centuries of military defeat political subjugation and moral development to transform him into the gentle and loving father of Hillel and Christ he is as vain as a soldier he drinks up phrase with a bottomless appetite and he is anxious to display his prowess by drowning the Egyptians they shall know that I am the Lord when I have gotten me honour upon Pharaoh to gain successes for his people he commits or commands brutalities is repugnant to our tastes as they were acceptable to the morals of the age he slaughters whole nations with the naive pleasure of a Gulliver fighting for Lilliput because the Jews commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab he bids Moses take all the heads of the people and hang them up before the Lord against the Sun it is the morality of Ashurbanipal and Ashur he offers to show mercy to those who love him and keep his Commandments but like some resolute German he will punish children for the sins of their fathers their grandfathers even their great great grandfather's he is so ferocious that he thinks of destroying all the Jews for worshipping the golden calf and Moses has to argue with him that he should control himself turn from thy fierce wrath the man tells his God and repent of this evil against thy people and the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people again Yahweh proposes to exterminate the Jews root and branch for rebelling against Moses but Moses appeals to his better nature and bids him think what people will say when they hear of such a thing he asks a cruel test human sacrifice of the bitterest sort from Abraham like Moses Abraham teaches Yahweh the principles of morals and persuades him not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah if there shall be found 50 40 30 20 10 good men in those cities bit by bit he lures his God towards decency and illustrates the manner in which the moral development of man compels the periodical recreation of his deities the curses with which Yahweh threatens his chosen people if they disobey him our models are by 2 per Asian and inspired those who burned heretics in the Inquisition or excommunicated Spinoza cursed shall be in the city and cursed shall be in the field cursed shall be the fruit of thy body and the fruit of thy land cursed shalt thou be when thou comest in and cursed shalt thou be when thou goest out the Lord shall smite thee with the consumption and with a fever and with an inflammation the Lord will smite thee with the botch of Egypt and with the emeraude tumors and with the scab and with the itch whereof thou canst not be healed the Lord shall smite thee with madness and blindness and astonishment of heart also every sickness and every plague which is not written in the book of this law then will the Lord bring upon thee until thou be destroyed Yahweh was not the only God whose existence was recognized by the Jews or by himself all that he asked in the first commandment was that he should be placed above the rest I am a jealous God he confesses and he bids his followers utterly overthrow his rivals and quite break down their images the Jews before Isaiah seldom thought of Yahweh as the God of all tribes even of all Hebrews the Moabites had their God shamash to whom Naomi thought it right the truth should remain loyal Beelzebub was the god of Ekron milcom was the god of Ammon the economic and political separatism of these peoples naturally resulted in what we might call their theological independence Moses sings in his famous song who is like unto thee O Lord among the gods and Solomon says great is our God above all gods not only was Tom who's accepted as a real God by all but the most educated Jews but his cult was at one time so popular in Judea that Ezekiel complained that the ritual wailing for Thomas's death could be heard in a temple so distinct and autonomous with the Jewish tribes that even in the time of Jeremiah many of them had their own deities according to the number of thy cities are thy God so Judah and the gloomy prophet goes on to protest against the worship of bale and Moloch by his people with the growth of political unity under David and Solomon and the centering of worship in the temple at Jerusalem theology reflected history and politics and Yahweh became the sole god of the Jews beyond this henotheism they made no further progress towards monotheism until the prophets henotheism is a clumsy with useful word coined by mocks muller to designate the worship of a goddess supreme combined with the explicit as in India or tacit as in Judea admission of other gods even in the Yahveh sztyc stage the Hebraic religion came closer to monotheism than any other pre prophetic faith except the ephemeral son worship of Ignat on at least equal as sentiment and poetry to the polytheism of Babylonia and greece judaism was immensely superior to the other religions of the time in majesty and power in philosophic unity and grasp in moral fervor and influence this intense and somber religion never took on any of the ornate ritual and joyous ceremonies that marked the worship of the Egyptian and Babylonian gods a sense of human nothingness before an arbitrary deity darkened all ancient Jewish thought despite the efforts of Solomon to beautify the cult of Yahweh with color and sound the worship of this awful divinity remained for many centuries a religion of fear rather than of love one wonders in looking back upon these faiths whether they brought as much consolation as terror to humanity religions of hope and love or a luxury of security and order the need for striking fear into a subject or rebellious people made most primitive religions cults of mystery and dread the Ark of the Covenant containing the sacred Scrolls of the law symbolized by its untouchability the character of the Jewish creed when the pious other to prevent the ark from falling into the dust caught it for a moment in his hands the anger of the Lord was kindled against aza and God smote him therefore his error and there he died the central idea in Judaic theology was that of sin never has another people been so fond of virtue unless it was those Puritans who seemed to step out of the Old Testament with no interruption of Catholic centuries since the flesh was weakened the law complex sin was inevitable and the Jewish spirit was often overcast with the thought of sins consequences from the withholding of rain to the ruin of all Israel there was no hell in this faith as a distinctive place of punishment but almost as bad was the Sheol or land of Darkness under the earth which received all the dead good and wicked alike accept such divine favorites as Moses Enoch and Elijah the Jews however made little reference to a life beyond the grave their Creed said nothing of personal immortality and confined its rewards and punishments to this mundane life not until the Jews had lost hope of earthly triumph did they take over probably from Persia and perhaps also from Egypt the notion of personal resurrection it was out of this spiritual dynamo that Christianity was born the threat and consequence of sin might be offset by prayer or sacrifice Semitic like Aryan sacrifice began by offering human victims then it offered animals the first fruits of the flocks and food from the fields finally it compromised by offering praise at first no animal might be eaten unless killed and blessed by the priest and offered for a moment to the God circumcision partook of the nature of a sacrifice and perhaps of a commutation the God took a part for the whole menstruation and childbirth like sin made a person spiritually unclean and necessitated ritual purification by priestly sacrifice and prayer at every turn taboos hedged in the faithful sin lay potential in almost every desire and donations were required in a tenement for almost every sin only the priests could offer sacrifice properly or explain correctly the ritual and mysteries of the faith the priests were closed cast to which none but the descendants of Levi could be long they could not inherit property but they were exempt from all taxation told a tribute they levied a tithe upon the harvests of the flocks and turned to their own use such offerings to the temple as were left unused by the God after the exile the wealth of the clergy grew with that of the renascent community and since this Sasser DOTA wealth was well administered augmented and preserved it finally made the priests of the second temple in jerusalem as in thebes and babylon more powerful than the king nevertheless the growth of clerical power and religious education never quite suffice to win the Hebrews from superstition and idolatry the hilltops and groves continued to harbor alien gods and to witness secret rites a substantial minority of the people prostrated themselves before Sacred Stones or worshiped Bale or a star T or practiced divination in the babylonian manner or set up images and burned incense to them or knelt before the brazen serpent or the golden calf or filled the temple with the noise of heathen feasting or made their children pass through the fire and sacrifice even some of the kings like Solomon and a hab went a whoring after foreign gods holy men like Elijah and Elijah arose who without necessarily becoming priests preached against these practices and tried by the example of their lives to lead their people into righteousness out of these conditions and beginnings and out of the rise of poverty and exploitation in Israel came the supreme figures in Jewish religion those passionate prophets who purified and elevated the Creed of the Jews and prepared it for its vicarious conquest of the Western world for the first radicals the class war origin of the prophets Amos at Jerusalem Isaiah his attacks upon the rich his doctrine of a messiah the influence of the prophets since poverty is created by wealth and never knows itself poor until riches stare it in the face so it required the fabulous fortune of Solomon to mark the beginning of the class war in Israel Solomon like Peter and Lenin tried to move too quickly from an agricultural to an industrial state not only did the toil and taxes involved in his enterprises impose great burdens upon his people but when those undertakings were complete after 20 years of Industry a proletariat had been created in Jerusalem which lacking sufficient employment became a source of political faction and corruption in Palestine precisely as it was to become in Rome slums developed step-by-step with of the rise of private wealth and the increasing luxury of the court exploitation and usury became recognized practices among the owners of great estates and the merchants and moneylenders who flocked about the temple the landlords of Ephraim said Amos sold the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of shoes this growing gap between the needy and the affluent and the sharpening of that conflict between the city and the country which always accompanies an industrial civilization had something to do with the division of Palestine into two hostile kingdoms after the death of Solomon a northern kingdom of Ephraim with its capital at Samaria and a southern kingdom of Judah with its capital at Jerusalem from that time on the Jews were weakened by fraternal