THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

THEOLOGY OF THE
OLD TESTAMENT

EDMOND JACOB
Doctor of Theology
Professor of the University of Strasbourg

Translated by
Arthur W. Heathcote and Philip J. Allcock

HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS

New York and Evanston

 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Copyright © 1958 by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd.

Printed in the United States of America
All rights in this book are reserved.
No part of the book may be used or reproduced
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This book is a translation of Theologte de

I’Ancien Testament, first published and copy¬
righted in 1955 by Delachaux & Niestle S.A.,
Neuchatel (Switzerland)

Library of Congress catalog card number: 58-7094

L-T

j^O'99
 CONTENTS

List of abbreviations
9

INTRODUCTION

HISTORICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL

CONSIDERATIONS

I Outline of the history of the subject

II The place of theology in relation to other branches of
Old Testament study
III The place of Old Testament theology in relation to
other theological studies

PART ONE

CHARACTERISTIC ASPECTS OF THE

GOD OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

I The Living God, centre of Revelation and of Faith

37
II The Divine Names, an expression of the Living God
43
A. El-Elohim
43
B. Yahweh 48
C. Other titles
56
III Yahweh and other gods
65
IV Angels and other powers divine or demonic 68
V Manifestations of God
73
A. Angel of Yahweh
75
B. Face of God
77
C. Glory of God
79
D. Name of God 82
VI The Holiness of God 86
VII The Righteousness of God
94
5
6 CONTENTS

VIII The Faithfulness of God 103

IX The Love of God 108
X The Wrath of God 114
XI The Wisdom of God 118

PART TWO

THE ACTION OF GOD ACCORDING

TO THE OLD TESTAMENT

I The Instruments of God’s Action 121

A. The Spirit 121
B. The Word 127
II God the Creator of the World 136
A. History and Creation 136
B. Uniqueness of the Israelite Idea of Creation 138
C. Principal Modes of Action of God the Creator 142
D. Influence of Faith in God as Creator upon the
picture of nature and the cosmos 144
III The Nature and Destiny of Man 151
A. Some semantic considerations 156
B. Man is a creature of flesh 158
C. Man is a living soul 158
D. Spirit 161
E. Heart 163
F. The Image of God 166
G. Male and Female 172
H. Imitation of God 173
I. Life as Man’s Destiny 177
IV God the Lord of History 183
A. Faith and History 183
(a) Generalities 183
(b) The Events 184
(c) The Historical foundation of Israel’s faith 188
(d) The Theological aspect of the presentation
of history 194
(e) Historicization 197
 CONTENTS
7
B. Election 201
C. Covenant 200
y
D. Mission 217
E. Miracles 222
J
F. Providence and Theodicy 226
V God in Institutions
233
A. Ministries 233
(*) King 234
(b) Prophet 239
(c) Priest 246
(d) Wise man 251
(<?) General conclusion 253
B. The Permanent Setting
254
(a) The Sacred Place
254
(b) The Cult 262
(c) The Law 270

PART THREE

OPPOSITION TO AND FINAL TRIUMPH

OF GOD’S WORK

I Sin and Redemption 281

II Death and the Future Life 299
III The Consummation
3*7
A. The Eschatological Drama
3*7
B. The Messianic Kingdom
3 27
General Index
347
Index of Biblical References
353
 LIST OF. ABBREVIATIONS

ATD Das Alte Testament deutsch.

AOTB Altorientalische Texte und Bilder zum Alten Testament,
2nd ed.
ARW Archiv fur Religionswissenschaft.
BZAW Beihefte der Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissen-
schaft.
DBS Supplement au Dictionnaire de la Bible (Letouzey, Paris).
Epb. th. lov. Ephemerides theologicae lovanienses.
ETbR Etudes theologiques et religieuses (Montpellier).
FRL Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des A.u.N.T.
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature.
JTS Journal of Theological Studies.
LVT Lexicon Veteris Testamenti (Koehler-Baumgartner).
NKZ Neue kirchliche Zeitschrift.
NRTh Nouvelle revue theologique (Louvain).
RB Revue biblique.
RHR Revue de l’histoire des religions.
RHPR Revue d’histoire et de philosophic religieuses.
RGG Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (2nd ed.).
RScPhTh Revue des sciences philosophiques et theologiques.
RThP Revue de theologie et de philosophic.
TWBNT Theologisches Worterbuch zum N.T. (Kittel).
T hLitztg Theologische Literaturzeitung.
ThStKr Theologische Studien und Kritiken.
TbZ Theologische Zeitschrift (Bale).
UUA Uppsala Universitets Arsskrift.
VT Vetus Testamentum.
ZAW Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft.
ZNW Zeitschrift fur die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft.
ZDMG Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenlandischen Gesellschaft.
ZThK Zeitschrift fur Theologie und Kirche.

9
 INTRODUCTION

HISTORICAL
AND METHODOLOGICAL
CONSIDERATIONS

I. OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY OF THE

SUBJECT

T he theology of the Old Testament may be defined as the

systematic account of the specific religious ideas which can
be found throughout the Old Testament and which form
its profound unity. This subject is relatively new, since only from
the eighteenth century onwards can we see it developing as an
autonomous science and diverging from dogmatics, to which it was
until then indissolubly bound. But the reality is older than the
name. Within the Old Testament itself it is already possible to
speak of theology. The Old Testament counts among its authors
several real theologians, of whom the most ancient, the one called
the Yahwist by the critics, portrays the history of humanity and
of Israel’s earliest days as a succession of events according to the
principle of grace (God’s initiative), of punishment (man’s dis¬
obedience) and' of faith (God’s requirement and man’s normal
attitude towards him); an analogous plan is adopted by the writer
of Deuteronomy, who insists more strictly on the divine punish¬
ment for man’s rebellion. The so-called Priestly writer presents
Israel’s history in the form of four successive covenants and the
writer of Chronicles sets out to show how all history must confirm
the promise made to king David that his dynasty would be ever-
12 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

lasting. Similarly we could speak of the theology of each prophet.

Among these second Isaiah is the one whose book is a real theo¬
logical treatise based on the three themes of creation, redemption
and final salvation. We recall these early outlines because we hold
that, even in the twentieth century, a theology of the Old Testa¬
ment should be able to draw inspiration from them so as not to fit
the Old Testament into a modern scheme or explain it according
to a dialectic that is fundamentally foreign to it. The New Testa¬
ment too is a theology of the Old Testament, for its essential
purpose is to show that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the Messiah
promised to Israel to whom all Scripture bears witness. Certain
of the New Testament writings assume more especially the appear¬
ance of theological treatises: the Gospel of Matthew is an historical
treatise meant to prove that Jesus is a new Moses, while the Epistle
to the Romans and the Epistle to the Hebrews present the Old
Testament from the point of view of the law and the promise in
one case, and of priesthood in the other. The latter writing is par¬
ticularly important for the exegetical methods of the early Church,
it is not “the most finished specimen of allegory”,1 but a model
of typological exegesis, for which the past is a preparation and an
imperfect sketch of the future. According to this writing there is
between the two Testaments the relationship of shadow to reality.
In general, the Apostle Paul makes the same use of it, only giving
up typology for allegory when he views the Old Testament apart
from the general perspective of the fulfilment of Scripture in
history.2
A theology of the Old Testament which is founded not on
certain isolated verses, but on the Old Testament as a whole, can
only be a Christology, for what was revealed under the old covenant,
through a long and varied history, in events, persons and institu¬
tions, is, in Christ, gathered together and brought to perfection.
Such a statement does not in any way mean that we should only
consider the Old Testament in the light of its fulfilment, but a
perfectly objective study makes us discern already in the Old
Testament the same message of the God who is present, of the
God who saves and of the God who comes, which characterizes the
Gospel. Unless it is based upon the principle of the unity of the

1 The expression is from P. Lestringant, Essai sur VXJnite de la revelation biblique,

Paris 1943, p. 131.
2 Galatians 4.2iff. is the clearest example of this.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 13

two Testaments, and a fortiori on the internal unity of the Old

Testament itself, it is not possible to speak of a theology of the
Old Testament. The unity of the Old Testament is in no way
incompatible with what critical and historical study has revealed
about the very diverse elements that have gone to its composition,
tor the collections of books and traditions have not prevented the
Old Testament from remaining as one book and the expression of
one religion. That is an objective fact and consequently justifiable
from scientific study.1
The theology of the Old Testament is an historical subject;
through neglecting this fundamental aspect and through becoming
the vassal of dogmatics it did not make its appearance until a
relatively recent date. From the earliest times of the Christian
Church, the Old Testament could not, for dogmatic reasons,
become the object of historical study. In its struggle against
Gnosticism on the one hand and Judaism on the other, the Church
could not do full justice to the Old Testament. Despite its
ephemeral nature, the work of Marcion and the Gnostics was
serious enough to perpetuate in the Church a reserved attitude
towards the Old Testament and consequently a certain dualism in
theological thought. In order to resist the perpetual currents of
heresy which kept coming to light within the fold, the Church was
glad to attenuate, even indeed to deny the differences between the
two Testaments. A place apart, however, must be given to the
work of Irenaeus of Lyons; in face of the Gnostic arguments, which
were not without a certain force, it was impossible to maintain the
naive point of view of the identity of the Gospel and the Jewish
scriptures, proved by means of an allegorical exegesis pushed to
the extreme. By insisting on the fact of the incarnation Irenaeus
shows salvation set in the framework of a history in which each
initiative of God assumes the form of a covenant; the Mosaic law
and the salvation of the New Testament were given, at appropriate
times, for the salvation of humanity by one and the same God,
knowledge of the creator God being the principium evungelii.
Irenaeus shows its development with the help of the following
comparison: just as an earthly sovereign may show more generosity

1 The problem of the unity of the Bible has been most recently treated in a par¬
ticularly profound manner by H. H. Rowley, The Unity of the Bible, 1953, which
does full justice to the diversity of currents brought to light by historical and literary
criticism.
1^, THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

at some times than at others, God has not always shown his
generosity towards his subjects in the same way. This simile of
the divine pedagogue is already found with the apostle Paul in the
Epistle to the Galatians in particular, but Irenaeus replaces the
notions of sin and grace by the less central ones, biblically speaking,
of growth and education; in this way he manages to preserve
against Marcionism the unity of the divine plan, while allowing
the difference between the two Testaments to stand. But it is a
difference of degree, not of two worlds that have no common
measure, “ now more or less are only said of two things which have
something in common, like water with water or light with light
or grace with grace”.1
Alexandrine theology, made famous by the exegetical prestige
of Origen, has the purpose of finding in the Old Testament all the
Christian dogmas in a figurative form. To this end it makes
extensive use of allegorical exegesis, whose methods had held an
honoured place in Alexandria since the time of Philo. According
to Origen Scripture has three meanings which correspond to the
three parts of the human body and to the three categories of
believers: the body is the letter visible to all eyes, the soul is the
hidden meaning contained in the letter, lastly, the spirit is the
heavenly things which the letter represents. Obviously the spiritual
meaning is the only true one, although that spiritual meaning is
only accessible through the outer covering of the literal meaning,
which, however, is speedily forgotten once the spiritual meaning is
reached. It is not without reason that in the eyes of Origen the
most important figure in the Old Testament is Moses: Moses is
the man who saw God’s glory. That is a spiritual and mystical
experience in the light of which the Alexandrine school views the
■experiences of the prophets and the prophetic role of the Old
Testament in general. For the man who sees the glory of God,
the world and history have no other meaning than the one they
take through reference to Christ, who is the reflection of the divine
glory. Origen made the mistake of generalizing from this valid
insight, finding a symbolic meaning in every detail of the Scrip¬
tures. Despite the absence of historical sense which is its chief
weakness, the exegesis of the Alexandrine school is not devoid of
greatness in its way of grasping Scripture as a whole or, as is

1 Adversus haereses, IV, 9, 2.

 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 15

frequently said to-day, in its plenary sense and of showing the

convergence of all its parts towards the one who forms its
centre.
The School of Antioch is generally opposed to the Alexandrine,
and certain writings from these schools bring us an echo of this
opposition, but perhaps it is fairer to speak of misunderstanding
rather than of real opposition. The School of Antioch is incon¬
testably superior to its rival in possessing an historical sense which
is better able to grasp the Old Testament revelation. To aXXrjyopia,
the theologians of Antioch oppose the Oewpia or emdeopia that is
contemplation, a term which Ongen uses in a mystical sense only.
Diodore of Tarsus (330-392)1 wrote a treatise entitled: rts Sia^opd
decoptas /cat dXXrjyoplas; the theoria does not change history, but
is superimposed upon it; thus in one and the same text certain
features refer to events of the author’s own time, others to Christ.
The men of Antioch attach great importance to the historical study
of a text and to the history of the people of Israel itself: for them
the chief figure in Israelite history is David, the man who lived in
advance the whole of his people’s history. They try to satisfy a
twofold requirement, the search for historical meaning and for the
typological meaning if it has a place there. It is not without reason
that one of their most illustrious representatives, Theodore of
Mopsuestia, can from some of his ideas be considered a precursor
of modern criticism.
In the West, the Alexandrine principles triumphed, thanks
especially to St. Jerome and St. Augustine, but as Scripture was
primarily regarded from a practical point of view developments in
the meaning of the Scriptures as a whole held a very minor place.
It must be noticed, however, that in several of his writings St.
Augustine has clearly set out the historical progression from the
Old to the New Covenant. In books XV-XVII of the City of
God he divides the history of God’s reign on earth into six
successive periods: (a) from Adam to Noah—infantia; (b) from
Noah to Abraham—puerilitas; (c) from Abraham to David—
adulescentia; (d) from David to the Exile—virilitas; (e) from the
Exile to Jesus Christ—senectus; (/) Time of the Church—Novum
Testamentum. We have in the City of God a grandiose essay in
the theology of history, but St. Augustine’s picture goes beyond

1 Cf. Ed. Schweizer, “ Diodor von Tarsus als Exeget ”, ZNW 40, p. 33.
16 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

the Old Testament plan and is inspired more by apocalyptic motives

than by historical considerations, the historical reality of Israel
being viewed in a figurative way only.
In the course of the Middle Ages the Old Testament is almost
completely viewed as a means of promoting the spiritual life and
as an anthology of dicta probantia supporting the theocratic ideal
of the Church. Exegesis is completely subordinated to dogma,
whose task it is to decide between different interpretations. It
is the open door to subjectivism, each one finding in the Old
Testament his own doctrines, making of the Bible, to use a pungent
expression of Geiler of Kaysersberg, a nasus cereus (wdchserne Nase)
which is adaptable to any form. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote many
exegetical works, but he refers all biblical notions to the Scholastic
norm, according to which the idea alone has value whereas history
has none. It must not be supposed, however, that Old Testament
study in the Middle Ages merely marked time. From that period
the Old Testament opened the way to two new studies which could
not fail to influence the way it was understood: the philosophy and
history of religions. Between these two the Old Testament had,
in the course of time, a lot of difficulty in maintaining its autonomy
and it could not resist the temptation to become a philosophy or a
history of religion. There also arose in the Middle Ages, as a
result of Christianity’s contact with the pagan religions, with Islam
in particular, the problem of each religion’s value, a problem
which obliged Christians to examine the foundations of their
faith.
If the Reformation was able to advance beyond the Middle Ages
in interpretation of the Bible, it owes such progress in particular to
the great humanist Reuchlin, who gave a new impetus to Hebrew
which Christians, through anti-Semitism, had neglected to study
and who, by returning to the sources, freed the Bible from the yoke
of tradition. The Reformers did not, however, succeed in giving a
coherent picture of the Old Testament: obliged to be obedient to
two opposing views they were not in a position to grasp the organic
unity of the Old Testament—the opposition between Law and
Gospel drove them to accentuate the differences and to regard the
Old Testament as superseded. In addition, in their desire to offer
strong resistance to their Catholic and “spiritualist” opponents,
they insisted on the unity of the Scriptures by putting both Testa¬
ments on the same plane by means of allegorical exegesis. The
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 17

importance of the historical element did not, however, escape

Luther. Faith, he says, “should be budt on history,”1 and
certain of his prefaces to the books of the Old Testament insist on
a knowledge of the history and the precise circumstances in which
these books were composed. Luther’s position seems to be quite
close to that of the School of Antioch; it differs from it, however,
on the most important point, that of Christ’s presence. While for
the earlier writers Christ is only present symbolically, he is really
present according to Luther’s conception; he compares this presence
of Christ with the presence of the ram which Abraham saw in the
bushes when he turned round at the moment of Isaac’s sacrifice.
Though Luther insists on the notion of history, he separates it
radically from the concept of development. In effect the Gospel
does not succeed the Law but, after the old covenant, the Law
and the Gospel are mingled together. Luther does not minimize the
importance of the incarnation as an historical event, but that
incarnation is totally outside the law of time and that is why it is
discussed at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of
Revelation; there is not then in the Old Testament a continuous
development, but there are testimonies to Christ; that is why Luther
insists especially on the prophets and on the great signs which are
real events by which God proclaims his grace; and the man who,
like Abraham, grasps that grace, through faith, makes the new
covenant real already under the old: Idem Christas eademque
fides ab Habel in finem mundi -per varia saecula regnavit in electis,
sed alia et alia ejusdem Christi et fidei signa fuerant, quae vere
sacramenta gratiae dicuntur”, and again: “externa variant,
interna valent .2 Luther’s Chnstological principle and his con¬
ception of time call for some correction; it is none the less true
that Luther showed in a masterly way that the Old Testament
represents “ the swaddling clothes and cradle in which lesus Christ
was placed ”.3 4
According to Diestel, Calvin brings together the complete

1 Ex historia aedificanda est fides. The expression is found in the Commentary

on Isaiah (1527-30); Luther certainly affirms revelation in history, but at the same
time he understands that all external history should become the history of each
believer.
2 Operationes in Psalmos, 1519-20.
3 Preface to the O.T., 1523. Luther uses this image several times, particularly in
the explanation of the Gospel of Christmas in the Kirchenpostille of 1522.
4 Geschichte des A.T. in der christlichen Kirche, p. 269.
l8 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

liberty of a Theodore of Mopsuestia with regard to the text and the

spiritual depth of Luther, which gives him that intuitive perception
which is one of the supreme qualities of a good exegete. He does
not wish to Christianize the Old Testament at any cost and seems
rather to come nearer to using a typological method, the theocracy
of the Old Testament being for example a type and a model of
the Kingdom of God which the Church should try to make real.
He himself characterizes the unity and difference of the two Tes¬
taments in the following way: “The Church which was among
the Jews was the same as ours, but as it was still in the weakness
of childhood, God kept it under that legal tutelage without giving
it clear knowledge of the spiritual promises, having presented them
to it only in a shrouded form and veiled by material promises.
All the Reformers are agreed in recognizing only one dispensation
from the Fall to the end of the present age in which the Law and
the Gospel are proclaimed.
Those who followed the Reformers fall back into a new scholasti¬
cism and envisage the Bible only as a collection of dicta probantia
meant to support their dogmatic utterances; at the same time the
idea of inspiration takes on a progressively more rigid form. The
Bible, being the absolutely infallible Book, could contain neither
contradiction nor progress. Even what the Renaissance and the
Reformation had established concerning the human character of
the Bible’s composition is subjected to the dogmatic preoccupa¬
tion of the times, and even philology becomes a branch of
dogmatics.
The seventeenth century bears the lasting imprint of the work
of the Reformed theologian John Cocceius (1603-1669,)1 2 whose
name is coupled with that of covenant theology. Cocceius dis¬
tinguishes the foedus naturale and the foedus gratiae, the second
being the successor to the first, which was destroyed by the Fall.
Consequently the covenant of grace is unfolded in the economy of
the Old and the New Testament; it is not only the idea of the
covenant which is presented historically, but also the idea of the
Kingdom of God, the history of which becomes confused with the
history of the Church—this provides Cocceius with the opportunity

1 Inst. 2, 11.
2 Summa doctrinae de foedere ac testamentis Dei. Cocceius underlines along with
the covenant idea the importance of the idea of the Kingdom, as is pointed out
by G. Schrenk, Gottesreich und Bund, 1923.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 19

of a vast typology in which the whole history of the Church is fore¬

shadowed from the beginnings to the time of Gustavus Adolphus.
In spite of his weaknesses, due primarily to the presentation of the
covenant according to the Zwinglian conception as a foedus mutuum
—instead of seeing in it, as the Old Testament itself does, a gift
to humanity and to his concern in seeking in the Old Testament
the description of contemporary events, Cocceius had the merit
of giving a new impetus to biblical study and to syntheses of vast
scope. The Bible is no longer the collection of sayings used to
support theses, but a book capable of supplying an intrinsic answer
to all questions about the faith. Mbreover, Cocceius' success went
far beyond Reformed circles; from it several Lutherans, in particular
the founders of Pietism, Spener and Francke, drew to some extent
their bibhcism. In his Via Desideria Spener had deplored the
almost total absence in the Church of a serious study of the Bible
and expressed the wish that it should be remedied. In the
Collegium Pbilobiblicum of Halle the Bible was read in its original
text and was freed from dogmatic shackles, but since individual
edification was more important than the need for knowledge, study
of the Bible was in the main concentrated on the New Testament.
In the Catholic Church dogmatic prejudice with regard to the
Bible was less strong and allowed a greater liberty of research and
hypothesis, a preliminary condition for all research. So it is not
surprising that it was in this Church that there appeared a work
like Richard Simon s, which, however, fell far short of receiving
unanimous approval.
The harmonizing of a serious study of the Bible with an histori¬
cal and philological commentary on it characterizes the work in
the eighteenth century of a man who more than any other deserves
the title of biblical theologian—J. A. Bengel (1697-1792) of
Wurtemberg. Bengel sets out to show that there is in the Scrip¬
tures a scheme of dispensation in an historical form which culminates
in an eschatological fulfilment: “ Tota religio tendit in futurum.”1
Bengel’s famous formula “overturn initio tenetur, quod deinde
apertum cernitur ”2 re-echoes St. Augustine’s still more famous

1 Gnomon, p. 528 (8th ed. as quoted by Schrenk, op. tit., p. 311, the 8th edition
of the Gnomon not being accessible to us).
2 Ordo Temporum, 1741, p. 305. The work of Bengel, who is perhaps the greatest
exegete of the eighteenth century, abounds in pertinent remarks about the unity
of biblical revelation. From this interesting collection we may quote the definition
to be found in a letter addressed to one of' his pupils, Jer. Fr. Reuss: “ Es stimmt
20 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

saying: “Novum Testamentum in Vetere Testamento latet, Vetus

Testamentum in Novo Testamento patet.’’
Rationalism, under which the Bible was read with the aim of
becoming not more pious but more reasonable, favoured the con¬
stitution of biblical theology as an independent science. The
necessity of treating biblical theology from an historical point of
view was first formulated by Johann Philipp Gabler in a slim
volume whose title contains a programme of work: Oratio de justo
discrimine tbeologiae biblicae et dogmaticae regundisque recte
utriusque finibus.1 The purpose of biblical theology is to describe
what the authors of the Old Testament thought concerning divine
things. In formulating this standpoint Gabler takes into account
two results to which he had been led by a profound study of the
Bible: (a) there are in the Old Testament diverse and sometimes
contradictory statements; (b) dogmatics makes a selection from the
contents of the Bible. By defining the boundaries between dog¬
matics and biblical theology, Gabler set up the latter as an mdi-
pendent science by removing the mortgage which until then had
weighed so heavily upon it. The first theology of the Old Testa¬
ment written according to Gabler’s principles was G. L. Bauer’s
(1796).2 While permitting the birth of a biblical theology Rational¬
ism stamped it at the same time with the seal of its own philosophy
and made it incapable of grasping the specific character of Hebrew
mentality, to such an extent that the Old Testament was the object
of criticism more frequently than of an effort of positive apprecia¬
tion. In spite of the effort made by de Wette3 to place himself on
a higher plane than the dispute between orthodoxy and rationalism
and to bring out the idea of God as holy will as a central principle
of the Old Testament, biblical theology does not become dissociated
alles so schon zusammen (omnia se quadrant)', wie man an einer Kugel sieht, dass
sie rund und eben damit ganz ist, so sieht man’s auch an der Heiligen Schrift,
Altes und Neues Testament” (quoted from Burk, Leben Bengels, 1831, p. 64).
1 In his short book—it is an academic lecture—given in 1787 (published in the
Opuscula academica, II, pp. 179-198, Ulm 1831), he presents dogmatic theology
as a philosophy concerning divine things in contrast to biblical theology, an historical
science; the advice that he gives “ that biblical theology is not conficta ad nostros
sensus ” remains perfectly valid.
2 Theologie des alten Testaments oder Abriss der religiosen Begriffe der alten
Hebraer von der altesten Zeit bis auf den Anfang der christlichen Epoche,
Leipzig 1796.
2 Biblische Dogmatik des alten und neuen Testaments oder kritiscbe Darstellung
der Religionslebre des Hebraismus, des Judentums und des Urchristentums, Berlin
1813.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 21

from a purely historical schema, as is shown by the division of

that period s classic work, D. C. von Colin’s Bibliscbe Theologie
(*836), which arranges the material in two sections, Hebraism and
Judaism, showing in each one the evolution from particularism
towards universalism. The Romantic movement effected some
progress in that it created a favourable climate for grasping the
originality of the religious life. The Old Testament owes much to
the work of Herder on Hebrew poetry, but the secularization that
biblical books thus underwent did not take place without harm
to their normative role in matters of faith. Schleiermacher, without
adopting the extremist position of Marcion s disciples, gave much
more emphasis to what separated Christianity from Judaism than
to their fundamental unity. By declaring that what was best in the
Old Testament could also be found in Greek philosophy, Schleier¬
macher1 forgot that that best was neither monotheism, nor the
immortality of the soul, but the holiness of God. For the theo¬
logical study of the Old Testament, Hegel’s influence was more
valuable than Schleiermacher’s, for, far from considering the religion
of Israel as an historical accident, he secures for it a necessary place
in the development towards absolute religion. The great advance
of this tendency over rationalism was to show that development in
religion was something other than a simple chronological sequence.
The work most in keeping with the Hegelian system is the
Bibliscbe Theologie of Wilhelm Vatke (I Die Religion des Alten
Testaments, 1835)’ *-o which Wellhausen acknowledges his debt
for what is best in his synthesis. It is incontestable that, freed from
dogmatic prejudice, the study of the Bible opened new possibilities
to exegesis. But if theology wished to maintain its autonomy in
the face of philosophy and history, it was necessary for it to make
fresh contact with the Scriptures as a normative authority. Two
names stand out in the movement directed towards a theological
understanding of the Old Testament: Hengstenberg in his
Cbristologie de I’Ancien Testament2 recalled the unity of the
two Testaments, but treated too lightly the elements which an
historical study had brought to light. J. C. Hofmann deserves
more attention for his work W eissagung und Erf ii llung3
1 In Der christlicbe Glaube, 1842, paragraph 12, p. 78, he says among other
things: “ Man kann das Christentum auf keine Weise als eine Umbildung oder
eine erneuernde Fortsetzung des Judentums ansehen.”
2 Cbristologie des Alten Testaments, Berlin 1829-35.
s Also Der Schriftbeweis, Nordlingen 1852.
22 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

(1840-1844). In it he examines the relationship between history

and prophecy, saying that all history is prophecy and all prophecy
history; each period of history bears within it the germ of the
period that follows and represents it in advance; it is thus that all
history is a prophecy of the final and lasting relationship between
God and man, the terminal phase of which is inaugurated by the
coming of Christ, Christ being the goal of history and prophecy.
Hofmann envisages biblical history in its entirety, and not merely
the specifically Messianic prophecies, from the viewpoint of the
history of salvation (Heilsgeschichte). This historical exposition is
accompanied, in Hofmann’s work, particularly in his Schriftbeweis,
by a psychological confirmation which has with good reason been
called a “biblical theosophy”,1 namely that the Christian redis¬
covers in his own life the course of sacred history: creation, fall,
flood, promise, judgment. This considerable work, which O.
Cullmann compares with the work of Irenaeus,2 provided, despite
some eccentricities, a solid basis for the construction of a theology
of the Old Testament which could take account of history and of
salvation and the highly important discovery that salvation is carried
out through the course of history. Orthodox reaction, stamped,
however, with Hegel’s influence, is shown in a work that was for
long a classic, the Theology of the Old Testament by G. F.
Oehler.3 The work is divided into three parts: Mosaism,
prophetism, wisdom, the two first each containing an historical and
a systematic section. In the preface the proposed aim is defined
in the following way: “ Biblical theology must never lose sight
of the fact that its domain includes the whole of revelation; it must
never forget that the stages through which revelation has passed
are, so to speak, different limbs of one and the same body. And
as a body can only be studied when it is fully grown, as an historical
evolution can only be fully appreciated when it is completed, the
theology of the Old Testament will take care to use the light that
the Lord’s appearing throws on the whole preparatory covenant”
(French translation, p. 58). In spite of his conservative ideas on
the history of Israel, Oehler fully grasped the fact that a theology
of the Old Testament could not be other than a theology of
1 Diestel, op. tit., pp. 698ft.
2 Christ et le temps, p. 131.
8 The first edition appeared in 1873, a year after the author’s death: Theologie
des Alten Testaments, Tubingen; a French translation by H. de Rougemont appeared
in Neuchatel in 1875 (in two volumes); English translation 1874-93.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
23

history. The end of the nineteenth century is dominated by the

name of Wellhausen, whose ideas were to permit the presentation
of Israel s history in a form acceptable to the mind of a generation
moulded by Darwin and Hegel. As the new presentation of the
history of Israel s religion, springing from the new discrimination
of the sources, takes precedence over theology, works which bear
this title are in reality only so many histories of the religion of
Israel. Such is the case of the posthumous work of Augustus
Kayser, edited by Edouard Reuss in 1886, and of the work in
French of the Strasbourg minister C. Piepenbring.2 However, the
latter author makes the praiseworthy effort of arranging his material
in a systematic order under three headings: Mosaism, prophetism,
Judaism. Germany witnessed the success of the Alttestamentliche
Theologie of Hermann Schultz, which ran into five successive
editions between 1869 and 1896 and which, while giving much
importance to historical development, finds in the idea of the
Kingdom of God on earth, the central principle of the whole of
the Old Testament teaching; while the Theology of the Old Testa¬
ment by A. B. Davidson (1904) does not succeed in freeing itself
from an exclusively historical point of view.
The result of this state of things was that at the dawn of the
twentieth century theology was almost excluded from the field
of Old Testament studies. Eduard Koenig’s manual which
appeared in 19223 cannot be considered as the sign of the rebirth
of this branch, but must rather be viewed as the last testimony of
a scholar who had always remained refractory to Wellhausen’s
theories. The new approach has its starting-point in 1925 when,
in an article entitled Alttestamentliche Theologie und alttestament¬
liche Religionsgeschichte* Steuernagel declares for the maintenance
and respective autonomy of the two studies which had become
almost totally confused. A year later, in an article with an almost
identical title,5 Eissfeldt states the case in favour of the legitimacy

1 Die Theologie des Alten Testaments in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung

dargestellt, 1886, 2nd ed. revised by K. Marti under the title (which shows the
change of approach) Geschichte der israelitischcn Religion, 1903.
2 Theologie de 1‘Ancien Testament, Paris 1886; English translation by H. G.
Mitchell, New York 1893.
3 Theologie des Alten Testaments kritisch und vergleichend dargestellt, Stuttgart
1922.
4 BZAW 41 (Martifestschrift), pp. 266ff.
5 “ Israelitisch-jiidische Religionsgeschichte und alttestamentliche Theologie”, ZAW,
1926, pp. iff.
24 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

of the theology of the Old Testament, but, according to him, this

could not be the object of an historical investigation and could only
be an account of what the religious or ecclesiastical attitude of the
man conducting the enquiry finds in the Old Testament. This
attitude, diametrically opposed to the one formerly advocated by
Gabler, is explained by the concern to do justice to certain dogmatic
and pneumatic tendencies, more or less stirred up by Barth’s com¬
mentary on the Epistle to the Romans, and to allot a separate field
to them where they would no longer trespass on the fields of history
and exegesis. This partitioning could not, however, be retained; it
was rightly and validly objected that, since in the Old Testament
revelation is carried out through the course of history, there could
be no divorce between historical research and theological interpre¬
tation. The next few years saw the almost simultaneous appearance
of several works of biblical theology. Sellin1 in a short, but com¬
pact book, arranges the material round the three classical themes:
God—Man—Judgment and Salvation. L. Koehler2 adopts the
same scheme and finds in the notion of the kingship of God the
unifying principle of the whole of the Old Testament. The most
important work is the one by Walter Eichrodt,3 professor at Bale,
which arranges the material not according to the classical scheme
as borrowed from dogmatics, but round a specifically Israelite
notion, that of the covenant regarded in a threefold way: the
covenant of God with the people, with man, with the world. In
choosing this notion Eichrodt tried to explain the Old Testament by
its own dialectic and the schematization of which he can be accused
does not detract from the value of his synthesis, the most notable
of the first half of this century. Otto Procksch4 gives, in a first
section, a history of the religion of Israel and then arranges the
“ world of ideas ” according to the tripartite scheme which Eichrodt
admits to have borrowed from him.5 The unity of the two Testa¬
ments is strongly stressed by both authors. “ Every theology is a
Christology ”,6 writes Procksch, and the Dutch writer Th. C.

1 Theologie des Alten Testaments, Leipzig 1933.

1 Theologie des Alten Testaments, Tubingen 1936.
3 Theologie des Alten Testaments, vol. 1, “ Gott und Volk”, Leipzig 1933; vol. 2,
“ Gott und Welt”, 1935; vol. 3, “Gott und Mensch ”, 1939.
4 Theologie des Alten Testaments, 1950, published after the author’s death by
G. von Rad.
* Th AT, vol. 1, p. 6, note.
•ThAT, p. 1.
 theology of the old TESTAMENT 25

Vriezen states in the introductory part of his manual that the Old
Testament can only be really understood by starting from Jesus
Christ, and he strives in the main part to elucidate the central
themes which are important to the Christian faith. On the Roman
Catholic side, the Theology of Paul Heinisch1 2 is a clear and well-
ocumented statement following the classical plan borrowed from
dogmatics. The two comprehensive works3 published in the
United States also have as a dominant theme the assertion of
the unity of the two Testaments and of the unity of the Old
Testament itself. Millar Burrows4 succeeds in a masterly way, by
treating in 380 pages the biblical theology of the whole Bible; these
two works are conceived less as scientific studies than as practical
contributions intended to put the substance of the Old Testament
at the disposal of believers and especially of ministers. Even
if it is not his immediate aim, the theologian of the Old Testament
can only rejoice to see his efforts help towards a better use of the
Old Testament in the life of the Church. In a quarter of a century
the theology of the Old Testament, which had been reduced to
the rank of a poor relation, has thus succeeded in taking the front
of the stage in the domain of Old Testament studies. This interest
is made plain by the publication, in addition to the comprehensive
works already mentioned, of monographs dealing with certain
central topics of the religion of the Old Testament. Works such
as those of Haenel5 on holiness, of Wheeler Robinson,6 * whom death
prevented from producing a complete treatment of Old Testament
theology, of N. H. Snaith' on the distinctive ideas of the Old
Testament, of Hempel8 on piety, of H. H. Rowley9 on election
and the unity of the Bible, of Baumgaertel10 on the promise, of W.

1 Hoofdlijnen der Theologie van het Oude Testament, Wageningen 1040.

2 Theologie des Alten Testamentes, Bonn 1940.
3 Otto J. Baab, The Theology of the Old Testament, Nashville 1949.
Millar Burrows, An Outline of Biblical Theology, Philadelphia 1946.
6 Die Religion der Heiligkeit, Gutersloh 1931.
* The Religious Ideas of the Old Testament, 1913, “ The Theology of the Old
Testament ” in the composite work Record and Revelation, Oxford 1938. Inspiration
and Revelation in the Old Testament, Oxford 1946.
The Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament, London 1944.
8 Gott und Mensch im Alten Testament, 1926.
9 The Biblical Doctrine of Election, London 1950; The Unity of the Bible,
1953; The Rediscovery of the Old Testament, 1946.
10 Verheissung. Zur Frage des evangelischen Verstdndnisses des Alten Testaments
Gutersloh 1952.
26 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Vischer1 on the testimony to Christ in the Old Testament, of

G. E. Wright2 on the originality of Israel’s religion in relation to
the surrounding world, are so many contributions to a deeper
knowledge of the Old Testament and the elucidation of its specific
and permanent value.3

1 Das Christuszeugnis des Alten Testaments, Vol. i: Das Gesetz , Zurich

1934; Vol. 2: “Die friiheren Propheten ”, Zurich 1942 (French trans. published
by Delachaux et Niestle, Neuchatel and Paris 1949 an<^ I951)-
2 The Challenge of Israel's Faith, 1944. “ The Old Testament against its Environ¬
ment ”, Studies in Biblical Theology, no. 2, London. “ God Who Acts. Biblical
Theology as Recital ”, Studies in Biblical Theology, no. 8, 1952■
3 We must also mention the articles in TWBNT which for the most part (especially
in the first two volumes) give a big share to the prehistory of the words of the
Old Testament and articles in the supplement to Pirot’s Dictionnaire de la Bible.
More modestly the Vocabulaire biblique (Delachaux et Nfiestle, 1954* English edition
in preparation) sets out to put before a wider public the theological contents of
the key words of the Old Testament.
 II. THE place of theology in
RELATION TO OTHER BRANCHES OF
OLD TESTAMENT STUDY

T heology is always placed last in lists of the different

branches which constitute Old Testament study, which
indicates that it is their conclusion and that it could not do
without their results.
Granted that between the various branches there is the coherence
that unites the members of one body, there can be no question of
separating them and we cannot accept the point of view of those
who separate the theology of the Old Testament, as depending
on pneumatic or existential knowledge, from the other branches
depending on historical knowledge. It is important, however, that
within this unity the various branches should perform their parts in
a fully autonomous way. The introductory study concerns the
forming of the books, their composition, their authenticity, etc.
Biblical theology could not without loss neglect taking them into
account. The time of a book’s composition is not irrelevant to its
theological value, precisely because the Bible contains, not a timeless
revelation, but a word of God for particular men in particular cir¬
cumstances. One of the most unanimously recognized results of
this introductory study is the progressive and collective composition
of many books; the authors therefore represent a milieu, a school,
and the book is not the result of the inspiration of one particular
author, but the expression of the religion of a whole people. Such
evidence can have important theological repercussions. Although
light on the composition of the Pentateuch is far from complete,
we adopt until further notice the Graf-Wellhausen theory; by
accepting then that the Law is later than the prophets, we shall
avoid defining the religion of the Old Testament as a legalistic
religion in its earliest stages and we shall not choose the Law as the
central unifying principle of the Old Testament. This example
shows that a critical study of the Old Testament is not necessarily
in opposition to a theological study and that the terms “ history ”
27
28 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

and “history of salvation” are not mutually exclusive. By apply¬

ing to the Old Testament the methods of the profane branches of
learning, criticism only brings out more clearly, among the un¬
enduring elements, the specifically religious element and allows us
a better grasp of what is God’s word in it. Nor can the theology
of the Old Testament ignore the lessons of archaeology, using
the word in the wide sense of the examination of civilizations and
customs, for if theology is the study of the manifestations of God
it cannot be uninterested in the human environment in which these
saw the light of day. But though they may sometimes deal with
the same topic, theology and archaeology must confine themselves
each to its own field. Thus the study of the cultus depends at the
same time on archaeology and theology: it is archaeology’s role
to supply the description of cubic places and objects, to study the
forms of priesthood and sacrifice, and from that description theology
will disentangle the meaning of the cult and will reconstruct its
symbolism. Archaeological work can show itself very useful, for
the frequency of such and such an object or of such and such a
rite is a clue pointing towards a certain form of worship which itself
is only the expression of an underlying attitude; if archaeology
succeeds in showing that the essential meaning of sacrifice is that
of gift or that of substitution, then the theological perspective for
the meaning of the cultus is considerably modified; but we are not
yet at the stage—and we shall probably never reach it—where
archaeology’s findings will be able to do without the biblical texts.1
The third discipline with which the theology of the Old Testament
must of necessity collaborate is the history of the people of Israel.
To know the way in which the nation was moulded, the political
and social changes that it underwent, is as important as to know
how the Old Testament itself was formed, knowledge that is all
the more indispensable since theology does not work with ideas,
but with historical facts. Questions of the spirituality, of the unity
or of the foreknowledge of God are far less important for the faith
of ancient Israel than questions of the Exodus from Egypt, of the
Sinai covenant or of the conquest of Canaan. The “Credo”2 of

1 It would be unjust not to acknowledge the debt that Old Testament theology
owes to the work of Johs Pedersen, Israel, its life and culture, on Hebrew mentality;
in France Pedersen’s works have received an original adaptation in those of A. Causse,
particularly in his last book Du groufe ethnique a la communaute religieuse, 1937.
2 Cf. G. von Rad, Das formgeschichtliche Problem des Hexateuchs, 1938, and
Wright, God who acts.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 29

the people was firmly based on the affirmation and remembrance of

historical events. The Old Testament theologian therefore cannot
have with regard to history that attitude of indifference or scepti¬
cism which is often shown towards historical questions by philo¬
sophers and dogmatists. It is then important to know—and it will
only be known by virtue of the methods proper to historical study
whether the events which the Old Testament relates, and on
which it bases its faith, really took place. This method cannot
be applied, of course to the early chapters of Genesis, where we are
in the presence of myths which give expression to supra-historical
truths or to historical facts only in the eyes of a higher power,
but we could not speak with the same authority of Abraham’s faith
it it were historically proved that the patriarch never existed. It
is important, however, at the same time to state that it is not
enough that an event should have taken place on a particular day
in a particular place for it to be historical. In order to merit the
title of historical event ”, an event has to be conspicuous and that
conspicuous quality is not necessarily a function of the event’s
primary importance in history: the death of Jesus passed unnoticed
in Roman history and yet that historical event dominates world
history and caused it to move in a new direction. Similarly, the
Exodus of the Israelites must have been a quite trivial event, but
that trivial event made its mark on the life of the Jewish people
and, as a result, on universal history. We can grasp this signifi¬
cance of the historical event by considering the interpretation of
history in the prophets and in the Psalms. We discover there that
history is very freely used, that the sequence of events is sometimes
reversed, as in Psalm 114 where the Jordan is mentioned before
the Red Sea, and that the whole tendency is to set the principal
themes in relief. Hence Old Testament theology, while remaining
a descriptive subject, will not stop over details of history and will
not be shackled by the chronological order of events, yet it will
not launch into excesses of allegory.
So it is neither desirable nor possible to pose the dilemma: either
the history of Israel’s religion, or the theology of the Old Testa¬
ment. Each has its proper function to fulfil while remaining in
each case an historical and descriptive subject: the first will show
the variety of the history and its evolution, the second will empha¬
size its unity. But can one legitimately speak of “theology” and
would it not be better, as has been recently suggested, to be content
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
3°

to speak of the “phenomenology of the Old Testament”?1 The

objection would be valid if the history of Israel were not itself a
part of the theology, that is to say a word and a revelation of God.
And so we think it is better to use the word theology in a wide
sense—one could speak of the theology of events and the theology
of ideas—rather than to see in it only the expression of the piety
and faith of the Church. In conclusion let it be said that there is
no history without theology and no theology without history.

1 N. W. Porteous, “ The Old Testament and some theological thought-forms ” in

Scottish Journal of Theology, 1954, pp. 153®-
 III. THE PLACE OF OLD TESTAMENT

THEOLOGY IN RELATION TO OTHER

THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

although it is a strictly historical subject, Old Testament

LA theology is not without relationship to dogmatics, with
x A. which it lived in a kind of symbiosis until the time of
Rationalism. The separation of the two subjects was salutary for
both by allowing each to develop its potentialities. Dogmatics
does not confine itself solely to the Bible, it takes much account of
the contributions of philosophy and natural theology, as well as
that of Church tradition; but if it wishes to remain “Christian”
it will always have to make fresh assessments of its declarations
by comparing them with the essential biblical data, the elucidation
of which is precisely the task of biblical theology, itself based on
well-founded exegesis. By supplying the raw material, biblical
theology will remind dogmatics of its limits and will preserve it
from falling into a subjectivism where the essential might be
sacrificed to the accessory.
Among the other fields of study, the New Testament is obviously
the one whose proper orientation depends on Old Testament
knowledge. At the present time New Testament exegetes have very
little sympathy for the opinion of Schleiermacher and Harnack,
for whom the Jewish origin of Christianity was merely an accident.
Knowledge of the Old Testament brings better understanding
of the New Testament not through contrast alone, but on many
points the New Testament message is completed by the Old Testa¬
ment message. Christian ethics, piety and eschatology have found
no better expression than the Decalogue, the Psalms and the words
of the prophets. Yet it must not be forgotten that between the
Old and the New Testament there is a theology represented by
the apocryphal and pseudepigraphical literature whose influence on
the New Testament could hardly be sufficiently emphasized. The
inclusion of this literature in the study of Old Testament theology
is admitted and widely practised by Catholic authors. In our

31
 32 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

opinion there should only be recourse to extra-canonical literature in

altogether exceptional cases, for, either the apocryphal writers only
reproduce in a less original and less clear form the affirmations of the
Old Testament itself, and then it is pointless to refer to it, or they
introduce into an idea, particularly in what concerns life after death,
completely new elements which are no longer in agreement with
the specific message of the Old Testament, and then they deserve
treatment in a theology of Judaism.1
Old Testament theology will not be able to deal with all the
questions that the Old Testament puts before us and it should not
try to do so; drawing inspiration from all branches, it will not
make the claim of being a possible substitute for them; faithful
to its name, it will deal only with God and his relationship with
man and the world. Piety, religious institutions and ethics are not
part of Old Testament theology’s specific domain.
This is the limitation which we have imposed in this present
work, which makes no claim to be a “compendium” of the per¬
manent or Christian values of the Old Testament. Two closely
connected themes have come to our notice more forcibly than others,
the themes of the presence and the action of God. The God of
the Old Testament is a God who seeks to manifest his presence in
order to be recognized as the sovereign Lord; that is why the fear
of God is at the basis of all piety and all wisdom. But God also
and especially seeks to manifest his presence in order to save man.
A line not always straight, but none the less continuous, leads from
the anthropomorphism of the earliest pages of the Bible, to the
incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. God’s action throws into relief
the specifically Hebrew quality of that presence: the Old Testa¬
ment does not bring us ideas about God, but acts of God, a God
who leaves his transcendence to link his own destiny with the
destiny of a people and through that people with the whole of
humanity. A contemporary Jewish philosopher has given expres¬
sion to this truth by saying that “ the Bible is not the theology of
1 This theology of Judaism will have to be written; at present the best synthesis
in French is by J. Bonsirven, Le judaisme palestinien, 2 vols., but the Qumran
discoveries have brought to light fresh evidence on many doctrinal aspects of that
penod. The exclusion from our work of the apocryphal and pseudepigraphical writings
does not imply that they have no place in the history of salvation. This subject
goes beyond the framework of the Old Testament; thus the Essene sect of Qumran
constitutes a very clear step towards the completion of that history, although the
faith of this and of other similar groups was mainly nurtured by the books of the
Old Testament.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 33

man, but the anthropology of God 1,1 a profound statement which,

in our view, found its fulfilment in Christ and which will be made
fully real at the time when there comes to pass what is said in that
book of the last days, each term of the statement being drawn
directly from the Old Testament: Idou >7 crKrjvt] tov 6eov /uletcl tu>v
avOpwTrwv,'Kcu crKr)v(l><jei fxer olvtwv, Kai avro'i Xao'i avrov etrovrat,
Kai auTos o Oeoi per avroov ecrTcu (Rev. 21.3).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. GENERAL WORKS

Baab, O. J., The Theology of the Old Testament, Nashville 1949-

Burrows, Millar, An Outline of Biblical Theology,Philadelphia 1946.
Davidson, A. B., The Theology of the Old Testament, Edinburgh 1904.
Dillmann, A., Handbuch der alttestamentlichen Theologie, ed. R. Kittel,
Leipzig 1895.
Eichrodt, W., Theologie des Alten Testaments, 3 vols., Leipzig 1933-39,
Gelin, A., Les idees mattresses de I’Ancien Testament, Paris 1948.
Bonn 1940.
Heinisch, Paul, Theologie des Alten Testamentes,
Hempel, Joh., Gott und Mensch im Alten Testament,Stuttgart 1926.
Imschoot, Van P., Theologie de l Ancien Testament, I. Dieu, Paris-
Tournai 1954.
Koehler, L., Theologie des Alten Testaments, Tubingen 1936.
Koenig, Ed., Theologie des Alten Testaments, Stuttgart 1922.
Oehler, G. F., Theologie des Alten Testaments, Tubingen 1873.
Piepenbring, C., Theologie de I’Ancien Testament, Paris 1886.
Procksch, O., Theologie des Alten Testaments, Giitersloh 1950.
Riehm, Ed., Alttestamentliche Theologie, ed. K. Pahnke, Halle 1889.
Robinson, H. W., The Religious Ideas of the Old Testament, New York

I9I3-
Rowley, H. H., The Unity of the Bible, London 1933.
Schultz, Hermann, Alttestamentliche Theologie. Die Offenbarungs-
religion in ihrer vorchristlichen Entwicklungsstufe, Frankfurt 1869.
Sellin, E., Alttestamentliche Theologie auf religionsgeschichtlicher Grund-
lage. T.i, Israelitisch-jiidische Religionsgeschichte; T.2, Theologie des
Alten Testaments, Leipzig 1933.
Snaith, N. H., The Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament, London 1944.

1 Abraham Heschel, Man is not alone. A philosophy of religion. New York

1951, p. 129.
34 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Stade, B., Biblische Tbeologie des Alten Testaments, Tubingen 1903.

Tresmontant, C., Essai sur la pensee hebraique, Paris 1953.
Vriezen, T. C., Hoofdlijnen der Tbeologie van bet Oude Testament,
Wageningen 1949.
Wright, G. E., The Challenge of Israel’s faith, London 1946.
God Who Acts, London 1952.

II. SPECIAL STUDIES

Baumgartel, F., “ Erwagungen zur Darstellung der Theologie des A.T.

ThLitztg, 1951, p. 257. , ,,
Bonwetsch, N., “ Das Alte Testament in der Geschichte der Kirche ,
Allg. evang. luth. Kirchenzeitung, 1923.
Bornkamm, H., Luther und das Alte Testament, Tubingen 1948.
Coppens, J., Les harmonies des deux Testaments, Paris 1949.
Danielou, J., Sacramentum Futuri. Les origines de la typologie biblique,
Paris 1950.
Dentan, R. C., Preface to Old Testament Theology. Yale Studies in
Religion, New Haven 1950.
Diestel, L., Geschichte des Alten Testaments in der christlichen Kirche,
1869.
Dodd, C. H., The Bible To-day, Cambridge 1946.
According to the Scriptures, London 1952.
Eichrodt, W., “ Hat die alttestamentliche Theologie noch selbstandige
Bedeutung innerhalb der alttestamentlichen Wissenschaft? ” ZAW,
1929, p. 83.
Eissfeldt, O. ,“ Israelitisch-jiidische Religionsgeschichte und alttestament¬
liche Theologie”, ZAW, 1926, p. 1.
Goppelt, L., Typos (Beitrage zur Forderung christlicher Theologie 43),

I939-
Hebert, A. G., The Authority of the O.T., London 1947.
The Throne of David, London 1941.
Irwin, W. A., “ The reviving theology of the O.T. ”, Journal of Religion,

I945> P- 235-
Lindblom, }., Zur Frage der Eigenart der alttestamentlichen Relgion,
Werden u. Wesen des A.T., BZAW 66, 1936, p. 128.
North, C. R., “ Old Testament theology and history of the religion of
Israel”, Scottish Journal of Theology, 1949, p. 113.
Porteous, N. W., “ Towards a theology of the O.T.”, Scottish Journal
of Theology, 1947, p. 136.
“Old Testament Theology” (in The Old Testament
and Modern Study, edited by H. H. Rowley, Oxford 1951, p. 311)-
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 35

Rad, von G., “ Grundprobleme einer biblischen Theologie des A.T.”

ThLitztg, 1943, p. 225.
Rost, L., Zur Theologie des A. T. Eine Obersicht ” Christentum and
Wissenschaft, 1934, p. 121.
Rowley, H. H., The Rediscovery of the Old Testament, London 1945.
Smart, James D., “ The death and rebirth of Old Testament theology ”,
Journal of Religion, 1943, pp. iff. and 125®.
Staerk, W., “ Religionsgeschichte und Religionsphilosophie in ihrer Bedeut-
ung fiir die biblische Theologie des A.T.”, ZThK, 1923, p. 289.
Vischer, W., Das Christuszetignis des A.T. French tr. vol. 1 La loi; vol. 2
Les premiers prophetes. English tr. vol. I, London 1949.
Weiser, A., Die theologische Aufgabe der alttestamentlichen Wissen¬
schaft, Werden u. Wesen des A.T., BZAW 66, 1936, p. 207.
LAncien Testament et les chretiens, ouvrage collectif (Rencontres 36),
Paris 1951.
 PART ONE

CHARACTERISTIC ASPECTS OF
THE GOD OF
THE OLD TESTAMENT

I. THE LIVING GOD,

CENTRE OF REVELATION AND OF FAITH

W hat gives the Old Testament its force and unity is the
affirmation of the sovereignty of God. God is the basis
of all things and all that exists only exists by his will.
Moreover, the existence of God is never questioned; only fools can
say, There is no God (Ps. 14. i; 53.2; Job 2.10); and even
when the prophet Jeremiah speaks of the unfaithful Israelites who
denied Yahweh by saying, “It is not he” (lo hu) (5.12) he does
not intend to speak of those who disbelieve in God but of rebels
who question his sovereignty. The passages which can be invoked
as proofs of the existence of God are meant to lay stress on certain
aspects which can be discussed, but the reality of God imposed
itself with an evidence which passed beyond all demonstration.
The knowledge of God in the sense of the awareness of divine
reality—and not in the profounder sense the prophets will give to
it—is to be found everywhere. The entire world knows God; not
only Israel but all the peoples praise him; even nature has only
been created to proclaim his power (Ps. 148.9-13). Even sin itself
proclaims the existence of God by contrast, for it is either desertion
from God or revolt against him; the sinner is a man who turns his
back on God, but who does not dream of contesting his existence.
The fact of God is so normal that we have no trace of speculation

37
38 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

in the Old Testament about the origin or the evolution of God:

whilst neighbouring religions present a theogony as the first step
in the organization of chaos, the God of the Old Testament is
there from the beginning. He does not evolve, and the various
names which are given him are those of originally independent gods
and do not mark phases of his development. The Old Testament
gives us no “history” of the person of Yahweh, who nevertheless
existed in another form before becoming the national God of the
Israelites, and the gods of the patriarchs only have a chronological
and not a genealogical connection with Yahweh. From the time
that Yahweh appears he is a major God whose eternity could be
affirmed (Ps. 90.2; 139.16), but the idea of eternity is secondary to
that of life. God is not living because he is eternal, but he is
eternal because he is living. The Israelite felt God as an active
power before positing him as an eternal principle. God is never a
problem, he is not the ultimate conclusion of a series of reflections;
on the contrary, it is he who questions and from whom the
initiative always comes. Strongly typical in this respect is the
sudden and unexpected appearance on the scene of history of the
prophet Elijah, who justifies his intervention simply by the words,
“Yahweh is living” (x Kings 17.1). Just as life is a mysterious
reality which can only be recognized, so God is a power which
imposes itself on man and comes to meet him without his being
always prepared for it.
The expression “living God” ('el ebay, ’elohim chayyim) has a
less deeply imprinted theological character than other formulae
such as holy God or God the King, and so we do not agree
with Baudissin1 that it is of recent date and that it sprang into being
from the polemic of Yahwism against the cult of dying and rising
gods who claimed to have the monopoly of life, nor with L. Koehler2
that it sprang up as an answer to the criticism that God had neither
life nor power. To say of God that he was a living God was the
elementary and primordial reaction of man in face of the experience
of the power which, imposing itself on the entirety of his being,
could only be envisaged as a person, that is, as a living being. It
is to the power and succour of that person that the Israelites appeal
1 In Adonis und Eshmun, Leipzig 1911, pp. 450®. The expression “living God”
does not necessarily imply a relation to nature. Yahweh—to whom the title is given
more often than to El or Elohim—is living because he is bound to a social group,
which is a living reality par excellence.
* L. Koehler, Theologie des A.T., p. 35.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
39
when they are menaced in their own personal life, chay Yahweh,
and when Yahweh himself wishes-to confirm by an oath the
dependability of his threats or promises he introduces it by the
affirmation of his life: “ I am living, says the Lord Yahweh. ... I
will make the effects of my oath fall upon his head ” (Ezek. 17.19),
but also: I am living, oracle of the Lord Yahweh, I have no
pleasure in the death of the wicked ” (Ezek. 33.11).
Life is what differentiates Yahweh from other gods; before it is
expressed in a well formulated monotheism, the faith of Israel is
confident of the feebleness of the gods of the nations and contrasts
that weakness to the living God; the gods of the nations are stupid
and foolish while Yahweh is the true God and the living God (Jer.
10.9-10). Yahweh does not die: “Thou shalt not die” cries the
prophet Habakkuk1 (1.12). The idea of God as living also implies
that Yahweh is the one who gives life: “ As true as Yahweh lives,
who has given us this nephesh” (Jer. 38.16). It is because they
see in the Living One essentially the source of life that believers
regard as the supreme aspiration of piety the ability to approach the
living God (Ps. 42.3; 84.3); and finally it is belief in the living
God which will lead to the affirmation of victory over death.
From a literary point of view, faith in a living God attained its
best expression in anthropomorphic language; “ the idea of a living
God,” writes F. Michaeli, “gives to the anthropomorphism of the
Bible a significance quite other than that which applies to similar
expressions about pagan idols ... it is because God is living that
one can speak of him as of a living man, but also in speaking of
him as of a human being one recalls continually that he is living.”2
Anthropomorphism is found throughout the Old Testament; it
is by no means a “ primitive ” way of speaking of God and it easily
harmonizes with a highly spiritual theology, as, for example, in
Second Isaiah: God speaks (Gen. 1.3), hears (Ex. 16.12), sees
(Gen. 6.12), smells (1 Sam. 26.19), laughs (Ps. 2.4; 59.9), whistles
(Is. 7.18); he makes use of the organs suited to these functions:
he has eyes (Amos 9.4), hands (Ps. 139.5), arms (Is- 51.9; 52.10;
Jer. 27.5), ears (Is. 22.14), an<^ ^eet (Nahum 1.3; Is. 63.3) which
he places on a footstool (Is. 66.1). His bearing is described with

1 The actual form of the verse: “ We shall not die ” is due to a tiqqun sofberim
designed to correct the disrespect which the mere thought of the death of God
would involve.
a F. Michaeli, Dieu a I'image de I’homme, p. 147.
40 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

the help of the most realistic anthropomorphisms: he treads the

wine-press like a grape-gatherer (Is. 63.1-6), he rides on the clouds
(Dt. 33.26; Hab. 3.8), he comes down from heaven to see the
tower of Babel and to scatter its builders with his own hands (Gen.
11.7), and he himself shuts the door of the ark behind Noah (Gen.
7.16). Figures of speech borrowed from military language are par¬
ticularly frequent. Yahweh is a gibbor and an ’ish milchamah
(Ex. 15.3; Ps. 24.8; Zech. 9.13), because at the period which may
coincide with the first age of settlement in Canaan war was the
normal and even the only way for Yahweh to reveal himself.1
Sometimes it is even the activity of animals which provides the
term of comparison; when it is a matter of showing a terrifying
aspect, the lion, the bear and the panther illustrate it in turn (Lam.
3.10; Hos. 5.14; 11.10; 13.7), and also the moth, which destroys
more subtily but quite as surely (Hos. 5.12); yet the sacred character
of animals in the majority of pagan religions was bound to hinder
Israel from making too large a use of theriomorphism. Anthropo¬
morphisms are accompanied by anthropopathisms: God feels all
the emotions of human beings—joy (Zeph. 3.17), disgust (Lev.
20.23), repentance (Gen. 6.6) and above all jealousy (Ex. 20.5;
Dt. 5.9).
There were mitigations of the anthropomorphism. Respect for
divine transcendence led to the substituting for God of inter¬
mediaries for his communication with men, for example in the
E editing of the J traditions, but it must be noted that these
attenuations are attributable to ethical tendencies rather than to a
spiritualizing for which the idea of a personal and present God
was fundamentally unacceptable. Other limits to anthropo¬
morphism are simply due to the fact that from the beginning
Israel was aware that God was only partially the image of man.
In the conception of God as a person Israel felt and expressed both
the similarity and the separation, for such a person was felt not only
as a different being but often indeed as a veritable obstacle; the
“ thou ” who was God could say No! to the “ I” of man, so that
even while speaking of God in human terms account must be
taken of the fact that one realized that between the two there was
no common measure. God is not subject, like men, or at least not
to the same extent as men, to changes of humour or feeling: “ God

1 G. von Rad, Der Heilige Krieg im alten Israel, 1951.

 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 41

is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should

repent. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken
and will he not fulfil it? ” (Num. 23.19). “I am God and not
man (Hos. 11.9); and then Isaiah summarizes the irreducible
difference between God and man by the terms spirit and flesh
(3I-3)> putting the opposition not between what is spiritual or
corporeal, but between what is strong and what is feeble and
ephemeral. Another limit to anthropomorphism is supplied by the
very conception of man in Israel. According to the anthropology
dominant in the Old Testament a man only exists as a member of a
community, there is no isolated man, there are only bene ’adam,
that is, participators in that great collective personality which is
constituted by humanity and, more especially, Israel. But that
idea of collective personality could not be applied to God: to exist
and manifest his sovereignty, God has no need of the assistance
of other beings; biblical anthropomorphism thus differentiates itself
clearly from ancient anthropomorphism in general where the god
is not only always associated with an attendant goddess, but where
he is also surrounded by an entire court of equal or inferior per¬
sonages like a human family. The Old Testament is unaware of
any feminine partner to Yahweh, and Hebrew does not even possess
any term for goddess and uses the ambiguous word ’elohim (1 Kings
11 -5> 33’ Astarte elohe Sidonim). Certainly it happened that, under
the influence of the contemporary world and because of a very
natural tendency of the human mind, the attempt was made to
give a consort to Yahweh: Maacah, the mother of king Asa, made
an idol which might serve as a feminine counterpart to Yahweh
(1 Kings 15.13), and the Jews of the military colony of Elephantine
did not hesitate to associate with Yahweh the great Canaanite
goddess under the name of Anat Yahu; but these are deviations
which were never admitted within the framework of the orthodox
faith which only knew a single consort of Yahweh, namely the
people of Israel, but the union with the people is the result of
an act of pure grace and in no way corresponds to a necessity of
the natural order. Transcendence of sex is also shown in the
absence of a son of God: the bene ha elohim of Gen. 6.2 and
of the prologue to Job are divine beings, but not sons in the proper
sense. Finally, a last limit to anthropomorphism and one which
clearly shows that anthropomorphism was unsuitable for expressing
the divine personality in its fulness, is the prohibition of making
42 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

a visual representation of Yahweh;1 consistent anthropomorphism

necessarily ends in plastic representations. Even if in the course of
history the people of Israel sometimes had difficulty in keeping to
the Mosaic order (Ex. 20.4, 22; Dt. 4.12, 15-18), it must be recog¬
nized that the prohibition on the making of images of the deity
and adoring them (for an image of the divine is made to be adored)
represents the main trend of Israelite religion. To make a repre¬
sentation of God means to desire to imprison him within certain
limits and God was too great for anyone to be able for an instant
to dream of setting a limit to what clearly never ceased, namely his
life.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Eissfeldt, O., “Mein Gott ” im Alten Testament, ZAW, 1945-48, p. 3.

Hempel, Joh., “ Jahwegleichnisse der isr. Propheten.” ZAW, 1924, p. 74.
“ Die Grenzen des Anthropomorphismus Jahwes im Alten
Testament”, ZAW, 1939, p. 75.
Michaeli, Fr., Diet* a I’image de I’homme, Paris et Neuchatel 1949.
Otto, Rud., Aufsdtze das Numinose betreffend, 2nd ed., p. 142.
Vischer, W., “ Words and the Word. The anthropomorphisms of the
biblical revelation ”, Interpretation, 1949, pp. iff.

1 As a God of nomadic origin and bound to a human society, Yahweh had no need
like other gods of fashioned representations in animal or human form, though one
must beware of equating nomadism with spirituality. But contact with the religion
of Canaan, where the power of the image was very great, might have led the
Israelites to use the same procedures sometimes to represent Yahweh, without
there being necessarily in origin an act of infidelity. The fashioned image of a
bull was not always an adoration of Baal; and the ephod itself, a human or closely
human representation of Yahweh (cf. I Sam. 19.1 off.), could appear perfectly
legitimate and even necessary for affirming the power of Yahweh. But as these
attempts ultimately struck at the uniqueness of Yahweh and especially at his
jealousy, a radical condemnation of all images and an insistent reminder of the
Mosaic requirements was brought into operation.
 II. THE DIVINE NAMES, AN EXPRESSION

OF THE LIVING GOD

T
A. EL-ELOHIM

h e Israelites form no exception to the general law of

primitive people in that they suppose that a person is con¬
centrated in his name.1 A man without a name lacks not
only significance but also existence (Gen. 2.18-23; 27.36). The
name is the bearer of a Suva/us which exercises a constraint upon
the one who bears it; in 1 Sam. 25.23 it is said of Nabal that he
is like his name, that is, he is a fool. But by virtue of this character
of Suva^.19 the name can also be separated from its bearer, be made
independent and even be employed against him. Since in the eyes
of the Israelites God was a power both dangerous and beneficent,
it was important to know his name. When the believer enters into
relationship with his god he starts by pronouncing his name, and
this ancient usage is continued in the liturgy of the Church under
the form of the invocation; similarly when God takes the initiative
of revealing himself he starts by uttering his name: Gen. 35.11;
Ex. 6.2; 33. i8ff.
The generic name of God amongst all people of Semitic tongue,
except the Ethiopians, is expressed by the help of the root Vx,
ilu, allah, etc. That root is interpreted in different ways, and the
time still appears remote when scholars will agree on its etymology.
(a) Some2 attach to it a root expressing force, the root underlying
and P*71? the oak, the typically strong tree and especially
the expression yesb be’el yadi — it is in the power of my hand, cf.
Gen. 31.25; Dt. 28.32; Mi. 2.1; Prov. 3.27; Neh. 5.5.
(b) Others3 think the root to be = to be in front, to be the
1 The fundamental study of the name remains that of O. Grether, Name und Wort
Gottes im A.T., 1933, and more recently R. Criado, Valor hipostatico del nombre
divine en el Antiguo Testamento, Madrid 1953.
2 Cf. amongst others E. Dhorme, La religion des Hebreux nomades.
3 This is the etymology proposed by Noeldeke, “ Elohim El ”, Sitzungsber. der
prettssischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1882, pp. 11751!., and more recently
by J. Starcky in Arcbiv orientalnt, “ Melanges B. Hrozny ”, 1949, p. 383, and
“Abraham et l’histoire ”, Cahiers sioniens, 1951, p. 118.

43
44 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

first; the noun —ram, would signify the one which goes at
the head of a flock, and in the Temple at Jerusalem the front part
of the structure bore the name of
(c) might go back to the preposition = towards, and the
two spring from a root = to reach. Paul de Lagarde1 thought
that El was the one towards whom one moves, and Pere Lagrange2
saw there the one towards whom men’s steps are directed in order
to worship him.
(d) Procksch3 associates El with the root = to tie (cf. the
Arabic z7/«n = bond); according to him the meaning of El would
be the one whose constraint cannot be thrown off. This last
etymology is wrecked on the fact that the vowel of El (flu) is always
long; whilst that suggested by Lagarde seems far too fantastic
and presumes a power of abstraction hardly conceivable for
Semites.
It seems to us that the idea of power, involving also that of
pre-eminence, most adequately expresses the reality designated by
El: the mountains of El (Ps. 36.7), the cedars of El (Ps. 80.11),
the stars of El (Is. 14.13), the army of Elohim (1 Chr. 12.22)
and the wind of Elohim (Gen. 1.2) only express the idea of the
divine as subordinate to that of power. What is powerful is
divine; one of the most elementary experiences of the divine is
that of a power on which, in varying degrees, man feels himself
dependent.4
El designates any god, but alongside this use as a common noun
we find the name El as the proper name of a particular deity.
The existence of a particular god named El is not only important
for the origins of the religion of Israel, but it raises the problem
of a primitive Semitic monotheism. Formerly defended by Renan,5
the thesis of an original monotheism has been upheld more recently
and with more convincing arguments by scholars of such varied

1 P. de Lagarde, Vbersicht iiber die Nominalbildung, 1882, p. 170, defines El as

the goal of all human desire and all human striving ”, a definition unfitting for the
Semites and still more for the Israelites for whom it is always God who comes to
encounter man, 2 Etudes sur les religions semitiques, p. 80.
3 NKZ 1924, p. 20, and Theologie des Alten Testaments, p. 444.
* In his last (posthumous) work A. Bertholet defines the experience of God as
that of a power which manifests itself in a dynamic material form or in a personal
form (Grundformen der Erscbeinungswelt der Gottesverebrung, 1953).
5 Histoire generate et systeme compare des langues semitiques and Nouvelles
considerations sur le caractere general des peuples semitiques et en particulier sur
leur tendance au monotheisme, 1859.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 45

outlook as Andrew Lang, N. Soderblom,1 R. Pettazzom,2 Father

W. Schmidt3 and Geo Widengren4 and finally, and on the par¬
ticular grounds of the religion of Israel, I. Engnell5 believes that
El, the supreme god of the Canaanites, was a "high god ” who
was worshipped in the whole of the west Semitic world under the
names of El Shadday, El Elyon, Shalem and Hadad. According
to this author, Yahweh would then be a parallel form of manifesta¬
tion of this supreme god to whom Moses attributed a new activity.
That would explain how the fusion of Yahweh with the different
forms of Canaanite El took place so easily after the entrance of
the Israelites into Canaan, since these gods had a common origin.
In spite of the attractive appearance of this thesis, which would
solve many problems, we do not think that it accurately corresponds
to the historical process. Certainly the god El played a great part
in Canaanite religion; in the Ugantic texts we meet a definite
tendency towards the supremacy of this god called ab shnm, father
of years or father of mortals, ’ab ’adam, father of humanity, bny
bnwt, creator of creatures, and, the most significant title, El bn el,
god of gods6 (ben indicates here the category and not the relation¬
ship).
The god El is supreme, but the part played by El as a supreme
god represents a terminus rather than a point of departure.
Amongst west Semitic gods which had as their chief characteristic
an attachment to a place (town, tree, mountain, spring), some, in
virtue of their more privileged position, surpassed others to the
point of temporarily eclipsing them or entirely absorbing them.
That must have been the case of the local god of Jerusalem El
Elyon = the very high god7 who, as creator of the heavens and the

1 Das Werden des Gottesglaubens, in French: Dieu vivant dans I’histoire, 1937.
2 /'ormazione e sviluppo del monoteismo nella storia delle religioni, 3 vol. Rome
19221!.; a summary in French of his principal contentions appeared in RHR, 1923,
pp. i93ff.
3 Der Ursprung des Gottesidee, 1926-1940.
4 “ Evolutionism and the problem of the origin of religion ”, Ethnos, to, 1945, pp.
57'95> anc^ Hochgottglaube im alten Ivan. Eine religionsphdnomenologische Unter-
suchung, Uppsala and Leipzig 1938.
5 Studies in Divine Kingship in the Ancient Near East, p. 177 and passim.
6 El bn el might also signify El the maker or creator of El. On the religion of
El at Ugarit, cf. the very interesting monograph of O. Eissfeldt, El im ugaritischen
Pantheon and the more recent work of M. Pope (cf. bibliography).
7 The name Elyon can only describe one god as superior to others, which is still
far from monotheism. As we knew from Philo of Byblos (Eusebius, Praep. Evang.
1, 10) ’EXtoOv Kakovp.evos inpuxTos had a very large diffusion, though it is almost
 46 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

earth and master of the country to which he gives access only on

condition that a tithe is offered, has collected in his own person
all the functions elsewhere distributed among many deities. The
evolution of polytheism towards monotheism, which we recognize
in Canaanite religion from a very early period, must also have taken
place mutatis mutandis among the ancient Israelites. The religion
of the patriarchs was characterized, as in our opinion Albrecht Alt1
and Julius Lewy2 have decisively shown, by the cult of familiar
gods associated with the individual or group of individuals who
have chosen them for their protectors; that religion predisposed
them to accept later on the cult of Yahweh who himself also had
no local attachment and who was characterized by the covenant
which he contracted with those faithful to him. The contact of
the ancestral Israelite religion, at the head of whose pantheon was
probably found Shadday,3 with the Canaanite religion dominated
by the figure of El, took place in many stages, of which the follow¬
ing outline only sets out to give the general lines:
(a) The first contact took place at the time of the patriarchs;
between Shadday of the mountains and El the powerful there were
so many points of contact that the fathers were able to feel relatively
at home in the Canaanite environment.
(i>) Yahweh, who became the God of the Israelites when they
became a nation, quickly took the place of the gods of the fathers,
who were far from being as demanding and jealous as he; but he
was different, in the matter of nature and origin, from El and the
Elim of the Canaanites, gods who were tied to nature. However,
because of his jealousy he could not tolerate that creation and the
maintenance of life should be reserved for other gods; so the settle¬
ment of the Israelites in Canaan leads to Yahweh’s taking all the
certain that this term does not always apply to the same god; the Elyon which
appears on an Aramaic stele of Sefire (near Aleppo) in the eighth century is
probably not identical with El Elyon of Jerusalem at the time of Melchizedek.
1 Der Gott der Vliter, 1929.
2 “ Les textes paleo-assyriens et l’Ancien Testament ”, RHR, 1934, pp. iff., J. Lewy
insists, with reason, against A. Alt, on the tutelary character of the god El Shadday.
3 The explanation of Shadday as the mountain one ” can be regarded as estab¬
lished (for the proof see Albright, “The names Shaddai and Abram”, JBL, 1935,
p. 173). Proofs supporting the antiquity of this name amongst the ancestors of the
Israelites are supplied by its use in two ancient texts, Gen. 49.25 and Num. 24.4, 16,
as well as by the names Shedeur, Zurishaddai, Ammishaddai in the list of proper
names in Numbers 1; and so we think that the text of Exodus 6.3, where the
priestly writer presents El Shadday as the first form of the appearance of Yahweh,
rests on a very solid historical foundation.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
47
functions retained until then by the god El or by Baal, his associate
and then his successor.1
(c) In the third stage Yahweh, who has already taken the
functions of El, will likewise take his name to show that there was
no other god (el) besides himself. Yahweh will be called El or
more often Elyon2 which will link with the ancient title Shadday,
a heritage of patriarchal religion; above all he will be called
Elohim.J The substitution of this latter name for that of Yahweh,
which took place systematically in the Pentateuch and the Psalter
and occasionally elsewhere, carries an echo of this process of
integration; integration could only have taken place at a time
when the cult of El was sufficiently “Yahwistic” to present no
danger of paganization and when the spiritual authority of Yahweh
was strong enough for there to be no danger in his assuming a garb
which was originally pagan or at least alien.4 From the seventh
century the name of El appears again frequently in the composition
of proper names.5 This process was natural, for at the time when
Yahweh was established as being the only one with power it was
necessary for him also to have the name El; the name Elohim which,
out of the 2,550 occasions it is used in the Old Testament, designates
sometimes the gods, sometimes one god amongst others, sometimes
1 The prophet Hosea is the best witness of this change of prerogative of Yahweh
(cf. Hos. 2.10). At that time El had recently yielded his place to Baal; but the
substitution of Baal for El marked a downward step in religion by introducing a
demoralizing mystical element, foreign to the cult of El.
2 The title of Elyon given to Yahweh can sometimes have no other meaning than
that of very high, but the fact that this appellation is chiefly met in the Psalms
(46-5; 5Q,I4' 73-11 • 83.19; 87.5) seems to indicate some connection with the ancient
local god of Jerusalem; it was a matter of proving that the god of Melchizedek
was already identical with Yahweh, whence in the narrative in Genesis 14 the
avowal put into the mouth of Abraham “ Yahweh El Elyon ” (v. 22), which seemed
too bold to the authors of the Septuagint. It may be admitted that this is
only one hypothesis, that certain rites of the cult of Elyon have penetrated into
the cult of Yahweh in its Jerusalemite form, particularly rites associated with cosmic
power, since this god was creator of the heavens and the earth.
3 8y g*ying t° these gods the names 0\f/t<rros, ira.VTOKpd.Tup licavit as a translation
of shc-day, he who is self-sufficient, translators have wished to obliterate their
origin from secondary gods. The term Shadday is frequent in the book of Job,
both out of a concern for archaism and also, it seems, through association with the
root shadad, to destroy (cf. the same relation of Shadday with shadad in Is. 13.6;
Joel 1.15), but this phenomenon of paronomasia cannot be invoked in favour of
the etymology.
4 One text which shows how Yahweh reunited in himself all the ancient deities
is Ps. 91.1: “Dwelling under the shelter of Elyon, and abiding under the shadow
of Shadday, I say to Yahweh: my refuge, my fortress, Elohay in whom I trust.”
5 Cf. M. Noth, Die israelitischen Personennamem, 1928.
40 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

the divine,1 and lastly the sole legitimate God, expresses hence¬
forward the totality of the divine reunited in one person. Never¬
theless this name in its plural form, which is found as a term for
one deity not only amongst the Israelites but also among the
Phoenicians (elim)2 and the Babylonians (llani), seems to provide
proof that the Semites experienced the divine as a plurality of
forces and not as a unity which might later be broken up. So far
as our knowledge goes, still very incomplete in spite of the mass of
accumulated material, it seems the reunion of many gods into one
belongs to a quite general tendency of which the supremacy of El
at Ugarit and of El Elyon at Jerusalem are two expressions, but it
seems just as probable that these superior—not to say unique—gods
are again in their turn fragmented to satisfy the desire of piety to
have gods at the disposal of man.3

B. YAHWEH

Yahweh is always a proper name and as such it carries a definite

meaning. It is true that, according to one opinion, which invites
serious consideration because of the authority of those who voice it,
Yahweh in its primitive form Yah was only originally an inter¬
jection,4 a kind of ejaculation uttered in moments of excitement
and in connection with the moon cult; the complete name of
Yahweh or Yahu would then be this interjection followed by the
personal pronoun for the third person: O it is he . . .5 This
explanation, in support of which interesting parallels could be cited,
makes it difficult, however, to account for the religious content
which faith has always found in the name of God and of the
revelatory value attached to the name. Could Yahweh be a foreign

1 Elohim has the impersonal sense of divine in Ps. 36.2; 2 Chr. 20.29, pacbad
Elohim, a divine fear, i.e. a very strong fear.
2 The word elm is only very rarely found in Ugaritic with a singular verb.
3 Cf. Bertholet, Gotters-paltung und Gottervereinigung, 1933. Even H. Ringgren,
who defends original monotheism, recognizes the existence of a process of reunion
of gods (Word and Wisdom).
4 This opinion has been defended by G. R. Driver, ZAW, 1928, p. 24; by an
analogous process the name of Bacchus came from to cry ya, ya, cf.
Movers, Die Phonizier, 1, 1841, p. 542.
5 The connection of the personal pronoun hu with Yahweh in passages like
2 Kings 2.14 and Jer. 5.12 as well as the proper name Elihu could point us towards
this etymology.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 49

name borrowed by the Israelites? In spite of the attractiveness of

many hypotheses, of which the one that attributes the name
Yahweh to Kenites retains a certain measure of probability, it must
Recognized that up to the present we have no attestation of
Yahweh as a name for God outside Israel. Its occurrence in the
garit texts under the form Yw’elt which Dussaud interprets as
Yahweh son of Elat, the wife of El, is far from certain.1 As for
the king of Hamath, Yaubidi, written in the same document as
Ilubidi preceded by the ideogram for divine, he could well be a
usurper of Israelite origin, the more so since we have from
2 Sam. 8.9ff. that from the time of David there were political con¬
nections between Israel and the kingdom of Hamath. But although
the presence of Yahweh as a divine name is most doubtful outside
Israel, the verbal form appears in the west Semitic name list from
the time of Hammurabi;2 names like Yawi-ilu and Yawi-um which
figure in the Mari texts certainly show that the verb hawah was
used to designate the existence of a god, and this information,
although it, does not settle the problem, indicates the direction
which enquiry should take. Was the name Yahweh revealed to
the children of Israel by Moses? Most certainly it was, according
to the Elohistic narrative of Exodus 5; but we have several indi¬
cations in the Old Testament according to which the name Yahweh
may not have been an absolutely new revelation to Moses. Genesis
relates that Enosh the son of Seth first invoked the name of
Yahweh (q.26) and in the benediction of Noah upon his sons
Yahweh is called the god of Shem (Gen. 9.26). It could then
be that Yahweh was one of the gods worshipped by the Hebrew
tribes, especially the Leah tribes, before their final settlement in
Canaan; that would afford a solution of the problem of the name
of Moses’ mother Yokebed (Ex. 6.20; Num. 26.59) ancl perhaps
that of Judah also, whose name could mean: Yahweh leads. The
link between Yahweh and the gods of the patriarchs, upon which
the narrative of Exodus insists, might not be entirely due then to
the harmonizing attempts of redactors. All this leads us to assert
that we do not have in the Exodus narrative the revelation of a
1 In VI AB, col. 4, 1.14 sm bny yw elt “the name of my son is Yw elt ” (it
is Ltpn who is speaking). Dussaud, Les decouvertes de Ras Shamra et I'A.T., 2nd
ed., pp. i6ff., translates Yw son of Elat and uses this text to show the kinship of
El and Yahweh. This single reference appears to us too slight to be able to
lead to any positive conclusion.
* Dhorme, “ Le nom du Dieu d’Israel ”, RHR 1952, pp. iff.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
5°
new name but the explanation of a name already known to Moses
which in that solemn hour is discovered to he charged with a
content the richness of which he was far from suspecting.
The text of Exodus 3 attempts an explanation of the name
Yahweh. Without claiming a scientific rigour which must never
be expected in the etymologies of the Old Testament, it connects
the divine name with the root hawah (Ar. bawah). According to
what we now know by means of the proto-Aramaic names men¬
tioned above, and by the example mentioned long ago by
Wellhausen of the existence among the pre-Islamic Arabs of a god
Yagutb = he helps,1 the formation of a divine name by the help
of the preformative “y” is by no means impossible. According
to Albright,2 basing his statements on Babylonian, Egyptian and
Canaanite analogies, the name Yahweh could be a hiphil form
of the verb hawa\ more recently Obermann3 believed he had found
in the great Phoenician inscription of Karatepe a participial form
with causative sense commencing in “y”, which would confirm
the explanation of the form Yahweh as a hiphil and which would
have the advantage of answering admirably to all that the Old
Testament says of the function of Yahweh as creator of life and
lord of history; but an important if not decisive objection is that
the existence of the verb hawah in the hiphil is nowhere attested
up to the present. At all events there seems to be growing
unanimity in favour of abandoning the more fanciful explanations4
1 Wellhausen, Reste arab. Heidentums, 1897, p. 22, mentions the existence of a
god Yaghut and quotes the verse recorded by the chronicler Yaqut: “When will
your help (ghiyatb) come from the one who aids {yaghut)? ” The Old Testament
knows the proper name Ya’ush (Gen. 36.5, 14; 1 Chr. 7.10) which might be of
Edomite origin.
2 From the Stone Age to Christianity, p. 198 (cf. also JBL, 1924, p. 370), the
name Yahweh may be the first part of a longer name: Yahweh asher yihweh or
Yahweh zeh yihweh after the analogy of zeh sinai in Judges 5.5; he brings into
existence what exists, yahweh having a causative sense. Albright reminds us that
Dumuzi (Tammuz) is an abbreviated form of Dumu-zid-abzu, and Osiris of
Ositis-onnophris.
3 “The divine name Yhwh in the light of recent discoveries”, JBL, 1949, p. 3c 1.
The existence of the form yqtl'nk in a causative sense leads to the supposition that
Yahweh was a mode of address before being a proper name and had significance as
an epithet of the god of Israel: the one who establishes, who maintains; the words
combined with Yahweh, as for example, shalom, nissi and particularly tsebaoth,
could be understood simply as direct objects. But the use of the root bawah in a
causative sense still remains problematical.
4 Certain authors again seek the meaning of the name Yahweh outside the O.T.
texts: H. Schrade, Der verborgene Gott, 1949, p. 37: “The interpretation varies
between ‘ the almighty ’, ‘ the one who descends (in fire) ‘ the destroyer
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
51
and to seek the origin of the name of the God of Israel in the root
hawah. This demands a more careful examination of the text of
Exodus (3.14). The construction employed, ’ebyeh ’asher ’ehyeh,
is not without parallel in the Old Testament. In several cases
it expresses indetermination: 1 Sam. 23.13 yithalleku be asher
yithallaku : they will go wherever they are able to go; 2 Sam. 15.20
ani holek al asher ani holek : I go I know not where; 2 Kings 8.1
gtiri ba asher taguri: sojourn where you can; Ex. 4.13 shelach
na beyad tishlach : send whom you will. At other times, particu¬
larly when it is God who is speaking, this form of expression is a
way of giving additional intensity to the phrase: Zech. 10.8 rabu
kemo rabu: they shall be as many as they were; Ex. 33.19 chanoti
et asher achon: I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy,
that is to say, I will indeed show mercy to the one who is its object;
Ezek. 12.25 Ydhweh adabber et asher adabber: I. Yahweh,
speak truly what I speak.
It is particularly in the light of these two last passages that
we must understand the Exodus text: it is not a rebuff that
Yahweh gives to Moses,1 rather he wishes to insist on the
fact that he is indeed what he is and that he truly accomplishes
what he says. Doubtless God’s refusal to entrust his name to
a mere mortal, by saying to him: my name does not concern
you, would be on the line of general teaching in the Old
Testament on the subject of the hidden and transcendent God, but
in the particular situation of our text Moses is not a mere mortal
but the one who bears to the people the revelation which will
make them the people of God, and for the accomplishment of this
mission he needs precise information. What then is the new
element which God reveals to Moses by reminding him of his
name? Since the name is the expression of the living God it must
make evident one of the aspects of that life; El expresses life in its
power, Yahweh expresses life in its continuance and its actuality.
Yahweh is indeed he who is. It must not be supposed from the

1 Father Dubarle, RScPhTh, 1951, art. cit., arrives at the conclusion that the text
of Exod. 3.14 constitutes a refusal on the part of God, who cannot compromise his
liberty to the extent of consenting to reveal his name at the request of a mere
mortal; the same position, though with more subtlety, is held by G. Lambert, NRTb.
1952, pp. 897!! We do not think that the revelation of the name abolishes the
mystery, one might even say that it increases it, since in God’s case the giving of
his name does not place him at the disposal of man, but reveals a presence before
which man can only tremble.
52 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

little grasp which the Israelites had of abstract ideas that they were
incapable of understanding the reality of being and it is not attri¬
buting to them a metaphysics too highly developed when we
imagine they could define God as “he who is ” over against things
which are temporary—the succession of days and seasons, the verdure
of the desert which grows and withers, flocks which are born and
die, the successive generations, men whose bodies return to the
dust. The Old Testament is full of statements about the eternity
of Yahweh as over against the ephemeral character of all created
things (Ps. 90.1; 102.27-28), the God of Israel does not die (Hab.
1.12), the terms eternity and Yahweh are sometimes even synony¬
mous, thus we read in Lev. 11.15; 18.5; 19.2; Num. 3.13 a certain
number of exhortations which end with the words ’ani Yahweh
and in Ex. 30.8; Lev. 3.17; 6.11 comparable exhortations are
motivated by the fact that they are a perpetual law, choq ‘olam,
a parallelism which seems to us significant for the relation of
Yahweh with hawah. However, it is not the idea of eternity which
is primary when the Israelites pronounce the name Yahweh, but
that of presence. Like all the other Israelite concepts, existence is
a concept of relation, that is to say, it is only real in connection with
another existence. God is he who is with someone; in the passage
immediately preceding the revelation of the name, God says to
Moses: ki ’ehyeh ‘immak = for I will be with you (Ex. 3.12) and
the same formula reappears in many other texts where the promise
is presented as a revelation: Gen. 28.20; Jos. 3.7; Jg. 6.12, etc.
The idea of relation is perhaps implied by the optative form of
Yahweh, Yahu1 which enters into the composition of numerous
proper names in the sense of a wish : that it may be. It is evidently
not being that is desired for Yahweh, whose existence was never
discussed, but his effective presence near the individual or amongst
his people. To make the people aware of the presence of Yahweh
in their midst was exactly the task committed to Moses. Until
then the tribes only maintained unity by the very loose bond of
a common origin already a far distant memory, and opposing
interests which show themselves in every Semitic society as soon
as its clans become a little too numerous tended to dissociate them,
1 Nothing authorizes us to see in Yahu the primitive form, since the tetra-
grammaton appears already in the ninth century in the inscription of Mesha (1.18).
Use of the tetragrammaton in the ostraca of Tell ed Duweir (Lachish) at the
beginning of the sixth century makes equally impossible the thesis which would
oppose Yahu, used in common speech, to Yahweh, reserved for liturgical use.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 53

the more so as the sojourn in Egypt tended to cause forgetfulness

of the ancestral heritage. “ To rally them a God was needed whose
omnipotence they had experienced, who was for them as a rallying
banner round which their unity might be effectively recovered.
This is what Yahweh will henceforth be for Israel, and so Moses
will give him the significant epithet: Yahweh nissi = Yahweh my
banner (Ex. 17.15).”1 Yahweh, because he is the God capable of
being with someone,2 and that in a more complete sense than the
tutelary and family gods of the patriarchs, becomes the God of
the people to which he is joined by a covenant. Israelite tradition
is unanimous in affirming that Yahweh is the God of Israel, that
he is only truly Yahweh from the time when that religious com¬
munity called Israel was constituted, that is, since the Exodus from
Egypt (Hos. 12.10). The priority of presence over existence gives
a new and unexpected aspect to all the interventions of Yahweh;
the presence of Yahweh corresponds each time to a new approach
and the prophets stigmatize as a grave illusion the faith of those
who interpreted the God is with us in the sense of a definite
and inalienable possession. The approach of Yahweh always
signifies punishment or blessing, usually both at once. Particularly
with the prophet Ezekiel this double action of Yahweh is found
expressly connected with his name. The statement “you shall
know that I am Yahweh” is made in connection with judgment:
b-13; 7,27» 12.16; and on the contrary, it marks a promise
m 34'3’ 37,I3’_ r4> 27- ^ has been thought possible to trace back
this double activity of Yahweh to the common denominator of the
divine jealousy;3 jealousy is in fact one of the specific marks of this
God whose presence never leaves man in repose and who always
supervenes either in moments of distress to save man or when man
behaves as if there were no such presence.
There is, however, one moment when this double activity of
Yahweh will manifest itself with unique clarity; that will be at
the great dramatic finale.
1 A. Vincent, La religion des Judeo-Arameens d‘ Elephantine, p. 59.
* Just in the same way it is the idea of relation which is implied by the translation
of Martin Buber: "Ich werde da sein, als der ich da sein werde." Dhorme, art. cit.,
in referring to the to be or not to be of Hamlet, seems to us to attach too much
importance to existence, which for the Israelites was neither a problem nor a
mystery.
sCf. particularly J. Haenel, “ Jahwe ” in NKZ, 1929, p. 614: “One might
expect that the conception of jealousy embraced by the name of Yahweh rcpre-
aents the most characteristic feature of the early Israelite idea of God.”
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
54
It is not, in fact, too rash to assume a relation between the name
Yahweh and the origin of eschatology,1 for a God who defines
himself as “ I am ” does not rest until that being and that presence
are actualized in their perfection. Second Isaiah, who with Ezekiel
is the theologian of the name Yahweh, shows its eschatological
bearing by defining Yahweh as the first and the last: “ I, Yahweh,
am the first and I will yet be with the last! ” (Is. 41.4)- "I am
the same, I am the first, I will also be the last” (Is. 48.12). In
these passages the expression: ’ani-hu, I am he, is, it would appear,
the best commentary on Exodus ^.14 where the revelation of a
God is found who in speaking of himself says: I am (’ehyeh)
and of whom men affirm: he is (yibyeh). With Second Isaiah,
the most accomplished theologian amongst the writers of the Old
Testament, we witness the full flowering of all the potentialities
contained in the name of Yahweh: the only genuine existence as
over against that of idols which are nothing, a complete presence
since the ends of the earth shall see him, an eternal presence
since it knows no end (Is. 49.6, 26).

