Third Period

From the Sojourn in Egypt Until the Arrival in Shiloh. The Period of the Development of Israel, and the Spring-time in the Land of Promise.

THIRD PERIOD.

FROM THE SOJOURN IN EGYPT UNTIL THE ARRIVAL IN SHILOH. THE PERIOD OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF ISRAEL, AND THE SPRING-TIME IN THE LAND OF PROMISE.

§ 22. The Development of the Patriarchal Family into a Nation.

THE pilgrim life of the patriarchs gradually came to a stand-still, hence the danger of intermarriages with the Canaanites arose. Under these circumstances the providential leading of Joseph became the means of hindering their settlement in a manner contrary to the promise, and of preparing a suitable place in Egypt for the independent ripening of the family of Jacob to a nation It was an arrangement of the divine wisdom that the family of Jacob were sunk in the currents of the national life of Egypt,—which as scarcely any other was regulated by law, penetrated by religion, and thoroughly cultivated in the most manifold way,—in order to go forth after four hundred and thirty years (Ex. xii. 40), or two hundred and fifteen years (according to the Septuagint renderingl

1 The rendering is as follows: » it xarclxtiris ruv ulS> 'irpcwx m

xara/xnirav lv yy AiyuTr* xou iy yri Xccvaav in) rirpooxoffiit rpiaxovTK.

"Now the sojourning of the children of Israel which they spent

in the land of Egypt and of Canaan was four hundred and thirty years." Not only Hellenistic tradition, but also Palestinian, testifies that the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt lasted two hundred and fifteen (210) years. See the Pesikta of Rab Kahana, edited by Solomon Buber, Lyck 1868, fol. 47".

DEVELOPMENT OF THE PATRIARCHAL FAMILY. 55

of the same passage, compare Gal. iii. 17), as a nation, which was the spiritual antitype of this heathen, natural type. From a few people in Egypt arose a great nation (Deut. xxvi. 5), but one which became more and more estranged from the God of redemptive history (Ezek. xxiii. 8, 19, 27). During the period of the Egyptian sojourn, falls the reign of the Hyksos (Shepherd kings), which lasted several hundred years. These kings were Semitic usurpers, who combined the Egyptian worship of Ea with the Canaanitic worship of Set or Sutech, who is almost the same as Baal and especially Molech (Amos v. 26). After they had been driven out by Amosis (Ahmes), one of the kings of the eighteenth dynasty, that new king (Ex. i. 8) arose under whom the oppression of Israel began. The new king is a representative of the native dynasty, which after the expulsion of the Hyks6s came to power, and no longer remembered what Joseph had done for the land, and especially for the royal house. Simultaneously with the oppression of Israel began, under the restored native royal power, the reanimation of the national consciousness in the better part of God's people. The Israelitish proper names in Exodus vi., Numbers i., and in the first chapters of Chronicles, present a vivid picture of the state of feeling at that time. The names of the father and mother of Moses, Amram and Jochebed, contain the two great thoughts which filled and animated his soul. The name Amram signifies the people is high, and thus indicates that Israel is an exalted people; and the name Jochebed signifies that Jehovah is glory, and affirms that Jehovah is exalted above the gods of the heathen, and hence of Egypt.

Eemark.—The Israelites were compelled to build for Pharaoh the magazine cities Pithom and Eamses. The name Eamses indicates a Pharaoh of this name, and not Eamses I., who reigned only one full year, but Eamses H. Miamun (the beloved of Amun), during whose reign, according to two papyrus rolls in Leyden, Apuriu, which without doubt are the same as Ibrim (Hebrews), are mentioned as compulsory labourers in the building of a Bechennu, one of the fortified magazines. According to this, the oppression of Israel fell in the sixty-six years of the reign of this second Eamses. The first four kings of the nineteenth dynasty are Eamses I., 1443 B.C.; Sethos I. (Sett) 1439; Eamses II., 1388; and Menephthes (Mernephiah), 1322. The year of the Exodus is, as Lepsius, Ebers, and most now think, the year 1314 B.C.

§ 23. The Exodus.

The opinion which even Schiller adopted in his Sendung Moses1 may now be considered as established.

1 This article first appeared in the tenth number of the Thalia, 1790; see Delitzsch's Pentateuch-kritische Studien; first article on the LepersTora, in Luthardt's Zeitschrift, Leipzig 1880, pp. 1-10.

THE EXODUS. 57

The expulsion of the lepers under Amenophis, or Menephthes, is the event to which the Egyptian myth has distorted the exodus of Israel from Egypt.1 Eamses n. Miamun is the Pharaoh of the oppression, and his son, Mernephtah (the beloved of Ptah), is the Pharaoh of the exodus. The princess who rescued Moses in Tanis was probably a daughter of Seti, and a sister of Eamses n.2 The foundling was brought up by Pharaoh's daughter like a prince;3 but when he was grown up, he regarded "the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt" (Heb. xi. 24—27). Although the name Moses may be identical with the Egyptian mes (mem), which signifies child, yet, understood as a Hebrew word, it is a hint at the history of him who, drawn out of the waters of the Nile, drew his people out of the waters of Egypt.4 In the solitude of Arabia he matured for this high calling.