hatred and strife breaking out occasionally into bitter war shortly after the death of Solomon Jerusalem was captured by Shashank Pharaoh of Egypt and surrendered to appease the Conqueror nearly all the gold that Solomon had gathered in his long career of taxation it was in this atmosphere of political disruption economic war and religious degeneration that the prophets appeared the men to whom the word in Hebrew nabi was first applied were not quite of the character that our reverence would associate with Amos and Isaiah some were the bynars who could read the secrets of the heart in the past and foretell the future according to remuneration some were fanatics who worked themselves into a frenzy by weird music strong drink or dervish like dances and spoke in trances words which their hearers considered inspired that his breathed into them by some spirit other than their own jeremiah speaks with professional scorn of every man that is mad and maketh himself a prophet some were gloomy recluse is like Elijah many of them lived in schools or monasteries near the temples but most of them had private property and wives from this motley crowd of fakirs the prophets developed into responsible and consistent critics of their age and their people magnificent street-corner statesmen who were all thoroughgoing anti-clerical 'z and the most uncompromising of anti-semites a cross between soothsayers and socialists we misunderstand them if we take them as prophets in the weather sense their predictions were hopes or threats or pious interpolations or prognostications after the event the prophets themselves did not pretend to foretell so much as to speak out they were eloquent members of the opposition in one phase they were Tolstoy ins incensed at industrial exploitation and ecclesiastical chicanery they came up from the simple countryside and hurled damnation at the corrupt wealth of the towns Amos described himself not as a prophet but as a simple village Shepherd having left his herds to see Bethel he was horrified at the unnatural complexity of the life which he discovered there the inequality of fortune the bitterness of competition the ruthlessness of exploitation so he stood in the gate and lashed the conscience less rich in their luxuries for as much therefore as you're treading is upon the poor and ye take from him burdens of wheat you've built houses of hewn stone but he shall not dwell on them he have planted Pleasant vineyards but ye shall not drink wine of them woe to them that are at ease in Zion that lie upon beds of ivory and stretch themselves upon their couches and eat the lambs out of the flock and the calves out of the midst of the stall the chant to the sound of the vile and invent to themselves instruments of music like David the drink wine in bowls and anoint themselves with the chief point mints I despise your feast days saith the Lord though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings I will not accept them take Bella way from me the noise of thy songs for I will not hear the melody of thy vials but let judgment run down as waters and righteousness is a mighty stream this is a new note in the world's literature if it's true that Amos dulls the edge of his idealism by putting into the mouth of his God a Mississippi of threats whose severity and accumulation make the reader sympathize for a moment with the drinkers of wine and the listeners to music but here for the first time in the literature of Asia the social conscience takes definite form and pours into religion a Content that lifts it from ceremony and flattery to a whip of morals and a call to nobility with Amos begins the gospel of Jesus Christ one of his bitterest predictions seems to have been fulfilled while Amos was still alive thus saith the Lord as the Shepherd taketh out of the mouth of the lion two legs or a piece of an ear so shall the children of Israel be taken out the dwell in Samaria in the corner of a bed and in Damascus in a couch and the houses of ivory shall and the Great Houses shall have an end the reference is apparently to the room made entirely of ivory and the palace at Samaria where King Ahab lived with his painted Queen Jezebel circa 875 to 850 BC several fine ivories have been found by the Harvard library expedition in the ruins of a palace tentatively identified with Ahab's about the same time another prophet threatened Samaria with destruction in one of those periods of vivid phrases which King James's translators minted for the currency of our speech out of the wealth of the Bible the calf of Samaria said Hosea shall be broken into pieces for they have sown the wind and they shall reap the whirlwind in 733 the young king of Judah threatened by Ephraim in alliance with Syria appealed to Assyria for help Assyria came took Damascus subjected Syria tyre and Palestine to tribute made note of Jewish efforts to secure Egyptian aid invaded again captured Samaria indulged in unprintable diplomatic exchanges with the king of Judah failed to take Jerusalem and retired to Nineveh laden with booty and two hundred thousand Jewish captives doomed to Assyrian slavery it was during this siege of Jerusalem that the prophet Isaiah became one of the great figures of Hebrew history the book that bears his name is a collection of prophecies that is sermons by two or more authors ranging in time from 710 to 300 BC chapters 1 through 39 are usually ascribed to the first Isaiah who was here discussed less provincial the nameís he thought in terms of enduring statesmanship convinced that little Judah could not resist the imperial power of Assyria even with the help of distant Egypt that broken staff which would pierce the hand that should try to use it he pled with King Ahaz and then with King Hezekiah to remain neutral in the war between Assyria and Ephraim like Amos and Hosea he foresaw the fall of Samaria and the end of the northern kingdom when however the Assyrians besieged Jerusalem Isaiah counseled Hezekiah not to yield the sudden withdrawal of Sennacherib hosts seemed to justify him and for a time his repute was high with the king and the people always his advice was to deal justly and then leave the issue to yave who would use assyria as his agent for a time but in the end would destroy her - indeed all the nations known to Isaiah were according to him destined to be struck down by yaver in a few chapters 16 through 23 Moab Syria Ethiopia Egypt Babylon and tyre are dedicated to destruction everyone shall howl this ardor for ruination this litany of curses Mars Isaiah's book as it Mars all the prophetic literature of the Bible nevertheless his denunciation falls where it belongs upon economic exploitation and greed here his eloquence rises to the highest point reached in the Old Testament in passages that are among the peaks of the world's prose the Lord will enter into judgment with the ancients of his people and the princes thereof so ye have eaten up the vineyard the spoil of the poor is in your houses what mean you that ye beat my people to pieces and grind the faces of the poor woe unto them that join house to house that lay field to field till there be no place that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees to turn aside the needy from judgment justice and to take away the right from the poor of my people that widows may be their prey and that they may rob the fatherless and what will ye do in the day of visitation and in the desolation which shall come from afar to whom will ye flee for help and where will ye leave your glory he is filled with scorn of those who while fleecing the poor present a pious face to the world to what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me saith the Lord I am full of the burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts your appointed feasts my soul hated they are a trouble unto me I am weary to hear them and when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you yay when you make many prayers I will not hear your hands are full of blood washy make ye clean put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes cease to do evil learn to do well seek judgment justise relieve the oppressed judged the fatherless plead for the widow he is bitter but he does not despair of his people just as Amos had ended his prophecies with the prediction strangely apt today of the restoration of the Jews to their native land so Isaiah concludes by formulating the Messianic hope the trust of the Jews in some Redeemer who will end their political divisions their subjection and their misery and bring an era of universal brotherhood and peace behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel for unto us a child is born and the government shall be upon his shoulder and his name shall be called wonderful counsellor the mighty God the everlasting father the Prince of Peace and there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him the spirit of wisdom and understanding the spirit of counsel and might the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord with righteousness shall he judged the poor and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked and righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins and faithfulness the girdle of his reigns the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together and a little child shall lead them and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks nation shall not lift up sword against nation neither shall they learn war any more it was an admirable aspiration but not for many generations yet would it express the mood of the Jews the priests of the temple listened with the well-controlled sympathy to these useful encouragement stew piety certain sects looked back to the prophets for part of their inspiration and perhaps these excoriation zuv all sensual delight had some share in intensifying the desert borne Puritanism of the jews but for the most part the old life of the palace and the tent the marketplace in the field went honest before war took its choice of every generation and slay every continued to be the lot of the alien the merchant cheated with his scales and tried to atone with sacrifice and prayer it was upon the Judaism of post-exilic days and upon the world through Judaism and Christianity that the prophets left their deepest mark in Amos and Isaiah is the beginning of both Christianity and socialism the spring from which has flowed a stream of utopia's wherein no poverty or war shall disturb human Brotherhood and peace they are the source of the early Jewish conception of a messiah who had seized the government re-established the temporal power of the Jews and inaugurate a dictatorship of the dispossessed among mankind Isaiah and Amos began in a military age the exaltation of those virtues of simplicity and gentleness of cooperation and friendliness which Jesus was to make a vital element in his Creed they were the first to undertake the heavy task of reforming the god of hosts into a God of love they conscripted Yahweh for humanitarianism as the radicals of the 19th century conscripted Christ for socialism it was they who when the Bible was printed in Europe fired the Germanic mind with the rejuvenated Christianity and lighted the torch of