Yahweh Tsebaoth

This name occurs 279 times in the Old Testament, though

with a very variable frequency according to the various books.
Totally absent from the Pentateuch, Joshua and Judges, the title
appears only n times in the books of Samuel and 8 times in
Kings; on the other hand, it is frequent in the prophets: we find
it 54 times in Isaiah 1-39, 77 in Jeremiah, iq in Amos, 14 in Haggai
and 44 in Zechariah 1-8, 13 times in the Psalms and 6 times only
in Second Isaiah. In addition to the usual expression Yahweh
Tsebaoth, we meet the more complete form Yahweh ’elohe
hatsebaoth (Hos. 12.6; Amos 3.13; 6.14) and Yahweh ’elohe
tsebaoth (2 Sam. 5.10; 1 Kings 19.10; Jer. 5.14; Ps. 89.9).
Naturally it must be asked what are these armies of which Yahweh
is the head? Three equally possible interpretations share the
favour of scholars: (a) they are the earthly armies of the Israelites;
(b) they are the armies of the stars; (c) they are the celestial armies
of spirits and angels. From the frequency and the context of the
1 On the relation between the name Yahweh and eschatology, cf. amongst others
L. Durr, Die isr. Heilandserwartung, p. 52.
 theology of the old TESTAMENT 55
expressi°n it is possible to extract the following conclusions: (a) in
t e historical books the expression is found in connection with the
ark of the covenant (2 Sam. 6.2, 18; 7.2, 8, 26-27; 1 Chr- 177).
Now originally at any rate the ark was a palladium of war, as the
ancient invocation at the moment of the departure for battle
shows: whenever the ark was lifted it was said, “ Arise, Yahweh,
and let thy enemies be scattered ” (Num. 10.35). Ic therefore
seems, in spite of the contrary opinion of B. N. Wambacq,1 that
the relation between Yahweh Tsebaoth and the ark must be upheld;
the association of Yahweh Tsebaoth with the armies of Israel is
moreover formally stated in 1 Sam. 17.45 Yahweh ’elohe maarekoth
Israel-, now the term maarekoth always denotes armies ranged for
battle, (&) the term is found with maximum frequency among the
prophets for whom Yahweh was definitely other than a national
God and above all other than a warrior God. It might be concluded
that the prophets have transposed the term from the terrestial to
the celestial plane;2 yet it is more exact to say that for the
prophets the expression Yahweh Tsebaoth refers to the totality of
forces over which Yahweh asserts his rule. The Assyrian title
sar kissati, given to kings and gods, is an interesting analogy.
Yahweh is lord of all, and this explains the use of the expression by
men with a universal outlook; but the umversalism of Yahweh is
itself a result of the dynamism which could not be better expressed
than by a term borrowed from the language of war, though faith
had long abandoned a warrior ideal; (c) nevertheless it remains
possible that alongside this essential aspect the prophets saw in
the use of the expression a polemical point directed against the
spread of the cult of the stars and of spirits which were thought to
animate them, and in face of which it had to be affirmed that
Yahweh was the only lord of the army of the heavens. But the
best way of neutralizing these powers was to integrate them into the
being of Yahweh, the only lord. According to one of the most
recent explanations of the name, Yahweh Tsebaoth is meant to
translate Yahweh the sebaothic, that is to say, he whose power is
like that of the summation of all armies.3

1 L’epithete divine Jahve sebaot, etude philologique, historique et exegetique, 1947.

2 Cf. G. von Rad, Der heilige Krieg im alten Israel.
3 This thesis had been upheld by O. Eissfeldt who translates Yahweh der
Zebaothhafte or der Gott der Zebaotheit, in Miscellanea Academica Berolinensia,
1950, pp. 128-150.
56 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

C. OTHER TITLES OF THE GOD OF ISRAEL:

BAAL — ADON — MELEK — AB

When these tides are met with as epithets of Yahweh they

present no particular problem, but when they occur independently
we have the right to ask whether under these names there is not
hidden some primitive deity different from the God of Israel and
assimilated by him.

Baal

In the root ba’al there are two correlative notions always mingled,
that of ownership and that of lordship, and these two notions are
common both to the profane and the religious usage of the term.
Calling a husband the baal of his wife is to be understood as saying
that he is her owner and her lord. A god called baal is essentially
the owner and hence the master of such and such a place or man;
thus the name baal is generally found compounded with the name
of a city or mountain or spring; and so we have the baal of
Lebanon, the baal Tsaphon, the baal and baalah of Gebal. Even if
in these names baal refers to an obviously localized god whose power
does not extend beyond the limits of a clearly defined place, there
are cases where Baal is used as the proper name of a god whose local
attachments were hard to define precisely. To see in the cult of
Baal a multitude of local gods with certain features in common is
no doubt true enough, but it only covers part of the reality contained
in the name Baal. The existence of a supreme Baal is shown by
numerous testimonies, the most ancient of which goes back at least
to the twelfth century and concerns the Baal of the heavens,1 baal
shamayim, whose supremacy is comparable to that of El. This baal
shamayim was widespread in the whole west Semitic area; it is
probably also of him that the Ugarit texts speak. These, according
to Dussaud, are the characteristics of this god Baal, who was
probably identical with the Aramaean god Hadad whose sky aspect
seems quite obvious: “Although sometimes he destroys crops, he
also makes them fertile; he dispenses abundance and life. To these

1 The earliest reference to Baal Shamayim is that of the inscription of Yechimilk

of Byblos in which this god figures in the leading position before the Baal of Byblos
and the other holy gods of the city. Cf. the study by O. Eissfeldt in ZAW,
1939, p. 1.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 57

functions he adds those of a warrior god and of lord of the under¬

world. He has the power of divination, he judges and, with
Shamash, he fixes destiny. 1 Just as for El, Baal is met with as
a qualification of certain gods and that throughout the Semitic
world, and also as the proper name of a god whose prerogatives
were those of a supreme god. Both in nature and function Baal
Shamayim and El Ely on must have been quite similar; the local
god of Shechem is sometimes called Baal berith (Jg. 8.33; 9.4),
sometimes El berith (Jg. 9.46), which would not be possible if
Baal and El represented two conflicting entities. We can therefore
assume that the contact of Yahweh with Baal followed an analogous
process to that of his encounter with El. The former took place
without a clash; the title of Baal was very suitable for tutelary
deities2 of the patriarchal age and Yahweh as he appears in the
Song of Deborah (Jg. 5.3-5) shares with the Baal of Ugarit the
terrifying character of a storm god. Thus by giving to Yahweh
the title of Baal, the ancient Israelites saw not only a way of
expressing the realities of sovereignty and of the covenant, but an
opportunity of integrating into the cult of Yahweh the positive
values of the great Semitic deity. Genuine worshippers of Yahweh
bear names compounded of Baal, for example Yerubaal, a name in
which the theophoric element probably indicates the god wor¬
shipped by this person; and the theophoric element also figures in
the names of descendants of Saul and David, Eshbaal, Meribaal
Baalyada (Elyada in 2 Sam. 5.16) (1 Chr. 8.33; 9.39; 14.7). In
general, the testimony of proper names, apart from that of Baalyah
(1 Chr. 12.6) does not enable us to conclude whether in the first
instance Yahweh is meant by Baal or the Canaanite god assimilated
by him; but in any case the coexistence within the same family
of names involving Yahweh and Baal proves that no serious con¬
tradiction was felt between Yahweh and Baal.3 Through contact
with Canaanite cults, with their mythology developed to a point
which perhaps betokens degeneracy in relation to more ancient
1 Dussaud, Les decouvertes de Ras Shamra-Ougarit et I’A.T., 2nd ed., p. 99.
2 The name baal indicates a bond of parentage and is consequently not alien to
a religion where the deity was regarded as a parent of the believer. By classifying
gods into master-gods and parent-gods, Dhorme (Rel. des Hebreux nomades) has
thrown much light upon a region which is yet far from fully explored.
3 The gods El and Baal followed an inverse development; the former becomes
depersonalized and little by little loses substantiality; at Ugarit, El is already on
the way to becoming a deus otiosus; while Baal reaches his apogee towards the
ninth century, at any rate in the geographical horizon of the Israelites.
 58 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

forms, and with their immoral practices, the alliance of Yahweh

and Baal appeared dangerous. In the coexistence of the two gods
it was Yahweh who ran the risk of being vanquished, for in an
agrarian civilization Baal enjoyed clear superiority and also the right
of priority to Yahweh the desert God. The prophets proclaimed in
vain that since Yahweh had given the children of Israel the land
of Canaan, it was he also gave the rain and the harvests (cf.
Hos. 2.10), they had difficulty in turning the people from the cult
of the baals who answered so much better to the instincts of popular
piety. Although a powerful god might tolerate the proximity of
Baal, it is not the same with a jealous god, and by insisting on
this aspect of Yahweh the prophets Elijah and Hosea, a century
later, opposed all compromise. It will no more be said to Yahweh:
“you are my baal, but you are my 'ish ”, this latter term allowing
no equivocation (H os. 2.10, 15, 19; 13.1). Nevertheless the
prophet Hosea, although violently opposing baalism, adopted the
mystic note of the union of the god with the believer and applied
it to Yahweh without, of course, leaving the ground of the historic
covenant; and this element of divine tenderness is more a heritage
of the Canaanite baals than a characteristic mark of the God of
Sinai. The preaching of the prophets succeeded in making the
name Baal disappear from the list of proper names, where it was
henceforth replaced by that of Yahweh or of El, the Canaanite
god of this name having long lost his active role and being no
more a rival to Yahweh. The name Baal will even inspire such
horror that it will be eradicated from the names in which it
figured and will be replaced by the term boshet = shame (2 Sam.
xi.21; 2.8; 4.4). This radicalism was salutary because it safe¬
guarded the integrity of the religion of Israel and prevented the
people from losing, through the disintegrating influence of the
cults of Baal, the feeling of its cohesion; but that does not mean
that popular piety did not retain a certain nostalgia for the name
Baal; so the prophet of the exile is to remind those who regret the
disappearance of Baal that “your Maker is your Baal: Yahweh
Tsebaoth is his name ” (Is. 54.5).

Adon

Contrary to Baal, the term Adon was used, at least in the biblical
period, only as a divine epithet and its use, more restricted than
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 59

that of Baal, is limited to the Canaanite and Israelite background.

The etymology of the word remains uncertain, but the geographical
area over which it is distributed seems to suggest a borrowing from
some pre-Semitic population of Canaan. Wherever we meet it it
has the meaning of lord. Rarely used absolutely (Mai. 3.x; Ps.
12.3; 114.7), it is on the other hand frequently in the vocative
adoni: it was thus that a subordinate addressed his superior, whether
orally or in writing. Therefore this title speaks less of what the
deity is in himself than of what he represents to someone who
addresses him. Adon was destined to have a great future because
under the form adonay (literally, my lords or thv lordship, intensive
plural) it replaced the now inefFable name of Yahweh. This sub¬
stitution took place under the influence of the stress on divine
transcendence and it found expression in the translation of the divine
name by Kvpio? in the LXX version. But for those who remembered
its original meaning the term Adon was a reminder that in spite
of his transcendence God entered into relation with the faithful and
heard their prayer.

Melek

The term Mlk is also met with as a title and as a proper name.
The existence of a god Xflk is attested among both the eastern
and western Semites. Among the latter the best known are
Milkom, which is the name Mlk followed by a mem in place
of the article, the national god of the Ammonites, and Melqart,
the king of the city of Tyre. Applied to Yahweh this title served,
in certain situations, to express the specific content of faith in
Israel’s God: many exegetes, following especially S. Mowinckel,
have seen in the kingship of Yahweh the central theme of the Old
Testament;1 following a parallel line, Martin Buber has defined the
religion of Israel as that of the kingship of Yahweh.2 In fact, the
ideas of power, presence and permanence contained in the name
Yahweh are made concrete in the term mlk and in its various
nominal and verbal derivatives. But as this term was employed
as well and indeed chiefly for the earthly king, its religious use
varied with the fluctuations undergone by the kingly office and
by the ideology of kingship within Israel.
1 Psalmenstudien II.
1 Das Konigtum Gottes.
 6o THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

(a) Originally the term mlk is used of a chief or counsellor; this

meaning appears in Micah 4.9: “Is there no king in thee, and
has thy counsellor (yo'ets) perished? ’’ It is found amongst the
early Arabs who did not know any royal regime and also in Assyria
under the form maliku, when the royal office is expressed by the
root sharru. The conclusion which logically follows is that the
title of Melek given to Yahweh is not linked to the adoption
by the Israelites of a monarchic regime; also certain texts where
Yahweh is called king may very well be of earlier date than the
time of the monarchy, for example Ex. 15.18; Num. 23.21; 24.7;
E>t. 33.5.
(b) The adoption of the monarchy acted both as an accelerator
and a brake upon the use of the title Melek for Yahweh. Accord¬
ing to one tendency, the importance of which Buber has under¬
lined, the kingship of Yahweh was thrown into relief by kingship
on the human level, considered as an act of infidelity (Jg. 8.23;
1 Sam. 8.7). Just as for Adon the cult seems to have been the
terrain preferred by the title Melek; the two principal attestations
which are certainly pre-exilic and contemporary with the monarchy,
Is. 6.5 and Ps. 24.7#., are clearly placed in a cubic setting. Out¬
side the cultic sphere, which always shows a greater power to
conserve the past, the title of Melek was rather avoided. The
prophets hardly use it, probably less because of a concern to avoid
associating with the holy and unique name of Yahweh a title over¬
much tainted by humanity, than to differentiate themselves from
the false prophets who made a good deal of the God-King in their
own announcement of salvation (Mic. 2.13; 4.7; Zeph. 3.15; Jer.
51.57). In addition, the existence of a god named Melek (LXX
Moloch) to whom child sacrifices were made and whose cult found
fervent devotees at the very gates of Jerusalem, must have aroused
as much revulsion from the use of the term as in connection
with Baal—a point already made.1
(c) After the disappearance of the kingdom the title of Melek

1 The existence of this god Mlk has been contested by O. Eissfeldt who has
thought it possible to prove, chiefly by means of certain Carthaginian inscriptions,
that the expression Imlk did not mean “ to Mlk ” but “ in votive offering we
must probably interpret in the light of this discovery such texts as Lev. 20.2 and
Jer. 32.25 in which Yahweh may be the object of human sacrifices, as is similarly
suggested by other texts, e.g. Mic. 6; while on the other side, when it is a question
of playing the harlot after Mlk (Lev. 20.5) it seems difficult not to see in mlk
the proper name of a god.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 6l

applied to Yahweh saw a new lease of life. The theme of the

kingship of Yahweh which had suffered an eclipse, so far as the
name only was concerned, becomes dominant in Second Isaiah and
in numerous Psalms which he influenced more or less directly (cf.
Is. 52.7; Ps. 29.10; 93-99; 84.4, etc.). It is by the formula “ Your
God has become king”,1 modelled upon that used to announce
the installation of a new sovereign, that the prophet announces the
inauguration of Yahweh s reign. Henceforward the eschatological
sense which had never been alien to the title becomes dominant:
Yahweh will be king not only of his own people who will know
the fulfilment of the revelation which has been entrusted to them,
but also of other peoples whose gods will collapse before the
splendour of his kingship. It is under this form that the idea was
perpetuated in Judaism: the books of Daniel and Chronicles insist
on the theme of God as king (1 Chr. 29.11; Dan. 3.33; 4.31, 34).
That eschatological orientation gave all the more force to the affir¬
mation of the present kingship of Yahweh as it was set forth in
the various institutions of the Torah.

Ah
It is true that only Christianity has made the fatherhood of God
the centre of religion, though that idea comes to it by direct descent
from the Old Testament: Jer. 3.4: Now thou callest me my
father”; Jer. 31.9: “lama father to Israel”; Is. 63.16: “It is
thou, Yahweh, who art our father . In this passage divine father¬
hood is put in contrast to that of the “ fathers of the nation.
Is. 64.8: ‘‘Yahweh, thou art our father, we are the clay and thou
art the potter who didst fashion us ”.
But whilst in Christianity the fatherhood of God is shown in
his love, it is in the Old Testament an expression of his lordship.
The relation of son to father is one of obedience: Ahab says to
Tiglath Pileser, ‘‘I am thy servant and thy son” (2 Kings 16.7);
or that of service, ‘‘A son honours his father, and a servant his

1 The expression Yahweh malak, particularly frequent in Psalms 95-100, has no

well marked temporal meaning: Yahweh has become king, or: Yahweh will be
king (prophetic perfect); it can be understood of the past, present or future kingship
of Yahweh and therefore affords too slender a basis for exact historical reconstructions.
It is also important to notice that in that formula the accent lies upon Yahweh
and not upon malak: it is Yahweh and none other who is king (cf. L. Koehler,
Syntactica V.T., 1953, p. 188).
62 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

master. If then I am a father, where is the honour due to me? ”

(Mai. 1.6, cf. Mai. 3.17). The title of father given to one or more
gods is met with in the whole Semitic world, whether it concerns
a father of gods or a father of men. In the Old Testament, ’ab as
a theophoric element is found in proper names such as Abichayl,
Abiyah, Abram, Abner, Eliab, Yoab. As in the case of Baal it
can be asked whether under the element ’ab there is not sometimes
hidden another god, who belonged to the Israelite pantheon before
the exclusive adoption of the cult of Yahweh. Yet it is more
important theologically to know whether this divine paternity is
to be understood in a realistic or in a metaphorical sense. The use
in Hebrew of the word ’ab in a very wide sense, as a term for
priest, prophet or benefactor, might suggest that it should be
understood in an exclusively metaphorical sense, but it is the realist
interpretation which must be retained when the term is applied to
Yahweh: Yahweh is called father not because he has certain
qualities normally connected with this title but because he is the
sole genuine creator of his people and of the faithful who make up
the people; the figure of the clay and the potter well shows this
realist character. We must notice that the Israelites only rarely give
to Yahweh the title father when they address him and that only
rarely do they call themselves sons of Yahweh. It is rather
God who designates himself as father by calling the Israelites his
sons. That prevented any mysticism based upon a bond of physical
parentage between God and man.

Various titles

The other titles given to the God of Israel are figures of speech,
often very suggestive and interesting in the history of piety but
furnishing no new theological information. Amongst these various
titles, however, it is fitting to mention specially the designation of
God as the rock, tsur, which from simple metaphor tends to become
sometimes a genuine proper name: “Thou, O my Rock, hast
established him for correction” (Hab. 1.12) and: “The Rock, his
works are perfect ... El is faithful and without iniquity” (Dt.
32.4, cf. verses 31 and 37). It is possible that we have here a sur¬
vival of the worship of divine power enclosed within the sacred
stones, or, on a re-reading of these texts, in the Jerusalem temple.
Other titles, such as judge, witness, shepherd, physician, are to be
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 63

placed on the same level as the comparison of God with certain

material objects or natural phenomena, like a sword, wall, fire,
spring, etc. But the multiplicity of these designations is an
illustration of the activity of the living God who is always so near
to man that the latter is unable to think of God otherwise than
in his own image.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. EL-ELOHIM

Albright, W. F., “The names Shaddai and Abram”, JBL, iqoc, p. I7o.
Alt, A., Der Gott der Water, 1929.
Bauer, H., “ Die Gottheiten von Ras Shamra ”, ZAW, 1933, p. 81 & 1935,
P- 54-
Eissfeldt, O., El im ugaritischen Pantheon, Berichte iiber die Ver-
handl. der sacks Akad. d. Wissensch. Phil.-hist. Kl. 98, 4, Berlin 1950.
Hehn, J., Die biblische und die babylonische Gottesidee, Leipzig IQIT
Kleinert, P„ “El ”, BZAW, 1918, p. 59.
Lagrange, M. J., “ El et Yahwe ”, RB, 1903, p. 362.
Levi Della Vida G., “El Elyon in Genesis 14.18-20”, JBL, 1944, p. 1.
May, PL G., The God of my Father. A study of patriarchal religion ”,
Journal of Bible and Religion, 1941, p. 155.
Morgenstern, J., “ The divine triad in biblical mythology ”, JBL, 1945,
P- 13-
Nielsen, D., Ras Shamramythologie und biblische Theologie, Leipzig
1936.
Noldeke, Th„ Elohim, El, 1882.
Nyberg, H. S., “Studien zum Religionskampf im A.T.”, ARW, 1938,
p. 329.
Pope, Marvin H., El in the Ugaritic Texts, Supplements to Vetus Testa-
mentum 2, Leiden 1955.
Procksch, O., “El ”, NKZ, 1924, p. 20.
Starcky, J., ‘ Le nom divin El ”, Archiv orientalnt Melanges Hrozny,
r949’ P- 383-

B. YAHWEH

Dhorme, Ed., “Le nom du Dieu d’Israel ”, RHR, 1952, p. 5.

Driver, G. R., “ The original form of the name Yahweh. Evidence and
conclusion”, ZAW, 1928, p. 7.
64 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Dubarle, A. M., “ La signification du nom de Yahweh ”, RScPhTb, 1951,

P. 3.

Eissfeldt, O., “ Neue Zeugnisse fiir die Aussprache des Tetragramms

als Jahweh ”, ZAW, 1935, p. 59.
Fredriksson, H., Jahwe als Krieger, Lund 1945.
Hanel, J., “Jahwe”, NKZ, 1929, p. 610.
Konig, Ed., “ Die formell genetische Wechselbeziehung der beiden Worte
Jahwe und Jahu ”, ZAW, 1897, p. 172.
Kuhn, K. G., “ Ober die Enstehung des Namens Jahwe ”, Orient Studien
Enno Littmann, Leiden 1935, p. 25.
Lambert, G., “ Que signifie le nom divin YHWH? ” NRTh, 1952, p. 897.
Langhe, de R., “ Un dieu Yahweh a Ras Shamra? ” Bulletin d’bistoire et
d’exegese de I’A.T. No. 14, p. 91, Louvain 1942.
Maag, V., “ Jahwes Heersharen ”, Festschrift L. Kohler, Berne 1950, p. 27.
Murtonen, A., “ The appearance of the name YHWH outside Israel ”,
Studia orient, soc. or. Fennica XVI 3, Helsinki 1951.
Obermann, J., “The divine name YHWH in the light of recent dis¬
coveries”, JBL, 1949, p. 301.
Nystrom, S., Beduinentum und Jabwismus, Lund 1946.
Vriezen, Th. C., “ Ehyeh asher ehyeh ”, Festschrift A. Bertholet, 1950,
p. 498.
Wambacq, B. N., L epithete divine Yahweh sebaoth, Pans-Bruges, 1947.

C. OTHER TITLES OF THE GOD OF ISRAEL

Cerfaux, L., Le nom divin Kyrios dans la Bible grecque ”, RScPhTb,

I93I> P- 27-
Eissfeldt, O., “Jahwe als Kdnig”, ZAW, 1928, p. 81.
“ Baalshamem und Jahwe”, ZAW, 1939, p. 1.
Molk als Opferbegriff im punischen und hebrdischen und
das Ende des Gottes Moloch, Halle 1935.
Gall, A. von, ‘ Ober die Herkunft der Bezeichnung Jahwes als Konig ”,
Studien zur sem Relig. (Wellhausenfestschrift), 1914, p. 145.
Gressmann, H., “Hadad and Baal” BZAW, 1918, p. 213.
Kapelrud, A. S., Baal in the Ras Shamra Texts, Copenhagen 1952.
Lagrange, M. J., “La patemite divine dans l’A.T.”, RB, 1908, p. 481.
Rad, G. von, “ Erwagungen zu den Kdnigspsalmen ”, ZAW, 1940, p. 216.
 III. YAHWEH AND OTHER GODS

T h e important place held by the god El in Semitic religion

has led some historians to consider favourably the possibility
of a primitive monotheism and thereby to arrive back by a
more scientific method at the position of those who supported their
thesis by the presence of an All-father in African religions or merely
upon an a priori anti-evolutionism. Although the frequent
occurrence of the god El is a certainty it is nearly as certain that
this name bears a number of senses. Sometimes it does not refer
to one definite god, but to the group of gods who, even in the most
developed polytheism, have in common certain qualities and attri¬
butes such as benevolence towards their worshippers and the pro¬
tection of justice, particularly defence of the feeble and the
oppressed, in such a way that one could talk of god without think¬
ing of any definite god or thinking of all the gods at once. The
unity of the divine was likewise equally imposed by the power
which a god could have of pushing all the other gods into the
background on some definite occasion, a phenomenon well known
under the name of henotheism. As for the use of the term El as
a proper name, which is only met in West Semitic circles, it is
fitting to see here belief in a supreme god who, however, is always
merely the head of a pantheon in the midst of which he does not
always play the most active part, as is the case at Ugarit. In spite
of the interest of these facts judgment must be reserved about the
assimilation of belief in higher gods to monotheism. There arc
here two different realities whose co-existence never presented any
problem to believers in those gods. To see in polytheistic pantheons
the division into hypostases of functions originally belonging to
one god is to introduce into the history of religion a schematism as
dangerous as the radical evolutionary view which it claims to
combat.
On the particular terrain of Israel’s religion, monotheism takes
shape at the moment when Moses has the revelation of a god
infinitely superior in power to the gods of the fathers and to all
66 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

variety of Palestinian ’elim.1 By the mediation of Moses the people

have the experience that a single God can be so powerful as to
impose himself alone for the worship of the faithful. Yahweh does
not present himself to Moses as the only God but as the jealous
God, which leaves the door open for the existence of other gods
but carries for the covenant people the absolute prohibition against
believing that these gods have any power over them. The witness
of the texts makes it difficult to deny that for a very long time
Yahweh had been the God peculiar to Israel: the Israelites depend
on Yahweh whilst the Moabites are under the power of Chemosh
(Jg. 11.23-24); even in David’s time it was thought that Yahweh’s
power ended at the frontiers of Israel (1 Sam. 26.19) and Ahaz
offers sacrifices to the gods of Damascus which are deemed by him
to bear sway outside his territory (2 Chr. 28.23). But even if
Yahweh is originally one God amongst others he is not a God like
others. The history of Israel is, from its origin and throughout its
development, a succession of manifestations of the superiority of
Yahweh over other gods: Moses confounds the gods of Egypt,
and the prophet Elijah, one of the most zealous champions of the
Mosaic spirit, pours scorn upon the worshippers of Baal and Baal
himself. Face to face with Yahweh other gods not only become
aware of their inferiority but they undergo a veritable defeat from
which they never recover. This progressive dethronement of gods
for which the history of Israel is the theatre, faith transposes into
primordial times, those of myth, by relating how at the beginning
of the world Yahweh triumphed over rival deities by way of
combat (Is. 51.9; Ps. 74.2ff.) or by that of a trial; and in this
respect Psalm 82 is particularly interesting: there Yahweh is repre¬
sented as exercising judgment in the assembly of the gods and
reducing the latter to the rank of angels or princes for not having
exercised justice. Affirmation of Yahweh’s victory over other gods
led logically to the denial of all power to these gods both in the
development of history and in the ordering of the world. In the
thought of the Yahwist and of that of the earliest prophets,

1 One cannot speak of evolution within the faith of Israel towards monotheism,
for from the moment when Israel becomes conscious of being the people chosen
by one God it is in practice a monotheistic people; and so one can speak with
Albright, to name only one of the most recent and illustrious historians, of the
monotheism of Moses (From the Stone Age to Christianity), on condition however
that by this term there is understood a conviction of faith and not a result of
reflection.
universal history is directed by Yahweh, even when that history
has no direct connection with that of Israel (cf. Amos i .3-2.3; 9.7;
Is. 7.18; 8.7-10; 10.4ft.). The invective of the prophets against
t e gods of the nations are not motivated by hate or arrogance, but
by the convictions that these gods are powerless to grant to the
nations the place to which they have a right in the order of
creation; with still more reason these gods could not be of any help
to members of the people of Israel who committed the folly of
forsaking Yahweh to put themselves under their protection. The
Deuteronomist by the repetition of the classic formula: “Yahweh
is God and there is no other God than he” (Dt. 4.35; 6.4; 32.39),
insists on the need for a unique religious object, and in an analogous
spirit Jeremiah speaks of foreign gods as gcds “who are no gods”
(Jer. 2.11; 5.7, 10). After that it was easy for Second Isaiah to
draw the ultimate consequences of faith in the all-mightiness of
Yahweh by proclaiming that gods other than Yahweh not only
had no power but were even non-existent; he says they are ’elilim,
non-entities, habdlim, empty breath, ma aseh, yadayim, human
creations which have no reality other than the matter of which their
idols are made (Is. 41*1! 43-9> 44*6; 45-22) and where these were
truly worshipped—for the Israelites were not so narrow as to deny
all sincere religious life outside their own religion—the prophets
regarded it as the unwitting worship of Yahweh (Mai. i.n).
 IV. ANGELS AND OTHER POWERS
DIVINE OR DEMONIC

T he beings denoted by the terms “sons of God” (bene ’El

or bene ha elohim) or “heavenly host” formed the celestial
court of Yahweh. What we know about their origin is
confined to fragmentary references to a myth in chapter 6 of
Genesis, no doubt formerly more fully developed, whose impact
the Yahwist tradition was forced to mitigate by setting this fall of
the angels in harmony with that of men.1 Their creation is nowhere
mentioned, for the heavenly host in Gen. 2.1 must be understood
in a very wide sense. Job (38.7) speaks of the “ sons of God ” as
existing prior to the creation proper and Psalm 148 (w. 1-6) men¬
tions angels at the head of the works of creation which must praise
God. The nature of angels is expressed by the title ben ha elohim,
that is to say one who belongs to the category of the divine. There
is no Adamic element in them although they are almost always
represented in human form when they enter into contact with men
(Gen. 18.2; 19.1; Jos. 3.13; Jg. 13.3$.; 6.11; Ez. 9.2; Dan. 9.21);
they behave in a very human way, sharing meals, for instance (Gen.
18.19), but from an early time these texts have been emended in
order to safeguard the spiritual nature of the angels (in Jg. 13.15, 16
the angel does not eat).2 The function of angels is expressed by
the term mal’ak, messenger; they are in fact sent by God to carry
a message which, in the form of an order or a promise, is always
a revelation on his part. Questions of personality and precedence
are unimportant in the early days; it is only from the time of
Daniel, and probably under the influence of Persian angelology,
that a hierarchy is established in the angel world and it is Michael
and Gabriel who henceforward play the leading role (Dan. 9.21;
10.13). The Seraphim and Cherubim3 do not include all the angels,
only those whom Yahweh attaches most especially to the service
1 In Gen. 6.3, 5 it is a matter of the punishment of men who, however, had no
part in the angels’ misdemeanour.
'• In Tobit 12.19 t^le angel pretends to eat, and Josephus introduces the same
suggestion into his exegesis of Genesis 18 (Ant. 1.11, 2).
* Cf. for Cherubim the study of Dhorme and Vincent KB, 1926, pp 328ft

68
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 69
of his own person. The root srph, to burn, to be warm, does not
necessarily imply that the seraphim were represented in the form
of serpents, although in two passages the two terms are associated
(Num. 21.6; Dt. 8.15); we might be more tempted—with the
support of Is. 14.29 and 30.6 where it is a matter of a saraph flying,
and particularly of the inaugural vision in chapter 6—to consider a
solar or at least astral origin for these beings. The kerubim must
be linked with the karibu or kuribu, terms which in Assyro-
Babylonian religion mean either the believer worshipping his god
or the divine intercessor presenting the prayer of the believer to a
principal god, and which we often find represented in the form of
monsters with human faces on the monuments which guarded the
entrances of temples and palaces. It is just this function of guardian
of a sacred area which is exercised by the kerub in Genesis. The
cherubim are directly connected with the presence of Yahweh
whether that presence is made evident over the distance which
separates it from the human sphere, as in the case of the Ark
(Ex. 25.17-22), or communicates itself to men (Ps. 18.11; 2 Sam.
21.11), this double aspect being illustrated by the fixity and the
mobility of the cherubim (cf. Ez. 1.4!?.). It would be wrong to
contrast the Seraphim with the Cherubim in so far as both groups
are messengers of grace; both alike serve the purpose of safeguarding
divine holiness and of making possible without danger its com¬
munication to man. Are we to regard these angelic powers as
distant echoes of a pre-Israelite tradition, as might be suggested by
the mention of Kerub in Ez. 28.13, °rfly as imperfect sketches
of a theology of the communication of God with man? The second
solution appears to us preferable, though it does not preclude Israel
from having borrowed material from alien mythologies.
Sometimes the demons are ancient Canaanite deities, sometimes
they are reminders of the desert period when Yahwism had not yet
received dogmatic formulation and as a consequence easily tolerated
the presence of beliefs which are spoken of very vaguely as popular
religion. At other periods of syncretism certain of these demons
received sacrifices, like the se’irim, the hairy ones, goat-faced demons
(Lev. 17.7; 2 Kings 23.8; 2 Chr. 11.15); there were also the
shedim (the black ones?) to whom occasionally children were
sacrificed (Ps. 106.37; Dt. 32,I7)> a single passage mentions the
goddess Lilith (Is. 34.14), a nocturnal monster which lurks amongst
ruins. At least one of these demons was integrated into Israelite
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
7°
ritual: at the time of the great atonement festival the high priest
sent away one goat for Yahweh and another for Aza^el; this
Azazel whose mysterious name suggests some connection with the
goat (the root 'azaz means to be strong and to be proud) was a
desert demon (Lev. 16.22), the desert always being regarded as the
places where forces hostile to Yahweh might operate (Is. 34.11;
13.21; Lk. 11.24). Since generally man remained outside that
dangerous area, demons played no vital part in his life; for Israelite
faith it is Yahweh who is the author of good and ill (Amos 3.6;
Lam. 337-38; Job. 9.24) and it is only at a late period, when that
belief became increasingly difficult to sustain, that demonology took
an important place in theology.1

Satan

This personage has a history in the Old Testament, and we can

say of him that he does not exist but he comes into being. The
focal point of that history appears in the book of Chronicles
(1 Chr. 21) where, used for the first time as a proper name, Satan
plays the part of a kind of anti-god. The root stn (stm) expresses
the act of putting oneself crosswise, which in the realm of justice
can show itself as accusation and calumny. On occasion human
beings can exercise that satanic function: David (1 Sam. 29.4), the
sons of Zeruiah (2 Sam. 19.23), any adversary (1 Kings 5.18), Hadad
the adversary of Solomon (1 Kings 11.14, 23); divine beings like
the angel of Yahweh in the Balaam story (Num. 22.22, 32) can
also bar the way to a man’s purposes. In all these passages “ satan ”
is never identified as a distinct person, but the example of men
or spirits opposing another’s plans, especially in the military or
judicial spheres, largely supplied the material for that figure of
the adversary -par excellence. The earliest text in which Satan
figures as an individual (Zech. 3) shows him in process of accusing
the High Priest Joshua before the divine tribunal. According to
that scene the Sitz im Leben of Satan might be found in the lawsuit
where, as we know from the story of Naboth and by certain
allusions in the Psalms (71.n, 13; 109.6, 20), the accusers were the
determining factor in the condemnation of the guilty and still
more in that of the innocent. According to an hypothesis put for-
1 In Psalm 91.5 pestilence and destruction are not demons but personifications
natural to a poetic style.
 THEOLOGY* OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 71

ward by Torczyner and taken up by Ad. Lods1 the origin of the

figure of Satan should be sought in connection with police. There
were in Egypt and at the court of the Persian kings officials called
the eye and ear of the king. According to the description
which Xenophon gives,2 each year they travelled through the
provinces of the kingdom accompanied by a body of soldiers; they
presented reproofs to the satrap when they found him abusing his
power, and if they did not obtain satisfaction they referred the
matter to the king who, on their report, took irrevocable decisions,
deposing the governor without trial or defence, sometimes having
him put to death by his own guards. It is possible that the figure
of Satan was inspired both by the customs of Israelite lawsuits and
by the police methods of the Persian kings. By nature Satan
belongs to the general category of bene haelohim and the use
of the preposition betok, in the midst of, in Job 1.6 (cf. Gen. 23.10
and 1 Sam. io.io) indicated a relation of similitude and kinship.
Satan is not an intruder into Yahweh’s celestial court, he enjoys a
privileged position even among the angels for, while these have a
limited mission such as that of executing an order or of watching
over a kingdom, Satan has at disposal a greater liberty which allows
him to go to and fro on the earth and to walk therein, for his
mission, wider than that of all the other angels, consists in discover'
ing on the whole earth the faults or infidelities of men and reporting
them to God. This police function leads him to he the adversary
par excellence. In virtue of his office he regards all human beings
with suspicion, spying upon their slightest actions, in order to find
some occasion of accusing them. His office obliges him, in Lind-
blom’s phrase, to “ have the poison of suspicion in his heart and the
spy-glass of malice before his eye ”fl and his suspicion ends by
making him malicious and unjust: from accuser he becomes
destroyer, for the opposition which he shows towards men leads
him to a like opposition to God, whose office certainly involves
1 In an article which appeared in the Bulletin de I'Universite htbrdique de
Jerusalem, 1938, pp. 15-21: “Comment Satan a fait son entree dans le monde ”
and in the Expository Times 1936-37, p. 563. Ad. Lods’ study appeared in Melanges
syriens presented to M. Rene Dussaud, p. 649. Les origines de la figure de Satan
A closely similar point of view has been defended by A. Brock-Utne, Der Feind
Die alttestamentliche Satansgestalt im Lichte der sozialen Verh'dltnisse des nahen
Orients, Klio, 1935, pp. 219®.
2 Cyropaedia VIII, chap. 6; the same title is also found in Egypt (cf. A. Moret,
Histoire de 1‘Orient, t. 2, p. 760).
3 Composition du livre de Job, Eund 1945, p. 23.
?2 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

judging men, but whose chesed is always disposed to love them.

Once set over against God—and in x Chr. 21 there is attributed
to Satan what in the parallel narrative of 2 Sam. 24 is Yahweh’s
work—Satan soon unites in his person all the functions of the evil
powers previously divided amongst a multitude of demons and evil
spirits or he becomes the head of the army of demons who are
opposed to the celestial hosts of Yahweh.1

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Canaan, T., Ddmonenglaube im Lande der Bibel, Leipzig 1929.

Dhorme-Vincent, “Les cherubins ”, RB, 1926, p. 328 and 481#.
Duhm, H., Die bosen Geister im A.T., Tubingen 1904.
Jirku, A., Die Ddmonen und ibre Abwehr im A.T., Leipzig 1912.
Satan, Etudes carmelitaines, recrueil collectif, Desclee de Brouwer 1950.

1 Here we keep strictly to the testimony of the canonical books of the O.T.
In the Apocrypha the figure of Satan takes such an amplitude that he becomes
a real anti-god; through the identification of the serpent of Genesis with Satan
and his being associated with death (Wisdom 2.24) he becomes a reality no
one can escape. It must, however, be stressed that the “ dualism ” we find in
certain texts of the apocrypha or New Testament (John 12.31; 2 Cor. 4.4) is only
moral and religious and never metaphysical; the demons and Satan remain
dependent on the one God who has created everything.
 V. MANIFESTATIONS OF GOD

A living and sovereign God like Israel’s can choose all

sorts of ways of manifesting his presence, but since his true
_ nature is spiritual and therefore invisible, no means will be
r uenA,?JIVC adecIuate expression to that presence. The God
of the Old Testament will always remain the hidden God whom
Moses saw only from behind and the skirts of whose robe alone
Isaiah perceived. But this hidden God had the strong intention
of manifesting his presence and chooses for that the normal
phenomena of creation and certain forms which he creates specially
for the purpose. r 7
The first are three in number:
M G.od aPPeafs in nature. In the majority of ancient religions
the gods are originally personifications of natural forces; thus in
Babylon the chief divine triad is composed of the sun (Shamash)
the moon (Ishtar) and water (Ea). Quite often Yahweh is also
found associated with the forces of nature, but he manifests himself
less in those which secure the regular course of the times and
seasons than in catastrophic forces, fire, lightning, earthquake.
These catastrophic aspects are found together in a text which is
one of the most important for the Old Testament idea of revelation :
the prophet Elijah at Mount Horeb sees wind, earthquake and
fire follow one another only to learn that these means by which
the deity was accustomed to reveal himself were only the prelude
to a more effective manifestation, that of the word (i Kings in).
Nevertheless there is a very large number of passages which show
God linked with these natural forces,1 particularly the historical
1 Amongst the phenomena of nature fire, storm and earthquake are the ones
which appear most often in connection with Yahweh, but that does not allow us
to make him a storm god or volcano god; but these manifestations were peculiarly
appropriate for his power and his mysteriousness. Theological reflection seized
upon these natural phenomena in the formulation of concepts which were intended
to r«olve the problem of the divine presence; this is particularly clear in the case
ot P, cloud which became luminous at night, a theme the history of which
in biblical tradition is an attempt to make a permanent presence out of an occasional
presence The combination of this theme with that of the ark, the tent and the
glory illustrates the subordination of nature to history (cf. A. Dupont-Sommer •
Nubes tenebrosa et illuminans noctem. Esquisse d’une histoire du concept de la
nuee divine dans l’A.T. ”, RHR, 1943, pp. if.).

73
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
74
and poetic accounts of the theophany at Sinai (Ex. 19.19; 20.18;
Ps. 29.3; Job 37.5); in these manifestations Israel had the conviction
of really seeing God, beholding however in nature his vestment
rather than his body.1
(b) God appears in a human form. This type of appearance is
common to the whole of antiquity. In Israel we find it only
sporadically, but such passages as Genesis 18 and 32 closely
approach in their realism certain pagan narratives about the visit
to earth of a deity clothed in human form. A less crude realism
appears in the prophetic visions of God (1 Kings 22.19; Amos 9.1;
Is. 6.iff.) where God always appears in a human form, whilst the
way in which these visions are recounted serves to underline that
anthropomorphism did not begin to grasp the full implications of
the divine. The phrase characteristic of the prophet Ezekiel, demut
kemar’eh ’adam (i.i2ff.) shows clearly that man, as an expression
of the deity, goes no further than appearance or resemblance.
(c) The gods appear in animal form. Such appearance is rarely
met with in Israel, although it was widely current amongst their
Egyptian neighbours. Nevertheless it could be admitted that
certain animals might be charged with divine mana and therefore
be capable of representing the deity, just as the bull and perhaps
also the serpent were sometimes in Israel representations of the
legitimate divinity; far more frequently, however, an animal was
the expression of demonic forces hostile to Yahweh (cf. the book
of Daniel).
Alongside this naive view, which admits in short the possibility
of seeing God, we find from a very early time the belief that God
could not be seen and that, as a way of revealing himself, he
chooses means which at the same time respect his transcendence
and his desire to be present. In this theological reflection Israel
had to take into account three considerations of principle:
(a) God is invisible and therefore essentially spiritual.
(b) God is present, and that presence is not a remote reality, but
must be shown through God’s dwelling in the midst of his people.
(c) God is unique; there is only one God and there is no one who
could be like him.

1 The comparison of Psalm 104 with the Egyptian hymn to Aton shows clearly
two conceptions of nature; the Egyptian hymn is addressed to Aton, that is to say
to the solar disc: “You rise at the horizon, you illumine the earth”, etc., the Psalm
on the contrary says: “ Thou coverest thyself with light as with a garment,”
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 75

These three principles were not always easy to reconcile and

even had a tendency to exclude each other, as with the principles
of the invisibility of God and his nearness. But Israel attempted to
resolve the difficulty; the solutions could only be tentative, but
in the light of their fulfilment we must regard them not as vain
speculations but as approaches to the biblical solution of the divine
presence, that of God become man in Jesus Christ.

A. THE ANGEL OF YAHWEH

The figure of this personage has been spoken of as elusive and

perplexing;1 in fact by this name there is meant either a form
of appearance of Yahweh in the nature of a double or outward
soul, or a being enjoying a personal existence clearly differentiated
from that of Yahweh. The noun mal’ak comes from the root la’ak,
which in Arabic, Ugantic and Ethiopic has the meaning of “ to
send with a message that is to be conveyed ”; so although etymolo¬
gically the term can have no other meaning than that of
messenger”,2 the scope and attributes of the messenger can be
subject to variation. On occasion the messenger could become a
genuine representative of God, playing a part comparable to that
of a divine or royal statue whose presence had the same import
as that of the sovereign himself; according as the angel was
envisaged as a messenger in the narrow sense of the word or as
a representative, the stress was laid on what distinguishes him from
Yahweh or on the bond which unites him to Yahweh. In the
Old Testament the angel of Yahweh varies between a representative
and a messenger.
The most ancient text in which the angel is mentioned may be
the blessing of Jacob, Gen. 48.15-16, over the sons of Joseph : ‘‘ The
God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the
God who has been my shepherd all my life long unto this day, the
angel (bammal’ak) who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the
lads.” The angel in this passage is not distinguished from the God
of the fathers and his attributes are those of God: protector of

1 Ad. Lods, “ L’ange de Yahweh et 1’ * ame exterieure ’ ” in Studien zur semitischen

Philologie presented to J. Wellhausen, p. 265.
2P. Lagrange, art. cit., and Stade, Biblische Theol. des A.T., 1905, p. 96, insist
on the role of messenger.
76 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

the people or more exactly of the clan to which he is united by

a bond of kinship, he directly participates in the life of this people
and therefore he shows strongly human features which he will also
retain throughout the evolution that he undergoes.
The kinsman God becomes the transcendent God on the one
hand through contact with the gods of Canaan, on the other hand
through the Mosaic revelation; henceforth the simple identification
of the mal’ak with God is impossible and the mal’ak is subordinated
to Yahweh by becoming either a form of manifestation or a mes¬
senger. This idea of the mal’ak not only allowed Israel to declare
a continuity, even an identity, between the religion of the fathers
and that of Moses, it also made it possible to speak of the presence
of Yahweh in many places without calling in question his unity,
and his intervention amongst men without challenging his
transcendence. In many texts the functions of Yahweh and the
angel are to some extent interchangeable: one who sees the angel
can say he has seen God (cf. Gen. 16.13; Jg. 6.22; 13.22). It is
indeed important to notice that the role of the angel, in the various
aspects which that figure assumes, is always beneficent (Gen.
24.7-10; Ex. 33.2); even when he appears sword in hand it is to
warn the people of the dangers into which they are running
(Num. 22); in one solitary passage the angel of Yahweh comes to
punish (2 Sam. 24.16; 1 Chr. 21.16). To explain the coexistence
within one single passage of the angel and Yahweh, Adolphe Lods
had recourse to the concept of an outward soul which is found
amongst primitive peoples and also amongst others more developed,
such as the Egyptians. “ According to that way of thinking certain
parts of the personality can be detached without ceasing for that
reason to belong to it, and without the personality on its side
ceasing to exist; these detached elements are the property of the
person himself and yet distinct from him.”1 This external soul
can be housed in a material object and it dies when that object
comes to be destroyed. This is perhaps not unknown to the Old
Testament, for when Gehazi runs after Naaman to try to obtain a
gift, the “heart” of Elisha “went” with his unscrupulous servant
while the prophet had stayed in his house (2 Kings 5.26). But
nothing allows us to state with certainty that the same psychology
applies to God. Besides, careful study of all the texts concerning
the angel of Yah»weh shows that one can only give partial assent
1 Lods, art. cit., p. 270.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 77

to that explanation.1 Even in texts where Yahweh and the angel

act side by side their functions are distinguished; thus in Gen.
16.7-r4 it is the angel of Yahweh who speaks to Hagar and who
says to her, “Yahweh has heard thy cries”. The angel is there¬
fore the messenger who appears and who speaks in place of Yahweh,
but the prayer can only be granted by Yahweh himself. Similarly
in Genesis 22 the angel of Elohim calls to Abraham from the height
of heaven and proclaims to him Yahweh’s oath (vv. 15-16). The
function of the angel is comparable to that of a prophet who, though
identifying himself for the time being with the one who has sent
him, nevertheless remains a fundamentally distinct personality. It
is not without interest to observe that the angel of Yahweh is
never mentioned by the great prophets, so that it can be asked
whether it is not the prophet who has taken the place elsewhere
held by the angel; and the title of mal ak Yahweh given to one
prophet (Haggai 1.13) could point in this direction.2
Whether as a double of Yahweh or a messenger, the angel only
exists and functions by virtue of Yahweh’s free decision; he is so
little a person in his own right that it cannot be said from one
narrative to the next whether the same personage is being referred to,
the more so because grammatically the expression can be translated
“ the angel of Yahweh ” or “ an angel of Yahweh ”. The angel
exists when Yahweh has need of him, just as the host of angels,
amongst which the angel of Yahweh ultimately belongs, and which
constitute the heavenly court, only truly exist when the lord of
angels gives them a definite and temporary mission to execute.

B. THE FACE OF GOD

Of all the parts of the body the face is the one which expresses
the greatest variety of feelings and attitudes: joy lights up the
face (Ps. 104.15; Prov. 15.13), anger makes it fall and turns it evil
(Gen. 4.5; Neh. 2.2). Hence it is quite normal for the face of
God to hold a very important place in the Old Testament as a
manifestation of his feelings. The whole personality of Yahweh
1 Comparison with the fravashis of Zoroastrianism and the genii of the Latin gods
is not conclusive, because with these powers pre-existent to a being are concerned,
while the mal'ak only intervenes when God wants to enter into relation with man!
2 The angel states the orders of God adding to them neum Yahweh just as the
prophets do (cf. Gen. 22.16).
78 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

is concentrated in his face, his love as well as his anger, although

the latter is expressed rather by the turning away or the absence of
the countenance. The face of God is thus the presence of God
without any reservation. In the passage which is the clearest for
studying this conception, Exodus 33, where Yahweh promises
Moses that his face will go with the Israelites, it is entirely a
question of the personal presence of Yahweh in the midst of his
people; but this passage is located in a context which leads us to
suspect that there is theological exploitation of the idea, because
the face seems to be a substitute for Yahweh himself, who clearly
states his refusal to accompany the people across the desert (33-3-5)
and his intention to use an angel as a substitute. By distinguishing
between Yahweh and his face this chapter places the conception
of the face in a perspective which does not completely correspond
to the Israelite picture. That God reveals himself and that man
can see him is a statement which in ancient Israel was hardly
doubted. In Dt. 4.37, “ He brought you out of Egypt by his face
and by his great power”, the expression denotes the person, that
is to say, God himself and not one of his representatives. The sense
is still more clear in Isaiah 63.9 (adopting the reading of the LXX
in preference to the M.T.), “ Not a messenger nor an angel, but his
face saved them”, and in Psalm 21.10 the “time of his face” is
the moment of Yahweh’s personal appearance. The name of
Penuel, attesting that Jacob the ancestor of the nation had seen
God face to face, and the example of Moses speaking to God face
to face, shows us that the face did not constitute any problem
(Ex. 33.11; Num. 12.8; 14.14). Nevertheless the dogma was
affirmed in Israel from very early times—a development belonging
no doubt to the current which issued in the Elohist editings of the
Yahwist source—that the face of God could not be seen (Ex.
33.20-23; x Kings 19.13). The narratives relating the visions of
Jacob and Moses were edited in such a way as to show that the
phenomenon was most exceptional and that Jacob had seen it only
at the price of an injury and Moses had seen it only from behind.
In their concern to support this dogma the Massoretes much
later on replaced the Qal ra ah by the Niphal yera’eh when the
face of God was the direct object (e.g. Ex. 23.13-17; 24.11; Ps.
42.3).
These developments were in accord with the general weakening
of anthropomorphism, but we are not of the opinion that the same
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 79

tendency gave any suggestion of making a distinction between the

face and Yahweh himself, making it a kind of double or even
hypostasis. It is, in fact, difficult to think that a term which
expressed so strongly and in every age the essential nature and
presence of a person could have been chosen to express his separate¬
ness. What happened in Phoenician religion, where a secondary
deity could be called the face of the principal deity, as with Tanit
-pen Baal, provides no analogy, the face being vital for the mani¬
festation of a person and in the religion of Israel this person can
only be Yahweh.
For the purpose of reconciling the presence of God with his
invisibility and his unity, the conceptions of angel and of glory,
both of which had a material basis, the one in humanity and the
other in nature, eclipsed that of the face as a form of God’s appear¬
ance. Yet it must be observed that the face never ceased to be
considered as a revelation of God; seeking the face of Yahweh,
that is to say his personal presence, sums up both the temple cult
and communion with God by the way of private prayer (Ps. 63.2-3;
100.2; 17.15 etc.) and believers had the certainty that this seeking
of the face had as its counterpart Yahweh s blessing which con¬
sisted precisely in his countenance looking upon them (Num. 6.25;
Ps. 80.4, 8, 20).

C. THE GLORY OF GOD

The fundamental idea expressed by the root kbd is that of

weightiness. Kabod designates whatever had weight—it is used of
riches. Gen. 31.x; Is. 10.3; Hag. 2.7; Ps. 49.17; of success:
Gen. 45.13, 1 Kings 3,I3 an<^ beauty: Is. 35.2. Since anything
weighty inspires respect and honour, kabod not only denotes the
obvious objective reality but the feeling which is experienced
towards what inspires respect. This double meaning is particularly
evoked where the glory of God is concerned. God reveals his glory,
but his creatures must also give glory to him, as in Ps. 29.1; Jos,
7.19; Is. 42.8; 48.11. This glory is what God possesses in his own
right, it is a kind of totality of qualities which make up his-divine
power; it has close affinity with the holiness which is of the nature
of deity and it is a visible, extension for the purpose of manifesting
holiness to men. Whether it be manifest in the sphere of creation,
8o THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

history or the cultus, it is always, to use Bengel’s particularly happy

expression, uncovered holiness (die aufgedeckte Heiligkeit) or, to
express it in more picturesque language which takes account of the
concrete aspect of kabod, “ the incandescent ectoplasm of his
invisible spirit”.1 Kabod is always conceived as something con¬
crete and we prefer for the usual distinction between abstract and
concrete kabod that of general and special kabod. Kabod is always
intended to be seen, witness its constant association with phenomena
connected with light. In one early text belonging to the JE
source, naively anthropomorphic but rich in meaning, the glory is
represented as a luminous reality, less directly divine than the face,
but nevertheless sufficient to annihilate the man who may look
directly at it and the reflection of which, left after its passage, is
perceptible to human eyes (Ex. 33.18$.). This more special con¬
crete sense is most in evidence in the Priestly source P. Even
while using the term to denote the divine power in general (e.g.
Ex. 14.4-17) it envisages the glory primarily as a concrete form
of Yahweb’s appearance, as a veritable theologoumenon of the
divine presence. The description given of it is that of fire which
appears at certain times through the cloud which normally hides
it (Ex. 16.10; Num. 17.7), although the part played by the cloud
as a manifestation of Yahweh is greater in scope than that played
by the glory (cf. Ex. 33.7L; 40.36-38). The origin of this con¬
ception is probably multiple: phenomena of the natural order such
as a volcanic eruption (Ex. 24.16$.) or a storm (Num. 16.19-35)
but also cultic rites like the fire of the altar (Lev. 9.23$.) and light
in general,2 first of all the works of creation and their essential
condition (Gen. 1), lie at the base of this concept which, having its
origin in the events of Sinai, seeks each time it is used to confront
the people with the divine presence in its overwhelming yet saving
solemnity: Ex. 24.17. The glory appeared to the children of
Israel in the form of devouring fire at the top of the mount.
Ex. 29.43: God meets with the children of Israel in the tent and
he will be sanctified by his glory.
Ex. 40.34$.: When Moses had completed the construction of
1 Paul Humbert, “ Les prophetes d’lsrael ou les tragiques de la Bible ”, RThPh,
1926, p. 229.
2 The perpetual lamp of the sanctuary must likewise be regarded as a representa¬
tion of kabod; when Eli cries: 1-kabod, the glory is departed from Israel, he is
thinking of the end of the cult and the extinguishing of that lamp brought about
by the capture of the ark (cf. 1 Sam. 3.3; 4.21).
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 8l

the tent, the cloud covered the tent and the glory of Yahweh filled
the place.

The important position occupied for the prophet Ezekiel by the

idea of glory is the result of a current which developed indepen¬
dently of that which led to P. Ezekiel moves along the line which
starts from Isaiah chapter 6 where the glory appears as the normal
expression of the divine presence. Moreover there are undeniable
analogies between the inaugural visions of the two prophets: the
tour animals of Ezekiel are reminiscent of the seraphim; the burn¬
ing coals of fire, of the altar. According to Ezekiel the kabod is
*jhe manifestation of God in concrete form, it is identical
with him; that is why, as in certain passages of Genesis where the
angel of Yahweh and Yahweh are almost confused, God and the
kabod are interchangeable, e.g. Ez. 9 where in verse 3 kabod is
the subject, but in verse 4 the subject is Yahweh. Since the kabod
is identical with Yahweh it is natural that the prophet insists on
the fact that he cannot be seen in his essence but only in his image:
mar’eb demuth Yahweh kebod Yahweh (1.26-28). The kabod is
very closely linked with the Temple; by it God consecrates the
temple as the place of his presence. While the temple is the normal
place of his residence, as is brought out by 43.2ff. where the kabod
returns to indwell the temple, Ezekiel nevertheless implies that this
association is not automatic and absolute but that it is due to the
free choice of Yahweh. The kabod appears as a kind of celestial
temple stationed above the world and able to move very swiftly
from one extremity to the other of the universe; this mobility of
the kabod is the mobility of Yahweh himself, of the God who has
a history and who directs world history. It is interesting to note
that right above the kabod a human form appears, sc that the glory
is the image of God just as man is, and this association of image and
glory reunited in one man will be developed along Ezekiel’s lines
by the apostle Paul (2 Cor. 3-18). Comparing the concept of
glory in P and in Ezekiel, we can say that for the latter it is a
permanent presence intended to express the freedom of Yahweh,
master of the world and of history, whilst the former wishes to
bring to light the reality of Yahweh’s approach, whether for sal¬
vation or more often to announce the punishment of those who
have rebelled against his will, e.g. Num. 16.42; Lev. 10.1-3. These
differences, moreover, are by no means irreducible, for the God
who comes and the God who directs history are only two aspects, or
82 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

better still two anticipations, of God’s kingdom which will be

made manifest at the end of time.1 The eschatological significance
of the kabod of Yahweh is already implied in the vision of Isaiah 6
where the prophet contemplates in advance what will happen when
the kingdom of Yahweh is made real in its perfection. In support
of this meaning we can appeal to the following passages: Is. 40.5 :
The glory of Yahweh will be revealed and all flesh shall see it
together—Is. 58.8: Then . . . the glory of Yahweh shall follow
after thee—Is. 59-19: His glory shall be feared from the rising of
the sun—Is. 60.1 : Arise, for the light is come and the glory of
Yahweh shines brightly upon thee—Hab. 2.14: The earth shall
be full of the knowledge of the glory of Yahweh-—Num. 14.21 :
The glory shall fill the earth—Ps. 57.6-12: Let thy glory cover the
earth—Ps. 72.19: Let the name of his glory be blessed for ever.
Lastly, if the text is not to be emended, the hope of the author
of Psalm 73 must be understood as a reference to the glory to come,
when he affirms that God will receive him after all his misfortunes
in his kingdom of light. Israelites believed that a time would
come when the glory would rise up for all peoples and they saw
the preliminary signs of this in the cultus and in prophecy.

D. THE NAME OF GOD

We shall not deal within the limits of this chapter with the
numerous passages in which the name is synonymous with Yahweh,
a usage which became more and more frequent in post-exilic times,2
but merely with those in which the shem-Yahweh operates with
the force of an appearance of Yahweh. At the origin of this use
there is to a large extent, as for mal’ak, the desire to procure some
weakening of a too vivid anthropomorphism: thus in Ex. 23.19$.
the shem Yahweh is on the one hand Yahweh himself, and on the
other his substitute in which he shows his reality and by which he
is able to accompany the people without abandoning his transcen¬
dence. The prophet Isaiah speaks of the “ name of Yahweh which
comes from far, burning with his anger, his lips are full of indigna-
1 The theology of the Chronicler, which moves in the wake of Deuteronomy, insists
on the beneficent function of the glory (e.g. 2 Chr. 7.1-3), whilst P more often
sees in it the divine presence which comes to admonish and to punish.
2 Amongst the passages where the name of Yahweh and Yahweh are inter¬
changeable we may mention: Job 1.21; Dt. 28.38; Is. 48.9; Ez. 20.44; Amos 2.7.
 theology of the old testament 83

tion and his tongue as a devouring fire” (30.27). Here what is

normally only said of Yahweh himself is said of the name; therefore
Yahweh can act by his name in as comprehensive a fashion as by
angel or kabod. In the Deuteronomic writings particularly we
witness the theological development of the name of Yahweh.
According to Deuteronomy Yahweh has chosen a place as a dwelling
for his name; characteristic passages of this type are: Dt. 12.5:
Yahweh has placed his name in the Temple to make it dwell
there—r Kings 11.36: The name of Yahweh inhabits Jerusalem
1 Kings 9.3: The name of Yahweh dwells in the Temple for
ever—2 Sam. 7.13 : The Temple will be built for the shem—2 Chr.
20.8; Ps. 74.7: The sanctuary is called the dwelling place of the
name. Certain writers, for example Smend1 and Heitmiiller,2 have
minimized the importance of this affirmation by saying that the
Temple was simply the place where the name of Yahweh was
invoked, nevertheless it seems difficult not to see in these texts the
affirmation of a real habitation of Yahweh in the sanctuary. By
that, Deuteronomy is saying ‘‘Yahweh does not dwell in the
Temple in person, but is represented there by his name Already
in the dedicatory prayer 1 Kings 8.12, where the Massoretic text
must be corrected by the LXX, it is said that Yahweh dwells in
darkness, that is to say in the sky, and that the Temple is his
lodging-place; not long afterwards Deuteronomy resolves this
antinomy by speaking repeatedly of the dwelling in the Temple
of the name, which, moreover, makes it possible to throw into
greater relief the heavenly dwelling place of Yahweh, cf. 1 Kings
8.27-30. The theology of Deuteronomy is in the line of the preach¬
ing of the prophets, who admitted a particular association of Yahweh
with the Temple, not in the sense of the deity’s dwelling-place but
in that of God’s particular property. However, Deuteronomy
makes a concession to popular religion since it retains the view of
the Temple as a dwelling-place, but spiritualizes it through the
concept of the name.
With Deuteronomy we are on the road to the hypostatizing of
the name of Yahweh. In early texts the shem has only a limited
existence, when the Exodus is over the mal’ak, with whom the
shem is closely associated, returns to Yahweh until such time as he
uses it for a new revelation. The shem, in Deuteronomic theology,
1 Alttestamentliche Religionsgeschichte, 1893, p. 281, note.
2 Im Namen Jesu, 1903.
84 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

is an attempt to give permanent expression to faith in a deus

revelatus: by his name Yahweh dwells in the Temple and will
only leave it at its destruction (cf. Jer. 7.12). The shem becomes
in that case a veritable hypostasis within the meaning of the defi¬
nition given by Mowinckel:1 “ a divine entity partly independent,
partly a manifestation of a superior divinity; it represents the per¬
sonification of a quality or an activity or of a component part of
the superior deity. The personification of abstract concepts is often
spoken of, but even if for us the name, the power, or the qualities
of a person are abstractions it is not so to the primitive mind, for
which qualities and actions are entities relatively independent of
the subject.”
The period following Deuteronomy strengthens the tendency to
make the name an hypostasis; although we still find numerous
passages where the name is only a synonym for Yahweh himself
(Is. 56.6; Ps. 103.1, etc.), those in which the name is found
endowed with full independence became more and more numerous;
these are, in particular, passages where the shem forms the
grammatical subject of the phrase, whilst in the others it is only
the direct object: Zech. 14.9: Yahweh will be one, his name will
be one—Ps. 8.2-10: the name of Yahweh is glorious over the earth.
Since the Psalm deals with manifestations of God in nature, the
use of the name is intended to show that Yahweh himself does not
dwell in nature. In an analogous manner the author of Psalm 19
will say that the heavens proclaim the kahod of God in order to
show the revelation of God in nature.
The expression “in the name of Yahweh” (heshem Yahweh)
sometimes has the almost instrumental suggestion as of an actual
power which man calls to his aid, as Ps. 54.3: “ O God, help
me by thy name and save me by thy power.” In this passage
the name is a means which Yahweh has available for action and
not simply a formula of invocation, and in Psalm 89.23 the name
of Yahweh is the means by which the prosperity of David is
assured. Comparable speculations on the subject of the name are
to be met with outside Israel where, however, the problem is more
easily solved because of a plurality of gods: the inscription of
Eshmunazar mentions Astarte shem haul,2 which might be a
1 RGG, 2nd ed., col. 2065.
2 Line 18, unless the heavenly (sheme) Astarte of Baal is to be read (cf. Gressmann,
A OTB, p. 445).
 theology of the old testament 85

parallel to Tanit pen baal. In conclusion, we may say that the

name, which we know always expresses the essential nature of a
eing, manifests the totality of the divine presence even more than
t e angel, the face or the glory; and at the same time this concept
ot the name safeguards the unity of God because name and person
are identical. To make God known to men is to make his name
known (cf. Jn. 17.6-26). The name associated with a person in
history will mark the consummation of all the gropings of ancient
Israel to resolve the problem so vital to it of the presence of God.1

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baudissin, W. W. von, “ ‘ Gott schauen ’ in der altt. Religion ”, ARW

1915, p. 173.

Boehmer, J„ Das biblische "lm Namen", eine sprachwissenschaftliche

Untersuchung, 1898.
Gottes Angesicht, 1908.
Brockington, L. H„ “ The presence of God, a study of the term glory
of Yahweh , Expository Times, 1945, October, p. 21.
Durr, L., Ezechiels Vision von der Erscheinung Gottes, Munster 1917.
Gall, A. von, Die Henlichkeit Gottes, Giessen 1900.
Giesebrecht, Fr., Die altt. Schdtzung des Gottesnamens, Konigsberg 1001
Grether, O., “Name und Wort Gottes”, BZAW 64, 1934.
Gulin, F„ “ Das Antlitz Gottes im A.T. ”, An. Ac. Fennicae, 1923, p. 21.
Johnson, A. R., “ The use of panim in the O.T.”, Festschrift O. Eiss-
feldt, 1947.
Kittel, Helmut, Die Herrlichkeit Gottes, Giessen 1934.
Lagrange, M. J„ “ L’ange de Yahwe”, RB, 1903, p. 212.
Lods, Ad., Lange de Yahweh et lame exterieure ”, Studien zur semit.
Philologie presented to J. Wellhausen, 1914.
Noetscher, Fr., Angesicht Gottes schauen nach biblischer und babylon-
ischer Auffassung, 1924.
Rad, von G., Deuteronomiumstudien (devotes one chapter to shem and
kabod), 1948.
Ramsey, A. M„ The Glory of God and the transfiguration of Christ
London 1948.
Rybinski, Der Mal’akh fahwe, Paderborn 1930.
Stein, B., Der Begriff Kebod Yahweh und. seine Bedeutung fur die altt.
Gotteserkenntnis, Emsdetten 1939.
Stier, F., Gott und sein Engel im A.T., Munster 1934.

1 On the utilization of the name Yahweh in the form ’Uw in the magical
papyri, cf. Baudissin-Eissfeldt, Kyrios II, pp. 206ff., though the identification of
Tdu) with Yahweh is debatable.
 VI. THE HOLINESS OF GOD

F rom the phenomenological point of view, holiness is a

supernatural and mysterious force which confers a special
quality upon particular persons and things. This definition
best gives the idea of what the Old Testament understands by the
term holiness. “Holiness,” wrote Johs. Pedersen, “never lost
its true nature as the force on which life depended and from which
it was renewed.”1 Varied as its aspects may be it is always a
manifestation of power; but for the Old Testament all power is
concentrated in the person of Yahweh, apart from whom no life
is possible in nature or mankind. Holiness is not one divine quality
among others, even the chiefest, for it expresses what is characteristic
of God and corresponds precisely to his deity, that is, by taking into
account the representation of the divine among the Semites, to the
fullness of power and life.
Yahweh is the holy one par excellence, but the concept of holiness
exists independently of him. The root qdsh2 which is encountered
in the majority of Semitic languages very probably expresses a cut,
a separation; locations which bear the name Qadesh are sacred
places, that is to say they are separated from and forbidden to
ordinary mortals; the sacred prostitutes, the qedeshim and
qedeshot are separated from the sphere of ordinary life. The idea
of power is found associated with that of separation: the person
or object taken away from normal life and usage are under the
dominion of a power which, like that of mana and tabu, can be
either dangerous or beneficent. Any moral conception is foreign
to this primitive notion of holiness: the man who falls smitten for
1 Israel, its life and culture, III-IV, p. 295.
2 The explanation from the root qd(d), to cut, has been upheld by W. Baudissin,
Studien zur semit. Religiongeschichte II, among others, and has been adopted by
the majority of critics. Others such as U. Bunzel have suggested the root quddushu,
to be brilliant (in a physical sense) and to be pure (moral sense). Others again
derive qdsh from dsh which expresses the idea of youthfulness and freshness: qdsh
would be an intensive form of chdsh; but chdsh designates what is new and brilliant,
in particular the pure and soft light of the new moon. In any case, it must be
stressed that the content of holiness is not exhausted by referring to its etymological
meaning.

86
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 87

having attempted to steady the holy ark which threatened to over¬

turn (2 Sam. 6) shows us that the Old Testament was not un¬
acquainted with this impersonal and material aspect of a holiness
which acted automatically.
Old Testament religion gives to holiness an aspect which goes
well beyond the etymological meaning and the materialistic phase,
n Hebrew the root qdsh undergoes a development without parallel
elsewhere: “the root qdsh reappears in the majority of forms of
the Hebrew language. In turn a regular verb, having its transitive
and intransitive forms and seven complete conjugations, participle,
a stract noun, adjective, concrete noun, proper noun, it might
almost be said that it is the grammatical centre of the Old Testa¬
ment just as the idea which it expresses is the theological centre.
Thanks to the marvellous flexibility of the Hebrew language the
same root successively denotes a state and an action, the action
suffered or produced, and the subject or object of that action. The
richness of expression is in no way inferior to the richness of the
idea, and the modifications of the one correspond exactly to the
multiple aspects of the other } It must therefore be recognized
that holiness in the Old Testament has a character sui generis which
is only very partially explained by etymology and by extra-Israelite
analogies. The essential aspect of holiness is that of power, but of
power in the service of a God who uses all things to make his
kingdom triumph. As soon as Yahweh takes possession of holiness
holiness does not take possession of Yahweh—the power of holi¬
ness no more consists in prohibition, in the limitation of the sacred
sphere, but in the power which communicates itself in order to
bestow life. This subjection of holiness to Yahweh was so complete
that very often Yahweh is defined as the holy one, the term holy
being synonymous with the divine (Is. 40.25; Hos. 11.9); in other
instances the terms God and holy are put in parallel2 (Is. 5.24;
Hab. 5.5, Ps. 71.22). When it is said that Yahweh swears by his
holiness that means that he swears by himself, as the parallelism

Alfred Boegner, La saintete de Dieu dans l’Ancien Testament, 1876, p. 131.

This work, although old, includes very interesting theological comments, particularly
on the subject of the relation between the holiness and the name of Yahweh.
2 Outside Israel the appellation “ holy gods ” appears for the first time in the
inscription of Yechimilk of Byblos (twelfth century); and it is found in the inscription
of Eshmunazar (fifth century, lines 9 and 22). It is possible that qedoshim in
Ps. 16.3 means pagan gods. But nowhere is this term charged with a religious
content comparable to what we discover in the O.T.
88 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

between holiness and nephesh shows (Amos 4.2 and 6.8; Ps. 89.36;
108.8). Likewise the relation between holiness and the name reveals
the identity of holiness with deity (Lev. 20.3; 22.2, 32; Amos 2.7).
It is possible, moreover, that the specifically Israelite notion of
holiness is associated with the revelation of the name of Yahweh,
for nowhere do the essential characteristics of holiness present
themselves to us with such precision as in the scene of the burning
bush, where both name and holiness are the most adequate
expressions for the divine life. This text teaches us that, even in
connection with Yahweh, the first effect of holiness is to keep man
at a distance: “ Who can survive before Yahweh, the holy God? ”
the inhabitants of Beth-Shemesh will say some centuries later
(1 Sam. 6.20). In face of the revelation of holiness man feels his
nothingness; not only is his creaturehood unveiled to him (Gen.
18.27; Job 42.6), but he recognizes that he is a creature tainted by
sin and that sin separates him from God—a separation which can
only be broken down by an initiative from God himself (Is. 6).
So the first result of the manifestation of holiness upon man can
only be fear; to recognize the holiness of God, which is the basic
form of sanctification, since it is expressed by the causative form of
the root qdsb, is above all to fear him (Is. 8.13; 29.23) and Psalm 99
gives three times as refrain a solemn qadosh hu in order to justify
the invitation to the peoples to tremble and prostrate themselves
before Yahweh. This overwhelming aspect of holiness also appears
when it is related to glory. Kabod is what gives a person this
weight, or, we could say, his soul. Each individual has his kabod
(Ps. 16.9; 30.13), but Yahweh has a quality of soul superior to any
that can be imagined and it is this quality which in his case is called
holiness. Thus there is no clear distinction between holiness and
glory. One cannot distinguish them by saying, for example, that
holiness is the glory of God in itself, and glory is his holiness in
relation to the world; no doubt the glory can be seen whilst holiness
remains invisible, but God communicates both his holiness as well
as his glory. If there is a difference we should see it in the fact that
kabod has a rather negative aspect, it is a power which overwhelms,
it is sometimes connected with terrifying manifestations in nature
(Ps. 29), whilst holiness is a life-giving power; the kabod presents
itself and, as such, it is a manifestation of the divine presence;
holiness not only presents but gives itself.
The specific character of holiness according to the Old Testament
 theology of the old testament 89

ISnot, however, exhausted by its negative aspect; holiness receives

its particular orientation from its relationship with the God of the
covenant. Because he is the God of the covenant, Yahweh does
not jealously keep his holiness for himself, shielding it from all
contamination by making it the barrier between the spheres of the
mne and human. His jealousy impels him, on the contrary, to
manifest his ho mess: thus the holiness revealed to Isaiah is not
only a power which annihilates him but one which raises him up
and makes him a prophet full of the power of Yahweh and charged
with displaying it before the eyes of the peoples. Yahweh sanctifies
himself, ntqdash, he sanctifies himself in the destruction of Gog
7 orJ,n Sidon against which he carries out his judgments
VTz■ 2°-22)- 1 his sanctification should make it possible to maintain
the covenant with Israel, just as the people of Israel at Meribah are
the object of a manifestation of holiness on Yahweh’s part when
they receive water from him, in spite of the strife by which they
oppose him (Num. 20.13). All the acts of deliverance for Israel’s
sake are manifestations of his holiness. The great deliverance by
w ich the people of Israel will be re-established in their land
(tz. 20.41; 28.25; 36-2°-24; 39.27) will be in the eyes of the
nations a demonstration of the vanity of their attacks and a
source of confusion, though not of utter annihilation. The
ink between holiness and the covenant appears in its full para¬
dox in the title the “holy one of Israel” which the prophet
Isaiah gives to Yahweh, without doubt for the first time It is
found 14 times in the first part and 16 times in the second
part ot the book. Because Isaiah’s oracles were so widely known
the expression has passed into three Psalms (71.22; 78.41; 8q.iq),
into Jeremiah (50.29; 51-6) and lnto Ezekiel (39.7); but the germ
o this title is probably to be found already in Hosea, who thinks of
Yahweh s dwelling in the midst of his people as characteristic of
his holiness (Hos. 11.9). The appellation “holy one of Israel”
does not mean that the holy one belongs to Israel, though strict
grammar would permit such a translation. Yahweh is the holy
one of Israel not because he is consecrated to Israel but because he
has consecrated Israel to himself, and Israel itself is holy only
because of this consecration to Yahweh. 7
In some of the passages referred to the expression occurs, more¬
over, with a slight variation which excludes any relationship of
possession. Hosea calls Yahweh: the holy one in the midst of
90 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

thee, qadosh beqirbeka (11.9), and Ezekiel: the holy one in Israel,
qadosh be Israel (39-7)- This association, which rests upon election,
implies that the holiness of which Israel is the object can turn
against them and in certain circumstances in the course of history
the divine holiness was for Israel an effective manifestation of
judgment. “ The light of Israel shall become a fire and his holy
one a flame consuming and devouring his thorns and his briers in
one day” (Is. 10.17). But the term holy one of Israel means above
all else that Yahweh keeps close to Israel, that he could not abandon
them without denying himself. The holy one dwells in the high
places, yet comes down to the contrite and humble (Is. 57.15), for
although holiness is that which qualifies God as god it is also that
in him which is most human. The holy one of Israel is he who
gives his word (Is. 3.24; 30.12, 15), the one who is always near
to help (Is. 31.1; 37.23), whose blessings are so evident that the
peoples will exclaim: ‘‘Yahweh is only found in thee” (Is.
45.11, 14). The association of the term holy with yoshea (Is. 43.3)
and particularly with go’el (43.14; 47.4; 48.17; 49.7) equally well
illustrates the communicative nature of holiness. If God is the
go’el, that is to say the near relative who exercises the right of
redemption, that means that the holy one, in spite of his distance
yet because of his vivifying power, is the near relative of his people
with whom he enters into a relationship intimate to the point of
jealousy: holiness and jealousy make up the contents of the name
Yahweh (Jos. 24.19). The entire history of Israel is the work of
holiness; it is not without reason that the prophet who forged the
title holy one of Israel is also the one who best showed the realization
of God’s plan in history, illustrating the exclamation of the
Psalmist: “Thy way, O God, is in holiness” (Ps. 77.14; 68.25).
Whilst subordinating holiness to the covenant, Yahweh remains
free to manifest his holiness outside the covenant, and the breaking
of the covenant by men does no injury to divine holiness. God is
holy and that is why he chooses to enter into the covenant; man, on
the contrary, can become holy only by entering into the covenant.
In a general way the people in their entirety are the recipients
of the holiness of Yahweh, but within the nation there are indi¬
viduals and objects which more than others are charged with divine
holiness. Whatever may be the vestiges of a primitive and
materialistic conception of holiness, in its theological reflection the
Old Testament always regards the holiness of objects as a property
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 91

conferred upon them by Yahweh, that is, as a holiness by relation¬

ship. In chronological order, the first object charged with holiness
is the ark in which the kabod of Yahweh is concentrated: Ikabod
the daughter-in-law of the priest Eli will say “ the kabod has
departed from Israel, for the ark of God has been taken” (1 Sam.
4.19-22). The holiness of the ark was never able to get rid of
its material and magical aspect, so under the influence of prophetic
Yahwism it was pushed into the background by the Jerusalem
temple which, since it was henceforward the place of revelation
rather than the habitation of the deity, answered better the spiritual
requirements of the religion of Israel. “ Holiness belongeth to thy
house” (Ps. 93.5), such is the affirmation of piety from the time
of Solomon to that of Zerubbabel (cf. Dt. 12.5; 16.6; Ps. 5.8;
79.1; Is. 16.12; Jer. 17.12; Ez. 5.21; 42.14; Jonah 2.5). The
holiness of the temple is shed upon all objects connected with the
cult: the sacred utensils are holy, water poured into a vessel
belonging to the furnishings of the Temple becomes holy (Ex.
30.18; Num. 5.17), the vestments of the priests are holy (Ex. 28.2;
Ps. 29.2; 96.9; 110.3). Holiness by consecration does not differ
essentially from the holiness conferred by election, for man offers
only what he has been expressly commanded by Yahweh. The
aim of sacrifice is to communicate some of the power of life which
is the divine holiness, and so the absence of the sacrificial cult can
often be regarded as a refusal of God to communicate his holiness to
those who are unworthy of it (Ex. 28.38; 29.33; Dt. 12.26; Jer.
11.15). Consecration by sacrifice is different from that produced
by the cherem\ this latter consists in vowing a thing or person (or
persons) to the deity without concern for the consequences of the
action, whilst one who offers a sacrifice expects the revelation and
the setting free of a vitalizing power. The “materialization” of
holiness did not exist without introducing a great danger which
Israel was not always able to resist. Holiness risked being looked
upon as linked in a permanent way with certain objects and of
causing the essential aspect of relationship to be forgotten; in this
way the holiness of the temple and later that of the torah took on
the appearance of veritable idolatry. Besides the ark and the temple,
holiness is conferred upon the sky, which never ceases to be the
actual residence of Yahweh (Dt. 26.15; ^s- ^3-x5> Mic. 1*2; Ps.
11.40; 18.17; 20.7; 102.20) and on the land of Israel, although the
first mention of this is made only in Zech. 2.16 (cf., however,
92 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Ex. 15.13; Ps. 78.54; Is. 63.18; 2 Macc. 1.7). In this evolution of
the idea of holiness stress is laid principally upon two aspects:
there reappears the character of tabu which had been supplanted by
that of relationship, and the distinction between the sacred world
and the secular world is found amongst all those in Judaism who
are the heirs of the thought of Ezekiel. Within the sphere of the
sacred itself there are various degrees of holiness, there is a dis¬
tinction between what is holy and what is very holy, which would
possess no meaning when holiness was regarded solely as a relation¬
ship (Ex. 26.33; 1 2 * * *9-37; 30-10; Lev. 2.3, 10; 6.10, 18, 22; 14.13
1 Kings 6.16; 7.50; 8.6; Ez. 41.4; 42.13; 43.12; 44.13). In
addition, the materialization of holiness led to its being regarded
less as an attribute than as a state and to its identification with
purity. The narrative about the revolt of the sons of Korah
(Num. 16) is an example of speculations about the diverse degrees
of holiness: the sons of Korah revolt against Moses and Aaron in
the name of the principle of the holiness of the people in its
entirety and they contest the right of Moses and Aaron to elevate
themselves above the assembly of the people, the sole depository
of holiness. Decision is given in favour of a specifically sacerdotal
holiness: only men detached from the sphere of the secular and
consecrated by special rites can approach God.1 As for purity,
which becomes the principal content of holiness, this is shown
sometimes in the realm of morals and sometimes in that of ritual,
most often in both at once (ritual aspect: 1 Sam. 21.6; Lev. 21.6;
Num. 6.5; ethical aspect: Lev. 1Q.3, 11, 15; 20.7, 10). Man’s
obligation to be holy following the example of divine holiness
(Lev. 19.2; 20.7; 21.8; 22.9, 31) implies cubic duties as well as
a personal attitude; in this setting, however, stress is laid less upon
separation than upon the necessity of man to realize the fullness
of his life, which he will not do without a struggle against the
destructive powers which are opposed to the fulfilment of his
vocation.2

1 It is in the same circles that there is a preoccupation with the problem of the
contagion of holiness; the priestly torah related by Haggai (2.ioff.) reconciles, how¬
ever, moral requirements with the ritual aspect by showing that the contagion of
holiness is not automatic like that of impurity.
2 The relationship of all holiness with Yahweh makes us very sceptical about
attempts to classify holiness. J. Haenel (cf. bibliogr.), who regards holiness chiefly
from the viewpoint of distance, distinguishes the five following aspects: (a) inaccessible
holiness; (b) holiness of majesty; (c) holiness of jealousy; (d) holiness of perfection;
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
93

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Asting, R., Die Heiligkeit im Urchristentum, Gottingen 1930.

Baudissin, W., Studien zur semitiscben Religionsgeschichte II, Berlin 1878.
Boegner, A., La notion de saintete dans I’A.T., 1876.
Bunzel, U., Der Begriff der Heiligkeit im A.T., Lauban 1914.
Diestel, L., “ Die Heiligkeit Gottes ”, Jahrb f. prot. Theol., 1839, p. 3.
Fridrichsen, A., Hagios-Qadosh, Oslo 1916.
Haenel, J., Die Religion der Heiligkeit, Giitersloh 1931.
Kuchler, F., “Der Gedanke des Eifers Jahwes im A.T.”, ZAW, 1908,
p. 42.
Leenhardt, Fr. J., La notion de saintete dans I’A.T., Paris, 1929.
Ringgren, H., The Prophetical Consciousness of Holiness, Uppsala 1948.