The theophany in the burning thorn-bush assured him that he and his people were now to get a sight of the fire of the divine wrath without being consumed thereby. Plague after plague comes upon Egypt, which disappoints Israel's hope again and again. But in this fiery furnace of affliction (Deut. iv. 20; compare Isa. xlviii. 10) the silver gleam of the name Jehovah shines for Israel. God has now formed a people as His peculiar possession, and is now called Jehovah, as the God of free grace ruling in this people. As on the third day of creation the continent, as the birth-place of mankind, goes forth from the waters, so in this third period Israel, as the birth-place of the future God-man, goes forth from Egypt. The people really come out of the waters,1 marching through the Eed Sea, since God's miraculous interference lengthened and heightened the time of the ebb-tide, out of just those waters which, flowing back, buried the Egyptians; an event which is celebrated in the Scriptures as the felling of rahab, that is, of the monster of the waters, and as the piercing of the tannin, that is, of the dragon.2 This passage through the sea was, according to 1 Cor. x. 1 sq., Israel's baptism, namely, into Jehovah, and into Moses his servant (Ex. xiv. 31). > Eemark 1.—The name Jehovah (mrr) was not first coined in the Mosaic period, but it received a particular specialization of its meaning. In itself considered,. the name Jehovah indicates the One whose nature consists in being, which continually manifests itself as existence, the One existing by and through Himself, the eternal, and at the same time the eternally living One. But at the time of Moses the name received,

1 Josephus, Contra Apionem, i. 26 sq.

* Compare Ebers, Durch Gosen nach Sinai, Leipzig 1872, p. 82 sq.

3 Acts vii. 21, 22: "And when he was cast out, Pharaoh's daughter took him up, and nourished him for her own son. And Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, "etc.

* Isa. lxiii. 11, first clause: "Then he remembered the days of old, Moses, and his people. Where is he that brought them up out of the sea with the shepherd of his flock?"

1 Isa. li. 10 : "Art thou not it which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep ; that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over ?" and Ps. civ. 7.

2 Isa. li. 9, last clause: "Art thou not it that was cutting rahab, and piercing the tannin?"

THE EGYPTIAN PASSOVER. 59

through the explanation in Ex. iii . 14 sq., "I shall be what I shall be," a special direction towards the future. The name signifies from henceforth the One existing in the unlimited future, and in His being determining Himself with absolute freedom; hence the One whd, without extraneous compulsion, so reveals Himself as His decree requires; in brief, the God of redemptive history, whose government has as its signature mercy and truth.

Eemark 2.—Those are everywhere important and significant turning-points in the history of redemption where the Old Testament Scriptures speak of faith:

(1) The beginning of the anterior history of the people of God ;1

(2) The beginning of the period of the kingdom of God ;2

(3) The beginning of the period when the kingdom of God was transferred to the heathen.3

i

§ 24. The Egyptian Passover and the Beginning of the Kingdom of God.

The leading of Israel out of Egypt is the Old Testament redemption. As the last of the ten plagues, the destruction of the firstborn, visited Egypt, and Israel received the command to sprinkle its doors with the blood of the passover-lamb, it was not the blood of the animal which changed the divine wrath into mercy which spared1 their firstborn, but the antitypical redemption stood behind it, as yet a dumb, unrevealed secret, for all the types spring from the invisible root of their antitype. Even the song of Moses (Ex. xv.) after Israel had crossed the Eed Sea is typical; it is the eternally significant counterpart of the song of the Lamb (Eev. xv. 3). It closes with the words, "Jehovah shall reign as king, for ever and ever." A king needs, in order really to be a king, a people; such a people Jehovah now has for the first time in Israel.2 The theocratic activity of God now begins, but the national form of God's kingdom is merely its foundation. Israel is only the firstborn of the nations.3

1 Gen. xv. 6: "And he believed in Jehovah, and He counted it to him as righteousness."

2 Ex. xiv. 31: "And Israel saw the mighty act which Jehovah performed upon the Egyptians; and the people feared Jehovah, and believed in Jehovah, and in Moses His servant."

•Jonah iii. 5: "And the men of Nineveh believed in God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even unto the least of them."

Eemark 1.—The Egyptian passover was a sacrifice, for although an altar was wanting, it was nevertheless stamped as a sacrifice:

(1) Through the separation of the lamb for the purpose of a divine service;

(2) Through the application of the blood with the stalk of hyssop.