the Reformation it was their fierce and intolerant virtue that formed the Puritans their moral philosophy was based upon a theory that would bear better documentation that the righteous man will prosper and the wicked will be struck down but even if that should be a delusion it is the failing of a noble mind the prophets had no conception of freedom but they loved justice and called for an end to the tribal limitations of morality they offered to the unfortunate of the earth a vision of brotherhood that became the precious and unforgotten heritage of many generations 5 the death and resurrection of Jerusalem the birth of the Bible the destruction of Jerusalem the Babylonian captivity Jeremiah Ezekiel the second Isaiah the liberation of the Jews the second temple their greatest contemporary influence was on the writing of the Bible as the people fell away from the worship of Yahweh to the adoration of alien gods the priests began to wonder whether the time had not come to make a final stand against the disintegration of the National faith taking a leaf from the prophets who attributed to Yahweh the passionate convictions of their own souls they resolved to issue to the people a communication from God himself a code of laws that would reinvigorate the moral life of the nation and what at the same time attract the support of the profits by embodying the less extreme of their ideas they readily won King Josiah - their plan and about the 18th year of his reign the priest Hill Chaya announced to the king that he had found in the secret archives of the temple an astonishing scroll in which the great Moses himself at the direct dictation of Yahweh had settled once and for all those problems of history and conduct that were being so hotly debated by prophets and priests the discovery made a great stir josiah called the elders of judah to the temple and there read to them the book of the covenant in the presence we are told of thousands of people then he solemnly swore that he would henceforth abide by the laws of this book and he caused all that were present to stand to it we do not know just what this book of the covenant was it may have been exodus chapters 22 23 or it may have been Deuteronomy we need not suppose that it had been invented on the spur of the situation it merely formulated and put into writing decrees demands and exhortations which for centuries had emanated from the prophets in the temple in any event those who heard the reading and even those who only heard of it were deeply impressed Josiah took advantage of this mood to raid the altars of Yahweh's rivals in Judah he cast out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels that were made for bail he put down the idolatrous priests and them also that burned incense unto bail to the Sun and to the moon and to the planets he defiled Tophet that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Moloch and he smashed the altars that Solomon had built for ki mosh milcom and Astarte these reforms did not seem to propitiate yahweh or bring him to the aid of his people Nineveh fell as the prophets had foretold but only to leave little Judah subject first to Egypt and then to Babylon when Pharaoh Neko bound for Syria tried to pass through Palestine Josiah relying upon Yahweh resisted him on the ancient battle side of Megiddo only to be defeated and slain a few years later nebuchadrezzar overwhelmed nico at car kamesh and made judah a babylonian dependency Josiah's successors sought by secret diplomacy to liberate themselves from the clutch of babylon and thought to bring egypt to their rescue but the fiery nebuchadrezzar getting wind of it poured his soldiery into palestine captured Jerusalem took king joachim prisoner put Zedekiah on the throne of judah and carried ten thousand jews into bondage but Zedekiah too loved liberty or power and rebelled against Babylon thereupon nebuchadrezzar returned and resolving to settle the Jewish problem once and for all as he thought recaptured Jerusalem burned it to the ground destroyed the Temple of Solomon slew Zedekiah's sons before his face gouge out his eyes and carried practically all the population of the city into captivity in Babylonia later a Jewish poet sang one of the world's great songs about that unhappy caravan by the rivers of Babylon there we sat down yay we wept when we remembered Zion we hanged our harps upon the Willows in the midst thereof for there they that carried us away captive required of us a song they that wasted us required of us mirth saying sing us one of the songs of Zion how shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land if I forget thee O Jerusalem let my right hand forget her cunning if I do not remember thee let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy in all this crisis the bitterest and most eloquent of the prophets defended Babylon is a scourge in the hands of God denounced the rulers of Judah as obstinate fools and advised such complete surrender to nebuchadrezzar that the modern reader is tempted to wonder could Jeremiah have been a paid agent of Babylonia I have made the earth the man and the beasts that are upon the ground says Jeremiah's God and now have I given all those lands under the hand of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon my servant and all nations shall serve him and it shall come to pass that the nation and Kingdom which will not serve the same nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon and that will not put their neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon that nation will I punish saith the Lord with the sword and with the famine and with the pestilence until I have consumed them by his hand he may have been a traitor but the book of his prophecies supposedly taken down by his disciple Baruch is not only one of the most passionately eloquent writings in all literature as rich in vivid imagery as in merciless abuse but it is marked with the sincerity that begins as a diffident self questioning and ends with honest doubts about his own course and all human life woe is me my mother that thou has borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth I have neither lent on usury nor men have lent to me on usury yet every one of them doth curse me cursed be the day where and I was born a flame of indignation burned in him at the sight of moral depravity and political folly and his people and its leaders he felt inwardly compelled to stand in the gate and called Israel to repentance all this national decay or this weakening of the state this obviously imminent subjection of Judah to Babylon were it seemed to Jeremiah Yahweh's hand laid upon the Jews and punishment for their sins run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem and see now and know and seek in the broad places thereof if he can find a man if there be any that executed judgment that seeketh the truth and I will pardon it everywhere iniquity ruled and sex ran riot men were as fed horses in the morning every one made after his neighbor's wife when the Babylonians besieged Jerusalem the rich men of the city to propitiate Yahweh released their Hebrew slaves but when for a time the siege was raised and the danger seemed passed the rich apprehended their former slaves and forced them into their old bondage it was a summary of human history that Jeremiah could not bear silently like the other prophets he denounced those hypocrites who with pious faces brought to the temple some part of the gains they had made from grinding the faces of the poor the Lord he reminded them in the eternal lesson of all finer religion ask not for sacrifice but for justice the priests and the prophets he thinks are almost as false and corrupt as the merchants they too like the people need to be morally reborn to be in Jeremiah's strange phrase circumsized in the spirits as well as in the flesh circumcise yourselves to the Lord and take away the foreskins of your heart against these abuses the Prophet preached with the fury rivaled only by the stern saints of Geneva Scotland and England Jeremiah cursed the Jews savagely and took some delight in picturing the ruin of all who would not heed him time and again he predicted the destruction of Jerusalem in the captivity in Babylon and wept over the doomed city whom he called the daughter of Zion in terms anticipatory of Christ oh that my head were waters and mine eyes a fountain of Tears that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people to the princes of Zedekiah's Court all this seemed sheer treason it was dividing the Jews in Council and spirit in the very hour of war jeremiah tantalized them by carrying a wooden yoke around his neck explaining that all judah must submit the more peaceably the better to the yoke of babylon and when Hananiah tore this yoke away jeremiah cried out that yahweh would make yokes of iron for all the jews the priests tried to stop him by putting his head into the stocks but from even that position he continued to denounce them they arraigned him in the temple and wished to kill him but through some friend among the priests he escaped then the princes arrested him and lowered him by ropes into a dungeon filled with mire but Zedekiah had him raised to milder imprisonment in the palace court there the Babylonians found him when Jerusalem fell on nebuchadrezzar orders they treated him well and exempted him from the general exile in his old age says Orthodox tradition he wrote his lamentations the most eloquent of all the books of the Old Testament he mourned now the completeness of his triumph and the desolation of Jerusalem and raised to heaven the unanswerable questions of job how does the city sit solitary that was full of people how she has become as a widow she that was great among the nations and princess among the provinces how has she become tributary is it nothing to you all ye that pass by behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow righteous art Thou O Lord when I plead with thee yet let us talk with thee of thy judgments wherefore death the way of the wicked prosper wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously meanwhile in Babylon and other preacher was taking up the burden of prophecy Ezekiel belonged to a priestly family that had been driven to Babylon in the first deportation from Jerusalem he began his preaching like the first Isaiah and Jeremiah with fierce denunciations of idolatry and corruption in Jerusalem at great length he compared Jerusalem to a harlot because she sold the favors of her worship to strange gods he described Samaria and Jerusalem as twin this word was as popular with hymns with the dramatists of the Stuart restoration he made long lists of the sins of Jerusalem and then condemned her to capture and destruction like Isaiah he doomed the nation's impartially and announced the sins and fall of Moab tyre Egypt Assyria even of the mysterious kingdom of Magog but he was not as bitter as Jeremiah in the end he relented declared that the Lord would save a remnant of the Jews and foretold the resurrection of their city he described envision the new temple that would be built there and outlined a utopia in which the priests would be supreme and in which he Ave would dwell among his people