(e) holiness of transcendence (Jenseitsheiligkeit). The “ sociological ” classification

proposed by F. J. Leenhardt (cf. bibliogr.) seems more subtle and therefore preferable:
(a) in popular circles holiness evolved from the simple tabu to become the expression of
the covenant; (b) priestly circles regarded holiness as the setting apart of priests for
the correct approach to sacred things; (c) to the prophets God is holy towards men
and holy in himself.
 VII. THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD

il \ twentieth-century reader encountering the word

ZA justice1 in Semitic texts must always be careful to adjust
1 V his thought and not to place this term in the categories to
which our word justice has accustomed us.”2 This wise warning
cannot be pondered too much; righteousness in the Old Testament
is in fact far more than a simple juridical concept, but we must
not allow an unbalanced reaction to send us to the opposite extreme
and think of righteousness as something fundamentally different
from what we understand by this term.
The peculiarity of the Israelite concept of righteousness appears
in connection with the exact meaning to be given to one of the
principal terms used for it. The root tsdq appears in Arabic with
a concrete and material meaning, but one which already has
acquired several facets: tsdq denotes what is right, stable and sub¬
stantial, in such a way that it may be asked whether these three
senses are not variants of a single more general notion which
might be conformity to a norm. When in Arabic a date is called
tsdq that can refer neither to its form nor to its taste, but can
simply mean that it conforms to what it should normally be. It
is, therefore, suitable, in spite of some contrary opinions which have
been expressed, to adopt the opinion of Kautzsch, who concludes
his important analysis3 of the root tsdq with these words: “The
fundamental idea of tsdq which is available to us is the state cor¬
responding to a norm, a norm which remains to be defined in each
particular case.” Righteousness is therefore conformity to a norm;
in origin it is neither punitive, nor distributive, nor justificatory,
but in a general way fidelity to a state or to a way of acting or
thinking; many instances of the root tsdq in the Old Testament
support this interpretation.
1 (In the translation justice and righteousness have been variously used to render
the French justice, which covers both, as did the Hebrew tsdq it represents.-—Trans.)
2 H. Cazelles, “ A propos de quelques textes difficiles relatifs a la justice de Dieu
dans l’A.T.”, RB, 1951, pp. 1690.
3 Die Derivate des Stammes tsdq im alttestamentlichen Sprachgebrauch, Tubingen
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 95

(a) Objects which conform to a certain type are called tsdq :

just balances, just weights, just measures are objects in conformity
with what they ought to be (Lev. 19.36; Ez. 45.10); zibche tsedeq
(Dt. 33.19; Ps. 4.6; 51.21) are sacrifices offered according to the
accustomed rite; 'ele hatsedeq (Is. 61.3) are trees that are always
green and not “terebinths of justice’'; just paths (Ps. 23.3) are
paths which one can walk along. The opposite of tsdq is rasha,
that is to say something not as it should be.
(b) Conformity to the norm can also apply to the inward dis¬
positions of men and the way they act. Samaria and Sodom are
called more righteous than Jerusalem simply because they have
committed lesser sins (Ez. 16.52). When Judah cries that Tamar
is more righteous than himself he is saying that in the particular
circumstances which are being narrated she has acted according to
the rules and customs of prostitution whilst he himself has not
respected them (Gen. 38.26), and when Ecclesiastes presents excess
of righteousness as a thing to be avoided it is because, according
to the general spirit of his book, too rigid a conformity to any kind
of norm runs the risk of being injurious (Eccl. 7.15).
(c) The relative and temporary conception of justice in human
relationships tends to take on a more unconditional meaning when
humanity is divided into the just and the wicked, the former being
exclusively the object of divine favour.
Conformity to a rule is, of course, very different according to
the subjects who practise it; but whether contacts between men
themselves or between God and men are concerned, righteousness
is always a concept of relationship, fashioned upon the everyday
dealings between two people and variable according to the require¬
ments which devolve from these various contacts. That is why
righteousness is an action much more than a state: a person is
righteous because he acts justly; he does not act justly because he
is righteous. The prophets never exhort men to acquire righteous¬
ness as a quality or state, but they constantly ask that justice be
practised. When it comes from God righteousness is a transitive
action and a visible manifestation of the being of Yahweh in his
relations with man; thus the manifestations of righteousness are
always placed in a temporal sequence: the Old Testament speaks
of the righteousness of Yahweh when he shows his action in history;
righteousness is. exercised within the framework of the covenant
and is only rarely made relative to the creation. Since the term
96 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

righteousness in itself has no religious or moral connotation it is

quite difficult to define the righteousness of God; the latter is essen¬
tially variable according to the diverse situations in which it is mani¬
fested. These different aspects have been defined in the following
way: “ Righteousness is attributed to the holy God who commits no
iniquity; it is attributed to the holy God who cannot leave wicked¬
ness unpunished nor the good unrecognized; it is attributed to the
God who is merciful and slow to anger who, according to Ezekiel’s
phrase, does not desire the death of a sinner but that he should repent
and live. It is attributed to the God of love who pursues after the
salvation of his people; and finally it is attributed to the God of
love who communicates his righteousness to the sinner and justifies
him.”1 Many aspects—because conformity to the norm repre¬
sents for God, in the course of history, realities which are sometimes
different and that for the important reason that the God of the Old
Testament is not an idea which imposes itself with the immutability
inherent in ideas but a living person, and that his norm can only
be this personal being in his totality; this personal being is the
sovereign Lord and all he does conforms to that fundamental
attitude. “ Righteousness is found under the sign of power”2 a
shares in the diverse expressions of that power which assumes some
times a terrible aspect, sometimes a bountiful one. Nevertheless,
when the Old Testament states that God is just it is generally
speaking of his power in a somewhat less vague way. The
righteousness of God cannot be separated from the figure of God
the judge. It is in fact this image which is always implied by the
use of the root shpht3 which in the form of mishpat is often found
1 G. Martin, La notion de la justice de Dieu dans I'A.T.
2 DBS, col. 1448, article “ justice ” by A. Descamps.
3 The root shpht always has the meaning of to judge; we follow the view of van
der Ploeg (Shpht and mishpat in Oudtestamentische Studien II, Leiden 1943); a
different opinion has been sustained by H. W. Hertzberg amongst others, “ Die
Entwicklung des Begriffes mishpat im A.T.” in ZAW, 1922, pp. 256E, according
to which the primitive meaning of shpht would have been “ to rule ” (herrschen).
This latter contention relies notably on the title sbophetim given to the heroes in the
book of Judges who were military leaders and not judges; but that appellation is
probably not primitive; the term sbophetim was originally kept for the “ minor ”
judges (Jg. 10.1-5; 12.8-15) who were not warrior leaders but guardians of the rmht
and of the traditions of the Israelite amphictyony, comparable with the judges°of
ancient Iceland (according to A. Klostermann, Der Pentateuch 1907, pp. 348L, and
Alt, Die Urspriinge des israelitischen Rechts, 1934); these judges formed a ’fixed
order, the chief judges were originally called moshiim, saviours; the extension
of the title sbophetim to these charismatic personalities was made under the influence
of the royal regime, the king being the supreme judge of the nation, and it marked
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
97
associated with tsedaqah. Although it too underwent development,
the root shaphat never lost its fundamental meaning of to judge,
but to judge is not only to give a verdict so the word covers all
the phases of a trial from the moment when the parties come
before the judge, to plead their case, up to the final decision. The
outcome of the judgment is a veritable liberation for the one who
has been the object of a declaration of innocence, since he is not
only reinstated in his right, but by the operation of the power of
which he has been a beneficiary his life-potential is in some way
augmented; the mishpat of the judge “establishes the one in the
reality of his right, the other on the contrary in the reality of his
wrong”.1 This dynamic nature of justice is still clearer when the
function of shophet is exercised by God. Like the chief of the
clan and in the manner of the gods of the fathers, Yahweh had to
resolve the inevitable conflicts which arose between members of
the clan. Expressions such as “May Yahweh be judge (shaphat)
between me and thee” (Gen. 16.5; 1 Sam. 24.13) as well as the
numerous proper names in which the theophoric element denotes
judiciary function: Elisaphat, Yehoshaphat, Shaphatyahu,
laphat, Shiphtan, Abidan, Dan, Danel, Peliliyah, Eliphal,
Phalal, show mat in Israel the idea of God as judge perhaps held an
even greater place than in other religions. The reality of the
covenant found one of its most characteristic expressions in the
figure of a lawsuit of Yahweh with his people (Is. 1; Mic. 6 and
Jer. 2). Here Yahweh and the people appear as two parties pleading
their respective rights, but since Yahweh is at the same time litigant
and judge the result is an affirmation of his sovereignty to which the
people can only submit. The judgment of Yahweh is always made
with tsedeq (cf. Ps. 98.9: He will judge the earth with tsedeq)
that is to say, according to his sovereignty which is the norm; very
often this norm is exercised within a judicial framework, but it
can also shatter this framework since the institutions of the law
depend only on his own freedom. The conception of mishpat,
evolving in the direction of custom, rule, law, into the character
of what is obligatory and constraining, became incapable of
a victory of the constitution over events (cf. O. Grether, “ Die Bezeichnung ' Richter ’
fur die charismatischen Helden der vorstaatlichen Zeit ” in ZAW, 1939, pp.
11 off.). In a recent study (RThPh, 1954, p. 283) G. Pidoux shows that the cosmic
aspect of justice was not entirely unknown, and he appeals to passages like Ps. 72.2-3:
85.12; Joel 2.23.
1 A. Neher, Amos, p. 262.
 98 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

expressing all that was meant by the righteousness of Yahweh;

therefore in speaking of God the judge stress had to be laid on
the norm of his action (tsedeq) and on the visible manifestation
of that norm (tsedaqab). The tsedaqab is not contradictory to the
view of God as judge, it is indeed its essential condition.1 More¬
over, this term appeared to be so apt for expressing the idea of the
divine that it became a proper name for one or more gods; the Old
Testament figures of Melkitsedeq (Gen. 14.18) and Adonitsedecj
(Jos. 10.1; Jg. 1.5-7)) Rabtsidqi of the El Amarna letters
a Tsdqel and Tsdqshlm at Ugant seem to attest the existence of
a god of this name who, in the form he had taken in the religion of
Israel, had a particular connection with Jerusalem, which Isaiah
calls the ir hatsedeq (1.26) and whose priesthood belonged to the
dynasty of the descendant of Tsadoq. The active and personal
role of Tsedeq in certain Psalms must also be mentioned: tsedeq
goes before Yahweh (Ps. 85.14), it looks down from the height of
heaven (Ps. 85.12), along with mishpat it is the foundation of
Yahweh s throne (Ps. 89.15; 97.2), Tsedeq and Shalom, another
Jerusalemite deity, embrace each other (Ps. 85.11). Whether this
refers to primitive gods become servants of Yahweh or to the
hypostatization of the attributes of one great god, it shows that
righteousness was always regarded in the Old Testament and in
the surrounding world as one of the principal attributes of deity.
One would almost be tempted to regard it as the essential quality
and to put it alongside holiness; perhaps it could be said that it
is righteousness which characterizes El (Elohim), cf. Ps. 50.6, whilst
holiness is the particular attribute of Yahweh.2 Tsedeq is also one
1 According to Th. Gaster, Thespis, Tsdq and Yshr figured as the names of
divine beings in one Ugaritic text (t K II, ,2), but that very hypothetical
reading seems rather to have been inspired by what Philo of Byblos says about
the divine pair Misor and Sydyk, names signifying e6\vros & SUatos to whom
tradnion ascribed the discovery of the use of salt (cf. Eusebius, Praep. evang. 1, to, ,3,
Mtgne Patr. Gr XXI, col. 80 b). f * 3
* In Psalms 50.6 and 75.8, Elohim is called Shophet; and in this context we
can also remember the passage in the Book of the Covenant dealing with the rite of
emancipation of a slave (Ex. 21.6): “His master shall bring him before Elohim”:
the Syriac version, depending upon Ps. 82.1 translates “to the judges”; whilst
recognizing that the term Elohim sometimes means the divine rather than the
deity, we do not think that it was ever applied to human beings (except to the
king in one solitary text in the O.T., Ps. 45). What we can sayf however, is that
justice is less an attribute peculiar to Yahweh than is holiness. Justice was charac¬
teristic of gods by and large (cf. the goddess Ma’at in Egypt, Shamash and his
associates Kettu and Mesharu in Babylon, Mitra and Varuna amongst the Mitannij
but Yahweh alone is the Holy One.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 99

of the principal attributes of those who on the earth are the most
highly qualified representatives of God, the king and the Messiah.
In the prayer at Gibeon Solomon asks Yahweh to give him discern¬
ment in judging (1 Kings 3.11) and the title shophetim given by
tradition to those who were—before the title was actually used—
the first kings of Israel, shows to what extent the qualities and
functions of the judge served as a model for the king (cf. the
importance of righteousness in the prayer of intercession for the
king: Ps. 72). The Messiah will only take up on a wider and
more perfect plane the activity of a king. The terms tsedeq,
mishpat, tsadiq form part of the typical style of all Messianic
oracles (Is. 9; n; Zech. 9) and Jeremiah will invent for the Messiah
the name of Yahweh tsidqenu, which is not only in opposition to
the name of the reigning king Tsidqiyahu but which summarizes
for him the whole work of the Messiah (Jer. 23.5).
When performed by Yahweh judgments always conform to the
rule; they are right and they attain their end, which is the estab¬
lishment of his kingship; yet along the right way of Yahweh’s
deliverances (tsidqot) there is a place for salvation and for the
punishment of sin, which is not an accident of no importance for
the realization of God’s plan but a reality able to oppose his designs
which he has to take seriously. Doubtless the decisions constandy
repeated by Yahweh towards his people represent the line of action
of divine righteousness, but that does not necessarily imply that
we must speak of the unilateral character of that righteousness by
seeing in it only the manifestation of benevolence. Diestel,1
Ritschl2 and others following them3 have seen in righteousness the
sequence of God’s plans for the salvation of believers, the punish¬
ment of the wicked being the work of his wrath, which some texts
indeed contrast with his righteousness (v. infra.). It is certain
that never in the Old Testament does justice appear as distributive
in the strict meaning of the term. The justice of Yahweh is not
of the type of the blindfolded maiden holding a balance in her hand,
the justice of Yahweh extends one arm to the wretch stretched out
on the ground whilst the other pushes away the one who causes
the misfortunes, and so its saving aspect does not exclude every

1 Die Idee der Gerecbtigkeit.

2 Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigtmg und Versobnttng II, Der biblische
Stoff der Lehre, Bonn 1874, pp. ioiff.
3 Amongst recent writers, H. Cazelles, art. cit.
 IOO THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

distributive element. One of the earliest old Testament texts, the

song of Deborah, speaks of the tsideqot Yahweh when celebrating
the great military victories won by Israel, but these tsideqot are
the decisions of the just judge, that is to say the victory for Israel
and the defeat for the Canaanites who in their wickedness have
dared to stand in the way of the chosen people (Jg. 5.11); at other
times the division between the righteous and the wicked cuts across
the chosen people themselves. Psalm 7 clearly says that the activity
of a righteous God must be exercised simultaneously in favour of
the righteous and for the punishment of the wicked. “Yahweh
judges the peoples (yadin). Judge me ('sbopbteni), O Yahweh,
according to thy righteousness (ketsidqu) and my innocence. Oh
let the wickedness of the wicked (reshaim) come to an end, and
establish the just (tsadiq) (vv. 9-10). Solomon’s dedicatory prayer
asks Yahweh to judge between his servants, to condemn the guilty,
making the consequences of his action fall on his own head, and
to pardon (justify) the just by treating him according to his
righteousness (1 Kings 8.32). The misbpat and tsedaqab with
which Zion will be redeemed mean for Isaiah (1.27) the judgment
she must pass through and which alone will remove from her the
sin which draws Yahweh’s wrath upon her. The right and the
righteousness which Yahweh will use as a measure are an allusion
to the structure which is to be erected, but this will take place
only through judgment (Is. 28.17). The negative and positive
aspects of righteousness are also present in the text of Isaiah 10.22:
The destruction is fixed which will make righteousness (tsedaqab)
overflow. It is not a question here of a life-bringing stream but
of the severity of Yahweh which destroys those who lack faith in
him, and the manifestation of his holiness by righteousness does
not appear in the context in which it is mentioned as an intervention
of a particularly saving kind (Is. 5.16).
The righteousness of Yahweh who is an ’elohe mishpat (h
30 18) implies that the faithful man will be truly declared righteous
only after submitting to the discriminatory judgment of Yahweh
On this point all the prophets follow the thought of Isaiah (cf.
Pf:.1?'1’ 3/5’ 8) ancl one Psalmist echoes current belief:
With the faithful thou showest thyself faithful, upright with the
upnght pure with the pure, but wily with the perverse” (Ps.
18.26-28). But even in cases where righteousness implies a punitive
aspect it never exhausts itself in judgment; wrath leadf on to
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT IOI

punishment, whilst mishpat, remaining purely educative (yjr),

opens the door to grace (Jer. 10.24). The idea of grace and deliver¬
ance never ceased to underlie the concept of righteousness looked
at in the light of election and covenant. The prophet Hosea speaks
of tsedeq and mishpat as gifts which the husband makes to his
wife after her return to grace (2.21). If from the time of Jeremiah
the punitive aspect of righteousness passes more and more into the
background it is doubtless because the just judgment of Yahweh
was thought to have been accomplished by the exile. It is above
all with Second Isaiah that righteousness becomes synonymous with
grace and salvation; except for certain passages in which the word
is used forensically (41.26; 43.9, 26; 50.8) righteousness is not only
for him the deliverance of the oppressed and the restoration of
their normal state, but the gift of a new reality superior to what
previously existed. This fresh aspect of righteousness is due less
to the experience of exile (cf. Is. 40.2) than to the eschatological
and messianic perspective which dominates his whole message:
righteousness is a communication of grace and glory; its beneficiary
will not be the innocent and the oppressed but the people who
have no other merits than being the elect of Yahweh. The frame¬
work of the covenant is widened because righteousness will extend
not only to the Israelites but to all peoples. The salvation of Israel
will no longer have, as in the time of Deborah, judgment upon
the Gentiles as its counterpart, it will extend to them as well, the
more so as the salvation of Israel itself is wrought through the inter¬
mediary of the Gentile king Cyrus (cf. 42.6 and especially 45.20$.).
Whilst in pre-exilic texts the announcement of messianic righteous¬
ness is still veiled and conditioned by the judgment upon sin, now
these new things are on the point of appearing.
Righteousness as the free and saving favour of God has many
echoes in the Old Testament, particularly in the Psalms where
the righteousness of God is presented as the refuge of the faithful
and as the source of pardon. In a text, probably post-exilic, in
the book of Micah (7.9$.) the believer awaits the manifestation
of Yahweh’s righteousness, not as the sanction for his sin but as
the grace which will put an end to it (cf. also Ps. 51.16; 143.1-2;
Zech. 9.9; Joel 2.23; Ps. 85.10-11). Does this new meaning of
the word contradict the picture of God as judge or is it perhaps its
final consequence? This evolution must be linked with the new
meaning of the words for poor and unfortunate; following a line
 102 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

of thought whose origin is found with Jeremiah and Zephaniah,

the poor is no longer, or not merely, the unfortunate one, the victim
of an injustice, awaiting the re-establishment of his rights, but every
believer has before God the attitude of a suppliant, of an ’ebyon1
who begs for a decision in his favour, not in order to be justified
against an adversary but in an absolute manner. By virtue of the
constant tendency for ideas to develop into actions, righteousness
tends, in post-biblical Judaism and especially in Aramaic, to take
the meaning of mercy and particularly alms-giving.2 “ Compensate
thy sin by tsedaqah [that is to say, by good works] and thine
iniquity by showing mercy to the poor,” Daniel counsels Nebuchad¬
rezzar (Dan. 4.24). As for the righteousness of God, this remains
an act of his mercy so much the more real because the one who
expects it will not rely upon his own righteousness (Dan. 9.18), yet
in face of the righteousness of God the practice of righteousness by
mr>n is the best way of knowing all its richness (cf. Is. 56.1).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baudissin, W. W. von, “ Der gerechte Gott in altsemitischer Religion”,

Festgabe A. Harnack, Tubingen 1921, p. 1.
Dalman, G., Die richterliche Gerechtigkeit im A.T., Berlin 1897.
Diestel, L., “ Die Idee der Gerechtigkeit, vorziiglich im A.T. ”, Jabrb. f.
deutsche Theol., i860, p. 173.
Fahlgren, K. H., Sedaka. Nahestehende und entgegengesetzte Begriffe
im A.T., Uppsala 1932.
Kautzsch, E., Die Derivate des Stammes tsdq im alttest. Sprachgebrauch,
Tubingen 188L
Koch Klaus, Sdq im A.T., 1934.
Martin, G., La notion de la justice de Dieu dans I’A.T., Montauban 1892.
Monnier, J., La justice de Dieu d’apres la Bible. Paris 1878.
Noetscher, F., Die Gerechtigkeit Gottes bei den vorexilischen Propheten,
Munster 1915.

1 On the meanings of the word ’ebyon in the O.T., cf. the article by P. Humbert
in RHPR, 1952, pp. iff.
In Rabbinic literature tsedaqah differs still more from anything juristic; the
Tosephta Sanhedrin i, 5 says: “In the place where there is din (righteousness in
the sense of judicial action), there is no tsedaqah, and where there is tsedaqah there
is no din ” and in Matthew 6.1 certain manuscripts read Aeiytocn^T; in place of
diKcucxnivr). This sense of tsedaqah is not absolutely new: it is only the crystallizing
out of the idea of salvation contained in the term since Deutero-Isaiah and no doubt
even since Amos.
 VIII. THE FAITHFULNESS OF GOD

T H e word chesed, which is the term most frequently used

for divine fidelity, has no exact equivalent in our modern
languages; the LXX renders it usually by eXeo?» mercy, but
as this sense applies only in a relatively limited number of cases
modern versions translate it by kindness, grace, fidelity. Ety¬
mology, without supplying us with an absolutely satisfactory
answer to the problem, at least directs us to the primitive signifi¬
cation, which is that of strength.1 This fundamental sense appears
again in many passages, as: “All flesh is as the grass and all its
strength as the flower of the field ” (Is. 40.6); in 2 Chr. 32.32
and 35.26 the actions of a king of Judah are qualified by the term
chesed; but the parallel text in Kings has the word geburah, strong
and effective action (2 Kings 20.20); in one other instance chesed
is placed parallel to ‘oz, strength: “Strength belongs to Elohim,
chesed to thee, O Lord” (Ps. 62.12-13). Yahweh is called chesed,
fortress and shield (Ps. 144.2) and the Psalm of Jonah contrasts
chesed with vain and transitory things (Jonah 2.9). The idea of
strength likewise appears in the association of chesed with ’emet,
the fundamental meaning of which is firmness, stability, and thus,
derivatively, of security and truth (Ps. 25.10; 40.11; 61.8; 138.2,
etc.). Since the idea of strength has in itself no moral content it
is not surprising that alongside the use of the term chesed in a
clearly positive sense we can meet the same word with the sense
of shame and infamy: Prov. 14.34; 25.10; Lev. 20.17, that is to
say of a strength which, instead of uniting, erects barriers and sets
men in opposition to each other.2
In Israel the term was associated early with a clearly delimited
strength, namely that which binds together two individuals or a

1 The meaning strength has been stressed by F. Perles, Analekten zur Textkritik
des A.T.; he sees in it the common denominator to the threefold use of the root
chsd in Arabic and in Hebrew: (a) to assemble; (b) to envy; (c) to be hard.
2 Instead of getting rid of the difficulty by emending the text, we must rather
see here the form which is retained in Aramaic and which means to be ashamed,
often assimilated to cherpah (cf. Noldeke, Neue Beit rage zur semitischen Spracb-
mssenschaft, 13, p. 93).
io3
 104 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

group and which, in the religious sphere, means the bond uniting
God to man and vice versa. When it is used for the attitudes of
man, the term religion, understood as that which binds, would
very well render the multiple senses of chesed which corresponded
closely to the Latin -pietas and described not only the attitude of
the believer towards God or of the son towards his father (filial
piety), but also that of God or of the chief towards his subordinates,
and in general the natural sentiment which without legal constraint
causes one to show benevolence and indulgence towards the mem¬
bers of one s family or tribe.1 It is to the credit of Nelson Glueck,
following a way opened earlier by I. Elbogen,2 that he showed the
link between chesed and the covenant, an interpretation which has
seemed so convincing that L. Koehler, in his Lexicon, replaces the
usual translations of mercy, benevolence and fidelity by those of
social obligation, association, solidarity (Gemeinschaftspflicht, Ver-
bundenheit, Solidaritat). The use of the term chesed for human
relationships shows clearly that the meaning of benevolence and
mercy is secondary to that of solidarity or simply of loyalty: in the
book of Genesis (19.19) Lot says to one of his three visitors: “ You
have shown great chesed towards me ’, and he means respect for
the sacred rights of hospitality. When David says: “I want to
show chesed to the king of the Ammonites as his father showed
chesed to me (2 Sam. 10.2), there is no question of an act of
friendliness, still less of compassion, but of the maintenance of loyal
relations between two peoples; in this last case chesed is the equiva¬
lent of berith, and the two terms are moreover found together in
Dt. 7.2, 9, 12; i Kings 8.23; 2 Chr. 6.14; Neh. 1.5; 9.32; Dan.
9-4> J*s‘ 5°-5> 3^» 89.29, 34, so we can define chesed as the power
which guarantees a covenant and makes it strong and durable. The
expression keep covenant and chesed”, which probably originated
in Deuteronomic circles, penetrated into the liturgy; it is not
without significance that the term is most used in the Psalms and
that it has passed into the liturgical tradition of Judaism.
The chesed of God is revealed in and through the covenant;
it is because God has concluded a covenant that he has shown
chesed; this is therefore less a quality or attribute of God than a
proof which he intends to give, and the multiplicity of meanings

1 Lods, Les prophetes d'Israel . . . , p. IOO.

* ' nhe,5e,d; Verp„fll,chtung’ Verheissung' Bekraftigung ”, Oriental Studies dedi¬

cated to Paul Haupt, Balamore-Lcipzig 1926, pp. 43-46.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT I05

the term can assume is better understood with that in mind.

Chesed is always connected with somebody (Ex. 20.6; Dt. 5.10;
2 Sam. 22.51; Ps. 18.51; Jer. 32.18), but since relationship is one
of the essential aspects of God himself, it is quite normal that we
should find chesed mentioned on certain particularly solemn
occasions in which God presents himself; thus when he manifests
himself to Moses, Yahweh passed before Moses saying: “ Yahweh,
Yahweh, a compassionate (rachum) and merciful (chanum) God,
slow to 'anger and rich in chesed and ’emet, keeping chesed for
thousands . . .” (Ex. 34.5). In the midst of the changes inherent
in a revelation of God in history chesed represents the permanent
element which allows Yahweh to be always faithful to himself.
It is to this chesed that every member of the covenant can appeal
when he wishes to see the covenant maintained and confirmed.
Eliezer the servant of Abraham asks Yahweh to prove his chesed
towards him at the time when he is entrusted with a particularly
delicate mission (Gen. 24.12). Solomon asks that Yahweh will
show him the same chesed which he has shown towards David
(1 Kings 3.6); one who finds himself in a dangerous situation is
recommended to the chesed of Yahweh (2 Sam. 15.20; Jer. 33.1 iff.;
Ps. 100.5; 106.1; 107.1-8, 15). The initiator of the covenant
cannot abandon those who are his partners: the majority of the
metaphors by which the Old Testament illustrated the reality of
the covenant bring to light the aspect of firmness and fidelity con¬
tained in the term chesed, whether the metaphor be that of father
and son, of the shepherd and the flock, or of conjugal union.
Marriage is the realm far excellence for the exercise of chesed and
it is not surprising that it is with the prophet Hosea that the term
reaches its greatest significance, designating in turn the relation
of Yahweh with the people, the obligations of the people towards
Yahweh and the reciprocal obligations of the members of the
nation between themselves, for in the teaching of the prophets
about human relations chesed is conceived after the pattern of the
divine chesed and a summary of obligations like that of Micah 6.8
shows that the imitation of God is the mainspring of all the religion
and ethics of the Old Testament.
The deepening of the idea by the prophets sometimes places
chesed beyond the covenant: this is why the breaking of the
covenant by the human partners in it does not entail of necessity
the suppression of chesed. To faithless Israel Yahweh says: I
Io6 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

will betroth thee unto me for ever by means of righteousness and

judgment, chesed, and mercy” (Hosea 2.21) and again: ‘‘Return,
rebellious Israel, saith Yahweh, I will no longer show thee an angry
face for I am chasid, I do not keep my anger for ever ” (Jer. 3.12) and
again: ‘‘For a brief instant I have abandoned thee, but with great
compassion (racbamim) I will gather thee. In the unleashing of my
wrath I had hidden my face from thee for a moment, but with
eternal chesed I will have compassion upon thee” (Is. 54.7-8). In
such passages chesed is no longer the bond upholding the covenant,
it is the very source of the attitude which impels God to enter into
relation with his people, therefore in reading them we must remove
the strictly legal conception as N. Glueck has defined it and translate
by love or grace.1 The terms chen and rachamim which replace
that of berith in making the meaning of chesed explicit (Ex. 34.7;
Num. 14.19; Is. 63.7; Jer. 32.18; Lam. 3.32; Neh. 13.22; Ps. 86.5;
106.7-45; 145.8) do not belong to the language of covenant and
are only used in a unilateral sense which excludes reciprocity.
Chesed is to such a degree an unexpected act that several texts
celebrate it as a miracle: ‘‘Yahweh has made marvellous his
chesed" (Ps. 4.4). ‘‘Make marvellous thy chesed” (Ps. 17.7).
“ Blessed be Yahweh for he has made his chesed wonderful for
me” (Ps. 31.22). “O that he would give thanks to Yahweh for
his chesed and for his wonderful works” (Ps. 107.8, 15, 21, 31);
nevertheless in keeping the term chesed the prophets wanted to
insist upon the firm nature which always characterizes the action
of God; according to them what is rightly astonishing is not that
God is loving and merciful, for other gods were equally so, but
that this love is firm and true. Parallel with the deepening of the
idea of chesed we witness the extension of its temporal significance.
The chesed of Yahweh belongs to the future as well as to the past,
it is an undertaking by which God stands as surety for the future;
the chesed ‘olam (Ps. 89, passim and Is. 55.3) is not only the mani¬
festation of divine faithfulness in the past, but “the grace irre¬
vocably promised ” of which king David was only the first sign

1 N. Glueck’s thesis has recently been criticized by H. J. Stoebe (V.T. 1952, pp.
224ft-) who contests the legal meaning and comes to the following conclusion:
“ The special feature of the theological assertion of God’s chesed is to be seen in
God turning to man in unconditional friendliness and magnanimity. He surrenders
his divine right in order to have fellowship with man.” Concerning this thesis
we hold that certain modifications must be made in Glueck’s one-sided interpretation,
but we do not think his initial viewpoint should be abandoned.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 107

and whose fulfilment the people await. This widening of the

concept is similarly shown in the realm of space: the attitude of
Yahweh towards all creation is characterized by chesed (cf. Ps. 33.5;
36.7; 119.64 and the great liturgy of Ps. 136 which views not only
history but creation as a result of chesed: vv. 5-9).
It may appear paradoxical that a term denoting an action and
clearly legal in appearance should have been preferred to others
which expressed profound qualities and feelings of God;1 but that
demonstrates yet again that the Old Testament is interested less
in the nature of God than in his work, less in his existence than in
his presence. Now the term chesed is particularly suitable for
expressing that Yahweh was an active power in the midst of men,
a power from which they could not escape.2

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Glueck, N., Das Wort Hesed im alttestamentlichen Sprachgebrauch,

BZAW, 47, Giessen 1927.
Gulkowitsch, L., Das Wort hasid, Tartu 1934.
Stoebe, H. J., “ Die Bedeutung des Wortes hasad im A.T. ”, VT, 1952,
p. 244.

1T. F. Torrance, Scottish Journal of Theology, 1948, p. 60, calls chesed the
“ great sacramental word of the Old Testament faith
2 The theme of chesed in the O.T. became the pattern by which the life of
the believer called to be an chasid had to be directed; together with tsedeq = tsadiq,
it is the only term which gave birth to a style of life. The chasid is, in general
terms—and before the word is used with a more limited meaning—one who fears
God and who shows “ piety ” towards those who are within the covenant like
himself.
 IX. THE LOVE OF GOD

T h e covenant by which God binds himself to his peopie

—and through his people to humanity as a whole—has
profound roots which cannot be defined otherwise than by
the mystery of election; but the origin of election is found in love,
that is to say in the spontaneous movement which carries one being
towards another being with the desire to possess it and to find
some satisfaction in that possession. The prophet Jeremiah in a
familiar verse expresses the relation between love and chesed: “I
love thee with an everlasting love, therefore with chesed do I draw
thee ”(31.3). The Hebrew root which serves to express the reality
of love under the double form of eros and agape is ’ahah, which
itself derives from a biliteral root hah, in Arabic habba = to blow;
this etymology was first proposed by Schultens:1 “ thema ahab
amare, diligere, vim istam secundariam induit a primaria spirandi,
anhelandique; prout anhelare aliquit est vehementius petere, et
adamare ”. The root ’abah = to desire is itself a variant of this same
fundamental meaning so that love can be defined as a desire at
once violent and voluntary.1 2 The term ’ahab (substantive ’ahabah)
is used chiefly with a personal object,3 yet it is only once met with
for expressing the love of a woman for her husband (1 Sam. 18.20:
Michal loved David) and once for the love of a subordinate for his
superior (Dt. 15.16).
Since love is the attitude of a superior towards an inferior, the
term ’ahab is not used for the attitude of a wife to her husband
nor for that of children to their parents. As for the love of man
for God, which often arises, it must not be understood in the sense
of abolishing the distance between God and man and it is moreover

1 In “ Proverbia Salomonis ” (1748) at the end of the work Index hebraeorum

vocum sub "bababcf. also D. Winton Thomas: “The root ahab ‘love’ in
Hebrew in ZAW, 1939, pp. 57®. This form habab is met in Prov. 30.15; Ps. 55.23;
Hos. 8.13 where the translation love” is adopted by the majority of versions.
2 This is the opinion of Eichrodt, Theol. A.T. I, p. 127, who dealing with
ahab speaks of “ Willenseinsatz ” and the “ starkcs Gefiihl ”.
3 The root ahab is never met in proper names, which express the whole gamut
of divine attributes; on the other hand the root yadad is quite frequent.

I08
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT I09

formulated as an order, which considerably weakens the idea of

desire and possession contained in the root 'abab. As the subject
of love God can have several objects, but in the great majority
of cases that object is the nation as a whole. The two passages
where Jerusalem is given as the object of God’s love (Ps. 78.68 and
87.2) are only a variant of that basic idea. Three times only are
we told that God loves individuals (2 Sam. 12.24 of Solomon, Neh.
13.26 of Solomon, Is. 48.14 of Cyrus). But in these three passages
royal personages are concerned, which gives the use of the verb to
love a significance it is impossible to extend to all men. The sense
of ardent and voluntary desire contained in the root ’abab is found
to be confirmed by the other terms by means of which the Old
Testament designates the love of God : cbasbaq = to attach oneself
to (Dt. 7.7; Ps. 91.14), cbapbets and ratsab = to take pleasure in
(Gen. 34.19 and 2 Sam. 24.23) and especially yada =to know; that
knowledge is in no degree theoretical knowledge, but its primitive
sense is that which we find expressed in Gen. 4.2: Adam knew
Eve; the opposite of yada1 is expressed by the prophets with the
root zanab = to prostitute oneself, thereby marking the breaking
of the marriage bond. The frequency of the figure of marriage to
describe the relationship of God with his people confirms the
connection we have pointed out between love and cbesed: under¬
lying marriage is a spontaneous feeling which leads to the making
of a choice, but this feeling must be exercised according to rule
and be subject to certain laws, in a word it becomes a beritb which
needs to be established by cbesed. The idea of desire, of choice
and of election is again confirmed by the term which expresses the
contrary to love. With the root ’abab is contrasted the root
sana = to hate; but that root does not always have, and in particular
did not have originally, the active and violent sense which we
usually attribute to it. If ’ababab denotes election, hate indicates
non-election. That comes out very clearly from the following
passages: Gen. 29.31, Leah is called senuah, that is to say she who
has not been chosen. The same antithesis is found again in
Dt. 21.15-17; 1 Sam. 1.5 and Prov. 30.23 and similarly it is in the
light of this relativity that we must understand the apparently very
harsh words of Jesus about the hatred which his disciples must
have for their kith and kin (Lk. 14.26). The election of the one
does not if so facto involve the disapproval of the other, although
we have in the Old Testament itself proofs of the twist towards
IIO THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

the understanding of God’s love in an exclusive sense, for example

in some oracles upon the nations.
These preliminary considerations lead to two conclusions which
will allow us to define the love of God in the Old Testament:
(a) as grace; (b) as education.
(a) The love of God is not conditioned but it springs forth spon¬
taneously through the free decision of God and thus appears as a
manifestation of his sovereignty: “You only do I know amongst
all the families of the earth ” (Amos 3.2) and the entire book of
Hosea is a development of the theme of God’s love. It is chiefly
in Deuteronomy that we find numerous affirmations about the
gratuitous nature of love, but here the tone of the prophet’s living
experience gives place to the theologian’s reflection and to the
exhortations of the legislator: “Although the heaven and the
heaven of heavens, the earth and all that is found therein, belong
to Yahweh, it is to thy fathers that Yahweh has attached his
affection (chasbaq), and after them he has chosen only you, their
posterity, among all peoples” (Dt. 10.14-13). “Know that it
is not because of thy righteousness that Yahweh thy God hath given
thee the possession of this good land ” (Dt. 9.6ft.). “ He found
him in a desert land, in the waste, he watched over him, he guarded
him as the apple of his eye, as an eagle which drives its brood from
the nest, hovers above them, then spreading its wings takes them
and bears them upon its feathers” (Dt. 32.10-n).
Had Israel anything attractive to become in this way the object
of God’s love? One passage of the prophet Hosea might lead us
to an affirmative answer: “ Like grapes (that might be discovered)
in the wilderness, I found Israel. Like an early-ripe fig on a fig
tree, I saw your fathers” (9.10). The prophet compares Yahweh
to a traveller pleasantly surprised by finding grapes in an arid
wilderness. Israel must therefore have had some trait to arouse
Yahweh’s interest, but this passage, unique of its kind, might also
mean that the impossible has become true, and so put in relief the
extraordinary and miraculous character of election. In the very
realistic allegory by means of which the prophet Ezekiel represents
the election of Israel, Israel had nothing attractive and God’s
initiative is aroused only by his pity (Ez. 16.1-32).
Israel always felt that in its election there was a mystery beyond
its understanding; nevertheless it attempted to give a rational
explanation of that election:
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 111

1. God loves and chooses Israel because he is bound to the

fathers by an oath: “ He loves you and wishes to keep the oath
which he made to your fathers,” (Dt. 7.7-8, cf. also Dt. 4.37
and 10.15).
2. God loves Israel because he made a promise to David: “I
will protect this city, I will save it out of love for myself and of
David my servant” (2 Kings 19.34; ^s- 37-35)*
3. God loves Israel for his own sake and particularly for his
name’s sake; perhaps there is implicitly present the idea that
God chose his people in order to set himself up in opposition
to other gods (Ps. 79.9; 106.8; Is. 41.21; Jer. 14.21).
4. God loves Israel in order to punish the wickedness of the
nations: ‘‘It is because of the wickedness of these nations that
Yahweh thy God dispossessed them before thee” (Dt. 9.4-5), a
motive which is found combined with that of the promise made
to the fathers.

From these explanations Israel often drew consequences which

ran contrary to the true nature of God’s love. They stiffened into
rigid exclusivism, interpreting their election, which had become a
hardened conception, as a duty to hate and a matter for pride. With
the prophet Malachi, who gives us a most authentic echo of Jewish
exclusiveness, the affirmation of God’s love: ‘‘I love you” (1.2) is
no longer the certainty by which the people live and in which they
believe, but a collection of proofs which the people turn to their
profit as a source of pride and glory. Happily the prophetic
message of God’s love had in itself too much power for such
deviations to be decisive.
(b) It was also the prophets who best showed the educative
element of the love of Goa. They were all firmly persuaded that
the motives of the divine action were inspired by its ultimate
purpose. God loves his people in order to achieve his aim with
them, that is to say the establishment of his kingship over the
world; that eschatological orientation preserved the love of God
from any form of mysticism, for mysticism implies a suppression of
time, whilst love according to the Old Testament is a slow but
certain education of his people. It is because Yahweh has a purpose
for his people that his love is not opposed to his justice and his
wrath. The idea of education as the Israelite conceived it is insepar¬
able from punishment and he who abstains from punishment would
112 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

be a bad pedagogue (Prov. 3.12 and in certain passages of the book

of Job), which does not eliminate the fact that the punishment is
accompanied for God by genuine suffering and that he never gladly
resorts to it (Hos. 11.7-9; Jer< I2,7"9)- The figure of the marriage
union, so rich in suggestiveness, illustrates this educative function
of love. The essentially contractual and even commercial aspect of
marriage in ancient Israel did not exclude the idea of mutual
education of the partners and specially that of the wife by the
husband; that education will cease when God the spouse of his
people has attained his ends, that is to say when history is com¬
pleted. It is interesting to observe that the figure of conjugal union
is never encountered in the pictures of messianic bliss;1 in the same
way the future aeon will be characterized by the suppression of
marriage, the bond between God and the people will be replaced
by something more profound and more real than that of marriage.
To attain his purposes God places at the disposal of his people certain
means which will preserve them in the love of God. The prophets
and most distinctly Deuteronomy stress the role of the law as the
most efficacious means of education for assuring the permanence of
the election (Dt. 4.3-6, 32, 36; 28.63; 3°-9> n-14), though con¬
fusion between the end and the means often led to a caricature of
the love of God.
The love of God is addressed in a general way to the people as
a nation and this gives the love a different tone from that which
appears in the New Testament; yet there is every reason for sup¬
posing that the thought of isolated individuals being the objects of
God’s love was not entirely strange to Israel: there is a proof, it
seems, in the invocation “my God”,2 frequent in hymns and
lamentations, by which individuals committed their fate into
the hands of a God with whom they knew themselves to be
in personal contact and by whom they knew themselves to be
loved.

1 At least tinder the form of the berit', knowledge will continue and even attain
to its fullness, once it is freed from all juridical attachment. It is interesting to
observe that Jesus when he speaks of the life of the age to come shows it as passing
beyond the condition of marriage (Matt. 22.30).
2 See O. Eissfeldt, “‘Mein Gott ’ im Alten Testament”, ZAW, 1945-48, pp. 3ff.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
"3

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Deak, J., Die Gottesliebe in den alten semitischen Religionen, Eperjes 1914.
Feuillet, A., Le Cantique des Cantiques, coll., “ Lectio divina ”, Paris

I953'
Buck, F., Die Liebe Gottes beim Propbeten Hosea, Rome 1953.
Winton Thomas, D., “The root ahab, love, in Hebrew”, ZAW 1939,
P- 57-
Ziegler, J., Die Liebe Gottes bet den Propbeten, Munster 1930.
 X. THE WRATH OF GOD

W rath is one of the most frequently mentioned of the

feelings of God and the expression “slow to anger” is
far from meaning that it was foreign to his nature. The
numerous terms which serve to denote it are all borrowed from the
concrete language of the physiological expressions of anger: it is
called 'ap nose, from the root ’anap to blow violently, chemah
heat, from yacham to be warm, qetsep outburst, ‘ebrah overflow¬
ing. It is interesting to note that these terms are met with more
often in connection with God than with men. Some even like
za'am and charon ’ap, are used only of the divine anger; thus it
is fitting to preserve for these terms their exact meaning: the
Israelite really believed in the wrath of Yahweh and did not project
it upon God from the testings and punishments which he himself
had passed through.1 It would be just as false to run to the opposite
extreme and to see in wrath an element which the God or Israel
had inherited from foreign deities or demons. It is always connected
with Yahweh and the few passages where it seems to act as an
independent power are to be attributed to the theological tendency
to eliminate anthropomorphisms. Rather let us say that wrath is
part of the divine 7ra'flo? and that it fits very well into the frame¬
work of this covenant religion, at the base of which there is the
affirmation of Yahweh’s sovereignty. Like the majority of the
sentiments, wrath is primarily an action: God pours it out (Ez.
20.33; Lam. 4.11), he makes it rise up (2 Chr. 36.16), he sends it
out (Job 20.23; Ls. 78-49), he performs it (1 Sam. 28.18; Hos. x 1.9).
Wrath is so much part of the figure of God in the Old Testament
that the ancient Israelites saw no problem in it, but they accepted
this reality as being a normal part of the irrational and mysterious
in God. What Paul Volz2 has called the demonic element in

1 According to statistics given by J. Fichtner, Theol. Literaturzeitung, 1950, 4-5,

‘ap is used 170 times of God and 40 times of man, chemah 90 times of God and
25 times of man, 'ebrah 24 times of God and 6 times of man, qetsep 26 times
of God and twice only of man.
2 Das Ddmonische in Jahve, 1924.

U4
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 115

Yahweh is not a foreign element attributed to the God of Israel,

but is linked with the profound and intimate being of this God and
of his religion. Many texts show this destructive and terrible power
at work, and even when they do not always mention wrath in this
connection they express its essential content, namely the threat
which a mysterious and powerful God imposes upon all that exists.
This aspect appears, for instance, in the wrestling of Jacob with
the angel (Gen. 32), in the nocturnal attack upon Moses (Ex. 4.29)
or in the numerous passages which speak of the face of God which
is unwilling to be seen, and of the holiness too direct contact with
which produces death (Ex. 33.20; 19.9-25; Jg. 13.22; 1 Sam. 6.19;
2 Sam. 6.7; Is. 6.5). Although in some cases wrath can be evoked
by the transgression of a given command, there are others, few in
number, in which it is kindled without anything to provoke it. In
the account of the David story we read that the anger of Yahweh
was kindled against Israel (2 Sam. 24.1) when according to 2 Sam.
21.14 it had )ust heen appeased and when in the meantime no event
had taken place likely to rekindle it. As an expression of his power,
Yahweh puts his wrath at the service of his purposes, for all that
Yahweh does has an aim, which is the establishment of his kingship
and of which the great judgment will be the decisive act. The day
of Yahweh will in fact be a day of wrath: in the earliest pictures
of it given us the nations are threatened with his wrath simply
because their existence is an obstacle to the establishment of the
sovereignty of Yahweh, and according to some traditions the same
viewpoint also prevailed at the conquest of Canaan (Ex. 23.27-30;
Num. 24.18; Jos. 24.12). This unmotivated character of the divine
wrath appears again in those texts which connect it with the
ephemeral nature of human life. As a human being man is
threatened with God’s wrath (Job 14.1-4); this may not even have
been foreign to his creation and God might have made man mortal
the better to control him.1
However, stress upon the covenant and the moral aspect inherent
in it led to the belief that transgression of that covenant was the
cause of wrath. Wrath then appears as a particular aspect of the
divine jealousy, of that jealousy which is an exclusive love when

1 In certain laments of Job the anger of God seems to be his normal activity, so
that it could disappear only by a change in his nature; but in the book of Job
allowance must be made for the readily exaggerated style of poetry (cf. Job 16.9, 20;
19.11).
II6 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

the people are faithful, but which turns to wrath when the people
respond to that love with ingratitude by going after other gods.
The Pentateuch, particularly the exhortations in Deuteronomy,
as well as the prophets, relate the outburst of wrath to the
transgression of the covenant (Dt. 6.15; n.i6ff.; 12.23; 13.19;
29.15-19; Jos. 23.16; Ez. 5.13; 16.38; 36.6; Nahum 1.2; Zeph. 3.8;
Ps. 79.5). In a parallel way, wrath against the nations answers to
motives of a moral order; they will be punished either for pride or
for contempt for the elementary rules of humanity; the day of
wrath becomes the day when quite definite sms are judged (Amos
1 and 2). Always there is correlation between the intensity of sin
and of wrath: the graver the sin the fiercer will be the wrath;
but the diminution of sin will weaken the wrath. The history of
Israel is presented by the prophets as a series of manifestations of
Yahweh’s wrath: Isaiah punctuates his great discourses of threats
with the refrain: “His wrath does not return and his hand is
stretched out still ”1 (5.25; 9.11; 16.20; 10.4). Yahweh will deliver
his own people to the Assyrian, the executive rod of his anger
(Is. 9.ioff.; 10.5), taken for the moment out of his armoury as the
prophet Jeremiah metaphorically expresses it when speaking of
Babylon (50.25); and in face of the display of this wrath the people
can only make the confession: “I must bear with the wrath of
Yahweh, for I have sinned against him ” (Mic. 7.9). But the wrath
only lasts for a time; Second Isaiah finds that the sufferings of the
exile have even exceeded the just punishment (Is. 40.iff.) and the
metaphor of the cup sometimes used for the wrath (e.g. Jer. 25.18)
reveals its temporary and essentially restricted nature, while the
chesed of God can be compared with an inexhaustible spring. It
is precisely the divine chesed which ensures that holiness builds up
more than it overthrows: “I am the holy One, saith Yahweh, I
will not come with wrath” (Hos. 11.9); for with a living God and
one who bestows life, wrath could not be the last word. Thus the
Old Testament teaching about God’s wrath finds its logical
expression in the statement of the Psalmist: “His wrath is for a
moment, his faithfulness ([chesed) life-long” (Ps. 30.6).
1 Merely out of curiosity we may notice Boehmer’s thesis, “Zorn”, ZAW, 1926,
p. 320, who, observing that the wrath is sometimes mentioned independently of
Yahweh (Dt. 29.27; 2 Kings 3.27; Jer. 21.5; 32.37), regards it as a demon, “ the
great Demon qetseph ”. Our view, rather, is that in these personifications there
is an attempt to separate the wrath from Yahweh because of a moralistic and
anti-anthropomorphic reaction.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT llj

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boehmer, J., “Zorn”, ZAW, 1926, p. 320.

Gray, J., “ The Wrath of God in Ganaanite and Hebrew Literature ”,
Journal of the Manchester University Egyptian and Oriental Society,
No. 25, 1954, p. 38.
Pohlenz, M., Vom Zorne Gottes, FRL 12, 1909.
Tasker, R. V. J., The Biblical Doctrine of the Wrath of God, London 1951.
Volz, P., Das Ddmonische in fahwe, 1924.
 XI. THE WISDOM OF GOD

B y saying that God is wise (Is. 31.2; Job 12.13) or t^iat

possesses wisdom (2 Sam. 14.20; Job. 15.8; 28; Dan. 2.20-23)
the Old Testament is expressing the universality of his
knowledge and the omnipotence of his deeds; so wisdom is often
mentioned along with knowledge and power. The fine twenty-
eighth chapter of the book of Job shows how that divine wisdom
plumbs the ultimate secrets of creation and the Yahwist is also
dealing with the divine wisdom in his theme of the knowledge of
good and evil. To his mind it is a complete knowledge which can
only be the privilege of Yahweh or at least of the Elohim and
whose acquisition by man, through disobedience or trickery (cf.
Job 15.8) infallibly turns to his ruin. God alone is Trav<r6<po$ as
a late author expresses it (4 Macc. 1.12; 13-19) and everything
which plunges man into mystery—the nature of Sheol, the birth
and growth of living beings, knowledge of the future—is naked
before God (Job 26.6). In the canonical literature of the Old
Testament stress is laid less upon theoretical wisdom than upon its
active manifestations: the wisdom of God shines in his works and
mainly in the creation whose order and harmony are a clear witness
to it. Certain texts even suggest that wisdom was represented as a
personal being, either a foreign deity1 whom Yahweh married, or
as a being created by Yahweh before the world itself, perhaps
serving as the prototype of the whole creation. The book of
Proverbs, in a much-discussed passage (8.22ff.) represents wisdom
as a child playing in front of its father and lord; we are not in the
presence of a pre-existent wisdom figure, although the personification
reaches such a degree that we can think of it as a kind of
hypostasis;2 in every case it is from this text that the apocryphal
1 Bostrom, Proverbiastudien, 1936, sees in the figure of wisdom a substitute for
the goddess Astarte; in short, speculations about wisdom may have arisen from the
desire to give Yahweh a consort, but the passages called upon such as Prov. 4-8ff.
and 7.4 simply seek to contrast wisdom with folly which might occasionally show
itself through the allurements of foreign women.
2 The personal nature of wisdom is more developed in Job 28.27 and in Prov.
8.22ff.; in this latter passage the words qanani (v. 22) and ‘amon (v. 30) present some
difficulty; if, as there is plenty of reason for supposing, qanah means to create, we
do not have in this text the statement of a mythical origin of wisdom, but it is
118
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 119

writings such as Baruch and the Wisdom of Solomon will develop

their speculations about the hypostatization of wisdom. By present¬
ing her credentials of nobility, as ancient as they are weighty,
wisdom seeks to invite men to follow her and to attain once again
by her help that original state when sin had not yet corrupted the
work of creation. Wisdom which reigns in nature should also
preside over God’s directing of human life. But in this realm
wisdom is accompanied by the power of discernment between good
and evil: binah, discrimination, is often mentioned along with
cbokmab, the art of success. The punishment of evil and the
reward of goodness are one of the dominant themes of wisdom
literature, but in distinction from the historical and prophetic books
which base retribution upon the covenant, the wisdom books con¬
nect it with the creation. By regarding man independently of all
national attachment, as a creature governed by certain elementary
laws quite well summarized by the term righteousness,1 the
wisdom movement affirms the universality of God in opposition to
the restrictions which the covenant and the law, manifestations of a
jealous God, ran the risk of introducing. However, in the course
of history it is the legalist current which ended by absorbing the
wisdom current; and already within the Old Testament certain
texts see the ideal of wisdom in a scrupulous study of the torah
(Ps. 1 and 119) and the Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus
sturdily identify wisdom with the law when they make it the
instrument of divine direction for the people of Israel (cf. particu¬
larly Ecclus. 2q.8ff.). This narrowing of wisdom also marks the
beginning of its decline. Nevertheless it must be observed that the
ideal of a wise and universal God had sufficiently penetrated Jewish
religion so that even in the midst of the strictest legalism it never
lost the vision of humanity.2
not impossible that the wise man of the Proverbs thought of wisdom as the first
thing created by God and as a thing which was intended to serve as a model for
all the others; the apocryphal texts like Wisd. 7.22®.; 9.9; Enoch 42.1-2 and Philo,
De Cherubim, 48-50, Baruch 3.29 are very probably inspired by this text in
Proverbs.
1 The idea of justice on which the prophets insist so strongly is more a part of
the wisdom tradition than of the specifically prophetic tradition which is dominated
by concepts of election and covenant; but the contacts of the two traditions show
the place of honour occupied by wisdom and by the wise men among the people
of Israel.
2 Cf. A. Causse, “ L’humanisme juif et le conflit du judaisme et de l’hellenisme ”
in Melanges Franz Cumont. Annuaire de VInstitut de fhilologie et d'histoire
orientates et slaves, t. 4, 1936, p. 525.
120 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Sometimes God gives this wisdom to men; mainly to the sages,

in its fulness to the Messiah (cf. Is. u); but for common men the
greatest wisdom will consist in recognizing the wisdom of God by
an attitude of awe and humility (Prov. 1.7; 9.10; Ps. in.10;
Job 28.28).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bostrom, G., Proverbiastudien. Die Weisheit und das fremde Weib,

Lund 1935.
Heinisch, P., Pcrsonifikationen und Hypostasen im A.T. und im Alten
Orient, Munster 1921.
Die personliche Weisheit des A.T. in religions geschicht-
licher Beleuchtung, 1923.
Knox, W. L., “The divine Wisdom”, JTS, 1937, p. 230.
RlNGGREN, H., Word and Wisdom. Studies in the hypostatization of
divine qualities, Lund 1947.
ScHENKE, W., Die Chokma in der jiidiscben Hypostasenspekulation, Oslo
1912.
 PART TWO

THE ACTION OF GOD ACCORDING

TO THE OLD TESTAMENT

I. THE INSTRUMENTS OF GOD’S

ACTION

A. THE SPIRIT

T he goal of divine action is to maintain and to create life; to

achieve this aim Yahweh chiefly avails himself of two means
which we encounter in varying intensities in all the realms of
his manifestation: the Spirit and the Word. The striking resem¬
blance between these two realities goes back to their common
origin: the term mach means originally and etymologically the air,
which manifests itself in two forms—that of the wind in nature and
of breath in living beings. Once it became the prerogative of God
mach threw off its material attachments though it never ceased to
be an active power. Spirit and Word belong to anthropomorphic
language; but since they continue to operate even apart from bodies
they can be regarded as independent realities more easily than the
hand or face of God.
Apart from some passages where it is the symbol of inconstancy
and nothingness: Is. 26.18; 41.25; Mic. 2.11; Job 16.3; Jer. 5.13,
wind as a physical reality is always closely associated with God, it
is one of his best servants (Ps. 104.4) and is personified as the
breath of his nostrils (Ps. 18.16). The Exodus, that liberating
event which became the type of salvation, was due to the inter¬
vention of Yahweh in the form of a strong wind which dried up
the sea and gave the Israelites passage (Ex. 14.21; 15.8). The wind
121
122 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

fulfils a double function exactly corresponding to that of God; it

is the destructive power which dries up the springs (Hos. 13.15)*
but at the same time and more importantly the force which by
piling up the clouds brings fertilizing rain to the parched earth
(cf. 1 Kings 18.45). Another aspect of the wind, less spectacular but
not less suggestive, connects it with God, namely its light and
intangible nature; it knows no limits and is capable of bearing the
deity on its wings to the extremities of the earth (Ps. 68.4; 104.3)
and no one can grasp its whence and whither. Power and mystery,
such are the two characteristics of wind, and it is because the God
of the Old Testament is both power and mystery that the
wind is able to express so adequately the whole nature of the
divine.
Although the wind accounts for life in nature and can be
regarded without difficulty as the breath which gives life, the life
of living beings should not be considered as an effect of the wind.
The term ruach denotes the breath of life which is an effect of the
breath of God. J. Hehn1 has shown with numerous examples that
this idea was to be found amongst the Egyptians, Babylonians,
Assyrians, Canaanites, Phoenicians and Hebrews. It must have
offered itself spontaneously to different peoples through the simple
observation that life and breath ceased together, and because of
the anthropomorphic picture of the deity the origin of this breath
was attributed to his breath. Numerous texts in the Old Testa¬
ment affirm that the breath of God is life-giving: Gen. 6.17; 7.15;
Num. 16.22; Jg. 15.19; Ps. 104.29; Eccl. 3.1; 9.21; 12.7; Is. 37.6,
8; Zech. 12.1. Not only the origin of human life but its span
is conditioned by the breath of Yahweh: “Thou hast granted me
life and thy care has watched over my ruach ” Job cries (10.12).
This breath rarely, and only as a result of the systematization of
language, becomes a merely anthropological reality; on the whole
it always remains the property of God who is free at any instant
to take it back to himself.
For the ancient Israelites the mystery which fills the world was
not limited to certain natural happenings; even before the unique
God Yahweh had assumed all aspects of power and mystery there
was belief in the existence of powers more or less invisible, for the
most part maleficent, and they were spoken of by the same term
1 “ Zum Problem des Geistes im Alten Orient und im Alten Testament ”, ZAW,
1925, p. 210.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 123

ruach1 in order to indicate their violent and mysterious character.

In the present state of the texts, these evil spirits appear as subject
to Yahweh, but their aspect as originally independent powers is
shown by certain verbs which are used of their mode of action.
Thus it is said of ruach that it clothes itself (labash), Jg. 6.34;
1 Chr. 12.18; that it falls upon an individual (na-phal), Ez. 11.5; that
it comes forth mightily (tsalach), Jg. 14.6; 1 Sam. 10.6, 10; 18.16;
that it passes or traverses (‘abar), Num. 5.14. If in these passages
the term used had from the beginning referred to the spirit of
Yahweh one cannot see why these early texts, which do not give
ground before the most daring anthropomorphisms, did not simply
say: Yahweh falls, Yahweh bursts in upon. Account must be
taken of this sense of ruach. To get out of the difficulty by saying
that the spirit is only the vivid personification of an evil power or
passion,2 is to by-pass the problem; in fact there is a notable differ¬
ence between passages like Num. 5.14, 30; Hos. 4.12; 5.4; Zech.
13.2, where we have a rhetorical style, and the very concrete des¬
cription of spirits in 1 Kings 223 where they play the part of indi¬
viduals subordinate to Yahweh but acting independently of him.4
Physical, biological and demonic reality, the spirit is yet pri¬
marily in the Old Testament the prerogative kcit’ e£oxnv of God
and his instrument of revelation and action par excellence. It is
probable that this identification of Yahweh with the ruach was not
made at the outset.5 The quite frequent combination of the term
with ’elohim might suggest that the divine spirit was thought of as
a force able to act without Yahweh and even to escape his control;
thus the transmission of Elijah’s spirit to his successor seems to
imply no participation by Yahweh (2 Kings 2.9-15). However, from

1 P. Volz in his work Der Geist Gottes im A.T. und im Spatjudentum has insisted
on this aspect of ruach. Cf. the same author: “ Der Heilige Geist in den Gathas
des Sarathuschtra ”, in Eucharisterion (Gunkel Festschrift), 1925, p. 323.
2 R. Koch, Gottesgeist und Messias; otherwise this work gives an excellent summary
of the subject of the spirit in the O.T.
3 The spirit (haruach) which comes before Yahweh in 1 Kings 22.21 plays a part
comparable to that of Satan in the prologue of Job; Kittel, Biblia hebraica (3rd ed.)
even proposes to alter ruach into satan, a purely gratuitous emendation.
4 In 1 Kings 22.21 spirit is masculine, which indicates a more definite individualizing,
though examination of all the texts does not allow any conclusions to be drawn
from variations in gender of the word ruach.
5 According to Ed. Koenig, Hebr.-aram. Worterbuch zum A.T., the primitive
sense may have been that of spirit, and the material sense of wind and breath
derivative; that seems difficult to reconcile with Hebrew semantic principles about
the priority of concrete meanings.
124 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

the first traces of theological reflection about ruach as a divine

power it was connected with Yahweh; a celebrated passage in the
book of Isaiah shows that in the eighth century the spirit and Yahweh
denote the same reality. The prophet reproaches the king and the
people of Judah for the projected alliance with Egypt, for to seek
salvation by military means is to reject Yahweh: “Egypt is man
and not god (el), his horses are flesh (basar) and not spirit (ruach).
Yahweh will stretch out his hand and the protector will stumble
and his protege will fall and all will perish together” (Is. 31.3).
The terms 'el and ruach placed here in parallel signify that God
alone has on his side power and immortality. The prophet does not
go so far as the New Testament affirmation that God is spirit, but
he implies—and everything suggests that he is not the first to do
so—that spirit characterizes all that is contained in the word “ god ”
and that Yahweh, once he has become the only God, is alone
capable of giving it perfect fulfilment. It can therefore be said
that the spirit is God himself in creative and saving activity; the
spirit of God lies at the origin of creation (cf. Gen. 1.2), it is cease¬
lessly present in the form of wind, but because of the uniqueness
of Israelite religion it is chiefly history which is the place of his
manifestation. The action of the spirit in history has not been
experienced with equal intensity in the course of the ages, but it
can be said without risk of hasty generalization that throughout
history it is the spirit who directs events. In the early ages the
spirit acts intermittently; he falls unexpectedly upon certain per¬
sons and makes them capable of extraordinary acts. Thus, it is
through a momentary gift of the spirit that Samson is able to tear
in pieces a lion and a kid (Jg. 14.6); by this act Samson is able to
ward off the Philistine danger and to restore the confidence of the
people in Yahweh’s power; through the gift of the spirit all these
charismatic leaders are saviours (moshi'im) of the theocratic state
and maintain the reality of the covenant. It has been very soundly
written, “These acts are not merely marvellous exploits, they are
acts of liberation. Though isolated deeds of local heroes they
belong to the one historical process, they mark the stages of the
forward march which leads Israel to independence. It is this
movement of liberation which gives them unity. The interven¬
tion of Yahweh’s spirit at these different stages gives prominence
to one of the directions of divine action in the Old Testament.
The spirit of God is the source of the national community of
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
I25
Israel.”1 The prophets are animated by the spirit. The nebi’im of
the time of Samuel are possessed by the ruach and he who comes
into contact with them is willy-nilly so infected as to become
“ another man ” (i Sam. 6.10). The spirit could have effects upon
men of God as violent as they were unexpected; it was commonly
accepted that it could seize them and carry them to another place,
even destroy them (1 Kings 18.12; 2 Kings 2.16). Nor is the spirit
foreign to the activity of the great prophets; it is true that the pre-
exilic prophets from Amos onwards never speak of the possession
of the spirit in order to justify or authenticate their work. Oppo¬
sition to the old nabiism and to its ecstatic manifestations produced
by the ruach might explain this new attitude. According to
Mowinckel2 the prophets’ reserve about the spirit may have been
due to conflicts which some of them—Jeremiah in particular—had
to suffer with the false prophets who boasted their possession of
ruach, but which was really only “wind” (cf. Jer. 5.13). It is
clear that for all the prophets it is not the spirit but the word which
qualifies them for their ministry, because only the word creates
between the prophet and God a relationship of person with person.
But the word presupposes the spirit, the creative breath of life,
and for the prophets there was such evidence of this that they
thought it unnecessary to state it explicitly. There are in addition
a few passages which show that the true prophets were also
conscious of being clothed with the spirit and of being thereby the
heirs of the ancient nebi’im as an instrument of divine revelation in
history. Hosea, after having announced punishment, elicits from
his adversaries the sarcasm: “The prophet is a fool, the man
of the spirit (’ish haruach) is mad” (9.7), a passage which clearly
does not prove that the prophet attributes his inspiration to the
spirit, but which shows that the prophets did not refuse to be
called men of the spirit among the people. Micah puts the spirit
into more direct relation with prophetic inspiration: “As for me,
I am full of power, of the ruach of Yahweh ” (3.8),3 and Isaiah

1 J. Guillet, Themes bibliques, p. 233.

2 Mowinckel, “ The spirit and the word ”, JBL, 1934, pp. 199®.
3 This Micah passage, because of its unusual construction (’et ruach Yahweh),
might be regarded as an addition to the text inspired by analogy with Is. 11.2;
break in the rhythm has also been appealed to in support of its lack of authenticity:
but instead of suppressing ruach we could just as well take koach as a gloss uselessly
repeating geburah (cf. Giesebrecht, Die Berufsbegabung der altt. Propheten, 1897,
pp. 123, 137).
126 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

says that to act without the spirit of Yahweh is to set oneself up

against him and that to oppose the words of the prophet who is the
mouthpiece of God is to reject God himself (Is. 30.1-2). Elsewhere
the hand of Yahweh which seizes the prophet (Is. 8.11; 1 Kings
18.12, 46; Ez. 1.3; 3.12; 37.1; 40.1) acts exactly like the spirit,
so that in spite of the infrequent reference to the spirit the upheaval
which takes place in the great prophets through their calling is
placed on the same plane as the marvellous acts attributed to the
spirit when it fell upon the judges and the first nebi’im. From the
Exile the spirit becomes an essential element in the inspiration of
the prophets. Ezekiel speaks and acts under the inspiration of the
ruach (2.2; 3.24; 11.5, etc.), and it is to the spirit that he attributes
both the reception of the divine word and the superhuman power
which makes him capable of announcing it. Many of the post-
exilic texts in which we have a kind of resume of the history of
salvation present that history as a result of the spirit manifesting
itself through the prophets. Speaking of Israel’s past, the great
prayer of repentance of Nehemiah (chap. 9) recalls that activity:
“ Thou warnedst them by thy spirit through the medium of thy
prophets, but they did not listen” (v. 30) and in an analogous
context of thought the prophet Zechanah speaks in the same way:
“ They made their hearts adamant for fear of hearing the instruction
and the words which Yahweh Tsebaoth had sent—by his spirit—
through the medium of the prophets of the past” (7.12).
In a similar presentation of history, Moses becomes the man of
the spirit, with which he is so richly endowed that he can without
loss transmit some of it to others (Num. 11.17, 25, 29). But it is not
only past history which is a manifestation of the spirit; an even
more splendid outpouring of the spirit is reserved for the future:
the new age will be marked by abundance of vegetation, by pros¬
perity and peace, all of which will be produced by the spirit of
Yahweh “ come from on high ” (Is. 32. i^fE.); the shoot of the stem
of Jesse will be clothed with the spirit in a more complete and
spiritual way than the leaders of the heroic age (n.2ff.); the spirit
will also rest permanently on the servant of Yahweh (42.iff.) but
at the same time all the people will receive the benefit of this extra¬
ordinary gift: “ I will pour forth my spirit upon thy race and my
blessing upon thy posterity ” (Is. 44.3) and since it will be shed in
their hearts it will produce not a transient manifestation of power
but a regeneration which will be the counterpart of the creative
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 127

function of the spirit in nature (Ez. 36.22-28). With stress laid

upon its creative function, the spirit’s sphere of action is enlarged.
Each individual life is directed by the spirit in the moral realm
(the request is made for the spirit to lead in the path of uprightness,
Ps. 143.10) as well as in that of intelligence (wisdom and artistic
abilities are gifts of the spirit, Ex. 28.3; 31 ^fE.) and the Wisdom
of Solomon will draw the consequences of that evolution by identi-
fying the spirit with wisdom. The spirit being of the very essence
of God was brought into relation with the holiness which constituted
his principal attribute, but it is only in two passages that this
relationship is explicitly stated. One post-exilic prophet represents
the holy spirit as the means par excellence by which God asserts
his presence in the midst of his people, a presence as personal as
that of the angel or the face against whom one can revolt and who
can be grieved (Is. 63.10-11). The author of Psalm 51 has the very
strong feeling that his faults deserve his removal far from God; so
he begs that God, after having pardoned him, will not remove his
holy spirit (v. 13), that is to say that he will not deprive him of
his presence. Without the spirit—and on this point the testimony
of the Old Testament is unanimous—it is not possible to have
communion between God and man; but this theology of the spirit
never took the form of an indefinite spiritism which would have
undermined the personality of God.

B. THE WORD

That God reveals himself by his word is a truth confirmed by

every one of the Old Testament books. It is by his word that he
reveals himself as the living God and Second Isaiah, drawing the
full consequences of anthropomorphism, will contrast Yahweh with
pagan gods by the word of the one and the silence of the others.
Of the false god made by human hands he says, “ It is vain to
cry unto him, he does not reply, he does not deliver from distress ”
(46.7; cf. also 41.21; 43.9; 45-2off.). To understand the importance
of the word of Yahweh it is necessary to remember the common
belief throughout antiquity in the value and efficacy of a word. A
spoken word is never an empty sound but an operative reality
whose action cannot be hindered once it has been pronounced, and
which attained its maximum effectiveness in formulae of blessing
128 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

and cursing. This dynamic quality of the word already appears

in the names by which it is denoted. The most usual term and the
one which has become classical for the word is da bar, which must
probably be associated with a root which in Hebrew has the mean¬
ing of: to be behind and to push; da bar could then be defined as
the projection forward of what lies behind, that is to say, the
transition into the act of what is at first in the heart. The realistic
character of dabar is always strongly stressed, so that the term will
denote thing as well as word (Gen. 20.10; 22.1, 20; 40.1; 48.1 etc.)
and no term throws into clearer relief the fact that the Hebrew
mind did not distinguish between thought and action. Realism
and dynamism are features equally characteristic of the root ’amar\
derived from a root having the sense to be raised up or to be clear,
the word would be the visible manifestation of the thought and
of the will. In distinction from dabar, the stress with ’amar is
chiefly upon the spoken word; the expression lemor which intro¬
duces speeches is generally preceded by dabar (wayedabber lemor)
which alone possesses creative dynamism.
The power of the word of God is similarly met outside the Old
Testament.1 Sumerian hymns very often celebrate the greatness
of the word; the believer in Enlil-Marduk addresses his god thus:

“ thy word, a sublime net, stretches over heaven and earth, it

falls on the sea, and the sea is rough, it falls on the cane plantation
and the cane sprouts, it falls on the waves of the Euphrates, the
word of Marduk stirs up vast waves.”

Belief in the creative power of the word appears in many proper

names, with constructions such as “ Sin gives the name ” or “ Nabu
is lord of the name ”, showing that existence and life was attributed
to the all-powerful word of the god. In Egypt we meet the same
theme of the creative word with the stress laid more on the
efficacious word of the king who, as the image and son of the god,
shares his power.
The idea of the divine word is, therefore, by no means peculiar
to Israel, but the God of Israel, being essentially different from the
nature gods and the national gods of other nations, stamps his
particular mark upon the theology of the word, so that under
1 The most abundant documentation is given in the work of L. Durr and for
the most recently discovered texts in that of Ringgren (cf. bibliogr.).
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 129

analogous terms very different realities are expressed. It is impos¬

sible to study the theology of the word without relating it to the
revelation of God in history. Whilst in Babylon and Egypt the
divine word intervenes in isolated events which have no connection
with one another, the word of God in the Old Testament directs
and inspires a single history which begins with the word of God
pronounced at the creation and which is completed by the word
made flesh (Jn. 1.14). Therefore it is in history that the word is
revealed and its action in nature is only a pale reflection of its work
in history. The laws and the oracles of the prophets are the two
principal forms which that word assumes. Law belongs to the
origins of Israelite history, not in its casuistical form but in that of
brief apodictic declarations, to which just the name debarim was
given and of which the various decalogues give us the best known
instances (Ex. 24.3, 4, 8; 20.1; 34.x, 27, 28). These debarim consti¬
tute a revelation of God; in them Yahweh affirms that he is the
Lord, but since God’s affirmation is at the same time the manifesta¬
tion of a power before which man can only bow, and therefore of
an order which he can only obey, the word takes on the aspect of a
law. The circumstances in which these debarim are uttered, their
link with the establishment of the covenant, have conferred upon
them an authority which in Judaism became merged with that of
God himself.
The prophets never dream of questioning the authority of the
ancient debarim; they were even to a large extent commentators
upon the law, but with them the role of guardians of tradition is
subordinate to the direct link which united them to God who places
his words in their mouth, thereby affirming his presence not above
but within the events of history.1 The prophet is a man of the
word; the wife of Jeroboam asks a dabar of Ahijah of Shiloh
(1 Kings 14.5); king Ahab asks a dabar of his prophets and of
Micaiah ben Imlah (1 Kings 22.5-13), and Jeremiah, in characterizing
the various ministries, defines the prophet by the dabar (Jer. 18.18).
There is an important difference between the legal and the prophetic

1 Two practices inspired the formulation of the prophetic oracles: on the one
hand the proclamation of royal edicts and orders, and on the other the forms
of communication oral or written (letters). Cf. the conclusive comments of L. Koehler,
Deuterojesaja, stilkritisch untersucht, pp. 102L, and of W. Baumgartner in
Eucharisterion (Gunkel Festschrift), pp. 145ft. This dual origin well illustrates the
double role of the prophet as the representative of God and as the servant of
his people.
130 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

word: debarim have a lasting value for all generations, whilst the
word of the prophet, spoken in quite definite circumstances, has no
bearing after its fulfilment. Thus the dabar which the prophet
Elijah announced to king Ahazaiah: “ Thou shalt die ” only exists
for the king and loses its dynamic when it is fulfilled. The word
of Micah about the ruin of Jerusalem and of the Temple (Mic. 3.12)
weighed like a heavy threat over the people until the time of
Jeremiah (Jer. 26. iyfE.), but after the events of 387 B.c. it had no
further significance. However, even in definite and individual
cases, the prophets do not announce a word but the word of
Yahweh. This means that each time the prophet speaks he reveals
Yahweh in his totality under one of his essential aspects as judge
or as saviour, and that revelation made to an individual has value as
an example for all the people.
What is striking in a study of the word in the prophets is its
objective and dynamic character. Jeremiah, who is the most
explicit of all the prophets on the subject of prophetic experience,
shows to what extent the prophet, in receiving the word, is seized
by a mysterious power which sometimes crushes and tortures him
(20.9), sometimes fills him with joy (15.16). The prophet is literally
disturbed through and through by the dabar he receives, and which
creates a new life within him. It is by this constraining power of
the word which weighs upon him that Jeremiah authenticates his
own ministry against that of the false prophets who also claimed
to have received the words of Yahweh, but in whom no change in
personal bearing was shown (23.1 iff.) and Amos compares the
situation of the prophet who has received the word to the terror
which spontaneously seizes a man who hears the roaring of a
lion (3.8).
The word is always far greater than the person of the prophet;
he only receives it in order to transmit it, his function is that of a
messenger. Even the form of prophetic discourses shows the nature
of the prophets as men called and sent. The prophets in fact
formulate their oracles in just the same way as a messenger transmits
a message that has been entrusted to him; passages such as Num.
22.16; Jg. 11.12; 14.22; 1 Kings 20.3; 22.27; 2 Kings 18.28, which
relate secular messages, have the same form as prophetic oracles.
When the prophets introduce their discourses by the words : “ Thus
saith Yahweh , they imply the transmission of a message received
without any addition of their own; and in other respects they
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 131

take care to distinguish the word of Yahweh from their own words;
so in Amos 3.1-2 it is the prophet who speaks, in verse 3 Yahweh,
in Is. 18.1-3 wor<^ °f the prophet, in verses 4-6 the word
of Yahweh. Once handed on, this word acts independently of the
person of the prophet: “The Lord sends a word against Jacob
and it falls on Israel” (Is. 9.7). It is like a projectile shot into
the enemy camp whose explosion must sometimes be awaited but
which is always inevitable, and these explosions are the events of
history. It cannot be more explicitly stated that Yahweh is the
sole author of history; human beings are the instruments of his
word; even the Assyrian king Sennacherib represents his intervention
as an order from Yahweh: “Yahweh told me: go up against this
country and destroy it” (Is. 36.10; 2 Kings 18.20). It is particu¬
larly in Deuteronomy, and in the great work of historical synthesis
created under its inspiration, that the idea of the word in relation
to history is systematized. The permanence of the word is assured
by the prophetic succession;1 according to the word put into Moses’
mouth by Deuteronomy, Yahweh promises an uninterrupted
succession of prophets (Dt. 18.13-18). That prophetic succession
was an historical reality, even though there were periods when the
word of God was rare, that is to say practically non-existent and
though the link connecting a prophet with his predecessors is less
important than the direct and personal relationship which links him
with God. After Deuteronomy the theology of the creative word
in history found still greater expression in the work of Second Isaiah,
whose book opens with the affirmation that in face of the succession
of the generations the word of God abides eternally, and closes with
the proclamation of that word’s efficacy (40.8 and 55.11). This
word is more to him than ‘ ‘ the promises of the old prophets
recorded in Scripture”,2 it is the entire action and revelation of
God; with great power he shows its double aspect; noetic and
dvnamic. By his word God makes known the meaning of events;
he makes them known in advance, for he who is the first and the
last knows what will happen at the end of time (41.4; 43.10; 44.6;

1 Five stages of that succession can be distinguished, with R. B. Y. Scott, The

Relevance of the Prophets, New York 1944: (a) Moses; (b) the prophets of the
time of the Judges and of the first period of the kingdom: Samuel, Nathan, Gad,
Shemaiah, Ahijah, Jehu ben Hanani; (c) Elijah and Elisha and their disciples;
(d) the golden age of pre-exilic prophecy inaugurated by Amos; (e) the post-exilic
prophets, often anonymous and hence difficult to date.
2 A. Robert, article “ Logos ” in DBS, col. 453.
 132 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

48.12).1 Above all it is the dynamic aspect of the word which he

is interested in stressing, though with him the dynamism which
had ended in catastrophe, as the majority of his predecessors had
announced, blossomed forth into salvation. This function of the
word in producing salvation can be compared with that of the
servant of Yahweh and it can be asked whether the intuition of the
prophet did not already discern one and the same reality in the word
which remains eternally and in the figure of the servant fulfilling
his mission right to the end. The word which creates and interprets
history appears also in several Psalms where the da bar is some¬
times above history and thus gives confidence and security to the
Psalmist (Ps. 103.8, 42) and sometimes the action of God in history
whose revelation is awaited. It is this that the believer awaits
(Ps. 130.5) because it brings healing (Ps. 107.20) and for the author
of Psalm 119 the word is both God’s promise and the concrete
reality of the written torah. Wisdom literature uses the term da bar
and more often 'imrah to refer to the teaching which the wise men
dispense in the family circles or in schools: the word is here
identified with wisdom. But as the master of Wisdom is God,
the words of the wise were also a word of God, and the association
of dabar with mitswah, found, for instance, in Prov. 13.13 and
16.20, shows that the same authority was attributed to them as to
the debarim of the law.
The creative function of the word in nature is stressed less in
Israel than amongst neighbouring peoples, but since the world is
viewed from an historical angle, that is to say as the stage on which
history will be unfolded, the action of God with respect to nature
will be exercised through the same means. In Gen. 1 the word
is the creative instrument of God, as in one of the most expressive
Psalms dealing with the creation: “By the word of Yahweh the
heavens were made, by the breath of his mouth all their host. . . .
He speaks and it is done, he commands and it takes place” (Ps.
33.6, 9). The world is also maintained by the word; and what
God utters by his mouth is concretely revealed in the form of
natural phenomena, unusual like the manna (Dt. 8.3) or familiar
like wind and snow, rain and thunder.

1 There was no organic association between the prophet and the word. The
word could fall upon the prophet at a moment when he was not expecting it, just
as it could be refused him when he asked for it. Cf. the example of Jeremiah
who had to wait ten days for the manifestation of a word (Jer. 42.7!!.).
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
*33
“ He sendeth out his ’imrah upon the earth, his dabar runneth
very swiftly. He giveth snow like wool, he scattereth the hoar
frost like ashes. . . . He sendeth out his word, and melteth them,
he causeth his wind to blow, and the waters flow” (Ps. 147.15-18).
“The voice of Yahweh (i.e. thunder) rumbles over the waters,
the voice of Yahweh breaketh the cedars, the voice of Yahweh
cleaveth the flames of fire” (Ps. 29.2$.; cf. Ps. 46.7).
Natural phenomena are sometimes even regarded as continua¬
tions of Yahweh’s word; thus the Psalmist speaks of the “stormy
wind which fulfils his word ” (Ps. 148.8).
Second Isaiah attributes to the word a power in the cosmos as
great as in history and he seems to envisage both aspects in the
celebrated picture in chapter 55 (cf. Is. 44.27).
The theology of the word resulted in two kinds of crystallizations;
the first started with the fixation of the word in writing. While
the debarim were from the start put into writing, which would
ensure their permanence, the prophets had originally no other
concern than that of transmitting the word orally to those for
whom it was destined. Before Jeremiah only occasionally does the
question arise of writing certain words down, as in Is. 8 with the
purpose of reinforcing a symbolic action. The definite order which
Jeremiah receives to write down his prophecies is probably not
unrelated to the Deuteronomic reform. In the history of Israel
Deuteronomy marks an attempt to reconcile and to identify the
prophetic word with the legal word by presenting a book as the
normative authority; in this book, which can always be consulted
(Dt. 30.11-14), life is truly found (Dt. 32.47), so that any new
revelation is superfluous. The dabar is, therefore, no more the
hoped for reality whose manifestation was often awaited with
anxiety, even by the prophets, it is given once for all and the
Israelite will find there all that is necessary for his salvation. Only
the backward glance matters, and every new revelation will have
to assume an antique garb to avoid appearing new.1 The part
which this orientation towards the dabar has played in the destiny
of Judaism cannot be disregarded. If we consider that because of it
Judaism survived during the Exile, and if we measure the intensity
of the piety aroused by the written word, then we appreciate all
that was fruitful in that evolution. Nevertheless we are not pre¬
vented from regretting that, by opening the door to the idea of
1 This is why so many apocalypses are attributed to men of the past.
134 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

complete and literal inspiration, it hampered an understanding of

the dynamic of the word of God such as we find in the prophets.
The other attempt at crystallization appears in the tendencies
towards making an hypostasis of the word. Although it is impos¬
sible to speak of an hypostasis of the word in the canonical books
of the Old Testament,1 it must be recognized that many of the
affirmations point in that direction. To speak of the word as a
reality which falls and which unlooses catastrophe (Is. 9.7), or as
a devouring fire (Jer. 5.14; 20.8; 23.29), or as a reality which is
present with someone like one person with another (2 Kings 3.12),
is to look upon it less as an effect than as an active subject akin
to the angel or the face of Yahweh. The same hypostatic function
of the word, which receives its full development in the pseudepi-
grapha, has its roots in the Old Testament without any need to
admit foreign influences. The tendency to hypostatize was more
obvious in the case of wisdom than of the word, but it is the latter
which provided a foundation for the theology of wisdom.2

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. THE SPIRIT

Gunkel, H., Die Wirkungen des heiligen Geistes, Gottingen 1909.

Hehn, J., “ Zum Problem des Geistes im alten Orient und im A.T. ”,
ZAW, 1925, p. 2io.
Imschoot, P. van, “ L’action de 1’esprit de Jahve dans 1’A.T.”, RScPhTh,

x934> P- 553-
“ L’Esprit de Jahve, source de vie dans l’A.T.”, RB,
r935> P- 4Sl-
“ Sagesse et Esprit dans 1’A.T.” RB, 1938, p. 23.
Koeberle, J., Natur und Geist nach der Auffassung des A.T., Munich
1901.
Koch, R., Geist und Messias. Beitrag zur biblischen Theologie des A.T.,
Vienna 1950.
1 Instead of speaking about foreign influences it is better to see in the analogous
expressions and speculations the mark of a fundamental structure of the primitive
mind according to which the life of a person shows itself in the form of breath and
word, dynamic realities far excellence.
2 It is evident that in a text like Ecclus. 24.3 where Wisdom says, in speaking
of itself: “ I came forth from the mouth of the Most High ” and in Wisd. 7.25
which represents wisdom as a “ breath of the glory of the Almighty ”, the role
attributed to wisdom is literally proper only to the word or to the spirit.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 135

Lamorte, A., “La notion de ruach chez les prophetes ”, EThR, 1933, p.
97-
Mowinckel, S., “ The spirit and the word in the pre-exilic prophets ”,
JBL, 1934, p. 199.
Snaith, N. H., “The spirit of God in Hebrew thought”, The Doctrine
of the Holy S-pirit, Headingley Lectures I, London 1937.

B. THE WORD

Durr, L., Die Wertung des gottlichen Wortes im A.T. und im antiken
Orient, Leipzig 1938.
Grether, O., Name und Wort Gottes im A.T., BZAW 64, 1934.
Heinisch, P., Das Wort im A.T. und im alten Orient, Munster 1922.
Ringgren, H., Word and Wisdom, Lund 1947.
Szeruda, J., Das Wort Jahwes, Lodz 1921.
 II. GOD THE CREATOR OF THE WORLD

A. HISTORY AND CREATION

I N the volume of his Dogmatik devoted to the doctrine of

creation Karl Barth characterizes the Old Testament idea of
creation very appropriately in these words: “The covenant is
the goal of creation, creation is the way to the covenant” and he
arranges his material under two main headings: (a) the covenant,
the internal basis of the creation; (b) the creation, the external basis
of the covenant.1 This means that the idea of creation is secondary
to that of covenant, of which it is both the condition and the con¬
sequence. Faith in God the creator holds a less important place
than that of God the saviour, and the God who made the heavens
and the earth is less often and less directly the object of faith than
the God who brought his people out of Egypt.2 But the covenant
is only possible within the framework of creation. The Old Testa¬
ment is not unaware of the idea of a Cosmos, that is, of a universe
organized with wisdom where each thing has its place and is pro¬
duced in its own time. The author of the Priestly creation narrative
shows God setting the elements in order like an architect intending
to build a house3 inside which new inhabitants should be entirely
at their ease; this house must be substantial, sheltered from dangers,
pleasant, with a measure of luxury not forbidden there. God him¬
self takes pleasure in the construction: “ Elohim saw all that he
had made and behold it was very good ” (Gen. 1.31). The architect
is not confused with the creation, God makes his creation so far
independent of himself that he exercises his sovereignty to the
1 “ Die Existenz und das Wesen des von Gott gewollten und gesetzten Geschopfs
ist der Gegenstand und insofern die Voraussetzung seiner Liebe. So ist der Bund
das Ziel der Schopfung, die Schopfung der Weg Zum Bunde ” (Dogmatik III/i, p. 106).
3 Faith in God as creator is not mentioned in the earliest credo of Israel: Dt. 26.56.
3 The comparison with a house, which is only hinted at by the Priestly author, is
explicitly developed in the book of Job (38.4-7) where all the acts of the architect
are attributed to God: marking off of the land, laying of the foundations and the
corner stone. Egyptian and Mesopotamian texts speak in the same way of the
construction of temples which are always thought of as a representation of the
universe.

136
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
*37
profit of man, who in his autonomy must nevertheless remember
that he is only the image, that is to say the representative, of God.
This autonomy which God confers upon the whole creation and
more particularly upon man alone makes possible a covenant, for
there can only be a covenant where the autonomy of the two con¬
tracting parties is maintained. In order that man might suitably
fulfil his function of partner, God subjects the framework of nature
to certain fixed laws or to certain unforeseen movements and the
normal aspect of the cosmos, as shown in the regular succession of
days and seasons, is quite as much directed towards man and thus
towards the covenant, understood in a wide sense, as its extra¬
ordinary and catastrophic aspects. After the flood, when God is
ready to make a covenant with a new humanity, he sets out in
these terms the conditions which render its existence possible: “As
long as the earth shall remain, seed-time and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, day and night shall not cease ” (Gen. 8.22).
Still more often nature is there in the form of a miracle and offers
a suitable setting for the fulfilment of the covenant: the Red Sea
allows the Israelites to pass and engulfs Pharaoh’s host, the waters
of the Jordan retreat to allow the conquest of Canaan, and the Song
of Deborah records that the stars in the heavens fought alongside
the Israelite troops and that, at the critical moment, God caused the
Kishon to overflow in order to produce utter panic amongst the
enemies of Israel. If the first covenant is only possible within a
cosmic framework, it will be the same with the new covenant which
will mark the arrival of the last days. The classic passage about
the new covenant stresses the necessity of this setting: “I will
sow Israel and Judah with the seed of man and with the seed of
beast” (Jer. 31*27) and the certainty of the new covenant is com¬
pared with the fixity of the laws of nature which are its indispensable
condition (Jer. 31.351!.). Second Isaiah speaks in a similar way
of the transformations on a cosmic scale which will precede or
accompany the return of the exiles: rivers will spring forth in the
dry places, trees will give shade in the desert (49.171?.), Yahweh
will renew the promises made to Noah after the flood (54*9), but
the prophet at once adds that cosmic realities can disappear without
any consequent shaking of the covenant (v. 10). To the question:
Why had God created the world? the Old Testament would
answer: He has created it for the covenant, that is to say because
of his plan of love and salvation for humanity by means of Israel;
138 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

in creating the world God already had the covenant in view, and it
is this motive which gave to the idea of creation its specific
orientation.