(3) Through the following religious meal. It has, with reference to the meal, the character of the peaceCIIAEACTERISTICS OF THE LEGISLATION. 61 elusion in the plains of Moab. From its course and contents the following main aspects are derived:—

1 The word nDB signifies to pass over, to spare, compare Isa. xxxi. 5.

~ T

2 Deut. xxxiii. 5: "And He was king in Jeshunvn," etc.

5 Ex. iv. 22: "And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith Jehovah, My son, my firstborn is Israel."

offerings; the blood, as in all animal sacrifices, aimed at a mediatorial expiation. An innocent life is presented to God, behind which Israel seeks covering for its own life, burdened with guilt. The blood was sprinkled upon the doorposts, and especially upon the upper moulding; in the subsequent observances of the passover, it was poured out at the foot of the altar, and the pieces of fat were laid upon the fire of the altar (Ex. xxiii. 18, xxxiv. 25).

Eemark 2.—The name theocracy (deoKparla) was invented by Josephus.1 When properly applied, it does not indicate a form of government, but a relation entered into between Jehovah and Israel, which does not demand any particular form of government, and is not excluded by any. The monarchy corresponds most to the theocracy, in so far as the theocratic relation will finally be completed in a christocratic.

§ 25. Characteristics of the Legislation.

As the people in the third month of the exodus were in the wilderness, they learned through Moses the high destiny intended for them, and answered the words of Jehovah with the promise, "All that Jehovah hath spoken we will do" (Ex. xix. 1-8, compare xxiv. 3, 7 sq.). After this unanimous and decisive answer began the giving of the law on Sinai, which forms the medium between its prelude in Marah2 and its con

1 Contra Apionem, ii. 16.

2 Ex. xv. 25, second clause : "There he made for them a statute and an ordinance" (compare Josh. xxiv. 25).

(1) It is a people to which the revelation from Sinai is directed. This revelation enters into the barriers of a nationality, and it cannot do this without accommodating itself to all that is incongruous in the character of the people to the idea of humanity.

(2) It is a people of which Aaron says, in order to excuse himself, that "they are bent on mischief" (Ex. xxxii. 22). Therefore the law must bind this people with a thousand bonds, in order to restrain its sinful inclination, and it must surround its demands with dreadful threatenings in order to secure itself.

(3) The law curses all those who do not absolutely fulfil all its commands,1 and therefore leaves man only the threefold possibility, either carnally to ignore it, or to despair, or to take refuge in mercy.

(4) The law meets this flight for mercy with gracious promises, and gracious institutions. But these gracious institutions subserve the end in view only as shadows, and externally and temporally, as the Epistle to the Hebrews shows ; and to prevent that mercy from being sought wantonly, every step in this direction is defined with painful exactness; and even the gospel elements in the law have a legal character. This character of the law corresponds to its mode of revela

1 Deut. xxvii. 26 : "Cursed be he who shall not establish the words of this law to do them," etc.

THE ESSENTIAL HOMOGENEITY OF THE LAW. 63

tioa It is not immediately the direct revelation of the one God, but is mediated through angels and men.1

§ 26. The Essential Homogeneity of the Law in all the Phases of its Development.

The characteristic features which have been indicated are peculiar to the law in all the stages of its development. Deuteronomy is not distinguished therein from the Middle Books of the Pentateuch, and even Ezekiel's Tora of the future has the same physiognomy. The description of the religion of the law is therefore independent of the results of Pentateuch criticism. All parts of the Pentateuch recognise the wonderful acts of God by which the exodus of Israel from Egypt under Moses' leadership2 was accompanied;3 all presuppose that the Tora which gave Israel its stamp as the people of God flowed from a majestic revelation of God upon Mount Sinai.4 The Tora, in all its forms and codifications, consists of the demands of divine holiness, and of means provided for purification and atonement, and is everywhere the rule of life for a people which is not able to withdraw from externality and particularism, with which a nationality and a state are infected. It accommodates itself to deeply-rooted institutions and customs, such as the avenging of blood, slavery, polygamy, and marriage with a brother's wife, since it contents itself with an ameliorating, restricting, and regulating interference, and leaves here and there even important deficiencies, as, for example, in the reasons for divorce,1 since it confines itself to that which can be attained in the present stage of the people's moral condition. In contrast with other ancient legislations, the Tora justifies its divine origin; but it is not less than all other legislations of the peoples, human, national, adapted to the age, and even on this account a standpoint which has been passed by for the new world which has been formed by Christianity.

1 Gal. iii. 20 : " Now a mediator is not a mediator of one; but God is one." Compare Deut. xxxiii. 2: "Jehovah came from Sinai, and rose from Seir unto them; He shined from Mount Paran, and He came with ten thousand saints; from His right was a fiery law for them ;" Acts vii. 53: "Ye who received the law as it was ordained by angels," etc.

2 Hos. xii. 13: "And by a prophet Jehovah brought Israel out of Egypt, and by a prophet was he preserved." Isa. liii. 11: "Then he remembered the days of old, Moses, and his people, saying, "Where is he that brought them up out of the sea with the shepherd of his flock?"

3 Micah vii. 15: "According to the day of thy coming out of the land of Egypt will I show thee marvellous things."

4 Judg. v. 4, 5: "Jehovah, when thou wentest out of Seir, when thou marchedst out of the field of Edom, the earth trembled, the heavens also dropped, also the clouds dropped water; the mountains melted from before Jehovah, even this Sinai from before Jehovah God of Israel."