forever he hoped with this happy ending to keep up the spirits of the exiles and their assimilation into the Babylonian culture and blood then as now it seemed that this process of absorption would destroy the unity even the identity of the Jews they flourished on mesopotamias rich soil they enjoyed considerable freedom of custom and worship they grew rapidly in numbers and wealth and prospered in the unwonted tranquility and harmony which their subjection had brought to them an ever-rising proportion of them accepted the gods of Babylon and the epicurean ways of the old metropolis when the second generation of exiles grew up Jerusalem was almost forgotten it was the function of the unknown author who undertook to complete the Book of Isaiah to restate the religion of Israel for this backsliding generation and it was his distinction in restating it to lift it to the loftiest plane that any religion had yet reached amid all the faith's of the Near East we know nothing of the history of this writer who by a literary device and license common to his time chose to speak in the name of Isaiah we merely guessed that he wrote shortly before or after Cyrus liberated the Jews biblical scholarship assigns to him chapters 40 through 55 and to another and later unknown or unknown chapters 56 through 66 while Buddha in India was preaching the death of desire and Confucius in China was formulating wisdom for his people this second Isaiah in majestic and luminous prose announced to the exiled Jews the first clear revelation of monotheism and offered them a new God infinitely richer and loving-kindness and tender mercy than the bitter Yahweh even of the first Isaiah in words that a later gospel was to choose as spurring on the young Christ this greatest of prophets announced his mission no longer to curse the people for their sins but to bring them hope in their bondage the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted to proclaim Liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them that are bound for he has discovered that Yahweh is not a god of war and vengeance but a loving father the discovery fills him with happiness and inspires him to magnificent songs he predicts the coming of the new God to rescue his people the voice of him the cries in the wilderness prepare ye the way of the Lord make straight in the desert a highway for our God every Valley shall be exalted and every mountain and Hill shall be made low and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places planed behold the Lord God will come with strong hand and his arm shall rule for him he shall feed his flock like a shepherd he shall gather the Lambs with his arm and carry them in his bosom and shall gently lead those that are with young the prophet then lifts the Messianic hope to a place among the ruling ideas of his people and describes the servant who will redeem Israel by vicarious sacrifice he is despised and rejected of men a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief he was despised and we esteemed him not surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows yet we did esteem him stricken smitten of God and afflicted but he was wounded for our transgressions he was bruised for our iniquities the chastisement of our peace was upon him and with His stripes we are healed the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all modern research does not regard this servant as the prophetic portrayal of Jesus Persia the second Isaiah predicts will be the instrument of this liberation cyrus is invincible he will take Babylon and will free the Jews from their captivity they will return to Jerusalem and build a new temple a new city a very paradise the wolf and the lamb shall feed together and the lion shall eat straw like a bullock and dust shall be the Serpent's meat they shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain saith the Lord perhaps it was the rise of Persia and the spread of its power subjecting all the states of the Near East in an imperial unity vaster and better governed than any social organization men and yet known that suggested to the Prophet the conception of one universal deity no longer does his God say like the ave of Moses I am THE LORD thy God thou shalt not have strange gods before me now it is written I am the Lord and there is none else there is no God besides me the prophet poet describes this Universal deity and one of the great passages of the Bible who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and meted out heaven with the span and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains and scales and the hills and a balance behold the nations are as a drop of a bucket and are counted as the small dust of the balance behold he taketh up the Isles as a very little thing all nations before him are as nothing and they are counted to him less than nothing and vanity to whom then will ye like in God or what likeness will ye compare with him 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 lift up your eyes on high and behold who hath created these things it was a dramatic hour in the history of Israel when at last Cyrus entered Babylon as a world Conqueror and gave to the exiled Jews full freedom to return to Jerusalem he disappointed some of the prophets and showed his superior civilization by leaving Babylon and its population unhurt and offering as skeptical obeisance to its gods he restored to the Jews what remained in the babylonian treasury of the gold and silver taken by nebuchadrezzar from the temple and instructed the communities in which the exiles lived to furnish them with funds for their long journey home the younger Jews were not enthusiastic at this liberation many of them had sunk strong roots into Babylonian soil and hesitated to abandon their fertile fields in their flourishing trade for the desolate ruins of the holy city it was not until two years after Cyrus's coming that the first attachment of zealots set out on the long three-month journey back to the land which their fathers had left half a century before they found themselves then is now not entirely welcome in their ancient home for meanwhile other Semites had settled there and had made the soil their own by occupation and toil and these tribes looked with hatred upon the apparent invaders of what seemed to them their native fields the returning Jews could not possibly have established themselves had it not been for the strong and friendly Empire that protected them the prince zerubabbel one permission from the Persian King derives the first to rebuild the temple and though the immigrants were small in number and resources and the work was hindered at every step by the attacks and conspiracies of a hostile population it was carried to completion within some 22 years after the return slowly Jerusalem became again a Jewish City and the temple resounded with the Psalms of a rescued remnant resolved to make Judea strong again it was a great triumph surpassed only by that which we have seen in our own historic time 6 the people of the book the book of the law the composition of the Pentateuch the myths of Genesis the mosaic code the Ten Commandments the idea of God the Sabbath the Jewish family estimate of the Mosaic legislation to build a military state was impossible judea had neither the numbers nor the wealth for such an enterprise since some system of order was needed that while recognizing the sovereignty of Persia would give the Jews a natural discipline and a national unity the clergy undertook to provide a theocratic rule based like desires on priestly traditions and laws promulgated as divine commands about the year 4 44 BC Ezra a learnin priest called views together in solemn assembly and read to them from morn to midday the book of the law of Moses for seven days he and his fellow Levites read from these scrolls at the end the priests and the leaders of the people pledged themselves to accept this body of legislation as their constitution and their conscience and to obey it forever from those troubled times till hours that law has been a central fact in the life of the Jews and their loyalty to it through all wanderings and tribulations has been one of the impressive phenomena of history what was this book of the law of Moses not quite the same as that book of the Covenant which Josiah had read for the latter had admitted of being completely read twice in a day while the other needed a week we can only guess that the larger scroll constituted a substantial part of those first five books of the Old Testament which the Jews call Torah or the law and which others call the Pentateuch Torah is Hebrew for Direction guidance Pentateuch is Greek for five roles how when and where had these books been written this is an innocent question which has caused the writing of fifty thousand volumes and must here be left unanswered in a paragraph the consensus of scholarship is that the oldest elements in the Bible are those distinct and yet similar legends of Genesis which are called J and E respectively because one speaks of the Creator as Jehovah yaver while the other speaks of him as Elohim it is believed that the llaves narrative was written in judah the eldest in ephraim and that the two stories fused into one after the fall of samaria a third element known as d and embodying the Deuteronomic code is probably by a distinct author or group of authors a fourth element P is composed of sections later inserted by the priests this freestlye code is probably the substance of the book of the law promulgated by Ezra the four compositions appear to have taken their present form about 300 BC these delightful tales of the creation the temptation and the flood were drawn from a storehouse of Mesopotamian legend as old as three thousand BC we have seen some early forms of them in the course of this history it is possible that the Jews appropriated some of these myths from Babylonian literature during the captivity it is more likely that they had adopted them long before from ancient Semitic and Sumerian sources common to all the Near East the Persian and the Talmudic forms of the creation myth represent God as first making a to sexed being a male and a female joined at the back like Siamese twins and then dividing it as an afterthought we are reminded of a strange sentence in Genesis chapter 5 verse 2 male and female created he them and blessed them and called their name Adam that is our first parent was originally both male and female which seems to have escaped all theologians except Aristophanes the legend of paradise appears in almost all folklore in Egypt India Tibet Babylonia Persia Greece Polynesia Mexico etc most of these Eaton's had forbidden trees and were supplied with serpents or dragons that stole immortality from men or otherwise poisoned paradise both the Serpent and the fig were probably phallic symbols behind the myth is the thought that sex and knowledge destroy innocence and happiness and are the origin of evil we shall find this same idea at the end of the Old Testament in Ecclesiastes is here at the beginning in most of these stories woman was the lovely evil agent of the serpent or the devil whether as eve or Pandora or the boss a of Chinese legend all things