B. THE UNIQUENESS OF THE

ISRAELITE IDEA OF CREATION

The creation is more than the setting in which the covenant is

unfolded; it is already a prefiguring of that covenant; it is not
something from another period of time but itself forms part of
time. That is why, when we speak of a creation myth in the
Old Testament, this term has not the same meaning as in other
religions. Ancient Israel knew one or perhaps several creation
myths whose traces can be detected less in the Genesis narratives
than in certain passages of the prophets and of the poetic books.
In texts such as Job 7.12#.; 26.10-13; 38.8-11; Ps. 74; 89.1 iff.;
Is. 51.9$., we can gather that these ancient myths told of Yahweh’s
struggle with rival powers, with sea monsters like Rahab and
Leviathan, and doubtless Babylonian traditions of the victory of
Marduk over Tiamat and Canaanite traditions of the struggle of
Baal with the sea were not alien to the composition of these myths.
But in the narratives of Genesis and their poetic parallel in Psalm
104, which are the only passages where theological reflection about
the creation is exercised, mythological elements are clearly subor¬
dinated to history, so that we are here in the presence of a history
of creation and not a myth of creation; the features characteristic
of myth are absent from it. There is no trace of theogony or
theomachy; furthermore, there is a lack of what is increasingly
considered to be the essence of myth, namely repetition. A myth
only lives in the measure in which it is repeated and actualized in
ritual, thus the Babylonian myth of creation was recited and repre¬
sented in the New Year festival, because each year it was necessary
to celebrate the cosmic power of Marduk if one wished to assure
the prosperity of men and things and above all that of Babylon,
of which Marduk was the national god. To Babylon—and the
case holds for other civilizations—creation, remaining limited to the
domain of myth and ritual, was not able to become the point of
departure for a movement in history, so the world of the gods and
historical reality remained closed to each other. For Israel creation
marks a commencement. The word reshit (Gen. 1.1) is a whole
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 139

plan of action, because it shows us that God’s plan in history has

creation as its starting point. The same Priestly author uses the
term toledot for the creation of the heavens and the earth (Gen.
2.4) as well as for the genealogy of the patriarchs and still to-day
the Jews express this unity of creation and history by dating their
calendar from the creation of the world. The Yahwist, less explicit
on the subject of creation proper, applies to his presentation of the
early ages of mankind for which he had no historical information,
the plan of the covenant, that is to say the succession of judgments
and restorations which he had discerned in the history of Israel,
so that for him also creation appears as a consequence of the
covenant.
Creation, being a commencement, has a sequel. No doubt God
completes the creation at the beginning, he makes everything
(hakol), he gives them independence and fixes laws for them which
should automatically ensure their maintenance in virtue of a decree
(choq) proclaimed once for all: Gen. 1.11, 22, 28; 8.27; Jer. 5.24;
31.36; 33.20, 23; Ps. 104.9; *48.6; Job 14.5; 38.10; but other texts,
generally more ancient, draw much less distinction between the
creation and the conservation of the world and make it possible for
us to speak of a creatio continua. “ Between the creation and what
follows it,” says Karl Barth, “there is no metabasis eis alio genos.
The former does not end when the history of the covenant begins
and continues. What we think of as the providence of God, namely
the conservation and governance of men and of the world, is just
as much creation, creatio continua\ but the other statement is quite
as true: history itself commences with the creation,1 creation has
the character of history, it is an event which occupies time ” (Dogm.
Ill/i, p. 64). The origin of the people of Israel, even the birth of
each individual, are presented as creations of God, who does not act
as a first cause but who ceaselessly intervenes by his spirit and word
to guarantee the preservation of creation. Here again it is
appropriate to notice the analogy between creation and covenant,
for it is equally by the spirit and word, of which the prophets are
the principal agents, that history takes place. Spirit and word are
not independent forces acting ex opere operato, but only become
effective by express order of the creator: “Thou sendest forth thy
breath and they are created” (Ps. 104.26). The direct action of
1 G. Ostborn, Yahweh’s Words and Deeds, UUA, 1951, has also stressed this
identity, but he sees there, wrongly as we think, proof for a cyclic view of history.
140 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

God in creation is seen at each birth, for it is Yahweh who opens

the mother’s womb (cf. Gen. 4.1, 25; 18.10), it is he who forms
the plants and gives the animals their food (Ps. 145.15; 147.8;
Job 38.39) and it is he again who gives light each day (Amos 5.8).
This direct intervention of God in nature is not only a proof of the
lordship with which he makes use of all the elements; it sometimes
takes the form of a veritable struggle, because in spite of its per¬
fection creation is unceasingly menaced bv two forces which have
not been created by Yahweh but have simply been subjected to
him, namely darkness and the sea, residues of the chaos which
existed before creation. Darkness is a power hostile to Yahweh,
whose essence is light. “ Are thy wonders known in the dark, and
thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness ? ” asks a Psalmist
(Ps. 88.13), feeling that the answer can only be negative because
the essence of darkness is different from that of light; and the
prophets stigmatize the confusion between light and darkness as a
lack of discernment between what comes from God and what comes
from chaos (Amos 5.18; Zeph. 1.15). The sea constitutes a still
graver menace. Tehom, whose name recalls that of Tiamat in the
Babylonian myth, is originally die power against which Yahweh
had to struggle in order to tear away from his control the solid
earth, of which Genesis 1.9 gives an echo, diough faint it is true.
The vast domain of waters was not conquered by Yahweh, but only
more or less neutralized by being confined within certain limits
assigned to them: “At thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy
thunder diey hasted away; they scaled die mountains, they went
down into the valleys unto die place which thou hadst assigned
for them; thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over, that
they turn not again to cover the earth ” (Ps. 104.7-9). Once subject
to Yahweh the waters can become a source of blessing, both those
which come from the ocean above in the form of rain and dew, as
well as die rivers which arise from die ocean beneath (cf. Gen.
49.25; Dt. 33-13; Ps. 148.7). But the water, though driven back,
has only one desire, to return and take up again the place it
originally occupied. In obedience to die general tendency of
giving all mythological elements historical significance, the theme
of the sea as Yahweh’s enemy only faindy appears as a figure of
speech used of the enemies of Israel, yet in such texts as Is. 17.12:
the uproar of many peoples, which roar like the roaring of the
seas; and the rushing of nations, that rush like the rushing of
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
*4*
mighty waters; but he rebukes them, so that they flee far away
and are driven away”, and Jer. 6.23: “Their noise (i.e. of the
peoples of the north) roareth like the sea ”, it is easy to perceive
underneath these figures the theme of the chained, rebellious sea.
Without doubt it is no mere chance that the great miracles of
Yahweh in the world of nature are victories won over the waters
(the Red Sea, the Jordan, and in some measure Jonah’s fish). Con¬
cerning the miracle at the Red Sea one Psalmist exclaims: “The
waters saw thee, O Elohim; they were afraid, the depths (tehomot)
were moved ” (Ps. 77-17), a trembling of revolt as much as of awe.
It is not without reason that the Israelites did not become a seafaring
people and that they always showed a kind of instinctive horror of
the sea and its dangers; Psalm 107 mentions sailors along with
travellers in the desert, prisoners and the sick as people in especial
peril. Darkness and the sea will only disappear at the coming of
the new heavens and the new earth, and we have to wait till the
last page of the Apocalypse of John to read that there will be no
more night and that the sea will be no more (Rev. 21.1; 22.3). The
sin which comes from man is a still graver threat weighing down
upon the creation; created to be king of creation, man, by his dis¬
obedience to the divine command, has drawn into his fall this
creation which was entrusted to him. In Genesis, the trees of
Paradise are replaced by thorns and thistles, and the soil will only
be a source of blessing at the expense of painful effort. Many a
time the prophets depict the birds of heaven, the beasts of the field
and the fish of the sea which had been entrusted to man’s dominion
as pining away because man by his wickedness has opposed God
and become the victim of powers placed originally at his service.
The relation between the fall and the creation also helps us to
understand the exclamation of the Psalmist, so surprising at first
glance, which ends his praise of God the creator: ‘ ‘ Let sinners be
consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more” (Ps.
104.35), for sin involves the danger of undermining the integrity
of the creation and of leading to a return of chaos.
Creation which has a commencement and a history has also an
end. Ludwig Koehler appropriately writes of this:1 “To the
beginning there corresponds an ending, to creation a completion,
to the ‘very good’ here the ‘perfect’ yonder; they correspond,
each to each; in the theology of the Old Testament, creation is
1 Theol. des A.T., p. 71.
142 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

an eschatological conception.” Eschatology is a return to the

beginning, but with something additional which was absent at
the first creation. This is why interest in the new creation goes
hand in hand with the intensity of Israel’s hope, which becomes the
more eager as sin has more increasingly turned the earth into a
chaos (cf. Amos 7.4; Jer. 4.23#.; Zeph. 1.2, 14; Is. 51.6). The
new heavens and the new earth will not be essentially different
from the first creation, but they will be freed from the forces of
chaos which threaten its integrity and security. This hope does
not mean, however, that God desires at all costs to preserve his
creation: God has no need of his creation in order to be God, and
he can do what he pleases with creation; he is able to make the sun
set at noon and to bring darkness upon the earth contrary to
all expectation and all evidence in the sight of man (Is. 13.10;
Amos 8.9); the earth can be shaken and the mountains totter
(Jer. 4.24). These are not merely figures of speech; rather must we
see there the assertion that creation can only subsist by God’s will,
for even the fixed laws which God allots to his creation depend upon
time, of which he alone remains master.

C. THE PRINCIPAL MODES OF ACTION OF

GOD THE CREATOR

To express the direct and personal intervention of God in creation

Old Testament writers have at all times had recourse to anthro¬
pomorphic language, which moreover harmonizes very well with a
most spiritual conception of God, particularly in Second Isaiah (Is.
40.i2f., the hand of God, and Is. 45.12; 48.13). Yahweh is com¬
pared with an architect who lays the foundations of a building and
who supervises the various stages of construction (yasad, banah,
qanah, konen: Ps. 24.2; Amos 9.6; Is. 45-18; Ps. 119.90), with
a potter who moulds the clay (Gen. 2.8; Amos 4.13; Is. 45.18) and
even with a father who begets children (cf. Job 38.28; Ps. 90.2),
an idea correlative with that of Mother-earth of which Israel was
never able to rid itself entirely (cf. Job 1.21; Ps. 139.15; Ecclus.
40.1). However, the specific term for the creative act of God was
not borrowed from anthropomorphic speech: the verb bara’,1 both

1 P. Humbert, “ L’Emploi et la portee du verbe bara dans l’A.T.”, ThZ, 1947,

pp. 404ft., and less recently F. M. Th. Bohl in Alttestamentliche Studien fur Rud.
Kittel, 1913, pp. 42ft.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 143

in the Qal and Niphal forms, is only used of God and designates
an activity peculiar to God and to him alone; the object of the
divine bara is the world, but Israel also—another mighty work of
God (Is. 43.1, 7, 15)—the new heavens and the new earth, the new
heart and the new spirit, and in a general way all that is original,
unforeseeable and not realizable by man (Jer. 31.22; Is. 48.7; 65.7;
Ps. 31.12; 104.30). The superiority of the divine bara over human
creations is also shown in the fact that the object of this verb is
never a substance, an intermediate stage, but always the result, the
completed and perfect work. The originality inherent in this term
does not, however, prevent its association with expressions borrowed
from anthropomorphic speech; it is used as parallel to ‘asah in Gen.
1.26, 27, with yatsar and konen in Amos 4.13; Is. 43.1; 45.18,
so that no more than these can it be used as evidence in favour of
the conception of creatio ex nihilo. This idea is foreign to the Old
Testament, where God is content to mould matter without creating
it, though the sovereignty he shows in this moulding and the
readiness with which the elements bend to his orders compel us to
recognize that creatio ex nihilo1 was the only possible issue from
the thought of the Old Testament in which the action of God
increasingly tends to take a less material form, namely that of the
word. Creation by a word is not an idea peculiar to Israel, but by
presenting the diverse works of creation as a simple order from God,
the Priestly writer gives unequalled expression to the divine
sovereignty and to the marvellous character of creation, and texts
such as Ecclus. 42.15; Apoc. Baruch 2i.4ff.; Hebs. 11.3; 2 Pet.
3.5, 6 show sufficiently the extent to which the line starting from
Genesis 1 determined the teaching of Judaism. Creation by the
spirit is not opposed to creation by the word; for language allowed
the establishment of a very close relation between them. Since the
spirit is the breath in which the air comes out of the mouth just like
the word, the synonymous use of the two is easily explained: “By
the word of Yahweh were the heavens made, and all the host of
them by the breath of his mouth’’ (Ps. 33.6). “His word [here
the Messiah’s] is the rod which smites the violent, the breath of his
lips slays the wicked ’’ (Is. 11.4). But this parallelism is the result
1 Creatio ex nihilo is found explicity affirmed for the first time in Second Maccabees
(7.28); “ Consider the heaven and the earth . . . and know that God has not made
them from existing things ”, ovk ££ bvrwv irrotqaev aura ; the reading presupposed
by the Syriac version and the Vulgate was c'f ouk 6vtojv which accentuates still
further the creation ex nihilo.
144 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

of a development: originally the spirit was a force more dynamic

than moral, more destructive than constructive; so, to become a
power serviceable in creation it had to be subjected to the word.
Probably it is in this way that the reference to spirit at the beginning
of the creation narrative must be understood; the macb Elohim
which moves over the water of chaos is not a violent wind,1 although
the translation is permissible, for it seems very unlikely that the
Priestly writer who uses the term Elohim for the creator God should
have used the same word for a reality opposed to the creation, the
more so since he could have found less ambiguous expressions for
the violence of the wind. The spirit (we translate: hut the spirit
of Elohim moved upon the face of the waters) is the first act of
creation, it is indispensable to the word, but the word alone allows
the spirit, a terrible and dangerous force, to become a constructive
power.2 In the wisdom literature word and spirit are sometimes
replaced by Wisdom, yet in spite of the attempt at hypostatization
of which Proverbs 8.22-363 and Job 28 bring us echoes, wisdom
was always regarded rather as an attribute of God than as a form
of his activity.

D. THE INFLUENCE OF FAITH IN GOD AS CREATOR

UPON THE PICTURE OF NATURE AND THE COSMOS

The cosmological conceptions of the Israelites do not seem to

have been directly influenced by their religious beliefs. In a general

1 For a justification of this point of view cf. Eissfeldt in Forschungen und

Fortschritte, 1940, pp. iff.
2 Evidently we must regard Gen. 1.2 as a parenthesis which seeks to describe
the condition before creation and 1.1 as the heading of the whole chapter. Jewish
theologians who have taken Gen. 1.1 as referring solely to the first act of creation
have had to admit the creation of chaos by God and so have reduced its significance,
like Jubilees 2.2 and 4 Esdras 6.385., by misunderstanding the sense of the expression
tohu wabohu which wherever it is met (Is. 34.11; Jer. 4.23), denotes the contrary
of creation and not merely an inferior stage of creation. By seeing in Gen. 1.1 a
heading we also discard the reading of the medieval theologian Rashi, who sees in
the three first words the temporal complement of a sentence the main part of
which commences only at verse 3.
3 The verb qanab is only attested six times in the O.T. in the sense of to create:
Gen. 14.19, 22; Dt. 32.6; Ps. 78.54; 139.13; Prov. 8.22; it seems to have been
more frequent in the Canaanite world; we find it at Ugarit (Keret 1, 57; Danel
11.6, 41; 2 AB 1.22, 23; 3.25, 28-30); to the evidence of El Elyon’s being the
creator of the heavens and the earth in Gen. 14 we must add the reference to
El qn 'rts in the Phoenician inscription of Karatepe. Cf. for the verb qanab the
study of P. Humbert, “ Qanah en hebreu biblique ” in Festschrift A. Bertholet,
pp. 258®.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 145

way the Israelites shared the ideas common to the ancient world,
conceiving the world as a three-storey building, the heavens above,
the earth below and the waters under the earth (Ex. 20.4), a repre¬
sentation which rests as much upon observational data as upon
certain mythical concepts.
The sky is not an immaterial reality but a solid construction, a
raqia (aTepta)pa= firmamentum), which indicates literally a smooth
surface. Resting upon pillars the sky forms the dome of the earth;
by its solidity the celestial vault can separate the terrestrial ocean
from the celestial and its rupture would be equivalent to the return
of primeval chaos. Above the celestial ocean a high chamber is
constructed, supported by beams, where God has established his
throne (Ps. 104.3). Other texts compare the celestial vault to a
tent which Yahweh has pitched (Ps. 19; Is. 40.22; 44.24; Job 9.8;
Ecclus. 43.12) or to a mirror of molten metal (Job 37.18). The
columns which support the vault seem to be identical with moun¬
tains; they can be shaken by thunder, which is the voice of Yahweh,
or by earthquakes (Ps. 18.8; 29.5; Job 26.11). The stars move
according to laws of which God himself guarantees the fixity (Ps.
89.38; 104.19; Eccl. 1.5); according to a tradition of which we
have an echo in the book of Job the stars were anterior to creation
(38.7), though it is advisable to ask what parts are played in such
representations by belief and by mere poetic imagery respectively.
The stars have a place reserved for them somewhere behind the
celestial vault for the time when they are invisible (Hab. 3.11;
Ps. 19.6), just as there are in heaven containers for certain atmo¬
spheric forces such as the snow and the hail (Job 38.22) which God
opens at will and which he holds in reserve for the day of judgment
(Is. 28.17; 30.30); the rain and the other celestial products pass
to the earth through the doors and lattice windows arranged in the
celestial vault (Gen. 7.11; Is. 60.8; Ps. 78.23-25). The name by
which the Israelites referred to heaven shows that they recognized a
plurality of heavens whose importance increased with their distance.
The “heaven of heavens” was the veritable divine abode (Dt.
10.14; Ps. 148.4). At the time of St. Paul Judaism admitted the
existence of at least three heavens (2 Cor. 12.2) and indulged in
speculations about the respective value of each of them, probably
under the influence of conceptions arising in Babylonia.
The earth is a flat surface resting upon pillars whose bases go
down into the waters of the great ocean, waters which feed the
146 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

terrestial oceans by means of subterranean conduits. Thus the earth

appears as the first floor of a gigantic building of which heaven is
the higher floor (Ps. 18.16; 24.2; 75.4; 93.1; Prov. 8.29). The
mountains which are a kind of framework of this building form the
connection between heaven and earth, and this explains the religious
esteem with which they were regarded (Ex. 24.pf.). In one passage
alone is there touched upon the idea of an infinite space in which
the earth may be suspended: “He stretched out the north over
empty space (tohu), and hung the earth over nothingness (‘<2/
belimah)” (Job 26.7). Mention of the four corners of the earth
suggests that the Israelites did not think of it as a disc but as a
square surface (Is. 11.13). Yahweh makes firm the pillars of the
earth to set a limit to the fury of the watery elements which seek
only to arise and submerge it (Job 38.10; Prov. 8.28).
The subterranean world lies under the ocean (Job 26.5; 11.8;
Jonah 2.6; 2 Sam. 22.3). It is the place of darkness, full of dangers
which make it, for those who go down there, the place of destruc¬
tion and the country from which no one returns (Job 7.9; 16.22).
Nevertheless, Sheol is not always so clearly distinguished from the
earth; it bears the same name ’erets (Jonah 2.7). At the time of
the revolt of Korah’s sons against Moses (Num. i6.32ff.) the earth
opens and the rebels go straight down to Sheol, and the phenomena
of necromancy also seem to show that Sheol was not separated from
the earth by an ocean.
This conception of the world is so little influenced by religion
that it was rather an obstacle than an aid to faith. Yahweh was not
at the outset the god of heaven and to become so he had to dethrone
other deities and it took him several centuries to extend his power
over Sheol. But it is impossible to reduce the cosmological ideas
of the Israelites to a single type and even if they had a coherent
system it is certain that we only know of it by allusions, a properly
scientific interest being outside the concern of the biblical writers.
What we can say with certainty is that the men of the Old Testa¬
ment were interested in the world less from a theoretical angle than
with an essentially practical aim: the term tebel, of Assyrian origin,
the universe (tabalu), gave way to ’adamah, the soil; this soil God
has placed at the disposal of man for him to rule over it and to
enjoy within the limits of his condition and not in order for him
to reflect upon the laws which govern it, which are known only
to God.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
*47
If faith in God the creator did not overthrow these cosmological
ideas and was content to rely upon traditional beliefs, at least it
succeeded in creating a view of the world which we can call
coherent. The Israelites always regarded the universe as a whole.
Affirmation of the unity of the world is already found heavily under¬
lined in the Yahwist account of creation which refers all the works
of creation to God their author on the one hand and to man as
their beneficiary on the other, for before the creation of man the
earth was a desert—it is drought and not water which constitutes
the element of danger in this account—and the garden of Eden
was only planted to put there the man whom Yahweh forms before
the other works of creation (Gen. 2.8); what a commentator of a
later period expressed in the words: “Thou wouldest make man
the administrator of thy works, that it might be known that he
was by no means made on account of the world, but the world
on account of him ” (Apoc. Baruch 14.18).
The unity of the universe is still more evident in the account by
the Priestly writer. There the works of creation are less directly
attributed to God than in the Yahwist narrative, for God is there
freed from all features which might suggest the figure of a
demiurge; so the elements do not arise directly from the hand of
God but from one another. Yet this generatio is only possible
through an order issued afresh each time by the creator. This inter¬
dependence which unites together the works of creation shows that
all things belong together and that nothing is useless and nothing
incomplete, and it must be said that the need our writer feels to
arrange the ten works of creation in the space of six days hardly
diminishes the imposing character of his description.
The third account, which in some respects is the most complete
and which equally emphasizes the unity of the creation, is in Psalm
104, which expresses in less solemn but much more picturesque
language the interdependence binding together the various parts
of the cosmos. For this poet the antinomies still apparent in the
first chapter of Genesis are resolved, there is no more opposition
between the earth and the sea, the latter personified by Leviathan
is no more than a plaything with which Yahweh amuses himself
and the ships ply there without risk of being swallowed up by
chaos. The universe is not only a house solidly built, it is also a
work of art.
The idea of the unity of creation did not come to Israel from the
148 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

mere observation of nature, but from a contemplation of nature in

the light of faith in a God who was the sole God and the God of
the covenant. By its monotheism the Old Testament surmounted
all mythology, that is to say all the traces of dualism inherent in
every mythology; while the covenant idea allowed the Old Testa¬
ment to oppose the belief in a distant god who might be reduced to
the function of prima causa.
Along with unity the Israelites were deeply conscious of the
aspect of finality in their conception of the universe. Since creation
itself is an eschatological concept it is natural that this feature is
also reflected in their conception of nature. Everything in creation
is well done, but perfection in the creation is entirely directed
towards Yahweh’s final aim, which is the salvation of humanity.
The creation of man as the Bible thinks of it belongs to the order
of redemption rather than to the order of creation; the whole
theology of Second Isaiah envisages the creation1 only in its relation
to the final salvation, itself presented as a creation. It is the cer¬
tainty that everything conspires to the final goal which makes
the Israelites able to admire the creation without reserve and to
announce that the heavens declare the glory of God, that is to say
that they are a visible form of his presence (Ps. 8; 19; 136.5;
Prov. 3.19; Jer. 10.12; Eccl. 3.11; 7-29). To read some of these
passages it might seem that nature is the clearest and most perfect
revelation of God, and it is true that in the wisdom literature the
whole of divine revelation seems to centre upon the creation of the
world and of humanity. Even moral laws are bound up with the
creation: “ Whoso mocketh the poor insulteth his creator ” says the
sage in the book of Proverbs (17*5),2 and one of the last represen-

1 No prophet insists as much as Second Isaiah on faith in God as creator, but

for him also creation remains subservient to the covenant; yet instead of being
condition and consequence the two are merged (see particularly Is. 51 .gff.), so that
the covenant is presented in the language of creation (cf. the terms bar a’, tsemach,
parah) rather than in that of election. The prophet’s teaching about God the
creator can be summarized by saying that God is the creator God because he is
the God of the covenant and he is the God of the covenant because he is the creator
God.
2 Comparable ideas occur in the wisdom literature of Egypt, such as Amenemope
(chap. 25): “Do not mock a blind man and do not slight a dwarf; for man is
clay and straw, the god is his maker, he is tearing down and building up every
day.” It is very probable that the texts which insist on order and plan in the
creation betray Egyptian influence and a tradition about creation which knew
nothing of the chaos (Prov. 8.22-26 is unaware of the chaos, everything is done by
wisdom, that is to say with perfection from the start); but it must be recognized
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 149

tatives of this tendency says explicitly that it is from the contem¬

plation of his works that we arrive at a knowledege of the artificer
(Wisdom j.ijft.y In the Old Testament itself creation never
became the mirror in which the wise providence of God might be
reflected plainly and, so to speak, rationally. Rather does creation
witness to a mysterious, hidden God and even if an Israelite
succeeds in discovering in creation and its order a wise and just
God, for others it is an object of fear. In fact nature contains sub¬
jects for wonder and even for scandal in which man discovers no
purpose and before which he can only bend in fearful adoration
(job 42.3, 40.9), or glorify the mighty and holy God who does
what he pleases (Ps. 115.3; I35,^)> Yet because of the priority of
the covenant man can look creation in the face, for the covenant
is eternal whilst the creation will come to an end. “ Therefore the
material universe is only the temporary and removable setting of
the divine-human drama. It does not possess permanent worth.
To-morrow the heavens will be rolled up like a book and all the
host of heaven will fall ‘ as the leaf falls from the vine, as the fading
leaf from the fig tree’ (Is. 34.4).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bohl, F. M. Th., “ Bara als Terminus der Weltschopfung im alttestament-

lichen Sprachgebrauch ”, Alttest. Studien (Kittel Festschrift), Leipzig
I9I3> P- 42-
Brongers, H. A., De Sche-p-pingstradition bij de Profeten, Amsterdam
1945 (gives in conclusion a summary in German).
Galling, H., “Die Chaosschilderung in Genesis I”, ZTbK 1950, p. 145.
Gunkel, H., Schopfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit, Gottingen 1895.
FIerner, S., Die Natur im A.T., Lund 1941.
Humbert, P., “ Emploi et portee du verbe bara dans l’A.T.”, ThZ 1947,
p. 410.
“ Qana en hebreu biblique ”, Festschrift A. Bertholet, 1950,
p. 259.
Labat, R., Enuma elish. Le poeme babylonien de la creation, Paris 1935.
Lambert, G., “La Creation dans la Bible”, NRTh, 1953, p. 252.

that the picture of creation as the result of a struggle was far more in keeping with
the lines of Israel’s religion; so it must not surprise us to find it even in texts
inspired by Egypt, as, for example, Ps. 104.26.
1 Victor Monod, Diet* dans I’univers, Paris 1933, p. 16.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
I5°
Lindeskog, C., Studien zum neutestamentlichen Schopfungsgedanken,
Uppsala 1952 (a third of this volume treats of the O.T. and Judaism).
Van der Ploeg, J., “ Le sens du verbe hebreu bara, etude semasiologique ”,
Le Museon lix (Melanges Th. Lefort), Louvain 1946, pp. 1-4.
Rad, G. von, “Das theologische Problem des alttestamentlichen Schop-
fungsglaubens ”, Werden und Wesen des A.T., BZAW 66, 1936’
p. 138.
 III. THE NATURE AND DESTINY OF MAN

T he first• affirmation of the Old Testament about man and

one which underlies all the rest is that he is a creature and as
such shares in the feebleness and limitations of all creatures;
his existence is ephemeral and ends inexorably with death: “Man
that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble. He
cometh forth like a flower, then he withereth; he fleeth as a shadow
and continueth not (Job 14.1-2), “As for man, his days are as
grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth; let the wind pass
over it, and it is gone, and the place thereof knoweth it no more”
(Ps. 103.15-16). The feebleness of man inherent in his creaturely
estate is one of the reasons why God is moved to pity and to
pardon : God is compassionate, he forgives their sin and destroyeth
them not; yea, many a time he turneth his anger away and giveth
no course to all his wrath. He remembereth that they were but
flesh, a breath that passeth away and cometh not again” (Ps.
78.38-39). The opposition between God and man is defined by the
prophet Isaiah as that of flesh and spirit (31.3), flesh being
synonymous with feebleness and spirit with power; therefore the
trust man places in his fellow man is vain and illusory: “Cursed
is the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and
whose heart departeth from Yahweh ” (Jer. 17.5). This is how the
Chronicler represents the antagonism between Judah and Assyria
by putting into the mouth of king Hezekiah the words: “ With
him is an arm of flesh, but with us is Yahweh our God to help us
and to fight our battles” (2 Chr. 32.8). Nothing obvious dis¬
tinguishes man from other creatures;1 according to the Yahwist
creation narrative man is created from the dust of the earth and
animals are formed from the ’adamah (Gen. 2.7, 19). At the
time of the flood men and animals, creatures of the same creation,
are objects of the same condemnation (Gen. 6.7), with the same
promise following for both (Gen. 9.15). The final end of man and
beast is the same: death for the one and also for the other (Eccl.
1L. Koehler, Theol. A.T., p. 143: “According to the revelation of the Old
Testament, animals share the same fate as men.”

I5I
I52 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

3.15) and Ecclesiastes looks with extreme scepticism upon attempts

to speculate about a fate reserved for man different from that for
animals (12.8). Plant life and social life do not differ essentially
from animal life: to maintain and propagate life is their common
function. Man’s limitations are also shown in the limited nature
of his knowledge. God is the one who knows, while man remains
eternally ignorant. This last opposition is shown in a particularly
dramatic light in the last chapters of the book of Job and this it
is which is given as the answer to the problem debated in that
book.
Alongside the statement of man’s ephemeral and limited nature
the Old Testament proclaims unceasingly the eminent dignity
conferred upon him by his peculiar association with God. The
link is not a relation of kinship, man is no fallen god, he is not as
in the Babylonian myth partly composed of divine substance; he
is placed by God as an independent and autonomous creature to
whom as God’s image dominion over the rest of creation is entrusted.
This is why man, although subject to the laws which govern the
realm of created things, is yet nearer to God than other creatures:
although man and the animals were created the same day—which
stresses their family relationship—an impassable barrier separates
them, for the principal function of the image consists precisely in
domination of the animals and maintenance of the distance which
separates them from the human sphere. Because of this distance
the Old Testament regards any sexual relation with an animal as
a fault worthy of the severest penalty: Ex. 22.18; Lev. 18.23;
20.15; Dt. 27.21. The worst punishment a man can suffer is to
be reduced to the state of an animal: Dan. 4.13, 29; Ps. 73.22.
But in no way does this difference in rank weaken man’s obligations
towards animals. Since God “ preserveth man and beast ” (Ps. 36.7)
man in the image of God must take care of the animals: “A
righteous man taketh care of the life of his beast but the tender
mercies of the wicked are cruel ”, says the wise man in the book of
Proverbs (12.10) and the legislation of the Code of the Covenant
does not fail to stress the duties of men towards those who are indeed
by virtue of their original kinship their inferior brethren. Oppo¬
sition between man and the animals, already marked at the time
of creation, has been accentuated by the fall: in the garden of
Eden and up to the time of the flood man forbore using animal
flesh for his food (Gen. 1.29; 2.16); the fall of man involves that
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 133

of the animals and is the cause of their wickedness (cf. Jer. 12.4;
14.2), as also in the time of his restoration man will draw the
animals into his salvation; once again the wolf will dwell with the
lamb (Is. 11.6); they will stop devouring each other (Is. 11 ,y)
and the benefits of the covenant will extend to the animals (Hos.
2.20). Man s superiority is shown in a general way over all nature.
In the oriental world as a whole, nature was deified and the
presence of gods and spirits in its midst induced men to make them
harmless by devoting a cult to them. In Hebrew religion there is
no bond between man and nature. Thus salvation for man will
not consist in the adoration of nature but in dominion over it; in
a sense man looks upon it with the eyes of God, although of course
that does not mean that he knows all its secrets; God alone possesses
absolute wisdom: Prov. 8.22; Job 28.i2ff.; 38. Man’s position
of sovereignty is also to be observed in other realms: work,
marriage, use of the good things of the earth; man should do all
that is in his power and fully enjoy all the pleasures of existence,
while remembering that he is only a stranger on the earth and that
his supreme dignity consists in belonging to a Lord who is the
creator and owner of all things.
The third point of which account must be taken for a sound
grasp of Israelite anthropology is the way in which the Semites
regarded the relation between the individual and society. Numer¬
ous works applying the results of sociology to the study of the
religion of Israel have made plain the primary importance of society
and the group. Amongst all peoples the group had primacy over
the individual, but in Israel purely natural solidarity based on blood,
cohabitation and a common history receive a singular stress by the
fact of divine election. Examples of solidarity both in good and
evil are too numerous in the Old Testament for the point to be
laboured : when one member of a clan has committed a fault punish¬
ment falls on the whole clan; thus for the fault committed by Achan
not only himself but all his family and his possessions are consumed
by fire (Jos. 7.24). David delivers seven descendants of Saul to
the Gibeonites to avenge the blood of their ancestors who had been
massacred by Saul (2 Sam. 21.9). Punishment is always collective;
the iniquity of the fathers extends to their children (Ex. 20.5); no
one is concerned to challenge the justice of such a principle and
it is always thought that the one who is punished is really culpable.
The same solidarity holds for rewards: Noah, who was righteous,
154 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

saves all his family, who were plainly not righteous to the same
extent as he was (Gen. 7.1); the house of Obed-edom is blessed
because he gave shelter to the ark (2 Sam. 6.11). Yahweh s benefits
are always conferred upon the people as a whole and it seems at first
sight that the quality of the members forming it is of no conse¬
quence. That shows that the distinction between the individual
and the group cannot be made according to modern criteria. Are
we to say that the group was the only reality and that in practice
the individual was sacrificed to it? Must we repeat Wellhausen s1
classical statement: “The wheel of history passed over the indi¬
vidual; nothing was left to him but hopeless submission. He had
to find his reward in the well-being of his people.” The attempt
often made to divide the history of Israel into two periods, the one
governed entirely by collective retribution and the other inaugurated
by the great champions of religious individualism, Jeremiah and
Ezekiel, who were the first to announce the promotion of the indi¬
vidual, does not do justice to the historical development of Israel.
In fact we find from ancient times the coexistence of a collective
mentality and of a more individualistic way of thinking, and the
examples of solidarity which we have mentioned are in themselves
the best proof of this.2 That an individual is able to implicate the
whole of his group in his reprobation or his blessing is a very
different matter from the totalitarian idea in which the individual
may be “sacrificed for social ends”. This blending of indi¬
vidualism and socialism, both of them thorough-going, and their
organic relationship, have been explained in recent years by the aid
of the concept of corporate personality whose classical formulation
has been given by Wheeler Robinson : 3 “ The whole group, includ¬
ing its past, present and future members, might function as a single
individual through any one of those members conceived as represen¬
tative of it.” Applying to the Old Testament the results of the law
of participation as Levy-Bruhl has defined it three aspects of this
1 Wellhausen, lsraelitiscbe und jiid. Geschichte, 19x4, 2nd ed., pp. 69, 107.
2 Cf. J. Hempel, who very soundly writes that “ the awakening of the individual
to self awareness lies behind even the most ancient sources ” (Gott und Mensch im
A.T., p. 192). An intermediate position is taken up by A. Causse, “ Following
the cultural crises of the period of the kings the individual tended to assert himself
independently of the primitive group, whilst by the evolution of morality and of
ideas tht hard law of collective responsibility lost its force ” (Du groupe etbnique
a la communaute religieuse, p. 106).
3 In Werden und Wesen des Alten Testaments, BZAW 66, 1936, p. 49:
“ The Hebrew conception of corporate personality.”
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
x55
notion become clear: (a) the idea of corporate personality is uncon¬
cerned with our conception of time; Amos addresses his contem¬
poraries as if they had been present at the Exodus from Egypt;
to live in the present is at the same time to embrace all the past
and all the future; (b) corporate personality is something essentially
realistic and it would be false merely to see in it a moral ideal or
a literary personification; Moab is the ultimate unity of which the
Moabite is only a part, likewise Israel or Adam who show them¬
selves in numerous sons: ben Israel, ben Adam; (c) the relation
between the individual and the group is extremely fluid: the
individual can be thought of in the community and the community
in the individual. Wheeler Robinson has applied this principle
to two questions which have always perplexed exegetes, to the “ I ”
of the Psalms and to the Servant of Yahweh. Through the idea
of corporate personality the I and the Servant can be understood
both in an individual and a collective sense at the same time: the
Psalmist who speaks in the first person is an individual, but as a
member of the community he incarnates in his own person the
whole community, so that in a re-reading of these Psalms the com¬
munity can apply to itself the experience of that individual. For
the Servant of Yahweh it was rather the inverse movement which
took place: originally collective this figure ends by being restricted
to a single individual. Prior to Wheeler Robinson an analogous
point of view had been defended by Otto Eissfeldt,1 who ‘ had
insisted upon the fact that in communities based upon blood
relationship the ancestor continued to live and to determine their
destinies.
The best solution is probably of this kind, yet it must never be
forgotten that, although the individual incarnates in himself the
group, he is also personally responsible and that the Old Testament
never thinks of the people as a neutral entity but as the assembly
of individuals, each one of whom has a personal link with God.
Every birth is presented as a personal intervention of God and the
wisdom literature, which is only the development of a tendency
that existed in Israel from the beginning, corrects the too rigid idea
of collective election by that of creation, which can only be inter¬
preted in an individual sense. Even a text like the Decalogue,
which belongs to the realm of election and covenant and which is
1 Der Gottesknecht bei Deuterojesaja im Lichte der israelitischen Amckauttngen
von Gemeinschaft und Individuum, Halle 1933.
156 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

addressed to the nation as a whole, sets out its commandments in

such a way that their execution is only possible by individuals.

A. SOME SEMANTIC CONSIDERATIONS

Hebrew uses several terms to designate man. The one that

corresponds most closely to the Latin homo is ’adam, which means
he who has been brought forth from the ’adamah, that is the
earth. According to Lidzbarski before it denoted man adam had
been the name of god : having found in a Punic inscription mention
of a goddess Hawwat (rabbat chawwat elat malkat = &\e great,
queen goddess Hawwat) he attempts to find the associated god who,
by biblical analogy, can only be Adam. Several inscriptions mention
ba'al melek ’adam,1 but it seems that we should see in mlk ’adam a
function of baal rather than the title of another god. Lidzbarski s
reading becomes quite improbable since there has been found in
Ugaritic texts the expression El ’ab ’adam. The basic meaning of
the root ’adam is probably that of the colour red which man has in
common with the earth, an association which facilitated the myth
of man brought forth out of the earth.
The term ’ish probably goes back to a root that means in Arabic
to be powerful and which is found in the biblical name Yo ash.
So ’ish would denote man as a being endowed with power. While
’adam stresses his origin and his external appearance, ’ish expresses
his power of will and choice; choice is particularly present in the
case of marriage; so a man is the ’ish in the presence of the one
he chooses. This meaning appears in several passages, notably in
Psalm 49.3, which mentions the bene ’adam and the bene ish,
humble folk and powerful nobles; the same meaning appears again
in Ps. 4.3; 62.10, and Lam. 3.33.
The root 'anash from which the term 'enosh comes, is attested in
Accadian and Hebrew in the sense of being weak, wretched. So
the use made of the term ’enosh, principally in poetic writings,
stresses the feeble and mortal aspect of man and connects it with
’adam, with which it is also often used in parallel: Ps. 8.5; Ps. 90.3;
Dt. 32.26; Job 10.4, 5; Is. 13.12; 24.6; 33.8. It is probably to
this same root that the term ’ishshah, woman, must be attached,
the popular etymology of which given by the Yahwist is philologi-
1 The text in question is published in Ephemeris fiir semitische Epigraphik I, p. 34.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
*57
cally impossible (Gen. 2.23), for it means not she who is drawn
from man but the feeble creature who needs support.
The term geber lays stress on power and is often used of a man
to distinguish him from a woman or child (cf. Ex. 10.11; 12.37;
Jos. 7*x4)> 1s also used of one who by his power thinks he can
oppose God (Ps. 12.3; Job 15.25).
From these terms some conclusions can be extracted about the
nature of man and his vocation. If it is true that ’adam insists on
t e human kind, enosb on his feebleness, ish on his power, geber
on his strength, then we can say that added together they indicate
that man according to the Old Testament is a perishable creature,
who lives only as the member of a group, but that he is also a
powerful being capable of choice and dominion. So the semantic
enquiry confirms the general teaching of the Bible on the insignifi¬
cance and the greatness of man.

Outline of Israelite anthropology

To attempt to present the anthropology of the Old Testament

with the aid of current concepts and modern speech will lead to
certain failure. Opposition between body and soul is not to be
found in the Old Testament, nor even a trichotomy (body, soul and
spirit). Man is a psycho-physical being and psychical functions
are bound so closely to his physical nature that they are all
localized in bodily organs which themselves only draw their life
from the vital force that animates them. The fluidity of the
relations between individual and group has its repercussions in
anthropology. indeed the human body is conceived in the image
of the greater body that constitutes the people of Israel. It is not
a collection of separate organs but an organism animated by one
single life and each organ can give expression to the life of the
whole. Hebrew expresses this truth by speaking of a heart, a
soul,1 a spirit for the Israelite people, for the only life is that of
the nation. The fundamental idea of Israelite psychology is that
of an animated body, and moreover it can only be understood in
its practical and experimental aspect. In presence of this reality
of the body, the beauty and harmony of which the majority of
texts are pleased to stress, the Israelites applied themselves to a few
1 Nephesh in the singular is used in a collective sense: Lev. 26.15; Num. 21.5;
Is. 46.2; 47.14; Ps. 124.7, I0b; Jcr- 7-24i I7-1 ctc-
reflections about the life that animates it, without always succeeding
in expressing in a logical analysis the sometimes contradictory
impressions they experienced.

B. MAN IS A CREATURE OF FLESH

It was the impression which most forcefully presented itself.

Possibly the term basar originally meant, as in Arabic, the skin
and then the outward appearance and ended by signifying the whole
man. Flesh is what man has in common with other living beings,
in its narrow sense flesh is distinguished from bones: My bones
cleave to my flesh” (Ps. 102.6). More frequently flesh denotes
the entire body: 1 Kings 21.27; 2 Kings 6.30; Num. 8.7; Job
4.15; Prov. 4.22, and it can be the seat of spiritual faculties as well
as of genuinely fleshly desires, both of which are bound up with
the body. So the flesh is consumed with desire for God (Ps. 84.3),
it is able to rejoice (Ps. 16.9) or to fear (Ps. 119.120); but more
often it is connected with more purely animal functions, as the
satisfaction of thirst (Eccl. 5*11) or sexua^ instinct (Eccl. 11.10,
Ez. 23.20). The idea that the flesh might be the principle of sin
is foreign to the Old Testament1 and is expressed for the first time,
clearly under Greek influence, only in the Wisdom of Solomon:
“ "Yhe perishable body weighs down the soul and oppresses the
spirit” (9.15), but the weakness of the flesh is a very favourable
ground for sin, as is shown in the early pages of Genesis. In the
Old Testament flesh is always what distinguishes man qualita¬
tively from God, not in the sense of a matter-spirit dualism, but
of a contrast between strength and weakness (Gen. 6.3; Is. 31.3;
40.6; 49.26; Jer. 12.12; 17.5; 25.31; 32.27; 45.5; Ez. 21.4; Ps.
56.5; 65.3; 78.39; 145.21; 2 Chr. 32.8).

C. MAN IS A LIVING SOUL

“ Yahweh Elohim formed man of the dust of the ground, and

breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a
nephesh ebay yah ” (Gen. 2.7). This passage, highly important for

1 Ed. Konig, Theologie des A.T., p. 237, goes so far as to suppose that the
three roots of sin, egoism, sensuality and weakness, correspond to three aspects of
 Israelite anthropology, contains several essential statements. The
term nepbesh chayyah which is applied to men and animals (Gen.
2.19) places animate beings on the same plane and distinguishes
them from plants which only have a vegetative life that they draw
from the soil to which they are fixed; living beings on the other
land are characterized by their mobility. However, there is an
important difference between man and other living beings: man
alone receives the vital breath in his nostrils direct from Yahweh,
which is proof that Yahweh considers him an individual, whilst
animals are created in conformity with, and with a view to, the
species. The text then clearly affirms that the nepbesh is not
given to man as a soul which might be considered as deposited in a
body, but as the final result of divine activity which is a reality at
once physical and spiritual; so the most adequate translation of
nepbesh ebay yah is living being”. But the question is compli¬
cated by the fact that the term nepbesh in the Old Testament
proliferates into many realities. The first task of the Hebraist in
the presence of a word is to recover the original meaning
from which others were derived: since Hebrew terms all originally
have a concrete meaning it seems to some1 that the Accadian
napistu, — throat is the desired key, but since already in Accadian
this term also denotes the immaterial reality we are accustomed to
translate by soul , the wiser course is to admit a multiplicity of
meanings for nepbesh, that is to say a plurality of senses from its
origin up to at least the point to which we can reach back, which
have in common the fact that each expresses a particular aspect of
life. The nepbesh is the life, not in a theoretical sense but in its
external and visible aspect, whilst heart and spirit denote life in
its interior and hidden aspect.
(a) Nepbesh has the general meaning of life in the following
expressions, nepbesh taebat nepbesh — hie. for life (Ex. 21.2q);
nepbesh benepbesb (Dt. 19.21), to make an attack upon someone’s
nepbesh (life) (Ex. 4.19; 1 Kings 19.2; Job 2.6).
1 Cf. the article by L. Durr, ZAW, 1925, p. 262; although this sense suits many
passages, others are mentioned in favour of the meaning in which nepbesh seems
rather connected with the nose as Is. 3.20 where the batte banephesh are
more likely to be flasks of perfume than “ Hauschen am Hals ”.
2 According to Mandelkern and Gesenius the idea of breath was expressed by
the two fundamental letters n and sh which by combining with various labials gave
birth to such words as nashab, to blow, nashaph, to breathe, naphash, to take breath,
nasham, to respire, cf. the graphic presentation in J. H. Becker, Het begrip nefesj in
bet oude Testament, Amsterdam 1942, p. 100.
160 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

(b) Life reveals itself most especially in certain parts or functions

of the organism, for example the throat (cf. the Accadian napisbtu),
“ waters are come up unto my nepbesb ” (Ps. 69.2), or the breath;
the verb napbasb, used of rest for God or man, literally means to
breathe, to take breath (Ex. 23.12; 31-17; 2 Sam. 16.14) anc^ when
Job speaks of the nepbesh of the crocodile which burns like glowing
coals he is evidently alluding to its breath. To the most primitive
observation the breath is always reckoned the most important mani¬
festation of life. So death is interpreted as the departure of
nepbesb: the nepbesb leaves Rachel and she dies (Gen. 35-18);
the nepbesb returns into the body of the widow of Zarephath’s son
(1 Kings 17.22); the nepbesb that “shortens” itself is similarly
based upon the observation that the breath becomes spasmodic at
times of great emotions like fear (Num. 21.4) or impatience (Jg.
10.16; 16.16). Other texts bring nepbesb into relationship with the
blood, which was the other most obvious manifestation of life along
with the breath. In legal texts the formula often recurs: badam
bu bannepbesb = the blood is the life (not the breath!): Gen. 9.4;
Lev. 14.11; 17*14; Dt. 12.23, an<^ c^e figure of the nepbesb poured
out can only be understood by the association of nepbesb with a
liquid substance: 1 Sam. 1.15; Ps. 141.8; Is. 53.12.
(c) Life also reveals itself in certain non-organic functions such
as aspiration and desire: the nepbesb of his enemies from which
the Psalmist asks to be preserved (Ps. 27.12; 41.3) is the eagerness
they show in desiring his ruin. Desire to eat or drink is also
expressed by the nepbesb, the man with a good appetite is a ba'al
nepbesb (Prov. 23.2) and particularly voracious dogs are ‘azze
nepbesb (Is. 56.11), that is to say ones which are strong in nepbesb.
When reading such expressions we cover the whole range of
difference that separates biblical realism from Greek spirituality.
The nepbesb can be lifted up or stretched in a certain direction (Ps.
24.4; Hos. 4.8; Ez. 24.25). The desire expressed by nepbesh is in
general violent. In character as well as in piety passion prevails
over meditation and it is with the same ardour that Old Testament
man desires to satisfy his hunger, have vengeance upon his enemies
or enter into communion with God (Is. 26.8, 9).
(d) The Israelites realized that bodily organs and functions were
incapable of expressing the full reality and dynamism of life; so
nepbesb often has the sense of living being and of person. The
members of a tribe or inhabitants of a city are napbasbot, persons:
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT l6l

Gen. 14.21; 46.18; Num. 5.7; Jer. 43.6; Ez. 33.6. In numerous
passages 133 have been counted—the most adequate translation
of nephesh is the reflexive personal pronoun with which moreover
it is sometimes used in parallel: Our nephesh is escaped out of
the snare of the fowler and we are free ” (Ps. 124.7; c^- also Num.
23-IO> Jg- J°b 30-25); when, however, it is a question of
the nephesh within someone (Ps. 42.5, 7; 131.2) or when one speaks
to one s nephesh (Ps. 42.6) it seems that more may be meant than
the personal pronoun, some kind of superior or inclusive ego, the
nephesh is the self and all that this self embraces (Ps. 103.1). It
may be that sometimes we are simply confronted with rhetorical
hyperbole, as in the case where Yahweh judges by his own nephesh
(Jer. 5.9, 29; Amos 6.8).
{e) It is also on the idea of “person” that the stress falls when
nephesh is used to denote the dead. The complete expression
nephesh meth1 clearly does not mean the “ soul of the dead ”, but
by analogy with nephesh chayyah a dead being (Lev. 21.11; Num.
6.6; nephesh only in Lev. 21.1; 19.28; Hag. 2.13). In post-biblical
Hebrew, Aramaic, Palmyrene and Syriac the word naphsa means
the funeral monument. This use takes us far from the primitive
meaning, since it is used for the very contrary of life, yet the monu¬
ment representing a person guarantees, at any rate for a limited
time, the continuance of his presence.

D. MAN HAS A SPIRIT

Nephesh is what results when basar is animated by ruach. This

last comes from without, only Yahweh possesses it in its fulness,
since occasionally he can be identified with it. All the texts
speaking of the spirit of God stress its power, which creates life
wherever it acts; penetrating within man this life reveals itself with
various degrees of intensity. There is no life without spirit, as
Gen. 2.7 clearly says; but there are instances when the spirit comes
upon beings who are fully alive in order to give them the power to
accomplish extraordinary actions, from martial exploits in the time

1 We must reject as utterly fanciful the interpretation put forward by Miriam

Seligson, The meaning of nephesh meth in the O.T., Studia orientalia fennica,
1951, who starts from the sense of power which is a fundamental sense given
to nephesh, and sees in nephesh meth the demon of death prowling round the corpse.
162 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

of the Judges (Jg. 13.20; 14.6, 19; 15.14; 1 ^am- IO;^> to

manifestations of prophecy (Joel 3.1). When the spirit disappears,
for it only acts sporac ically, these people again become normal folk
and continue in full life; in other cases, on the contrary, the absence
of spirit produces a decidedly inferior grade of life, a kind of loss
of strength or even unconsciousness. In presence of Solomon s
wealth the Queen of Sheba is deprived of breath (1 Kings 10.5) and
the spirit of Jacob revives when he learns that Joseph is still alive
(Gen. 45.27), so we can say that an individual without ruach is
not dead but is not a genuine nephesh either; its absence, when it
is not simply identified with the vital breath (Ps. 104.29) does not
bring about the death of a creature but only diminishes its vitality.
In this last sense ruach ceases to be regarded as a power lent to man
and becomes a psychological reality residing in man in a permanent
manner and like nephesh able to be the seat of faculties and desire.
In the latest texts there is a tendency to identify the two terms with
ruach predominating; where the earliest expressions use soul, spirit
is found (Is. 57.16) whence the phrase: the God of the spirits of
all flesh (Num. 16.22; 27.16). In spite of this tendency to merge
there remains a perceptible difference. It has been well defined
by Johs. Pedersen1 when he says that “ the spirit is the motive power
of the soul. It does not mean the centre of the soul, but the
strength emanating from it and, in its turn, reacting upon it.” The
feelings that are connected with the spirit are the particularly
violent ones which by their effects seem to be the result of
possession: Isaac and Rebekah experience bitterness of spirit because
of Esau’s marriage with foreign women (Gen. 26.35, c^- a^so 1 Kings
21.5); the spirit of jealousy (Num. 5.14, 30) which seizes a man
through a suspicion of his wife’s adultery is a feeling which moves
him with such violence that he cannot resist it; often the spirit is
said to be stirred up (Hag. 1.14; 1 Chr. 5.26; 2 Chr. 36.22), so it
is not easy for a man always to keep control of his ruach. It is
harder to control the ruach than to capture cities (Prov. 16.32;
25.28); thoughts which mount up into the spirit (Ez. 11.5; 20.32;
18.31) are always ripe for passing into action. Though the spirit
can be the seat of manifestations whose violence sometimes
threatens to rupture normal equilibrium, it is all the more important
for it to be controlled by the spirit of God; Psalm 51, speaking
of the action of God’s spirit on that of man, shows it steadying,
1 Israel, I-II, p. 104.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 163

making firm (v 12) and breaking (v. 19) the spirit of man (cf. also
Ps. 34’ I9[ 57* x5» 66.2). Since man is incapable of controlling
his spirit it is God who must put a brake upon it and reduce man
to his true status. When this control is assured to the extent of
man s spirit being possessed by God s, spirit becomes the principal
religious organ, the seat of the genuinely spiritual faculties. This
evolution prepared the ground favourably for an alliance between
Greek dualism and Hebrew thought.

E. MAN HAS A HEART

Whilst for nephesh and ruach localization in one definite part of

the body remains vague, the heart is a distinct organ whose entire
psychical functions are closely conditioned by its place in the human
body. To the Israelites the heart appears as the chief instance of
an invisible and hidden organ; it is within the body, so the terms
leb and qereb, the middle, are often linked: 1 Sam. 25.37; Jer.
23.9; Ps. 64.7. Moreover, we find the same parallelism in the
Babylonian world: the creation poem describes in these words the
final blow with which Marduk killed Tiamat: “He cut her
inward parts, he split open her heart.” The heart, inward and
hidden, is contrasted with the face; the leb hashamayim (Dt. 4.11)
is contrasted with the face of the heavens; the heart of the sea
into which Jonah laments he has been cast is contrasted with the
face of the waters (Jon. 2.4). The heart of man also is contrasted
with his face, although the face often reflects the thoughts of the
heart. Since it is invisible it is mysterious, unfathomable, man
cannot know it, only God who sees everything, because he has
created everything, sees the heart (1 Sam. 16.7; man looks at the
outward appearance, but Yahweh looks at the heart).
The Hebrews deduced from its movement that this hidden organ
might have a life and a function the full scope of which they were
far from suspecting. The heart seemed to them a concentration
of all the vital powers, as Johs. Pedersen is impelled to write:
“ Nephesh is the soul in the sum of its totality, such as it appears;
the heart is the soul in its inner value.”1 Without having modern
physiological knowledge, the Israelites were able to observe that
impressions and emotions coming from outside influenced the heart,
1 Israel, I-II, p. 104.
164 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

retarding or accelerating its movement. They were also able to

prove that life depended as much on the heart as on the breath
and thus were led to make the heart the “source of life” (Prov.
4.23). From that double assertion they made the heart, understood
in a psychological sense, an organ both receptive and active, an
idea which is perfectly suitable for the seat of knowledge:
knowledge arrives at the heart from without and especially by the
channel of the ear;1 oral tradition was the basis of all teaching
amongst the Semites: the pupil had to gather up the words of
his wise teacher, and the better he listened the more his intelligence
would be developed. From the ear a canal ran straight to the heart
(Prov. 23.13; Ez. 3.10), which itself also must be wide open (rachab-
leb); Accadian texts also say that the heart must see a long way,
corresponding to the remoteness of wisdom (Eccl. 7.23, 24). In¬
telligent men are men of heart (Job 34.10, 34) and in order to say
that he is not more stupid than his interlocutors Job exclaims:
“ But I have a heart as well as you ” (12.3). On the other hand,
the unintelligent man lacks a heart (chasar leb, Prov. 6.32; 7.7)
and to condemn a people one says they are without heart (Flos.
7.11; Jer. 5.21); and the figurative expression “to steal someone’s
heart” (Gen. 31.21, 26; 2 Sam. 15.6, 13) means to rob him of
his inteljectual faculties to the point of destroying his capacity of
judgment. Since in large measure intelligence is a matter of
memory, the expression “ to come up into the heart ” usually refers
to remembering: “ Remember Yahweh from afar, and let Jerusalem
come into your heart” (Jer. 51.50; cf. also Jer. 3.16; Is. 33.18; 65.17;
Ps. 31-13; Dt. 4.9, 39, etc.). Because it is by the heart that man
is aware of external impressions, it is natural that consciousness
itself should be termed the heart.2 David said to Shimei, “Thou
knowest all the wickedness which thine heart is privy to, that thou
didst do . . .” i.e. you are fully conscious of the wrong (1 Kings

1 The Egyptian wisdom books, in particular chapter 125 of the Book of the
Dead, give frequent evidence that the heart is the organ by which man can receive
and understand the divine commandments; an insane man is a man without a heart;
it is not impossible that the “ listening heart ” asked for by Solomon in his prayer
at Gibeon had some connection with Egypt (cf. H. Brunner: “ Das horende Herz ”
in ThLitztg, 1954, col. 698).
2 In a study on “ Suneidesis, une pierre de touche de l’hellenisme paulinien ”,
M. H. Clavier has made clear that even when hellenistic Judaism was flourishing the
idea expressed by ovvflS-qtns corresponds on the whole to what is called the heart,
meaning thereby the totality of the states of consciousness (Athenes, Extrait du
volume jubilaire du 1900® anniversaire de la visite de saint Paul en Grece, 1953).
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 165

2-44); remorse of heart is remorse of conscience (1 Sam. 25.31), the

table of the heart is the conscience (Jer. 17.1), the wise man in the
house of mourning takes to heart, i.e. becomes conscious of, the
meaning of life (Eccl. 7.2) and above all Eccl. 7.22: “ For thine
own heart knoweth how often thou thyself hast cursed others ”
(Vulgate: conscientia). In short, we may say that the recep¬
tive functions of the heart place it between conscience and
memory.
But in Hebrew thought consciousness is more active than recep¬
tive; the heart does not only receive the thoughts which mount
up into it, it also forges new and original constructions. According
to von Meyenfeldt, the heart plays the part of a planensmid ”/
that is to say an organ by which impressions and ideas are trans¬
formed into projects which must end with action. It is still the
heart which devises plans (2 Sam. 7.3; 1 Chr. 22.7; Est. 7.5);
these plans are good (Ps. 20.5; 1 Chr. 12.38), or more often evil,
since the fall created a congenital propensity for evil (Gen. 6.5);
in this last passage there is talk of the imagination (yetser) of the
heart of man. The heart therefore has the power to create and its
function joins up with that of the image of God without, however,
being able to be identified with it. Man moves in the direction
determined by his heart (Is. 57-17); all the feelings which express
a direction or pull towards an object have relation to the heart,
which in this sense is often an alternative for spirit: hunger, thirst,
arrogance come from the heart: Jer. 49.16; Prov. 21.4; 2 Chr.
25.19; 26.16; 32.26; Est. 6.6, even love and hate; true love has
its seat in the heart (Jg. 16.15). Nevertheless it must be noted
that the heart plays a lesser part in the affective life than it does
in our conceptions and language.
Organ of knowledge2 in general, the heart is likewise the seat
of religious knowledge. Being the source of the body’s life, it is
natural that it should be related to what is the ultimate source of
human life. With the heart one loves God and in the exhortation
to love God in Deuteronomy the heart takes first place (Dt. 6.5);

1 Het hart (leb, lebab) in het oude Testament, Leiden 1950.

2 An animal has no heart and this is its principal difference from man,
even more than the way in which the ruacb is communicated to the one or the
other. The “heart of a lion” (2 Sam. 17.10) is to be understood in the sense of
courage. It is true that in Daniel (4.16 and 5.21) it is said that the heart of
Nebuchadnezzar became like that of beasts, but is a heart devoid of knowledge
still really a heart?
166 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

but as man can truly make real only what God works within him,
the heart must be tested and known by God. God weighs the
heart (Prov. 21.2), he fortifies it, establishes it and, to show that
of all the organs the heart is the one which belongs to him alone,
he circumcises it (Lev. 26.41; Dt. 10.16; 30.6; Jer. 4.4; 9.25; Ez.
44.7, 9). But when the heart turns away from God, when it is
hardened, then Yahweh himself hardens it, as a temporary measure
only, since the goal of Yahweh’s work is the new heart which will
be given at the end of time (Ez. 11.19; 36.26) and which believers
ask to receive in the present as a guarantee of what must come
(Ps. 51.12).
The heart holds so great a place in Israelite anthropology, it is
so far the quintessence of the man, that we may be tempted to
assimilate it to nephesh and say: man is a heart. The precise
location of the heart prevents our going so far, but at least we can
fully subscribe to Dhorme’s judgment that a “ man is worth what
his heart is worth”.1

F. MAN CREATED IN THE IMAGE OF GOD

The theme of the image of God, which has figured so large in

the development of theology, only appears in the Old Testament
in a solitary book, and more particularly in only one of the docu¬
ments of this book: Gen. 1.26, 27; 5.1, 3; 9.6; all belong, in fact,
to the Priestly source. From the position of these texts an imme¬
diate conclusion of considerable significance can be drawn; it is that
neither the fall nor the flood destroyed the image of God, and this
from the outset puts the concept into the domain of anthropology
and not into that of soteriology. The principal text of Gen. 1.26-27
says that man was created in the image and after the likeness of
Elohim. Must we regard these terms as in opposition, or as com¬
plementary, or as merely hendiadys? In the Old Testament the
first term tselem means a fashioned image, a shaped and representa-

1 Here is the full quotation: “ Particular passions or emotions will be localized

in other internal parts (kidneys, liver), the heart contains them all. It sums up
the inward man in opposition to the flesh which is the outward, tangible man. A
man is worth what his heart is worth ” (“ L’emploi metaphorique des noms du
corps ”, RB, 1922, p. 508). It is in this study of first rank importance that we
already find the essential ideas systematized later by Pedersen in his work Israel,
its life and culture, 1926.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 167

tive figure (2 Kings 11.18; Amos 5.26; Ez. 23.14), something

eminently concrete, so that after an exhaustive semantic investiga¬
tion Paul Humbert comes to the following conclusion: “The
semantic verdict is perfectly definite: man, according to P, has
the same outward appearance as the deity of whom he is the
tangible effigy, and the noun tselem refers to no spiritual likeness
in this case any more than in the others.”1 The term demut can
have the same concrete sense as tselem (e.g. Is. 40.18), but as its
original force was that of resemblance its use by the author of
Genesis in effect curbs and tempers the excessively material and
plastic meaning that the first word might suggest. Be that as it
may, it is proper to keep a realistic sense for the expression and
before asking in what the image consists (bodily resemblance,
spiritual capacity, intelligence, speech, will, freedom, differentiation
or reciprocity of the sexes, etc.) it is necessary in the first place to
start from what is initially given in the text, that man is created
as an image of God.
The ancient orient shows us with ever increasing clarity that the
purpose and function of an image consists in representing someone.
An image, that is to say a statue of a god, is the real presence of
this god; prayers are addressed to it and its destruction is equivalent
to the destruction of the life of the one it represents. The king
had his image set up in the remote provinces of his empire which
he could not visit in person. Assyrian inscriptions often repeat the
ritual phrase: ‘I will set up my statue in their midst.” The
ancient orient also shows us that the title of image was applied to
the living person of the king; a hymn of Thutmose III puts these
words into the mouth of the god Amon: “lam come, I give you
to walk on the princes of Djahi (the population of Palestine or
Phoenicia), I spread them out under your feet across their land, I
cause them to see your majesty like that of a lord of glory, while
you shine in their face like my own image.”2 The term image
applied to man in general is rare; it is reserved for kings, whose
place was nearer to the gods than that of ordinary folk. Notice,
however, an Egyptian text also dating from the reign of Thutmose
III: “How wise was God when he arranged the condition of
men, God’s flock. He made the sky and the earth for their sake,

1 Etudes sur le recil du paradis et de la chute dans la Genese, 1940, p. 157.

2 Quoted from J. de Savignac, “Interpretation du Psaume no” in Oudtestamen-
tische Studien, IX, p. hi.
168 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

he drove back the darkness of the abyss. He made the breath of

the heart as the life of their nostrils; they are his images coming
out of his flesh. He shone in the sky for their sake. He made
for them the plants, the cattle, the birds and the fish as their food.
This reference to man as an image of God is first conceived in
Egypt where humanity is supposed to have originated by way of
generation from the divine world;2 but that it is found in the Old
Testament and in a document which otherwise stresses strongly
the divine transcendence is at first surprising, the more so as the
central place it occupies shows that it is not a truth mentioned in
passing but a quite fundamental reality. The representative
function which the term image implies is not exercised by a par¬
ticular person, the king for example, but by man, who is, according
to a particularly happy expression, the “ vizier”3 of God on earth.
Man is a representative by his entire being, for Israelite thought
always views man in his totality, by his physical being as well as
by his spiritual functions, and if choice had to be made between the
two we would say that the external appearance is perhaps even more
important than spiritual resemblance. The Old Testament teaches
in fact that in man’s exterior aspect there is a beauty and dignity
found in no other living being. According to L. Koehler4 the
image of God could consist in man’s upright posture (die aufrecbte
Gestalt) which separates him from the animals and which would
find its commentary in a verse of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1/85):

Os homini sublime dedit, caelumque videre

Jussit et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.

The solemnity with which the Priestly writer speaks of the imago
Dei seems to prove that he did not restrict it to this single aspect;
it is none the less true that the Old Testament affirms that the
human ideal always includes external beauty, and when Second

1 Quoted from Podechard, Les Psaumes, commentary on Ps. 8.

2 In the epic of Gilgamesh, Enkidu is created as the image of Anu, but the
translation of zikrtt sha Anim by image of Anu is doubtful; interesting information
on the identity of the image with the god will be found in the work of H. Schrade,
Der Verbogene Gott. Gottesbild und Gottesvorstellung in Israel und im Alten
Orient, Stuttgart 1949; the proper name Ur-Tsalmi, servant of the image, which
we find in Babylonian hymns, clearly expresses the identification of the god with
his image.
3 The expression is from J. Hempel, Ethos des A.T., p. 201.
4 ThZ, 1948, pp. 17ft.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 169

Isaiah speaks of a servant who has neither attractiveness nor beauty

he introduces to Israel such an original idea that he takes care to
stress its paradox and offensiveness. It is true that no Old Testa¬
ment text expressly connects bodily beauty with the image of
God; but a passage in Rabbinical literature shows that the con¬
nection was made at least once in Hebrew thought: in Midr.
Lev. K. 34, referring to Prov. 11.17: “The merciful man doeth
good to his own nephesh ’ ’, we have the following comment: When
Hillel (20 B.c.) took leave of his disciples he usually accompanied
them far along the road, and as they asked him: Rabbi, where are
you going? he answered: I am going to fulfil a commandment.—
Which one?—I am going to take a bath at the bathing place.
When his disciples asked: But is that a commandment? he
replied: Certainly, for if the man appointed for the statues of
kings set up in the theatres and circuses washes and rubs them down
and for that work is not only provided for but honoured amongst
the great men of the realm, how much more must this duty be
incumbent upon me who am created after the image and likeness
of God? 1,1 It is also to a rather physical sense that we are directed
by the passage in Genesis which refers to the image of God over
the matter of blood vengeance (9.6): to touch man is to touch
God himself, of whom every man is the image; God will not
require account of animal blood, but man’s blood is in some measure
God’s, even though there may not be the bond of physical kinship
between God and man, as in Babylonian myth.2
If the representative function is the specific quality of the image,
it is clear that man can only exercise it in connection with other
creatures in whose eyes he represents God. Man’s place in the
bosom of creation is that of an intermediary: whilst in neighbour¬
ing religions, particularly in Canaan, distinctions between God,
nature, the animal world and man were exceedingly ill-defined and
it was very easy to pass from one to the other of these domains,
the Old Testament draws a clear distinction between man and his
environment. Now, straight after the creation of man in God’s
image, Genesis speaks of his dominion over the animals. This
dominion over the animals is not itself the imago Dei, but it is the
1 Quoted from Strack-Billerbeck, t. I, p. 654.
2 This inviolability of man is already recognized in earlier texts; for this reason
the Code of the Covenant (Ex. 21.28) lays down that an animal which kills a man
shall be stoned and its flesh not eaten; the impurity of the animal throws into
relief the holiness of the man.
170 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

first opportunity for the image to be exercised in a definite way

and Psalm 8, which is the best commentary on Genesis 1, also sees
the particular sign of man’s superiority in his dominion over the
animal world. This same Psalm says that man was created only a
little inferior to Elohim; what man lacks to be equal to Elohim is
what the Priestly Code expresses when it tempers tselem by demut.
To mark clearly the limit which must not be transgressed the
Psalmist, speaking of man’s role, avoids the name Yahweh which
is, however, used at the beginning, for the name Yahweh is a
personal name and for that reason the inalienable property of the
one who bears it, and cannot be associated with any creature. To
this being, clothed with glory and majesty—and the figure of
speech of clothing is again an allusion to man s physical aspect
God has given dominion over nature.
This ruling of man over nature is a privilege: the beasts of the
field must serve for his food, make his life easier, increase the
product of his work and his wealth; but this privilege can only
be maintained at the price of effort for although the animal world
is subject to man it remains a perpetual temptation into which he
is in danger of falling either by overestimating it and worshipping
it or by underestimating it through not recognizing the hostile and
dangerous element which characterizes it. From the serpent of
Genesis to the beasts of Daniel, the forces of evil are symbolized
by animal powers; and this is why we think that the image of
God and dominion over the animals also implies to some extent
dominion over evil. Not far from the passage proclaiming man’s
dominion over the animals is this other order of God: If thou
doest not well, sin coucheth at the door: and unto thee is its desire,
but thou shouldst rule over it” (Gen. 4.7). This passage differs
from Genesis 1 both in origin and terminology; yet it is hard not
to see a connection between these two orders given to man about
the dominion which he must exercise as God’s representative.
Domination through struggle reproduces God’s own action: the
earliest traditions about creation of which we have traces in certain
poetic texts represent it as a struggle and victory of Yahweh’s over
the powers of chaos, which have not, however, been totally des¬
troyed but only bridled. These powers of chaos, which people liked
to picture in animal forms, could even be an obstacle to God’s just
government of the world. This is why when God desires to reply
to Job’s bitter complaints and questions he chooses the apparently
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
I7I
ridiculous way of describing to him two beasts, Behemoth and
Leviathan. Commentators usually put this reply of God down
to the irony which the Old Testament and the book of Job in par¬
ticular often uses to express divine sovereignty. There is probably
a still more profound reason: God wants to show Job how difficult
the conduct of the world is with creatures so extraordinary and so
mysterious which fear nothing (Job 41.24) and against which he has
to wage incessant war. By transposing that to his own plane, Job
will be able to draw the conclusion not only that God is not unjust
by his lack of concern for him since he himself on a much higher
plane struggles against evil, but that Job will only find a solution
for evil by mastering it; then the words of Job 40.7-11 would be
less an order to keep silent and be humble than a call to the
struggle, a call to the image of God himself: “Deck thyself now
with excellency and dignity; and array thyself with honour and
majesty. Pour forth the overflowings of thine anger: and look
upon every one that is proud, and abase him. Look on every one
that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked
where they stand. Hide them in the dust together; bind their
faces in the hidden place. Then will I also confess of thee that
thine own right hand can save thee.”
Such interpretations might leave the impression that the Old
Testament presents an ideal for man akin to that of a superman.
Far from it, for the imago Dei means for man a relationship with,
and dependence upon, the one for whom he is only the represen¬
tative. To wish to be like God, the temptation suggested by the
serpent, is to desire to abandon the role of image and on several
occasions the Old Testament shows that in behaving thus man
degrades himself and falls to the animal level instead of raising him¬
self: to desire to become an angel is to prepare to become a beast.1
To remain an image man must maintain his relationship with God,
he must remember that he is only an ambassador and his dominion
over creation will be effective only in proportion as that relationship
becomes more real.
This theme, which has only a very limited place in the Old
Testament, simply expresses in theological dress a truth admitted
in Israel long before the time of the Priestly writer: the Yahwist,
in showing the direct intervention of Yahweh in the creation of
1 The respective positions of these different creatures can be described by saying
that the animal lives in the present, the angels in eternity and man in history.
172 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

man, already brings to light his royal function,1 but since his
thought is directed entirely towards the fall he stresses the contrast
more than the resemblance; it is the same with the prophets, though
their persistence in speaking of man’s sin and the necessity of his
return proves that they expected much from man. It is only in
apocryphal literature that explicit reference is made to the theme
of the image of God:
“ He gave into the power of men what is on the earth. He
clothed them with power like his own; in his image he created
them. He put the fear of man on all creatures ” (Ecclus. 17.2-4).
“ God created man for incorruption, and made him an image of
his own proper being” (Wisdom 2.23). The last passage points
forward to the developments which will extend this theme far
beyond its particular Old Testament attachments.

G. MAN IS CREATED MALE AND FEMALE

Man’s destiny is only fully realized within the unity of the

married couple. Marriage is always regarded as the normal state
and celibacy is only considered as an exceptional vocation, necessary
for the fulfilment of a mission, as in the case of Jeremiah. The
breaking of the unity of the couple by the decease of one partner
is regarded as a misfortune because one of the two is reduced to
solitude; to be a widow is synonymous with abandonment and the
requirements of the law aimed at easing this misfortune. The most
developed reflection on the unity of the married couple is in the
Yahwist creation narrative, from which we can extract the main
contentions which the whole Old Testament makes on this subject.
Since the woman is taken from man’s body she forms with him a
single flesh; this is why man and wife unceasingly seek and call
upon each other. The joy of reunion and the sadness of parting
are celebrated in an incomparable way in the Song of Songs.
Alongside this unity all the Old Testament insists on the subordi¬
nation of the woman to the man. Man by himself is a complete
being, the woman who is given to him adds nothing to his nature,

1 It would be wrong to follow Wellhausen, Prolegomena, 5th ed., 1899, p. 312,

and oppose the conception of man in Genesis 1 to that of the Yahwist narrative;
the equality with God that man wants to attain is something quite different from
the image of God which is given him by God at the time of his creation.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
m
whilst the woman drawn forth from man owes all her existence
to him, though man only assists passively in her creation, which is
the work of Yahweh alone and before the outcome of which man
utters a cry of admiration: “ This is now flesh of my flesh ” (Gen.
2.23). The bond of the man to the woman is not an indication in
favour of a matriarchal order;1 if there were traces of a matriarchate
it was before the Yahwist period of Israelite religion. The Old
Testament always assigns the woman an inferior role, in the religious
domain as well as in social life, though this does not prevent her
fulfilling on occasion the functions of military leader or prophetess;
but generally the place of the woman is the home, where she is
called to devote herself to tasks whose dignity is recalled by the
author of the book of Proverbs (chap. 31). It is in the setting of
the home that the woman can exercise her double vocation of
’isbah and chawah, by giving man all the help she can and by
bringing sons into the world who will assure the continuity of the
generations. This ideal of the unity of the married couple is only
intelligible in a society where monogamy was the normal condition,2
but in this realm, as in others, the reality no doubt often fell far
short of the ideal.

H. THE IMITATION OF GOD, THE PRINCIPLE OF

THE MORAL AND SPIRITUAL LIFE

If man’s nature can be defined by the theme of the image of

God, his function can be qualified as an imitation of God. This
involves a double obligation for man, we might say a double out¬
look : one eye turned towards God and the other towards the
world. The Old Testament re-echoes both a piety in which com¬
munion with God reaches the highest intensity (Psalm 73) and a
realism which underlies much social legislation. This does not
mean they are two mutually exclusive parallel lines; the apparent
duality belongs to man’s own position within creation: as a creature
man receives his life from God only, but as an autonomous and
1 The arguments which have been used in favour of a matriarchal period in
Israel have little substance and on the whole historians reach a negative conclusion,
cf. L. G. Levy, I^a famille dans I’antiquite Israelite, Paris 1905, p. 125.
2 For the evolution from polygamy towards monogamy, cf. the study of A. Gelin
in Melanges Podechard (Etudes de critique et d’histoire published by the Faculte
de theologie catholique de Lyon, 1946).
174 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

free creature he is capable of initiative and dominion: In the

Yahwist’s religion communion with God means to experience in
the personal life the creative sovereignty of God and to express it
positively in one’s own action and one’s own sufferings. 1 What
this contemporary author says of the prophets is true for every
individual, for each man is called to enter into God’s plan.
To enter into communion with God is to enter into a movement,
to participate in a history which is of God. Participation by man
in God’s plan is, first of all, faith; and it is not by chance that
Isaiah, who is the prophet of God’s plan, is also the prophet of
faith. To believe is to share in the stability of God, to see things
as God sees them with security and confidence. Faith has a three¬
fold aspect in the Old Testament: 2 it is knowledge, and the phrase
knowledge of God expresses one of the essential features of Israelite
religion; it is trust, and Isaiah defines it as an attitude of calmness
(7.4; 30.15; 28.15) because it is submission to an all-powerful and
good master; and finally, it is active obedience, for the believer, far
from abandoning himself to fatalism, must struggle along with God
for the fulfilling of his plan. This entering into God’s plan is
illustrated by the use of the same word or at least of the same root
for both divine and human activity: ’emunah and ’emet denote
at the same time the faithfulness and veracity of God and the faith
of man. It is the same with the use of the term chesed which, in
spite of the numerous studies made of it, still remains difficult to
render into any of our western languages; the word is used at one
and the same time for the attitude of God to man, of man to God,
and of man to his fellow. By chesed man best attains to the imita¬
tion of God and the chesed he shows to his neighbour is always
chesed Elohim (2 Sam. 9.3; 1 Sam. 20.14); c^e more complete
expression ‘asah chesed we’emet is used of God and of men (2 Sam.
2.6; 15.20; Gen. 24.12; 2 Sam. 10.2) and every Israelite’s ideal
to become chasid is realized in a perfect way by Yahweh himself
(Jer. 3.12; Ps. 145.17). The requirements of righteousness and
holiness are already partly implied in that of chesed, but nevertheless
are not explicitly formulated there: “Ye shall be holy, for I am
holy ” (Lev. 11.44). It could also be asked whether the formula “ I

1 I. P. Seierstad, Die Offenbarungserlebnisse der Propheten Amos, fesaja, Jeremia,

Oslo 1946, p. 22.
2 On faith in the O.T., cf. the article of P. Michalon, “ La foi, rencontre de Dieu
et engagement envers Dieu dans l’A.T.”, NRTh, 1953, p. 587.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
*75
am Yahweh ’ which serves as conclusion to many of the laws of
Leviticus does not also signify that the principle of imitation lies
behind all the legislation; this legislation which culminates in
“ Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Lev. 19.18) applies in
the human realm God s own method who, by creating man in
his image and clothing him with a dignity like his own, loved him
as himself.1
The bond subjecting man to God and the freedom which gives
him dominion over the world also give direction to the entire
devotion of the faithful Israelite. The humility characterizing it
is no blind submission, but a walking with God (Mic. 6.8). The
believer who has seen in history a manifestation of divine righteous¬
ness and chesed can only involve his own existence humbly in the
wake of that history. Humility will be accompanied by fear, for
nothing else is possible before a holy and sometimes terrible God;
yet, important as fear is in Israelite religion, it does not occupy
the central place, joy far outweighs it; joy belongs to God. A God
who laughs, a God who indulges so largely in humour, is a joyous
God: the morning stars (Job 38.7) and wisdom (Prov. 8.22-31)
which utters cries of joy before him are a poetic personification of
the feelings which animate God himself when he takes pleasure in
his created works (cf. Gen. 1 and Ps. 104.31: that Yahweh delights
in all his works). “ There is no word,” writes L. Koehler,2 “ which
is more central in the Old Testament than the word joy.” God
gives man a considerable share in his joy (Eccl. 2.26; 8.15; 9.7;
n.9ff.), joy forms the centre of the cult, which consists in rejoicing
before Yahweh and in communion with him (Lev. 23.40; Num.
10.10; Dt. 12.7; 14.26; 16.11) and when the future kingdom arrives
its advent will be marked by great joy (Is. 9.2). In a joy which
does not merely show itself in inward feelings, God and man
express the domination and the victory, experienced by God and
hoped for by men, over all the powers capable of attacking their
liberty.
The principle of imitation appears in the two cultic manifestations
of piety—prayer and sacrifice. In the Old Testament there are traces
of purely eudemonistic and egocentric prayer, but under the
1 Hempel, Ethos des A.T., p. 201, speaks of the theomorphism of man and stresses
its ethical consequences, which are shown particularly in man’s dominion over nature
and other beings.
2 Theol. A.T., 1936, p. 137; cf. also the fundamental article of P. Humbert,
“ Laetari et exultare dans le vocabulaire religieux de l’A.T.”, RHPR, 1942, pp. i85ff.
influence of Yahwism and of the prophets it became primarily prayer
for die work of God. Israelite prayer only shares widi mystical
prayer a certain similarity of terms; in reality diey serve different
ends: mystical prayer seeks to separate the individual from die
world and from himself by submerging him in the absolute, while
Israelite prayer aims at uniting the will of man with God’s will so
that the individual, abandoning himself entirely to God, also finds
himself fully in God. “ Israelite prayer,” says Fernand Menegoz,1
“ tends to make the believer an energedc co-operator and not a
beatified enjoyer of God. The expression and driving-force of a
will active in holiness shows itself to be in the last analysis a result
of God’s redempdve work such as takes place age after age in
men’s hearts.” Imitadon of God is to be understood as the con¬
tinuation of God’s acdon. In Israel, as with all religions, sacrifice
had an aim like that of prayer; yet even more than prayer it seems
to us to be the expression on the level of ritual of die fundamental
attitude of chesed which governs all Israelite life; it does no violence
to the texts to discover in them the three aspects of chesed we have
defined above. Sacrifice is a manifestadon of God’s presence made
percepdble on earth; therefore it expresses the chesed of God
towards men which is a gift symbolized by the sacrificial elements.
In the second place, sacrifice is a gift of man to God, the offerings
symbolizing the life of man submitted to God, and finally, by the
rite of fellowship and the common meal, chesed is realized on the
horizontal plane in the form of the great brotherhood of Israel.
Looked at from this angle, sacrifice approximates to the symbolic
actions of die prophets which were revelatory and also set in acdon
the divine purposes.2 If there is a reladon between sacrifice and
chesed the celebrated words of Hosea: ‘‘I desire chesed and not
sacrifices ” (6.6) do not underline the opposition between the two,
but imply diat a sacrifice not inspired by chesed lacks the spirit
to make it effective.
The sabbath is also an invitation to act like God, who rested on
the seventh day.
The imitadon of God does not remain limited to the specifically
1 Le probleme de la priere, ist ed., p. 246.
2 For the relation between sacrifice and symbolic action, cf. H. Wheeler Robinson,
Redemption and Revelation, p. 250, and Old Testament Essays, 1927, pp. 1-17, as
well as Rowley, “ The meaning of sacrifice in the O.T.” in the Bulletin of John
Rylands Library, 1950, p. 74. Cf. also G. Fohrer, Die symboliscben Handlungen der
Propheten, Zurich 1953.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 177
religious life. The theme of conjugal love was widely used to
express the relationship between Yahweh and his people. It is
not unduly rash to suppose that the religious use of this figure
rebounded upon the idea of marriage and that the Israelites saw a
reflection in the mutual love of man and wife of Yahweh’s love for
his people; indeed we have proof of it in the Song of Songs, which
celebrates conjugal love in terms borrowed from the metaphorical
language of the prophets. Wisdom—that is to say, the art of
succeeding in life—and the work of man find in God both their
inspiration and their pattern. In short, the two great realms of
divine revelation and action are also offered to man: creation and
the covenant. Man must be a creator and do everything of which
his hands are capable (Eccl. 9.10); but his creative work must be
directed because of the covenant by the bond of chesed which he
must show particularly to those whose vitality is menaced by their
weakness; service of one’s neighbour is the basis of the social and
economic life.1 With the pride and harshness of King Jehoiakim
the prophet Jeremiah contrasts a portrait of his father, Josiah. “ He
judged the cause of the poor and the orphan. Was not this to know
me? saith the Lord” (Jer. 22.16). The ‘‘knowledge of God”
which sometimes in the Old Testament has an echo which we shall
gladly call mystical, is here identified with action on behalf of
the poor. The Gospel will show in a still more complete way
how encounter with God can simply be encounter with one’s
neighbour.

I. THE DESTINY OF MAN: LIFE

Life in the Old Testament has many aspects. Whilst breath and
blood are its most evident manifestation they are far from exhaust¬
ing its content, for life is not only the exercise of organic functions
but is the sum of the ways by which man realizes his destiny of
nepbesh chayyab and of imago Dei. God has created Man as an
independent being, as his partner, but man only attains that
independence by ever-renewed contact with the one who is the
source of his life and the source of all life. To define what that life
is the Old Testament has recourse to a number of comparisons and
1 “ L’economic est le service du prochain ”, writes W. Eichrodt, Die soziale
Botschaft des A.T., 1946, p. 51.
178 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

pictures, each of which suggests life in its characteristic aspect,

namely motion; it is by immobility in the first instance that death
differs from life, the dead no longer do anything and Sheol as a
land of silence is in contrast to the land of the living. Life is com¬
pared to a tree, a spring, a roadway; and these comparisons conceal
ancient myths which, apart from the tree of life in Genesis, have
left no trace. Only God possesses this life in its fulness, and he
concentrates it in certain objects or places so that man can possess
the portion to which he has a right. In the East, water is the source
and condition of life; it is water which in the Yahwist creation
narrative makes life possible on earth (Gen. 2.5) and lack of rain and
dew was always regarded as a grave message threatening vitality;
but as water in its maritime aspect was also thought to be an element
of chaos, it could only partially express the power of life. It is
otherwise with light,1 which is always connected with life; light
in its proper sense is synonymous with health (Is. 58.8), salvation
Ps. 27.1; Mic. 7.8; Is. 60.1, 3), happiness (Amos 5.18; Is. 9.1;
Ps. 112.4; 97.11); to make someone’s face shine is to renew his vital
power (Ps. 13.4; 19.9; Prov. 29.13) and the absence of light dis¬
tinguishes Sheol from the earth. The earth itself is charged with
life, it makes the plants spring up without which man could not
maintain his life, but in place of the mythical idea of an animated
and generative earth there is substituted, through the general pro¬
cess of historization, that of an earth which is the source of life
because of a special manifestation of God in time and space. At a
given time in history salvation is bound up with the possession of
a certain land, for the land is indispensable for the maintenance of
the covenant and the community. Even when the community
replaces the land as the source of life, even in the eschatological
promises, salvation will be associated with dwelling in safety in
the land. In this land Yahweh chooses certain places where he
reveals himself with greater reality and where man can meet with
him: the sanctuaries and particularly the Jerusalem temple were
the places where life could be found,2 and the Psalms bear many
echoes of a piety for which remoteness from the holy place meant
separation from the source of life.