Eemark.—Nowhere in the Tora is the non-Israelite, or the man as such, called the neighbour of the Israelite. Although in Lev. xix. 18, second clause, we read, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself;" yet in the parallel member, ver. 18, first clause, we

1 Deut. xxiv. 1. Matt. xix. 8: "He saith unto them, Moses, for your hardness of heart, suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it hath not been so."

THE SACRIFICIAL TORA. 65

have these words: "Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear a grudge against the children of thy people." The legal regulations respecting the taking of usury (Deut. xxiii. 20 sq.), and the non-exaction of debts in the year of release (Deut. xv. 1-3), allowed the Israelites to pursue a course with the stranger which was forbidden with regard to a brother of the same nation. The Israelite was not allowed to eat of any carcase, but he might give it to the stranger pS), and also sell it to the alien (^J).1 Deuteronomy is as exclusive as all the rest of the legislation, nay, even more exclusive. It modifies the law which pronounces the sentence of death upon one pursuing the slave trade,2 by limiting it to the stealing and selling of an Israelite as a slave.

§ 27. The Sacrificial Tora.

The sacrificial worship was neither the first nor the chief thing in the legislation.3 It had previously existed as traditional usage; and when the legislation purified and regulated it, this was only a concession * which was made to the human need of sacrifice, but not without the dangers connected with it being foreseen. The greatest danger lay in the delusion, into which the people were likely to fall, that the i gift as such was a sufficient compensation for the sin, / — a delusion which the prophets oppose in such \d cutting expressions as Micah vi. 6-8. The sacrificial | Tora itself therefore holds the elements of the atonement and of the offering wide apart. All which is consumed in fire upon the altar is not in itself of an toning character, but is only acceptable to God on he presupposition that it is the offering of one who as been previously reconciled. The promise--of '"reconciliation is absolutely connected with the blood alone, or with the offering on account of the blood. Hence the emptying of the blood from the sacrificial bowl, or the pressing out of the blood at the side of the altar, always precedes the offering itself; for a preliminary condition of every offering which is pleasing to God, is the atonement mediated through the life-blood of the guiltless animal which is devoted to death. But between the person of the man and the animal, which mediates through its blood, there is an endless difference. And, moreover, the sacrificial animal suffers an involuntary death, contrary to its will, while the atoning character in the New Testament sacrifice of the Eedeemer consists precisely in His willingness to offer Himself. The blood of the animal offering atoned only symbolically, and had atoning power only as a temporary, figurative, typical substitution for a better offering, which is the mystic

1 Deut. xiv. 21: "Ye shall not eat any carcase: to the stranger that is in thy gates thou mayest give it, or thou mayest sell it to the alien," etc.

8 Ex. xxi. 16: "And he that stealeth a man or selleth him, if he be found in his hand, shall surely be put to death."

3 Jer. vii. 22: "For I did not speak with your fathers, nor command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt-offering and sacrifice."

* Such a concession is indicated in Lev. xvii. 11 : "/ have given it to you [that is, the blood] upon the altar, to make an atonement for your souls."

£

THE SACRIFICIAL TORA. 67

background from which the divine permission of animal sacrifice has gone forth. As the blood of the animals which covered the floor of the court of the priests indicated to Israel that it needed an atonement, so the veiled holy of holies, which was accessible only to the high priest once a year, indicated that a time must come when a sufficient atonement would be furnished once for all, so that the presence of God would no longer need to be concealed in such a death-threatening manner, and so that the abode of God would be accessible for all believers. But the people of the legislation did not yet know that this atonement was to be the voluntary sacrifice of a man1 whom God gives, and who gives himself in death, to break the curse of sin through the moral power of this act In the age which now follows, the Future One is not promised in the person of a sufferer who offers himself, but in that of a prophet and king. Eemark. — For the proper estimate of sacrifice, the following considerations are decisive:—

1. Against the substitution theory of Baehr:2 the f life of the sacrificial animal is not substituted by man for his own life (&$), so that it is a symbol of it, but it is a third somewhat which enters between God and man for man.

2. Against the juristic theory of Kurtz: the

1 Ex. xxxii. 30: "And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses said unto the people, Ye have sinned a great sin: and now I will go unto Jehovah ; peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin."

* Symbolik des Mosaischm KulCus, in 2 vols., Heidelberg 1837-39.

slaughtering of the sacrificial animal is not a punitive .execution within the sacrificial ritual, that is, the suffering of death as a punishment, but only the means for securing the atoning blood, which is a type of that poured out on Golgotha. Hence the killing of the sacrificial animal is never spoken of as a putting to death (nw), but as a slaughtering (BnK> or rn?). In like manner the going up of the sacrifice in fire is never called a burning (*)"]&>), but a causing to ascend in smoke p,t?l£').