says the she Ching at first were subject to man but a woman threw us into slavery our misery came not from heaven but from woman she lost the human race ah unhappy Posay thou kindled the fire that consumes us and which is everyday increasing the world is lost by silver flows all things even more Universal was the story of the flood hardly an ancient people went without it and hardly a mountain in Asia had given perch to some water we're ignore or shamash niscitam usually these legends were the popular vehicle or allegory of a philosophical judgment or a moral attitude summarizing long racial experience that sex and knowledge bring more grief than joy and that human life is periodically threatened by floods that is ruinous inundations of the great rivers whose waters made possible the earliest known civilizations to ask whether these stories are true or false whether they really happened would be to put a trivial and superficial question their substance of course is not the tales they tell but the judgments they convey meanwhile it would be unwise not to enjoy their disarming simplicity and the vivid swiftness of their narratives the books which Josiah and Ezra cause to be read to the people formulated that mosaic code on which all later Jewish life was to be built of this legislation the cautious Sartain writes its importance in the history of institutions and of law cannot be overestimated it was the most thorough going attempt in history to use religion as a basis of statesmanship and as a regulator of every detail of life the law became says Arenal the tightest garment into which life was ever laced diet medicine personal menstrual and natal hygiene public sanitation sexual inversion and best eality all are made subjects of divine ordinance and guidance again we observe how slowly the doctor was differentiated from the priests to become in time his greatest enemy Leviticus chapters 13 through 15 legislates carefully for the treatment of venereal disease even to the most definite directions for segregation disinfection fumigation and if necessary the complete burning of the house in which the disease has run its course the ancient Hebrews were the founders of prophylaxis but they seemed to have had no surgery beyond circumcision this Rite common among ancient Egyptians and modern Semites was not only a sacrifice to God and a compulsion to racial loyalty it was a hygienic caution against sexual uncleanliness perhaps it was this code of cleanliness that helped to preserve the Jews through their long Odyssey of dispersion and suffering for the rest the code centered about those Ten Commandments Exodus chapter 20 verses 1 through 17 which were destined to receive the lip service of half the world the first laid the foundation of the new theocratic community which was to rest not upon any civil law but upon the idea of God he was the invisible king who dictated every law and meted out every penalty and his people were to be called Israel as meaning the defenders of God the Hebrew state was dead but the temple remained the priests of Judea like the Pope's of Rome would try to restore what the Kings had failed to save hence the explicitness and reiteration of the first commandment heresy or blasphemy must be punished with death even if the heretics should be ones closest kin the priestly authors of the code like the pious inquisitors believed that religious unity was an indispensable condition of social organization and solidarity it was this intolerance and their racial pride that embroiled and preserved the Jews the second commandment elevated the national conception of God at the expense of art no graven images were ever to be made of him it assumed a high intellectual level among the Jews for it rejected superstition and anthropomorphism and despite the all-too-human quality of the Pentateuch y'avait tried to conceive of God is beyond every form and image it conscripted Hebrew devotion for religion and left nothing in ancient days for science and art even astronomy was neglected lest corrupt diviners should multiply or the Stars be worshipped as divinities in Solomon's Temple there had been an almost heathen abundance of imagery in the new temple there was none the old images had been carried off to Babylon and apparently had not been returned along with utensils of silver and gold hence we find no sculpture painting or bar relief after the captivity and very little before it except under the almost alien Solomon architecture and music were the only arts that the priests would while song and temple rich will redeem the life of the people from gloom an orchestra of several instruments joined as one to make one sound with a great choir of voices to sing the Psalms that glorified the temple and it's God David and all the house of Israel prayed before the Lord on harps psalteries timbrels cornets and cymbals the third commandment typify the intense piety of the Jew not only would he not take the name of the Lord God in vain he would never pronounce it even when he came upon the name of Yahweh and his prayers he would substitute for it a Dona Lord only the Hindus would rival this piety the fourth commandment sanctified the weekly day of rest as a Sabbath and passed it down as one of the strongest institutions of mankind the name and perhaps the custom came from Babylon Shabba - who was applied by the Babylonians to taboo days of abstinence and propitiation besides this weekly holy day there were great festivals once Canaanite vegetation rites reminiscent of sowing and harvesting and the cycles of Moon and Sun mats are called Pentecost celebrated the end of the wheat harvest Sukkot commemorated the vintage Pesach or Passover was the Feast of the firstfruits of the flock Rosh Hashanah announced the new year only later were these festivals adapted to commemorate vital events in the history of the Jews on the first day of the Passover a lamb or kid was sacrificed and eaten and its blood was sprinkled upon the doors as the portion of the God later the priests attached this custom to the story of Yahweh's slaughter of the firstborn of the Egyptians the lamb was once a totem of a Canaanite clan the Passover among the Canaanites was the oblation of a lamb to the local God as we read in Exodus chapter 11 the story of the establishment of the Passover right and see the Jews celebrating that same right steadfastly today we feel again the venerable antiquity of their worship and the strength and tenacity of their race the fifth commandment sanctified the family as second only to the temple in the structure of Jewish society the ideals then stamped upon the institution marked it throughout medieval and modern European history until our own disintegrative Industrial Revolution the Hebrew patriarchal family was a vast economic and political organization composed of the oldest married male his wives his unmarried children his married sons with their wives and children and perhaps some slaves the economic basis of the institution was its convenience for cultivating the soil it's political value lay in its providing a system of social orders so strong that it made the state except in war almost superfluous the father's Authority was practically unlimited the land was his and his children could survive only by obedience to him he was the state if he was poor he could sell his daughter before her puberty is a bondservant and though occasionally he condescended to ask her consent he had full right to dispose of her in marriage as he wished boys were supposed to be products of the right testicle girls of the left which was believed to be smaller and weaker than the right at first marriage was mattre local the man had to leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife in her clan but this custom gradually died out after the establishment of the monarchy Yahweh's instructions to the wife were thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee though technically subject the woman was often a person of high authority and dignity the history of the Jews shines with such names as Sarah Rachel Miriam and Esther Deborah was one of the judges of Israel and it was the prophetess holder whom Josiah consulted about the book which the priests had found in the temple the mother of many children were certain of security and honor for the little nation longed to increase and multiply feeling as in Palestine today it's dangerous numerical inferiority to the peoples surrounding it therefore the exalted motherhood branded celibacy as a sin and a crime made marriage compulsory after 20 even in priests of horde marriage' Bulverde and childless women and looked upon abortion infanticide and other means of limiting population as heathen abomination that stank in the nostrils of the Lord and when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children Rachel envied her sister and said unto Jacob give me children or else I'd die the perfect wife was one who labored constantly in and about her home and had no thought except in her husband and her children the last chapter of Proverbs states the male ideal of woman completely who can find a virtuous woman for her price is far above rubies the heart of her husband does safely trust in her so that he shall have no need of spoil she will do him good and not evil all the days of her life she seeketh wool and flax and worketh willingly with her hands she is like the merchants ships she bringeth her food from afar she Rises also while it is yet night and giveth me to her household and apportioned to her maidens she consider it the field and buyeth it with the fruit of her hands she planted the vineyard she girded her loins with strength and strengtheneth her arms she Percy bethey that her merchandise is good her candle goeth not out by night she lay at her hands to the spindle and her hands hold the distaff she stretches out her hand to the poor yay she reaches forth her hands to the needy she maketh herself coverings of tapestry her clothing is silk and purple her husband is known in the gates when he sitteth among the elders of the land she maketh fine linen and selleth it and delivereth girdles unto the merchants strength and honour are her clothing and she shall rejoice in time to come she openeth her mouth with wisdom and in her tongue is the law of kindness she looketh well to the ways of her household and eateth not the bread of idleness her children arise up and call her blessed her husband also and he praiseth her give her of the fruit of her hands and that her own works praise her in the gates the sixth commandment was a council of perfection nowhere is there so much killing as in the Old Testament its chapters oscillate between slaughter and compensatory reproduction tribal quarrels internal factions and hereditary vendetta's the monotony of intermittent peace despite a magnificent verse about plowshares and pruning hooks the prophets were not pacifists in the priests if we may judge from the speeches which they put into the mouths of the ah they were almost as fond of war as of preaching among nineteen kings of Israel eight were assassinated captured cities were usually destroyed the male's put to the sword and the soil deliberately ruined in the fashion of the times perhaps