1 On this subject, cf. the work of Sverre Aalen, Die Begriffe “ Licht ’’ and
“Finsternis " im A.T.\ particularly pp. 63ff. In some passages light is synonymous
with salvation: Ps. 36.10; Is. 9.1; 50.10; Mic. 7.9.
2 The more so as the Jerusalem temple probably had a cosmic significance.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
x79
Then wherein does this life consist? A life such as the Israelite
ideal conceived it could only be a long one; for man to realize his
destiny he must have time; for the king, who is in some measure
responsible for the life of his subjects, the wish was expressed that
he might live for ever, that is to say for a very long time (i Kings
i.31; Ps. 21.5; 61.7#.); the prayer the righteous man addresses
to Yahweh is for the gift of long life or for the maintenance of his
life (Ps. 34.13; 91.16; Prov. 4.10; 9.11; 10.27), and die greatest
misfortune that can happen to him is to be removed in the midst
of his days (Ps. 55.24; 89.46; Prov. 10.27; Is. 38.10).
It is the content of time which gives it its value, but since
according to the faith dominant in Israel long life was already a
reward it could not be anything other than an uninterrupted train
of happiness. The idea of happiness attaching to the word life is
explained by the terms berakah and shalom\ the man who possesses
life is a blessed man; just as the knees (birkayim) maintain the
balance of the body, the berakah1 maintains the equilibrium of
life. At an early period when religion was still infected with magic,
when it could be thought that God needed the blessing of men,
particularly of influential people (Gen. 9.26) the word to bless used
of men was very soon reduced to that of praise and give thanks.
The blessing which has weight is the one bestowed by God.
With Pedersen we distinguish three fundamental aspects: 2 (a) it
consists in numerous offspring; “be fruitful and multiply” says
Elohim to the first men after having blessed them (Gen. 1.28; 9.1);
this is also the basic element of the blessing given to Abraham
(Gen. 12.1; 13.16) and David receives the promise that his dynasty
will be eternal (2 Sam. 7.29). (&) Riches are the second sign of
blessing: the blessed man has many possessions (Gen. 24.35). Job
is an example of a man blessed by a large posterity and abundant
wealth, and one of the closing chapters of Deuteronomy similarly
expresses the constant connection between blessing and prosperity
(Dt. 28.1-13). (c) Blessing finally consists in being victorious over
one’s enemies, as appears from many texts belonging to the heroic
age of the early tribes (Gen. 27.29; 49.8-12, 22-26; Dt. 28.7).
In conclusion we may say that the blessing is the power by which
life is maintained and augmented. The result of the blessing is the

1 We believe that the root brk embraces the ideas of firmness and extension, the
first in the words from barak, to kneel, the second in berekah, an expanse of water.
2 Israel, I-II, pp. 205ft.
180 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

condition defined by the word shalom,1 which suggests the idea of

abundance, prosperity and peace; this state will only be fully
attained in the last times, but for the righteous it can be a present
reality, so true is it that there is nothing hoped for which cannot be
translated immediately into actual life.
Refinement of the religious sensitivity and the lessons of experi¬
ence created doubts in serious minds about the identification of life
with length of days and earthly success, and led to a view of life
as no more the possession of God’s gifts but of God himself; so we
find in the Old Testament an ideal of life which neither premature
death, trials nor poverty are capable of shaking, but which rather
even gains in intensity by contact with suffering. Psalmists such
as the authors of Psalms 16 and 73, put to the test of sickness and
poverty, found in communion with God a life to which death
itself could set no limits. According to a thinker whose faith did
not attain the profundity of the Psalmists’, the old equating of life
with prosperity is likewise destroyed; life for him is merely a
synonym for mortality; the living who are still alive know they will
die (Eccl. 4.2; 9.5), and this attitude has probably been more
common than that of the Psalmist who accepts the loss of his life
in order to find it again on a higher level in God: “ Thy chesed is
better than life” (Ps. 63.4).
Life, having its source in God, can only be a gift, yet this gift,
just like God himself, is the object of a choice on man’s part; it is
only by choosing life (Dt. 30.19) that man truly becomes what
he is.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bachmann, “ Das Ebenbild Gottes ”, Das Erbe Martin Luthers, Festschrift

L. Ihmels, Leipzig 1928.
Barth, Karl, Kirchliche Dogmatik III, 2, §46.
Becker, J. H., Het be grip nefesj in het oude Testament, 1942.
Briggs, C. A., “ The use of nephesh in the O.T.”, JBL, 1897, p. 17.
Caspari, W., “ Imago Divina Gen. I ”, Festschrift Reinbold Seeberg, t.I,
1929, p. 190.

1 Shalom is the outcome of righteousness (Is. 32.17) or wisdom (Prov. 3.2, 17)
which are only fully realized through Yahweh or his most eminent representative,
the messianic king (cf. Is. 9.5).
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT l8l

Crespy, G., “ Le probleme d’une anthropologie theologique ”, EThR,

Montpellier, 1950, pp. iff.
Delitzsch, F., System der biblischen Psychologic, Leipzig 1855.
Dhorme, P., L’emploi metapborique des noms de parties du corps en
hebreu et en accadien, Paris 1923.
Durr, L., Nephesh = Gurgel, Kehle ”, ZAW, 1925, p. 262.
Eichrodt, W., Das Menschenverstandnis des Alten Testaments, 1947.
Etudes carmelitaines, Le coeur (recueil collectif).
Galling, K., Das Bild vom Menschen in biblischer Sicbt, Mainz 1947.
Gelin, A., “ L’homme biblique ”, Lumen Vitae, 1955, no. 1, p. 45.
Hehn, J., “ Zum Terminus Bild Gottes ”, Festschrift Ed. Sachau 1915,
p. 46.
Hempel, Joh., Das Ethos des Alten Testaments, Berlin 1938.
Gott und Mensch im A.T., Stuttgart 1926.
Johnson, A. R., The One and the Many in the Israelite Conception of
God, Cardiff 1942.
The Vitality of the Individual in the Thought of Ancient
Israel, Cardiff 1949.
Koeberle, J., Natur und Geist nach der Auffassung des Alten Testaments,
1901.
Koehler, L., Der hebraische Mensch, Tubingen 1953.
Kornfeld, H., “ Herz und Gehirn in altbiblischer Auffassung ”, fahrbiicher
fiir judische Geschichte u. Literatur, 1909, p. 81.
Lichtenstein, Max, Das Wort nephesh in der Bibel, Schriften der
Lehranstalt fiir Wissenschaft des Judentums, Bd. IV, 5-6, Berlin 1920.
Meyenfeldt, von, Het hart (leb, lebab) in het oude Testament, Leiden
195°•
PlDOUX, G., L’homme dans I’A.T., Neuchatel-Paris 1953.
Robinson, H. Wheeler, “Hebrew Psychology”, The People and the
Book, ed. A. S. Peake, Oxford 1925.
Rust, E. C., Nature and Man in Biblical Thought, London 1953.
Ryder Smith, C., The Bible Doctrine of Man, London 1951.
Schmidt, K. L., “ Imago Dei ” (Eranosjahrbuch 1948).
Schwab, J., Der Begriff der nefesch in den heiligen Schriften des A.T.,
Munich 1913.
Volz, P., “ Die Wiirde des Menschen im A.T.”, Glaube und Ethos (Fest¬
schrift G. Wehrung), pp. 1-8, 1940.
Vriezen, Th. C., “La creation de 1’homme d’apres l’image de Dieu ”,
Oudtest. Studien 11, p. 87, 1943.
Wright, G. E., The Biblical Doctrine of Man in Society, Ecumenical
Biblical Studies no. 2, S.C.M. Press, 1954.
Zimmerli, W., Das Menschenbild des A.T., Theol. Existenz heute,
N.F. 14, Munich 1949.
182 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

I. THE DESTINY OF MAN: LIFE

Aalen, Sverre, Die Be griffe Licht und Finsternis im A.T., im Sp'dtjuden-

tum und im Rabbinismus, Oslo 1951.
Baudissin, W., “ Alttestamentliches ' chayim ’ Leben in der Bedcutung
von Gliick”, Festschrift Ed. Sachau, 1915, p. 143.
Durr, L., “ Die Wertung des Lebens im A.T. und im antiken Orient ”,
Vorl d. Akad. Braunsberg 1926-27.
Gunzig, J., Das jiidische Schrifttum iiber den Wert des Lebens, Hanover

I924-
Hempel, J., Das Ethos des A.T., Berlm 1930.
Kleinert, P., “ Zur Idee des Lebens im A.T.”, ThStKr, 1895, p. 693.
Ratschow, C. H., Werden und Wirken. Eine Untersuchung des Wortes
hay ah als Beitrag zur Wirklichkeitserfassung des A.T., BZAW 70,
Berlin 1941-
 IV. GOD THE LORD OF HISTORY

A. FAITH AND HISTORY

('a) Generalities

“ X T istory might be called the sacrament of the religion

I I of Israel; through the history of Israel, she saw the face
X X of God and endured as seeing him who is invisible. But
the details of that history with which we shall be concerned—the
words and deeds, the thoughts and emotions, and above all the per¬
sistent purposes of the Israelites—these were the bread and wine of
the sacrament, which the touch of God transformed into both the
symbol and the instrument of His grace for all time.” This
definition of Wheeler Robinson’s,1 while bringing out the impor¬
tance of history as a revelation of God, underlines at the same time
what might be called the supra-historical aspect of the history of
Israel; for from early times and already in the Old Testament
history was interpreted in a typological manner,2 and in the Rabbinic
and ecclesiastical tradition, thanks to allegory understood either in
a mystical or ethical sense, believers read their own history in the
pages of the Old Testament. It is none the less true that the'nature
of history is its inability to repeat itself. If, therefore, God reveals
himself in history, he does so through very precise events in time,
1 The History of Israel, 1938, p. 12.
2 Typology is already to be found in the Old Testament. The Exodus, in the
entirety of Israelite tradition, is handled as the symbol of salvation and more par¬
ticularly certain episodes within the Exodus: the gift of manna in the account
given by the priestly writer (Ex. 16.6-138, i6b-26) is not only a unique event,
but a reality which is ever being freshly reproduced in the life of God’s people;
the Flood, the Temple, the possession of the land are interpreted as symbols of
catastrophe, salvation and rest. The process of typologization can also be noticed
in the way in which certain figures represent in themselves the totality of the
functions of government: Samuel, Moses and, to some extent, the Servant of
Yahweh are the most striking examples of this. But always the type is an historical
reality; the historicity of a figure or of an event is ever the condition of their
typological application; this idea is already expressed by Joh. Gerhard (1762),
“ Typus consistit in factorum collatione. Allegoria occupatur non tam in factis, quam
in ipsis concionibus, e quibus doctrinam utilem et reconditam depromit ”, quoted
from Goppelt, Typos, p. 8.

i83
184 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

the historicity of which is in no way weakened by the typological

meaning acquired by those events.
History, however, is not made of events alone. To speak of
history and revelation through history, two realities must be
brought together: raw facts and their interpretation. The latter is
even more important than the facts, for it is one s idea of an event
which assures for it its quality as an historical fact, that is as a
decisive fact in the course of events. In general this interpretation
reveals the true significance of a fact, but it also happens, even in
the Old Testament, that it gives a presentation of facts that is quite
the opposite of strict historical truth.1 The Old Testament is a clear
example of the priority of the interpretation of history over its
presentation, for the narration of history implies for the Israelite
an interpretation of it, because he views God’s action through faith
and not by the methods of the archivist or the archaeologist. If
by history is meant knowledge of the past, it is fair to recognize
with L. Koehler that the Hebrew mind has little awareness of the
notion of history,2 for it is interested in history only to the extent
in which it is hie et nunc a present and dynamic reality. There is
a double relationship between history and faith: on the one hand
history provides faith with its object. The most ancient confession
of faith recorded in the book of Deuteronomy (26.^.) is a purely
historical credo to which any metaphysical affirmation about God
is foreign. On the other hand faith gives to history its orientation
through the prophets, who bring on Yahweh’s behalf the word
which provokes events, and through those who in various degrees
deserve to be called historians and who by making a selection from
the facts envisaged history in the light of God’s plan of salvation
taken as a whole and who considered that only what was used in
that plan’s fulfilment was worth retaining.

(b) The events

The great stages in the history of the people of Israel

Real history is born only when a religious or philosophical

principle establishes some relationship between the course of events.
1 The clearest example of this is given to us by the author of the book of
Chronicles whose testimony, for the interpretation of history, is for this reason all
the more interesting to study.
2 Der bebr'dische Mensch, 1953, pp. 126 and 129: “ Geschichte als zeitlichen
Abstand gibt es nicht.”
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 185

Yet certain circumstances of a geographical or ethnic nature already

ensure a certain continuity among the facts and maintain certain
common features in their unfolding. A country’s history is to
a large extent a function of its geographical position. Now
Palestine s situation is characterized on the one hand by being at
the cross-roads of three great cultures, Asiatic, Egyptian and
Semitic, each of which has left its mark on Palestine, and on the
other hand by its nearness to the desert. Throughout the whole
of Israel’s history we can find the antagonism between civilization
and the desert, the first representing the elements of dissolution,
the second the reservoir of young and vital forces. The second
constant is of a sociological nature: it concerns what has been called
“ corporate personality ” and the primacy of the group. To neglect
the principal role of the group is to expose oneself to the danger
of understanding nothing concerning the rites, the ethics, or the
institutions of the Israelites.
The origins of Israel’s history date back to the vast movement of
peoples which brought the Aramaeans from the Syrian desert, the
cradle of origin, down to the shores of the Persian Gulf and the
Mediterranean. Certain of these Aramaean tribes, to which are
linked the names of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, move into
Palestine, whence certain clans go down into Egypt with the object
of pursuing their penetration by means of the usual process of raids
widely practised by the Habiru, of which the Elebrews are probably
a branch. This very involved history is reduced by the Old
Testament to the simple proportions of a family of 70 men who
became a great nation (Gen. 46.27; Ex. 1.7). All the Hebrew
tribes were not in Egypt, but only those of the Rachel branch
and some isolated elements of the Leah tribes, among whom
was Levi, from whom Moses descended. In Egypt the tribes
suffered a period of oppression which was ended by the intervention
of Moses. Concerning the Exodus itself we know little, and we
cannot even date with certainty this event which the body of
Israelite tradition holds to be fundamental.1 After escaping from
the Egyptians by a coincidence of circumstances in which faith saw
a miracle, the tribes set off for a mountain of which we know for
sure neither the correct name (Sinai or Horeb) nor the exact situation
(Sinai peninsula, Arabia or Qadesh). Having arrived at this moun-
1 On the present state of the problem, cf. the study by E. Drioton, “ La date de
l’exode ” in RHPR, 1955, p- 36.
186 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

tain they concluded a covenant with Yahweh, who had revealed

himself to Moses, receiving from him a revelation and laws and
undertaking to observe the terms of this covenant. After a period
of half-nomadic, half-settled life at the Qadesh oasis, the tribes set
off for the conquest of Canaan, joining forces with other elements
that had not been in Egypt; this conquest was carried out simul¬
taneously by war and by peaceful penetration through pacts with
the native population. Soon the Israelites, thanks to the permanent
contribution of the desert, proved stronger than the Canaanites (cf.
the song of Deborah, Jg. 5). But later a greater danger was to
jeopardize the still very precarious foothold of the Israelites in the
promised land. To the south-east the Ammonites launched powerful
assaults and to the west the Philistines, a branch of the sea-peoples,
by cutting the land into two had proved before the letter the
Roman adage : divide et impera. The Philistine danger obliged the
Israelites to re-examine and to consolidate their own organization.
The bond, in the beginning a purely religious one, which held
the tribes together in a sacred association of the same kind as the
Greek amphictyonies, became with the adoption of a monarchy
a primarily political and social bond, which did not prevent the
first experiment of kingship under Saul from ending in setback.
With David we see the tribe of Judah, which hitherto had lived
rather at the edge of the Israelite confederacy, rise to the zenith
of history. Thanks to his personal ascendancy and also to the
support of the prophets, David succeeded in uniting the tribes of
north and south about a single new capital, Jerusalem, which he
made into a religious centre by bringing the Ark thither. After
establishing peace within the country, David neutralized the neigh¬
bouring powers. With Solomon, civilization, with its accompanying
forces of corruption, took precedence of the forces of the desert, to
such an extent that at the end of his reign, rich as it was in
grandiose achievements, all was again thrown into the melting
pot. Henceforth the northern kingdom, where the specifically
Israelite traditions had all along been observed, became the centre
of gravity of the historical development. A particularly brilliant
period was marked by the reign of Omri, about whom the Old
Testament says very little at all and, in that, very little good, but
whose creative role is attested by the excavations of Samaria and by
Assyrian inscriptions. The policy of alliance with neighbouring
peoples carried out by the Omri dynasty was not unanimously
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 187

approved; the reaction came from Transjordania, from that area

where the nomadic spirit was still deeply rooted. Elijah’s success
was certainly less great than the Bible states, for the prophet was
forced to flee and his zeal did not prevent the presence some years
later of prophets of Baal in the court of Samaria. The policy of the
Omri dynasty was so skilful that it succeeded in maintaining the
relative independence of the kingdom of Israel after the crushing,
at the battle of Qarqar (853), of the anti-Assyrian coalition in which
Ahab seems to have played a predominating part. For a century
Israel, and as a result Judah also, which in its mountains was less
directly aware of the surge of world politics, enjoyed a period of
relative calm when Amos came and announced that the threats
proclaimed by Elijah were to be carried out. With increased
rhythm, disasters followed one another until the fall of the kingdom
of Samaria (722). This event was for Judah the opportunity to
regain awareness of its mission; the live forces, urged on by the
prophets and the Yahwist elements that had sought refuge from
the northern kingdom, were all to create a favourable atmosphere
of resistance to Assyrian influence, an atmosphere considerably
strengthened by the events of 701, which were greeted as a mani¬
festation of divine protection. The action of the prophets, to whom
kings like Hezekiah and Josiah gave sympathetic hearing, ended in
the Deuteronomic reform, which was not without political reper¬
cussions.
It was thus that Josiah, moved by religious motives, attempted
to regain dominion over all Palestine and to restore to the empire
the frontiers of David’s time, and in so doing opposed Pharaoh
Necho, who was going to the help of the rest of the Assyrian
Empire. The relative independence of Judah came to a final end in
605, the date of the battle of Carchemish, which marks the advent
in the whole Near East of Babylonian power and which led for
Judah to the fatal dates of 597 and 587. The history of that period
is dominated by the figure of the prophet Jeremiah and the attitude,
by turns favourable and hostile, which the authorities adopted
towards him is a proof of the important role attributed to him in
the course of events. We have available very little information
about the Israelitish groups which during the exile came into
existence in Egypt and in Palestine itself; the influential elements
of the nation were in Babylon and it was there that, under the
direction of men like Ezekiel, there were outlined the reflections
188 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

on the disaster they had suffered and the plans of restoration to

which the edict of Cyrus allowed a concrete form to be given. The
successive efforts of Nehemiah and Ezra ended in the reconstruction
of Judaism into a theocracy about the two poles of the Law and the
Temple, but within this theocracy we see developing two quite
different currents: a strongly nationalist current which showed
hostility to all that was not Jewish and a wider current which aimed
at making Judaism accessible to the nations and whose most typical
echoes are shown in the books of Ruth and Jonah. Henceforth
Palestine was not the only centre of Judaism; important diasporas
grew up in which great capacity of assimilation was generally shown
and in which there grew up also new forms, in particular synagogue
worship. But as soon as its very existence was questioned, Judaism
always showed itself uncompromising: thus, when Antiochus
Epiphanes made his attempt at Hellenization, a few members of
the aristocracy were the only ones to declare their agreement, whilst
the people rose with fierce energy. It was at this precise moment
that the author of the book of Daniel, reflecting on the vicissitudes
of history, disentangled its essential lessons and grasped its funda¬
mental unity.

(c) The historical foundation of Israels faith

The idea that God is the initiator of events is not specifically

biblical. “ From the time of primitive totemism,” writes R.
Niebuhr,1 “until the time of the great imperial religions, the
notion prevails that there exists a power superior to all human will
which acts on the destiny of the tribe, the nation or the empire.”
But the special characteristic of biblical revelation is that God binds
himself to historical events to make them the vehicle of the mani¬
festation of his purpose. The holiness and uniqueness of Israel’s
God confer on him a power superior to that of any other god.
While the powers of the gods of the nations cease at the frontiers
of their territory, Yahweh directs universal history, and a declaration
like that of Amos that Yahweh directs not only the destinies of
Israel, but also that of the Philistines and of the Ethiopians, pro¬
vides a good illustration of the specific power of Israel’s God, all of
whose potentialities were developed by the prophets. Yahweh is
not only a powerful God but a wise sovereign who leaves no place
1 Foi et histoire, p. 109.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 189

either for dualism or for chance: all is initiated and willed by him
(Amos 3.6; Is. 47.7; Lam. 3.37), which does not mean that history
is only the unfolding of a plan fixed in advance, for Yahweh holds
the destinies of men in his hands, not in the way of a marionette
operator, but by leaving them with the freedom of decision; and
so history always appears to be a drama in which the two pro¬
tagonists, God and men, call one another, flee from one another
and finally become reconciled.
In the directing of universal history, Yahweh did not choose the
way of the providence that assures equilibrium and stability, from
the starting-point of the universal laws of creation. Yahweh’s
action goes from the particular to the general; universal history is
made by means of the election of a little people whose destiny it
is to become the light and leaven of the nations, and even within
the history of Israel God’s presence is not always clearly revealed.
Yahweh is certainly present in that history and that is why it may
rightly be called holy, but the events of the history are far from
being confused with God’s presence itself; events tell God’s glory
but, like the heavens and the stars, they are not confused with him.
Israel’s religion had too lively a conception of God’s personality to
reduce it to events. God’s presence in history is that of the hidden
God whose intentions always remain full of mystery in men’s eyes
(Is. 45-I5’ 55-8), but the hidden God is also the one who comes at
certain moments in time to demonstrate through certain events the
totality of his being and of his action. This coming of God into
history—we prefer the term coming, as being more dynamic than
presence—is on God’s side an action and at the same time an
interpretation. The origins of Israel’s history as God’s people may
be traced back to the Exodus, but the event of the deliverance of
the tribes from Egyptian servitude was preceded by the revelation
of Yahweh to Moses, who receives the assurance of God’s coming
and the announcement of the actions which will make that coming
manifest. Before acting, Yahweh tells Moses what he is about to
do and when the events take place they will only be the confirmation
of that word: and so the people believe, not merely because of the
events, but also and especially because of the word which has set
those events in motion and which has been entrusted to Moses
(Ex. 4.31; 14.31). This is the truth expressed by Amos when he
says that “ the Lord Yahweh does nothing without revealing his
secret plan to his servants the prophets ” (Amos 3.7).
190 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

History’s moments of revelation are in fact always marked by

the appearance of one or more prophets; not that they must be
considered as the politicians of the time responsible for directing
events, but when God wishes to reveal himself through an act of
history, he first makes sure of the choice of a prophet to whom he
entrusts his word before that word is enacted in events. The Exodus
would not have been the moment of revelation without the prophet
Moses. At a time when the events of world history were seriously
compromising the universal sovereignty of Yahweh Isaiah was
charged by Yahweh to proclaim and to interpret his plan. Jeremiah
and Ezekiel are contemporary with the fall of the kingdom of
Judah and at the time of the great turning-point marked by the
advent of Cyrus, Second Isaiah is there to show its true meaning.
Sometimes the prophet is ahead of the events, thus Amos announces
Israel’s ruin at a time when nothing immediate gave reason to
expect it; at other times he is contemporary with the event or
appears after it, but always his message is nothing other than an
interpretation of those events. The presence of these men of God
was of itself a sign that something was being unfolded, that there
was a crisis in history that was about to burst in catastrophic form
but which might also be the starting point of a new awakening.
Consequently it was enough to see the prophets proclaim the word
and carry out their symbolic actions to grasp the divine action
in history, for they were themselves a word of God in action.
Out of the events which manifest God’s coming into history
faith has selected and, as a faithful interpreter of Yahweh’s plan,
has retained two main ones, the first at the beginning, the second
at the end of history—the Exodus and the Day of Yahweh:1
between these two extremes there are, of course, many interven¬
tions of Yahweh but they only serve to confirm and make explicit
the initial revelation of the Exodus or to announce the future king-
ship of Yahweh. Since the object of history is to make Yahweh
known to the people of Israel and to the nations (cf. the formula:
“ You shall know that I am Yahweh ”, Ez. 6.7, 10, 1257.27; 11.10,
1 We give a treatment of eschatology in another chapter but we wish to stress
here and now that there is no contradiction between eschatology and history; in
using the term eschatology (doctrine of last things) in connection with the Old
Testament, it is important to bear in mind that for Israel it is less a matter of
the end than of the coming of Yahweh which marks the end of a period but
which, because he is essentially the living God, inaugurates a new beginning; the
former things must pass away solely to give place to the kingship of the God who
comes.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 191

etc.), there could be no better method for God to give his teaching
than time and again to turn people’s eyes afresh to the time when
he first showed himself to Israel and to the eyes of the peoples.
It was at the time of the Exodus that Israel had felt the experience
of a God sovereign in his grace and judgments who was capable of
calling forth a new creation out of the most desperate situations.
And so we must not be surprised to find the fact of the Exodus at
the head of a passage which by common consent is recognized as
one of the most ancient “creeds” of Israel’s faith,1 the confession
that the Israelite had to recite at the offering of the first-fruits
(Dt. 26.5ff.). At the Passover feast, the departure from Egypt was
enacted through the ritual, so clearly that it may be said that at
least once a year the Exodus ceased to be a fact of the past and
became a living reality, and that never, even after five centuries,
did the Israelites consider themselves different from their ancestors
who, under Moses’ guidance, had experienced the deliverance (cf.
Amos 3.2).2 References to the Exodus are too common for us to be
able to consider them all, for they are not found only where the
event is explicitly mentioned, but the theme underlies the many
images of the God who leads, who delivers, who feeds, who
quenches thirst and gives light. The credo of Deuteronomy 26
mentions the entry into Canaan as a second article; the deliverance
of the Exodus was only made with a view to the possession of the
country; although there are variants in the texts concerning the
role of the promised land, all agree in the assertion that it is a gift
of God to his people that they may have a place of security and
rest (Ex. 3.8; Dt. 12.10-12), so that Yahweh himself may have a
dwelling-place (Deut. 11.10-12) and that the wicked nations who
occupy the land may be dispossessed of it (Deut. 9.5). To the

1 Two other “ creeds ” are found in Deut. 6.20-24 and Jos. 24.2-13 with the
same fundamental assertions. We may also conveniently add certain Psalms which
present the great facts of history in the double form of praise and teaching:
Ps. 77.i2ff.; 78; 105; 136. It seems more and more probable that the recital
and confession of history in worship constituted the nucleus from which the historical
books were formed.
2 Paul’s speech in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch (Acts 13) takes up the same
themes as the Old Testament credos; the history of salvation stops with the coming
of David; the whole of history between David and Jesus Christ is passed over in
silence as though it were only the deepening or repetition of previous events. The
movement of the history of salvation would be more adequately represented by a
spiral which has depth while following certain fixed points than by a straight
line (cf. O. Strasser, “ Les periodes et les epoques de l’Histoire de l’Eglise ” in RHPR,
1950, pp. 29off.).
192 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

two historical themes of the Exodus and the conquest, there were
joined two memories which were considered as subordinate and
whose links were of a sacred rather than an historical nature: the
Sinai theme, originally independent of that of the Exodus and
absent from the credo of Deuteronomy 26, was introduced to
extend the latter by the motif of the theophany and the law, these
being particularly important to remind the people of God’s greatness
and the necessity of conforming to his requirements. The temple
theme was fused with that of the conquest, the more easily since
the temple was considered as the centre of the country; thus the
temple becomes very clearly the object of the Exodus and, by
giving Jerusalem to the Israelites, David only continues the role
of Moses, who promised a country to the people. It is quite
probable that, in the popular belief which is always prone to become
attached to static realities, the temple and Sinai themes may
have been more preponderant than that of the Exodus, but all
theological reflections on history always returned to this initial
theme.
The important place held by the theme of the past among the
prophets is at first surprising in men who had from God direct and
immediate revelations and visions. It is quite clear, however, that
the prophets never considered their own revelations as superior to
those given in the early days of the people and that they always
thought in terms of the election and the covenant. That Yahweh
chooses and saves the people is a reality that the prophets never
doubted, but for the election and the covenant to remain valid, they
had to be manifested through the judgment that was brought upon
the people by their all too frequent unfaithfulness. That is why
history becomes for them a sequence of deliverances issued from a
series of judgments, while all those judgments only anticipate the
great final judgment. It was important to the prophets to show
that disasters, deserved or not, did not invalidate the ancient credo,
and that God’s plan was simultaneously accomplished by destruc¬
tion and construction, as Isaiah expresses in a famous parable
(Is. 28.23-29). The Exodus theme with its accent on deliverance
had a new flowering when the events of the exile were considered
as the final point of Yahweh’s judgments. The two great prophets
of the exile, Ezekiel and Second Isaiah, again take up the theme
of the Exodus and the possession of Canaan; certainly, both stress
the point that the temporary loss of national independence is the
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
X93
result of multiple disloyalties to the covenant, but the punishment
is only transitory, while the promise will have a still finer flowering
than in the time of Moses. By emphasizing the wilderness theme
and by introducing into it the idea of punishment, they reconcile
judgment with the promise: Yahweh will once more lead Israel
into the wilderness of the peoples and will perform a judgment
there (Ez. 20.35), ^or> through the dangers that it presented, the
wilderness was a place of temptation rather than an idyllic setting.
Ezekiel sees his own role in the light of that of Moses: as a sentinel
with the duty of warning the people, he will proclaim the coming
of a new shepherd, a new David, who will take up on a vaster
scale the work of Joshua. The people will be restored: just as in
former times they had crossed the Red Sea and the Jordan, which
in each case had been a passage through death—think of the lasting
association of the sea with chaos—they will again pass from death
to life (Ez. 36-37) and the Temple rebuilt in the centre of the
country will be the guarantee of the dependability of this promise.
So Ezekiel proclaims nothing which is not to be found already in
the ancient credo, so convinced is he that the faithlessness of the
people does not cancel the faithfulness of God. Second Isaiah
insists on the fact that the events of history have exceeded in
severity that of a strict punishment. The trials of the exile have
been for God himself a suffering in the face of which he could
only remain silent (Is. 42.14; 47.6) and a profanation of his name
(Is. 52.4-5). So it is high time that the silence should be broken
and that Yahweh’s arm should once more be made manifest as
at the time of the Exodus. The deliverance of the people will be
a new Exodus followed by a new covenant (Is. 54), ana an invitation
to come and drink at the well of living water (Is. 55.iff.) is a
synthesis of the fountain springing forth in the desert at Moses’
call and the river coming from the new temple (Ez. 47); and
the servant of Yahweh will be a recapitulation of all the deliverers,
kings and prophets who have assured the permanence of election
and of whom Moses was the first.
History has never ceased to inspire and to give direction to faith,
for all the events of that history went to confirm the great facts
of God by showing that history was not only a revelation by which
God showed itself to men, but a redemption by which he saved
them.
194 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

(dj The theological aspect of the presentation of history

Faith in a single God who directs events according to the laws

of justice for the purpose of establishing his kingdom was the basis
of all presentations of Israel’s history and produced methods and
results whose originality and value historians of antiquity are pleased
to stress. The religious foundation of historiography allowed a
quite marked independence with regard to the compilatory method
from annals and allowed the development of a literature where the
accumulation of facts yields pride of place to an interpretation of
the essential events. In the life of a people, all periods are not
equally favourable to historical composition: in a general way
history is written under the dominion of striking events which by
their creative nature constitute a turning point and which are the
opportunity for reflection and exhortation. These notable events
may be of two kinds: a people which has reached the peak of its
power feels the need of looking back over the way it has come to
reach it;1 on the other hand national disasters are also appropriate
times, for the trial opens people’s eyes to the causes which have
occasioned it and the reflection which it suggests may be the cause
of a salutary reawakening. Historical works in Israel show the
mark of this double origin. The governing idea of the biography
of David (2 Sam. 9.20 and 1 Kings 1-2), which by common consent
is regarded by historians as a model of the narrative type, is
expressed not by commentaries linked to the presentation of the
facts but by the presentation of the facts themselves arranged with
the object of showing up David’s personality, whose kingship
endures in spite of his own infidelities, which are in no way passed
over in silence, and in spite of the obstacles of his enemies, for
the disappearance of the three legitimate claimants to the throne,
Amnon, Absalom and Adonijah, does not prevent the monarchy
from being firmly settled in the hands of Solomon (1 Kings 2.46).
The stress given to the role of individuals, which is one of the
originalities of Israelite historical writing, also constitutes one of its
limitations. While seeking the cause of events in the fluctuations
1 On the interpretation of history in the Old Testament, cf. the more detailed
studies of North, The Old Testament Interpretation of History, London 1945;
G. von Rad, “ Theologische Geschichtsschreibung am A.T.”, ThZ, 1948, p. 161;
Ed. Jacob, La tradition historique en Israel, Montpellier 1946, and “ Histoire et
historiens dans l’A.T.” in RHPR, 1955, p. 26.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
‘95
of character of dominant individuals, the writers forget that other
things of a more general nature, reasons of a political or social
kind, are also determining factors in history. There is thus good
ground for supposing that the opposition of the northern tribes to
Judaean supremacy was as important in Absalom’s revolt as the
desire to avenge the outrage to his sister. The Yahwist, embracing
a much vaster period than the writer of David’s biography, seeks
to write a work of synthesis. Having at his disposal much written
or orally transmitted material, he makes a selection and retains
only what serves his fundamental theme, which is to show that
history is the fulfilling of a promise or, which amounts to the same
thing, the putting of a word into practice. The promise is that
of a land to possess, a promise made formerly to Abraham and
renewed to Moses. It is at the moment when this promise seemed
to have been fully carried out, probably in the reign of Solomon,
that the Yahwist undertakes the composition of his work; he
reviews the road travelled, in order to find in the march of events
towards the goal of the promise, reasons for thankfulness and
faith. Around the fundamental nucleus based on the Exodus from
Egypt and the march through the wilderness, whose memory was
made present in the cultic ritual, the Yahwist groups other elements,
first the patriarchal traditions and then the traditions of the origins.
It is in connection with the latter that the theological thought of
the Yahwist has the opportunity to assert itself with more freedom
by his insistence on the theme of the promise to which man should
respond by faith. All the accounts illustrate this fundamental
theme. The religious bias of the Yahwist appears again in the
way he binds together cycles of tradition that were originally inde¬
pendent. The wretched condition of the Israelites in Egypt after
the glorious period of Joseph is explained by the coming to the
throne of a “Pharaoh who knew not Joseph” (Ex. i.8) and he
has an equally happy touch in linking the patriarchal traditions to
the story of the origins by the episode of the tower of Babel, the
destruction of which allows Yahweh to create a people for himself.
Some centuries later, at the time of the exile, the work known
under the name Deuteronomic, while paying a greater respect
to the documents that had been handed down, presents history
according to certain outlines which sometimes grasp the essential
point, but which at other times pass reality by. Since the kings
are judged in the light of their attitude to the temple at Jerusalem,
196 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

our writer sometimes omits important events in their reigns; on the

other hand, he has fully grasped the unity of the history represented
by an uninterrupted line of prophets (Dt. 18. through whom
the word of God becomes a vital power. All that happens is the
result of a divine word and no word of God falls to the ground
(cf. i Kings 11.29-12.15 and 2 Kings 1.6-17). Although he under¬
took his work under the blow of most tragic circumstances for
the people, it would be wrong to consider his presentation of
history as catastrophic in contrast with the optimistic view of the
Yahwist, for at the heart of and above the operation of the law of
strict retribution there subsists a promise which von Rad said served
as a Karexow :1 it is the perennial continuity of the promise made
to David concerning the eternity of his dynasty; as long as the
lamp of David lasts (1 Kings 11.32, 36) nothing is irretrievably lost.
The exile itself does not erase this promise; and so the Deuterono-
mist’s work comes to its end with an apparently quite trivial event,
the rehabilitation of King Jehoiachin in the depths of the captivity
(2 Kings 25-37-39); but, as often happens, endings are rich in
meaning for faith. It is not too rash to suppose that this gesture
aroused among the exiles a resurgence of hope of national restora¬
tion. It is the same theme of the perennial continuity of the
promise to David which constitutes, but in a much more unilateral
way, the main thread of the Chronicler’s work. Although this
writer made a wide and conscientious use of sources, the theologian
in him takes precedence of the historian and he has no hesitation at
times in presenting a distorted version of events. This point of
view is explained, however, when account is taken of the Davidic
viewpoint destined, in the writer’s thinking, to galvanize the
people’s hope and not to let them meekly accept national humilia¬
tion. Two centuries later the historical synthesis will find
expression, not lacking in greatness, in apocalyptic literature.2 The
unity and finality of history are at the basis of the visions in
chapters 2 and 7 of the book of Daniel; but by regarding history
as purely determined, following the manner of the Priestly writer,
apocalyptic deprives it of its substance so that no more is seen in
history than what is ordered to disappear at the coming of the king-
1 Dcuteronomiumstudien, p. 63.
2 The words determinism, dualism, pessimism provide a quite good definition of
the conception of history in the apocalypses. The unfolding of history is of little
importance; thus in the vision of the statue, the four empires which come one after
another are all present at the end of the last empire (Dan. 2.35, 44).
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT I97

dom of God, The great historical productions cease with the great
wave of prophetic utterance; revelation found its best interpreters
in the prophets.

(e) Historicization, an expression of the faith

In the Old Testament history is the most characteristic channel

through which thought is expressed; the historical mode of thinking,
moreover, spreads far beyond the category of truly historical works.
Only two books of the Old Testament are completely apart from
history—Job and Ecclesiastes. Although their writers strove to
give them an historical background and to give their characters
location in time, revelation through history is wanting in them;
also, lacking this essential mainspring, the religion that is expressed
in them leads either to an attitude closely verging on scepticism
(Ecclesiastes) or to a submission to the mystery of the hidden God
(Job). Everywhere else history is so fundamental that not only
does it inspire everything, but by subjecting them to itself'it even
succeeds in transforming realities that are originally foreign to it.
This process of historicization is most apparent in three fields:
(a) Like all the peoples of antiquity, Israel knew many myths
which came from its own background or from neighbouring peoples
with whom Israel had been in contact, but the majority of these
myths no longer exist except in a fragmentary form or in allusions,
for history has caused them to undergo a transformation which some¬
times went as far as complete disappearance. It was thus that Israel
knew some creation myths which, like Babylonian or Phoenician
myths, spoke of an original struggle between two opposing deities;
through certain poetic texts we can picture this myth as a struggle
between Yahweh and two sea monsters, Rahab and Leviathan, the
victorious outcome of which allowed him to organize heaven and
earth (Ps. 74.12-17; 89.10-13; Is. 51.9-10; Job 26.10-12; 38.1-11; Ps.
104.26). But faith in the God of history made Rahab into an histori¬
cal reality, Egypt; Leviathan became a beast that Yahweh made
completely subject to his authority (Ps. 104.26); the Tiamat of the
Babylonian myth became the tehom, that is, the sea. In the well-
known text of Isaiah 51.9-10 : “ Awake, awake, put on strength, O
arm of Yahweh; awake, as in the days of old, the generations of
ancient times. Art thou not he that cut Rahab in pieces, that pierced
the dragon ? Art thou not he who dried up the sea, the waters of the
198 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

great deep; that made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed
to pass over? ”—the last words are clear proof that the prophet
deliberately put at the service of history the traditions of the cosmo¬
gonic myths; God’s action at the time of the Exodus from Egypt is
more striking because it is nearer than his work of creation. It is
worth noting that all these mythical references are found only in
relatively late texts, which otherwise insist so strongly on the
sovereignty of Yahweh that these allusions constitute no danger of
Israel’s falling back into mythology. The same thing can be said of
the eschatological myths. Cosmic images, such as the shaking of
the earth’s foundations or invasion by the waters, clearly pass into
the background and the great final cataclysm is presented as a battle.
The day of Yahweh, says Isaiah, will be like “ the day of Midian ”
when Gideon won a particularly resounding victory (Is. 9.3) and
in Second Isaiah the great change comes about without disturbance,
so far has eschatology been penetrated by history, of which it is no
longer the opposite, but the conclusion.
All religions give great importance to the problem of the
dwelling-place of the gods. In undoubted imitation of the
Canaanites, the Old Testament is acquainted with the picture of
the gods dwelling at the top of a high mountain which was situated
in the extreme north and whose peak penetrated the sky, which
allowed the celestial role of the deities to be reconciled with their
earthly presence. The myth of the mountain of the gods in the
north is also met in the Old Testament (Is. 14.13); but in Psalm
48.3, it is Jerusalem that is called the extremity of the north, a point
which can only be explained by the transference to Jerusalem of
the myth of the mountain of the gods. According to the cosmo¬
graphy of Gen. 2.10-14 paradise was also found in the north, but
the north is already conceived as a geographical reality and the
rivers which rise there may be situated in a known background.
Sinai has also in a certain degree been substituted for the mythical
mountain, but it is the temple which has become God’s mountain
par excellence, making the presence of God among his people a
possibility open to all.
Genesis has preserved the fragments of a myth which told of
relationships between celestial beings and the daughters of men
which resulted in the birth on earth of beings originally divine
(Gen. 6. iff.), but in the adaptation of this theme by the biblical
historian the fault of the angels became men’s and it is men who
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
*99
undergo the punishment (Gen. 6.5ft). The Helal ben Shachar,
the shining star, son of the dawn, the title by which Isaiah ironically
calls the king of Babylon (Is. 14), was certainly, as the Ugaritic
texts confirm, a divine being reduced to the proportions of an
historical figure, in the same way as the guardian cherub hurled
from God’s mountain because of his pride (Ez. 28), and the man
who presents himself to Joshua as the chief of the armies of Yahweh
is only a slightly humanized picture of the local god of Jericho
(Josh. 5.13). To-day it is no longer possible to argue reasonably in
support of the primitively mythical character of the Patriarchs and
to speak of historicization in their case, but it must be realized,
however, that the historical spirit has been at work on these
admittedly rather shadowy characters in order to establish genea¬
logical links between them. On the other hand, the possibility of
historicization could well be envisaged for the characters of Samson
and Esther, in whose names those of Shamash and Ishtar can be
seen quite clearly. If this hypothesis were verified, we should have
a further proof of the art with which the Israelites subordinated
myth to history by creating from mythical elements perfectly
credible historical tales. Lastly we must notice how far the con¬
stituent features of the myth about man (Urmensch) have been
shifted on to historical figures: Noah (Gen. 5.29) and Abraham
(Gen. 12.3) must convey the consolation and blessing that was
expected from the first man, and the ideology of kingship is another
indication of the general tendency to seek the activity of God in
history rather than in myth.1
(b) The cultic field was not unaffected by this general process of
historicization. Although markedly indebted to the Canaanites in
all that concerns ritual and the organization of things sacred, the
Israelite tradition was, however, strong enough to repress the
mythical elements with which Canaamte religion was abundantly
provided. Thus while adopting the holy places of Canaanite
worship they made a point of bringing them within Israelite
tradition by presenting the venerable sanctuaries of Bethel, Beer-
sheba and Penuel, whose origins for the Canaanites was lost in the
darkness of time, as founded by their own ancestors. Jerusalem
certainly had a very ancient cultic tradition, but the Israelite spirit

1 We are thinking here only of the specifically Israelite aspect of kingship which,
contrary to what happened elsewhere, is a movement in history and which attaches
equal importance to the perpetuity of the dynasty and to the person of the sovereign.
200 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

strove to prove that the temple had been built on a virgin site and
had become a holy place only after an express theophany of
Yahweh (2 Sam. 24). The calves set up by Jeroboam at Bethel
and Dan are the usual symbols of the fertility cults, but, in their
desire to satisfy the rights of history, they are related to the Exodus
from Egypt (1 Kings 12.28). It is in the significance of the great
feasts that the process of historicization is most apparent: the
Passover, originally the feast of offering of the first-born of the flock,
became at a very early date, by reference to the Exodus, the com¬
memoration of that event. The New Year Feast, the annual feast
par excellence, became, through the theme of the kingship of
Yahweh revealing himself in history, much more the time of renewal
of the nation’s destinies than the renewal of nature.
(c) The laws, too, bear the mark of this historicization; the
common expression “that is not done in Israel” (Gen. 34.7; Dt.
22.21; Jos. 7.15; Jg. 19-23; 20.10; 2 Sam. 13.12; Jer. 29.23) to
rebuke an action contrary to good conduct proves that the moral
sense was subordinate to the historical sense. All the rites have
an historical foundation; thus the institution of circumcision, which
the Israelites doubtless practised from very early times, like their
neighbours, is recorded three times (Ex. 4.24ff.; Jos. 3.7; Gen. 17)
and is ascribed to Moses, to Joshua and to Abraham. Generally
speaking, the laws are all attributed to Moses and lose their charac¬
ter of ancient taboos to become ordinances of the God of the
covenant who is unwilling to have anything that concerns his people
outside his sovereignty. The decisions that the people are called
on to take are always dictated to them by the circumstances of the
moment, but as in the precise circumstances the will of God may
be manifested in its totality, these decisions assume the force of
laws. That is why Israelite law is not expressed in formulae fixed
once for all, but undergoes the repercussions of every new divine
intervention in history. Comparisons of the Elohist and Deutero-
nomic versions of the Decalogue is the clearest illustration of this
and the variations are still greater for laws whose “historical”
character is more solidly based. Attacks directed against the Old
Testament in the name of ethics would do well to remember that
the Old Testament does not set out to give general principles
without taking account of the concrete circumstances in which
they were promulgated.
This historicization was not without its dangers. The mythical
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 201

elements might take their revenge and give a mythical appearance

to historical realities. Apocalyptic literature marks a renaissance of
myth: not only is there a resurgence of old elements which had
been repressed—creation myth, fall of the angels, etc., but historical
events themselves receive mythical trappings: Jerusalem becomes
a celestial reality before descending to earth and the Law exists in
heaven from the beginning in its totality and in its perfection. But
it must be said that such a reversion deprived Israel’s religion of
what was its specific character; cut off from its source, Judaism was
to be a body of doctrine and ritual, but it was no longer a history.
In conclusion it must be noticed that Israel’s faith was subjected to
a quite radical “demythologization”; it is none the less true that
the profound essence of myth, the direct intervention of God
in the world, has still been preserved and that the coming of God
into the world represents the main power line of Israel’s religion.

B. ELECTION

Election is one of the central realities of the Old Testament; even

though it is less frequently mentioned than the covenant it is
however the initial act by which Yahweh comes into relation with
his people and the permanent reality which assures the constancy
of that bond. Every intervention by God in history is an election:
either when he chooses a place in which to make more especial
manifestation of his presence, or when he chooses a people to
carry out his intentions, or when he chooses a man to be his rep¬
resentative of his messenger, the Old Testament God is the one
who has universal sovereignty at his disposal, and shows it by the
free use that he makes of it. The technical term to designate the
fact of election is the verb bacbar which expresses a choice among
several possibilities.1 The particular aspects and the deep motives
of this election are made explicit with the help of other roots, each
of which brings out in full one of the particular aspects of the
election: this qara brings out the idea of the call; qanah that
of belonging; hibdil that of separation; hiqdish that of setting
1 The main idea expressed by the root bachar is that of free unmotivated choice;
only in two passages, Is. 48.10 and Job 34.4, is the verb used to designate a choice
following an intensive examination; it seems then that, in the evolution of this
word, there was such an attenuation of the idea of free choice, that in Aramaic
and in Syriac bacbar, to choose, and bachan, to test, are to end up by being
confused.
202 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

apart and finally yada , which shows that the election is accompanied
by interest and solicitude for those who are its object.1
The important place held by the election theme is also expressed
by the rich variety of images used in the Old Testament to show
the union of Yahweh with his people. The commonest and the one
that found most favour is incontestably the one of marriage union.2
First used by Ffosea, it was taken up by Jeremiah (2.1-7; 3.11-22),
Ezekiel (16 and 23) and Second Isaiah (50.1; 54.5, 8, 10; 62.4-5).
Just as in marriage the wife becomes the property of her husband
who has purchased her for money, Yahweh has taken possession
of the people, like a faithful husband he assures them fertility and
prosperity; the wife owes obedience and faithfulness, her infidelity
would be a refusal to acknowledge the grace of election. Marriage is
in effect an election before being a covenant and that, much more
than Israelite law, gave to the husband the right to repudiate his wife.
Another image borrowed from the realm of natural relations is
that of father and son; the Yahwist calls Israel “ the first-born son
of Yahweh” (Ex. 4.22) and gives as realistic a sense to the idea as
to the Pharaoh’s family relationships—the idea to which this
election is compared and contrasted. The numerous proper names
in which Yahweh is called “father” witness to the same truth.
We must not draw from the use of this image the conclusion that
Israel regarded its relationship with Yahweh as a bond of the natural
order; in biblical language, the son is the one who was created
by the father and who consequently is in a relationship of depen¬
dence in regard to him; that is why the divine fatherhood is
endowed with a sovereignty which was vainly sought for in human
relationships (Is. 63.16; 64.7).
The image of the clay and the potter might suggest that election
is made in an arbitrary way; in reality something very different
from God s fancy is involved. God does not create for the pleasure
of destroying; he always acts according to a plan, but the materials
he uses in its accomplishment are diverse and occupy the places for
which they are individually suitable; in the interpretation that he
gives to the parable, Jeremiah preserves human liberty: man is so

The verbs chdsbckj, to be attached to, dh&h, to love, rachutn, to have pity are
also words belonging to the language of election.
2 The marriage image is specifically Israelite; it is possible, however, that the
image of the union of Baal with the earth, which is nowhere explicitly attested, but
which seems to underlie the nature myths, may have provided the biblical language
with some expressions.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 203

free that his conversion can lead God to review his intentions (Jer.
18.8). The idea is also met in Is. 29.16 and 64.7.
The vineyard theme is a variant of the marriage theme. When
Hosea meditates his going in search of the unfaithful wife, the gift
that he means to offer to seal the pardon consists of vineyards: “I
will give her her vineyards” (Hos. 2.17). The well-known word
of Isaiah 5 is only the religious adaptation of a love-song. The
vineyard expresses the hope of God and the obedience that he has
the right to expect from his people. At the origin of this hope
there is the devouring love of one who is jealous, which is shown
in unwearying perseverance, but when the hope is dashed it
changes to cursing; a vine which bears no more fruit is only fit for
uprooting. The image of the inheritance is particularly applied to
the land of Israel which Yahweh, its legal owner, gives to the people
that he has chosen; to some extent he gives up bis sovereignty to
the people, who also take the title of “ Yahweh’s inheritance ” (Ex.
34.9; 1 Sam. 10.1; Jer. 12.7, 8, 10; Ps. 28.9; 33.12; 74.2; 78.62, 71;
94.5 and 106.5, 40). Still more than the marriage image, that of
the inheritance is a two-way one: if Israel is Yahweh’s inheritance,
Yahweh is also Israel’s inheritance, in a particular sense for the
Levites (Num. 18.20; Dt. 10.9; 18.2), in a general sense for the
body of the faithful (Ps. 16.5-6).
The image of the shepherd and the flock which by its frequency
bears witness to the central place of the Exodus theme (Ps. 68.52;
Is. 63.11; Hos. 11.1-4) insists on the utter dependence of the people
with reference to their God.
The terms which designate the people of Israel themselves
express, each in its own way, divine election. The name Israel
itself1 was probably from the beginning that of a group of tribes
united by a religious and cultic bond, like the amphictyonies in

1 The explanation of the name Israel by the root yashar receives not unimportant
confirmation from the fact of the existence of the noun Yeshurun, which certainly
derives from the same root and which in the four passages where we meet it
(Dt. 32.15; 33.5, 26; Is. 44.2) is a poetic designation of Israel; the sepher hay as bar,
one of the oldest collections of national songs (Josh. 10.13; 2 Sam. 1.18) could be
understood as the book of Israel, understood as the righteous one, the hero of God. The
explanation given in Gen. 32 is philologically untenable; this text could at the most
justify the translation: El fights. It is none the less a testimony to a theology
which saw expressed in the name of Israel all that made the reality of the chosen
people. For the exposition and discussion of all the problems relating to the name
of Israel, we refer the reader to the work of G. A. Danell, Studies in the name
Israel in the Old Testament, Uppsala 1946.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Greece; this name contains a distinctive meaning, either “El is

Right” or “ the Righteous one of El”. In chapter 32 of Genesis,
the name is interpreted as “he who wrestles with God” and the
object of this story is to transfer this collective name on to the
ancestor of the twelve tribes. From the time of the Judges, Israel
is designated as the ‘am Yahweh (Jg. 5.11). The appellations “ holy
people” and “the people who belong”1 are not met earlier than
Deuteronomy, for the well-known passage of Ex. 19.5 must
probably be attributed to a Deuteronomic editor: “ If you hear my
voice and keep my covenant, you shall be to me a segullah among
all peoples, for all the earth is mine. And you shall be for me a
kingdom of priests, mamleket kohanim, a holy nation, goy
qadosh.” But what is expressed in this verse certainly represents a
more ancient opinion. The prophets had the sole object of giving
back to the people the consciousness and sound understanding of
their election, such as existed in the beginning. Since it is holy,
Israel belongs to Yahweh and since it belongs to Yahweh, it is
different from other peoples on earth. Election confers on him who
is its object a particular dignity, but, so that this may never harden
into a haughty conceit, election carries service as its necessary
corollary; to be the ‘am of Yahweh involves being his ‘ebed: the
two terms are sometimes put in parallel: “Yahweh will do justice
to his people, he will take pity on his servants” (Dt. 32.36).
“ Rejoice with his people for he avenges the blood of his servants”
(Dt. 32.43) a°d association of the terms “elect” and “servant” is
particularly frequent in Second Isaiah (41.8-9; 42.19; 43.10; 44.1-2;
45.4). When the Old Testament gives to certain individuals the
title of ‘ebed it means to assert that a great privilege has been granted
to them: the patriarchs are servants (Gen. 26.24; Ex. 32.13; Dt.
9.27; Ps. 105.6, 42); Moses is called by this title forty times; the
kings, David in particular, are servants of God (1 Kings 18.26;
2 Kings 9.7; 17.13; Jer. 7.25; 26.5; Ez. 38.17; Amos 3.7; Zech.
1.6; Dan. 9.6; Ezr. 9.11). This term’s link with election is made
more evident by the frequent use of the noun ‘ebed with the pro¬
noun of the first person. In giving to a people or to an individual
the title of “my servant”, Yahweh meant to put the accent less
1 The expression ‘Am Yahweh (Elohim) is also met in 2 Sam. 1.12; 14.13;
1 Sam. 2.14, ‘am segullah in Ex. 19.5; Dt. 7.6; 14.7; 26.18; Mai. 3.17; 1 Chr. 29.3;
Eccl. 2.8. This term has sometimes been compared with the Accadian sukallu,
vizier, minister, which would bring out the dignity attached to the title (cf. Caspari,
NKZ, 1921, p. 202).
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 205

on his obedience than on his belonging, and when in moments of

national distress the Israelites call on Yahweh by describing them¬
selves as his servants, they mean by that to remind Yahweh of the
reality of election and not to rely on the services that they had
performed (Is. 63.17; Ps. 79.2; 89.51; 90.13). But to be a servant
necessarily implies a mission to fulfil; the servant should love
Yahweh, should cleave to him, fear him, requirements which in
Deuteronomy return at least as frequently as the assertion of
election, and this mission will always be exercised in a specific
task.
The witness of history confirms that of language. No one could
seriously contest that election is closely linked to the work of Moses.
On the other hand the election of the patriarchs set a problem to
which K. Galling a quarter of a century ago devoted a scholarly
monograph.1 Examining the two traditions relating to Israel’s
election, he came to the conclusion that the patriarchal traditions
are a late creation whose object was to justify by a closely linked
genealogical line the ideal of a great Israel at a time when the unity
of the people was being called in question.
The almost total absence of patriarchal traditions from the pre-
exilic prophets seems to be a pointer to their later origin, although
all allusion to these traditions is not absent. It is quite probable
that in Amos 3.2 and Jer. 4.2 we have an allusion to the promises
made to Abraham concerning the blessing that all families on
earth are to have in him (Gen. 12.3). The problem is complex
and cannot be resolved by simple considerations of dating.
Historical research has made the existence of the patriarchs more
and more certain. Even if they came far short of playing the
religious role that tradition ascribes to them, there was in the
movement that brought them from Haran to Canaan something
which corresponded to an election and it seems impossible to see
in the religion of the patriarchs a simple projection into the past of
forms and of beliefs that were only current five centuries later.
There is then ground for recognizing two elections, the first at the
time of Abraham, the second at the time of the Exodus, two elec¬
tions that we might qualify by the terms of being and of doing.
With Abraham, Yahweh declares the existence of the people, and
so he throws the whole weight on the permanence of the race, a
natural phenomenon, undoubtedly, but which in the precise cir-
1 Die Erwablungstradition Israels, Giessen 1928.
206 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

cumstances none the less assumes the appearance of a miracle. For

Moses on the other hand, what matters is the accomplishment of a
work for which the existence of the people was indispensable.
Rowley very rightly defines this relationship by saying that the
people was elected “ in Abraham ” and elected “ through Moses ’ -1
Through Moses the people received their consecration as God’s
people. Whatever may be thought of the hypothesis that Yahweh
was originally a God of the Kenites who, at some given time,
turned to a people other than his own, it is certain that Moses had
a revelation of Yahweh and that his work of liberation is linked to
this revelation; it is because he experienced the activity of Yahweh
in his own life that he can interpret events as the work of that same
God. The departure from Egypt and the crossing of the Red Sea
would not have become such fundamental facts without the inter¬
pretation given to them by Moses and, after him, by the prophets.
The person of Moses plays a part of the first importance in the
forming of the elected people, it is the reality which cements the
unity and the faith of the people; when the leader is present, the
people go forward, when he disappears, they relapse into wayward¬
ness; but, important as his role may be, Moses is only the inter¬
mediary, it is the people as a whole that is the beneficiary of election.
The fact of election is then earlier than the theology of election.
The Yahwist presents his historical work according to the principle
of election; that is why in his work the history of the patriarchs
is preceded by the history of the origins as the background against
which the election of Abraham is picked out. Yahweh is the uni¬
versal God yet one who chooses a people, obeying in this nothing
but his own plan. This election is not envisaged by him, as an
initial act which sets a mechanism in motion—it is constantly being
renewed and always freely and in a way that cannot be foreseen.
The existence of the people is called in question, the younger is
chosen to the detriment of the elder without there being an idea
that the notion of choice automatically implies the notion of
rejection, as L. Koehler2 rather arbitrarily asserts, for if certain ones
are left outside the election it is only for the time being, in order

lThe Biblical Doctrine of Election, p. 31: “The election in Abraham and the
election through Moses.”
2 Theologie des A.T., 1936, p. 66. Koehler believes that the notion of election
only appeared at a time when Israel had ceased to be a nation to become a
religious community and that it occupies only a very secondary place in the Old
Testament. At the opposite extreme to Koehler, H. H. Rowley makes election
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 207

to make more readily possible the accomplishment of God’s plan.

The prophets, as elected to be the servants of Yahweh, made a
large contribution to the theology of election: “You alone have
I known out of all the famdies of the earth ” says Amos 3.2. By
choosing Israel, Yahweh has conferred on them a privilege and has
given proof on their account not only of grace but of love, which
is made clear by the verb yada (cf. also Is. 1.2; Hos. 11 and Jer. 2).
For the people, election implies the duty of loving Yahweh with
a love worthy of that with which he has loved them, otherwise
election will be turned to judgment; but the insistence that the
prophets place upon the continuance of a remnant proves that
neither acts of disobedience nor judgment mean in their view the
end of election. The Deuteronomist found'the ground well pre¬
pared for a more systematic elaboration of a doctrine of election.
Impressed by the preaching of the prophets on the imminence of
judgment, he sets out, by returning to the sources, to reconstitute
the reality of the holy people as it existed in Mosaic times. To
prove the perennial nature of the election, frequent mention is made
of the promise to the patriarchs (Deut. 1.8; 6.10; 9.5; 10.11; 30.20)
for the patriarchs received a word and for the Deuteronomist the
Word is the supreme divine revelation. But in order to become
God’s people once more, only the return to Moses will be effective.
In the legislative parts of Deuteronomy only the Exodus is under
discussion (Dt. 30.1; 24.18, 22; 26.5^.) and Josiah’s reformation
is ratified by a solemn celebration of the Passover (2 Kings 23.21),
the old nomadic feast which had for some time previously been
connected with events of the nation’s history. With a force that
is expressed in the Hebrew language by repetition, the Deuterono¬
mist lays the foundations of the theocracy which he means to make
a reality: the people of Israel is separated from other peoples, the
idea of separation is more heavily stressed than in the Yahwist’s
writings, other people are left outside his horizon and delivered
over to false gods by Yahweh himself (Dt. 4.19). Separation
implies the demand of belonging to Yahweh and of serving him
with all one’s heart and with all one’s being. The exile was needed
to set free all the potentialities that were implicit in the idea of
election. For the first time, no doubt, the election itself was called

the centre of the Old Testament. Vriezen occupies an intermediate position;

according to him, election is secondary to the covenant and only made its appearance
from Deuteronomic times.
 2C>8 theology of the old testament

in question. That Yahweh had forsaken his people (Is. 40.27; 42.18;
49.14) must have been the state of mind of the majority of the
exiles. To restore the certainty of divine election to the people
was the message of Second Isaiah. The election stands, for Israel
is always the servant of Yahweh, that is to say, the object of a
privilege that a restoration more wonderful than past times will
show, but this privilege is accompanied by an obligation and it is
this second aspect that the prophet brings to complete expression.
Since the light of Yahweh is risen upon it, Israel in its turn must
be a light to the nations and must not be content to let the nations
come to itself. Henceforward the theocratic ideal of the Deuterono-
mist is raised to a universal plane, and by making this ideal of the
servant real in the person of an individual belonging to the future,
Yahweh gives to Israel the pledge that its election remains sure
and that its missionary duty can be a reality when, through the
forgiveness received, it will be in a position to realize it fully.
While envisaging the election of the people as a whole, Second
Isaiah is interested in the lot of individuals; the example of
Abraham, who was chosen when he was alone (Ez. 33.24) is fre¬
quently invoked to show what Yahweh can do with a single
individual and to make it clear that for his power nothing is
impossible (Is. 41.8; 48.19; 51.2).
All through the Old Testament the election of the people is
accompanied by the election of individuals. The king is always
one of the elect, a bachir (1 Sam. 10.24; Ib.6ff.); in the first instance
David, but also his descendants right down to that mysterious
Zerubbabel, on whom at one time the hopes of the people were
based (Haggai 2.23). But the object of election may also be found
outside Israel: the Pharaoh of the Exodus and Nebuchadrezzar are
the servants of Yahweh (Jer. 23.9; 27.6; 43.10). Cyrus even
receives the title of “ messiah ” (Is. 45.1, 3). But each time an
election of this type' takes place, it is done with a view to the
punishment (Assyria the rod of Yahweh’s anger) or to the saving
of Israel. The election of Jerusalem, and more especially of the
temple, answers to a slightly different theology, although in
Deuteronomy it goes hand in hand with the theology of the election
of the people (1 Kings 8.48; 11.13, 36; 2 Kings 21.7; Dt. 12.5;
2 Chr. 33.7; Zech. 3.2). The temple and the people must
show clearly the universal character of election: the temple of
Ezekiel’s vision (Ez. 47), from which flows the spring that
 brings life, and the servant of Yahweh bringing salvation to
the nations, are both in the service of one cause—the manifesta¬
tion in the world of God’s presence and the permanence of his
grace.
The election of which it had been the object was for Israel the
most powerful of stimulants. Thanks to the covenant and the law
which were its visible expressions, election maintained Israel’s
separateness apart from which it would have been unfaithful to its
destiny. But there was also in this notion a danger to which Israel
sometimes succumbed, that was to confuse the fact of election, of
which God alone is the subject, with the feeling of being elected,
which Vriezen expresses by using the terms Erwahlung and
Erwahlheit.1 The prophets always gave fresh reminders that the
notion of election was to be set right again in opposition to its
deviations. In a word election has no effective value except when it
is understood in the spirit of the exhortation that Deuteronomy pro¬
claims with the same solemnity as the reality of election: Thou
shalt love Yahweh and shalt seek him with thine whole heart . . .
(Dt. 6.5; 8.6ff.), with all the obligations and all the risks that this
response could involve.

C. THE COVENANT

Election constitutes the fundamental event, but, so that it may

be a dynamic reality, it is exercised within the framework of a
covenant.2 The covenant makes a restriction of the election, for,
if the latter keeps Israel’s looks turned towards the other people
from among whom and for whose salvation Israel was chosen, the
covenant insists on the bond which unites the people to their God.3
For the etymology of the term berit, the door remains open to

1 Die Erwahlung Israels nach dem Alten Testament, p. 115.

The character of the covenant as a relationship of belonging between two con¬
tracting parties has been well brought out by the work of Johs. Pedersen, Der Eid bet
den Semiten, 1914, and Israel, I-II, pp. 265ff.
3 A. Neher, who in his book on Amos (Paris 1950) devotes some very thought-
provoking pages to the berit, considers it as a synthesis of the ideas of hiatus and
participation, the hiatus being the difference between the given and the perfect,
which the Alexandrine translators felt in translating berit by 8iadr)K-r] instead of by
avi'6t)K7) which would have been the exact translation; as for the participation, it
appears especially in the various images that recall marriage union (cf. on this
last point, the same author: “ Le symbolisme conjugal, expression de l’histoire dans
l’A.T.”, RHPR, 1954, pp. 3off).
210 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

several possibilities,1 among which the one that derives the term
from the root barah, to eat, seems to us to be best supjported by the
evidence; but in any case the term became separated from this root
at an early date, which proves once again that Old Testament
concepts must be studied more in the light of their internal evolution
than their etymology. On the plane of human relationships, the
truth almost always points to a covenant between two partners who
are on an unequal footing; it is the stronger who proposes the berit.
The Israelites grant a berit to the Gibeomtes who manage, by a
trick, to place themselves under their protection (Josh. 9), Nahash,
king of the Ammonites, grants a covenant to the people of Jabesh-
gilead (1 Sam. 11.iff.), Ahab grants it to Benhadad his prisoner
(1 Kings 20.34), Abimelech makes a covenant with Isaac (Gen.
26.28) and Abner asks David to grant him his berit (2 Sam. 3.12).
It is the stronger alone who takes the initiative in acts which accom¬
pany the conclusion of a covenant, such as the oath (Jos. 9.15), the
shared garment (1 Sam. 18.3) and the meal, apart from which there
can be no real bond between the two partners (Gen. 26.30; 31.46,
34; 2 Sam. 3.20). One of the most ancient rites, and one which
lasted a long time, was for the participants to pass between the two
halves of one or of several beasts that were killed, a gesture by
which the participants undertook to suffer the lot of the victims in
the event of their transgressing the claims of the covenant (cf. Gen.
15 and especially Jer. 34.ioff.). It is to this practice that we can
trace the origin of the expression karat berit, to cut a covenant, the
term berit denoting the result of the action, the cutting being in this
case only the means of attaining an agreement. The grant of a berit
is not made, however, without the observance of certain conditions
on the part of the recipient: David is quite willing to make a
covenant with Abner on condition that he return Michal his wife to
him (2 Sam. 3.13), so that the berit also becomes a contract. The two
partners observe together the rites that are to make it effective; and
so, parallel with the expression karat berit, we meet the more speci¬
fically contractual beqim berit, followed by ‘im or beyn: “ Now
come,” said Laban to Jacob, “ let us make a covenant, thou and I ”
1 The proposed etymologies are many; if we keep to Hebrew roots only, that
of barah, to eat, seems to have the greatest probability on its side. L. Koehler,
LVT, p. 152, favours this etymology. Recourse to other Semitic languages has
suggested the Assyrian birtu, bond, fetter or beritu, separation, or the Arabic beraat,
ordinance, edict; none of these comparisons seems more conclusive than the
explanation by a Hebrew root.
 theology of the old testament 211

(Gen. 31.44, cf. also 2 Sam. 3.21; 1 Kings 15.19; Ez. 17.13). The
two aspects are met with side by side; it is thus that in 1 Sam. 18.3
the covenant is imposed by Jonathan on David, while in 1 Sam.
23.16 that same covenant is concluded jointly by the two partners.
These covenants between men are not devoid of religious signifi¬
cance; they are accompanied by sacrifices and very often the divine
presence and guarantee are explicitly invoked. God is the witness
of the covenant between Laban and Jacob (Gen. 31.50), he is, in
some degree, the third partner and it is his presence that gives the
covenant its binding strength. He could not indeed be anything
else in a religion where the aspect of the parent-god held so
important a place. Every covenant is concluded before Yahweh
(1 Sam. 23.18; 2 Sam. 9.3; 2 Kings 23.3).
When God is one of the two partners of the covenant, obviously
there can be no question of a bilateral contract. We are acquainted
with some examples of covenants concluded by deities outside
Israel. the king of Lagash, Urukagina (c. 2400 B.c.) imposes on
his subjects the word that his king Ningirsu had pronounced ”
and ends the list of his laws with these words: ' with Ningirsu
Urukagina concluded this treaty and the Old Testament itself
mentions the local god of Shechem El Berit or Baal Berit (Jg. 9.4,
46), whose characteristic was probably to be bound by a covenant
with the people of the sons of Hamor. But in spite of these
analogies it is certain that the notion nowhere took such a central
place as it did in the religion of Israel. In the same way as election,
of which it is at once the form and the content, the covenant is
due only to the initiative of Yahweh and is in no way the reward of
Israel s merits. This free character of the covenant is the condition
of its moral aspect, for the covenant is valid only if the people respond
to it by obedience and faithfulness (cf. particularly Dt. 7.7-10).
All the accounts of covenant-making between Yahweh and the
people show three aspects of the covenant, though the accent is
sometimes differently placed : {a) the covenant is a gift that Yahweh
makes to his people; (b) by the covenant, God comes into relation¬
ship and creates with his people a bond of communion; (c) the
covenant creates obligations which take concrete shape in the form
of law.1 The covenant, mentioned in the stories about the

Begrich, ZAW, >944’ P- 7> seems t0 us to put a little too much emphasis on
the difference between the covenant and the law when he writes that the premises
of legislation cannot be understood by beginning with the notion of berit.
212 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

beginnings and in the patriarchal traditions, is probably largely a

projection into the past of the Mosaic covenant, though it is very
probable that the covenant already held a certain place in the
essentially family religion of the fathers, such that the covenant
with the fathers, sealed by an oath that the Old Testament mentions
quite frequently, might preserve a memory of historical events
(Dt. 4.31; 7-12; 8.18; 9.5; Jer. 11.5). The most detailed account
telling of the Sinai covenant (Ex. 19-24) has been retouched many
times and the various traditions are ‘ ‘ so entangled that it would be
very difficult, if not impossible, to separate them and restore
them”.1 The following elements may, however, be put forward
as certain: the Sinai covenant includes a revelation granted to
Moses, a rite of blood-sprinkling, a reading of the laws and a sacra¬
mental meal. The meaning of this covenant is expounded in the
introductory verses of chapter 19 : the covenant is an election, “ you
belong to me from among all peoples”; it is a bond, the people
will have with Yahweh the particularly close bond of belonging
which characterizes the priestly function; it is an obedience, for if
Yahweh is king, the members of the people can only be the subjects
who will follow him everywhere he leads (Ex. 15.18; Num. 23.21;
Dt. 33.5; Jg. 8.23). Covenant-makings later than Sinai are
renewals, or extensions to a wider association, of the covenant: the
laws listed in the book of Deuteronomy (12.26) are interpreted as
the clauses of a new covenant concluded by Moses with the people
of the land of Moab to the East of Jordan (Dt. 28.69). The
covenant concluded by Joshua’s mediation at Shechem (Josh. 24.25)
probably has as its aim the extension of the Sinai covenant to
certain clans who were not yet members of the Israelite amphic-
tyony. Following the discovery in the temple of the book of the
covenant (2 Kings 23.2), King Josiah, after giving a reading of it,
‘‘made the covenant before Yahweh” and undertook to put into
practice the words of that covenant and all the people entered into
the covenant (2 Kings 23.31). In the covenant made in the time
of Ezra (Neh. 8.10), the people undertake to ‘‘walk in God’s law
and to observe and to keep all the commandments ” (Neh. 10.30).
Within Yahweh’s covenant with Israel there is a place for indi¬
vidual covenants which generally have the object of confirming
and guaranteeing the covenant with the people: the everlasting
1 For the account of the Sinai covenant, cf. the study of M. Haelvoet, in Analecta
lovaniensia, no. 39, 1953, p. 28.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 213

covenant made with David (2 Sam. 23.5; Ps. 89.4, 29) expresses
in its quintessence, according to Procksch’s1 happy expression,
Yahweh s covenant with the people; the particular relationship of
the king with God only serves to symbolize the relationship of the
people as a whole. The relationship with Yahweh of the messianic
king of the future is also presented as a covenant (Is. 49.6). These
characters, beneficiaries of the covenant, are at the same time and
especially its mediators. It would be going too far to assert that the
covenant always requires a mediator, but it is certain that, as the
concept of covenant becomes more precise, the person of the
mediator, past (Moses), present (the King) or future (the Messiah)
tends to increase in importance. The mediatorial function can also
be fulfilled by a group; thus in the post-exilic period, priests, who
take in almost all fields the kingly succession, become the mediators
of the covenant and make its benefits possible for the people (cf.
the covenant with Levi, Num. 18.19; Jer-
33-20-26; Mai. 2.4ft.).
It was natural that such an essential reality should be exploited
by all those historians, prophets and thinkers who strove to give
literary expression to the fact of the close relationship of the people
with Yahweh. The covenant has its origin in history and more
especially in the event of Sinai, but how does it come about that,
outside the accounts which concern it directly, this fundamental
event is mentioned only very rarely later on? This absence should
not make us suspicious of the historical truth of the events, it is
explained rather by the fact that faith, in Israel, while having an
historical foundation, does not bind itself to the historical events
themselves, but to the objective realities created by those events.
Now by the Sinai covenant a close relationship was created with
Yahweh and henceforth the covenant is envisaged only under the
form of that relationship, which remains as close and as vital as in
the days of Moses; the memory of the covenant was, moreover,
kept going by the ritual of the great feasts. That there was an
annual feast of the covenant, as A. Weiser2 thinks, is an hypothesis
that is more theologically than historically founded, but it is certain
that, at the time of the feast of Tabernacles, the reminder of the
covenant kept the memory of its origin alive among the people.

1 ThAT, p. 529.
2 Weiser insists on this feast in all his recent publications, particularly in the
introduction to the commentary on the Psalms in ATD and in “ Die Darstellung
der Theophanie in den Psalmen und im Festkult ”, Festschrift A. Bertholet, pp. 513!!.
214 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

The eclipse of the Sinai theme by the Exodus one probably has a
still deeper reason: the Exodus theme, being the commencement
of a movement, illustrated in the most expressive way that
Yahweh’s revelation was made through history, while to stress the
Sinai covenant might easily have led to a static conception of
revelation and to a mythologizing against which Israelite religion
always protested. The subordination of the covenant to history
explains the variations that the notion of the covenant has under¬
gone in the course of the ages.
From the time of the settlement in Canaan of the Israelite tribes,
the covenant was to be subjected to a serious crisis: in an environ¬
ment in which religion was a realm apart, that of the sacred, un¬
connected with everyday life, the covenant ran the risk of being
reduced to cultic practices instead of being the bond that linked
every aspect of life; the frequent taking over by Israelites of
Canaanite sanctuaries opened wide the door to this danger. Further¬
more, the adoption of the monarchy ran the risk of making the
covenant into an institution whose stability would be guaranteed
only by the presence of the sovereign. The purely institutional side
of the covenant threatened to become more important than the
event itself. However dangerous this crisis may have been, the
covenant idea did not thereby lose its particular quality: against
the danger of departmentalizing that would ascribe to Yahweh
the mission of guiding the people, but would leave the realm of
agricultural life under the protection of the baalim, the prophets
forcefully declared that the products of nature were not independent
of the God of the covenant and of the moral conditions demanded
by him. As the settled life became more and more the nation’s
normal way of life, it became clear that the Sinai and Shechem
covenants no longer altogether answered the situation thus created;
in particular, all the legislation which had issued from that
covenant needed to be re-examined. Faithful to their method
of returning to the first source, the great prophets of the eighth
century insisted on the foundation of the covenant, that is on the
free election of Israel and on the responsibility laid upon them by
that election. It was the task of the Deuteronomic reform to out¬
line upon this foundation of election a new framework which was
to allow the message of the prophets to filter through into the
institutions. One of the happy results of the critical work of recent
years is to have shown the importance of Deuteronomy. The
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 215

Deuteronomic reform is at the same time reactionary and revolu¬

tionary , this code sets out to be only a reminder of the single
covenant conceived by the mediation of Moses, but by sanctioning
the state of things created by the settlement and monarchy
Deuteronomy marks the taking up of a stand in history that is
both political and religious. At the moment of its promulgation
the very existence of the people was seriously in question; the
northern kingdom, the more important, had ceased to exist more
than a century before; the kingdom of Judah was so strongly
vassalized and paganized that it was going to fall at any moment
the prey of the Assyrian conqueror. And so the new constitution
was going to give to the people, not only the opportunity to survive,
but even to reorganize. To the Deuteronomist, faithful to the spirit
of the prophets, election is the fundamental message; by virtue of
this election Yahweh is the master of nature and the master of the
nations. But Israel is the people of Yahweh, that is a people set
apart whose particular character must be shown by separation from
the pagan environment and by a renewal of awareness of the bond
which unites the members of the people to Yahweh and to one
another. Like the Sinai covenant, this covenant will find expression
in a law, but this law will not be far away, hidden by the brilliance
of the divine glory, it will be practicable and everyone will be able
to have access to it by turning to the book in which it is recorded
(Dt. 30.5#.). If Israel conforms to the words of this law, it will
be able to stand as God’s people, even though it should pass through
the severest of trials.
After Deuteronomy, the term berit is again used by the prophets;
thanks to this reformation they can speak of it without its evoking
an archaic and faded reality, but we can pick out, according to the
religious temperaments that used it, a twofold orientation of the
concept of covenant. For the author of the priestly code, the berit
becomes the foundation and the goal of the nation’s whole life.
By stressing its character of foedus iniquum, given and established
by God, as is suggested by such expressions as: natan berit and
heqim berit, and of everlasting ordinance berit ’olam, the theo¬
logians of this school are satisfied with the primitive sense, the limit
of which they pass, however, by making of berit the only religious
concept: all is berit, all is fixed once for all, creation is envisaged
in the light of berit; according to the analogy of the people whose
characteristic is their separation from all that is impure, the essential
216 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

characteristic of the creation is its separation from chaos (Gen. 1.28;

8.21; 9.9). The law is the present and concrete expression of that
covenant with which, moreover, it becomes more and more con¬
fused. To remain within the covenant is to conform to the letter
of the law; finally, in a last stage, the term berit will come to signify
the people or the Jewish religion (Zech. 9.11; Dan. 9.27 and
especially 11.28). Alongside this priestly current in which the
covenant becomes a static reality, the prophets, particularly Jeremiah
and Second Isaiah, retained the provisional character of the
covenant by stressing that the narrow framework of the covenant
could be broken, when election flourished afresh. According to
Jeremiah, the new covenant (31.31-34)1 will be made according to
the Mosaic mode. It aims only at maintaining the ancient ideal:
Yahweh Israel’s God and Israel Yahweh’s people (v. 33); but, thanks
to the extension of this ideal to all, and to the interiorization of the
law, which in no way signifies the abolition of the written law,
and thanks especially to the forgiveness by which God forgets the
whole past, it will make fully real the ideal of a holy people.
Ezekiel (36.23-28) gives more weight to interior regeneration and
ascribes it to the action of the spirit without which no creation
is possible. Second Isaiah goes still further, by announcing
that Yahweh’s servant will be at the same time the people’s
covenant (Is. 42.6) and the light of the nations (42.7), which means
that the privilege of the covenant granted to Israel is to become the
portion of the nations.
These two currents each in its own way helped to keep alive in
Israel its specific inheritance: the priestly current, by insisting on the
present and immutable character of the covenant, allowed the people
to stand firm and to “ walk before God ” (Gen. 17-7-8, 19); the pro¬
phetic current, at the basis of which is found the eschatological hope
of the perfect union of God and his people and of all the peoples in
the kingdom to come, allowed the people to envisage history in the
light of its end, and gave them, so far as events are concerned, an
attitude of freedom and detachment which never gave way.
It may be asked how it happens that a religion so far removed
from the juridical spirit as the religion of Israel should have
designated one of its essential aspects by a term taken from juridical

1 The all-important passage of Jeremiah on the new covenant probably inspired

the other texts that mention it: Jer. 32.38, 40; Ez. 16.60; 34.25; 37.26; Is. 42.6;
49.8; 55.3; 59-21; 61.8; Mai. 3.1.
 theology of the old TESTAMENT 217

language. It was because the language was particularly suitable to

express the reality of a fact and the presence of divine action in
visible things. Just as the Old Testament shows the election made
visible through the covenant, the New Testament is not content
with speaking of God s love for sinful man, but insists on its reality
by turning again to the juridical term of justification. The covenant
expresses that election is true and that Yahweh now and in truth
is consistent with what he is; and so we think that it is not going
too far to define the relationship of election and covenant as that
of word and sacrament.

D. THE MISSION

The election of Israel was to lead of necessity to a missionary

duty, but this fact, which was the most powerful lever, was at
the same time to reveal itself as the most tenacious of brakes as
soon as it was envisaged only under its first aspect of separateness.
"The Yahwist presents Abraham s election as an episode which,
standing out against the plan of universal history, is to pour forth
as a blessing upon it. Yet it could be that the promise, several times
repeated, that all the peoples of the earth will be blessed or will
bless themselves in Abraham (Gen. 12.3; 18.18; 22.18; 26.4; 28.14),
is not so definite concerning the missionary duty as it seems at
first sight, for, according to the similar grammatical constructions
of Gen. 48.20; Jer. 29.22 and Zech. 8.13, the blessing of Abraham
is to be understood in an exemplary sense as being among the
peoples the prototype of blessing, without their being direct
beneficiaries of the blessing. But the solemnity of the formula
and especially the general plan of the Yahwist’s book provoke us
rather to see between Abraham and the peoples a relationship of
cause and effect and the assertion of the universal mission of the
people of Israel. From the beginning the religion of Israel was
convinced of the superiority of its God Yahweh over the gods of
the nations; even though his action was limited to his own people,
it can be said that Moses was a missionary for the Egyptians1 by
demonstrating to them the weakness of their gods. The conversion
1 Before being a missionary to the Egyptians, Moses is a missionary to those of
his own people who did not yet know Yahweh, at any rate under the form that he
had revealed himself to Moses. One of the merits of H. H. Rowley is to have stressed
the role of Moses in the development of a missionary sense (cf. The Missionary
Message of the O.T. and The Biblical Doctrine of Election).
218 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

of the nations to the God of Israel, ordered by the election, was

done by ways that often seemed to go counter to this fundamental
intention. At the time of the conquest, Israel must, with a view
to obtaining the country linked with the promise, exterminate the
nations who occupy it. Later, settled and organized according to
the laws of all the peoples, in order to be able to maintain itself as
a people, it will adopt relationships of good neighbourliness with
the surrounding nations without trying to interfere with their
religion. The following period will, be marked by vassalization
to two great peoples who will gravely compromise its existence.
By keeping Israel almost always on the defensive, historical circum¬
stances created great difficulties to any missionary attempt by Israel
to the nations. This does not prevent the faith of Israel from being
still more strengthened and deepened by stressing the unique and
jealous nature of Yahweh, who could not bear other gods beside
him. This faith finds theological expression in two reflective
passages on the relations of Israel with the nations: the table of
nations in chapter io of Genesis presents all the peoples as issued
from one common ancestor and destined to find harmony in spite
of racial and linguistic differences which are a sign of the Creator s
bounty, but which, when pride supervenes, change into a mass and
can no longer understand one another and who make war on one
another. The other passage is limited to a single verse (Dt. 32.8)1
which must be read according to the Greek version: When the
Most High divided the lands among the nations, when he separated
the children of men, when he fixed the boundaries of the peoples
according to the number of the bene El, Jacob was Yahweh s share,
Israel the lot that fell to him.” Other gods are not denied and in
another text Deuteronomy even equates them to the stars (4.19).
Under the influence of an even more thorough-going monotheism,
the gods of the peoples are presented as subject to Yahweh and
reduced to the rank of angels who exercise over the peoples subject
to their dominion a right of protection—protection which is often
badly carried out, a point which emerges from Psalm 82, which
shows the bene El, chiefs of the peoples, receiving from the God
of Israel a sentence of condemnation for having failed in their

1 According to the reading of the Massoretic text “ according to the number

of the sons of Israel ” the text is rather puzzling; we should have to assume that
there were as many peoples as descendants of Jacob (12 or 70 according to Gen.
46.27); in any case it expresses the idea that Israel is the standard of the nations.
 theology of the old testament 2x9

essential charge, the exercise of justice. From powers auxiliary to

Yahweh, these beings can, like all angels, degenerate into opposing
powers. Such a reflection bears witness of a great solicitude with
regard to the nations. If there is a veil of mourning over all the
peoples (Is. 25.7) the fault lies with the host on high and with the
kings appointed by the gods, by the punishment of whom judg¬
ment will begin and whose disappearance will free the peoples from
their yoke (Is. 24.21; Jer. 46.25). Freed from this tyranny, the
peoples will be ready for the worship of Yahweh. The final triumph
of Yahweh over all the peoples belongs only to eschatological times,
but even at this time Yahweh had given in history enough proofs
of his superiority to inspire the respect and even the confidence of
pagan peoples who politically, in comparison with Israel, were in
a position of domination. The extraordinary vitality of Israel amid
ever-increasing difficulties was in itself a missionary testimony to
the pagans, the power and mercifulness of Israel’s God was talked
about abroad1 and people came to him to receive the benefit of it.
The story of the Syrian general Naaman is a striking example of
this: this officer does not accept the worship of Yahweh to the
exclusion of other gods but gives him an honoured place beside his
own national gods, and Naaman was certainly not the only
proselyte. The rules decreed by the Deuteronomic Code concern-
mg the admission of foreigners to the congregation of Yahweh
proves that the admission of proselytes was no exception (Dt. 23.2-8).
Yet at this period the mission is only centripetal. Naaman, and
after him all the foreigners, come to Palestine, and more par¬
ticularly to Jerusalem, which, under the influence of Isaiah and
Deuteronomy, becomes the unique and necessary point of attraction
for all those who desire to have a share in the benefits of the
worship of Yahweh. A prophecy reproduced both by Isaiah (2)
and by Micah (4) asserts that one day all nations will come and
adore Yahweh in his sanctuary and that Zion will be the centre
of the world towards which all peoples with one accord will make
their way.2

1 The kings of Israel had the reputation of being very merciful kings (malke
chesed), i Kings 20.31.
2 Tolerance never leads to mission. The gods of the Egyptian, Mesopotamian and
Canaanite pantheons tolerated other deities beside themselves, even when a single
god tended to wield the supremacy. The only exception in antiquity is constituted
by Akhenaton’s movement, which manifested itself by active missionary propaganda
which, however, found little lasting echo among the masses.
220 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

The same hope is found in Zephaniah, who, after describing the

catastrophe of the last day, goes on: “Then will I give to the
peoples pure lips so that they may call upon the name of Yahweh
and serve him with one accord. From beyond the rivers of Kush
they will bring sacrifices and offerings unto me (3.9-10). Jeremia
(16.19-21) also shows the nations recognizing the vanity of their
idols and seeking refuge in Yahweh. Jerusalem holds an important
place as the centre even in the work of the one who is rightly called
“the missionary prophet of the Old Testament . Zion will be
restored and its splendour will attract the peoples (Is. 54-1-3), but,
beside this power of attraction, Israel will exercise a more active
mission, it will be the light of the nations and the Servant will go
to the peoples who are, moreover, waiting for his coming, and he
will not only bring the revelation of Yahweh s crushing majesty
but also the revelation of the love that wills their conversion and
which, to that end,1 accepts the suffering of death. The prophet s
faith, more exclusively monotheistic than that of his predecessors,
does not lead him to pronounce a final judgment on the value of
pagan religion. Certainly he had depicted with remarkable irony
the foolishness of the worship of idols (e.g. 44*9), but precisely
because the gods of the pagans are nothing, the peoples are ready
to accept Yahweh, who is the creator of all men and towards whom
their aspirations unwittingly carry them. Never was the missionary
ideal expressed in the Old Testament more profoundly. By sacrifice
and death, the servant rediscovers the election and its indispensable
corollary, the mission. The promise made to Abraham is hence¬
forward made real. In its attempts to put its missionary programme
into practice, Israel was not always able to maintain itself on the
summits glimpsed by the prophet of the exile. The prophet s
hook itself underwent some retouching of a nationalist kind, and
chapter 47, proclaiming Babylon’s punishment, is veiy different
from the passages of the Servant’s mission. Necessities of the
organization and defence of the post-exilic community brought a
stiffening of Israel’s position; having had to experience the fact
that brotherly contact with other peoples led to syncretism, the
rigorist policy of Nehemiah and Ezra, while delivering a salutary
blow, also put an end to missionary possibilities or envisaged them

1 By his death, Yahweh’s servant became the martyr of his mission. Now the
idea of martyrdom is incompatible with tolerance; that is why we only meet it in
the realm of the religion of the jealous God, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 221

only as a submission by force: the nations which will not submit

will be severely punished, and certain prophets invoke upon them
the worst of scourges in case of refusal of obedience (Joel 3.12-14;
Zech. 14.16-21). The figure of the Servant gives place to that of
the Tyrant and Inquisitor. Israel is the chosen people, that is, the
privileged people which has the right to expect other peoples to
humble themselves and to sacrifice themselves on its behalf; the
Chronicler, in places, and the book of Esther are the most out¬
standing examples of this exclusiveness. However, the line
inaugurated by Deutero-Isaiah was never altogether abandoned; it
is continued particularly in the Psalms, which see in Jerusalem,
not the place where the nations will be tolerated as slaves of Israel,
but the place where they will enjoy civic freedom absolutely equal
to that of the chosen people. “All were born in Zion,” cries a
Psalmist (Ps. 87.4). In practice, fulfilment proved difficult and it
was not clear how foreign peoples could be won over to Israel’s
faith without at least accepting the Sabbath and circumcision. But
the eschatology remained universal in outlook and never gave up
the hope of a day when all peoples will adore Yahweh. Beside the
eschatology, the missionary ideal is expressed, but only implicitly,
in the bulk of the wisdom literature: wisdom is always presented as
universal and cosmopolitan, she addresses herself to all men without
reference to their national adherence, for all men issued from the
same creator share a great number of common traits and identical
possibilities. But in passing from the level of theory to that of
accomplishment wisdom reveals itself incapable of creating anything
but a moralism, and so it was absorbed by legalism, which showed
itself superior for the training of man and of society but closed the
door to tendencies of a universal nature.
Nevertheless, these tendencies found ways of showing them¬
selves: the importance for the missionary ideal of the book of
Jonah cannot be overstressed. Not for a single moment does this
little book forget the religious superiority of Israel. The unique
power of Yahweh blazes forth even to the eyes of the sailors, but
all Israel’s prerogatives are placed at the service of the nations; as
in the case of Yahweh’s servant, the mission is carried out to the
detriment of Israel, the spoliation of whom is to enrich the heathen
and, by presenting the most serious truths in a form full of irony,
the author makes it clear that the only unsympathetic character is
an Israelite and even a prophet. The nations will know in their
222 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

turn that Israel’s God is not only the master of universal history,
but that he is merciful and compassionate and that his kingship
is fulfilled in his love. From that point onwards there is no need
to go to Jerusalem; it is possible to be at the same time a citizen
of Nineveh and a worshipper of Yahweh. More briefly, but with
an accent that speaks volumes about the progress of universalism,
we find the prospects of salvation opened to the nations in prophetic
passages. The prophet Malachi, a lucid and stern critic of cultic
formalism, contrasts the temple sacrifices with the sacrifice of
incense and the pure offering presented to the name of Yahweh in
any place among the nations from East to West where his name is
great1 (i.ii). Whether we must interpret this verse of a heathen
cult which, under cover of its own gods was in fact addressed to
Yahweh or see in it a prophecy of eschatological times, it is the
testimony of a state of mind for which the wall of partition is
broken down. The universal outlook of Is. 19.16-25 is based on the
same viewpoint: Israel will be reconciled with its great oppressors
of former days, Egypt and Assyria, and the three together will
serve Yahweh.2 When such texts are compared with the majority
of oracles on the nations, the extent of the way travelled can be
measured. So that Israel should get outside its national limits
and forget the insults and sufferings it had undergone, it had to
win a victory over itself, but by this victory it rediscovered its real

'An outline and discussion of the various interpretations of Malachi i.u will
be found in the typewritten thesis of Th. Chary, Le culte dans la litterature
prophetique exilienne et postexilienne, p. 195' Four solutions share the critics
favour: (a) allusion to the worship of proselytes; (b) worship of the Jews of the dia¬
spora; (c) a syncretistic ideal; (d) an eschatological view. We feel that the solution must
be sought in a combination of solutions (c) and (d). The prophet saw among other
nations, particularly in the worship of the god of heaven Ahura Mazda, a pure
offering, and such manifestations were for him the sign of the near approach in
eschatological times of a worship that would surpass all that was at present observed,
that is why we can subscribe to the assertion of a contemporary scholar who calls
this verse “ a saying whose universalism could only be further surpassed by the
word of Jesus about the worship of God in spirit and in truth” (De Liagre Bohl,
“Missions- und Erwahlungsgedanke in Alt Israel”, Festschrift A. Bertholet,
p. 94).
2 The text of Isaiah 19.16-25 is probably earlier than that of Malachi, who was
moreover able to get inspiration from it as well as from Jonah and from Isaiah
66.20-21, and might date from the end of the Persian domination (fifth century).
The prophet’s viewpoint is not purely historical; Assyria had long ceased to exist;
these nations are then types of the mass of pagan nations called to share in the
benefit of the covenant formerly concluded with Abraham (Ps. 47. io). Cf. A.
Feuillet, “ Un sommet religieux dans l’Anden Testament”, Recherches de Science
religieuse, 1951 (Melanges J. Lebreton), pp. 65!.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 223

self with an awareness clearer than ever of its election for the service
and glory of God alone.