3. The sacrificial arrangement was a gracious one. Atoning sacrifices were admissible for venial sins {peccata venialia) alone, and only for mortal sins (peccata mortalia) when grounds for mitigation made them venial sins. But on the day of atonement,1 year by year, the condition of the congregation as one of grace is renewed. The private and congregational sacrifices during the year presuppose this annual atonement of the congregation as such.

§ 28. Moses and the Future Mediator.

As the people were not able to bear the voice of Jehovah in its awful nearness, and Moses was compelled to take the position of mediator between them (Deut. v. 23-25; Ex. xx. 19), God also promised the people for the future a prophet as mediator of the divine revelation, like Moses, and demanded for him in MOSES AND THE FUTURE MEDIATOR. 69

1 See Delitzsch, Der VersShnungstag, in Luthardt's Zeitschrift fur Kirchliche Wissenschqft, Leipzig 1880, pp. 173-183.

advance unconditional obedience (Deut. xviii. 15-19). Moses was not the only prophet of his age, but all prophecy beside him and after him moved in the realm created through his mediatorship. The one prophet in whom Moses' mediatorship finds its antitype as seen in the history of fulfilment, is the predicted Christ, who is here announced as a prophet. The prophets who arose between Moses and this one cannot be included in the expression, "a prophet like thee," for none of them was so great as Moses, according to the testimony of the Tora itself (Deut. xxxiv. 10; compare Num. xii. 6-8). None of them were mediators of such a divine revelation as the Sinaitic; but that divine revelation, which will be like the Sinaitic, lies for all in the realm of the future.

Eemark.—The New Testament Scriptures see the promise of a prophet who is the antitype of Moses, fulfilled in Jesus (Acts iii. 22-24, vii. 37). Even among the Jewish people the knowledge dawned that the mighty and miraculous teacher from Nazareth "was the prophet that cometh into the world" (John vi. 14); but they did not know that the prophet of the Old Testament promise and the Messiah were one and the same person (John vii. 40 sq.; compare i. 19-21), although, beholding the person of Jesus, they surmised the identity of both.1

1 Matt. xxi. 9-11, ver. 11: "And the multitudes said, This is the prophet, Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee."

§ 29. The Beginning of Prophecy in the Time of Moses concerning the Future King.

It is the result of different situations, that the image of the future mediator in the Sinaitic legislation takes on a prophetic image, and that in the mouth of Balaam it receives a special royal character,—in the mouth of that sorcerer whose magic Balak, the king of Moab, invokes against victorious Israel. The star and the sceptre, which Balaam sees going forth from JacobIsrael (Num. xxiv. 17), signify, as emblems of the heavenly and earthly glory, the king in whom Jehovah's royal government over Israel1 is humanly mediated. He is the king of the final period, through whom Israel conquers all the neighbouring nations; and though Israel for a time is threatened by Ashur, the worldempire of the East, and subjugated by Chittim,2 the world-empire of the West (1 Mace. i. 1, viii. 5), it victoriously outlasts the nearest and most remote movements of the nations. Although occasioned by the circumstances of the age, this prophecy of Balaam, as the first properly Messianic prediction, forms an integral part in the systematic progress of revelation. That which is promised to Judah as the royal tribe is hereafter connected with the person of a king, through

1 Num. xxiii. 21, last clause: "Jehovah their God is with them [i.e. Israel], and the shout of a king is among them." Num. xxiv. 7, la3t clause: "Their king shall be higher than Agag, and their kingdom shall be exalted."

2 See Delitzsch, Messianic Prophecies, Edinburgh 1880, p. 41, Rem. 1.

THE OLD TESTAMENT OBJECT OF FAITH. Tl

whom Judah attains the dominion of the world, to which, according to Gen. xlix. 10, he was designated after the arrival in Shiloh.1

Remark. — The king whom Balaam foresees is neither a succession of kings (that is, a collectivum)? nor is he David,8 the victor over the Moabites and Ammonites. The one beheld is not this or that king who had already been (yaticinium post eventum), nor one like David in Balaam's nearer future, but the Future King who is exalted over all, through whom Judah attains the promised dominion over the world. For this cause Jeremiah (xlviii., xlix.) again takes up the prophetic threatenings against the neighbouring peoples as unfulfilled. Balaam's prophecy does not contain anything which is not fitting to his character and time. Schultz admits that it remains in tone and contents within the boundaries of Jacob's blessing.4

§ 3 0. The Old Testament Object of Faith after the Testamentary Words of Moses.