the figures exaggerate the killing it is unbelievable that entirely without modern inventions the children of Israel slew of the Syrians one hundred thousand footmen in one day belief in themselves as the chosen people intensified the pride natural in a nation conscious of superior abilities it accentuated their disposition to segregate themselves maritally and mentally from other peoples and deprived them of the International perspective that their descendants were to attain but they had in high degree the virtues of their qualities their violence came of unmanageable vitality their separatism came of their piety their quarrelsome nests and quería lessness came of a passionate sensitivity that produced the greatest literature of the Near East their racial pride was the indispensable prop of their courage through centuries of suffering men are what they have had to be the seventh commandment recognized marriage as the basis of the family as the fifth had recognized the family as the basis of society and it offered to marriage all the support of religion it said nothing about sex relations before marriage but other regulations laid upon the bride the obligation under pain of death by stoning to prove her virginity on the day of her marriage nevertheless prostitution was common and pederasty apparently survived the destruction of sodom and gomorrah as the law did not seem to prohibit relations with foreign harlots Syrian Moabite Midianite and other strange women flourished along the highways where they lived in booths and tents and combined the trades of peddler and prostitute Solomon who had no violent prejudices in these matters relaxed the laws that had kept such women out of Jerusalem in time they multiplied so rapidly there that in the days of the Maccabees the temple itself was described by an in reformer as full of fornication and harlotry love affairs probably occurred for there was much tenderness between the sexes Jacob served seven years for Rachel and they seemed unto him but a few days for the love he had to her but love played a very small role in the choice of mates before the Exile marriage was completely secular arranged by the parents or by the suitor with the parents of the bride vestiges of capture marriage are found in the Old Testament Yahweh approves of it in war and the elders on the occasion of a shortage of women commanded the children of Benjamin saying go and lie in wait in the vineyards and see and behold if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in dances then come me out of the vineyards and catch you every man his wife of the daughters of Shiloh and go to the land of Benjamin but this was exceptional usually the marriage was by purchase Jacob purchased Leah and Rachel by his toil the gentle Ruth was quite simply bought by Boaz and the Prophet Hosea regretted exceedingly that he had given fifty shekels for his wife the word for wife Beulah meant owned the father of the bride reciprocated by giving his daughter a dowry an institution admirably adapted to diminish the socially disruptive gap between the sexual and the economic maturity of children in an urban civilization if the man was well-to-do he might practice polygamy if the wife was barren like Sarah she might encourage her husband to take a concubine the purpose of these arrangements was prolific reproduction it was taken as a matter of course that after Rachel and Leah had given Jacob all the children they were capable of faring they should offer him their maids who would also bear him children a woman was not allowed to remain idle in this matter of reproduction if a husband died his brother however many wives he might already have was obliged to marry her or if the husband had no brother the obligation fell upon his nearest surviving male kin since private property was the core of Jewish economy the double standard prevailed the man might have many wives but the woman was confined to one man adultery meant relations with the woman who had been bought and paid for by another man it was a violation of the law of property and was punished with death for both parties fornication was forbidden to women but was looked upon as a venial offense in men divorce was free to the man but extremely difficult for the woman until Talmudic days the husband does not seem to have abused his privileges unduly he's pictured to us all in all as zealously devoted to his wife and his children and their love did not determine marriage it often flowered out of it Isaac took Rebecca and she became his wife and he loved her and Isaac was comforted after his mother's death probably and no other people outside of the Far East as family life reached so high a level is among the Jews the eighth commandment sanctified private property and bounded up with religion and the family is one of the three bases of Hebrew society property was almost entirely in land until the days of Solomon there was little industry beyond that of the Potter in the Smith even agriculture was not completely developed the bulk of the population devoted itself to rearing sheep and cattle and tending the vine at the olive and the fig they lived in tents rather than houses in order to move more easily to fresh pastures in time their growing economic surplus generated trade and the Jewish merchants by their tenacity and their skill began to flourish in Damascus tyre and sidon and in the precincts of the temple itself there was no coinage till near the time of the captivity but gold and silver weighed in each transaction became a medium of exchange and bankers appeared in great numbers to finance commerce and enterprise it was nothing strange that these moneylenders should use the courts of the temple it was a custom general in the Near East and survives there in many places to this day yah they beamed upon the growing power of the Hebrew financiers thou shalt lend unto many nations he said but thou shalt not borrow a generous philosophy that has made great fortunes though it is not seemed in our century to be divinely inspired as in the other countries of the Near East war captives and convicts were used as slaves and hundreds of thousands of them toiled in cutting timber and transporting materials for such public works as Solomon's Temple and Palace but the owner had no power of life and death over his slaves and the slave might acquire property and buy his Liberty men could be sold as bond servants for unpaid debts or could sell their children in their place and this continued to the days of Christ these typical institutions of the Near East were mitigated in Judea by generous charity and a vigorous campaign by priests and profit against exploitation the code laid it down hopefully that ye shall not oppress one another it asked that Hebrew bondservants should be released and debts among Jews cancelled every seventh year and when this was found too idealistic for the Masters the law proclaimed the institution of the Jubilee by which every 50 years all slaves and debtors should be freed and he shall hallow the fiftieth year and proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof it shall be a jubilee unto you and ye shall return every man unto his possession and he shall return every man unto his family we have no evidence that this fine edict was obeyed but we must give credit to the priests for leaving no lesson in charity untaught if there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren thou shalt open 9 hand wide unto him and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need and take thou no usury that his interest of him the Sabbath rest was to be expended to every employee even to animals stray sheaves and fruits were to be left in the fields and orchards for the poor to glean and though these charities were largely for fellow Jews the stranger in the gates was also to be treated with kindness the Sojourner was to be sheltered and fed and dealt with honorably at all times the Jews were bidden to remember that they too had once been homeless even bondservants in a foreign land the ninth commandment by demanding absolute honesty of witnesses put the prop of religion under the whole structure of Jewish law an oath was to be a religious ceremony not merely was a man in swearing to place his hand on the genitals of him to whom he swore as in the old custom he was now to be taking God himself as his witness and his judge false witnesses according to the code were to receive the same punishment their testimony had sought to bring upon their victims religious law was the sole law of Israel the priests in the temples were the judges in the courts and those who refused to accept the decision of the priests were to be put to death ordeal by the drinking of poisonous water was prescribed in certain cases of doubtful guilt there was no other than religious machinery for enforcing the law it had to be left to personal conscience and public opinion minor crimes might be atoned for by confession and compensation capital punishment was decreed by Yahweh's instructions for murder kidnapping idolatry adultery striking or cursing a parent stealing a slave or lying with the Beast but not for the killing of a servant and thou shalt not suffer a witch to live Yahweh was quite satisfied to have the individual take the law into his own hands in case of murder the revenger of blood himself shall slay the murderer when he meet at them he shall slay him certain cities however were to be set apart to which a criminal might flee and in which the Avenger must stay his revenge in general the principle of punishment was the Lex talionis life for life eye for eye tooth for tooth hand for hand foot for foot burning for burning stripe for stripe we trust that this was a Council of perfection never quite realized the mosaic code though written down at least 1,500 years later shows no advance in criminal legislation upon the Code of Hammurabi in legal organization it shows an archaic retrogression to primitive ecclesiastical control the 10th commandment reveals how clearly woman was conceived under the rubric of property thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house and thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife nor his manservant nor his maidservant nor his ox nor his ass nor anything that is thy neighbor's nevertheless it was an admirable precept could men follow at half the fever and anxiety of our life would be removed strange to say the greatest of the commandments is not listed among the 10 though it is part of the law it occurs in Leviticus chapter 19 verse 18 lost amid a repetition sundry laws and reads very simply thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself in general it was a lofty code sharing its defects with its age and rising to virtues characteristically its own we must remember that it was only a law indeed only a priestly utopia rather than a description of Jewish life like other codes it was honored plentifully in the breach and one knew prays with every violation but its influence upon the conduct of the people was at least as great as that of most legal or moral codes it gave to the Jews through the 2,000 years of wandering which they were soon to begin a portable fatherland as Heine was to call it an