E. MIRACLES

Since nature and history are both creations incessantly renewed

by God, there is no room in the Old Testament for miracles in
the sense of a breaking of the laws of nature or history. The only
miracle is God himself, who is ever a wonderful God and whose
works inspire either dread, or gratitude and joy, and as there is
no limit to God’s power everything is miraculous. Sayings in
proverbial form gave popular expression to this faith in Yahweh’s
limitless power: “ Is there anything too wonderful for Yahweh? ”
(Gen. 18.14). “ Nothing prevents Yahweh from giving the victory,
whether by small or by great means” (1 Sam. 14.6) and when
Israel reached a conception of the universe governed by fixed laws,
those very laws did not fail to arouse more admiration than rational
reflection (Jer. 5.24; 8.7; Ps. 8.4; 19.5-7; io4-5"9; H8-6; Job
5.9; 38.16): God “filling the heavens and the earth” (Jer. 23.24)
could, it was thought, subject these very laws to his pleasure. Still
further, history is never envisaged as the unfolding of events by
virtue of immanent laws, but as a perpetual creation of God. The
history of the people of Israel as a whole is always considered as
the only and the great miracle: “I shall make a covenant with
thee. In the sight of all the people, I shall perform wonders
(niphla’ot) such as have not been performed in any land or in any
nation. The people which surrounds thee shall see what Yahweh
is able to do, for it is a terrible thing that I shall do for thee ” (Ex.
34.10). The chosen people is the most obvious sign of God’s
presence; but at certain moments this presence is more intensely
manifested and it is then that what we popularly call a miracle
takes place. Within the revelation miracles mark culminating or
turning-points. This aspect of miracles, as wide as it is diffuse, is
confirmed by the language. The fact that Hebrew has not one
but several terms to signify miracle attests its frequency, but also
its fluidity. Everywhere where God is found, there is miracle;
that is why the latter is called ben ah, creation (Num. 16.30; Ex.
34-10! Jer- 31-22; Is. 48.7), it is the manifestation of the holy and
terrible God, nora (Ex. 34.10; 2 Sam. 7.23), it is the effect of the
sovereign and powerful God, a gedolah or a geburah (Ps. 20.7;
224 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

106 2) or of the transcendent hidden God whose very name is

wonderful, a pels' (Ps. 77.12-15; 78'12' 88'II; S9;6} or ,mLore °f“"
niphla’ (plural niphlaot). This term is applied by ]ob to the
miracles of nature ()ob 9..0; 37.19) and by the Psalms and Isaiah
to the miracles of history, mainly to chose of the Exodus already
interpreted as types (Ps. 78.4, n, 12, 32; 105.5; 107.24--31; Mic.
7.15; Is. 28.19; 29.14) and, in one passage, to the divine prerogatives
of the Messianic sovereign (Is. 9.5).
For the Old Testament the essential mark of a miracle does not
lie in its “miraculous” character, but in the power of revelation
that it contains, two realities which, as we show elsewhere, did
not necessarily overlap; and so the two terms which most frequently
designate miracle insist less on its nature than on its function: the
word ’ot, whose primary sense is one of sign, does not in any
way evoke the idea of a miracle, and mopbet, which is often associ¬
ated with it, evokes the revelatory intensity which may be linked
with a sign and which according to the circumstances provokes
admiration or fear. So the scope of the miracle is determined by
its significance as a sign. Quite ordinary facts or phenomena can
become signs: the almond branch seen by Jeremiah (i.n) was
a thoroughly natural spectacle, but, through the word given to the
prophet and the faith which this word creates, it assumes the value
of a sign. The crossing of the Red Sea only became a miracle by
a concatenation of circumstances, firstly the presence of the
Israelites at that particular moment, and still more that of Moses
who gives to these circumstances a religious interpretation. This
is a point whose importance must be stressed: a fact is not a sign
and a miracle except as a function of the time in which it takes
place; now in the Old Testament there are times of miracles which
coincide with a crisis and consequently call for an intensification of
revelation. The times when miracles flourish are found at the time
of the Exodus, at the dawn of the prophetic age with Elijah and
Elisha, when the power of Yahweh had to be asserted against that
of the baalim, at the time of Isaiah, when the advent of a world
empire made the establishment of Yahweh’s kingdom improbable
for many, finally during the exile when the promised deliverance
was to be in proportion to the suffering endured. The link of the
miracle with the time assures it in the course of history certain
common features.
(a) The aspect as a sign is apparent in the close connection
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 225

between miracle and prophet. Even though it is probable that

sometimes a miracle was invented to express the very strong
impression aroused by a prophet or to increase the prophet’s great¬
ness this is what happened in the case of Elisha, whose disciples
wished to raise him to the same level as his master Elijah—the
person of the prophet is almost indispensable to the miracle. The
prophet, being a man of God, can perform to some extent in God’s
stead miracles of which God is the author: Isaiah allows it to be
understood that he could perform on the spot the sign suggested
to Ahaz (Is. 7.11), but the greatest miracle is the person of the
prophet himself.
(b) The miracle is a sign to strengthen faith (Ex. 4.iff.; 7.8ft.);
the power of miracles is granted to Moses only with a view to
confirming the promise.
(c) The miracle serving as a sign and as a testimony requires the
presence of witnesses; the witnesses are at the same time the people
of Israel and other nations. Whether it be the Egyptians at the
time of the Exodus, the Assyrians under Sennacherib before Jeru¬
salem, or the Babylonians at the end of the exile, at the sight of the
superiority of Israel s God the heathen must be convinced or
hardened (Is. 40.5; 42.12; 45.6; 48.20; 52.10).
(d) A sign foretells what is going to happen. The miracles of
the Old Testament all have an eschatological bearing, they are
signs announcing new heavens and a new earth and the real habita¬
tion of Yahweh among his people which was expected with the
coming of God’s kingdom. If faith produces the miracle, absence
of faith does not, however, bring its suppression, just the contrary;
when the period of prophetic inspiration is considered closed, we see
a resurgence of miracles, and seeking for the miracle then becomes
a substitute for faith. This tendency, already very obvious in the
book of Chronicles (e.g. 2 Chr. 20), grows steadily in apocryphal
literature (2 Macc. 1.19; 3.23; 2 Macc. 2.21; 4 Esdr. 13.44-47)
where the spectacular character of miracles shows that instead of
being superimposed on faith they were an object of research.
The following classification of the Old Testament miracles can
be given:
(a) The majority of them are due to the coincidence of natural
phenomena: 1 the miracle of the Red Sea is due on the one hand
1 According to Phythian-Adams, The Call of Israel, p. 180, there was in the
Exodus miracle a threefold coincidence; material—the one we have already pointed
 226 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

to the ebbing of the waters which allowed the Israelites dry passage
and to the flowing back which caused the drowning of the
Egyptians, and on the other hand to a sandstorm which concealed
the Israelites from the sight of their enemies. Similarly the crossing
of the Jordan (Josh. 3.16) is the crossing of a ford which tradition has
amplified, and at the basis of the fall of Jericho there is probably
an earthquake. In none of these cases does the miracle break the
order of nature; in the majority of them there is rather a question
of returning nature to its original state, as in the miracles of cure
and resurrection.
(b) However, it does happen that the miracle contradicts the most
elementary cosmic laws: the most typical case is the one told in
the book of Kings (2 Kings 20.10). It was certainly known from
the most ancient times that a body’s shadow was always seen on
the side opposite the light, and that a shadow going in the other
direction was going counter to the natural order; nor could any¬
body seriously think that an iron axe could float by the simple
power of a piece of wood (2 Kings 6.2-7).
(c) In certain cases the miracle can be a simple creation of
language. The most extraordinary of the Old Testament miracles,
the staying of the sun at Joshua’s command, is due to the literal
interpretation of a poetic flight: “Sun, stand thou still upon
Gibeon ” (Josh. 10.12). In exhortation ready use was also made of
images which enlarged events to the level of miracles (e.g. Josh.
24.7). We can thus state that in Israel the action of language was
never used in the direction of rationalization of miracle.

F. PROVIDENCE AND THEODICY

In using the term Providence, we must avoid interpreting it in

the light of the rationalist conception, of a god as impersonal as
possible who directs events from afar while ensuring balance and
harmony everywhere. The personality and holiness of the God
of the Old Testament are too dynamic to be satisfied with an
aloof ordering of things, but precisely Yahweh’s intervention in
the world and his will to leave nothing outside his sovereignty give

out; spiritual—the presence of a prophet-interpreter of the events; finally sacra¬

mental—because in the nature of the phenomena there was a reservoir of spiritual
significance.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 227

us the authority to speak of a biblical notion of providence which

is exercised at the same time in creation and in history.
The creation is maintained, not by virtue of autonomous laws,
but by Yahweh s free will; its duration is eternal only in so far
as Yahweh is pleased to preserve it. On the whole the biblical view
is not directed towards the preservation of the world, but towards
its transformation. The teaching of the prophets concerning
creation is dominated by the hope of new heavens and a new
earth, so that they see in the present world, before all else, the
signs of catastrophe, foreshadowing the great change. Even the
book of Job, which is unaware of eschatology, gives a vision of
creation which is far from making equilibrium and harmony
obvious, as happens in Psalm ioq for example. From the sight of
the irrational and frightening, man should draw lessons of faith in
providence, for in God the display of power is always a manifesta¬
tion of life, and consequently a source of hope. Another sage,
Ecclesiastes, after putting the divine providence into momentary
doubt, finally succeeds, in the discovery that God does all things
at the right time, in finding a solution which allows him to accept
life not only with resignation, but even with joy.
Divine providence in history is exercised, first and foremost, in
favour of Israel and is implied by the very fact of election and
of belonging; but Yahweh’s interest in Israel obliges him, to some
extent, to glance also at the nations, either by punishing them when
they oppose the realization of that election (for example the
Canaanites at the time of the conquest) or by using them to chastise
his people when the latter forgets the conditions attached to its
election (Amos 3-2)- At other times Yahweh’s intervention among
the nations is motivated by his justice (Amos x); the Yahwist shows
us the iniquity of the inhabitants of Sodom, who were not Israelites,
calling forth Yahweh’s intervention (Gen. 18.20-21). This defence
of justice was not specially peculiar to Israel’s God, but what gives
the particular tonality to the biblical affirmation of providence is
the eschatological foundation of its message. Before the vision of
the kingdom that is coming, sectional barriers fall and the coming
of that kingdom is so certain that all present history can have no
other purpose than to be used in its coming, and even the most
open opposition to this kingdom will be used for its triumph (e.g.
Gog and Magog’s assault in Ez. 38). Faith in Yahweh’s universal
providence found less dynamic expression, but expression which
228 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

however does not lack greatness, in the priestly theology, which by

presenting all things as fixed and maintained by divine decree
expresses in its own way that nothing could happen outside the
eternal plans of God.
Just as there can be no chance in the life of peoples, so individuals
taken one by one are the object of the divine providence. The Old
Testament is not unaware of chance, but by calling it an encounter
(miqreh) it registers its objectivity and does not put it outside God’s
plan. Moreover, for a God who shows so little rationality as
Yahweh, the element of chance is almost normal and ignorance of
second causes also makes apparently contradictory actions to be
attributed to Yahweh. Providence, in the life of individuals, is
most frequently manifested at certain particularly outstanding
moments of that life, but the Old Testament is also acquainted
with several examples of lives which are in themselves a manifesta¬
tion of providence. Thus Joseph’s life is entirely destined to illus¬
trate the theme of the plan of God who thwarts the designs of
men; Jeremiah’s life, which existed as a thought of God’s before
being manifested in history, has no unity or sense apart from the
carrying out of that plan; finally the life of Yahweh’s servant must,
through the most mysterious of wayfarings, carry out God’s redeem¬
ing plan. But besides those precise examples, conceptions such as
the “bundle of life”1 (tseror hachayyim : i Sam. 25.29) and the
book of life (Ps. 69.29) and especially prayers like Ps. 139 give
sufficient evidence of how far individual life was considered as
directed by a higher will.
The assertion of the government of the world and of all history
by God is so evident for the Old Testament that the recognition of
evil does not succeed in throwing serious doubt upon it. Misfortune
itself comes from Yahweh: “Is there misfortune in the city without
God being the author of it”, cries Amos (3.6). In the Yahwist
religion, which we distinguish from the popular religion which
had a strong admixture of pagan elements, the evil spirits are sub¬
ject to Yahweh, who uses them at his will with the object of
chastising those who deserve his anger, for the ethical stress of
Israel’s religion puts suffering in relationship with sin; historians,
prophets and wisdom writers are agreed in declaring that sin brings

1 This expression is also found in one of the Qumran hymns, the Hodayoth.
“ I praise thee, Adonai, that thou hast placed my nephesh in the tseror chayyim ”
(cf. ZAW, 1949-50, p. 258; cf. also Ecclus. 6.16).
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 229

suffering, whilst a return to God brings happiness. Since this

assertion is, however, often contradicted by the facts attenuations
were introduced into it which never brought harm to faith in provi¬
dence and did not open the door to a dualist conception. The mis¬
fortune of the righteous could be a means of education; this point
of view, already stated by the book of Proverbs (3.12 : God chastens
the one he loves), is developed at length by the author of Elihu’s
speech (Job 33.19ft.; It was considered also that in
certain individuals suffering could have the value of substitutionary
expiation, for example with Hosea, Jeremiah and especially the
Servant of Yahweh. It even happened that the most inexplicable
and unjust misfortune brought the one who was struck by it to a
deeper understanding of the intentions of the divine providence1
(Job and Ps. 73) for God’s power and saving intention could, in the
end, only make all things work together for the triumph of his

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. FAITH AND HISTORY

Criado, R., La teologia de la bistoria en el antiguo Testamento, Madrid

l954 -

Dietrich, de S., Le dessein de Diett, Neuchatel et Paris 1946.

Eissfeldt, O., “ Geschichtliches und Obergeschichtliches im AT.”,
ThStKr Bd. 109 H. 2, 1947.
Hempel, J., Altes Testament und Gescbichte, Giitersloh 1930.
“ Die Mehrdeutigkeit der Geschichte als Problem der
prophetischen Theologie ”, Nachrichten der Gottinger
Gesellsch. d. Wissensch., 1936.
Glaube, Mythus und Geschichte im A.T., Berlin 1954.
Holscher, G., Die Anfdnge der hebrdischen Geschichtsschreibung,
Heidelberg 1942.

1 These believers, whom we can link to the stream represented by “ the poor ”
of Israel, found in the qirbat elobim (Ps. 73.28) the solution to the problem of
providence and through that closed the way to the problem of theodicy. This
attitude re-echoes the one that has been defined by Karl Jaspers, Introduction a la
philosophic, French trans. 1951, p. 54: “When living in the world one has
struggled towards the good believing that one is allowing oneself to be led by God,
and when one finally runs into a setback, there remains only this single immeasurable
reality: God Is.” The subject of the poor in Israel has received its most recent
treatment in a very suggestive manner by A. Gelin, Les pauvres de Yahweh (coll.
Temoins de Dieu, 14), Paris 1953.
230 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Jacob, Ed., La tradition historique en Israel, Montpellier 1946.

Jirku, A., Die diteste Geschichte Israels im Rahmen lehrhafter Darstel-

lungen, Leipzig 1917.

Niebuhr, R., Foi et histoire, Neuchatel et Paris 1954-
North, C. R., The Old Testament Interpretation of History, London

I946'
Noth, M., “Die Historisierung des Mythos ”, Christentum u. Wissen-
schaft, 1928, p. 265.
Uberlieferungsgeschichte des Pentateuch, Stuttgart 1948.
Geschichte und Gotteswort im A.T. Bonner Akadem. Reden
1949, English translation in Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Man¬
chester 1950, pp. 194EE-
Das Geschichtsverstdndnis der alttest. Apokalyptik, Cologne

*954-
Ostborn, G., “Yahweh’s Words and Deeds. A preliminary study into
the O.T. interpretation of history ”, UUA 1951.
Procksch, O., Geschichtsbetrachtung und geschichtliche Vberlieferung
bei den vorexilischen Propheten, 1902.
“ Die Geschichte als Glaubensinhalt ”, NKZ, 1925, p. 485.
Rad, G. VON, Das Geschichtsbild des Chronistischen Werkes, BZAW,
Stuttgart 1930.
Das formgeschichtliche Problem des Hexateuchs, 1938.
“ Theologische Geschichtsschreibung im A.T.”, ThZ, 1948,
p. 161.
Deuteronomiumstudien, 1948.
Rieger,J., Die Bedeutung der Geschichte fur die Verkiindigung des Amos
und Hosea, Giessen 1929.
Robinson, H. Wheeler, Redemption and Revelation in the Actuality of
History, London 1942.
Rust,E. C., The Christian Understanding of History, London 1946.
Senarclens, de J., Le mystere de I’histoire, Geneva.
Soderblom, N., Dieu vivant dans I’histoire, Paris 1937.
Troeltsch, E., “ Glaube und Ethos der hebr. Propheten ”, Gesammelte
Schriften IV, p. 34.
Weiser, A., Glaube und Geschichte im A.T., Stuttgart 1931.

B. ELECTION

Caspari, W., “ Beweggriinde der Erwahlung nach dem A.T.”, NKZ, 1921,
p. 202.

Dahl, N. A., Das Volk Gottes, Oslo 1941.

Danell, G. A., Studies in the name Israel in the O.T., Uppsala 1946.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 231

Eichrodt, W., Israel in der W eissagung des A.T., Zurich 1952.

Galling, K., Die Erwdhlungstraditionen Israels, BZAW 48, Giessen 1928.
Hesse, Fr., Das V erstockungsproblem im A.T., BZAW 74, Berlin
x955-
Hertzberg, H. W., Werdende Kirche im A.T., Theol Existenz heute,
Munich 1950.
Lindhagen, C., The Servant Motif in the O.T., Uppsala 1950.
Porteous, N. W., “Volk und Gottesvolk im A.T.”, Theol. Aufsdtze
Karl Barth zum 50. Geburtstag, 1936, p. 146.
Powis Smith, J. M., “The Chosen People”, American Journal of Semitic
Language, 1928, 29, p. 73.
Rad, G. von, Das Gottesvolk im Deuteronomium, Stuttgart 1929.
Rost, L., Die Vorstufen von Kirche und Synagoge im A.T., Stuttgart 1938.
Rowley, H. H., The Biblical Doctrine of Election, London 1950.
Schoeps, H. J., “ Haggadisches zur Auserwahlung Israels ”, Aus fruhchrist-
licher Zeit, 1950, p. 184.
Staerk, W., “Zum alttestamentlichen Erwahlungsglauben ”, ZAW, 1937,
pp. iff.
Vriezen, Th. C., Die Erwdhlung Israels nach dem A.T., Zurich 1953.

C. THE COVENANT

Begrich,J., “ Berit. Ein Beitrag zur Erfassung einer alttestamentlichen

Denkform ”, ZAW, 1944, pp. iff.
Gehman, Henry S., “ The Covenant. The O.T. foundation of the
Church”, Theology to-day, 1950, p. 26.
Hoepers, M., Der neue Bund bei den Propheten, Fribourg en Br. 1933.
Imschoot, P. van, “ L’esprit de Yahweh et l’alliance nouvelle dans
1’A.T.”, Eph. th. lov., 1936, p. 201.
“ L’alliance dans l’A.T.”, NRth, Louvain 1952, p. 785.
Karge, P., Geschichte des Bundesgedankens im A.T., Alttestamentliche
Abhandlungen 2, 1-4, Munster 1910.
Kraetzschmar, R., Die Bundesvorstellung im A.T. in ihrer geschichtlichen
Entwicklung, Marburg 1896.
Lohmeyer, Ernst, Diatheke, Leipzig 1913.
Pedersen, Johs., Der Eid bei den Semitem, Leipzig 1914.

D. THE MISSION

Bertholet, A., Die Stellung der Israeliten und der Juden zu den Fremden,
Freiburg i.B & Leipzig 1896.
Bertram, G., “ Das antike Judentum als Missionsreligion ”, Rosen: Juden
und Phonizier, Tubingen 1929.
232 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Blauw, Joh., Goden cn Mensen. Plaats en Betekenis van de Heidenen

in de heilige Schrift, Groningen 1950.
Bohl, F. M. Th. de Liagre, “ Missions-und Erwahlungsgedanke in Altis-
rael ”, Festschrift A. Bertholet, p. 77.
Causse, A., Israel et la vision de I’humanite, Strasbourg 1924.
Eichrodt, W., “ Gottesvolk und die Volker ”, Evang. Missionsmagazin,

1942.
Eissfeldt, O., “ Gott und Gotzen im A.T.”, ThStKr, 1931, p. I51-
Lohr, M., Der Missionsgedanke im A.T., Leipzig 1896.
Lubac, de H., Le fondement theologique des missions, Paris 1946.
Morgenstern. J., “ Deutero-Isaiah’s terminology for ‘ Universal God ’ ”,

JBL, 1943, p. 269.

Raguin, Y., Theologie missionnaire de I’A.T., Paris 1947 (La sphere et la
croix).
Rowley, H. H., The Missionary Message of the O.T., London 1944.
Schmokel, H., Jahwe und die Fremdvolker, Breslau 1934.
Sellin, E., “ Der Missionsgedanke im A.T.”, Neue allgemeine Missions-
zeitschrift, 1925.
Staerk, W., “ Ursprung und Grenzen der Missionskraft der alttestament-
lichen Religion”, Theol. Blatter, 1925.

E, MIRACLES

Balla, E., “ Das Problem des Leidens in der Geschichte der isr.-jiid.
Religion”, Eucharisterion (Gunkel Festschrift), 1923, p. 214.
Eichrodt, W., “ Vorsehungsglaube und Theodizee im A.T.” (Festschrift
O. Procksch), 1934, p. 45-
Keller, C. A., Das Wort OTFI als Offenbarungszeichen Gottes, Bale
J946-
Knight, H., “ The O.T. conception of miracle ”, Scottish Journal of
Theology, 1952, p. 355.
Peake, A. S., The Problem of Suffering in the O.T., London 1904.
Robinson, H. Wheeler, “ The nature miracles of the O.T.”, JTS, 1944,
p. 1.
Rowley, H. H., Submission in Suffering, Cardiff 1951.
 V. GOD IN INSTITUTIONS

T
A. MINISTRIES

h e people s election does not create among the members

of that nation an equality that removes all precedence. The
Old Testament has strong convictions on the necessity of
leaders. One ancient Bedouin poem from Arabia, which compares
leaders and led with the poles and pegs of the tent,1 reflects quite
faithfully the feelings of Israel which, despite all the developments
that took place in the course of history, was always able to avoid
despotism by the chief and dictatorship of the people. The various
offices that we see exercised among the people and in which religious
and secular elements are mingled as well as institutional and
charismatic elements, are primarily representative offices: whether
it concerns leadership, justice or teaching, the ministry’s objective
is to show in concrete form an activity which is assumed in a perfect
form by God himself. To exercise a ministry implies a more direct
relationship with God, an individual election within the general
election; by virtue of this election the chosen individuals are not
aloof from the people; as the latter’s representatives before God
they point out to the people the way that it is right to follow in
order to remain faithful to their vocation. And so the elect have a
great responsibility before God, whose representatives they are, and
before the people, which behaves in accordance with the example
that the elect provide. That is why the prophets apportion the
chief blame to the leaders, kings, priests and prophets who take
advantage of their superior position to lead the people astray instead
of being its servants, for their worth resides only in the call which
they have received and not in some personal quality which dis¬
tinguishes them from the ordinary run of mortals (e.g. Jer. 5.29#.).
1 “ A people that lacks leaders will inevitably fall, and leaders are short where the
people reigns. A tent cannot be put up only with poles, and the poles are of
no value if there are no pegs. Where poles and pegs are in correct union, there
only what is set up stands, complete” (quoted by Noldeke, Delectus, p. 4, II, 8-10,
from A. Bertholet, Histoire de la civilisation d'Israel, French trans., p. 139, E.T.
London 1926).

233
234 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

(a) The King

Among the human beings set apart by God to be his more

especial representatives and the mediators of his gifts, the king
occupies the most important place. According to one tendency
which has a wide following, the king is the only channel by which
divine realities are accessible to men. In a series of studies which
appeared twenty years ago and which were devoted to the general
subject of myth and ritual, several English scholars, taking up the
ideas put forward by the great Norwegian exegete S. Mowinckel
ten years earlier, insisted on the dramatic character of the cult and
on the need of dramatic representation for the efficacy of the myth
which underlay it. Taken up in their turn by other Scandinavian
scholars, these ideas gave birth to what is already called the Uppsala
school, and which has no other ambition than to set a new inter¬
pretation of the Old Testament, founded on the priority of ritual
and tradition, against historical and documentary interpretation.1
The essential points of this cubic drama, traces of which can be
found, it is thought, in texts apparently far removed from any
cultic viewpoint, have been summarized in the following way:
(a) struggle of the god represented by and incarnate in the king
and ending in the king’s victory over opposing mythical forces;
(h) proclamation of the king’s victory through the whole world;
(c) adjuration to the king to reign justly; (d) assumption of the
regalia, (e) the king receives sacramental food, baptism by water
and unction of oil; (f) proclamation of the king as the son of God;
1 The subject has given rise to a considerable literature; the most complete
bibliographical material is to be found in the book of J. de Fraine (1954). In
speaking of the Uppsala school, we must not forget that the work that it has
produced would not have seen the light without that of the English school, the
Myth and Ritual group whose principal representative is S. H. Hooke. The methods
of this school have been applied to the study of quite diverse subjects, particularly
to several prophets (Isaiah, Obadiah, Joel); one of the most systematic applications
has been made by H. Riesenfeld, Jesus transfigure (published in French, Lund
1947); the reading of this book permits us to form an idea of the value and also
the exaggerations of this method. It must be pointed out that even in Scandinavia
these ideas did not meet with unanimous agreement; in his last work, Han som
Kommer (He that cometh), p. 47, Mowinckel insists on the fundamental importance
of the Yahwist religion, that is on a religion with a historical foundation, in order
to understand the Israelite monarchy. One of the best criticisms of this method
is that of M. Noth, who points out the excessive simplifications and the disregard
of historical results of which this school unfortunately gives too many examples
(“ Gott, Konig und Volk”, ZThK, 1950, pp. 157-191).
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 235

(g) the king s installation on God’s throne; (ti) the sacred marriage
of the king. The initial and final acts of this drama may be sum¬
marized by the terms death and resurrection, for in the back¬
ground of this drama there is the rite of the dying and rising god
about whom we know to-day the extent to which he formed the
centre of the Sumerian, Babylonian and Canaanite religions, and
whose main purpose was to explain the mystery of life and to assure,
by means of rites, the upkeep of that life in the realms of nature
and of human life, which were almost always intermingled. In
these religions, kingship is part of a fixed framework and the
person of the king is of secondary importance in relation to the
pattern which he incarnates and whose continuity he is to assure.
Now it is impossible to find this pattern as such in the Old
Testament. There is no doubt that Israel had mythical traditions,
with corresponding rites, and the kingship, David’s particularly, is
one of the places where this heritage is particularly noticeable; but
to see in the kingship the simple transposition on to the historical
plane of a mythical pattern would be to do violence to the texts.
The monarchy in Israel has its history and that history, so human
and so full of vicissitude, has nothing in common with the rigidity
which myth requires, and it is far from expressing always God’s
will. The history of Israel begins with the election of a people
and with the covenant entered upon by God with the mass of that
people, of which every member is clad with royal and priestly
dignity. The chiefs who lead this people owe their higher rank
to their gifts and to their noteworthy actions, and especially to the
fact of having been chosen by the people to safeguard its interests
and energies. It is also the people that chose the kings, when
political and military considerations led the people to opt for this
regime, which had so little in common with its social and religious
structure. The king is chosen by God and by the people: “ I will
belong to him who has been chosen by Yahweh, by this people and
by all the men of Israel ”, as one of the king’s servants expresses
himself (2 Sam. 16.18); the anointing1 which accompanies the
choosing of a king is not the communication of an extraordinary
1 Anointing is also the communication of a power by the gift of the spirit; thanks
to the anointing the spirit rests permanently on a man instead of acting inter¬
mittently (1 Sam. 16.13; 2 Sam. 23.2; Is. 11.2). But the spirit is never presented
as a force which transforms the man’s nature; it always remains a grace which God
is free to withdraw at any moment. Cf. North, ZAW, 1932, p. 30, and D. Lys,
“ L’onction dans la Bible ”, EThR, 1954, p. 3.
236 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

power of life, for objects also were anointed (Gen. 31.13; Ex. 30.26;
Dan. 9.24), but rather a gesture expressing the king’s belonging to
Yahweh and consequently his close dependence; being a ritual
gesture it requires the presence of a specially qualified person, priest
or cultic prophet, but it is none the less conferred by the entire
people (2 Sam. 2.4). The divine and at the same time popular origin
of kingship is a feature common to the entire Israelite monarchy,
though the latter developed quite differently in the northern and
southern kingdoms. In the kingdom of Israel, the king is a
charismatic figure chosen by Yahweh, or by the people on
Yahweh’s indication, his charism is not transmissible and at his
death he is replaced by a person whom the spirit will raise up
at that moment. ,It can be asserted that this was the specific form
of Israelite monarchy and the one which was most in harmony with
the notion of an elect people; for such a mentality monarchy was
neither necessary nor indispensable, and a prophet like Hosea con¬
siders that it is better to remain without a king than to establish
kings to preserve the principle of the monarchy while doing without
Yahweh (8-4ff.). The only attested dynasties for the northern
kingdom, Omri’s and Jehu’s, had merely an episodic character
because of this order of things. In Judah, on the other hand, the
Davidic dynasty lasted for more than four centuries, thanks in part
to a divine promise made to David, and partly, also, to the support
of the people, who took the side of the legitimate claimant each
time that the throne became vacant and consequently favourable
ground for a palace revolution (2 Kings 14.21; 21.24; 23.30). The
circumstances in which the biblical books were composed mean that
we are much better informed about the Jerusalem monarchy. The
Psalms, which are the most valuable source, deal with this monarchy
only, which answered only distantly to what was peculiar to
Israelite tradition. The Jerusalem monarchy bears the mark of the
Canaanite heritage and in it the king plays a part very like the
one he holds in neighbouring countries, yet without being absorbed
into a common pattern. The term son of God is currently given to
the king, though it must be understood in the sense of an adoption
and not of a begetting (2 Sam. 7.14; Ps. 2.7; 89.26). In a passage
which the exegetes have emended often with more ingenuity than
scruple, the king is even called god. In the present state of the
text the words of Psalm 45 can only be addressed to the king:
“Thy throne, O Elohim, is an eternal throne”; royal ideology
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 237

reaches its highest point in this passage, but doubtless it is entirely

right to remember in connection with this text that “ one swallow
does not make a summer ,x and that Old Testament teaching
viewed as a whole always clearly asserts the king’s subordination to
Yahweh. The king is the channel of divine blessings; it is he who
really assures the life of the people, which would be doomed to
disaster apart from his presence (Lam. 4.20), he is the lamp of Israel
(2 Sam. 21.17), ls responsible for the country’s prosperity and
for its calamities, he, thanks to his righteousness, which must be
understood in a religious rather than a moral sense, causes the corn
to grow (Ps. 72.16; 2 Sam. 21.1); to him is ascribed as to a god
the power of healing (2 Kings 5.7); his knowledge is like that of
one of Elohim’s angels, that is to say supernatural (2 Sam. 14.17);
he is the people s shield (Ps. 84.10), and it is significant to notice
that in one and the same text the same title is simultaneously applied
to the king and to God (Ps. 84.12; 47.10 and 89.19). The picture
of the king’s religious role may be completed by ascribing to him
certain prerogatives of the high priests who, after the exile, con¬
tinued his functions.2 But despite the interest that they offer, none
of these texts permits us to draw the conclusion that in the temple at
Jerusalem there existed an annual feast coinciding with the New
Year Festival, and including a dramatic representation of Yahweh’s
struggle against the powers of chaos and in the course of which
the king played the part of the servant, at first humiliated and then
victorious over the kings of the earth. On the other hand, it
must not be forgotten that if the king could incarnate and express
the consciousness of the nation, he was not the only one who
could do so. By virtue of the principle of “ corporate personality ”
and of the fluidity of the relationships between the individual and
1 This verse has always intrigued the exegetes; without mentioning the many
textual corrections, sometimes very cavalier, let us mention the possibility in the
present state of the Massoretic text of translating: Thy throne is divine (as in
2 Chr. 9.8) or: thy throne is like Elohim’s, the preposition “ like ” being under¬
stood. Even in admitting that the king is treated as Elohim—which seems to us
the correct reading—it must be borne in mind that the term ’elobim has a variety
of shades of meaning which forbid our speaking of a real deification.
2 Many other elements in the royal ritual had a religious significance, such as
the seven steps of Solomon’s throne, the number seven representing the divine
perfection (i Kings 10.18). But on the point of the monarchy in Jerusalem it is
difficult to define where the idealization of the king lies, and on the other hand
where the reaction of eschatological messianism on the monarchy is manifested; in
the reckoning by which the king only typifies the Messiah, his person is honoured
by reference to another person.
238 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

society which such a principle implies, each individual could typify

the people in his own life;1 that is why behind the individuals
who pray in the Psalms there lurks no rite of a democratized and
decayed ideology of kingship as is declared by disciples of the
Uppsala school, but the real experience of an individual—who on
occasion may be a king—who because he belongs to Israel, can
incarnate in himself the whole of his people.
The Old Testament observes and always stresses very strongly
the limit which separates the king from God. The true king and
the true throne are to be found in heaven, from where Yahweh
directs world history (cf. Ps. 33-13; 29.10; 103.19), and if the
Chronicler speaks of Solomon as ‘ ‘ sitting on the throne of
Yahweh” (1 Chr. 29-23) instead of the throne of David, he is less
intent on insisting on the religious role of the king’s person than
on that of the Davidic dynasty from which the Messiah will come
as a guarantee of the presence of God on earth. The king’s duties
are, moreover, no less great than his privileges. The king can only
be God’s representative if he observes in his life absolute obedience
to God, for the fact that he sits on the throne and even that he
has the advantage of a promise does not ipso facto confer on him
righteousness and equity. Prayers on his behalf by his subjects
are indispensable to him (Ps. 72.15) and Deuteronomy, which is
a new charter of the people and which completes that of Sinai by
introducing kingship as a necessary element in the people’s life,
insists very strongly on this subordination. The king’s foremost
task will be the study of the words of the torah; he will thus
avoid ‘‘growing proud beyond his brethren” (Dt. 17.20) and
Jeremiah declares that there is no other knowledge of Yahweh, that
is to say no other bond with Yahweh than by exercising justice and
doing right to the poor (22.16). Throughout history the prophets
reminded royalty of its duties and its bounds; even David was not
exempt from the censure of prophets. Confronted by the textual
evidence we must recognize that in Israel’s religion, apart from a
few very localized attempts, the king never became a god, and to
remember in this connection the definition of an historian of
encyclopaedic vision:2 ‘‘Elsewhere the king was a god, in Israel
1 Pedersen, Israel, I-II, p. 23, points out that the monarchy has left almost no
trace in the laws and that consequently it must have been only indifferently
assimilated by the people.
2 Henri Berr in the preface to the work of A. Lods, Les prophetes d’Israel (coll.
L’evolution de l’humanite), 1936, p. XX.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 239

it was God who was king. Indeed Yahweh’s kingship over the
people as a whole, and the figure of the ideal king projected from
the earliest times into the eschatological future, were cjuite power¬
ful brakes in preventing religion from ever being confused with the
cult of the king’s person.

(b) The Prophet

The prophet is the man of God par excellence; with the excep¬
tions of Moses, David and Samuel, who participate in all the
mediatorial functions at once and who were claimed by the people
as a whole, the title ’ish ha ’elohim is given to the prophets only;
the reason is that the prophet stands in a particularly close relation¬
ship with God, a relationship expressed by the term “knowledge
of God”;1 although this is demanded from all men, the prophets
are the only ones who realize it in a perfect and exemplary way.
The direct bond with God which characterizes the prophet leads us
to place the prophetic centre of gravity in the individual experience
of each prophet and to speak of individual prophets rather than of
prophetism, but it must also be noticed that the prophets as a group
form an institution which, in the course of great changes of history,
presents a certain number of common features. When they first
appear on Israel’s historical scene, the prophets are grouped into
brotherhoods and it is probably in the strongly communal life of
the nebi’im in the times of the Judges and of Elijah that the
monastic tendencies of late Judaism, one of whose aspects we can
reconstitute from the Qumran documents, have their deepest roots.
This communal spirit is cemented, if not created, by the presence of
a sanctuary, the schools of prophets developing around the cubic
centres of Ramah, Gibeah, Bethel and Gilgal. Although the
recruitment of the sons of the prophets was made by spiritual affinity
and not by bond of blood and although their prerogatives were
different from those of the priests, it is none the less true—and it
is true also for prophetism in general—that kinship with the priestly

1 The fullest study of the knowledge of God among the prophets is by J. Haenel,
Das Erkennen Gottes bet den Schriftpropheten, 1923; Mowinckel’s study, RHPR,
1942, pp. 69ff., is shorter, but gives a clearer insight into the content of prophetic
knowledge. On the same subject, cf. G. J. Botterweck, Gott erkennen im
Sprachgebrauch des A.T., 1951; W. Reiss, “Gott nicht kennen im A.T.”, ZAW,
1940-41, pp. 70-98, and W. Zimmerli, Erkenntnis Gottes nach dem Buche Ezechiel,
'954•
2^0 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

functions was infinitely greater than anything that separated the

two.1 The prophets’ bond with the cult appears in their frequent
association with the priests, as in Hos. 4.5; Is. 28.7; Mic. 3.11;
Jer. 4.9; 26.7; 29.1; Lam. 4.13, and in the fact that several of the
great prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel actually belong to priestly
families. The freedom that Amos enjoys to express his message
inside a sanctuary seems to speak clearly in favour of a bond and
common objective of the two functions, and it is not too rash to
suppose that belonging to the priesthood constituted a ground
favourable for a more complete revelation of the divine holiness and
for a more intimate knowledge of the hidden God who did not
readily release his mysteries. So it must be recognized that the
antithesis, so often stated, particularly among the Wellhausen
school, between prophets and priests, is historically highly question¬
able. We must not, of course, rush to the opposite extreme and
make all the prophets into cubic agents, a thing that would singu¬
larly limit the freedom of prophetic inspiration, but we can say
with A. R. Johnson2 that all through history, the prophet exercises,
alongside the properly prophetic function which is to transmit a
message, a priestly activity through his intercession before Yahweh
on the people’s behalf.
The institutional aspect of prophetism is further apparent in the
quite close bond which unites the prophets and the royal court;
charged by the king to make God’s will known to him, they are
in his service and receive their subsistence from him. If this bond
might sometimes be an obstacle to the sincerity of their message, as
in the case of the 400 prophets at the court of Samaria (1 Kings
22.^ff.), it is more usual to find them enjoying considerable freedom
with reference to the royal authority; already the prophets con¬
cerned in the Mari texts3 express a different opinion from the
king’s, which the latter, moreover, hastens to follow. It is because
of the reciprocal association and interaction of the two spheres, royal
and prophetic, that the prophets were able to be the nation’s
conscience throughout the centuries.

1 The Uppsala school would like to make all the prophets into cultic prophets
(cf. particularly A. Haidar, Associations of Cult Prophets). It is true to say that
the prophets use cultic means, but they are not enslaved by them and for certain
prophets the means of access to their ministry is not through the cult.
2 The Cultic Prophet in Ancient Israel, Cardiff 1944.
3 On prophetism at Mari cf. Ad. Lods: Studies in Old Testament Prophecy
presented to Professor T. Robinson, Edinburgh 1950, pp. 103!!.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 241

All these sociological bonds are, however, of secondary impor¬

tance to the direct and immediate calling of the prophet by Yahweh.
Whether the term nabi is interpreted as active: he who proclaims,
or as passive: he who has been called,1 it is certain that it is the
call that he has received which characterizes the prophet and which
differentiates him at the same time from other men and from false
prophets. The election of which he has been the object—and the
prophet is always a chosen one, despite the rare use of the classical
term bachar in connection with him—puts him in a particular
relationship with God that the Old Testament calls knowledge of
God. This knowledge is manifested, according to time and tem¬
perament, in various ways. In origin the nabi is the successor to
the seer, the ro’eh (1 Sam. 9.9), and the visionary element under its
divinatory aspect will never disappear completely from prophetic
activity in which inspiration will readily lend support to a minimum
of technique. The vision may assume the form of a dream, Samuel
is called in a sort of dream,2 but the great prophets are generally
very wary about the type of revelation thus obtained. Jeremiah
even questions whether the dream has any authority (Jer. 23.25;
27.9; 29.8), but in the book of Zechanah we find nocturnal visions
which by the splitting of the personality that they seem to imply
are really nothing other than dreams. Recourse to the phenomena
of hypnosis and hallucination can only occasionally throw some
light on prophetic experience, v/hen a prophet is called he is not
found in a state of semi-consciousness, on the contrary his sensitive¬
ness is heightened rather: with eyes fully open on to the outside
world, the prophet takes as the starting point of his vision real
objects which come before his sensitive perception. Thus Jeremiah’s
almond branch (1.11) and Amos’s basket of fruits (8. iff.) are not
set before a visionary gaze, but before normal perception; but the
particular bond of knowledge, which at that moment unites the
prophet to his God, charges these objects with a deeper content.
We may, in this case, speak of the sublimation of a real perception.
1 The etymology of nabi’= called was suggested by Albright, From the Stone Age
to Christianity, p. 231; and before him by Torczyner, ZDMG, 1931, p. 322. Albright
connects it with the word nabitu given to the king in the Hammurabi code. For
more details on the etymology and the relations of the nabi with the ro'eh and the
chozeh, we refer readers to H. H. Rowley, “ The nature of prophecy in the light of
recent study” in Harvard Theological Review, 1945, pp. - ,
1 38 and reproduced in
The Servant of the Lord and other essays, pp. 9iff.
2 On the dream, see now Ehrlich, Der Traum im Alten Testament, BZAW,
*953-
242 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Isaiah’s famous vision (chap. 6) is the sublimation, that is the trans¬

formation into a celestial sanctuary and cult, of rites that were
enacted before his eyes in the temple at Jerusalem. At other times,
the prophetic vision is explained by the sublimation of sentiments:
the prophet must be put into the category of individuals with fixed
ideas, but, in his case, the fixed idea is not the result of a morbid
state of mind, it is imposed on him from without by a transcendent
power and henceforward forms part of his psychic background.
Thus certain visions must probably be interpreted as the actualizing
of sentiments that slumber in the depths of consciousness: the
image comes to mind when the sentiment rises from the sub¬
conscious to assume a concrete form and to strike with a force
which for the prophet takes on the value of certainty. According
to all that we reckon to know about the links of the prophets with
tradition, it seems quite improbable that in the majority of cases
the prophetic vocation always assumed the aspect of a sudden and
radical turning point. Before being called, the majority of the
prophets led a life of obedience and even intimacy with God; the
moment of their call is that when communion with God takes
on such a constraining aspect that in the form of a vision it imposes
itself as a new reality. Let us add that the kinship of many of
the images with mythical representations, such as the sea, the
serpent, the lion, proves that they originate, like myths, less in
literary reminiscence than in certain fundamental structures of the
human spirit. The great variety of the visionary element must
not, however, make us neglect the other aspects that make the
prophet into a man of God. It is not only through his sight and
his feelings that the prophet knows God, his whole being is seized
by God; very often we read that Yahweh’s hand seizes the prophet
(Is. 8.11; Jer. 15.17; Ez. 3.14) or that the spirit takes possession of
him, making him into an ’ish haruacb (Hos. 9.7), so that some¬
times he finds that he is outside himself in a state of ecstasy,1 which
can be manifested as abnormal excitement, or on the other hand
1 All depends obviously on the sense that is given to the word “ ecstasy ”. If
by the word the disappearance or the absorption of the subject by a superior power
is understood, it is not suitable for defining the prophets’ experience; but if one
understands by ecstasy the concentration of a subject on an object, to a point
where that object alone impinges upon him to the exclusion of all others, the use
of the term seems legitimate. Lindblom, “ Einige Grundfragen alttestamentlicher
Wissenschaft ” in Festschrift A. Bertholet, 1950, distinguishes between ecstasy of
fusion (Verschmelzungsektase), that of Plotinus and St. Teresa of Avila, and ecstasy
of concentration (Konzentrationsekstase) of the prophets and of St. Paul.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 243

by a state verging on apathy. Without awarding it pride of place

in the explanation of prophetism, we cannot exclude the ecstatic
element. Elijah, as though moved by a strange power, sets out to
run before Ahab over a journey of several miles (1 Kings
18.12, 46), and his disciples consider it as in no way impossible that
the spirit should have caught him up and dropped him in some
secluded valley so that he might die (2 Kings 2.16). Jeremiah com¬
pares himself to one in a drunken state (23.3), Ezekiel, more than
all the others, was shaken in his psychical balance, and the simul¬
taneous mention of the prophet and the fool (meshugga) (e.g. Jer.
25.26) leaves no doubt about the frequency of the manifestations
which it would be difficult to refuse to qualify as ecstatic. Rare,
however, are the cases where this ecstasy is expressed by a real loss
of personality: possession by a superior power does not prevent a
conflict with the prophet s own feelings and he is never “ possessed ”
to such a point as to be unable to hold further conversation and
to enter into prayerful relations with him by whom he is addressed.1
The particular knowledge God grants to the prophet when he
takes possession of him is destined to make him into a participant
and representative of that supernatural force. Prophetic knowledge
is certainly of a different order from mystical union, but the two
have in common an element of participation which in the case of
the prophets can be quite safely defined by the term pathos,2 pathos
being the characteristic of the divine activity itself as it is mani¬
fested by love and by anger; and so the prophet must, in his whole
bearing, make God’s presence perceptible. The extraordinary, not
to say extravagant, actions performed by the prophets3 have a

1 The technique necessary for the inspiration of the ancient nebi’im of Samuel’s
day was not altogether abandoned by the great prophets; in the main it is limited
to the most spiritualized form, prayer; often the revelatory word is only com¬
municated to the prophet after prayer (cf. Is. 37.4, 6ff.; Jer. 11.18-20, 2iff.;
12.1-4, 5ff.); prayer may also be the starting point of the vision (Dan. 9.20); in
the form of patient waiting (Hab. 2.11) or of passionate struggling with God
(Jeremiah), prayer is for the prophet the condition of his ministry and the reality
indispensable to its fulfilment (Jer. 15.19). It is possible that some asceticism was
linked to this life of prayer; but absolute proofs are lacking.
2 The term pathos for the prophet’s relation with God goes back to Abram Heschel,
Die Prophetic. This work did not have, in its time, all the attention it deserved;
notice, however, that the importance of the element of pathos has been stressed
by C. R. North, The O.T. Interpretation of History, 1946, p. 173.
3 By symbolic actions the prophet represents events before they actually take
place; it is an actualization comparable with that of past events in the cult. Externally
these symbolic actions are hardly distinct from magical gestures with which they
244 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

symbolic value which not only serve to illustrate their preaching

by matching deeds with words, but which must act in a determin¬
ing way upon events, which they represent. Jeremiah s yoke and
water-jar (chaps. 19 and 27) show that punishment is inevitable
and that Yahweh has no intention of deferring it, and Hosea s
marriage is for the prophet, who actually entered upon it, not only
a representation, but also a participation in the suffering and the
love of God, and therefore a gesture of redemption. It is not going
too far to speak of the sacramental value of the prophets’ symbolic
actions. They are, in any case, a verbum visibile which might yet
be unintelligible without the word proclaimed by their mouth, for
it is first and foremost by what he says that the prophet reveals
himself as the man of God.
“Thou shalt put words into his mouth, he shall be a mouth
unto thee and thou shalt be as God to him,” says Yahweh to
Moses in speaking of Aaron (Ex. 4.15-16).
“ Balaam said to Balak: I shall speak the words which God put
in my mouth” (Num. 22.38; 23.5, 12, 16).
“ I will raise up a prophet like thee and I shall put my words in
his mouth” (Dt. 18.18).
“Behold I put my words in thy mouth” (Jer. 1.9 and 5.14;
15.19). The word he proclaims has been communicated to him by
God in a mysterious and secret way; that is probably the sense of
the word sod which Amos makes the first condition of all prophecy
(3.7). This word is not given to the prophet once for all at the
beginning of his activity. The prophet Jeremiah is typical of the
accomplished disciple to whom Yahweh opens his ear each morn¬
ing (Is. 50.4; Jer. 1.11, 13; 2.1; 11.9) and Ezekiel’s vision of the
roll does not indicate a new development in prophecy characterized
by a complete and written inspiration, but simply the objective
and transcendent aspect of his words. It is in the faithful repro¬
duction of the message entrusted to him that the prophet discharges
his mission and makes it authentic in the eyes of his audience. It

have in common a realistic, effective and often frightening character; but while
magic is an initiative of man to constrain the deity, the symbolic action of the
prophets is an initiative of God’s. The discovery of the realism of the Old Testament
(cf. especially the works of Pedersen) has again brought to light the importance of
these symbolical actions which rationalistically inspired exegesis attempted to reduce
to the level of literary fictions or of pathological manifestations. The subject has
received very full treatment by G. Fohrer, Die symbolischen Handlungen der
Profheten, Abhandlungen zur Theologie des A.u. N.T., 1953.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
245

is in this, too, that he is distinguished from the false prophets.1

These, too, had visions and performed symbolic actions, but they
spoke without receiving a word. We may compare them with
demagogues who attempt to flatter the crowds by repeating words
that they wish to hear and which they order by payment. The
distinction was less easy when the false prophets were perhaps true
prophets who, instead of ceasing to prophesy when they had no
further word to pass on, ended, when they continued to speak, in
being no longer the interpreters of Yahweh’s plan. The prophets
to whom Jeremiah is opposed and who proclaim shalom and the
inviolability of Jerusalem, faithfully reproduce the message formerly
proclaimed by Isaiah but, given the very different conjuncture of
events in Jeremiah s time, their message has a false ring. It is the
word that acts as the distinguishing criterion, not so much in the
agreement between the prophecy and its fulfilment, but in the
aspect of constraint and certainty which it is impossible to escape
fTer. 23.21). The prophetic word is always conditioned by historical
circumstances and by the environment in which it is delivered;2 it
is so lacking in timelessness that certain oracles such as the book
of Nahum are only pamphlets composed for the occasion; it is,
therefore, difficult to speak of prophetic preaching.3 Nevertheless,
since the prophet is always seized in his totality by God and since
God s action is exercised in accordance with certain constants, the
preaching of the prophets is never irrelevant to the great themes of
the holiness that condemns sin, and of the promise which culmi¬
nates in salvation. The preaching of all the prophets could be
summarized in the Decalogue’s exhortation: “ Thou shalt have no
other gods beside Yahweh ”. Anything that attacks that sovereignty

1 On false prophets, cf. the book of G. Quell, Wabre tmd falsche Propheten,
Giitersloh 1952, p. 218.
2 We feel that the strictly historical character of certain oracles should be upheld,
contrary to the thesis of the Scandinavian school, which discovers traces of myth
and a common pattern everywhere.
3 The words of the prophets are to a large extent an interpretation of contemporary
history and it is quite normal that they should have been led to take part in
politics, but as the interpretation of history consists for them essentially in bringing
a word from God, they take a stand above the course of events; what is for them
an absolute certainty is partly the realization of God’s plan by means of Israel’s
election and partly the punishment of sin. This double certainty leads them to
speak sometimes of wars and invasions, at a time when the human agents of this
punishment were not yet present on the historical scene; sometimes they also
announce events which in actual fact took place rather differently; this in no way
lessens their authority as men of God.
246 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

falls under the lash of their censure; their opposition to military

alliances is not dictated by a pacifist ideology, but by the exaltation
of man and human resources that they encourage. The stern words
that certain prophets pronounce against cultic practices1 are not a
condemnation of the cult itself but of the measures of a magical
and meritorious nature which man had introduced into the cult in
order to launch an attack on God’s sovereignty. But to proclaim
God’s sovereignty was first and foremost to lay on earth in the
concrete life of the people the foundations on which his kingdom of
righteousness and peace will be built. By identifying the remnant
of Israel with the community of his disciples, Isaiah gives a good
illustration of prophecy’s constructive role through which the divine
kingship has never ceased to be promulgated on earth. Although
clearly set apart, the prophets are also a sign and an example; it
can even be stated that, in the history of prophetism, knowledge
always becomes less a revelation made to an initiate (e.g. Balaam,
Num. 24.4-16) than a communication of God’s will to all the
people; the aim of the divine ways is not only to ensure a line of
prophets, but to make sure that “ all are taught of God ” (Is. 54-13;
Jer. 31.33; Jn. 6.45) and that all should be prophets (Joel 2.28L;
Num. 11.29). Then the people of Israel will be in a position to
be before the other nations what the men of God had been for them.

(c) The Priest

The importance of the priests in the relationship between God

and man appears throughout the history of Israel, but it took on
a broader scope in more recent times, when sacerdotalism imprinted
its specific mark on the whole of Israel’s religion. The complex
history of the priesthood, made up of diverse currents harmonized
in the precincts of the temple at Jerusalem with a view to the
latter’s greater glory, is, however, unanimous in the affirmation of
the origin and the Mosaic or Aaronic filiation of the priesthood
as a whole. All the functions that we meet in the Old Testament
1 The question of the “ anti-cultic ” preaching of the prophets has often been
examined in the course of recent years; it seems that opinion is taking a middle
position, the prophets being neither cultic agents nor systematic opponents of
the cult, but the heralds of God’s sovereignty which the cult could express, but
which it could also on occasion cause to be forgotten (cf. Hertzberg, “ Die
prophetische Kritik am Kult ” in ThUtzg, 1950, p. 219).
 theology of the old TESTAMENT 247

as characteristics of the priests can be found, in the most ancient

texts, as being already exercised by Moses: he communicates God’s
oracles (Ex. 33.7), he sprinkles the blood of sacrifice (Ex. 24.6),
e intercedes for the guilty people with the object of obtaining its
pardon (Ex. 32.20). The link with Moses appears in the pre-
dommance of Levi over the other priestly families. It is doubtless
difficult, in view of texts such as Gen. 34.30 and 49.5, to argue
against a period of warrior activity in the history of this tribe on
the same footing as all the others, but it must be recognized that
this memory was erased at an early date and the name passed from
the tribe to the office. Originally itinerant, the Levitic priesthood
shared in the general evolution from nomadism towards a sedentary
way of life, by becoming the consecrated personnel of the sanc¬
tuaries, where its presence was all the more necessary as the settling
of the children of Israel in what were originally Canaanite
sanctuaries ran the risk of creating cubic forms which had little
conformity with the Mosaic ideal. The dignity and office of the
Levites are well characterized in Moses’ blessing in chap. 33 of
Deuteronomy (vv. 8ff.): The Levite is there emphatically described
as a man of an office and not as a member of a family, he must
teach Yahweh s laws and the juridical ordinances (tor ah and
mishpatim) and officiate at the offering of the sacrifices; these
functions originally had to be practised only in a curtailed way. In
earlier times and until the time of the Judges the celebration of the
cult did not require a specially organized consecrated personnel;
the patriarchs, who were certainly not priests, bless, build altars,
offer sacrifice, practise intercession. In the time of the Judges the
head of the family is still priest at the same time; but the presence
of a Levite gave a greater prestige to the religious celebration, as
arises in the adventures of the Levite attached to the service of
Micah and carried off by the Danites (Jg. 17); on his side the
Levite, as is shown in the same narrative, had every interest in
giving up his itinerant ministry and in attaching himself to a
sanctuary, unless he were willing to be reduced to depend on other
people’s generosity like the widow, the orphan and the stranger.
The priests follow an evolution parallel to that of the ark, which
finds shelter in the sanctuary, after accompanying the tribes on
the battlefield.
It is in the sanctuary that the priests carry out their twofold duty
of teaching and intercession. The torah, which characterizes the
248 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

priests’ ministry (Jer. 18.18),1 was given in the sacred place; it

consisted of revelations from God from the most rudimentary form
of the urim and thummim, which corresponded in origin to a yes
and a no, to more highly developed instruction. The torah was
sought by the people as a body when it went on pilgrimages to the
sanctuaries (cf. Is. 2.3; Mic. 4.2), and the reading of the law every
seven years at the feast of Tabernacles (Dt. 3i.ioff.) represents the
most highly evolved stage of a custom firmly established for
generations. When it was the answer to a consultation concerning
a more precise case, it might initiate the development of details,
the discussion of which mentioned by Haggai (2.11) on the con¬
tagiousness of holiness shows the degree of subtlety it could attain.
It is not improbable, and the last text seems to confirm it, that
the priests’ teaching could give proof of originality, but in the main
their teaching consisted in the transmission of customs and
traditions, and in seeing that the rites are correctly performed.
Israelite law did not issue from this priestly torah, for the most
ancient legislative document, the Code of the Covenant, never
mentions the priests, but it may be supposed that the sanctuaries
carried out a kind of supervision, so that the law should always be
referred back to its religious foundations, in proportion to its pro¬
gressive secularization.
The increasing importance of the office caused the person of
the priest to be surrounded with certain prerogatives intended to
make clearer his role as God’s representative. In the exercise of
his duties the priest is clad in a special costume, the epbod; this
word also being that of a cubic image (Jg. 8.26; 17.3; x Sam. 21.9),
we can conclude from it that, by putting on the ephod, the priest
put himself for his part and in the eyes of the people in the position
of the god in whose name he acted and in whose name he pro¬
nounced the benediction, whose presence or absence was a question
of life or death (Num. 6.22-27). The High Priest’s costume is
1 The priest is, like the prophet, in a special relationship with God which Hebrew
expresses by the term knowledge {da'at). Hosea reproaches the priests with
having despised knowledge (4.6) and Malachi (2.7) considers that the duty of the
priests is to preserve knowledge, in order to be able to let the people know the
difference between the sacred and profane (Ez. 22.26; 44.23); this knowledge, which
is at the basis of their torah, makes the priests akin to the prophets; we think,
however, that they can be distinguished by calling the priestly knowledge a
mediated knowledge, which only arises in the framework of an institution, and the
prophets’ knowledge a direct knowledge (cf. H. W. Wolff, “ Wissen urn Gott bei
Hosea als Urform von Theologie ” in Evangel. Theologie, 1952-53, pp. 533ft.).
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 249

charged with symbolic significance: the gold and precious stones

represent God s glory; the breastplate with the names of the twelve
tribes means that he assumes the responsibility of the people as
a whole; the diadem comparable to the headdress of the Nazirites
symbolizes the integrity of the vital force, on which Levitical
prescriptions lay such stress, for reasons which were probably not
altogether of a ritual nature. Yet never in his representation of God
does the priest attain a degree equal to the king’s, or the prophet’s;
these had an immediate link with God, the first through his
enthronement, the second through his calling; the priest’s link with
the deity is only one of an institutional nature. Further the priest’s
human side only rarely appears with a few details; except for Zadok
and Eli we know little about their life, and Ezra owes his biography
less to his priestly function than to his role as doctor of the law.
Within the sacred area in which their activity takes place, the
priests are in the service of the head of the family and later of
the king (1 Sam. 2.35#.). The real initiative in the cultic realm
lies with the king; thus the priest Urijah can only conform willy-
nilly to the directive of King Ahaz, who imposes on him the
construction of an altar of Assyrian pattern (2 Kings i6.ioff.).
They rarely take part in political affairs; only twice do we see them
playing a part other than that of executant of the king’s orders:
Zadok takes Solomon s side against the legitimate heir (1 Kings 1)
and Jehoiada provokes the fall of Athaliah (2 Kings 11). As for
the great religious initiatives, such as the removal of the brazen
serpent in Elezekiah’s reign and the Deuteronomic reformation, they
are the result of prophetic preaching.
The priest s mediatorial function is more exercised in the opposite
direction, that going from man to God. Behind the increasingly
complicated rites which accompany the priestly functions there is
always the care to uphold the election of the people who, to be
Yahweh s people, must be a holy people. To assure this holiness
and to re-establish this holiness, which is ever being freshly com¬
promised, such seems to us to be the priest’s essential function,
as shown in the specially ritual texts. In a religion that is increas¬
ingly insistent on divine transcendence, the priest becomes, through
the permanent contact that he has with divine holiness, the only
intermediary capable of bearing the weight of the faults committed
by the people and of reinstating it into a condition of wholeness
(Ex. 28.38; Lev. 10.17; Num. 18.1), his own person being, more-
 250 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

over, in no way sheltered from the need of expiation, as is brought

out by the expression ‘awon kehunnatkem = the iniquity of your
priesthood (Num. 18.1). This representative function appears
again in the classical expression by which the priest’s investiture
has in all times been designated, mille yad, “to fill the hand”
(Lev. 16.32; Jg. 17.3, 12; Ex. 32.29) and which probably refers to
the gesture which consisted, at the time of the sacrifice, in returning
to the priest the share which was to be offered to the deity (cf. also
Ex. 29.22), and when the Priestly code sees in the Levites the sub¬
stitutes for the first-born which belong by right to Yahweh, it also
intends to make clear that the priests represent the congregation of
the people (Num. 3.12, 41; 8.16, 17).
When the monarchy no longer existed and when prophetic
inspiration was beginning to weaken, the priest eclipses king and
prophet and dons to some extent their mantles. The prifestly
monarchy of Maccabean times will be the outcome of this tendency;
the covenant with Levi will gain the importance that the Davidic
covenant had (Jer. 33.18, 21, a text much later than Jeremiah), and
Malachi s diatribe against the priests is all the more severe because
the dignity ascribed to them is greater; are they not in effect
Yahweh s angels ? (Mai. 2.4). The Messiah himself will
assume a priestly aspect, and in the Zadokite theology the Messiah
son of Levi will tend to displace the son of David (cf. Jer. 30.18-21).1
And since there are no more prophets, the priest may prophesy;
Josephus records that the High Priest Hyrcanus, while offering
incense in the temple, heard a heavenly voice telling him that his
sons had just won the victory over Antiochus (Ant. XIII 10.3), and
the writer of the Fourth Gospel appears to consider it normal that
the High Priest Caiaphas, by virtue of his position, should have the
gift of prophecy (Jn. 11.51). But before drawing all these con¬
clusions from the High Priest’s supremacy the people of Israel
had already found in the priest’s function the expression of its ideal
and the model of its vocation: chosen by Yahweh to be a “ nation
of priests (Ex. 19.6) it hoped for a time when all the redeemed
would be called priests for Yahweh and servants of Elohim (Is. 61.6).

The terms qarab and nagasb which in this text characterize the Messiah’s
activity are current in cultic language (cf. Ex. 40.3iff.; Lev. 21.21; Num: 16.5;
Is. 29.13; Ez. 44.16). On the subject of the priestly aspect of the Messiah in
apocryphal and pseudepigraphical literature, cf. A. J. B. Higgins, “ Priest and
Messiah ”, VT, 1953, pp. 32iff.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 25I

(d) The Wise Man

The wise men, the chakamim, probably formed in the eighth

century a special class, distinct from prophets and priests (Jer. 18.18;
Ez. 7.26) and, by the same title, formed part of the governing elite
of the nation. But even earlier than this we find several references
to the wise who, by their counsel ( etsah), have an active influence
on the course of events. This function was often, it seems, in the
hands of women: it is a chakamah, gifted with powers of divina¬
tion, who informs Sisera s mother about her son’s movements after
the battle (Jg. 5.28-30); it is a wise woman who, through a trick,
obtains Absalom’s return in peace (2 Sam. 14.14), and it is also a
wise woman who obtains the handing over of Sheba (2 Sam. 20. i8f.),
and the town of Abel beth Maachah, where this episode takes place,
seems to have been a centre of wisdom, or at least of good advice
(2 Sam. 20.18). We find wise men in David’s immediate entourage
besides the priests and prophets; it is the counsel of a wise man,
Ahithophel, who gives to events the turning favourable to David’s
final victory, and the narrator does not omit to add that this advice
had the same value as the dabar of Yahweh himself (2 Sam. 16.23).
It is, then, useless to seek the origin of this social class outside
Israel, or at any rate outside Palestine, for in this realm, as in many
others, Canaan1 must have been more than a dependency of Egypt.
But interest in human problems gave to the wise men an horizon
which was not limited by Israel’s frontiers. Since we have proof
of a direct link between certain wisdom writings and Egyptian
documents, we must admit that, among the wise men of Israel,
human interest became more important than specifically Israelite
interest; precursors of free masonry, they took moreover for patron
the least Israelitish and most humanist king of the Old Testament,
King Solomon. Solomon gave a fixed organization to a wisdom
movement that was already in existence and outlined its programme
of action; and so the wise men almost all remained anonymous in
order to place themselves under the authority of that paragon of
wise men.
1 One of the patrons of Canaanite wisdom was Danel, who is less well known to
us than his son Aqhat, to whom a whole cycle of Ugaritic poems is dedicated;
he there appears as a king who metes out justice at the gate for the benefit of
the widow and the orphan (i Aqht, 20-25, ”-5-8); in Ez. 14.14, 20 and 28.3 he
is the type of the wise man; this same figure could also be the prototype of the
figure of Daniel (Dan. 1-6) who, like Joseph, is conspicuous for his wisdom.
 252 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

The activity of the wise is shown in three ways which earlier

characterized the work of Solomon himself. The first is of a literary
and philosophical nature. The wise are writers of maxims, fables
and more developed works like the book of Job; Solomon’s literary
activity, attested by the historians (1 Kings 4.20), cannot be
seriously doubted, although his own literary works are not easy
to identify among biblical texts. The author of the account of
the beginnings, usually called the Yahwist, who was probably a
contemporary of Solomon’s, is like the prophets in his way of
showing the divine directing of events, and like the wise man in the
depth with which he approaches the problems of mankind, such as
the origin of life, the differentiation of sexes and the peculiarities of
language, which have always excited the speculations of philosophers
and scholars.1 This wisdom rarely had a purely non-religious aspect,
it is entirely dominated by the fear of God, but the God of the wise
men is more the one who created the world and who directs it
by his providence than the master of history who views the world’s
destiny through the destiny of Israel.
The field of pedagogy is the second place where wisdom is prac¬
tised. There were in Israel, as elsewhere, schools of wisdom2 where
the art of reading and writing was taught, but where the main
effort of the teachers was directed less towards instruction than
towards the formation of character; through the teaching of the
fear of Yahweh, the young were to learn to respect authority, to
struggle against pride and to give proof in all their ways of a wise
moderation. Yahweh himself, in the garden of Eden, had taught
just this to the first human beings.
But it was in the political field that the activity and counsel
of the wise was to be revealed as particularly successful. Contrary
to the prophets, whose political preaching consisted in stressing the
precariousness of alliances, the illusory nature of military technique,
and in extolling trust in Yahweh, the only master of events, which
in general earned the hostility of the kings, the wise men became
counsellors to the king, suggesting foreign alliances, particularly

1 P. Dubarle s fine book on the Sages d'lsra'el devotes a chapter to the creation
narratives.
2 It may be concluded from texts like Prov. 1.20; 4.5; 8.2; 17.16, that schools
of wisdom existed, where the personification of wisdom might have been inspired by
the masters of wisdom and by the way they talked; but we know nothing precise
about the Israelite schools before the fusion of wisdom with the law, which takes
us beyond the Old Testament.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 253

with Egypt, and Isaiah had difficulty in persuading Hezekiah, full

though he was of kindly feeling towards him, that nothing could
be hoped for from the Pharaoh s help. Even though Israelite
wisdom was to a lesser extent than in Egypt entirely directed to the
royal circle, that is to future officials, it must be recognized that
many of the exhortations of the book of Proverbs were drawn up
solely for this purpose; for to no other person were counsels more
necessary than to the man whose duty it was to take decisions of
an administrative or military nature. And so the disappearance of
the monarchy marks a turning point in the orientation of wisdom.
Henceforth, the king s adviser gives place to the doctor of the law
and in the book of Jesus son of Sirach we see the fusion of the
counsels of the wise with the letter of the law (cf. especially Ecclus.
24-8). Yet, despite this promotion of the doctor of the law, Moses
never succeeded in ousting Solomon completely; by deliberately
taking the great syncretist king as their patron, the wisdom writers
set out to strike a universahst note which would allow Judaism to
become, despite the barrier of the torah, a missionary religion.
The wise, as dispensers of knowledge under its cognitive aspect,
but especially under its practical aspect, are one of the channels
through which God’s presence is communicated to men, and even
though their person itself lacks the religious prestige attaching to
the king, to the priest and to the prophet, they are none the less
a sign, in view of the time when all men will be taught by the
author of all wisdom (Jer. 31.34; Is. 54.13).

(e) General conclusion on the ministries

The aim of all four governing bodies is to assure God’s presence

among his people. The king guarantees God’s rule on earth, the
prophet expresses by his person and his message God’s action in
history, the priest, through the administration of sacred things,
gives reminders of God’s sovereignty over time and space, lastly,
the wise man shows and teaches still more that there is no happiness

1 With Isaiah and Hezekiah, we witness the conflict between prophet and sage.
Hezekiah, while remaining a faithful worshipper of Yahweh, wished to be a second
Solomon, seeking alliance with Egypt and Babylon: we may compare the visit of
Merodach Baladan’s embassy to Hezekiah (Is. 39) with that of the Queen of Sheba
to Solomon. In the political field the prophets’ realism showed itself more effective
than the idealism of the wise men.
254 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

possible outside God’s love. The divisions between the various

functions were never watertight: the affinity between prophet and
priest was very close, the greatest of the sages was at the same time
a king, and the prophet, when not proclaiming a precise message
from Yahweh, spoke in aphorisms and riddles in the manner of the
wise. Only once, at the very dawn of the old covenant, do we
meet the four offices brought together in one person. Moses as
chief of the people exercises royal functions before the fact, the
title of prophet is expressly given to him by tradition (Hos. 12.13),
the priests trace back to him the main body of the priestly organiza¬
tion and Yahweh’s revelation takes nothing away from the wisdom
he had acquired through contact with Egypt. And so Moses,
among all those who exercised ministries, is alone in fully meriting
the title of mediator par excellence; likewise his figure and his
work considerably influenced the presentation of the mediatorial
work of the Servant of Yahweh and of Jesus himself.
The choosing of an elite by God is not contradictory to the election
of the people as a whole, for in addition to the mission of governing
and teaching which was entrusted to them, those particular indi¬
viduals are an annunciatory sign of the kingdom to come and show
to the other members of the nation where their vocation lies while
helping them here and now to make it real.

B. THE PERMANENT SETTING

(a) The sacred place

Every religion recognizes a tension between the remoteness of

God and his nearness. In Israel there existed a very lively feeling
of Yahweh’s presence in the whole universe, due to his power and
spiritual nature, but because of the very personal character of this
same God, who was hardly spoken about except in anthropomor¬
phisms, there was a tendency to localize his presence in a fixed
place where it was possible to meet him perhaps face to face. The
variety of solutions to the problem of the divine presence throws an
interesting light on the types of piety which the divine mystery
evoked; we meet these types rarely in the pure state and in general
the religion and more particularly the place of the cult does justice
both to the present God and to the hidden God.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 255

i* heavenly dwelling-place of Yahweh appears already in

the most ancient strata of tradition; we meet it commonly in the
Yahwist writings (Gen. 11.5; 18.21; 21.17; 22.11; 24.7; 28.12;
tx. 19.11; 20.22), in Deuteronomy (4.36; 26.15), m che Psalms
(2.4; 18.7; 123.1) and in the prophets (Is. 31.4; Mic. 1.2). It is
true that, in several of these texts, heaven is only Yahweh’s
dwelling-place when at rest. To intervene and show himself,
he comes down from heaven. This heavenly dwelling-place was
occupied by Yahweh in common with many other deities. It
was far from being his distinctive feature. Other gods, such as
Baal Shamayim,1 who was, as we know, very widely worshipped
in the Near East from El Amarna times onwards, and whose
activities were all, conditioned by his heavenly role, could easily
challenge Yahweh s sovereignty over heaven, and the story of Elijah
shows us that as late as the ninth century many Israelites thought
that it was more worth while to address Baal than Yahweh to obtain
the gifts of heaven. It was only from the time of the exile that
the temporary absence of the temple and the crisis of the covenant
obliged the Israelites to pay more attention to the heavenly
dwelling-place of Yahweh. Although Stade’s assertion2 3 that
Yahweh rose into heaven only from Ezekiel s time is certainly
exaggerated, it is, nevertheless, probable that it was only from
that time that the celestial dwelling-place became a theological
problem and an article of faith likely to have the same authority as
the divine indwelling among the people or in the temple, themes
that were, moreover, never abandoned, for the heaven was always
considered less as the symbol of distance than of totality; and so
post-exilic texts stress with equal vigour the heavenly dwelling of
Yahweh and his presence among his people. It is only among a
few isolated individuals such as Qoheleth that we find the idea that

1 On the extent of the worship of Baal Shamayim, cf. the article by Eissfeldt,
ZAW, 1939, pp. iff., we must also now add the testimony of the Karatepe inscription
in which Baal shmm figures at the head of a triad beside El, creator of the earth,
and Sbamash 'olam.
Jahweh ist erst zu Hezekiels Zeit in den Himmel hineingewachsen ”, Bibli.
Theol. des A.T., p. 291.
3 The latest Old Testament books show many traces of this celestial supremacy:
the book of Jonah (1.9) calls Yahweh “ the God of the heavens who made the
sea and the dry land ”, heaven, as his specific place, is above the works of creation;
in the LXX version, we also notice a tendency to lay stress on the celestial dwelling
of Yahweh, cf. e.g. 1 Kings 18.36 where the Greek version introduces the words
els r6v ovpav&v which do not appear in the Massoretic text.
 256 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

the celestial dwelling of Yahweh makes him more or less insensible

to what happens on the earth (God is in heaven, thou art on earth,
Eccl. 5.2) and the need of intermediaries only appears in post-
canonical literature.
2. Yahweh’s dwelling on a high mountain is very close to his
heavenly dwelling, since in ancient cosmology mountain peaks
communicate directly with heaven. In Israel the theme of the
mountain of the gods, mythical in origin and of which we have a
few reminiscences, was all the more easily transposed on to an
historical plane because the decisive event for the constitution of
the people took place on a mountain. Yahweh’s dwelling on Sinai
left a deep impression, not only among those who had been direct
witnesses of the theophany, but also many centuries later Sinai was
considered as the pre-eminent place of revelation, and the episode of
1 Kings 19 probably contains an echo of a pilgrimage which the
northern tribes continued to make to Sinai. Many texts suggest that
it was from Sinai and not from heaven that Yahweh set out at the
time of his manifestations (Dt. 33.2; Jg. 5.5; Ps. 68.yff.).
3. Another tradition makes the whole land of Canaan Yahweh’s
dwelling-place: the land is Yahweh s inheritance and outside its
frontiers it is no longer possible to meet him. When pursued by
Saul, David, in banishment from his country, is afraid of being
driven far from Yahweh’s presence (1 Sam. 26.19-20), and
Naaman’s gesture in taking a load of earth from Palestine illustrates
that this belief held something at once touching and naive
(2 Kings 5.15-19).
4. Among the sacred places made by men’s hands, the tent of
meeting, ’ohel mo ed, which accompanied the Israelites during their
migration through the desert, reconciled the demands of God’s
presence and invisibility. To meet Yahweh, Moses set up a tent
outside the camp and Yahweh descended in a column of cloud
which stopped at the tent’s entrance, and Moses spoke with him
as a man speaks with a friend (Ex. 337-11), particularly when dis¬
putes among members of the people made the assertion of the divine
presence and holiness necessary (Num. 11.14#.; 16.19; 20.6#.).
5* While the tent resolved the problem of the divine presence in
the sense of a meeting between God and man, the ark was con¬
ceived, at least in the most ancient tradition, as a real dwelling-place
of the deity. Whether it had the form of a throne1 or, as seems
1 If the ark could have been called the throne of Yahweh, it owes it not to
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 257

more probable to us, and more in keeping with the textual data,
of a chest, it is certain that it was considered as the dwelling-place
of Yahweh, to such a degree that the terms Yahweh and ark of
Yahweh are sometimes interchangeable. The book of Numbers
records the words of invocation, which were addressed to the ark
as much as to Yahweh: “Arise, Yahweh, so that thine enemies
may be scattered and that those who hate thee may flee before
thee.” And when it came to a halting-place, Moses would say:
“Return, Yahweh, to the hosts of Israel” (Num. 10.35-36). The
passage of the Israelites before the ark at the time of the crossing
of the Jordan is passage before Yahweh (Jos. 4.5, 13), and when
at the time of the Philistine wars the ark is brought into the Israelite
camp, the Philistines cry out in fear: “ Elohim has come into the
camp” (1 Sam. 4.7). During the whole period of the conquest,
the ark was sufficient answer to the problem of the divine presence,
and if the representation of the ark as a receptacle of the tables of
the law is not a concept developed from speculation in priestly
circles but corresponds to historical development, we must recognize
the very complete appearance of that theology of the ark which, as
a sacred chest, contained the mysterious and, on occasion, explosive
holiness of God and which as container of the law recalled how God
had bound himself to his people. As a symbol of the deus
abscondttus and of the deus reuelatus, the ark lacked neither
dynamism nor objectivity.1
6. Sanctuaries, the specific dwelling-places of a deity, could be
constituted by natural objects which were endued, for the time
being, with supernatural powers. A stone set upright could confer
a sacred character on a place and create that thrill which is at
the basis of any true religious experience. In the presence of one
of these rudimentary sanctuaries Jacob exclaims: “ How dreadful is
this place; this is indeed the house of God ” (Gen. 28.17); an^ UP
to the time of David it was held that the noise of wind in the
foliage of a tree could be a manifestation of Yahweh (2 Sam. 5.24).

its form, which was quite unlike a throne, but to its association with the cherubim
which stood over it and which were considered in certain texts as the bearers of
Yahweh (Ps. 18.11).
1 The disappearance of the ark of the covenant is probably a pre-exilic event; it
is officially mentioned for the last time in the Chronicles version of Josiah’s reforma¬
tion (2 Chr. 35.3); Israelite piety does not seem to have been specially affected
by it (cf. Jer. 3.16) although the prophet’s assertion of its being forgotten was
not realized to the letter, as is shown by the legend mentioned in 2 Macc. 2.4-6.
 258 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

With settlement in permanent quarters and with civilization, the

religious object provided by nature gives way to buildings which,
with names such as bet, mishkan or heykal, seek to represent the
sanctuary as the dwelling-place of the deity and as a place where
God s presence was considered to be as real as if he were physically
present, even though there was no fashioned image of him. The
dwelling of the deity in the sanctuary did not exclude, however,
his heavenly dwelling-place; thus in Mesopotamia, the temples
which stood at the foot of the ziggurats were places where the deity
appeared and which he reached by using those staircases as a way
down from heaven to earth.1 In the whole of the ancient East the
building of a sanctuary was an act initiated by the deity himself;
the human builders carry out only what is communicated to them
by a revelation. Gudea of Lagash received in a dream2 all the
information necessary for the building of the temple for his god;
Moses builds the tabernacle according to a pattern (tabnit) given
by God himself (Ex. 2^.8ff.); according to the book of Chronicles,
David passes on to Solomon all the data concerning the building
of the temple which he received from the hand of God in person
(1 Chr. 28.11, iqff.), and Ezekiel s temple is presented throughout
as the content of a vision. Because of these premises, it is permis¬
sible to seek the expression of religious realities in the architectural
elements of the sanctuaries. Although we know little more than
the name of the sanctuaries of Bethel, Nob and Beersheba, we are
very well informed about the temple at Jerusalem. This sanctuary
is largely modelled on foreign patterns which it is archaeology’s
business to bring to light; it is none the less certain that the
Israelites tried to express through this building their own beliefs
about the divine presence.3 Indeed, in the temple at Jerusalem
1 The archaeol°gy and theology of the ziggurats have received a masterly
exposition in the works of Andre Parrot, Ziggurats et Tour de Babel, Paris 1040 and
La tour de Babel (Cahiers d’archeologie biblique, no. 2), 1953
• \The teXt °f Gudea s cyllnder was published with a commentary by R. Tournav
m RB, 1948, pp. 40311. and 520s. 1 }
3 It quite probable that the temple at Jerusalem had a cosmic significance.
Josephus asserts (Ant. VIII, 3, 2) that the threefold division corresponds to the
three parts of the universe .sea, sky, earth; perhaps this shows a desire to read too
much into the data, but the symbolic character of certain elements such as the
debir and the sea of bronze would be difficult to confute (cf. also J Danielou “ La
symbohque cosm.que du Temple de Jerusalem " in Symbolisme cosmiaue et monu¬
ments religteux, pp 61-64, and by the same author: Le signe du temple, to,8)
Speculations about Jerusalem and the temple as the navel of the world (omphalos]
express the same belief, the navel being the centre of organic life. F }
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 259

there can be seen a kind of summary of all the answers given to

the problem of the divine presence. Yahweh’s dwelling in the
temple does not contradict his residing in heaven, since because of
the theology of the name, which is considered as a sort of double
of Yahweh, he was able to be present in both places at once
(1 Kings 8.29; 2 Chr. 6.i8ff.), and all the texts agree in declaring
that the limitation constituted by the dwelling of God in the temple
is voluntarily self-imposed. The Sinai theme also finds its place
in the temple; the darkness, ‘arapbel, in which Yahweh chooses
to dwell (1 Kings 8.12) is a reminder of the darkness into which
Moses penetrated on Sinai (Ex. 20.21; Dt. 4.11).
The ark, too, helps to give the temple its prestige, but it was
reduced quite quickly to the rank of a simple ornament and lost
its dynamic power before its finally almost completely unlamented
disappearance at a time that is difficult to determine exactly. Even
the theme of the land finds its place in the temple, which was
the centre, not only of Palestine, but of the entire universe, of which
it sought to be a reproduction. Since the temple had thus exercised
an attractive function which led to the crystallization of various
traditions, it can be understood that piety was determined by it
and became centred within its orbit. There was no image of God
in the temple, but certain architectural features such as the palm
trees and the cherubim constituted a reminder of paradise and gave
to the faithful a foretaste of what he hoped to see established. It
was in the temple and in the temple only that it was possible to
see the face of God and to experience that fulness of power and of
joy expressed by the v/ord shalom, through which man can rise
above time and overcome it, since one day spent in the courts of
Yahweh was worth a thousand spent elsewhere (Ps. 84.11 and Ps.
26.6; 27.4; 42.3, 5; 43.4, etc.). The central place occupied by the
temple in the Psalms, which in many cases were composed in a
milieu of singers and Levites, is not surprising, but the great place
that it occupies in the preaching of the prophets proves that the
temple theme had a theological importance much wider than the
mere cubic observances.
All the prophets agree in declaring that there is a particular and
permanent bond between Yahweh and the temple. Even a prophet
like Amos, apparently detached from all cultic preoccupations,
asserts that “Yahweh makes his voice heard from Jerusalem ” (1.2),
which he therefore considers as his legitimate dwelling-place. How-
 260 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

ever, the prophets envisage the temple less as a dwelling-place than

as the meeting-place of Yahweh and his people; in this they are
linked more closely with the theological current represented by the
tent than with the popular piety which was centred round the ark.
For the prophets, as for the Psalmists, to meet Yahweh is the height
of happiness; but for anyone who fails to fulfil the conditions
indispensable to entry into the sanctuary (cf. Ps. 15 and 24) this
meeting can only be a judgment. The 6th chapter of the prophet
Isaiah expresses in the most striking way all the thought of the
prophets about the temple. The prophet comes to the temple to
meet God and, in his vision, God descending from heaven to the
temple manifests himself in his essential aspect, that of holiness,
through which the prophet becomes aware of his condemnation and
justification. Isaiah s experience in the temple not only summarizes
and foreshadows his own ministry, it has value as an example for
the whole people. Just as his own destiny is played out in the
temple, it is in the temple that his people’s lot will be played, a
people who will find in that stone in its midst either the salvation
which will save or the judgment which will crush (cf. Is. 28.16 and
s' T. j ’ HG2)- order to give concrete expression to this bond
of Yahweh with the temple, the prophets delivered their oracles
in the very precincts of the temple, thus giving a further sign of
the divine authority with which they were endued, by joining the
authority of the place to the authority of their message. Since any
revelation of God is also a revelation of man—we are still thinking
of Is. 6—the divine majesty as it is manifested in the temple places
man in his rightful place before God, a position of obedience and
faith- If. on the other hand, a man takes advantage of the temple
in order to make it a shelter for his pride, that sign of divine pro¬
tection will be taken from him. As early as the time of Isaiah,
the temple had become for many Israelites a sort of talisman which
kept them in illusory security and the Deuteronomic reformation
had confirmed the people in this feeling, rather than produced a
change in depth. It is in this concrete situation that it is fitting to
understand Jeremiah s message; he declared clearly, what Isaiah had
not dared to proclaim and what was not necessary in his time, that
the temple will be destroyed, although not because he considers it
as a useless place destined to give way to more spiritual expressions
of piety. For Jeremiah the temple remains the “ throne of glory ”
and the hope of Israel ” (Jet. 3.17; ,+2Ii ,7.12), but its desttuc-
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 261

tion is motivated by the sin of the people who by giving offence

to God have also profaned his sanctuary (Jet. 23.11). If Yahweh
allows the destruction of his dwelling-place, it is to take from the
people the illusion of a false security before it is too late, and to
force it to go back to the sources and to clear a fresh field (Jer. 4.3;
7.5). In a particularly impressive vision, Ezekiel shows Yahweh
leaving his temple and, by so doing, delivering the people over
to the most terrible of punishments, that of God’s absence (Ez. 8
and 10). The temple, the place of judgment, is also the place
of restoration; the nations will go up to the mountain of Yahweh
(Is. 2; Mic. 4), the redeemed of Zion will again go up to Jerusalem
(Jer. 30.19; 31.4-6, 12) and Ezekiel, who had seen Yahweh leave
his temple that had been defiled by idolatry, makes him return to
his dwelling-place, the holiness of which will be considerably
increased. Even Second Isaiah, anxious to rid religion of its too
material attachments, twice mentions the rebuilding of the temple:
profaned by sin (43.28) it will be rebuilt by Cyrus (44.28). It is
true that in this prophet’s writings the place held elsewhere,
particularly in Ezekiel, by the temple, is occupied by the figure of
Yahweh’s servant. In our view, there is here less a difference of
essence than of perspective; the prophet’s vision goes beyond the
sign to its fulfilment, but both the temple and the servant are the
concentration of the means by which Yahweh manifests his
presence and his salvation. Less animated by the imminence of
the new age and obliged to face up to the hard realities of their
day, the post-exilic prophets insisted on the temple as the visible
sign of the guarantee of the covenant. Haggai reacts against the
tendency to pessimism which is beginning to show itself by pro¬
claiming that the temple, still a pitiful place, will become, by the
intervention of God himself, a manifestation of glory (Hag. 2.6).
With still more force, Zechariah takes up the promises linked with
Yahweh’s presence in the temple; the presence of Yahweh after
returning to his sanctuary will make any other means of protection
unnecessary for Jerusalem (Zech. 2.5) and Gentiles, convinced of
the power of Israel’s God, will rise to adore him in his temple: “ I
too will go,” they will say on all sides (Zech. 8.21). Henceforth,
the temple will be more than ever the centre of Jewish piety; many
Psalms certainly date from this time and the Chronicler presents
a new synthesis of the history of Israel turning on the two poles
of the temple q,nd the Davidic monarchy.
262 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Envisaged as a sign, the temple is not in contradiction with the

revelation of God in history, for the temple itself takes part in the
movement of history, it even takes part in the first place in the
succession of judgments and deliverances of which that history is
made. But its permanence—as a theological theme-—shows that
history develops around a fixed point, that of God’s presence which,
from being hidden, tends to become a dwelling among the people.
By showing the fulfilment in his person of the temple sign (Matt.
12.6; Jn. 2.20), Jesus made clear its provisional and at the same
time necessary value in God’s plan.1