A great king and a great prophet are now hoped for; but their reciprocal relation is still concealed, and the personality of both is so far from being superhuman, that the desire for redemption is directed beyond both to Jehovah Himself. Hence in the great memorial song (Deut. xxxii.) neither the future prophet nor the future king are thought of. Jehovah is the One who makes use of the heathen as instruments of punishment against His people, and who, after He has extinguished the rebellious mass, attests Himself to the remnant as having compassion on them and as avenging them, so that the history attains its goal in the restoration of Israel, and in the uniting of all nations in the praise of the God of Israel, who has been revealed in judgment and mercy. Even the blessing of Moses (Deut. xxxiii.) deduces all salvation from Jehovah, the eternal King, who is the refuge of His people (compare Deut. xxxiii. 29 with Gen. xlix. 18). And the prayer of Moses (Ps. xc.) also takes refuge in this God, since it recognises Him as the unchangeable One, as the Foundation of hope in danger and death. This faith, which hides itself in Jehovah, seized at all times the redemption of Jesus Christ by the root (compare Ps. cii. with Heb. i. 10-12). As, now, the younger generation stood on the threshold of Canaan they hoped to see the great work of Jehovah's salvation, which had been promised, but it became all the while manifest that the essential, final redemption had not yet appeared, and that the fulness of the times must still be awaited. Israel's entire history is planned with the design that it should take refuge from the God of the present in the God of the future, who in the history of fulfilment becomes manifest as the Father of Jesus Christ. and fiery pillar has ceased. Bread has taken the place of manna. The angel of Jehovah still appears, but only seldom. The will of God is announced in ordinary ways through the priesthood. In general, the second half of the redemptive period, which ends with the death of Joshua and Eleazar, is inferior to the first half, ending with the death of Moses. It is true that the part of the Book of Joshua which gives the history of the distribution of the land, closes with the thankful acknowledgment, Josh. xxi. 43-45: "And Jehovah gave unto Israel all the land which He sware to give unto their fathers ... all came to pass." But a larger portion of the land, especially the entire sea-coast of Phoenicia and Philistia, was not yet conquered, for only too soon Israel showed delay and want of success in the continuation of the conquest, which they had begun with energy, and placed themselves in the midst of all the dangers of apostasy, which the destruction of the idolatrous population was designed to prevent. This was the condition of affairs when Joshua, shortly before his death, took an oath from the people in Shechem that they would hold fast to Jehovah.

1 Compare Delitzsch, ut supra, p. 35 sq.

2 See Hengstenberg, Christologie des Alten Testaments, 2d ed., Berlin 1854-57.

3 Wellhausen, Oeschichte Israels, Berlin 1878, p. 266.

* Alttestamentliche Theologie, Frankfort-on-the-Main 1878, p. 681.

Eemark.—It would be impossible to conceive how

N

ENTRANCE ON THE POSSESSION OF THE LAND. 73

it is to be reconciled with the divine mercy, that God's love as revealed in the true salvation should be so long delayed, that the secret of the incarnation should be so long veiled, and that the image of the future Saviour should be formed in such a slow sporadic way, while at the same time retaining such a national externality, — all this, we say, would be inconceivable, if the faith which hides itself in Jehovah the God of Eedemption had not been able at all times to seize the salvation of Jesus Christ by its root. It was therefore unavoidable for the Old Testament believers that the human mediation of salvation should recede as a mere accident behind the substance of Jehovah's work.

§ 31. The Entrance on the Possession of tJie Land.

When Israel entered into Canaan, it came the second time out of the waters. As at the creation the waters gave way that the firm land might appear, so now the waters of the Jordan gave way that Israel might secure a firm land. The conquest of Canaan occurred in connection with mighty miracles, as that part of the Book of Joshua which treats of the conquest (i.—xii.) relates. The conquest, indeed, as connected with the exodus from Egypt, forms the Old Testament redemption. But since the time of Joshua is the end of that work of God which commenced with the exodus, so too its miraculous glory is only a sunset. The miraculous presence of Jehovah in the cloudy

Bemark.—We admit that there are miracles which have arisen as legends, yet we do not deny the miracle as a fundamental principle. But for this very reason we need a criterium, so as to discriminate between credible and incredible miracles. The display of such extraordinary means as the interference of God in the course of nature, only appears credible to us when

THE CHARACTER OF THE TIME OF THE JUDGES. 75

important ends of redemptive history are concerned; and especially when they have to do, as in the time of Moses and Joshua, and in the time of Jesus and the apostles, with the foundation of a congregation of God for an entire world-age, hence with a creative beginning.

§ 32. The Character of the Time of the Judges.

Soon no more of the elders were left who had seen the miracles of the redemptive period. The people were like orphans. They answered with tears and sacrifices the divine message which admonished them to be faithful to God (Judg. ii. 1-5). This state of mind did not long continue. The heathen surroundings, with which Israel was hemmed in, decomposed its national consciousness, and relaxed the uniting bond of its religion. The tribe of Judah, during the time of the Judges, lost its pre-eminence. The history of the Judges is almost exclusively the history of the northern tribes. The separation between the north and the south became all the while more abrupt. One must not suppose that the dominion and activity of the Judges comprised the entire people. The unity of the people was broken, and their character was half Canaanitic. The time of the Judges resembles the age of chivalry. It was the time of Israelitish romance.