intangible and spiritual state it kept them United despite every dispersion proud despite every defeat and brought them across the centuries to our own time a strong and apparently indestructible people 7 the literature and philosophy of the Bible history fiction poetry the Psalms the Song of Songs Proverbs job the idea of immortality the pessimism of Ecclesiastes the advent of Alexander the Old Testament is not only law it is history poetry and philosophy of the highest order after making every deduction for primitive legend and pious fraud after admitting that the historical books are not quite as accurate or as ancient as our forefathers supposed we find in them nevertheless not merely some of the oldest historical writing known to us but some of the best the books of Judges Samuel and kings may as some scholars believe have been put together hastily during or shortly after the exile to collect and preserve the national traditions of a scattered and broken people nevertheless the stories of Saul David and Solomon are immeasurably finer in structure and style than the other historical writing of the ancient Near East even Genesis if we read it with some understanding of the function of legend is barring its genealogies an admirable story told without frill or ornament with simplicity vividness and force and in a sense we have here not mere history but philosophy of history this is the first recorded effort of man to reduce the multiplicity of past events to a measure of unity by seeking in them some pervading purpose and significance some law of sequence and causation some illumination for the present and the future the conception of history promulgated by the prophets and the priestly authors of the Pentateuch survived a thousand years of Greece and Rome to become the worldview of European thinkers from boëthius to bas way midway between the history and the poetry are the fascinating romances of the Bible there is nothing more perfect in the realm of prose than the story of Ruth only less excellent are the tales of Isaac and Rebecca Jacob and Rachel Joseph and Benjamin Samson and Delilah esther judith and daniel the poetical literature begins with the song of Moses Exodus chapter 15 and the song of Deborah judges chapter 5 and reaches finally to the heights of the Psalms the penitential hymns of the Babylonians had prepared for these and perhaps had given the material as well as form it Natanz ode to the Sun seems to have contributed to Psalm 104 and the majority of the Psalms instead of being the impressively united work of David are probably the compositions of several poets writing long after the captivity probably in the third century before Christ but all this is as irrelevant as the name or sources of Shakespeare what matters is that the Psalms are at the head of the world's lyric poetry they were not meant to be read at a sitting or in a higher critics mood they are at their best as expressing moments of pious ecstasy and stimulating faith they are marred for us by bitter implications tiresome groanings and complaints and endless adulation of a Yahweh who with all his loving-kindness and long-suffering and compassion phors smoke out of his nostrils and fire out of his mouth number eight promises that the wicked shall be turned into hell in number nine laps up flattery and threatens to cut off all flattering lips number twelve the Psalms are full of military ardor hardly Christian but very pilgrim some of them however are jewels of tenderness or cameo of humility verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity as for man his days are as grass as a flower of the field so he flourishes for the wind passeth over it and it is gone and the place thereof shall know it no more number 29 and number 103 in these songs we feel the antis trophic rythm of ancient oriental poetry and almost hear the voices of majestic choirs in alternate answering no poetry has ever excelled this in revealing metaphor or living imagery never has religious feeling been more intensely or vividly expressed these poems touch us more deeply than any lyric of love they move even the skeptical soul for they give passionate form to the final longing of the developed mind for some perfection to which it may dedicate its striving here and there in the King James Version are pithy phrases that have become almost words in our language out of the mouths of babes number 8 the apple of the eye number 17 put not your trust in Princes number 146 and everywhere and the original are similes that have never been surpassed the Rising Sun is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber and rejoiceth there's a strong man to run a race number 19 we can only imagine what majesty and beauty must clothe these songs in the sonorous language of their origin when beside these Psalms we place in contrast the Song of Solomon we get a glimpse of that sensual and terrestrial element in Jewish life which the Old Testament written almost entirely by prophets and priests as perhaps concealed from us just as Ecclesiastes reveals a skepticism not otherwise discernible and the carefully selected and edited literature of the ancient Jews this strangely amorous composition is an open field for surmise it may be a collection of songs of Babylonian origin celebrating the love of Ishtar and Tammuz it may be since it contains words borrowed from the Greek the work of several Hebrew and a crayons touched by the Hellenistic spirit that entered Judea with Alexander or since the lovers address each other as brother and sister in the Egyptian manner it may be a flower of Alexandrian jewelry plucked by some quite emancipated soul from the banks of the Nile in any case its presence in the Bible is a charming mystery by what winking or hoodwinking of the theologians did these songs of lusty passion find room between Isaiah and the preacher a bundle of myrrh as my well-beloved unto me he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts my beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphor and the vineyards of an Getty behold Thou Art Fair my love behold Thou Art Fair thou hast doves eyes behold Thou Art Fair my beloved yeh pleasant also our bed is green I am The Rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys stay me with flagons comfort me with apples for I am sick of love I charge you O ye daughters of Jerusalem by the Roe's or by the Hinds of the field that he stir not up nor awake my love till he please my beloved is mine and I am his he feedeth among the lilies until the daybreak and the shadows flee away turned my beloved and beamed out like a row or a young heart upon the mountains of bether come my beloved let us go forth into the field let us Lodge in the villages let us get up early to the vineyards let us see if the vine flourish whether the tender grape appear and the pomegranates bud forth there will I give thee my loves this is the voice of youth and that of the Proverbs is the voice of old age men looked a love and life for everything they receive a little less than that they imagine that they have received nothing these are the three stages of the pessimist so this legendary Solomon warns youth against the evil woman for she hath cast down many wounded yay many strong men have been slain by her whoso committeth adultery with a woman lacketh understanding there be three things which are wonderful to me yay for which I know not the way of an eagle in the air the way of a serpent upon a rock the way of a ship in the midst of the sea and the way of a man with a maid he agrees with st. Paul that it is better to marry than to burn rejoice with the wife of thy youth let her be as the loving hind and the pleasant roll let her breasts satisfy thee at all times and be thou ravished always with her love better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a stalled ox with hatred therewith can this be the words of the husband of seven hundred wives next to unchastity in the way of wisdom is sloth go to the ant thou sluggard how long wilt thou sleep o sluggard see a sour man diligent in his business he shall stand before kings yet will the Philosopher's not brook crass ambition he that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them work his wisdom words are near folly in all labour there is profit but the talk of the lips tendeth only to penury a fool uttereth all his mind but a wise man keepeth it in till afterwards even a fool when he holdeth his peace is counted wise the lesson which the sage never tires of repeating is an almost Socratic identification of virtue and wisdom redolent of those schools of Alexandria in which Hebrew theology was mating with Greek philosophy the form the intellect of Europe understanding is a wellspring of life unto him that hath it but the instruction of fools is folly happy is the man that findeth wisdom and the man that getteth understanding for the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver and the gain thereof than fine gold she is more precious than rubies and all things thou canst desire are not to be compared with her length of days is in her right hand and in her left hand riches and honour her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace Jobe is earlier than proverbs perhaps it was written during the exile described by allegory the captives of Babylon I call it says the preferment Carlyle one of the grandest things ever written with a pen a noble book all men's book it is our first oldest statement of the neverending problem man's destiny and God's ways with him here on this earth there is nothing written I think in the Bible or out of it of equal literary merit the problem arose out of the Hebrew emphasis on this world since there was no heaven in ancient Jewish theology virtue had to be rewarded here or never but often it seemed that only the wicked prospered and that the choicest sufferings are reserved for the good man why as the psalmist complained did the ungodly prosper in the world why did God hide himself instead of punishing the evil and rewarding the good the author of Job now asked the same questions more resolutely and offered his hero perhaps as a symbol for his people all Israel had worship Yahweh fitfully as Joba done Babylon had ignored and blaspheme yaver and yet Babylon flourished and Israel ate the dust and wore the sackcloth of desolation and captivity what could one say of such a God in a prologue in heaven which some clever scribe may have inserted to take the scandal out of the book Satan suggests to Yahweh the job is perfect and upright only because he is fortunate would he retain his piety in adversity Yahweh permits Satan to heap a variety of calamities upon job's head for a time the hero is as patient as job but at last his fortitude breaks he ponders suicide and bitterly approaches his God for forsaking him so far who has come out to enjoy the sufferings of his friend insists that God is just and will yet reward the good man even on earth but job's shuts him up sharply no doubt but ye are the people and wisdom shall die with you but I have understanding as well as you yeh who knoweth not these things the Tabernacles of robbers prosper and they that provoke God are secured into whose hand God bringeth abundantly