(b) The Cult

Any theology finds its expression in the cult: a theology of

immanence and a theology of transcendence create particular cubic
forms and in any religion the history of changes in the liturgy
gives a fairly exact reflection of theological changes. Yet this cultic
expression is only partial, for while the cult is governed by the great
affirmations of the faith, it is also governed at the same time by
remarkably conservative forces which rite and tradition uphold par¬
ticularly tenaciously long after the disappearance of the thought that
inspired them. In Israel the cult did not escape this paralysing
influence of tradition and we see only rarely in their pure state the
forms which are specific to its religion. In the Semitic world taken
as a whole, the fundamental law of the cult was the distinction
between the sacred and the profane; it was this distinction that
governed the arrangement of the sanctuaries and the development
of sacred times and actions. The Israelite cult was never freed
from this fundamental law and even developed it in all its breadth
at a time when the cult had become for the people the only place
where its election could be shown and practised. It must be recog¬
nized, however, that the essence of Israel’s religion bore it in a
different direction; because of the assertion of God’s sovereignty
over all realms of creation and history, there could be no realm
or time set aside for revelation to the exclusion of others. It is
probable that if Israel had been free to work out all the consequences
of this affirmation it would have finally developed a rather a-cultic
1 Cf. the reflections of S. de Dietrich in the special number of Semeur: “ Pour
comprendre 1’Ancien Testament”, 1954, p. 115.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 263

religion in which the permanence of the election and the covenant

through justice, war, mission and the law would have taken
precedence over truly cultic manifestations. In spite of pointers
in this direction implicit in the demands for justice in certain
prophets (Amos) on the one hand, and in the humanism of wisdom
on the other, Israel did not arrive at a religion which could do
without a cultic expression—at least never in the Old Testament.
Although much indebted to Canaan, whose ritual and cultic places
it adopted to a large extent, Israel succeeded, through the substi¬
tution of history for myth, in breathing a new spirit into identical
forms. Israel’s originality in the cultic field is shown by the priority
of history over myth and of time over space. The revelation of
Yahweh was not linked to a few natural objects more sacred than
others, such as mountains, springs or trees, but he had the freedom
to manifest himself where he wished and the famous text in Ex.
20.24: “In whatever place I give reason to remember my name,
I will come to thee to bless thee,” alludes to the plurality of
shrines, historically attested by the books of Judges and Samuel,
and whose importance was inversely proportional to their multi¬
plicity. Further, this link of Yahweh with the sanctuary was not
regarded as permanent; this is expressed by the use of the verb
shakan: this term, different in sense from yasbab,1 which is never
used in connection with the dwelling of the deity in the sanctuary,
designates a temporary habitation whose transitory and provisional
aspect is well brought out by the figure of the tent. Yahweh’s
dwelling in the sanctuary is a function of time and the sacred places
only exist as a function of sacred times. Everything in the cult was
determined by time and at first by cosmic time. In spite of certain
opinions to the contrary, it may be considered as an established fact
that the Israelites attributed great importance to the year and par¬
ticularly to the moments that marked its ending and renewal: the
year, with its regular rhythm of seasons and lunar phases, provided
the cult with its framework and gave assurance that, in the unfold¬
ing of time, there would be fixed points, the mo'adim without

1 The term yashab is connected with the ark (1 Sam. 4.4; Ps. 80.2; 99.1; Is. 37.16)
but in the case of the ark at least at the time of the Judges when it really was the
only place of the divine presence, mobility weakens the static aspect which the
term contains. It must be said that the theology of the ark represents only one
current of piety, more or less tainted with Magianism, and that the main current
is represented by the theology of the tent which we still find in the New
Testament (Jn. 1.14; Rev. 21.3).
 264 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

which it ran the risk of falling back into chaos (Gen. 1.14). The
link between the New Year1 and the autumn festival of the harvest
indicates that one of its essential aspects was the act of thanks for
benefits received during the past year and conversely the concern
to ensure the same favours for the year that was beginning. The
change of year marked indeed a threat of the return of chaos with
the unleashing of powers of destruction, and therefore made
necessary the affirmation of the forces of creation; and so the thesis
which holds the New Year as the Sitz im Leben of the creation
narrative of Gen. i2 3 in imitation of what happened in Babylon,
deserves the most serious attention. The aspect of the feast which
looked forward to the future was illustrated, principally, by the rites
intended to ensure rain. The scene of Elijah’s sacrifice at Carmel,
which took place in autumn, might well be a rite of the year’s
renewal and Isaiah’s invitation to come with cries of joy to draw
water at the wells of salvation (12.3) seems to allude to a rite prac¬
tised at a particularly solemn moment of the year. However,
nothing permits the statement that the New Year festivities were
accompanied by dramatic scenes, in the course of which the death
of the god involving the return of chaos and his recall to life were
represented by the person of the king. It seems clear, rather, that
Israel remained obdurate to this practice, which was so widespread
in the ancient East and which was diffused in the biblical environ¬
ment, as the Ugantic texts testify. The Canaanite cult consisted
essentially in the integration of human life into nature. Now, since
nature obeys laws which are to some extent instinctive, that inte¬
gration was ensured on man’s side by the exercise of the natural
laws and more especially of sexual functions raised to the level of
orgy, in which union with the deity was realized in its perfection.
It was thus that the impregnation of the woman by the man was
presented as a phenomenon not only similar to, but identical with
the generative power of the earth, which was assured by the
co-operation of the rain and the seed. In this religion man was
only a part of nature which was itself more or less confused with

1 The importance of the year for the Israelites has been contested by Sverre Aalen
Die Begriffe Licht und Finsternis, who thinks that the only alternating of time
which interested the Israelites was that of night and morning, darkness and light
This over-radical thesis has been refuted by S. Mowinckel, Zum israelitischen Neujabr
und zur Deutung der Thronbesteigungspsalmen, Oslo 1952.
3 Cf. P. Humbert, La relation dc Genese 1 et du Psaume 104 avec la liturgie du
Nouvel-An isra&ite ”, RHPR, 1935, pp. 1-27.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 265

the deity. The Old Testament always regarded this form of

religiosity, to which the Israelites more than once succumbed, as a
serious aberration, for it led men away from the attitude of faith
and obedience, the only fitting attitude before God, and from the
attitude of domination and sovereignty, which alone is legitimate
before nature. By transferring the metaphors of sexual life into
the historical field so as to use them as the expression of a covenant
between two unequal partners, the prophets intended to put an
end to any mystic connection between man and nature.
The secondary divisions of the year were also the occasion of
cubic manifestations. The appearance of the new moon was
marked by observances which must have had, on a reduced scale,
the same significance as the renewal of the year (Ps. 81.4; Amos
8.5; Hos. 2.13; Is. 1.13). The association of the Sabbath with the
moon (2 Kings 4.23; Is. 1.13; 66.23) might suggest the possibility
of a relationship between the two which was gradually differentiated
into two independent currents; but since the etymological equiva¬
lence of the Babylonian shapattum, the 15th day of the moon,
with the Hebrew Sabbath is improbable, and since the content
of the two feasts is very different, a lunar origin of the Sabbath
must be considered only with extreme caution. It seems more
likely that from its origin1—that is, from Mosaic times—the
Sabbath was a fixed day set apart, perhaps with the very object of
turning the Israelites from the temptation of lunar cults. It would
be more readily understood from this why this festival became the
supreme holy day. Even the year’s smallest division, the day,
was considered as a victory of Yahweh over chaos, represented by
darkness, with the result that the words for morning and salvation
became synonymous (Is. 8.20; 33.2; 58.10; Zeph. 3.5; Ps. 17.15;
46.6). For this reason, the beginning and the ending of the day
were marked with cubic ceremonies, the morning burnt sacrifice
and the evening offering, by which God’s favour was secured while
thanks were being offered (1 Kings 18.29; 2 Kings 16.15; Ezra 9.4).
If the cult was a revelation of God as creator and was a reminder
that creation must be for ever renewed, it also gave a no less impor¬
tant place to the God of history and to the manifestations of
salvation of which that history had been the scene. According to

1 On the present state of the Sabbath question, cf. the article by N. H. Tur-Sinai,
“Sabbat und Woche ” in Bibliotheca Orientalis, 1951, pp. 14-24, which argues in
favour of a purely Israelite origin of the Sabbath.
266 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Mowinckel’s suggestions,1 which were taken up in a modified form

by A. Weiser and H. J. Kraus, it is probable that the outstanding
events of Israel’s history were not only used in the cult as subjects
for teaching, but also for real dramatic presentation which had the
purpose of making onlookers share in a very real way in those events.
At the time of the Passover, the Exodus was represented down to
the detail of the appearance of those sharing in the Passover meal
“with loins girt, sandals on feet, and staff in hand” (Ex. 12.n).
At the time of the feast of Tabernacles the Israelites had to spend
seven days living in tents in order to put themselves in the position
of their ancestors in the desert period (Lev. 23.43). This feast,
which was the feast par excellence, commemorated in representa¬
tional form the Sinai theophany, the granting of the law and the
conclusion of the covenant. Ps. 81 is probably a fragment of the
liturgy of this feast as it was celebrated in the kingdom of Israel
(cf. the reference to Joseph in v. 6) and it shows us that the great
acts of God and the exhortation to put the law into practice made
the cult into an expression of both prophetic and priestly piety.
The invitation which we read in several places (Dt. 5.3; 26.16-19;
Ps. 95.yff.) to respond “to-day” to God’s call is not explained
solely by the solidarity which unites the people through successive
generations, but supposes some definite act which was to make
that solidarity evident; the insistence on the fact that it was not
“with the fathers” that God concluded the covenant (Dt. 5.3),
but with the present generation, proves that the stress was placed
less on the solidarity and the historicity of facts in the strict sense
than on their actualization. In the cult celebrated in Jerusalem, the
commemoration of events which had marked the foundation of the
city was added to events of the Mosaic period. Psalm 132 has all
the characteristics of the liturgy of an annual festival which cele-
1 Several of the suggestions made by Mowinckel were only appreciated at their
true value several years after the appearance of his Psalmenstudien. The theses of
Weiser and Kraus, while offered ostensibly as a criticism of Mowinckel’s position, are
none the less largely derived from him. Weiser speaks of a feast of the covenant
(Bundesfest) celebrated in the autumn which turned mainly on the dramatic repre¬
sentation of the great facts of history (cf. Einleitung in das A.T. and Die
Psalmen in ATD). Kraus: Die Konigsherrscbaft Gottes, 1951, reconstructs with
a high degree of probability an annual feast of the enthronement of the kings of
the Davidic dynasty, thus clearly moving into the historical field what according
to Mowinckel belonged to the realm of myth. The exposition of Kraus’ ideas can
be found in Die Konigsherrscbaft Gottes im A.T., Tubingen 1951, “ Gilgal. Ein
Beitrag zur Kultusgeschichte Israels”, VT, 1951, p. 181, and Gottesdienst in Israel,
Munich 1954.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 267

bra ted the ark’s removal to Jerusalem and culminated in the oracle
addressed to David on the eternity of his dynasty: Yahweh chose
Zion (v. 13) and Yahweh chose David—these were the two major
themes of the cult in Jerusalem. The conclusion that there was a
cultic drama in existence may also be drawn from the invitation to
come and “see” Yahweh’s works (Ps. 46.9; 48.0; 66.5; 98.3). It
is possible that the cult included (cf. especially Ps. 66.5) dramatic
representations of the great events of the past such as the Exodus
from Egypt and the crossing of the Jordan; but, whether by gesture
or simply by word, the recalling of these events had as its object
the overcoming of chronological and spatial distance and the real
introduction of the onlookers into the presence of the God who not
only acted there and then, but who still acts hie et nunc. All these
reminders, apart from that of the Passover, took place at the time
of the great autumn feast, coinciding with that of the New Year,
which proves how far the cycle of time was put to the service of
history. Thus it is that the creation myth alluded to in Ps. 77
(V. iyff.) is no more than a figurative way of showing God’s inter¬
vention for his people’s salvation; but by putting the language of
myth at the service of history, Israel, consciously or unconsciously,
made a new myth out of history, that is to say a fundamental
structure of thought which could sometimes lead it far from its
anchorage in time.
One theme, however, which did not belong to the history of
the past found its way into the cult: though largely directed
towards the past, the cult also looked towards the future, towards
Yahweh’s final consummation of his kingship. In the Old Testa¬
ment Yahweh’s kingship was an object of hope, but for the
Israelite hope1 is a dynamic reality which literally “stretches”—
for that is the sense of the root qwb—anyone who is animated by
it, determining in this way his present behaviour far beyond the
cultic sphere, although the cult may have allowed it to manifest
itself with maximum intensity, a faithful echo of which is given
in the Psalms. That this hope was made concrete in certain rites
is quite probable, despite the absence of precise indications, but it
should not be concluded that all eschatology found expression in
cultic rites. Faith in Yahweh’s final triumph was strong enough
to do without rites, while in religions lacking eschatology the rite
1 On hope in the O.T., cf. the article by Van der Ploeg, RB, 1954, p. 481,
which brings together all the material concerning the terminology of hope.
268 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

was the only means of ensuring the perpetuation of the revelation.

The representation in the cult of God’s past, present and future
actions leads us to describe the cult as a revelation of God. This
revelation is summarized in Yahweh’s name, the invocation of
which, moreover, is often synonymous with the cult (cf. i Kings
8.43). Linked as it was with the fundamental events of the Exodus
and Sinai, this name contained both a command and a promise.
Since the revelation of Yahweh could only be the revelation of the
holy God before whom evil could not exist, the representation of
his acts implied a requirement and a decision to be made; that is
what is expressed by the rites of judgment1 which, from the most
distant times, must have formed part of the cult, and the importance
of which was stressed by eschatology when it placed them on a
universal plane (Ps. 96.13; 98.8). The cult’s dependence on
history, considered at least by the Yahwist and the Deuteronomist
as the history of God’s promises and judgments, invested it with
an ethical character unparalleled in other religions in which the cult
was and at times was forced to be in opposition to ethics. The
various decalogues, ritual as well as ethical, probably have a cultic
origin intended to state the conditions of entry into the sanctuary
(Ps. 15 and 24), and the sometimes complicated Levitical ritual
would allow no forgetting that the differences between the sacred
and the profane was the expression of the primordial antithesis
between the holy God and sin.
This ethical basis of the rite also appears in the legislation on
sacrifice. The history of sacrifice in the Old Testament is complex;
it is the business of literary and archaeological study to make clear
what is truly Israelite and what is adopted from Canaan, what is
due simply to the cultural influence of the environment, whether
it be nomadic or agricultural, and what corresponds to a religious
purpose. Any wish to form an absolutely coherent synthesis in this
field would do violence to the Old Testament itself, which never
succeeded in unifying either the terminology or the symbolism
of sacrifice. While leaving the question open and adopting a very
general point of view, we believe that it is possible to distinguish
behind the three main forms of sacrifice, gift ('olah, minchab),
communion (zebach, shelamin), expiation (chattat, ‘asham) three

1 We can only form hypotheses about the way in which those judgments received
concrete form in the cult; it is possible that the cult occasionally included rites of
ordeal and liturgies of blessing and cursing analogous to those mentioned in Dt. 27.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 269

aspects of a single purpose which was to ensure the revelation of

God. And so we think that the sacrifice takes its place in the general
purpose of the cult, which is the affirmation of God’s sovereignty.
Ihe believer recognizes that everything comes from God, the
creator and disposer of all things, and he expresses this by offering
to God all or a part of the elements of sacrifice. The cult was the
commemoration of the covenant; and so the act of eating together
with the invisible but present deity—what the Old Testament calls
“eating before Yahweh ” (Ex. 32.6; Dt. 12.18; Jg. 9.27; 2 Sam.
15. n)—expressed in the most tangible form that communication of
life that God makes to man. To receive life from God became a
necessity when human life was threatened either by external
dangers (war, epidemic), or by sin. The sacrifice, then, is the means
of restoring a broken relationship; it must first appease God’s anger
justly roused by sin, it symbolizes next, by the victim’s death, the
death of the guilty sinner, and finally it puts at the sinner’s dis¬
posal an upright life symbolized by the quality and purity of the
sacrificial victims. Without denying the secondary motives, some
of which were strongly tainted with magic, we envisage the sacrifice
as the act through which God reveals and communicates his life-
force, in which man receives infinitely more than he brings and
in which it follows that the sacramental element takes precedence
of the truly sacrificial element.
Man’s participation in the cult can only assume the aspect of
a response. To the word, revealed and announced in the form of
drama and teaching, there comes in answer from man the word
of acceptance. To God’s action in going out to his people there
corresponds man’s answering step: “I come, as it is prescribed in
the roll of the book, to do thy good pleasure” (Ps. 40.8). This
human word may be a collective or individual confession of sin, a
taking of a vow and a confession of faith like the declaration which
accompanied the offering of the first-fruits and whose importance
we have already pointed out (Dt. 26.1- 10). Moreover, the liturgy
left much scope for individual initiative dictated by the circum¬
stances of the moment. Since the work of Gunkel and Mowinckel,
there is general agreement in recognizing the individual Psalms of
lamentation as cubic Psalms, which proves how far the Israelite
cult was from being pressed into a single rigid pattern. Flexibility
of cubic forms is the necessary corollary of the divine revelation in
history, for since inability to repeat itself is characteristic of history,
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

in so far as the cult was an expression of that revelation it could not

be reduced to the repetition of an unchanging rite. Music and
singing held an important place in the cult, for those were the
means through which it was thought possible to give God a response
worthy of his power. The Israelite cult was a cult of praise and it
always remained so in spite of the insistence on expiation from the
time of Ezekiel and the priestly writers.1 From the most ancient
times, praise in the form of brief rhythms beaten out to the sound
of the tambourine accompanied the sacrifices; under pressure from
David, the part played by music took on fresh scope (cf. 2 Sam.
6.15; Amos 5.23). We witness indeed the unfolding of a type of
piety in which praise goes beyond sacrificial symbolism by absorb¬
ing it; Psalms 40 and 30 consider the action of thanks as sufficient,
whether it be accompanied by sacrifice or not, and in a prophetic
flight Hosea expresses himself in an analogous way: “ Let us offer
thee our lips like bulls” (14.3). And the supremely cultic book,
the book of Chronicles, continually makes the point that praise
and brotherly joy form the main thread of the Israelitic cult.

([c) The Law

In all religions law represents an element whose importance

varies, but whose permanence is generally decisive for that religion’s
orientation. According to van der Leeuw,2 the relationship between
law and religion may assume four aspects: (a) the law is an object
of veneration; (b) the revelation of the law like divine revelation
can degenerate into mere observance, as in Judaism and Zoroast¬
rianism; (c) exaggerated observance brings opposition to the law
as a reaction; (d) lastly, in mysticism, the law is completely denied.
In the Old Testament the law, like the temple, is one answer
to the problem of God’s presence; on the one hand it brings out
God’s transcendence and sovereignty as they are expressed by his
word, on the other hand, it shows how God intervenes in the world,
leaving nothing, not even the smallest details, outside his
1 Did the Israelite cult include a preaching element ? The literary type of
preaching is represented in the O.T. by the Deuteronomic exhortations, certain
speeches in Chronicles which are put in the mouths of the prophets and by certain
passages in the prophetic books themselves, but everything leads to the belief that
preaching lay mainly outside the truly cultic realm.
2 Pbaenomenologie der Religion, p. 423.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 271

sovereignty. The legalist form of religion appears only at a relatively

late period. However, it must be recognized that the law was not
grafted on to the religion at one particular time, for it was implied
and required by the central notion of the covenant. The covenant
being in effect the choice by a superior party of another whom
he wishes to associate with his plan, can only be effective if it
takes concrete form in a certain number of laws, which have the
object of permitting those who have been the object of the choice
to lead a life conformed to the new situation into which they have
entered. That is why the most ancient texts mention debarim,
chuqqim, mishpatim, as having a bearing on cubic or moral
ordinances and which, from an early period, were handed on orally
as well as in written form. As initiator and surety of the covenant
Yahweh continually reminds the people of the conditions necessary
for its maintenance. The multiplicity of the terms used brings us
an echo of the diversity of the circumstances in which the Israelite
had to seek a law in order to live in conformity with God’s will.
These laws are words, debarim, a term which suggests their divine
origin and authority, mishpatim or chuqqim, engraved ordinances
which acquire an intangible value through being fixed in writing,
or mitswot, commandments. The term torah, which came to
be the supreme term for law, does not have in the Old Testament
the sense and scope which it is to acquire in Rabbinic writings;
yet its specifically religious origin confers upon it the most important
place in the terminology. At first we find it only in the plural.
According to the circumstances there are torot, divine directives,
but already in Hosea 4.6 and especially from Deuteronomic times,
the word used in the singular designates the body of legislative
measures sometimes summarized in a few brief formulae, of which
the best known and most striking is the one in Mic. 6.8ff. The
verb ^arah, to which the noun torah1 is connected, does not
originally designate divination by means of arrows shot in a certain
direction (2 Kings 13-17; Jg. 18.6), a frequently attested custom in
pre-Islamic Arabia, but has the more general sense of pointing out
a direction; this sense appears, for example, in such passages as
Gen. 12.6 (the indicatory oak tree); Gen. 46.28; Ex. 15.25 (Yahweh
shows them a tree); Prov. 6.13 (a worthless person moreh—makes
signs—with his fingers); Ps. 45.5 (that your right hand may cause
1 Concerning this etymology of the word torah, we are much indebted to G.
Ostborn, Tora in the Old Testament, Lund 1945.
 272 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

you to see wonders). When this indication is given by a superior,

it is also an instruction: Ex. 4.12-15; Is. 28.26; job 34-32, and
when the giver of this instruction is God, it receives thereby an
authority that quite naturally appears absolute. This instruction
should give to man 'die means of walking on a straight path.
Yahweh points out the road, therefore the verb borah is often
associated with derek (cf. Is. 2.3, Yahweh teaches his paths, and
Ps. 23.8-12; 27.x 1; 32.8; 86.11; 1 Kings 8.36). The term derek
had a precise sense; it generally refers to cubic practices; Amos
speaks of the derek of Beersheba (8.14) and, in a passage mistakenly
ascribed to Jeremiah, the term is used in the sense of religion (12.6).
The torab, therefore, is originally a direction which turns people
towards a law. The priests who had the main responsibility of
promulgating the torot (Jer. 18.18) drew either from a traditional
background, or from more direct inspiration, the directions required
by the cases which were submitted to them. That the direction
given by the priest should have been more or less confused with
the road to be followed1 gives no cause for surprise, very often a
kind of osmosis is produced between two neighbouring ideas, so
much so that the word torab is often associated with balak, to walk:
Ex. 16.4; Is. 2.3; 30.20; 42.24; Jer. 9.12; 26.4; 32.23; 44.10, 23;
Zech. 7.12; Neh. x.10-30; Ps. 119.1; Dan. 9.10. The evolution
of the word torab can be compared with that of berit; in both cases
a reality expressing a bond ends by designating a body of rites and
customs.
The Old Testament teaching about the law comprises two aspects
which correspond to the two successive stages of its development.
In the first stage we can define the law as God’s revelation to those
who are in the covenant. The aspect of revelation of the law
appears in the place and manner in which it is presented in legis¬
lative texts. The statement of the law’s provisions is generally
preceded by a reminder of the election and the covenant: “You
have seen how I treated the Egyptians, how I carried you away
on eagle’s wings and brought you to me. Henceforward, if you
obey me and respect my covenant, I will keep you as my
people . . .” (Ex. 19.4#.). Moses has a vision, a revelation of
1 The relationship between law and the path throws an interesting light on the
Old Testament roots of the word of Jesus: “1 am the way, the truth and the
life” (Jn. 14.6). The terms truth and life are always associated with the law, which
is defined as the way; Jesus represents himself therefore as one who carries out the
law.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 273

God s glory, before receiving his instructions; the Decalogue itself

is introduced by a reminder of the Exodus from Egypt, of the
redeeming act which was for Israel the supreme revelation, and the
Shema Israel of Dt. 6 is given in that atmosphere of love which
unites Yahweh with his people. The frequent use in the laws of
the formula (cf. Lev. 18): “I am Yahweh”,1 is a reminder that
the law is a revelation, and the “thou shalt” of the Decalogue
and of other laws in the apodictic style is intended to express that
the law is a revelation before it is an instruction: the “ thou shalt ”
is a corollary of the “ I am ” of Ex. 3.14, for the revelation of God
as a sovereign and present person can only have as counterpart the
revelation of man as a dependent and obedient creature. The law
is always addressed to a well defined group, to the people and more
especially to the people of Israel who were in Egypt, the Exodus
from Egypt being understood in a typological more than an
historical sense: Dt. 4.1; 9.1; 13,11; 15.1; 20.1; 24.18; Lev. 18.3;
19.34; 26.45 etc‘ A foreigner or an Israelite without faith in the
God of the covenant is incapable of understanding anything about
the law. Moreover, there is never any question in the ancient
texts of submitting foreigners to the law of Israel; it is given to the
elected people as a means of being able to live within the covenant.
As this objective needed to be continually renewed, the law too
became modified and underwent adaptations so as to fulfil the better
its role of guide towards salvation. Never in this first stage is the
law considered as a sacrosanct reality, fixed once for all. Never¬
theless it must be recognized that variations in the law turned only
on points of detail and that in its main lines it remained conformed
to its first inspiration. The similarity of a text such as Mic. 6.8ff.
with the requirements of Moses in the Decalogue makes us realize
the continuity of teaching of the torah and the fundamental unity
between the law and the prophets, for on obedience to Yahweh
as the only Lord there was no question of compromising.
The second stage can be characterized by the cleavage between
the law and the covenant. The prophets had announced to the
people the breaking of the covenant as a punishment for sin:
“You are no longer my people, and I am no longer your God”

1 The aspect of revelation in the law is also shown in the frequency of the formula:
“ I am Yahweh ” in connection with legislative texts which were to form part of
the cultic observances, cf. on this subject W. Zimmerli, “ Ich bin Jahwe ” in
Gescbicbte und Aites Testament (Festschrift Albrecht Alt) 1953, pp. 179&.
274 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

(Hos. 1.9) and by announcing a “new covenant” Jeremiah and

Ezekiel naturally understood that the old one was to be annulled.
Events in 587, by temporarily setting aside the covenant and the
framework of its normal functioning, also brought into question
the value of the law. The dilemma arose: was it necessary to
cease using them, to consider them outworn, or, on the other hand,
to keep them while attempting to give them a new foundation?
It was the last solution that prevailed, for the abolition of the
covenant was not considered as final; the prophets had announced
a new covenant which was also to include new laws (Jer. 31.33;
Ez. 36.27); and so the period of the covenant’s rupture was regarded
as temporary and, while waiting for God to carry out the promises
of the prophets, the people held fast to the observance of the law.
The torah of Ezekiel (40-48) brings us an echo of that period of
transition by showing us how it was put to profitable use in the
codifying of a body of law while waiting for the restoration of the
covenant. As events gave little authority for a speedy realization
of these hopes and as the return authorized by Cyrus was far
from corresponding to the re-establishment of the covenant, the
representatives of tradition tried, by maintaining and strengthening
the law, to restore the lost covenant or rather to find in the law
a substitute for the covenant.
This was not less than a reversal of the old order: whereas the
law was formerly the expression of the covenant, it now becomes
the condition of its restoration. It was normal that the law should
assume greater authority from that time forward. Ezra, the man
of the law, becomes the great figure of Judaism and it is not
impossible that the portrait of Moses in the later strata of the
Pentateuch was modelled on him. Henceforward, he who accepts
the law becomes part of the community; this system had the advan¬
tage over the old one of giving a bigger place to the individual
and of allowing Judaism to proselytize. The law is no longer
given by merely belonging to the chosen people, but one belongs
to that people only by accepting the law. The history of Israel
becomes, in this new conception, only a series of examples of men
who were faithful to the law. The piety of a Daniel is made up
almost entirely of ritual and alimentary interdictions; there is
nothing surprising in the law becoming an end in itself, instead of
remaining a means of walking in God’s way. Having become
the foundation of the faith, the law is in certain texts clothed with
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
27 5
a prestige and with qualities which in reality are only becoming to
God alone; it is often personified; people take pleasure in it (Is.
56.1-8) or take a dislike to it (Lev. 26.45), anc^ author of Psalm
119 sees no other goal to his religious aspirations than meditation
on the law: “I take delight in thy law (v. 70). If thy law had
not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction (v. 92).
How much I love thy law. All day it is the object of my medi¬
tations ” (v. 97). It is fitting to emphasize that this veneration of
the law was never felt as a burdensome yoke, but as a very pure joy:
the Jews really found in the law the same power as in the covenant
or the cult. It was only according as, within the limits of this new
situation, salvation became man’s work instead of God’s, that the
religion of the law showed its inability to express God’s presence
in its full scope.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. MINISTRIES

(a) The King

Alt,A., “ Das Konigtum in Israel und Juda”, VT, 1951, p. 2.
Anderson, G. W., “Some aspects of the Uppsala school of O.T. study”,
Harvard theol. Review, 1950, p. 239.
Engnell, I., Studies in Divine Kingship in the Ancient Near East, Upp¬
sala, 1943.
Euler, F. K., Konigtum und Gotterwelt in den aramaischen Inschriften
Nordsyriens ”, ZAW, 1938, p. 272.
Fraine, J. de, Uaspect religieux de la royaute israelite, Rome 1954.
Frankfort, FI., Kingship and the Gods, Chicago 1948.
Gadd, C. J., Ideas of Divine Rule in the Ancient Near East, Schweich
Lectures, London 1948.
Gaster, T. H., Thespis. Ritual, Myth and Drama in the Ancient Near
East, New York 1950.
Gross, H., Weltherrschaft als religiose Idee im A.T., Bonner biblische
Beitrage no. 6, 1953.
Hooke, S. H., The Origins of Early Semitic Ritual, Schweich Lectures,
London 1938.
Johnson, A. R., “The role of the King in the Jerusalem cultus ”, The
Labyrinth, ed. by S. H. Hooke, 1935, p. 73.
Kraus, H. J., Die Konigsherrschaft Gottes im A.T., Tubingen 1951.
Kuppers, W., “ Gottesherrschaft und Konigtum in Israel ”, Internationale
kirchl. Zeitschr., 1935, p. 148.
276 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Labat, R., Le caractere religieux de la royaute assyro-babylonienne, Paris

*939-
Lindblom, J., “ Einige Grundfragen der alttest. Wissenschaft ” (Festschrift
A. Bertbolet), 1950, p. 325.
Lods, Ad., “ La divinisation du roi dans l’Orient mediterraneen et ses
repercussions dans l’Ancien Israel ”, RHPR, 1930, p. 209.
Mowinckel, S., “ Urmensch und Konigsideologie ”, Studia theologica,
Lund 1948, p. 71.
North, C. R., “The religious aspects of Hebrew kingship”, ZAW, 1932,

P- 8-
Noth, M., “ Gott, Konig und Volk im A.T. Eine methodologische
Auseinandersetzung mit einer gegenwartigen Forschungsrichtung ”,
ZThK, 1950, p. 137.
Rad, G. von, “ Erwagungen zu den Konigspsalmen ”, ZAW, 1940, p. 216.
Rost,L., “Sinaibund und Davidsbund ”, ThLitztg, 1947, p. 129.
Van den Bussche, “ Le texte de la prophetie de Nathan sur la dynastie
davidique ”, Eph. th. lov., 1948, p. 354.
Widengren, G., Psalm no och det sakrala kungadomet in Israel,
UUA, 1940.
The king and the Tree of Life in Ancient Near Eastern
Religions, UUA 1951.

(b) The Prophet

Botterweck, G. J., Gott erkennen im Sprachgebrauch des A.T., Bonner
bibl. Beitr. 2, 1952.
Buber, M., Der Glaube der Propheten, Zurich 1950.
Eissfeldt, CX, “ Das Berufungsbewusstsein der Propheten als theologisches
Gegenwartsproblem ”, ThStKr, 1934, p. 124.
Fohrer, G., Die symbolischen Handlungen der Propheten, Zurich 1953-
Giesebrecht, Fr., Die Berufsbegabung der altt. Propheten, Gottingen

i897-
Guillaume, A., Prophecy and Divination, London 1938.
Gunkel, H., “ Die geheimen Erfahrungen der Propheten ”, Schriften des
A.T. 2, 2.
Die Propheten, Gottingen 1907.
Hanel, }., Das Erkennen Gottes bei den Schrift-Propheten, Berlin 1923.
Haeussermann, Fr., Wortempfang und Symbol in der altt. Phophetie.
Eine Untersuchung zur Psychologie des prophet. Erlebnisses, BZAW
58, 1932.
Haldar, A., Associations of Cultic Prophets among the Ancient Semites,
Uppsala 1945.
Hertzberg, H. W., Prophet und Gott, Giitersloh 1923.
Heschel, A., Die Prophetie, Cracow 1936.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 277
Holscher, G., Die Profeten, Leipzig 1914.
Jepsen, A., Nabi. Soziologische Studien zur altt. literatur und Religions-
geschichte, Munich 1934.
Johnson, A. R., The Cultic Prophet in Ancient Israel, Cardiff 1944.
Junker, H., Prophet und Seher in Israel, Trier 1927.
Koehler, L., Deuterojesaja stilkritisch untersucht, BZAW 37, 1923.
Lindblom, J., Die literarische Gattung der prophetischen Literatur, UUA,
i924.
“Die Religion der Propheten und die Mystik ”, ZAW,
1939, p. 65.
Lods, Ad., Les Prophetes d Israel et les debuts du judaisme, Paris 1935.
Mowinckel, S., Psalmenstudien III Kultprophetie und prophetische
Psalmen, Oslo 1922.
“ La connaissance de Dieu chez les prophetes de 1’A.T.”,
RHPR, 1943, p. 69.
Neher, A., Amos, Paris 1950.
L essence du prophetisme, Paris 1955.
Quell, G., Wahre und falsche Propheten. Versuch einer Interpretation.
Giitersloh 1952.
Rad, G. von, “Die falschen Propheten”, ZAW, 1933, p. 109.
Rowley, H. H., “ The nature of prophecy in the light of recent study ”,
Harvard theol. Review, 1945, p. 1.
Scott, R. B. Y., The Relevance of the Prophets, 1944.
Seierstad, I. P., Die Offenbarungserlebnisse der Propheten Amos, Jesaja
und Jeremia, Oslo 1946.
Studies in O.T. Prophecy presented to Professor T. H. Robinson,
Edinburgh 1950.
Volz, P., Prophetengestalten des A.T., Stuttgart 1938.
Widengren, G., Literary and Psychological Aspects of the Hebrew
Prophets, Uppsala-Leipzig 1948.
Zimmerli, W., Erkenntnis Gottes nach dem Buche Ezechiel. Eine theo-
logische Studie, Zurich 1954.

(c) The Priest

Baudissin, W. W. von, Geschichte des altt. Priestertums, Leipzig 1889.

Begrich, )., “Die priesterliche Tora”. Werden u. Wesen des A.T.
BZAW, 1936, p. 63.
Gautier, L., Le sacerdoce dans I’A.T., 1874.
Holscher, G., “Levi ”, Pauly-Wissova. REA XII, col. 2155.
Johnson, A. R., The Cultic Prophet in Ancient Israel, Cardiff 1944.
Kuchler, F., “Das priesterliche Orakel in Israel und Juda ”, Festschrift
W. Baudissin, Giessen 1918.
278 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Mowinckel, S., “ Kultprophetie und prophetische Psalmen ”, Psalmen-

studien 3.
Pedersen, J., “ The role played by inspired persons among the Israelites
and the Arabs ”, Studies in O.T. Prophecy presented to Professor T. H.
Robinson, Edinburgh 1950, p. 227.
Press, R., “Das Ordal in A.T.”, ZAW, 1933, p. 227.
Thiersch, H., Ependytes und Ephod, Stuttgart 1936.
Welch, A. C., Prophet and Priest in Old Israel, London 1936.

(d) The Wise Man

Baumgartner, W., Israelitische und altorientaliscbe Weisheit, Tubingen

I933'
Causse, A., “ Sagesse egyptienne et sagesse juive ”, RHPR, 1929, p. 149.
Dubarle, A. L., Les sages d’Israel, coll. “ Lectio divina ”, Paris 1946.
Duesberg, H., Les scribes inspires, 2 vol., Paris 1939.
Durr, L., Das Erziehungswesen im A.T. und im antiken Orient, Leipzig
1931.
Fichtner, J., Die altorientaliscbe Weisheit in ihrer isr.-jiid. Ausprdgung,
BZAW 62, Giessen 1933.
Humbert, P., Recherches sur les sources egyptiennes de la litterature
sapientiale d’lsrael, Neuchatel 1929.
Meinhold, J., Die Weisheit Israels, 1908.
Pedersen, }., Scepticisme Israelite, Paris 1931.
Rankin, O. S., Israel’s Wisdom Literature, Edinburgh 1936.
Rylaarsdam, }. C., Revelation in Jewish Wisdom Literature, Chicago 1936.
Wendel, A., Sdkularisierung in Israels Kultur, Giitersloh 1934.

B. THE PERMANENT SETTING

(a) The sacred place

Gall,A. von, Altisraelitische Kultstatten, Giessen 1898.

Jeremias, Friedr.,“ Das orientalische Heiligtum ”, Angelos. Archiv. fur
neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte und Kulturkunde, vol. 4, 1932, p. 56.
Moehlenbrinck, K., Der Tempel Salomos, Stuttgart 1932.
Parrot, A., Le Temple de Jerusalem (Cahiers d’archeol. bibl. no. 5), 1955.
Phythian-Adams, W. J., The People and the Presence, London 1942.
Rad, G. von, “ Zelt und Lade ”, NZK, 1931, p. 484.
Schmidt, Hans, “ Kerubenthron und Lade ”, Eucharisterion (Gunkelfest-
schrift 1), 1923, p. 120.
Schmidt, Martin, Prophet und Tempel. Eine Studie zum Problem der
Gottesndhe im A.T., Zurich-Zollikon 1948.
Westphal, G., Jahwes Wohnstdtten, Giessen 1908.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 279

(b) The Cult

Alt, A., Die Urspriinge des israelitischen Rechts, Berichte fiber die
Verb. d. sdchs Akad. d. Wissensch. Phil.-hist. LI, Leipzig 86 vol.,
tome 1, 1934, reproduced in Kleine Scbriften. t. 1, pp. 2y8ff.
Die Wallfah rt von Sichem nach Bethel, Abhandl. der Herder
Gesellscbaft, vol. 6, no. 3, 1938, reproduced in Kleine Scbriften t. 1,
pp. 79ff.
Hooke, S. H., The Origins of Early Semitic Ritual, Schweich Lectures, 1935.
Humbert, P., Problemes du livre d’Habacuc, Neuchatel 1944.
La relation de Genese 1 et du Psaume 104 avec la liturgie
du Nouvel-An israelite ”, RHPR, 1935, pp. iff.
Kraus, H. J., Die Konigsberrschaft Gottes im A.T., 1951.
“ Gilgal; ein Beitrag zur Kultusgeschichte Israels”, VT,
i95i.
Gottesdienst in Israel. Studien zur Geschichte des Laubhiit-
tenfestes, Munich 1954.
Mowinckel, S., Psalmenstudien, Oslo i922ff (6 volumes).
Zum israelitischen Neujahr und zur Deutung des Thron-
besteigungspsalmen, Oslo 1952.
Religion und Kultus, Gottingen 1953.
Noth, M., Vberlieferungsgeschichte des Pentateuch, 1948.
Pedersen, J., “ Passahfest und Passahlegende ”, ZAW, 1931.
Snaith, N. H., The Jewish New Year Festival. Its Origins and Develop¬
ment, London 1947.
Wellhausen, J., Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels, 6th ed., 1927.
Wendel, Ad., Das Opfer in der israelitischen Religion, Leipzig 1927.

(c) The Law

Daube, D., Studies in Biblical Law, Cambridge 1947.
Noth, M., Die Gesetze im Pentateuch, Halle 1940.
Ostborn, G., Tora in the Old Testament, Lund 1945.
 PART THREE

OPPOSITION TO AND FINAL

TRIUMPH OF GOD’S WORK

I. SIN AND REDEMPTION

T he idea of sin is the converse of the idea of God.”* 1

God is strength and his whole action tends only to give
strength and life; sin, on the contrary, which assumes the
aspect of a hostile force only in the latest Old Testament texts,
always produces a state of weakness which is a forerunner of death.
God is the one who enters into relationship and who makes the
covenant, sin is a breaking of this relationship. "Your sins,” says
one prophet, make a separation between you and God ” (Is. ^9.2).
The whole of the sin vocabulary confirms this fundamental aspect
of breaking: chattat is the missing, the abandoning, of the straight
road, awon is to turn aside or to become lost, shown not only in
act but in thought, ma'al is unfaithfulness, finally pesha2 expresses
open rebellion. Wherever sin shows itself, it destroys communion
with God and delivers man to himself or to evil forces.
Although absent from the rest of Israelite tradition, the explana¬
tion given in Genesis, concerning the origin of sin, is one that has
the greatest theological importance. If the Yahwist connected sin
with the serpent, it is not only because this animal symbolized
1 Gelin, Les idees mattresses de VAncien Testament, p. 66.
2 Pesha' is always rebellion; in one of the oldest texts in which it appears (Ex. 22.8,
Covenant Code), it signifies an attack on the rights of others; cf. L. Koehler, “ Ein
Beitrag zur Kenntnis des hebraischen Rechts ”, ZAW, 1928, p. 213.
The ambivalent aspect of the serpent is common to many religions; we meet it
in Egypt and Babylon as well as in Greece; but while these religions give particular
stress to the life-force aspect, the Old Testament, adopting once more the opposite
to Canaanite beliefs, stresses its deadly role. Furthermore, it seems almost certain
281
282 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

cunning and mystery more than others: in Semitic religions, the

serpent was associated with the representations of chaos and death;
hostile to life, it carries within it the poison which kills; but the
serpent was also associated with the vegetation and fertility cults,
in which it symbolized the vital force of the earth. It may be said,
then, that sin as it appears in the Paradise narrative is a power of
death which definitely deprives man of all possibility of eternal life
and at the same time a life-force which, for the time being, assures
man of superior knowledge, particularly in the realms of intelligence
and sexuality. Sin comes from outside, it is an objective reality,
it is the incarnation of forces which are hostile to Yahweh and to
which man appealed for salvation. And so the identification of
the serpent with Satan which is stated for the first time in the
Wisdom of Solomon (2.24) and which passed into the New Testa¬
ment (Rom. 16.20; Rev. 12.9 and 20.2) only draw's the final
consequences of what the story-teller in Genesis had already
glimpsed. The serpent metaphor seeks to insist on the mysterious
and sudden appearance of sin, even more than on its external
character, it appears as suddenly as God himself and it seems some¬
times that God’s presence brings about that of sin as a sort of
corollary. The widow of Zarephath, in the presence of the man
of God, is suddenly haunted bv her sin (1 Kings 17.18) and
the prophet Isaiah has a vision of his sin at the very moment of
a vision of God. Another Genesis text which is quite difficult
to translate also insists on the mysterious quality of sin, com¬
paring it with a demon which lurks in front of a house door

that there was a connection between the name of the serpent and that of Eve.
Lidzbarski has pointed out the interest of a Carthaginian votive inscription where
these words appear: chawwat ’elat malkat = goddess and queen Chawwat, the name
of a goddess of the underworld (Eph. fur semit. Epigraph., 1, 2bff.); in Aramaic
and Syriac the serpent is cheu/iya, in Arabic we meet chayya besides other names;
in northern Abyssinia a diabolical serpent called cheway is known; to all this we
may add that Philo says that the serpent was called 4v irarpiip yXibrrxi ’Eua, that
is, Eve (De agricultura, par. 95, ed. Cohn-Wendland, t. 2) and that Clement of
Alexandria holds the same view (Protrept. 2, 12, 1-2). In the light of all these
parallels, the text of Ecclesiasticus (40.1) takes new point: “ God has given much
trouble, and a heavy burden is put upon men, from the day when they come forth
from their mother’s womb to the day when they return to the mother of all the
living.” The Eve-earth-serpent relationship seems a well established fact, but it
is not less clear that the Genesis narrator expressed a deeper truth with the help
of these data. Other parallels on the symbolism of the serpent may be found in
the work of T- Coppens, La connaissance du bien et du mal et le peche du paradis,
Louvain 1948.
 and lies in wait for the slightest opportunity to rush upon its prey
(Gen. 4.7).’
There is no contradiction between the external origin-of sin and
its seat within a man s body. The serpent and man are both taken
from the earth, from the 'adamah, and though the serpent has a
closer link with sin, man also bears within himself, by reason of
his creation from the earth, an innate and permanent propensity
towards evil. The Yahwist creates no illusion for himself about
man s natural goodness: “The thoughts which are formed in the
heart of man are evil from his youth” (Gen. 6.5 and 8.21). The
prophet Jeremiah often speaks of the evil inclinations of the heart
fi6.i2; 17.9; 18.12) and looks on sin as a kind of congenital illness
in man stemming from his condition as a created being and not from
his fall. 5
There is no man who commits no sin (1 Kings 8.46). None
can say: I am free of all sin (Prov. 20.9). There is no righteous
man upon earth (Eccl. 7.20). Man, taken from dust, could never
he pure before him who created him (Job 4.17-21; 14.4). Certain
Psalmists use this state of man as an argument to justify and claim
God’s mercy; because man is dust God must forgive (Ps. 7878;
io3-io> r43-2) and the author of Psalm 51 asserts the universality
of sin by depicting every man as bringing with him, when he enters
the world, a propensity towards evil. The same idea is again
expressed by a post-exilic prophet: God does not give free rein to
the burning of his anger because he created men as feeble beings
(Is. 57.16).2
The sickness metaphor to designate sin was all the more sugges¬
tive as sickness in its proper sense was always considered, according
to the classical Israelite idea, as a direct result of sin. We find it
in Hosea (5.13; 6.1; 7.1; 11.7), in Jeremiah (3.22ff.), in Second
Eaiah (53.5; 57.17#.), as well as in several Psalms (6.3; 30.3;
107.18; 147.3).
For the most part, however, the Old Testament speaks of man as
a sinner, not because he is of human kind, but because he has rebelled
against his God.3 For every man is in relationship to Yahweh and
1 The verb rbts is associated with demons in Isaiah 13.21 and in Babylon rabitsu
is the name of a demon.
2 It is only in the book Ecclesiasticus that we first find the statement of a cause-
effect relationship between Adam’s sin and that of humanity (Ecclus. 25.24).
3 What may be termed the finitude of man is distinct from his guilt, even though
it prepared ground favourable for guilt. Finitude is based on the difference between
284 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

this relationship is not essentially that of creator and creature, but

that of two persons: man is God’s partner, for whom he has made
it possible to respond and before whom he has set the necessity of
choosing. Sin is to refuse to choose God and, consequently, the
breaking of this relationship. In the Garden of Eden, man could
normally have listened and should have listened to the voice of
Yahweh, whose prohibition against the eating of one tree was a very
little thing in comparison with the pleasures that were granted,
and the serpent’s temptation, despite its seductive power, was not
unavoidable. Sin is presented as a rebellion : finding it unbearable
to be content with much when he thought it possible for him to
grasp everything, man rebelled against his divine partner in order
to seize, as his booty, the gift that had been withheld. According
to the Genesis myth, this gift consisted in the knowledge of good
and evil, which probably means total knowledge1 and, since for
the Hebrew mentality knowledge is more dynamic than intellectual,
a total power which would have made him like Elohim. To know
anything is to have power over it; now Yahweh does not wish man
to be his equal, because that would rupture the relationship and
the filial bond which should remain as the one binding man to
God. The sinner always appears as the one who rebels against his
God or against his neighbour. Even when the sin is only the
transgressing of a prohibition, it is considered by Yahweh as an
act of disobedience which provokes his anger, for the divine
presence, even in a material form like the ark, is always that of the
personal God, at any rate in Yahwist theology. Cain’s sin, jealousy
of his brother, is the replica of Adam’s—jealousy of Yahweh’s
orivileee. The prophets always speak of sin as a responsible act,
as a refusal to obey an appeal or an order; the same Yahwist writer,
to whom we owe the story of the beginnings, expounds in the
Pentateuch how to the initiative of God, to whom they owed their

God and man in the order of creation, while guilt consists in the antithesis between
holiness and sin. Cf. on this topic P. Ricoeur, “ Culpabilite tragique et culpabilite
biblique”, RHPR, 1953, p. 285.
1 We feel in fact that the mention of two opposed realities expresses some com¬
plementary relationship between them. What Yahweh forbids is neither moral
awareness nor intellectual discernment, but complete knowledge; this awareness is
beyond the reach of the child or of the old man in his second childhood (Dt. 1.39;
2 Sam. 19.36); now what Yahweh requires of man, is unconditional obedience which
will keep him inside the limits set for him (cf. on this topic G. Lambert, “ Lier-
delier, l’expression de la totalite par l’opposition de deux contraires ” in Vivre et
penser, Rechercbes d’exegese et d’bistoire, 3rd series, Paris 1944, pp. 91ft.).
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 285

freedom, the people replied by repeated refusals, wilfully closing

their hearts to the divine appeal, to such a degree as to become
finally and permanently insensitive to the call: that is what the
Old Testament calls the “hardening of the heart”1 in which the
initiative is from God himself, but of which only those who are
themselves already wilfully and consciously hardened are the object.
The prophet Jeremiah, to whom we owe the most profound medi¬
tations on the subject of man’s relationship with God, expressed
in a well-known word the power that indefinitely repeated sin can
exert in transforming human nature: Can the Ethiopian change
the colour of his skin or the panther eradicate the spots from his
hide? Of yourselves, it is impossible to do good, so accustomed
are ye to doing evil ” (13.23). The habit of doing evil creates a
sort of second nature to which there is no other remedy than an
intervention by God, who will have to bring in a new circumcision
of the heart, which has become infinitely wicked, in order to remove
the obstacle which has grown up between man and himself (Jer. 4.4;
I7-9)- This refusal, according to the prophets, includes different
aspects: for Amos, it is ingratitude, for Hosea, unfriendliness, for
Isaiah, pride, for Jeremiah, falseness concealed in the heart, for
Ezekiel, open rebellion but always it is the breaking of a bond.
Just as on the human plane sin brings the breaking of the social
and ramily bonds, sin against God brings separation from God;
every time a man sins, he re-lives Adam’s experience and goes far
from the face of Yahweh.
Is this sin of rebellion and refusal as universal as the weakness
inherent in the created state? Indeed the Old Testament often
makes a distinction between the sinner and the righteous man: 2 it
sometimes happens that some men claim to be pure from all sin
(Ps. 18.24; Job 33.9), and so the “ all have sinned ” only corresponds
in part to the teaching of Israel. Efowever, when the Old Testa¬
ment considers universal history as a whole, it makes no distinction

1 The main O.T. texts on the hardening of the heart are Ex. 4.21; 7.3; Is. 6.10;
29.10; Ps. 95.8; it is produced less by absence than by excess of revelation, a point
which stresses man’s responsibility. We must further bear in mind that the
O.T. is unaware of second causes and ascribes to God events which depend on the
human will and that it draws no further distinction, so important for us, between
what God wills and what he allows. On the problem of hardening of the heart,
see the study by Franz Hesse, Das Verstockungsproblem im A.T., BZAW, 1954.
2 When the O.T. distinguishes between sinners and righteous it adopts a
sociological standpoint rather than an ontological or moral one; the indispensable
distinctions which society makes no longer exist in God’s eyes.
286 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

between sinners and the righteous; at the time of the flood, it was
not said that Noah was sinless but that he had found grace, which
rather implies that he was no exception to the general rebellion,
and in the pictures of eschatological judgment the Remnant that
will be saved is not necessarily composed of the righteous, for upon
them too the catastrophe will fall, but it is solely the grace of God
itself which determines the composition of this Remnant. The
prophets, who had closer relationship than ordinary men with God,
never dreamed of denying their own sin (cf. Is. 6; Jer. i, etc.),
On the contrary, they ask to be freed from it, and the fact of being
a prophet does not preclude a new conversion (Jer. 15.19).

By sin man places himself in a state of guilt. Among the terms

denoting sin ‘awon is the one that most nearly corresponds to what
we understand by guilt. Thou hast taken away, says the
Psalmist, “ the ‘aiuon chatta’ti ” (Ps. 32.5). This guiltiness generally
comes to light as soon as the sin is committed: Adam and Eve are
afraid and hide from Yahweh, the guiltiness of Uzzah, who touched
the ark in spite of orders to the contrary, is not long in being
manifest since he is struck down (2 Sam. 6.6), and the sinner’s bad
conscience is illustrated by many examples (1 Sam. 24.6). “ David’s
heart smote him because he had cut off the skirt of Saul’s robe”
(2 Sam. 24.10). The same expression is met in connection with
David’s census. The fault is often compared with a weight that
must be carried by the transgressor (Gen. 4.13; Is. 1.4) or with
a measure that will finally overflow (Gen. 15.16; 43.9; 44.16; Is.
40.2). Because of the solidarity which holds all the people together,
the punishment falls not only upon the one who committed the
evil but also upon those about him;1 the whole country, even
inanimate nature, can be defiled by the fault of one man; but in
a general way the fault weighs more heavily on the one who com¬
mitted the act and gives him the feeling of his sundering from
God. Under the increasing influence of a legal conception of life,
which did not leave the religious field outside its ambit, the notion
of fault tends to become more materialized; sin is no longer the
breaking of the bond with God, but simply the transgression of
a commandment of the law which can be sufficiently repaired
according to the rules of casuistry which make a distinction between
1 Other examples of collective punishment are found in Gen. 9.5; 42.22L;
2 Sam. 1.16; 4.11; 1 Kings 2.32; 21.iff.; 2 Kings 9.7.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 287

the various sins. It is obvious that the feeling of guilt takes on a

very different aspect when confronted by a catalogue of laws from
what it has before the living holy God.
hvery fault brings punishment. This is a necessity, firstly
because the offence against God must be repaired, then because it
is incumbent to eliminate the contagious poison that sin is from
the midst of the people, and finally because the sinner himself must
be penalized, dhe punitive action of Yahweh is exercised accord¬
ing to the principle which dominates Israel legislation: the lex
taiionis. “God repays what I have done,” exclaims Adom-bezek
when his thumbs and big toes are cut off as a punishment for
the same mutilation which he had inflicted on seventy kings (Jg.
1.7). Eve, who, before the fall, guided Adam’s desires as she
willed, is thenceforward condemned to become her husband’s slave,
the builders of the tower of Babel who wish to stay together are
condemned to be scattered, the people who abandon Yahweh to
prostitute themselves before foreign gods will be actually trans¬
ported to a foreign land, far from Yahweh’s face. Man is so far
responsible for his rebellions that his punishment appears as the
sanction of a state in which he has deliberately placed himself:
man has separated himself from God—he will obtain death. The
sanction of sin is to involve man still more deeply in sin so that he
weaves about himself a web from which it will be impossible for
him to escape.
Iniquity is a burden that weighs so heavily on the land that it
makes it fall (Jer. 6.19), or a crevice in a wall (Is. 30.13); it means
that the sinner s conduct does no harm to God but falls back upon
the sinner’s own head (Is. 3.9; Jer. 7.19; Ez. 22.31); in the persons
of King Saul (1 Sam. 17 to 20) and of the Pharaoh of the Exodus
(Ex. 7 to 9), the Old Testament offers two instances which may be
considered as typical of the power of sin revealed to its ultimate
consequences. God acts according to the lex taiionis, yet he does
not link his punitive action with this legal form. God obeys only
those laws that he himself fixes; he is certainly offended by sin but
he retains the liberty to react according to the lex taiionis or the law
of anger or of mercy. Cases in which God punishes outside the
lex taiionis are relatively few: when for the sin of one person all
the people are struck, Yahweh seems to conform to the principle of
collective vengeance; so it is wise to notice that in these cases sins
committed by kings are involved and kings are the incarnation of
288 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

and responsible for the people, so that the king’s sin visited upon
the people is not a derogation of the lex talionis. Further, it some¬
times happens that in connection with some particular sin God
shows an anger which seems out of all proportion to its gravity;
but it must not be forgotten that, when God punishes, he is
regarding not a particular sin, but the uninterrupted succession of
sins and that the offence can provoke his anger at a moment when
man least expects it (cf. Is. 18.4!!.), for what counts before God
more even than the punishment of sin is his will to rule and his
plan to establish his kingship; although this kingship is manifested
only at the price of a rupture, the day of Yahweh, the final judg¬
ment is already made partially real in each of the judgments which
take place in the unfolding of history.
God also is free to grant mercy. Mercy is not the cancellation
of punishment; but it takes away from it its aspect of irrevocable
condemnation. In every sentence pronounced upon the first human
beings, mercy modifies the punishment: the pains of childbirth,
despite their violent nature, are the preliminary to the most beautiful
of promises. When driving men from the Garden of Eden,
Yahweh is careful to make clothes for them so that they can bear
the rigours of a less clement climate. In a general way, it may be
said that God acts only rarely in accordance with the violence of
his anger, which, moreover, corresponds to strict justice; it is thus
that he shows patience, generally intervening only after repeated
warnings (Amos 4.6ff.) and that precisely because he is God and
not man (Hos. i x .8). There are cases, doubtless, where the death
of the sinner is the only means of eradicating the sin, but this
represents the exception when logically it should represent the
norm: the man who turns his back on God forsakes life for death;
if he does not die, it is because God tempers justice with mercy:
“God chasteneth but doth not give over to death” (Ps. 118.18).
And so the punitive aspect which figures in punishment is counter¬
balanced and even dominated by the educative aspect. Whether
the people or isolated individuals are involved, punishment is
intended to set right again and to bring back on the right road the
one or the ones who have turned aside from it. The story of Joseph
and his brothers illustrates in typical manner this process of punish¬
ment by education: the brothers are chastised so that they may
recognize the evil they have done to Joseph. To lead to the
awareness of sin by way of punishment is the first stage of the
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 289

divine pedagogy. This awareness is revealed by the confession of

sins which, by giving glory to God and by recognizing its own
faults, produces a true liberation of which several Psalms bring an
echo: 32.3-5; 38.19; 39.2b. By recognition of his sin, man must
learn to hate it, for when confronted with punishment and the
mercy which has held back from the full penalty, man will be
ashamed of his sin (Ez. 16.59b.) and especially will the aware¬
ness of his sin lead to a renewed awareness of God. “They shall
know that I am Yahweh.” This phrase frequently recurs in
Ezekiel’s mouth when he shows God’s action towards his people
in the form of judgment and of mercy (Ez. 24.27; 25.7; 29.16;
30.19; 32.15; 33.29, etc.). Even when God pardons he does not
hide the sins, on the contrary he displays them to the guilty man
so that the latter may experience the greater horror of them. The
Wisdom writers likewise stress the educative value of chastisement
and readily ascribe to God the usual methods of their own peda¬
gogy: to chastise and to set right again (Job 15.17; Prov. 3.12).1
What Yahweh seeks to obtain by punishment is the sinner’s
return and the possibility of a new life. Conversion is the indis¬
pensable condition of forgiveness; without it, all the means of
forgiveness which God has made available run the risk of being
inoperative. This act is expressed by the Old Testament by means
of various forms of the root shub, which expresses both return and
repetition. The common exhortation of prophetic preaching to
“return”, means Israel’s return to its origins, that is to the pure
and unalloyed covenant with Yahweh which in the prophetic view
has been substituted for paradise as the ideal period. This return
necessarily implies a breaking of relationship: to return to Yahweh
must bring the forsaking of foreign gods (Hos. 2.9) and of certain
cubic and cultural forms incompatible with Yahweh: political
alliance and trust in military force are just as much signs of unfaith¬
fulness because they are a challenge to Yahweh’s sovereignty. “ It
is by return, sbubah,2 and by quietness that you shall be saved! ”
1 Some interesting information on the pedagogical principles of the wisdom writers
is to be found in P. Humbert, Recherches sur les sources egyptiennes de la litterature
sapientiale, 1929 (chap. 9), and in L. Durr, Das Erziehungswesen im A.T. und im
antiken Orient, 1932.
a Except for Isaiah 30.15 where we meet the noun sbubah the O.T. only uses
the verb to express the fact of conversion; so conversion can never be considered as
a quality that man could possess as his own; in the O.T. there are no converted
men, but only beings who are incessantly converted. The term tesbubah which is
to be widely used in Jewish theology from Rabbinic times onwards is used in the
 290 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

says Isaiah to those who put their hope in an alliance with Egypt
(30.15). It was Jeremiah especially who drew from the root sbub
all the overtones of meaning contained in the word. Not only
does he stress the moment of breaking by putting the term in
relationship with min, a construction unknown before his time (Jer.
15.7; 18.8; 23.14, 22; 25.5; 35.15; 36.3 and 7; 44.5), but he shows
that the renunciation of certain rites and customs is not enough
unless it is done with the heart. Without the heart, the return
runs the risk of being a deceit (3.10); he had experienced the fact
that the best intentioned religious reforms were incapable of pro¬
ducing a real conversion which would be be’emet, bemisbpat and
bitsedaqah. Such a return can only be the business of each indi¬
vidual : before Jeremiah, the prophets address their exhortations to
conversion to the people; now—and all the later prophets will
adopt this language—this is the order that resounds: Sbubah na
’ish middarko bara'ab, “ Let every one turn from his evil way ”
(Jer. 18.11; 25.5; 26.3; 36.3, 7). The initiative of this return
belongs to God himself; just as he will bring in the great eschato¬
logical turning point, the sbub sbebut, he it is who, even now,
makes it possible to return to him: “Cause me to return and I
will return! ” (Jer. 31.18). “Cause us to return to thee and we
will return” (Lam. 5.21). In Zech. 1.3 God’s return seems to
depend on the people’s and in the great public prayer which Psalm
80 represents we find three times the request: “ Hasbibenu! ’’—
“ Make us return ” (4, 8, 20).1

Since sin is a separation from God and an offence against God, it

can only be effaced by an act of forgiveness. In Israel, faith in the
love and faithfulness of Yahweh was so great that the possibility of
pardon was never doubted, not that it was thought that laws could
be fixed for God who, people knew, would do what seemed good
to him (1 Sam. 3.18; 2 Sam. i6.ioff.), but to fall into God’s hands
(2 Sam. 24.14) was to trust in the Living God who could not in
O.T. in a temporal sense only (return of the seasons, for example) and is never
associated with the religious attitude. On this topic, cf. the very thorough study
by E. K. Dietrich, Die Umkehr im A.T. und im Judentum, 1936, and the more
recent study which puts the problem on to a more theological plane by H. W. Wolff,
“Das Thema ‘Umkehr’ in der alttestamentlichen Prophetie ”, ZThK, 1951, p. izg.
Since the verb is used in an absolute sense, without a preposition to indicate
direction, it could also be translated as “ Re-establish us this is the interpretation
adopted by the Jerusalem Bible and by O. Eissfeldt in Geschichte und Altes Testa¬
ment, Festschrift A. Alt., pp. 65ff.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 291

the last analysis desire the death of his creatures, sinners though
they be. Since God created man weak and consequently inclined
to sin, he will also have pity on him (2 Sam. 14.14; Ps. 78.38;
89.47-49; 103.14-16; 143.2; 144.3). But real motive for God’s
pardon is to be found in the bond by which he freely linked himself
with his people, by love, and by what is expressed by the term
chesed. Sometimes this love is momentarily turned to anger.
Nevertheless, it remains God’s dominant feeling, a feeling which
does not leave him, even when he must chastise (Hos. 11.8ff.) and
which through the suffering inflicted upon him by the fact of
man’s rebellion is still more strengthened by becoming self-sacrifice
and self-giving. God’s pardon does not have the same scope in all
Old Testament texts. In one of the most ancient texts in which
God’s pardon is mentioned God responds to the request for pardon
by an act of repentance (Am. 7.2ff.). God’s repentance pushes mis¬
fortune away, for the time being, and can, therefore, be considered
as an act of deliverance, but, as is evident from the selfsame text
in Amos, it does not destroy the deep cause which produced the
misfortune. A God who repents of his anger, following the
repentance of men or simply obeying his own feelings—such
appears to be the main line of pardon in the Old Testament, which
insists less on the disappearance of the fault than on its being for¬
gotten. Forgiveness as an individual gesture which removes the
sin erected as a barrier between man and God appears essentially
in the cultic sphere, where sin is regarded as an objective reality
which loads man with the weight of God’s anger so long as that
weight is not removed by some precise gesture, rite or declaration.
If in the main this pardon consists in a limited—and renewable—
act the Old Testament also gives a more profound notion of pardon
which does not consist in the removal of a fault, but in a single
definite act which will allow man to have normal relationship with
God. The prophet Isaiah, confronted with the revelation of God’s
holiness, experiences his own impurity so deeply that he thinks he
will die as a result (Is. 6.5); only an act of pardon in which Yahweh
himself takes the initiative will provide the possibility of re-estab¬
lishing the relationship and of giving him a more effective and
lasting ability than before his call. Similarly the pardon entreated
by the faithful men to whom we owe Psalms 51 and 130 consists
not in the re-establishment of a particularly compromised exterior
situation, but in the regeneration of heart and spirit. The
292 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

etymology of the general term salacb,1 to express pardon, turns us

towards the idea of sprinkling and shows up the ritual element;2
but much more light is thrown on the Old Testament teaching
about redemption by three other roots: the root ga’al, which
expresses a feature of family law,3 stresses the protective aspect.
The go’el is the particular kinsman who has the right—and the duty
—to avenge blood {go’el haddam : Num. 21.28; Dt. 19.6; Jos. 20.3;
2 Sam. 14.11) or to marry the widow of his nearest relative (Ruth
3.13). This right is spoken of as a redeeming; by asserting that
Yahweh is the active party in this redemption, the Old Testament
authors mean to show in him the near relative whose protection is
made manifest towards the people who are his. This is why the
Exodus as well as the return from exile are presented as a redemp¬
tive act carried out by Yahweh (Ex. 6.6; 15.13; Ps. 74.2; 77.15;
78.35; 106.10; Is. 43.1; 44.22; 52.9). This function of the go’el
can also be exercised by Yahweh for the benefit of individuals (Ps.
103.4; Gen. 48.16; Ps. 69.18; Job 19.26). It is clear that, when
used of Yahweh, the idea of redeeming takes second place to the
more general idea of deliverance, for, in Yahweh’s case, there
could be no question of paying a ransom; he performs his work
of deliverance without effort, but when it is said that Yahweh lays
bare his arm (Is. 50,34» 52*10)’ we can find the idea of a certain
effort by which Yahweh pays in person the ransom required by
his pardon.
The root padah more clearly expresses the payment of a ransom;
one of the most ancient cultic laws of Israel demanded the offering
of the first-born, but at an early date this offering was done by
means of a redemption which allowed the keeping of the first¬
born while satisfying God’s rights (Ex. 13.12E). This redeeming
‘In Accadian salachu has the sense of “to sprinkle”; it is used in a secular
sense (medical texts) and in a cultic sense; in Hebrew this concrete sense is hardly
apparent, but rites and figures of speech borrowed from the realm of purification
are common in the O.T. to denote the reality of pardon.
3 The verb salacb can have an attenuated sense, e.g. 2 Kings 5.18 where Naaman
asks that Yahweh should be “indulgent” towards him if his duties at court
oblige him to go to the temple of Rimmon; and a strong sense, especially when
there is a question of pardon at the end of time (Jer. 31.34; 33.8; 50.20).
3 In an interesting study which appeared in Supplements to Ve’tus Testamentum,
vol. I, 1953, A. R. Johnson, “The primary meaning of ga’al ”, considers that the
sense of “ redemption ” is secondary to that of “ protection ”, a sense which itself
developed from the concrete significance of “ covering ” which had a double develop¬
ment, on the one hand to protect, on the other to make unclean, defilement being
the covering of the clean by the unclean. 6
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 293

is also shown in other fields: it is thus that the slave can be

bought back (Ex. 21.8; Lev. 19.26) and that the Levites carry out
the buying back of the first-born (Num. 3.40#.). Padah is often
associated with or used in the same sense as ga’al and denotes the
liberation of the people from Egyptian servitude (Dt. 7.8; 9.26;
13.5; Ps. 78.42; 1 Chr. 17.21), and again we find it used of
deliverance from enemies, from sickness and from death (Jer. 15.21;
Ps. 44.27; 49.16; 2 Sam. 4.9; Job 33.28).
When we come to the third term, kaphar, there is no doubt about
the very material aspect of “ransom”; the etymology of kaphar
has been sought in two different directions: comparison with the
Arabic kaphara and the quite common association with the term
kasah suggests the idea of “to cover”. In Accadian, on the other
hand, the root kupuru has the sense of to rub and to “ erase”; as
in Hebrew the term kaphar is also associated with machah “ to
erase ”, nasa’ “ to remove ”, sar “ to set aside ”, the sense “ to erase
is perhaps preferable to the one of “cover”; the very notion of
pardon stands in quite a different light, by the adoption of this
rendering. The Code of the Covenant (Ex. 21.30) specifies that
the master of a bull which has, through negligence, caused a fatal
accident should be put to death; but the death penalty may be
replaced by a ransom through which his life may be preserved.
This ransom is the kopher by means of which a man may obtain
the pidyon, that is, liberation. The redemption is not possible in
all cases; there are murders for which no kopher is effective (Num.
35.3iff.), sins committed heyad ramah “with a high hand
(Num. 15.22-31; 1 Sam. 3.14) cannot be expiated; in a general
way, however, expiation is not limited simply to sins committed
inadvertently, bishegagah, for the sins mentioned (Lev. 5.14-19;
19.20-22; Num. 5.5-8) are perfectly conscious and voluntary ones,
yet they are capable of being redeemed. The ransom paid to save
one’s life is also the meaning of the capitation tax for which the
children of Israel were liable according to Ex. 3o.i2ff. A man can
offer a kopher to redeem himself in very varied circumstances; in
a passage of the book of Job, the kopher is offered by an angel (Job
33.24). The kopher may also be offered by God: thus when the
prophet of the exile announces liberation to Israel, he lets it be
understood that Yahweh must give to Cyrus, who allows it, some
compensation, a kopher, in the form of Egypt, Ethiopia and
Seba (Is. 43_2ff.); even though we must make full allowance in
294 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

this passage for a metaphorical element, it is none the less true that
the value and force of the kopher are clearly emphasized. Where
man can obtain no redemption, God can offer an effective kopher
because it can consist only in a gift from himself (cf. Ps. 49.8; and
especially v. 16).1 *
The idea common to these three forms of redemption is that of
substitution; man gives something in order to receive another thing
in its place: when sin is concerned, man exchanges sin for a new
life.
This substitution found its concrete expression in sacrificial ritual.
Without seeking to reduce the body of Israelite sacrifices to a single
type, we can affirm that substitution is at the basis of the burnt
offering (Lev. 1.4) as well as of the sacrifice for sin, chatta’t (Lev.
4.20), and of the guilt offering, ’asham (Lev. 5.16). The victim
plays a substitutionary role; one Accadian text, coming from a
collection of conjurations against evil demons, shows us how wide¬
spread this idea was in the Semitic world: “ The lamb is the sub¬
stitute for man; for his life, he shall deliver the lamb: the lamb’s
head shall he deliver for the man’s head. The neck of the lamb
shall he deliver for the neck of the man, the breast of the lamb
for the breast of the man shall he deliver.”* In this particular
case, it is a matter of a gift to the demons who threaten the sick
man as compensation by which he can be free;3 it is again the
substitution notion that alone satisfactorily explains the human
sacrifices, which can only with difficulty be regarded otherwise than
as the substitution of one life for another. The offering of the first¬
born is a ransom for the parents (Ex. 22.2^.) and each time that
the Old Testament speaks of human sacrifice (1 Kings 16.34;

1 We do not think it possible to contrast in the O.T. expiation as a human con¬

trivance acting in a more or less magical way with pardon, a gesture freely granted
by God; the means of expiation are always presented as committed to man by God
in order to make his pardon real.
* Transcribed text in Dhorme, La religion assyro-babylonienne, p. 281, and Recueil
Edouard. Dhorme, p. 604.
3 It 's a^so probably a matter of substitutionary sacrifice in the covenant rite
sealing the treaty between Mati ilu, prince of Arpad and Assur-nirari VI (eighth
century). At the moment of the victim s immolation, Mati’ilu pronounces the follow¬
ing words: “ This head is not a ram’s head, it is Mati’ilu’s head, the head of his
sons, of his great ones, of the people of his country. If the aforesaid sin against
these provisions, just as this ram’s head is removed, may the thigh of the aforesaid,
of his children, of his great ones, of the people of his land be removed.” It is not
merely a question of illustrating the oath by a gesture, but the contracting parties
symbolically transmit their life to the victim in order to keep it safe.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
295
2 Kings 3.27; Mic. 6.7; Dt. 12.31; Jer. 7.31; 19.5; 32.35; Ez.
2°-25"3I)> tbe a‘m °f ^is sacrifice is to safeguard, at the cost of
a single life, the life of a whole group. The profound reason for
these substitutionary rites is to he found in early beliefs about the
mystery of life: the first-born takes upon himself the life of the
parents, who, by that fact, are virtually dead; to regain life, they
must cause its release by the immolation of the first-born, immola¬
tion alone allowing the freeing of the life-principle.
In the beginning, this transmission is purely magical, but in the
Yahwist religion this exchange can be effected only by Yahweh,
the sole holder of life. Sin, whether it be ritual uncleanness or
moral fault, is always a loss of vital wholeness, and, when account
is taken of the fluidity of the notions of life and death, a sort of
death; the remedy can, therefore, only consist in the restoration of
this wholeness. The victim, therefore, fulfils a double role; it
symbolizes the life of the guilty one, and its death symbolizes the
death which is the punishment of sin; but the victim is at the same
time the intermediary by which God communicates his life to the
sinner, and if the ritual texts insist so much on its purity, its
integrity, its youth, its vigour, it is because its life must symbolize
the divine life; so the essential point about the sacrifice is not the
death of the victim, but the offering of its life. Far from being a
magical means through which man may exert a sort of constraint
on God, the sacrifice is much rather a means by which man expresses
his utter submission and to which God responds by communicating
his life. The redemptive role of the sacrifice appears in many
aspects of the ritual, for example in that of the Passover, in that
of the daily burnt offering and of the daily sacrifice, the tamid
(Lev. 6.13; Num. 4.16), but nowhere do the various aspects of the
expiation and the reconciliation appear so clearly as in the ritual
of the yom hakkippurim, in which it is a question of observing “ the
rite of expiation for the transgressions and all the sins of the children
of Israel” (Lev. 16.16). In this passage, which is of a complex
literary character,1 very ancient elements are mingled with obviously

1 All critics, even the most conservative, are agreed in acknowledging the complex
character of this chapter; for an analysis of it, we refer readers to the commentaries
and to the note in the Bible du Centenaire, p. 155; in its present state the passage
is of very late composition, since neither Ezekiel nor Ezra know the feast as it is
described here: the most ancient part is probably the sending out of the goat to
Azazel (v. 8-10, 20-22, 26) which may spring from the old popular religion and
have been absorbed into a more developed and authentically Yahwist ritual.
296 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

late provisions. The goat sent into the desert—which with death
and darkness is one of the three negative worlds according to
J. Pedersen1—might well be a survival of the nomadic period. This
episode stresses the removal of evil. By the confession of sin (Lev.
16.21) and by the laying of hands upon the victim by the guilty
man himself (Lev. 4.15, 24), the people claims to identify itself
with the victim and to share its fate; whilst the priest, acting in
God’s stead, performs the sprinkling of the blood and thus frees
the power of life there contained for the benefit of a people who
were virtually dead.
Intercession is only another aspect of substitution, more spiritual
than the one appearing in the rite and the most frequent use of
which is found, not surprisingly, in the prophet Jeremiah. All the
prophets exercise their functions of mediation not only by revealing
God’s will, but also by trying to act according to that will by
means of intercession. Just as the prophetic ministry is a gift
reserved for an elite, intercession is the privilege of only a few
individuals, and never do we find in the Old Testament a general
exhortation to intercede for one another. It is also wise to notice
that, even among the great intercessors, prayer has nothing magical
about it and that it often assumes the aspect of a struggle in the
course of which the intercessor offers himself to God until his
will shall be in harmony with God’s. Abraham does not succeed
in arresting the destruction of Sodom by his intercession, Moses has
to make repeated efforts before his requests are granted, on two
occasions Amos succeeds in delaying God’s anger (7.1-9), Jeremiah
stood before Yahweh in order to speak in favour of the people
(18.20) until the day that he received the command to intercede no
more because of the ineluctable approach of judgment (7.16; 14.n).
Whether intercession is useless because of the greatness of the sin or
pardon is impossible because of the absence of intercession (Ez.
22.^0; Is. 59.16), it is important to notice that it depends on the
divine liberty and that no human device can bring about God’s
pardon.
The mediation of celestial beings in the pardon of sins appears
only once in the Old Testament: Eliphaz says to Job: “To which
of the saints wilt thou speak? ” (5.1) and Elihu envisages the possi¬
bility that an intercessory angel should offer a kopher to God in
order to save a man’s life from death (Job 33.22); but we have to
1 Israel, I-II, pp. 465S.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 297

wait for apocryphal literature to find a fuller development of ideas

on intercession by the merits and sufferings of the righteous and
the saints.1
The various aspects of substitution are brought together in the
figure of Yahweh’s servant: he is the perfect embodiment of the
prophet by his election and his obedience which goes to the point
of martyrdom, and at the same time he is the sacrificial victim, the
’asham offered for the benefit of the guilty (Is. 53.10); in him the
prophetic current and the priestly current come together in a higher
synthesis.
Whatever may be the means used by man for reconciliation with
God, they are put at man’s disposal by God. Pardon is an act of
God’s mercy. Sin, being a corruption of human nature, will dis¬
appear completely only when that nature has itself undergone a
radical transformation; so total pardon is part of the gifts of the
new covenant in which Yahweh will give to man a new heart
which will be so attuned to his own that man will not need to be
converted (Jer. 31.34; 33-8; 50.20). This eschatological redemption
gives to all the provisional attempts at reconciliation between man
and God their real significance in the plan of salvation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bennewitz, F., Die Siinde im alten Israel, Leipzig 1907.

Boer, P. A. H. de, “ De Vorbede in het oude Testament”, Oudtestamen-
tische Studien III, Leiden 1943.
Coppens, J., La connaissance du bien et du mal et le peche du paradis,
Louvain 1948.
Delorme, }., “ Conversion et pardon selon le prophete Ezechiel ”, (Memorial
Chaine). Bibl. de la Faculte de theol. de Lyon, vol. 5, p. 115.
Hermann, J., Die Idee der Siihne im A.T., 1905.
Herner, S., Siihne and Vergebung in Israel, Lund 1942.
Hesse, Fr., Die Fiirbitte im A.T., Dissertation, Erlangen 1951.
Humbert, P., Etudes sur le recit du paradis et de la chute dans la Genese,
Neuchatel 1940.
Johansson, N., Parakletoi. Vorstellung von Fiirsprechern im A.T. und
im Judentum, Lund 1940.
Koberle, J., Siinde und Gnade im religibsen Leben des Volkes Israel bis
auf Christum, Munich 1905.
1 Concerning the intercession and merits of the righteous, cf. principally Tobit
2.12; 2 Macc. 12.42-46; 15.14; Baruch 3.4.
298 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Koch, Klaus, “Gibt es ein Vergeltungsdogma im A.T.? ”, ZThK, 1955,

P' *'
Morris, L., “ The Biblical Idea of Atonement ”, Australian biblical review,
1952, p. 83.
Procksch, O., Der Erlosungsgedanke im A.T., 1929.
Satan. Etudes carmelitaines, ouvrage collectif.
Smith, C. Ryder, The Bible Doctrine of Salvation. A study of atone¬
ment, London 1941.
The Bible Doctrine of Sin and of the Ways of God
with Sinners, London 1953.
Staerk, W., Siinde und Gnade nach der Vorstellung des alteren Juden-
tums, besonders der Dichter der sog. Bussfsalmen, 1903.
Stamm, J. J., Erlosen und Vergeben im A.T., Bern 1940.
Das Leiden des Unschuldigen in Babylon und Israel, Zurich
1948.
 II. DEATH AND THE FUTURE LIFE

I N the Old Testament death assumes various aspects, of which

the truly biological one is not, perhaps, the most important.
There is, in a contemporary author’s phrase, a realm of death1
which breaks into the realm of life, in such a way that man may
be involved in it without ceasing for that reason to live. Anything
that threatens life, the desert, the sea, sin, disease, chaos or darkness,
is linked with death, which remains the hostile reality and which
will finally be overcome. Admittedly all parts of the Old Testa¬
ment do not speak with the same insistence of the destructive
power of death. It is, nevertheless, certain that the Old Testament
never presents death as a liberation or as a gateway giving access to
perfect felicity. Along with the Semitic peoples as a whole, Israel
shares belief in the fatal and inevitable character of death which
found classical expression in this passage from the Epic of
Gilgamesh:

When the gods created humankind,

They made death the lot of humankind,
Life, they retained in their own hands.