Eemark 1. — The Phoenician judges (sufetes), like the Eoman consuls, stood two by two as independent magistrates at the head of the State. The Israelitish judges, on the contrary, are called of God in an extraordinary manner to rescue Israel, and their activity has rather an external than an internal direction. They have in common with the prophets the extraordinary call, but are distinguished from them in this, that their extraordinary mission was not of an ethicoreligious, but of a warlike nature.

Eemark 2.—Even Gideon, who had begun in the spirit, ended in the flesh. Sampson presents a true portrait of the Israel of that period. "We see spirit and flesh all the while contending in him, without the spirit overcoming the flesh, and yet he is the Nazarite of Jehovah, whose birth the angel announced with words similar to those with which the angel Gabriel announced the birth of Jesus Christ. The contrast between both Testaments is here as great as possible.

§ 33. The Footsteps of the Future One in the Time of the Judges.

The course of the true seed of the woman went at that time through the mire of great waters. The tribe of Judah disappears so completely from the theatre of history, that the song of Deborah does not mention it. It is a law of redemptive history, that its ways, indicated by prophecy, suddenly appear as if they were broken off, in order that they may come all the more strikingly to view. The sacred historiography is conscious of this, for the Book of Judges begins with divine oracle, implying the promise of victory (i. 2): "Judah shall go up," and closes in xvii.-xxi. with THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE FUTURE ONE. 77

narratives which, revolving around Bethlehem-Judah, have as their frame the reflective remark, "In those days there was no king in Israel,"—by which it is indicated that the want of a legal kingdom is soon to be remedied, and that the beholding of the ways of God in the future is to be directed to Bethlehem-Judah. Hence the end of the Book of Judges is continued in the Book of Euth. In this charming history of a family from Bethlehem-Judah, the coming Christ is far more prominent than in the warlike histories of the other tribes. As Euth gleaned ears in the field of Boaz, God purposed through this daughter of a foreign land to give back the sceptre to the tribe of Judah, for the last word of the Book of Euth is the name David.

Eemark 1.—Ancient writers regarded Judges and Euth as one book. When Josephus (b. 3 7 A.D.), Melito of Sardis (d. about 170 A.D.), Origen (b. 185, d. 253 A.d.), Jerome (b. about 340, d. 420), reckon twenty-two books in the Old Testament, they consider Judges and Euth as one. But the two narratives, Judg. xvii., xviii., xix.—xxi., and the history of the Book of Euth, are most closely connected through their references to the tribe of Judah. From BethlehemJudah was the priest who arranged the tribal worship of the Danites. From Bethlehem-Judah was the wife of the Levite whose violation in Gibeah resulted in the annihilation of almost the entire tribe of Benjamin. From Bethlehem-Judah was Elimelech the husband of Naomi, who, with her daughter-in-law Euth, the Moabitess, returned thither. The purpose of the Book of Euth is to relate the original history of the Bethlehemitic family from which David came. There is no time which could have been more fitting for the composition of this book than the time of King Hezekiah. When Micah points to the roots of the parousia of the Messiah, which lie in the lowly community of Bethlehem-Ephratah,1 it seems as if the Book of Euth was written to describe those ancient Bethlehemitic "goings forth."

Eemark 2.—The Book of Euth relates a history from the time of the Judges, about one hundred years before David. The victorious song of Deborah belongs to a much earlier epoch of the time of the Judges, in which this is particularly significant, that it celebrates the miraculous revelation of God upon Mount Sinai (Judg. v. 4,5): "Jehovah, when Thou wentest out from Seir, when Thou marchedst out from the fields of Edom, the earth trembled, also the heavens dropped, also the clouds dropped water. The mountains tottered before Jehovah, this Sinai before Jehovah, the God of Israel." These words of Deborah confirm Deut. xxxiii. 2 as Mosaic, and afford at the same time a parallel to the Book of Euth, for the designation of God as Jehovah, God of Israel, is characteristic of the history of Joshua and of the Judges; compare Euth ii. 12 with Judg. iv. 6, v. 3, 5, vi. 8, xi. 21-23, xxi. 3, 23.

1 Micah v. 1 (E. V. ver. 2): "And thou Bethlehem-Ephratah, too small to be reckoned among the thousands of Judah, out of thee shall He go forth to me, who is to be ruler over Israel, and His goings out are from old, from the days of remote antiquity." Compare Delitzsch's Messianic Prophecies, Edinburgh 1880, pp. 44 sq.

THE MESSIANIC HOPE. "79

§ 34. The Messianic Hope in the Time of the Judges.

How great the desire for a king was at that time of dominant anarchy and barbarism, appears from the prophecy of the man of God (1 Sam. ii. 27-36), which announces the overthrow of the house of Eli, the high priest in the line of Ithamar, and which promises a priest after God's heart: "I will build him a reliable house, and he shall walk before my anointed1 for ever." The same strong desire is seen in the song of Hannah (1 Sam. ii. 1-10), who in the mirror of her elevation from disgrace to honour beholds the triumph of the oppressed congregation: "Jehovah, His adversaries shall be broken in pieces; it thunders before Him in heaven: Jehovah will judge the ends of the earth, and will grant power to His king, and will exalt the horn of His anointed."3 The prophecy of the man of God was fulfilled in Zadok and Solomon, but was not exhausted; and Hannah's-song of praise began to be fulfilled in David, but first drew near a final fulfilment when, as it were, born again, it was re-echoed in Mary's magnificat (Luke i. 46-55).