lo mine I have seen all this mine ear has heard and understood it but ye are forgers of Lies ye are all physicians of no value o that he would altogether hold your peace and it should be your wisdom he reflects on the brevity of life and the length of death man that is born of woman is a few days and full of trouble he cometh forth like a flower and is cut down he fleeth also as a shadow in continue with not four there is hope of a tree if it be cut down that it will sprout again and that the tender branch thereof will not cease but man daya 'then wasteth away yeh man giveth up the ghost and where is he as the waters fall from the sea and the flood decay ahthe and dry up so man lieth down and rise if not if a man die shall he live again the debate continues vigorously and Jo becomes more and more skeptical of his God until he calls him adversary and wishes that this adversary would destroy himself by writing a book perhaps some lightnin seein theodicy the concluding words of this chapter the words of Jobar ended suggest that this was the original termination of a discourse which like that of ecclesiastes represented a strong heretical minority among the Jews but a fresh philosopher enters at this point Elihu who demonstrates in 165 verses the justice of god's ways with men finally and one of the most majestic passages in the Bible a voice comes down out of the clouds then the Lord answered job out of the whirlwind and said who is this the darkness counsel by words without knowledge gird up now thy loins like a man for I will demand of thee and answer thou me where was thy when I laid the foundations of the earth declare a foul hast understanding who have laid the measures thereof if thou knowest or who hath stretched his line upon it where upon other foundations there are fastened or who laid the cornerstone thereof when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy or who shut up the sea with doors when it break forth as if it had issued out of the womb when I made the cloud the garment thereof and thick darkness a swaddling band for it and break up for it my decreed place and set bars and doors and said here thereto shalt thou come but no further and here shall thy proud waves be stayed hast thou commanded the morning since they 's and caused the day spring to know his place hast thou entered into the springs of the sea or hast thou walked in the search of the depth have the gates of death been opened unto thee or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death hostile perceived the breath of the earth declare if thou knowest at all hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades or loose the bands of Orion knowest thou the ordinances of heaven canst thou set the Dominion thereof in the earth who have put wisdom in the inward parts or who have given understanding to the heart shall he that contended with the Almighty instruct him he that reprove with God let him answer it Jobe humbles himself in terror before this apparition Yaga appeased forgives him accepts his sacrifice denounces job's friends for their feeble arguments and gives Jobe 14 thousand sheep six thousand camels a thousand yoke of oxen a thousand she asses seven sons three daughters and one hundred and forty years it is a lame but happy ending Jobe receives everything but an answer to his questions the problem remained and it was to have profound effects upon later Jewish thought in the days of Daniel circa 167 BC it was to be abandoned as insoluble in terms of this world no answer could be given Daniel and Enoch and Kant would say unless one believed in some other life beyond the grave in which all wrongs would be righted the wicked would be punished and the just would inherit infinite reward this was one of the varying currents of thought that flowed into Christianity and carried it to victory in Ecclesiastes the problem is given a pessimistic reply prosperity and misfortune have nothing to do with virtue and vice all things have I seen in the days of my vanity there is a just man that perishes in his righteousness and there is a wicked man that prolong with his life in his wickedness so I returned and considered all the oppressions that are done under the Sun and beheld the tears of such as were oppressed and they had no comforter and on the side of their oppressors there was power if thou seest the oppression of the poor and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province Marvel not at the matter for there be higher than they it is not virtue and vice that determine a man's lot but blind and merciless chance I saw under the Sun that the race is not to the Swift nor the battle to the strong neither yet bread to the wise nor yet riches to men of understanding nor yet favor to men of skill but time and chance happeneth to them all even wealth is insecure and does not long bring happiness he that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver nor he that loveth abundance with increase this is also vanity the sleep of a labouring man is sweet whether he eat little or much but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep remembering his relatives he formulates maltose in a line when goods are increased they are increased that eat them nor can he be soothed by any legend of a golden past or a utopia to come things have always been as they are now and so they will always be say not thou what is the cause that the former days were better than these for thou us not inquire wisely concerning this one must choose his historians carefully and the thing that have been it is that which shall be and that which is done is that which shall be done and there is nothing new Under the Sun is there anything ware of it may be said see this is new it has been already of old time which was before us progress he thinks is a delusion civilizations have been forgotten and will be again in general he feels that life is a sorry business and might well be dispensed with it is aimless and circuitous motion without permanent result and ends where it began it is a futile struggle in which nothing is certain except defeat vanity of vanities saith the preacher vanity of vanities all is vanity what prophet had the man of all his labour which he taketh Under the Sun one generation passeth away and another generation cometh but the earth abideth forever the Sun also arises and the wind goeth toward the south and turneth about unto the north it worth about continually and the wind returneth again according to his circuits all the rivers run into the sea at the sea is not full unto the place from whence the rivers came thither they returned again wherefore I praise the Dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive yay better is he than both they which hath not yet been who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the Sun a good name is better than precious ointment and the day of death than the day of one's birth for a time he seeks the answer to the riddle of life and abandonment to pleasure then I commended mirth because a man has no better thing under the Sun and to eat and to drink and to be merry but behold this also is vanity the difficulty with pleasure is woman from whom the preacher seems to have received some unforgettable sting one man among a thousand have I found but a woman among all those have I not found I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets and her hands as bands who so pleased with God shall escape her he concludes his digression into this most obscure realm of philosophy by reverting to the advice of Solomon and Voltaire who did not practice it live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity which God hath given thee Under the Sun even wisdom is a questionable thing he lords it generously but he suspects that anything more than a little knowledge is a dangerous thing of making many books he writes with uncanny foresight there is no end and much study is a weariness of the flesh it might be wise to seek wisdom if God had given it a better income wisdom is good with an inheritance otherwise it is a snare and is apt to destroy its lovers truth is like Yahweh who said to Moses thou canst not see my face where there shall no man see me and live in the end the wise man dies as thoroughly as the fool and both come to the same odour and I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven this sword travaileth God given to the sons of man to be exercised there with I have seen all the works that are done under the Sun and behold all his vanity and the chasing after the wind I communed with mine own heart saying lo I am come to great estate and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem yay my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge and I gave my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly I perceived that this also is a chasing after the wind for in much wisdom is much grief and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow all these darts of outrageous fortune might be born with hope and courage if the just man could look forward to some happiness beyond the grave but that to Ecclesiastes feels is a myth man is an animal and dies like any other beast for that which befall it the sons of men to falleth beasts even one thing befall at them as the one diet so diet the other yay they have all one breath so that a man hath no preeminence over a beast for all his vanity all go into one place all are of the dust and all turn to dust again wherefore I perceived that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his own works for that is his portion for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him whatsoever thy hand findeth to do do it with thy might for there is no work nor device nor knowledge nor wisdom in the grave whither thou goest what a commentary on the wisdom so lauded in the Proverbs here evidently civilization had for a time gone to seed the vitality of Israel's youth had been exhausted by her struggles against the empires that surrounded her the Ave in whom she had trusted had not come to her aid and in her desolation and dispersion she raised to the skies this bitterest of all voices in literature to express the profoundest outs that ever come to the human soul Jerusalem had been restored but not as the citadel of a nun conquerable God it was a vassal City ruled now by Persia now by Greece in 334 BC the young Alexander stood at its gates and demanded the surrender of the capital the high priest at first fused but the next morning having had a dream he consented he ordered the clergy to put on their most impressive vestments and the people to guard themselves in immaculate white then he led the population specifically out through the gates to solicit peace Alexander bowed to the high priest expressed his admiration for the people and their God and accepted to rusul 'm it was not the end of Judea only the first act had been played in this strange drama that binds 40 centuries Christ would be the second a Hassoun rest's the third today another act is played but it is not the last destroyed and rebuilt destroyed and rebuilt Jerusalem rises again symbol of the vitality and pertinacity of an heroic race the Jews who are as old as history may be as lasting as civilization