Eemark 1. — The prophecy, 1 Sam. ii. 27-36, is considered by modern critics, since Ewald, Thenius, and others, as a prediction after the event (vaticinium post eventum), which has been interpolated in the old history. But we remark that it does not contain any1 The Hebrew is TVB'D'"'3B.>> which the Septuagint renders: lnirm

Xpurrou ftau.

* Hebrew: ^fVB'D ppi Sept. *!/wt Xfitrcu xlrau.

thing which cannot be understood as a presage of the future at the end of the period of the Judges. The reliable priest is, according to the first fulfilment, as the Book of Kings itself remarks, that Zadok who took the place of Abiathar, because he entered into the conspiracy against Solomon in favour of Adonijah. Through Zadok the line of Eleazar again came into possession of the pontificate. Wellhausen, Smend, and "W. Eobertson Smith, indeed, think that Zadok was the founder of an absolutely new line, which did not belong to the house of Aaron, and that the genealogies of Chronicles, which refer his origin to Eleazar, are artificial inventions which are due to an unmistakable tendency.

Eemark 2.—The connection in which Hannah and David stand to each other is favourable to the genuineness of the song of Hannah. When Hannah had thus prayed, she consecrated the one to the Lord who was called to anoint the son of Jesse as king. Hannah, who was the songstress of Jehovah, became the mother of that Samuel who begat David, the founder of the poetry of the psalms, into the kingdom. The fact that the song of Hannah is very old is confirmed by this, that it had a fructifying influence upon all the later literature (compare 2 Sam. xxii. 32; Ps. lxxv. 6, 8).

THE NEW AGE. 81

§ 35. Establishment of a New Age by Samuel.

As Samuel established the first kings of Israel, and formulated the reciprocal rights and duties of the king and people (1 Sam. x. 25), so too he reorganized the prophetic office. Towards the end of the time of the Judges, prophecy became rare (1 Sam. iii. 1). But after the word of Jehovah came to Samuel in Shiloh, and then in Eamah, the people had in him the judge and at the same time the seer (1 Sam. ix. 9; compare 1 Chron. ix. 22, and elsewhere), and soon through him many others; for Samuel roused as with powerful electric strokes his contemporaries, who had come under the dominion of the flesh, and produced such a revival in Israel as they had never experienced before. The prophetic schools which he founded for the wakening and intensifying of the prophetic charism, became the nurseries of the literature of the regal period. Israelitish prophecy, according to Acts, dates from Samuel.1

Eemark.—As Saul came to Gibeah, a company of prophets moved down from the bamah, that is, a place of worship at Gibeah, before whom harp, tambourine, flute, and guitar were played (1 Sam. x. 5 sq. and verses 10—13). The messengers whom Saul sends to Eamah to take David meet a company of prophets at whose head is Samuel, and they fall into an ecstasy, as afterwards Saul himself (1 Sam. xix. 20-24). Here we

1 Acts iii. 24: "Yea, and 11 the prophets from Samuel, and them that followed after," etc.

meet with organized companies of prophets, who not only make excursions in order to secure a spiritual excitation, and meet together not only casually, but also have dwellings in common, which in Eamah, where the original society was, were called Newayoth or Nayoth. The music served to excite (2 Tim. i. 6) the prophetic charism. We have the same difficulty in obtaining a clear conception of this mode of prophecy, as of the gift of tongues in the primitive Church. It was so overpowering and exciting, that the auditor was irresistibly carried away by the power of the Spirit of God; so tempestuous, that the instruments did not drown it; and so violent, that Saul throws off his clothes, and remains lying on the ground as though caught away from this world. Since the power of the Divine Spirit expresses itself all the more powerfully in proportion as the natural life is lacking in spiritual character, the prophetic office of the time of the Judges is only a chaotic beginning. It has, like everything else in the time of the Judges, a Canaanite hue, a more mantic,1 and so to speak Shamanian character.2 But Samuel was the man who in that barbarous age brought forth prophetism as the fruit of a great spiritual awakening. Those companies of prophets are an Old Testament Pentecostal phenomenon. As Abraham is the father of believers, and Moses is the ESTABLISHMENT OF A NEW AGE. 83

1 Compare ehap. iv. in Delitzsch's Messianic Prophecies, Edinburgh 1880, pp. 12-20.

2 A picture of the wild self-excitement of the Shamans is given by Tholuck, who follows Castrin, in Die Prophetenund Hire Weissagungen, Gotha 1860, § 1.

mediator of the law, so Samuel is the father of the kingdom and the prophetic office, and through the medium of the prophetic schools, father of the literature of the royal and prophetic period which now follows.