This theme that life in its fulness belongs only to the deity is
illustrated by the Yahwist in the myth of the tree of life which, in
an older tradition, must have been more developed than in the
present text of Genesis. Man has never eaten any of the fruit of
this tree, of which his mortal state even made him unaware; only
after eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge did man, having
acquired the possibility of becoming like an ’elohim, find the tree
of life expressly forbidden to him. Yahweh, through irony and

1J. Pedersen, Israel, its life and culture, I-II, pp. 453?!:.; the same point of
view is adopted by Chr. Barth (v. bibliog.); the latter applies the principle of the
fluidity of the notions of life and death to the exegesis of the Psalms by seeking
to show that the quite common expression “ to be at the gates ” or “ in the depths ”
of Sheol is neither a figure of speech nor a prophecy, but describes the real
experience of a man who, through illness, or through some other trial, is under the
dominion of the kingdom of death.
299
300 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

also through love, but not through jealousy, returns man to his
earthly condition, for divine life, usurped instead of being received,
can only bring catastrophe for man. If man had not transgressed the
divine prohibition, Yahweh would doubtless have granted him as a
grace, added in some degree to his original nature, the power of
eating of the tree of life, but by his disobedience man definitively
deprived himself of this possibility: he will die; his death, from
being potential, will become real and irrevocable and, by this
definitive nature, death takes on the appearance of a punishment.
We must, however, recognize that this aspect was present only
rarely to the mind of the Israelites when they spoke of death. To
die old and replete with days is the normal and desirable end of
all existence; this fate, which was reserved for Abraham and Job,
in whom types of the ideal Israelite were readily seen (Gen. 15.15;
Job 42.17), was the hope of every member of the people, who
thought that, by being reunited to his fathers, he would continue to
share in the eternity of the group. However, this certainty, which
considerably weakens the disruptive aspect of death, did not prevent
the Israelites from making a number of reflections about the change
that death produced in the body of the individual. Wliat becomes
of the elements which together constitute the ne-phesh at the
moment of death? The dead man is no longer a nephesh chayyab,
since he is deprived of breath, which is its essential characteristic,
but what is he, then? It is difficult to reduce all the Old Testament
data into a single viewpoint; but we think that all the reflections
about death are the result of two currents of thought. Just as the
definition of man as a living being depends on observation, reflection
about death does not begin with theoretical considerations, but
with the situation that is presented visually. According to the first
line of thought, which we shall call the analytical, death is charac¬
terized by the absence of breath; the dead person no longer has
neshamah or ruach nor, according to some texts, nephesh, either
because nephesh is used in the restricted sense of breath (Jer. 15.9)
or because the fact of no longer being a nephesh is presented as a
departure of nephesh (Gen. 33.18; 1 Kings 17.21). Deprived of
nephesh and ruach, man is left with the basar only and, as soon
as this ceases to be animated, it is in no way distinct from dust.
Death may be considered as a dissolution; as soon as they cease to
be held together by the principle of life, the various elements com¬
prising the human being are “ as water which runs away and
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 3° I
which cannot again be collected up ” (2 Sam. 14.14). Man reduced
to dust is nothing; he no longer exists, and we must not be sur¬
prised that several texts speak of death as non-existence; at least
that is the conclusion reached by Job and the Psalmist (Job 7.21;
Ps. 39.14)1 and the Preacher, a man of analytic and scientific tem¬
perament, arrives at an identical result: man dies like the beasts,
both return to dust (3.20) and, when the spirit returns to its source,
the dust returns to the earth and is mingled with it (12.7). This
outlook, which has a logical place in Israelite thought, was, how¬
ever, counter-balanced and finally dominated by a point of view
which also started from observation but which reached a different
conclusion. The Israelite always looked on the human being less
as a collection of various elements than as an organic whole which
attained expression in the body or the person. Now, it appeared
to observation that at the moment of death the body did not dis¬
integrate into its constituent elements, but, for a certain length of
time at least, continued to retain the features of the living being.2
The individual dies, but he does not cease to exist, yet this existence
is only a shadow of the existence of the living, that is why the dead
have or are still nephasbot (cf. Job 14.22);3 they continue to have
the same physical aspect as when they were alive (Gen. 37.35;
42.38; 44.29; 1 Kings 2.6; Ez. 32.27). Death is considered as a
state in which the forces of life are at their lowest intensity, a state
similar to fatigue or sleep (Job 14.19ft.), a state deprived of what
characterizes the living being, the bond of community; the dead
man is alone (Job 14.22). According to the first current of thought
death is a breaking which marks the brutal and irremediable end
of existence; according to the other, death is not in opposition to

1 Gunkel, Die Psalmen, p. 165, wrote of this Psalm: “The idea of a life beyond
death does not once come into consideration in the entire poem.”
2 The Hebrew term corresponding to body, gewiyyah, is often used of a corpse
which was regarded as a body even though life was absent (Jg. 14.8, 9; 1 Sam.
31.10, 12; Nahum 3.5; Ps. 110.6). It is quite likely that in Israel a distinction was
made between the period when the body still existed as a corpse and the period
when it was reduced to dust.
3 Belief in a double or an exterior soul was not altogether foreign to Israel; it
is to be found in certain manifestations of ecstasy among the prophets and in the
mention of Elisha’s heart which accompanies his servant Gehazi, but we find no
mention of it in connection with the dead. The reduction of the dead to the state
of shadows in no way conferred greater mobility on them, for having the aspect
of a prison, Sheol made any possibility of escape very remote. This does not prevent
popular religion having included belief in ghosts—the term ’ob should probably
be interpreted in this way—but it was never exploited theologically.
 302 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

life. This latter tendency made the passing from life to death a
relatively easy one: living beings with their powers much reduced
—such was the appearance of die dead in Sheol, the place which
collected them all together.
None of the etymologies1 so far suggested for this noun seems
to deserve absolute credence. The location of this place is differently
presented, for to the Israelites the spatial aspect of the kingdom of
the dead is secondary to its dynamic aspect; what is common to
all representations is that Sheol is to be found in the depths of the
earth, the dead go down into the tacbtiyot ha’arets (Ps. 63.10;
86.13; 88-7> 139-15; Lam. 3-55)' This siting of Sheol in the depths
seems to imply a connection between Sheol and the tomb. Tombs
generally had the appearance of pits or of wells, several yards deep,
at the end of which a door gave access to the burial chamber. It is
likely that this aspect of tombs exercised an influence on represen¬
tations of Sheol. According to an interesting passage in the book
of Job, it might be concluded that the tomb was a channel giving
access to Sheol: “He preserveth his nephesh from the pit (shachat
meaning destruction is also applied to Sheol) and his life from
passing through the channel (shelach) ” (Job 33.18). But we must
be cautious in over-interpreting texts in order to find confirmation
of a chronological or spatial link between the tomb and Sheol. It
seems rather that it was thought at all periods that the dead dwelt
in the tomb and in Sheol at the same time; the great care lavished
upon burial was inspired more from fear and respect for the dead
than from the desire to ensure his reaching Sheol, otherwise beings
deprived of burial would not have been able to reach the abode of
the dead; now Jacob does not doubt for an instant that he will find
in Sheol the son whom he believes to have been devoured by a wild
beast (Gen. 37*35) an<^ out Sheol Samuel says to Saul, whose
corpse is to remain unburied on the battlefield: “To-morrow thou
and thy sons will be with me ” (x Sam. 28.19). Therefore, instead
of distinguishing between the tomb and Sheol, it is better to con-
1 °£ most recent and interesting etymologies is the one suggested by
L. Koehler (ThZ, 1946. p. 71): the lamed of Sheol is considered an auxiliary letter,
so that the root would be shaah which, in addition to the meanings of “ to bestir
oneself, to look at”, would also have the sense of “be deserted, ravaged”, in par¬
ticular in Isaiah 6.11 and which has given rise to the word sha'on; an expression
like that in Psalm 40.3: he brought me up from a mibbor sha'on ” favours Koehler’s
etymology, which, however, is contested by W. Baumgartner (ThZ, 1046 p. 2^
who sees in Sheol a word of Sumero-Accadian origin in relationship with Shuara,
the dwelling-place of Tammuz in the underworld.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 303

sider them together , and Pedersen’s definition of Sheol as the

“primitive grave”1 which shows itself in each individual grave
could put us on the way to the true solution. If, theologically, Sheol
was the true meeting-place of the dead, popular piety was more
concerned with the dwelling of the dead in the family grave. The
expression already quoted “ to be reunited with his fathers and with
his people ”2 refers to the uniting of the members of the same clan
in a common grave, the more so because Sheol was in no way
reserved for the Israelites only.3 The term Sheol itself does not
allow us to throw any light on its nature, but the synonyms used
give details of the kind of existence that was supposed to be led
there: the kingdom of the dead was called ’abaddon, destruction
(Job 26.5; 28.22; Ps. 88.12; Prov. 15.1 x; 27.20), and dumah,
silence (Ps. 94-17; 115.17), or again the land of darkness and dust
(Job 10.21-22; 38.17; Dan. 12.2); all these terms go to confirm the
view that existence in Sheol was the negative replica of earthly
existence. From the most detailed descriptions that we read in
chap. 14 of Isaiah and chap. 32 of Ezekiel, it seems that social
and national distinctions were maintained: kings are seated upon
thrones, Samuel continues to exercise upon occasion in Sheol his
prophetic function without death having added anything to his
prerogatives. This existence is always colourless and lacks vitality;
it never seems enviable, except to Job who, crushed under the weight
of his misfortunes, reaches a point, at one moment, where he sighs
for the great repose of the resting-place of the dead (Job 3.17-19).
The Preacher, representing as he does a current opinion in Israel,
stands by his statement that, however illusory earthly things and
activities may be, a living dog is none the less worth more than a
dead lion (Eccl. 9.4), for, far from bringing a more complete union
with Yahweh, death is equivalent to a separation from him. Death

1 “ All graves have certain common characteristics constituting the nature of the
grave, and that is Sheol. The ‘ Ur ’-grave we might call Sheol . . . manifests itself
in every single grave, as mo'ab manifests itself in every single Moabite.” Israel,
I-II, p. 462.
2 Cf. Gen. 35-29; 49-33; Dt. 32.50; certain passages (2 Kings 8.24; 12.9; 15.38;
16.19; 21.7, etc.) add to this formula the mention of burial in the family grave;
but the first expression has a more solemn accent which seems to imply more than
simple interment (cf. B. Alfrink, “ L’expression shakab ‘im 'abotaw ”, Oudtesta-
mentische Studten, II, pp. io6ff.).
s According to L. Rost, in In memoriam Ernst Lohmeyer, the notion of Sheol is
of Babylonian origin, while the return of the spirit to Yahweh leading to total
disappearance is the heritage of ancient Hebrew religion.
304 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

and Sheol—the two terms are sometimes interchangeable, a fact

which proves that the stress was laid with Sheol upon its function
rather than upon its location—are powers opposed to Yahweh or at
least neutral in relation to his sovereignty. Since the creation
narratives do not speak about the creation of Sheol, it may be
supposed that in Sheol traces were seen of the original chaos—the
darkness, while the watery aspect of chaos was represented by the
waters of the sea. The Song of Hezekiah, which may be con¬
sidered as one of the most explicit documents on the attitude of
Yahwism with regard to death (Is. 38.9!!.), proclaims: “Sheol
praises thee not and its inhabitants hope no more in thy faithful¬
ness.” Was Sheol under the dominion of another deity, Mot, for
example?1 or was it this deity himself? What is certain is that
this realm remained outside Yahweh’s sphere of influence for quite
a long time and was only gradually opened to his sovereignty.
Beside the idea that Yahweh is a stranger to Sheol, and consequently
without power over it, there is the idea which speaks of Yahweh’s
forgetting those who go down to Sheol, while they themselves lose
all remembrance of Yahweh (Ps. 6.6; 88.13; 94-17; 115.17; Eccl.
9.5-6; Job 26.6; 28.22). This conception was probably born to
answer the objection that Yahweh was not all-powerful, since there
was a realm which escaped his sovereignty, an unhappy solution,
however, for without getting rid of the idea of a powerless Yahweh,
it added to it the idea of a wilfully cruel God. The majority of
texts know nothing of any differentiation of a moral order among
the dwellers in Sheol; the only differences are those which existed
in their earthly life. We have, however, in the two most explicit
texts, an allusion to a division between the righteous and the
wicked: in the elegy on the King of Babylon (Is. 14), it is said
that he is hurled into the “depths of the abyss”, whilst around
him the kings of the nations rest with honour in their graves. In
the elegy on the Pharaoh (Ez. 32), the distinction is even more

1 Following Philo of Byblos, who identifies the god Mot (Mw0) with eivaros
many modern authors, because of the Ugaritic texts, have insisted on this con¬
nection, e.g. Virolleaud in almost all his published work, Nielsen, Ras Shamra
Mythologte and biblische Theologie, p. 61, Moret, Hist, one., p. 619, Sellin Theol
A.T., p. 80; others such as H. Bauer-Eissfeldt, W. Baumgartner, ThR, 1941 p 92
see in the god Mot the root mutu, mortal, man. Note that the Ugaritic texts
insist on the destructive role of Mot (I AB, II AB 15-20). Whatever the linguistic
solution may be, it is certain that the struggle between Baal and Mot represents
in the world of nature the conflict between life and death.
 theology of the old TESTAMENT 305

pronounced: on the one side are the uncircumcised,1 that is, those
who were buried without ceremony, and on the other the valiant
(Ez. 28.10 and 31 • 18), but it is only from the second century b.c.
that the division between the righteous and the wicked within Sbeol
will be taken up and developed in all its breadth.
The distinctive mark of the dwellers in Sbeol is weakness. Even
the Repbaim,2 who constitute the aristocracy of the abode of the
dead, are feeble beings who in Sbeol have lost their terrifying power
which they formerly held when they were either auxiliaries to the
deity (as in Ugarit), or a population of giants occupying Palestine
before the children of Israel settled there (Gen. 15.20; Dt. 3.11;
Jos. 12.4). Archaeology confirms the textual testimony to the
weakness of the dead, who continue their earthly existence at a
much reduced tempo. In structure, the tomb was a reproduction
of the dwelling-house. In the Israelite period, it is usually con¬
structed as a chamber roughly hewn in the rock round which are
set forms intended for the bodies of the dead; in the middle of this
room, some earthenware objects are the surviving traces of the food
and other offerings which were brought to the dead. These offer¬
ings were not sacrifices and cannot in any way be used as evidence
of a cult of the dead, for which the texts themselves offer only the
flimsiest basis. The offerings are more like alms and are a sign
that the dead needed the living; food, and very specially water,3
were indispensable to them, and the presence of numerous lamps
among the funeral offerings probably corresponds to no other pre¬
occupation than to perpetuate what constituted the centre of the
family dwelling. Love tinged with pity might be the motive which
inspired all the offerings; but is there not an element of fear mingled
with it? It must certainly be admitted that the Israelites shared with
many other people the belief that the non-accomplishment of the
funeral duties could incite the dead to unpleasant reactions against
which it was better to take precautions. This desire to make the
dead inoffensive was sometimes able, in times when faith in
Yahweh’s power was strained, to lead men to devote to them a

1 On the origin and meaning of this expression, cf. the very interesting study
by A. Lods, “ Le sort des incirconcis ” in Comptes rendus de I'Academie des
Inscriptions et belles-lettres, 1943, p. 271.
2 Concerning the Rephaim in Ugaritic texts, cf. Virolleaud, Syria, 22, pp. iff., and
Dussaud, Les decouvertes de Ras Shamra et I’A.T., Paris 1937, 2nd ed., p. 185.
3 Concerning the theme of thirst of the dead a fairly complete documentation
will be found in the work by A. Parrot, Le “ Refrigerium " daru l‘au-deld, Paris 1937.
306 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

veritable cult and to ask them for revelations which could come to
them through their contact with the mysterious powers hidden in
the bosom of the earth (cf. the serpent in the garden of Eden).
The dead, and more especially those who called them up, were
yideonim, beings who know (Is. 8.19; 63.4; Lev. 19.31; Dt.
x8.11).1 It must, however, be added that the official religion
always condemned with great severity the practice of necromancy2
and that never were the dead as a whole considered to enjoy superior
knowledge. The story of the witch of Endor (1 Sam. 28), which
the partisans of the cult of the dead in ancient Israel have always
called in as their main argument, points rather in the opposite
direction, for if Samuel is capable of foretelling the future from
Sbeol, it is solely because he continues to exercise after his death
the gifts of divination which he had in life. Rachel, on the other
hand, in her tomb, is utterly ignorant of her children’s fate and
knows it only through a special message from Yahweh (Jer.
31.15-17). It would, moreover, be a vain undertaking to seek to
bring funeral rites into line with theology. In our day, as in Israel,
the “religion of the dead” is a mixture of pagan customs with
perfectly orthodox beliefs. For theology, the dead were in Sheol,
but in popular belief they lived rather in the tomb, and A. Lods
has very correctly said that3 “ the Israelites took no more trouble
to reconcile existence in the grave and in Sheol than the Christian
populations of our lands to reconcile ideas of resurrection, immor¬
tality and even survival in the sepulchre ”. In so far as it was the
normal end of a life that has reached its allotted span, death was
neither a problem nor a scandal; nothing was more normal than to
go, when old and satiated with years, and join one’s ancestors.
Premature death on the other hand did present a problem: anyone
who was taken away “in the midst of his days” (Is. 38.10; Ps.
102.24) or “before his time” (Eccl. 7.17) does not fill the time
normally granted to a human life, his life will only have lasted as
long as a flower (Ps. 102.12) without reaching the stage of fruition,
or as long as the weaver’s shuttle-thread which breaks in the middle
of the work (Job 7.6), so that the time that he lived will always
leave, even in Sheol, the bitter memory of something left incomplete
1 The main texts on consultation with the dead are to be found in Ex. 22.17;
Lev. 19.31; 20.6, 27; 1 Sam. 28.3, 9-13; Is. 8.19; 19.3; 29.4.
2 The law stigmatizes recourse to this type of practice as a prostitution, which
seems to suggest that it saw the practice as homage to rival deities (cf. Lev. 20.6).
3 Croyance a la vie future, p. 207.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 307

for which he cannot be comforted, especially if he feels that this

shortening of his life is not the effect of punishment.
Xo regard death as separation from God could have led to a
dualistic solution, but faith in the omnipotence of Yahweh was to
make dualism impossible in Israel. Just as Yahweh had extended
his power over realms originally foreign to his own, Sheol could not
remain very long outside his sovereignty. “It is Yahweh who
causes men to die and to live, who sends down to Sheol and recalls
thence,’’ sings the author of the song of Hannah (1 Sam. 2.6) and
for Amos Yahweh’s omnipotence does not stop at the gates of Sheol
(Amos 9.2). Life and death are within Yahweh’s power, but since
Yahweh’s power was the sovereignty of a living God, death could
not manifest it to the same degree as life. Despite Yahweh’s
dominion over the world of the dead, there is always some incom¬
patibility between him and death; that is why the solution of the
problem of death could only be found in the final triumph of life.
Since death was the limit set to human life by Yahweh, it was
on him alone that the pushing back or even the complete removal
of that limit depended. Before the insistence of Israel’s religion
on Yahweh s omnipotence, the possibility of escaping death was not
excluded, but it is none the less clear that the assertion of his divine
transcendence and utter distinction from the created world could
leave hope for this privilege only in rare and exceptional cases. Two
beings only escaped death, the patriarch Enoch and the prophet
Elijah. For the former, “ translation ’n is presented as the reward
of his piety, “he walked with God” (Gen. 5.24) and also as a
compensation, for his life was noticeably shorter than the lives of
the other patriarchs. Enoch continues to live with God, not in
an island of the blessed, like Utna-pishtim, the Babylonian prototype
of Noah, but probably in heaven, though we have to wait for
apocalyptic literature in order to have any precise information about
the place of his abode. Elijah’s removal is presented in a more
circumstantial manner, he went up to heaven (2 Kings 2.1-11) in a
chariot of fire and in the midst of a whirlwind, the classical accom¬
paniment of divine manifestations. The texts are not sufficiently
explicit to allow us to state that a similar fate was reserved for
Moses; although Deuteronomy expressly states that Moses was
buried, there is so much mystery connected with his death and
1 Note, however, that the verb laqtch which in these passages has a technical
sense is elsewhere used in a completely ordinary fashion.
burial-place, which Yahweh alone knows, that tradition associated
him with Enoch and Elijah, to whom Ezra and Baruch1 were added
later. These figures, who remained alive though invisible, might
return to earth, and Elijah’s return was, for Jews, long before the
time of Jesus, a belief which had been widely accepted (Mai. 3.231?.;
Ecclus. ^8.ioff.). It may be asked whether these translations were
considered as strictly individual cases or if they had value as
examples. In the Psalms, which are our main source of informa¬
tion on this subject, it sometimes happens that Psalmists ask to be
delivered from death. In the majority of cases, death must be
understood in the widest sense as anything which threatens human
life—disease, persecution and the curses of enemies. It seems, how¬
ever, that in one case at least the prayer goes to the point
of hoping for translation by God: the believer of Psalm 49 is not
a sick man, but a “poor man”, scandalized by the prosperity of
the rich, a man who glimpses the solution of the problem that
torments him in differing final fates reserved for the good and the
wicked; while the latter will go straight down to Sheol, where
they will be the pasture of death (v. 13), he hopes that he himself
will be carried away to God; but the text is not sufficiently clear
to distinguish definitely whether the Psalmist has in view a trans¬
lation which would eliminate his passing through Sheol or a
resurrection from Sheol itself; the term laqach which is used in
connection with Enoch and Elijah and which seems to have quite
a solemn ring about it (v. 16) makes us lean rather towards the first
solution.
For all believers, death presented a problem and the illumination
they had to resolve it more resembles pale gleams than certitude;
among some, a more intense faith succeeds in depriving death of
its aspect of an agonizing problem or even of a straightforward
problem. Job’s words: “I shall see God” (19.26) and Psalm 73
(v. 23) are the most advanced expressions of this faith. The writer
of the book of Job has little hope for what follows death. Man goes
towards Sheol, which is the shadowy existence ending in utter
annihilation, and the whole drama of Job consists precisely in the
14 Esdr. 14.9: Thou shalt be taken away from among men, and thou shalt
dwell beside my son and thy companions. 4 Esdr. 14.49* Esdras was taken away
(raptus est) and led to the place of those like him. Syr. Apoc. Baruch 46.7: I
disclosed nothing to them of what had been told me concerning my removal; 76.2:
Thou shalt leave this earth, not for death, but to be kept in reserve for the end of
time.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
3°9
fact that he feels death coming closer without his having been able
to obtain an answer to his tormenting problem of God’s justice.
Yet fear of death is counter-balanced by faith in God and ultimately
will be absorbed by that faith. The certainty of seeing God is of
first importance for him and it is on earth, before his death, that
he expects it. In the well-known word of chap. 19, in which
Christian tradition has unanimously acclaimed an announcement of
the resurrection, Job expresses the certainty that his go’el, who can
only be God himself, will manifest himself as his nearest kinsman,
the dust on which he must manifest himself is the dust of the earth
and not that of the tomb or the corpse. But if Job has the certainty
of seeing God, it is because he hopes to enter into a particularly
close relationship with him and to share in what constitutes his
being, that is, life. To see God, at least in this text, is to share
in his life, and, as God himself does not die (Hab. 1.12 according
to the original text uncorrected by the Massoretes), for the believer
communion with God makes death, if not non-existent, at least
powerless to destroy life. An experience similar to Job’s was
endured by the author of Ps. 16, who declares that Sbeol will have
no power over him, since he is destined to life and since that life
is communion with the living God. But it is indisputably in
Ps. 73 that this hope of communion with God, in spite of and
beyond death, reaches its apogee. The Psalmist, a prey to moral
suffering comparable to Job’s, finds the solution in the possession
of God who cannot be taken from him either by the mocking of
his enemies or by his sufferings, or even by death. God will stay
with him, even when his body crumbles to dust. We can only
make a rather confused survey of what was for these believers an
unshakable certainty; it seems, however, that they did not regard
this eternal life either as immortality of the soul, or as a reward,
or as a resurrection.
Although victory over death by resurrection is the latest Old
Testament solution, its antecedents are probably more ancient than
the first hopes of eternal life. Yahweh, the living God, could not
in his action as creator of life be limited by death, and from time
to time he manifested this power by calling dead people back to
life. The Old Testament reports three cases of restoration to life,
the first two being brought about with the active participation of
the prophets Elijah and Elisha, the third by the prophet’s bones
(1 Kings 17.17EE.; 2 Kings 4.29; 13.21). In all three cases, corpses
310 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

are recalled to life by Yahweh himself, the prophet being only the
instrument and having to ask God for the power to perform the
miracle (i Kings 17.21). The idea of the resurrection of the nation
was more familiar. The central theme of eschatology, the shub
sbebut, left the realm of death outside its bounds and interest.
Only those living at the time of the great change would be bene¬
ficiaries of the paradisal age; but from the eighth century the judg¬
ment and salvation of the people are described as a death and
resurrection. The prophet Hosea puts into the mouth of the people
a liturgy of penitence by which they encourage themselves to return
to Yahweh who has “ torn and smitten ”, but who “ after two days
will restore life to us and will raise us up again on the third day ”
(H os. 6.1-2). The terms used, particularly the verb chayyah, which
often has the sense of healing (Gen. 45-27; 1 Kings 17.22; Is. 38.9),
may, however, suggest that the prophet compared the people to a
person seriously ill rather than to one dead, although the wide
sense of the terms life and death weaken the force of this argu¬
ment. The text of Ezekiel 37, on the other hand, leaves no doubt.
It is well understood that this vision concerns a picture of the
people’s restoration after the return from exile, but the elements
of this symbolism leave it to be understood that the resurrection of
the dead was envisaged as a possibility;1 several clues in the text
direct us in fact along this way; the prophet’s uncertainty before
Yahweh’s question: “Shall these bones live?—Lord, thou
knowest ” can be explained with difficulty if it is a matter only of
the resurrection of the nation, which had never been questioned,
but is very readily understood if it concerns the resurrection of the
dead in general. Moreover, the dead are called harugim, those
who have been killed (37.9); now later we learn from the book of
Daniel that those who have been put to death, the martyrs, will be
the first to benefit from the resurrection. Finally, the mention of
graves might mean that those who died long ago will share in the
re-establishment of Israel; in any case, the precision of the metaphors
seems to indicate that the idea of resurrection had made headway
between Hosea and Ezekiel. Successive disasters to the people
largely contributed to this evolution, but there was added to this
1 According to H. Riesenfeld, faith in the resurrection had its origin in the pre-
exilic period in the rites of the New Year festival in which the victory of life over
death and chaos was celebrated; he is, however, obliged to recognize that this notion
of life was essentially collective and material (The resurrection in Ezechiel 57 and
in the Dura-Europos paintings, UUA, 1948, n).
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 311

historical reason a theme of mythical origin which certainly did not

have in Israel the importance that one contemporary school
ascribes to it, but which, on account of its widespread incidence in
the whole ancient East, cannot have left Israel completely unaffected
the theme of a dying and rising god. Through the Ugaritic
texts, we know how important a place this myth held in Canaanite
religion: the struggle of Aleyin-Baal and Mot is the mythical
formulation of the conflict between the two opposing forces of
nature, the fertilizing rain of spring and the parching heat of
summer. The poems of the Baal cycle express in a particularly
dramatic way the death and resurrection of that god: his death
entails the disappearance of life from the face of the earth and
plunges men and gods into deep desolation until the moment when
it is announced that Baal has risen again because of the intervention
of the goddess Anat. It is undeniable that the maintenance of life
occupied a central place in this religion and that it was not regarded
as the simple play of automatic forces but the intervention of the
gods, induced it is true by the cultic rites. However, only terrestrial
life is concerned, in the form of vegetative life in nature and the
exercise of vital functions in man; and so A. Moret’s statement:
“We take it that the Phoenicians drew from their Adonis rites
the hope of a renewal of existence for man after death ”/ is a mere
supposition which receives very little support from what the
Ugaritic texts otherwise teach us about the sad condition of the dead
in a beyond which was no better than the Hebrew Sheol.
Since the myth of a dying and rising god, whether among the
Sumero-Accadians or among the Phoenicians, led to no positive
views on the fate of the dead, only a very secondary root of the
resurrection doctrine was to be found in it. The aspects of this
myth which touched Israel in the form of the gardens of Adonis
(Is. 17.10) and the cult of Tammuz which had penetrated even as
far as the precincts of the Jerusalem temple (Ez. 8.14), or the serpent
cult, always associated with chthonic powers, did not, apparently,
have any connection with beliefs concerning the dead, and must
rather have favoured certain instincts of the present life which
official Yahwism held in check. Yahweh’s transcendence prevented
him from being assimilated into one of these gods, but on the
other hand it is not altogether impossible that the idea of a dying
and rising god was applied to certain men who were considered as
1 Histoire ancienne de VOrient, t. 2, p. 621.
312 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

intermediaries between the divine and human worlds. The funeral

dirge intoned at the death of a king, hoy ’adon, hoy ’achi (cf. Jer.
22.18; 34.5) strangely resembles the dirges sung at the time of the
fictitious death of Adonis, and the special form of the royal tomb
in Jerusalem, brought to light by excavations in the City of David,
may be proof of a privileged position for a king in the beyond.
Finally the idea of David redivivus which we find in Ez. 34,23
and 37.24 seems to speak in favour of the king’s resurrection pre¬
ceding the belief in a resurrection extending to a greater number
of individuals. Coming through the intermediary of the royal
ideology or directly from the myth, the pattern of death and
resurrection appears in the figure of the Servant of Yahweh and the
confession put into the mouth of the people: “We thought him
smitten by God . . is found in a very similar form in the
Tammuz-Adonis myths. The resurrection of the Servant is in
every case presented as an extraordinary phenomenon which could
happen to an individual only in very exceptional circumstances.
But in the Old Testament all God’s extraordinary interventions,
such as prophetic utterance, the priesthood, election in general, are
called to pass in scope from the particular to the universal, so that
the hope of resurrection will spread through the mass from these
indications, and all the more because it seemed the only solution to
the problem of retribution and to the increasingly frequent crises
to which this dogma was subject. In the case of the Servant,
resurrection is linked with retribution; it is a reward for offences
suffered and for the expiatory work accomplished by his sufferings,
henceforth the resurrection will always be presented as a form of
recompense. That suffering accepted even to death calls for a
compensation is the affirmation of the author of Psalm 22 who,
moreover, probably views his own sufferings in the light of the
Servant’s, and who ends his Psalm with a cry of joy and hope:
“Those who sleep in the earth will adore Yahweh and those who
have gone down to the dust will prostrate themselves before him ”
(v. 2q).x The hope of resurrection which hitherto is only glimpsed
as a faint gleam, becomes clear in two fragments which belong to
the apocalyptic genre. In the Apocalypse of Isaiah (chap. 24-27)

1 There is reason to distinguish between earth and dust; the first possesses a certain
vital force which allows it to produce plants for instance (Gen. i), while dust
acquires positive value only by the use that a living being and especially God
makes of it.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 313

resurrection is promised to the righteous only while the wicked

are expressly excluded. The seer, who receives inspiration from
Ezekiel 37, awaits a manifestation of the spirit; but it is to be more
than a national restoration—the dead themselves, the dead of Yah-
weh, that is, the righteous, will rise again. Concerning the mode of
resurrection, the text (Is. 26.i8ff.) gives the following details: the
righteous will to some extent be brought forth by the earth which
will itself be fertilized by a dew of light, the term light having to
be understood in a wide sense as a symbol of Yahweh himself, who
frequently links himself with this natural phenemonen in order to
manifest himself. The idea of the resurrection as a new creation
is also found in the second book of Maccabees, where the mother
of seven sons expresses the hope that he who presided over their
birth will in his mercy return breath and life to them as a reward
for their martyrdom (2 Macc. 7.22). In the well-known pericope
of Daniel 12, the participants in the resurrection are still more
clearly distinguished from the people as a whole; as in eschatology
of an earthly or national form, it is only a remnant who will be
saved, those whose names are written in God’s book; as for the
wickedest of the wicked,1 they will rise again for judgment.
Explicit as this text may be in relation to the preceding ones, it
leaves in the dark certain points about which we should like to
know more. Thus the place where the risen will dwell is not stated;
in the light of Dan. 7.27, announcing an eternal kingdom on the
earth, this place could only be the earth; but the situation in
chapter 12 is slightly differently presented; the resurrection is not
a simple return to earthly life, but the raising to a celestial life and
the connection of the righteous with the stars might be more than
a simple comparison; in the book of Enoch, indeed, the righteous
are identified with the stars (Enoch 39.7; 104.2; 108.13), whence
we can deduce also that the bodies of the risen will not be like the
earthly body, but penetrated with a new luminosity. The trans¬
figuration of which the righteous will be the object will have as a
counterpart an exceptional ugliness of the damned which will inspire
a horror similar to that of corpses eaten by worms at the city
gates.
Because of the law of retribution, the resurrection in Daniel is

1 Outside this passage from Daniel the word deraon, which is used to mean the
horror of the damned, is found only in Is, 66.24, where it is used about the horror
inspired by decomposing bodies.
314 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

more than a hope, it is a veritable necessity. During the wars of

independence the flower of the nation had been killed; they had
fallen as martyrs of their faith. Many Israelites were hanged,
because they vigorously refused to eat unclean things, but they
preferred to die rather than eat defiled foods and profane the holy
covenant (1 Macc. 1.62-64). The martyrdom of the righteous
set an agonizing problem of conscience: the faithful were massacred
and the impious and renegade received honour and wealth. What
was becoming of Yahweh’s promise which assured happiness to the
faithful? Wisdom showed itself powerless to resolve this problem:
neither Job nor Qoheleth gives a direct answer and both are con¬
tent to pass on to another plane—that of the unfathomable mystery
of the divine ways. Ecclesiasticus holds to the old traditional
conception (2.10) and declares that inequality and injustice will
find a just solution before the death of him who is their victim:
“It is easy to the Lord, on the day of death, to render to a man
according to his ways. The moment of unhappiness causes pleasure
to be forgotten and it is the end of man which reveals his acts. Call
no man happy before his death, for it is by his end that a man
becomes known ” (Ecclus. 11.26-28). But the anguish of the situa¬
tion required a less superficial consolation and it was thus that there
was born the belief that the righteous who had loved truth so
much as to die for it would rise at the end of time. “ The martyr,”
says Renan, “was the real creator of belief in a second life”1 and
we will add that the figure of the Servant in Isaiah 53, the prototype
of all sufferers and all martyrs, was a powerful contribution to the
strengthening of this faith. So it seems clear that internal reasons
alone account for the arrival at the doctrine of resurrection out of
all the beliefs relative to the beyond. Transcendental eschatology,
of which the resurrection is one aspect, is not an Israelite borrowing
from Zoroastrianism,2 but is bound up with a more widespread
current of thought which, in the Achaemenian Empire, in Babylon
and in the empire of Alexander, aims at freeing religion from its
national ties and at creating a terrain favourable for an a-political
religion in which the accent is put on the primacy of the individual,
without destroying the specific heritage of each of those religions:
1 Histoire du peuple d’Israel, t. 4, p. 226 (ed. Calmann-Levy).
2 It is difficult to trace the doctrine of resurrection in the Avesta further back than
the fourth century b.c., which makes a borrowing by Israel very unlikely. Persian
influence seems to have operated rather in the adoption of certain metaphors and
representations such as the plurality of the heavens.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
3*5
thus it was that in Iran the promotion of the individual took place
against the background of a cosmic myth of the destruction and
renewal of the world, while in Israel it was the result of faith in
Yahweh and the consequence of his power and righteousness.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baumgartner, W., “ Der Auferstehungsglaube im Alten Orient ”, Zeit-

schrift fur Missions- und Religionswissenschaft, 1933, p. 193.
Barth, Chr., Die Errettung vom Tode in den individuellen Klage- und
Dankliedern des A.T., Zollikon-Ziirich 1947.
Beer,G., “Der biblische Hades”, Theologische Abhandlungen (Festgabe
H. J. Holtzmann), Tubingen 1902.
Bertholet, A., Die israelitischen Vorstellungen vom Zustande nach dem
Tode, 2nd. ed., Tubingen 1914.
Dhorme, Ed., “ L’idee de l’au-dela dans la religion hebrai’que ”, RHR,
1941, p. 113.
Feret, R. P., “ La mort dans la tradition biblique ”, Le mystere de la mort
et sa celebration, Paris 1952, p. 133.
Karge, P., Rephaim, Paderborn 1917.
Lindblom, J., Das ewige Leben, Uppsala-Leipzig 1914.
Lods, Ad., La croyance a la vie future et le culte des morts dans I'antiquite
Israelite, Paris 1906.
“ Les idees des Israelites sur la maladie, ses causes et ses
remedes ” (Festschrift Karl Marti), 1925, p. 181.
“ De quelques recits de voyage au pays des morts ”. Comptes
rendus de l’Acad, des inscr., Paris 1946, p. 434.
Moortgat, A., Tammuz. Der Unsterblichkeitsglaube in der altorient-
alischen Bildkunst, Berlin 1949.
Nikolainen, A. T., “ Der Auferstehungsglaube in der Bibel und in ihrer
Umwelt ”, Ann. Acad. Fennica, Helsinki 1944.
Notscher, Fr., Altorientalischer und alttestamentlicher Auferstehungs-
glauben, Wurzburg 1926.
Parrot, A., Le " Refrigerium ” dans I’au-dela, Paris 1937.
Quell, G., Die Auffassung des Todes im A.T., Leipzig 1925.
Rad, G. von, “ Alttestamentliche Glaubensaussagen von Leben und Tod ”,
Allg. evang. luth. Kirchenzeitung, 1938, p. 826.
Riesenfeld, H., The resurrection in Ezechiel 37 and the Dura-Europos
paintings, UUA, 1948, no. 11.
Rost, L., “Alttestamentliche Wurzeln der ersten Auferstehung”. In
memoriam Ernst Lohmeyer, Stuttgart 1951, p. 67.
Schilling, O., Der Jenseitgedanke im A.T., Mayence 1951.
316 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Schultz, A., “ Der Sinn des Todes im A.T.”, Vorlesungen der Akademie
Bratmsberg, 1919.
Schwally, F., Das Leben nach dem Tode nach den Vorstellungen des
alten Israel und des Judentums, Giessen 1892.
Sellin, E., “ Die alttestamentliche Hoffnung auf Auferstehung und ewiges
Leben ”, NKZ, 1919, p. 232.
Sutcliffe, E. F., The Old Testament and the Future Life, London 1946.
Vollborn, W., “Das Problem des Todes in Genesis 2 & 3 ”, ThLitzg,
1952, pp. 71 off. (resume).
 III. THE consummation

A. THE ESCHATOLOGICAL DRAMA

T he divine presence in the Old Testament may be defined

as the presence of the God who comes; but since this presence
was linked with the notion of the hidden God, it was never
able to satisfy religious aspirations in full in spite of its manifesta¬
tions in the history, institutions and reality experienced by believers.
And so Israel had at an early date the hope of a moment when
this divine presence would be made perfectly real, when God would
come personally to rule on earth and to fill it with the knowledge
of himself as the depths of the sea are filled by the waters that
cover them (Is.11.9; Hab. 2.14). Because of these premises, Israelite
eschatology presents a unique character, in spite of similar concep¬
tions among other peoples: neither themes of a cosmological nature
affirmation of the ageing of the earth or natural catastrophes—nor
themes of a moral order—the need for reward of the righteous and
punishment of the wicked—is the basis of Israel’s hope, but solely
the certitude that their God Yahweh, whose name evokes being
and presence, was more powerful than all other gods and that he
would come and establish his kingship, an act that would not be a
mere restoration of the kingship he held in the beginning, but
which would be enriched by all the victories gained in the course
of history. Although Yahweh’s kingship had been manifested at
various times in history with infinite glory, reality fell short of hope
and, precisely because of victories won, faith had the conviction
that Yahweh could perform things that were still more wonderful.
Eschatology was not born, as Mowinckel has suggested,1 from the
disappointment which the realization of Yahweh’s kingship as it
1 Cf. Psalmenstudien, t. 2, pp. 21 iff.; these are the terms in which the scholarly
Norwegian exegete defines eschatology: “Eschatology is to be understood as a
flight into the future under the disillusioning pressure of a new, strong and quite
unexpected experience of the surrounding world, when the old experiences could
no longer be felt with complete reality ”, p. 324. In a more recent work {Religion
und Kultus, 1935, p. 80) Mowinckel states that eschatology as a doctrine of last
things did not grow out of the cult, but that, just as all that is living and dynamic
in religion is expressed in the cult, eschatology becomes a vital force only in the
cultdc drama.

3*7
318 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

was exercised in history and in the cultic rites had brought to faith:
it was, on the contrary, the hope which never ceased to be the lever
of faith in spite of all the visible proofs of Yahweh’s kingship in
history and in the cult. However, in the oldest conceptions at
least, Yahweh’s kingship could only come to pass absolutely at the
cost of a great change which would mark the end of the present
state of things and the establishment of something new. There is
no eschatology without rupture: Israel knew that the present world
was coming to an end, that its days were numbered, though it was
only at a late stage that calculations were made concerning its limit.1
Certain natural phenomena were particularly suitable for suggesting
the idea of the end; frequent earthquakes, droughts and the dark¬
ness in which Israel could see a residue of original chaos, were re¬
minders to faith that the world subsisted, not because of fixed and
immutable laws, but merely through the good pleasure of Yahweh,
for whom a single moment would be sufficient to reduce to nothing¬
ness what he had caused to arise out of chaos (Ps. 102.26; 104.29).
Although the cosmic aspect holds an important place in Old Tes¬
tament eschatological concepts, it is not the determining factor: the
idea of the end of the world is always secondary to that of Yahweh’s
coming and Yahweh does not come because the world is going to
end, but his coming brings, among other things, the end of the
world or more exactly the end of an age, which will be followed by
a new period of the world. And as Yahweh is the God who creates
life,2 the catastrophic aspect of eschatology could never be the last
word of his coming. The essential place is occupied by the notions
of a new creation and restoration. That is why the cleavage between
history and eschatology is never radical, for on one side the God
who will reveal himself by a grandiose theophany at the end of time
has already manifested himself and does not cease manifesting

1 According to the chronological system which is at the basis of the Priestly work,
the world will last 4,000 years, that is to say four periods of a thousand years each;
the Exodus, having taken place in the year 2,666 from the creation of the world,
is exactly at the end of the second third of this period, whilst the end of the
world brings us to the time of the composition of the book of Daniel. All O.T.
writings are shot through with the belief in a world of limited duration; but it
was probably only from the time of the Priestly work that this belief became the
object of speculations of an arithmetical nature.
2 The affirmation of the eternity of Yahweh can already be found in some ancient
texts, thus 1 Sam. 15.29, in which the nesach Israel is contrasted with the changeable
nature of man. But it is especially from the time of Second Isaiah that eternity
becomes one of the essential attributes of Yahweh (Is. 40.28; 41.4).
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
3X9
himself in the course of history; and on the other side all historical
events are already charged with eternal significance. Such fluidity
has had the power to move certain critics to speak of eschatology
only at the end of Israel’s evolution, at the time when with Ezekiel
the apocalyptic movement was germinating—a movement which
accentuates the cleavage between eschatology and history.1
However, examination of the language and concepts leads us to
the conclusion that an eschatology existed from a very early period
of Israel’s history. At the time of Amos the “day of Yahweh”
formed part of Israel’s hope and undoubtedly had done so for some
time previously. It seems difficult to us to subscribe to the interpre¬
tation which looks on this day as a mere feast day,2 perhaps the
day of the next feast in the calendar, for the association of that day
with light is an allusion to changes of a cosmic nature. Without
being able to say at what date the expectation of this day first
arose, it is quite probable to see in it the great means of Yahweh’s
revelation and action. In so far as it is a day of light, the day
of Yahweh evokes the creation of the world, the moment when
Yahweh gained the victory over the forces of chaos represented
by darkness; more wonderful still than the first creation, when
darkness had been merely pushed back by light, that day was to
mark the final victory of light over all the obscure forces which
would deliver a final assault in order to escape from the subordinate
rank to which Yahweh had reduced them (cf. Is. 27.1; 51.9; Amos
9.3; Ps. 74.13-14; 104.26). Yet it was on the plane of history that
he was to manifest himself essentially: it was imagined indeed as
a great battle in the course of which Yahweh would intervene in
person and would subject all the enemies of his people more
effectively than he had done at the time of Gideon’s victory over
the Midianites (Is. 9.3; 10.26; Jg. 9.3). This final victory was
also the object of a cultic ceremony which was a kind of anticipatory
event. Just as a feast day in Babylon was a day of God (um ili),3
the great feasts of Israel, and not only the probable though hypo-

1 The late origin of eschatology has been asserted by von Gall, Basileia ton theou,
1926, and in a general way by the Wellhausen school. Latterly Mowinckel, Han
som kommer, 1951, likewise defends the post-exilic origin of Messianic eschatology;
we refer readers to this book for all matters dealing with the history of the question
(English trans. He that cometh).
3 Cf. von Gall, of. cit., and Morgenstem, Amos Studies, 1941, pp. 4o8fE.
3 Nehemiah speaks of days consecrated to Yahweh (Neh. 8.9), but the day
of Yahweh has a unique and unrepeatable character.
320 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

thetical enthronement festival, celebrated the coming of God and

his victory over all the forces which were opposed to the establish¬
ment of his rule.
The expression “that day”, hayyom hahu,1 also designates the
day of Yahweh: passages such as Is. 2.20; 3.17; 5-3°> 2&-5'6’
Amos 2.16; 8.9; Hos. 2.18, allude to an eschatological reality,
though very often, particularly in the historical books, it is simply
a past or present reality that is in question (Ex. 32.28; Jg. 3-30;
4.23; 1 Sam. 14-23).
More significant, and allowing no doubt about its eschatological
meaning, is the formula “at the end of the days”, beacharit
bayyamim, or the similar expression “the coming days”, yamim
bairn, which in Ezekiel and Daniel marks the beginning of the
Messianic era (Ez. 38.8, 16; Dan. 2.28; 10.14). Though the
expression also has an attenuated sense which allows the translation
“ in the course of the days ”, this can be explained by the general
tendency to lessen the aspect of the cleavage of the ultimate realities,
but proves nothing against its original eschatological significance.2
The expression which best summarizes the various aspects of the
eschatological drama is shub shebut, which can be translated as:
the great return, the turning-point or change of destiny. The
great resemblance between the two roots (shub and shabah) led the
translators of the Septuagint to render the expression as the return
from captivity, a reading which has been adopted by many modern
translators.3 The origin of this term is to be found in the great
mythological theme of a return at the end of time of the first things,
a theme which Christian theology defines as the aTro/caraVrao-is
TrdvTwv (Acts 3.21). This great change takes place in two stages:
judgment and restoration, hinged together by the idea of the
remnant. Judgment constitutes the essential phase of the day of
1 The eschatological bearing of the expression bayyom hahu has been contested
by P. A. Munch, The expression Bajjom Hahu: is it an eschatological terminus
technicus? Oslo 1936.
2 There are two tendencies present; according to one, history became eschatology,
the point of view of the partisans of a late origin of eschatology; according to the
other, the view we favour, eschatology was absorbed by history and received from
history what constitutes its dynamism, which did not prevent it from determining
the interpretation of history.
3 The translation “ to bring back the captives ” is manifestly impossible in
passages like Ez. 16.53; J°b 42.10 and also Ps. 126. Note that Aquila regularly
translates it as d-rrocrrp^ipecv T-pv dwoaTporpTjv except in Jer. 49.6, in which he
follows the LXX reading (ewicrTp£<peiv tt)v alxp.a\oiciav)\ on this topic, cf. the
opposing theses of Dietrich and of Baumann (cf. bibliog.).
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 321

Yahweh without completely exhausting it, since the day of Yahweh

is also and indeed especially the day of the coming of his kingdom,
a goal which is never lost sight of in the gloomiest prophetic pic¬
tures, which show judgment as operating against Israel—Israel
taking the place solely occupied by the nations in popular
eschatology. Judgment is not motivated by mythological reasons
such as the aging of the world or by national reasons such
as the supremacy of Israel, but by sin. Certain scholars like
Wellhausen and Smend think that the prophets only announced
judgment when they were to some extent forced to do so by the
course of events. Certainly the preaching of the prophets is clearly
determined by the circumstances of history, but as it appears just
as clearly that times of prosperity—for instance in the time of
Amos—do not exclude the announcement of judgment, we must
admit that the ethical factor triumphs over political opportunism.
The prophets’ method of announcing judgment is to transpose
current practices in lawsuit scenes on to the religious plane.1
Judgment unfolds in three phases: (a) God presents himself as
accuser and enumerates to those with whom he enters into judgment
their faults, which are either faults committed against God, idolatry
(Jer. 2.23; Ez. 6.3ff.), or offences against neighbours, murder,
adultery, calumny (Hos. 4.2; Jer. 7.8-10); (b) God pronounces the
verdict of condemnation sometimes introduced by the interjection
hoy = woe! which through its association with funeral rites indicates
that there is no appeal against the sentence (Is. 10.5; Jer. 48.1;
50.27); (c) the execution of judgment is carried out by means of
three scourges which Jeremiah summarizes in a striking phrase:
“ I will destroy them by the sword, by famine and by pestilence ”
(14.12; cf. Jer. 27.8, 13; 28.8; Ez. 6.12).
Final judgment is not only announced, but is already partially
brought to pass by the judgments which are carried out in the
course of history, and so its contours only become precise in passages
with an apocalyptic flavour in which the divorce between escha¬
tology and history is accentuated. The obviously judicial aspect
of judgment, the order and method by which it is carried through,
do not permit us to see in it the manifestation of anger of an
1 Note among the principal scenes of judgment: Amos 1.3; 2.16; Hos. 4.1;
Is. 1.2, i8ff.; 3.13: Jer. 1.14; 25.15!!:; Mic. 1.2-4; S-1®-.’ Zeph. 3.8ff.; Joel 4-2ff.;
Mai. 3.2ff. It is quite possible that certain cultic scenes foreshadowed this judgment
(cf. Wurthwein, “ Der Ursprung der prophetischen Gerichtsrede im Kult ”, ZThK,
1952, pp. 1-16).
322 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

arbitrary God; all Old Testament texts agree that it has the banish¬
ment of sin as its goal, although the term sin covers a variety of
things. At the time of Amos sin was identified with the pagan
nations as a whole, the destruction of which appeared necessary
for the triumph of Israel’s election; judgment on Israel itself
seemed to be the very negation of that election. In other pro¬
nouncements belonging to various periods, the sin to be punished
is identified with the gods responsible for the fate of those nations
(Is. 19.i; 34.4; 46.1; Jer. 10.11; 48.13; 49.3; Zeph. 2.11); but the
main line is represented by the great prophets who show that,
because of the conditions of obedience linked with election and the
covenant, judgment on guilty Israel is the logical conclusion of
God’s plan. Whether judgment on the nations or on Israel is
concerned, the law which guides the exercise of judgment is always
the “ lex talionis ” : “ Thou hast pillaged—thou shalt be pillaged ”
(Is. 33.1); “ Those who devour you shall be devoured ” (Jer. 30.16);
“Do unto her as she [Babylon] hath done” (Jer. 50.29). The
people forsook Yahweh and so Yahweh will forsake them (Hos.
1.9; 2.4; 4.6). The wicked will reap what they have sown
(Is. 3.10, n). This is why the prophets were able to see, in the
exile, the just punishment of God against a people who had forsaken
him (Jer. 5.19; 18.10-13).1

Eschatology—and this is certainly further evidence in support

of its antiquity—has an aspect which is clearly collective. The
people of Israel as well as the other nations are regarded as a whole.
However, it did not escape the uncompromising moral attitude of
the prophets that there could be, within a single group, guilty and
righteous or at least various degrees of guilt. Already in a well-
known passage of the Yahwist’s work we find the idea stated that
the righteous can on certain occasions stop or at least cause the
deferment of the punishment of the guilty; all the prophets took
up this theme (Jer. 5.1; Ez. 22.30) and to one of the greatest of
them belongs the achievement of drawing its final consequences
(Is. 53). The collective aspect of punishment does not necessarily
make it anonymous; the prophets announce that, in the midst of
general punishment, particular punishments are destined to rein-

1 We must not always see the announcements of the exile by pre-exilic prophets
as prophecy post eventum; transportation of people was the normal method applied
by conquerors of antiquity to vanquished populations.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
323
force the judgment—this is the case with the false prophets in
Jer. 29.21-23—or on the other hand to temper it—Ebed Melek the
Ethiopian will be safe in the midst of catastrophe (Jer. 39.15-18)—
for from every judgment Yahweh means to reveal something new
which should be a sign of the coming of his kingdom.
A remnant will come out of judgment: the doctrine of the
remnant is essential to Israelite eschatology, for it expresses in its
own fashion the central message which is the coming of God into
the world. Although also used in connection with the nations (the
remnant of Babel, Jer. 50.26; of Aram, Is. 17.3; of the Philistines,
Amos 1.8; of Edom, Amos 9.12) but solely in a national sense, in
Israel the expression has religious overtones, for it reflects very clearly
God’s will for Israel. The remnant is a concept with two facets, one
catastrophic—only a remnant will survive; the other full of promise
—for a remnant will escape. The catastrophic sense is basic; a
remnant is spoken of only after a terrible catastrophe which has
destroyed all but a remnant: by comparing it to two bones and
a piece of ear just saved from the lion’s mouth, Amos conveys
some idea of its smallness (3.12; 5.3). The prophet’s hearers could
not misunderstand, but they could also remember the word by
which Yahweh had announced to the prophet Elijah that he had
established a remnant (hisb’arti) so that his work should continue
(1 Kings 19.17-18).1 This saving and consoling aspect of the
remnant has its origin in the mercy of Yahweh, who wishes to
uphold his people at all costs: God chooses the remnant, it is the
Xei/uL/uLa kolt e/cXoy^ xapiros (Rom. 11.5) and no one can claim to
form part of it, although Yahweh exercised his choice on righteous
men such as Noah, Lot and Joseph, etc. It was Isaiah who gave
systematic expression to the notion of the remnant; like Amos he
insists on its catastrophic aspect (6.13; 17.5-6; two olives on the
topmost bough) but, however small the remnant may be, it is the
germ, the root from which a new plant will be able to spring, for
it is in favour of this remnant that the election and consecration
granted formerly to Abraham’s posterity are renewed.2 Convinced
that what he believes is to be brought about in the immediate
future, and anxious also to give concrete expression to his faith by
ruling his life in accordance with it, Isaiah tries to make from the

1 In the cycle of narratives concerning Elijah, the notion of remnant is met in

1 Kings 18.22, 40; 19.3, 4; 2 Kings 9.15: 10.11, 14: 17.19, 24.
2 De Vaux, RB, 1933, p. 531.
324 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

remnant a reality that is already present: the name given to one

of his sons, Shear-yashub = a remnant will return (i.e. to Yahweh)
signifies not only that there will be a remnant, but that his son
will constitute its nucleus. It is possible that in the course of his
ministry he more or less identified the remnant with all the things
which were the object of God’s choice: his disciples, himself,
Jerusalem, the community of the ‘anawim (14.32) constituted, if not
the remnant itself, at least sure signs and pledges of its future
coming and triumph, for “ the remnant will produce new roots
below and fruits above” (37.31), and Micah states that the
remnant will be so powerful that it will accomplish a reversal of the
situation and that the remnant will in its turn become a lion which
tramples and tears, by the power of Yahweh which will reside in
its breast (Mic. 5.7-8). In Isaiah the remnant is essentially distinct
from a purely political reality; it is essentially an Israel /ca-ra
wedfia] in /.epnaman, a prophet of progress in many respects,
the remnant receives concrete form in the community of the poor
(2.3; 3.12) and it is significant that Deuteronomy, which is an
attempt to reconstitute the holy people in its entirety, does not
speak of the remnant. Jeremiah announces total destruction (5.1;
6.9; 8.3; 9.9; 24.8-9); yet once the catastrophe has taken place a
remnant gathers round Gedaliah; but is it God’s remnant? For
a moment this possibility is envisaged (Jer. 42.10-12), but events
were not long in undeceiving the prophet (42.19-22) by inviting
him to see the remnant in the basket of figs which symbolizes the
exiles (24.4). Ezekiel had hesitated to identify the remnant, but
the death of Pelatyah (11.13), whose name, so like that of Shear-
yashub, proves the importance of the notion, convinces him that
the exiles form the real remnant (11.14-20). After the exile,
the community of Ezra was very conscious of being this remnant
(Ezra 9.8, 15) and this feeling became current among the last of
the prophets. However, the judgment which was brought to pass
in the exile and from which the remnant issues does not eliminate
the final judgment (Joel 3.5; Obad. 17). The disentanglement of
the remnant from its national trappings makes it into a splendid
reality open to the heathen, or rather to the remnant among them
(Zeph. 3.9 ; Zech. 14.16). Although with each prophet statements
about the remnant are determined by the circumstances of his
time, it always appears—and this is the evidence in favour of a
supra-histoncal origin of the notion—as the bridge joining the
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
325
threat of punishment to the promise of restoration. Proportional
to the development in detail of the catastrophic aspect, the remnant
becomes disentangled from ancient ties and appears less as the
debris of a past that is reaching fulfilment than the germ of a new
future in which Yahweh alone will hold the initiative.
The glorious future indeed will primarily be a restoration of the
past. In the visions of restoration mythological elements are
mingled even more closely with historical memories than in the
visions of judgment: the restoration will sometimes be the return
of paradise, at other times the return of the particularly glorious
periods of Israel’s past. Although the terms Eden and the garden
of Yahweh are met explicitly only in Isaiah 51.3, the idea underlies
all the texts which speak of the felicity at the end of time. The
nature of paradise is the nature of fairy tales. There the food com¬
prises wonderful dishes which have the property of conferring
immortality and knowledge; at the time of the ’acharit hayyamim
there will be the same luxuriant vegetation as in the beginning
(Is. 4.2); there will be a profusion of milk or honey, oil and wine,
according as the ideal is regarded from a nomadic or a sedentary
viewpoint (Amos 9.13; Joel 4.18); men will live long and death at
the age of a hundred years is very premature (Is. 63.20; Zech. 8.4);
for those who think absolutely consistently death itself will be
abolished (Is. 25.8). Beauty, innocence and wisdom, which were
the attributes of the first human beings, will return (Ez. 28.13;
31.3). This transformation of man will be brought about by means
of the tree of life, the water of life or the book of life. The tree
of life1 whose fruit confers eternal life is mentioned outside the
Genesis narrative only as an image of beauty and particularly of
wisdom (Prov. 11.30; 13.12; 15.4), but it again plays an essential
role in apocalyptic writings (Enoch 32.24-25; Rev. 2.7; 22.2, 24).2
The theme of life-giving water represented by the four rivers
which take their rise in the mountain of paradise (Gen. 2.10-14)
reappears in Ezekiel’s final visions and an allusion to it can be seen
in the ambiguous mention of the river of delights (nachal ‘adanim)
in Psalm 36.9. The notion of the book of life excludes that of
1 Cf. also 4 Esdras 7.36: “ Revelatur iterum paradisus jucunditatum.”
2 In a series of studies devoted to the ideology of royalty Widengren has stressed
the importance of the theme of the tree of life in the cult of Tammuz and in that
of the king; but apart from Lam. 4.31 there is in the O.T. no connection between
this image and royalty (The King and the Tree of Life in Ancient Near Eastern
Religion, Uppsala 1951).
326 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

the food of immortality, for anyone whose name is written in

the book of life has no need of special food in order to gain
immortality. The transformation will also extend to the animal
world; wild animals will be tamed, the wolf will lie down with
the lamb (Is. 11.6-8) or they will purely and simply disappear
(Is. 35.9; Ez. 34.25; Lev. 26.6); all animals will be beneficiaries of
the divine covenant (Hos. 2.20). The Genesis narrative, admittedly,
does not insist much on this concord between man and beast, but,
by affirming that his food was exclusively vegetarian until the time
of the Flood, the Priestly writer seeks to assert that, though called
to rule over the animals, man has no right to put them to death.
The restored state is quite well characterized by the term shalom,
which means more than peace as opposed to war, although war also
is eliminated in the new age (Is. 2.2-4; Mic. 5.2ff.). It expresses
a state of plenitude and perfection in which everyone will attain
his maximum intensity in a life freed from all limitations.
Israel’s faith was nourished less on myths connected with the
beginnings—the absence of allusions to which is quite striking—
than on the great facts of the past, on those tsideqot Yahweh which
were manifested in history. The Exodus was at all times the type
of God’s interventions; so it is not surprising that the felicity of
Mosaic times should occupy more space in eschatology than truly
paradisal felicity. Yahweh will recall his people to the desert, to
the place of the first betrothal; they will have to cross the desert
again but, instead of being an exhausting march, it will be a
triumphal procession; wonderful trees will grow there and springs
will gush forth (Is. 41.18-20; 51.9-10); along their route, Yahweh
in person will be the shepherd (Ex. 15.13; Is. 40.11; 52.12) and
will manifest himself in the form of a column of smoke by day
and of fire by night (Is. 4.5). The new political and social organiza¬
tion will be like that of the Exodus (Is. 1.26) and Yahweh will
proceed to divide the land again. The vision of the new covenant
in Jer. 31 is likewise a transposition on to the eschatological plane
of one of the essential Mosaic themes. Some sectarians like the
Rechabites (2 Kings 10.5; Jer. 35) gave concrete form to this hope
by transposing the return of Mosaic times into the immediate
present, holding that the fact of ever leaving them was a mark of
unfaithfulness. The hope of the return of Davidic times added to
the paradise theme and the Exodus theme an element which, in
view of the circumstances surrounding the composition of the
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
327
biblical books, was destined to enjoy great prominence: a large
number of the hopes centre round Jerusalem; the route of the new
Exodus does not simply lead to the promised land, but to Jerusalem.
At the gates of Jerusalem the great drama will be played out, in
the course of which Yahweh’s kingship over all his adversaries will
be declared (Ps. 46; Ez. 38-39). It is very probable that several
reasons contributed to give Jerusalem this essential role: its sacred
character since the Canaanite period, its geographical position and
the memory of extraordinary deliverances in the course of history.
Israel was conscious of owing all these valuable things of the past
to David and, because of the general tendency of Hebrew men¬
tality to incarnate all truths in people, all the glory of Jerusalem
came to be concentrated in the person of David.

B. THE MESSIANIC KINGDOM

The eschatology of judgment and of the great return hardly gives

a place to the figure of the Messiah; yet it could not be said that it
is totally ignorant of him. But the person of the Messiah obviously
plays only a subordinate part. Yahweh alone is king and as such
the author of judgment and restoration. The Messianic hope, how¬
ever, has deep roots which go further back than the institution of
kingship, though the latter gave it its dominant orientation. Since
the return of the golden age formed part of the most ancient
religious patrimony of Israel it is quite natural to suppose that it
also included the hope of the return of man as he existed in the
beginning. Man had been created to exercise the function of
dominator and king within the creation (Gen. 1.26; Ps. 8.5). This
royal function also appears in certain paradise traditions whose
substance had been furnished to Israel by her neighbours. In his
well-known elegy on the King of Tyre, Ezekiel (28.13) speaks of a
vizier of the great god El, to whom the latter had entrusted
guardianship of his seal in the garden of Eden; his wisdom gave
him the privilege of being called the protecting kerub, the gate¬
keeper of heaven; but this vizier showed himself unworthy and,
because of his sin, he was hurled down to earth, where he built the
city of Tyre and founded the most ancient kingdom of the
Phoenicians. In an analogous order of ideas, Isaiah applies to the
king of Babylon the features of a celestial personage, Helal ben
 328 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Shachar, shining star son of the dawn, whose pride cost him relega¬
tion to earth (Is. 14). fob too knows the tradition of an Urmensch
begotten before the hills (in time or in place), who was considered
to have made fraudulent entry into the council of the gods in order
to steal wisdom; this was responsible for his being ejected from the
celestial paradise (Job Psalm no, which in its present
form is an oracle addressed to the reigning king, greets him as the
one who “was begotten on the holy mountain from the womb of
the dawn ”, an expression which probably stems from some myth
about the beginning of things; finally it may be remembered that
the Babylonian hero Adapa, “seed of humanity”, was gifted with
a vast intelligence which made him capable of revealing the forms
of the earth, that he bore among other titles that of mshch,
anointed, of shepherd of humanity, and that he had been within
an ace of obtaining the privilege of immortality. Original man
by whom the fall had come should also be the means of the restora¬
tion, and without drawing from the “ Protevangelion ” all the
Christological affirmations which Christian exegesis never ceases
to find there, we feel that there is in this text much more than the
expression of an everlasting enmity between man and the serpent,
for victory belongs to the one who crushes the head and not to
the one who will wound the heel1 (Gen. 3.15). So it is possible
to discover behind these fleeting allusions and metaphors the figure
of a person who is none other than primitive man; from this man
the re-establishment of the compromised situation—in a word—
salvation was expected, as is shown by the large number of
anthropos myths. But Israel’s essentially historical faith always
applied this saviour’s features to particularly historical figures.
Before finding them applied to the Davidic Messiah, we meet them
among the first representatives of a charismatic kingship who were
themselves called moshi'im, that is saviours.2 These heroes all have

1 The bibliographical material on this text will be found collected in the article
by B. Rigaux, “La femme et son lignage ”, RB, 1954, p. 321. We feel that in this
text there is an announcement of the final salvation of man and consequently a
Messianism ” which goes far beyond national limitations; this universal aspect
never disappeared moreover even when the Davidic current became dominant; the
Chronicler again shows how David’s kingdom is a universal reality.
a Several authors dealing with Messianism prefer the term “ saviour ” to Messiah,
which never has an eschatological sense in the O.T., for example Sellin, Die
israelitiscbe Heilandserwartung; Durr, Ursprung und A us ban der isr.-jiid Heiland¬
serwartung-, Staerk, Soter. Die Erlosererwartung in den ostlichen Religionen; Widen-
gren, King and Saviour.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 329

common features which can only be explained if it is admitted that

their life is cast in the same mould, that of the ideal saviour:
(a) their birth is preceded by a long period of sterility in their
mother: this is the case of Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Samson and Samuel;
(b) their origin is obscure and modest: Gideon is the poorest of his
tribe and the least in his clan (Jg. 6.15), Jephthah is of obscure
origin, but this lowliness is responsible for his being chosen by
God for brilliant exploits, Saul comes from the smallest tribe
(1 Sam. 9.21), and Bethlehem, David’s birthplace, is very little
among the myriads of Judah (Mic. 3.1); (c) the heroes are filled
with God’s spirit through which they are capable of performing
superhuman actions: Joseph has the strength of an ox (Gen. 49.24;
Dt. 33-17), Moses is continually filled with God’s power, likewise
Samson (Jg. 14.15!^), Samuel (1 Sam. 15-33), Saul (2 Sam. i.22ff.)
and David (1 Sam. 17.46; 18.7).
It would, however, be a rather fragile hypothesis if we could not
support it by what we know of Israel’s eschatological hopes in the
most ancient times. The date of the Messianic oracles is difficult
to determine and, although we think we can find traces of this hope
earlier than the establishment of the monarchy, we must admit that
all the oracles received their present form only from the time of
David. This is true in particular of the oracles of Balaam,1 but
despite their Davidic stamp, these oracles reflect rather the climate
of the time of the Judges or the early days of the monarchy under
Saul, and their prophetic character, mysterious and veiled, forbids
our seeing in them simple vaticinia ex eventu. Composed in their
present form to the glory of David or one of his descendants, they
announce the end of time (’acharit hayyamim), but, whereas the
eschatological oracles speak only of the coming of Yahweh, here
the main stress is put on the person of a mediator who is already
endued with the main features which we are to find all through the
Messianic tradition: (a) he is called a star (kokab),2 a title which
will be one of the constants of eschatological language, since we
find it right through to the book of Revelation (Rev. 22.16) and
since elsewhere also the coming of the Saviour is found in association
1 The oracles of Balaam have often been re-edited in the course of the centuries,
as is shown particularly in the mention of the vessels of Kittim (Num. 24.23) which
can only be the Greeks and Romans, but the basis is certainly ancient and characterizes
quite well what may be called the heroic age of Israel.
2 It is particularly interesting to notice the translation of Num. 24.17 in the LXX:
'AvareXti &<TTpov 'laicwp, xal avaaT^erai: &v0punroi 4£ 'lapatiX.
33° THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

with manifestations of a planetary or solar order; (&) the Saviour

will be a powerful warrior; he it is who performs the task elsewhere
reserved for Yahweh: to break the skull of his enemies; (c) this
Saviour has a universal empire; the earth belongs to him (cf. Dt.
33. ^ff.), an echo of Israel’s national consciousness and of its mission,
which are as ancient as its election.
Besides the oracles of Balaam our most important literary source
is constituted by Jacob’s blessing of the tribes (Gen. 49) and more
especially by the blessing on Judah (v. 8ff.). The mystery of this
passage, which is already partially obscure in itself, is further
increased by the puzzle of the term Shiloh.1 Jews and Christians
alike have always looked on this text as a Messianic prophecy, going
so far as to show that the numerical value of Yabo Shiloh and
maschiach were identical. The sceptre shall not leave Judah nor
the rod of command from between his feet, until the coming of
him to whom dominion belongs. There also, it seems, a saviour
is concerned who will arrive at the end of time, probably issuing
from Judah, but whose arrival will put an end to the authority of
that tribe; he will be different from the saviour of Balaam’s oracle
in that he will be pacific, he will be mounted on an ass and will
feed on paradisiac dishes, milk and wine. So, at a time preceding
the monarchy, there may have been, among certain tribes, the hope
that a figure would come with the task of bringing back the golden
age and of exercising again the dominion which had been com¬
promised by opposing forces; but faith never doubted the triumph
of that dominion, nor could faith conceive the return of an age
without the return of a person, for in Israel all truths tend to
crystallize in personalities and not in some abstract principles.
These antecedents do not prevent us from saying that Messianism
in its true sense developed only from the time of the monarchy.
Long before adopting for itself the royal regime, Israel had seen
kings over the majority of its neighbours and had lived for long
enough among Canaanites, who were organized in little kingdoms,
to appreciate the pros and cons of this regime.2 Throughout the
ancient East, the king was the object of a veneration which some¬
times became a real cult: in Egypt, the Pharaoh’s divine character
1 The best analogy to the name Shiloh is provided by Ezekiel 21.32 ‘ad bo ’asher
lo hammishpat, which cuts short all attempts to seek to interpret the term as a
proper name. Cf. concerning the blessing on Judah Sellin’s article in ZAW, 1944,
pp.57 ff.
2 Cf. John Gray, “ Canaanite kingship in theory and practice ”, VT, 1952, pp. i93ff.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 331

is always affirmed without reservation, since the Pharaoh is the

incarnation of the god and the only true priest through whom the
land was assured divine life. In the Mesopotamian world, the
deification of the king assumed aspects as numerous and varied as
the peoples who mingled in that area, but, as shown in the
exhaustive enquiry by H. Frankfort,1 the idea of the king as
servant of the god always and everywhere came earlier than the
idea of the god incarnate. Since Syria-Palestine occupies a position
midway between Egypt and Mesopotamia, it is not surprising that
we find in Canaan a notion of monarchy very similar to Egypt’s;
the Ugaritic texts, the Legend of Keret in particular, are significant
in this respect, while among the Aramaeans of Syria2 we have no
trace of the divine origin of the king or of his deification after death.
These variations, in which it is right to see more than differences
of detail, make us regard as infinitely improbable the existence of
a pattern common to the Semitic world as a whole, of a dying and
rising god whose role was incarnated in the king. Further—and we
must insist upon this—all that the literary sources tell us about the
institution of the Israelite monarchy gives very little support to
a royal ideology: the monarchy always had a secular character; the
constitution of the people by the bond of the covenant into a holy
people dispensed with the mediation of the king, who could not be
united to God by a closer bond than the people as a whole. The
reasons which finally and not without much hesitation led to the
adoption of the royal regime were of a political order only, and it is
quite probable that kingship would always have remained in the
borderland of Israel’s life without the person of David. In the
history of the Messianic hope David constitutes both a finishing
and a starting-point. A finishing-point, for to David, and with
better reason than to the heroes of the time of the Judges, features
of the final Saviour were ascribed; he was saluted as son of the
dawn (Ps. 110.3), as the hero who brings the prosperity of nature
with him (Ps. 72.16), as the rising sun (2 Sam. 23.4). It also seems
quite probable that by the capture of Jerusalem David inherited
certain local traditions connected with this city, which, moreover,
we can find in the Old Testament itself. Among the kings who
gave brilliance to pre-Israelite Jerusalem, Melchizedek occupies a
pre-eminent position. That he exercised royal and priestly functions
1 Kingship and the Gods, Chicago 1948.
* Euler in ZAW, 1938, pp. 272-313.
332 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

is in keeping with what we know of ancient oriental custom, but

this priest-king, who is invoked in Psalm i io to establish David’s
authority, probably held his prestige from something more lofty
and more distant than these two functions. Concerning the
Messianic king, the same Psalm which mentions Melchizedek
speaks of his birth from the womb of the dawn and from the living
water of the torrent; these figures of speech form part of a myth
of paradise which must have received fairly full expression in
Jebusite Jerusalem. Consequently, when David seized Jerusalem,
he took over the prerogatives of Melchizedek and through him those
of the paradisal king.
In the mythologies of the most diverse peoples, paradise is the
impregnable place, the place whose entrance in biblical tradition
is jealously guarded by the cherubim with flaming swords; and
so anyone who wishes to take paradise by assault exposes himself
to an adventure which is doomed in advance to failure. Now the
taking of Jerusalem is likewise spoken of as impossible; the
Jebusites are made to say to David, “ Thou shalt not enter here, but
the blind and the lame will force thee to retire” (2 Sam. 5.6).
Doubtless the impregnability of the city is partially explained on
geographical grounds, but religious considerations are not absent:
El Elyon, who was called ‘‘the lord of all the earth”, dwelt
in Jerusalem (Gen. 14.19) and this presence was a pledge of
security for the city. Therefore we should probably consider Jeru¬
salem s role as holy city in a rather different way from the one
commonly admitted; it is usually thought that Jerusalem’s prestige
is due to the presence of the temple which, on becoming the deposi¬
tary of the Ark, concentrated within its walls all the divine presence.
It is more plausible to suppose that the temple was built because
Jerusalem was already a holy city and that the work of David and
his successors was to transfer that holiness from the ownership of the
Canaanites to that of the Israelites. David received a considerable
inheritance, but for no one is the saying as true as for him:
to him that hath shall be given. From all points of view David
was a great man. Thanks to a wealth of first-hand documentary
evidence, since it comes doubtless from his followers, we can draw
a relatively accurate picture of his reign. David could impose his
will, he possessed the nature of a chief, but this chief was not a
cruel and tyrannical despot using the arbitrary power that his
immunity conferred upon him; he was able to take the value of
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
333
his subjects into account and strove skilfully to win their esteem,
by sending for example a share of the booty to the elders of Judah
(i Sam. 30.24). National unity which was brought about in his
reign was due less to political contrivance than to his personal
prestige, which explains in part why it was compromised as soon
as he had died. His military exploits had made him infinitely
popular: ‘ ‘ Saul hath slain his thousands and David his ten thou¬
sands ” was a well-known refrain and “all in Judah and Israel
loved David, because he went out and came in before them”
(1 Sam. 18.7, 16). His poetical and musical gifts put him in the
people’s eyes in a particularly friendly relationship with the deity,
all the more since David was indeed deeply religious. Certainly
he did not compose all the Psalms which tradition attributes to him,
but it seems certain that this man was capable of humbling himself
and of recognizing God’s power as much in his victories, in which
he never rejoices in the death of his enemies, as in the defeats of his
personal life. An oriental despot, considering himself as god,
requiring that divine honour should be paid to him, could easily
have been incensed at the hope of a king greater than himself; a
thousand years later Herod will be bitterly angry when he learns
of the birth of a new king. David, however, merely becomes more
conscious of his dignity as a precursor of this Messiah. David’s
attitude towards Messianism can be defined from two texts whose
authenticity is more and more recognized by literary criticism: the
first is Nathan’s prophecy (2 Sam. 7), which takes place at the time
when the king is preparing to build a temple to Yahweh. Yahweh
declines this offer but gives to David a threefold compensation
because of his good intention: (a) I will make thee a name equal
to the name of the greatest on earth (v. 9); (b) Israel will attain
national independence, it will not be disturbed and the wicked shall
no longer oppress it (v. 10); (c) Yahweh shall make thee a house:
thy house and thy kingdom shall stand for ever in my presence,
thy throne shall be established for ever (vv. 11, 16). Therefore
Yahweh gives David the assurance, something he had not done for
Saul, that he will found a dynasty and that this dynasty will last
indefinitely. From this there opened for Israel, as long as they
were governed by a descendant of David, a new prospect of glory.
The blessings given to the people and attributed, by Jacob’s pre¬
diction, especially to the tribe of Judah, were thenceforward con¬
centrated on the royal house of Jesse; from that time, the destiny
334 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

of God’s reign on earth will be linked with that of David’s dynasty.

Important as this text is, it is, however, only implicitly Messianic,
for what is promised in it is not the more or less imminent coming
of a saviour, but the eternity of David’s dynasty—unless preference
should be given to the version of this prophecy given in the book
of Chronicles, where the individual sense is clearly brought out.1
We find an echo of Nathan’s prophecy in the oracle which
is usually, but improperly, called the last words of David (2 Sam.
23.1-7).2 In form this passage recalls the oracles of Balaam
(Num. 24.3, 13) and like Jacob’s blessing it forms part of the
literature of testamentary statements; however there is no question
in it of the eschatological Messiah: the moshel tsaddiq is primarily
David himself and then each of his descendants on his throne;
but it is not impossible that there is an allusion to the final victory
of the dynasty, which can only be the victory of an individual.
This aspect of finishing-point and starting-point is found in several
Psalms which, even if they do not come from David himself, at least
link up with the current which tended to identify the Messiah
with the reigning king. This “realized” eschatology, to use an
expression that has become fashionable, very closely resembles, from
the formal point of view, the language of royal ideology, and it is
quite probable that in certain circles, particularly in Jerusalem, no
distinction was made between the reigning king and the Messiah
who was to come. This does not mean that all eschatological per¬
spective is absent from those Psalms which are very rightly called
royal rather than Messianic. Thus in Psalm 2 the view goes beyond
the reign of the present sovereign; doubtless the latter is the one
who is meant by the term mashiach, but for the Psalmist’s faith he
is also the sign of the coming king who alone will be able to carry
out the mission of victory and universalism which is proclaimed
therein. The same point occurs in Psalm 72, which regards the
present kingship in the light of the kingship of Yahweh, which is
1 Nathan’s prophecy is interpreted in a collective sense by the authors of Psalms
89.30-38 and 132.11-12; it was interpreted in an individual sense by the addition
of v. 13 in 2 Sam. 7, in 1 Kings 5.19; 8.16-19 and by the Chronicler: 1 Chr.
17.11-14; 22.10; 28.6; in the latter an individualization of the person of the Messiah
is clearly involved.
2 Cf. Procksch’s study, “ Die letzten Worte Davids ” in Alttestamentliche Studien
Rud. Kit tel dargebracht. In order to show the eminently Messianic character of
this passage von Orelli has written: “ As he, the old king departs, the sun does
not set but the morning then breaks in unexpected splendour ” (Die alttestamentliche
Weissagung, p. 187).
 THt O LOGY Of Till: OLD TESTAMENT 335
made real by the Messiah, and thli without any need to admit in the
pott-exilic period a recasting of the royal Psairm with the purpose
of making them the vehicle of eschatological Messianismd In a
general //ay, it may be held that Mcssianism from David onwards
enjoyed great continuity, with the stress put sometimes on the
dynamic aspect, sometimes on the purely eschatological aspect.
It would, however, he incorrect to state that Messianism forms
trie centre of the preaching of the great prophets, f or the prophets
earlier than Isaiah- Elijah, Amos and Hosca- the Messiah plays
no part to speak of, tliough the fundamental theme of eschatology,
which is the proclamation of the kingdom, is at the basis of their
message, for God’s absoluteness and the requirement of justice in
social relationships are motivated hy their faith in the God who
comes to establish his sovereignty after a thorough sifting of the
whole world. Even to an fsaiah, the Messiah occupies only a
secondary place in his visions of the future; he forms a part of
the gifts of the new age far more than being its initiator, but only
his coming gives real meaning to the new age, for without his
presence Cod’s gifts would risk being ineffective. This Messiah
will be a descendant of David, but in all the well-known Messianic
prophecies of ecclesiastical tradition, the son of David also bears
the stamp of the paradisal man. The association of the various
themes appears most clearly in the text of Micah (5.1-5): the
Messiah is of the lineage of David or rather he will be David
redtvivus since he will cornc from Bethlehem, hut behind this David
looms the figure of the man-saviour who existed at the far-off
beginnings of creation and whose birth will be surrounded with
mystery and wonder. In spite of the transference on to the histori¬
cal plane, the mythological background is still clearly discernible;
without ignoring the positive values brought by kingship with a
view to the actualizing of the hope, the prophets regarded it as too
narrow a basis for the coming of the kingdom. A prophet like
fsaiah is markedly influenced by the monarchy. More than other
prophets, he lived in the immediate vicinity of kings and, by
addressing many of his oracles to them, he showed that he con¬
sidered them as the representatives of the people and responsible

1 Podechard and Steinmann, to quote only two recent French commentator* on

the Pialrm, think that the etc ha to logical Mettianitm of the Psalm* i* due to a
revuion: thu* P*. 2.7: 45.18b; no.6b, 7b are alleged to have been added in order
to bring about thi* transference.
 336 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

for them. His pronouncements, however, have nothing in common

with the language of courtiers; although he never doubts that the
king is installed by God, his own prophetic conscience, which rested
on immediate contact with God, assures him of an evident feeling
of superiority before the king, for example when in the presence
of Ahaz he contrasts his God with the king’s (Is. y.ioff.). It is
improbable that Isaiah ever thought that the perpetuity of the
Davidic dynasty was enough to establish Yahweh’s kingship on
earth, for in his eyes the reigning king was only a sign, positive
or negative, of the king whom the prophet was awaiting in accord¬
ance with the most ancient tradition of his people. A righteous,
faithful and pious king, walking in the footsteps of David, was a
sign of the Messianic king; on the other hand an unfaithful king
evoked, by contrast, the hope and figure of the ideal king. This
contrast appears clearly in chapter 7 of this book: on one side is
Ahaz, weak and hesitant, seeking salvation in alliances with a
foreign power, on the other side Immanuel, the child of mysterious
and more or less miraculous origin, who is the son neither of Ahaz,
nor of the prophet, and who represents a new age which will put
an end to the former order of things.1 Immanuel’s mission, which
is only announced there, is given in detail in the oracles of chaps.
9 and 11; his person and work will form part of a new creation,
inaugurated like the first with a great light and a great battle which
Yahweh, who is always the principal actor, will launch against the
powers of chaos. By insisting on the birth of the Messiah, the
prophet seeks to declare his complete participation in the course of
history, while the attributes with which he is endowed are not con¬
quests due to his genius and activity, but solely gifts from God.
His work will consist not only in bringing back the shub shebut,
but in making it operative through a moral transformation; by
founding his kingdom on mishpat and tsedaqah, the Messianic
sovereign must prove that his reign is a faithful reflection of the
reign of Yahweh himself, whose means of action are no different
(Is. 29.19-20; 32.16; 33.ij). The gift of the spirit stressed in
chapter 11 is a further reminiscence of what took place at the
beginning of creation, when the movement of the spirit hovering
1 Immanuel and the 'almab must have been realities known to the prophet’s
hearers: the people were waiting for the coming of a divine child of more or less
wonderful origin, but in the prophet s mouth this myth becomes present in history
and the coming of this Saviour very imminent, in spite of the general situation, which
seems unfavourable to the arrival of the golden age.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
337
over the darkness of chaos was the first gesture of God the creator.
If this king brings in a new creation, it is obvious that his work
goes far beyond the continuity of the dynasty, although it is in
Jerusalem and on the throne of David that it must be manifested.
Jeremiah, too, envisaged the Messianic kingdom as a contrast and
not as a continuation of the earthly kingdom. The righteous seed,
tsemach1 tsaddiq, is far from being realized by him who bears the
name of righteous, that is King Zedekiah (Jer. 23.5) and it might
even be that the prophet denies him any link with the Davidic
dynasty.2 The abolition of the monarchy and the exile, while causing
a crisis in Messianic beliefs, did not nullify the hope itself, which
was founded on faith in the creative power of God much more than
on the permanence of an institution. The dynastic current found
a way of turning to good account all the signs which could be
interpreted as proof that the exile had not put an end to the Davidic
line and to the promises connected with it. Thus the Deuteronomic
redactor sees, without explicitly stating, a sign of the validity of
the promise formerly made to David through Nathan in the
reinstatement of Jehoiachin by the king of Babylon (2 Kings 25.27,
30); and at the return from exile the Messianic movement begun
by the Davidic Zerubbabel was probably more important than the
few allusions in the biblical texts might lead us to suppose.3
Yet this current was less dynamic than the specifically prophetic
current which is represented by the two men who set their mark
on the whole post-exilic development of Judaism—Ezekiel and
Second Isaiah. Both proclaim the restoration, not as a return to
the past, but as a new creation. Ezekiel, the prophet of the honour
of God, presents this restoration as almost exclusively the work of
Yahweh, who will conclude a new covenant in accordance with the
principles of the first: “Ye shall be my people, and I shall be your

1 The word tsemacb is a term of cosmic eschatology (cf. Num. *4.17); we find
it again in Is. 4.3-3; Zech. 3.6-10; 6.9-15; the Messiah is to inaugurate a new
creation.
2 Messianism holds a very secondary place in Jeremiah’s message; its goal is the
new covenant under Yahweh’s kingship; in a passage which is probably not by
the prophet himself (33. i4ff.) the name of Yahweh tsidqent* is applied to the
Jerusalem community, which proves that the Messiah is for him only a means
of making fully real the idea of an elected people.
3 The specifically Davidic current was maintained particularly in the book of
Chronicles; we find it used down to the time of the book of Maccabees (1 Macc.
2.57). “ David has inherited the throne of the kingdom for ever yet the house
of David had long ceased to exist.
 338 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

God ” (36.28), but this covenant will be new since the people will
have passed through a death and a resurrection (37); the David who
will reign over this community is less like the king of Israel whose
name he bears than the “ original man ” whose presence is enough
to confirm the presence of God, who will be the only king (Ez.
34.23; 37.24). Second Isaiah does not make a clean sweep of the
past, on the contrary, he finds in the transformed and purified
experience of the past the secret of the restoration. The Servant
Songs, far from being fragments of foreign origin inserted into his
work, offer us on the contrary the key to his thought which, as
has been very rightly stressed, is a theology of history. With the
help of this extremely fluid figure, which is used in the Old Testa¬
ment for the nation and for certain privileged individuals, the
prophet recapitulates the whole history of Israel.
Founded upon election and destined to a mission, the people of
Israel underwent a long series of trials, due for the most part to
their own faithlessness, from which they had always been delivered
anew by a not less uninterrupted series of liberating interventions
of God. All these themes are used again in the Servant Songs: the
servant is the elect, the wretched, the missionary, the glorified one;
he summarizes in his person the whole history of his people, but
where Israel failed, the servant will succeed: “Behold, my servant
will succeed ”—thus, as in a superscription the importance of which
must not be minimized, is defined his supreme work (52.13). He
will succeed by his sufferings and by his death, which have a sub¬
stitutionary value, for by substituting himself for his people the
servant makes their salvation possible; that is why in the last song
the figure of the servant can only be understood in an individual
sense. To the question which preoccupies him: What are the
reasons for the present suffering and how will Yahweh’s reign be
established on earth? the prophet replies by an interpretation of
history in which he grasps, like all historians and prophets, not a
few events, but the full scope of the divine plan.1 From afar or
from close by he is present at the fall of Babylon and he enthusias¬
tically greets Cyrus as the providential instrument of the plan of
salvation; yet he soon understood that Cyrus was only a conqueror
like the others and that a simple political change was insufficient
to produce in the people the great change which was to allow them
1 Cf. J. de Scnarclens, Le mystere de I’histoire, Geneva. All the biblical part of
this book is devoted to an exposition of the theology of Second Isaiah.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
339
to make their vocation a reality. For the prophet, as for his fore¬
runners, salvation was linked to the event of the Exodus; at the
time of the Exodus Yahweh had constituted, saved, redeemed and
taught his people, and so any saving intervention in history could
be only a confirmation of the Exodus. It is striking to discover
how far the Exodus theme dominates the thought of Second Isaiah;
it is so central that it forms the introduction and the conclusion to
his work (40.3d. and 55.12-13). The new Exodus will not be a
replica of the former: between the type and the antitype there is a
relationship of progress and deepening; the terms “ to bring back”
and “desert” take on a spiritual meaning1 and the agent of this
change is a new figure, the Servant, an eschatological and Messianic
figure. This figure, however, has numerous historical connections.
Reflection on the Exodus had more than once led the prophet to
meditate on the person of Moses, who is called the “ servant of
Yahweh” in Ex. 4.10; 14.31; Num. 11.11; 12.7; Dt. 3.24; 34.5,
a prophet in Ex. 5.5, 23; 6.6 (cf. Is. 49.2), a man of the spirit in
Num. 11.25-29; 12.6-9 (c^- Is- 42-1! 50.4-9), the one who becomes
an intercessor in Ex. 32.11; 33.12; 34.4; Dt. 9.18-20; 10.10-11 (cf.
Is. 53.12), the one who gives a covenant in Ex. 24.8 (cf. Is. 42.6;
52.15), the one who teaches in Dt. 4.10; 7.12 (cf. Is. 42.4; 53.11).
Other features of the Servant figure are borrowed from the royal
rites, especially those which dealt with his sufferings and death.
An exhaustive comparison of the Servant Songs with the hymns of
the Tammuz cult has brought to light the similarity of expressions
and metaphors.2 More conclusive still are the analogies of the
Servant’s sufferings with certain rites practised in Babylon on the
person of the king at the New Year ceremonies: the king under¬
went a kind of symbolic humiliation; he was struck, his crown was
removed and his sceptre and the regalia of royalty were returned
to him only after he had made public confession of his sins. In

1 Among reminiscences of the Exodus line of thought, note the theme of the
route (40.3, 11), of the Egyptian magicians (41.18, 21), of the prison (42.22), of
water in the desert (48.21), of Rahab (51.9), of flight (52.11), of food costing
nothing (55.1-7).
2 The resemblance between certain titles of Tammuz and those of the Servant is
quite striking; Tammuz is called the crooked, the ill-treated, the one whose face
has lost vitality, the man of tears, the weakling, the lamb who goes into the
underworld (cf. the material collected by Witzel, Tammuzliturgien und Verwandtes
(Analecta Orientalia X 1935), and the very suggestive study of I. Engnell,
“The Ebed Yahweh songs and the suffering Messiah in Deutero-Isaiah ”, Bulletin
of the John Rylands Library, 1948, pp. 54®.).
34° THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

this rite, the king acted as a substitute for the people by taking
upon himself the sins whose burden must not weigh on the new
year/ On certain special occasions, the humiliation was not alto¬
gether symbolical, but a substitute (shar pucbi) was actually put
to death, in order to safeguard the king’s life. These Babylonian
customs certainly inspired the prophet more than the similar royal
rites in Israel whose existence remains problematical. From the
sole clue in Ps. 89.39: “Thou hast cast off, thou hast rejected,
thou hast pursued thine anointed with thine anger ”, it seems really
difficult to reconstruct the existence of rites of the king’s humiliation
in the Jerusalem temple, the more since in this text the term
mashiach is applied to the dynasty or to the people rather than to
the person of the king. It is improbable, furthermore, that the role
of the high priest at the Feast of Atonement was the continuation
of rites which existed before the exile in the royal cult, for the sub¬
stitutionary role of the priest goes back doubtless to the very origins
of the priesthood. Whatever may be the elements borrowed from
tradition by the prophet, it must be recognized that he deepened
and spiritualized them considerably. The Servant does not perform
a seasonal rite, he does not act in a symbolical way, he really dies
and after this substitution, which is also a total gift, he is capable
of bringing salvation. The entirely new figure of the Servant is
made up of elements borrowed from tradition: the ‘ebed is a king
and his sufferings are not contradictory to his royal aspect. This is
one of the important results of the study of the Mesopotamian and
Canaanite parallels, while certain texts from the Old Testament
itself must never have allowed it to be forgotten that humility
formed part of the Messianic functions of the Son of David (e.g.
Zech. 9.9; 13.7). The ‘ebed is a prophet, he fulfils to perfection
all the functions of a prophet: obedience, ministry of the word,
intercession; it is difficult not to admit that the memory of Moses
and Jeremiah haunted the prophet’s mind. He is also the priest
and the sacrificial victim offered for the forgiveness of sins. By
borrowing from them most of the features of his saviour, Second
Isaiah seeks to stress the positive values of history and the institu¬
tions. All that myth and history taught about salvation he sees
prophetically realized by a man who, because he is a living synthesis

1 On the rites of the New Year festival in Babylon, cf. Zimmern, Zum Baby¬
lonia c hen Neujahrfest, 1928; Durr, Die isr.-jiid. Heilandserwartung, and van der
Ploeg, Les chants du serviteur de Yabwe, pp. 170S.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
341
and a concentration of the elected people, will give back to the
latter its sense of mission, for in the prophet’s thought Israel never
ceases to be the real servant. Converted by Israel’s example, the
nations will in their turn enter the covenant; those nations, out of
whom Israel had been called at the beginning of its history, will
travel to its light, and the new heaven and the new earth will make
a new and final reality of this salvation (Is. 60.19; 65.17).
The Son of Man, who appears in only one text in the Old
Testament (Dan. 7.13) is not in absolute opposition to the Messiah,
as is often thought, and it is, therefore, not necessary to postulate
a foreign origin for this figure. A metaphysical and transcendental
aspect already characterizes the Messiah of Isaiah (Immanuel), of
Micah, and still more the figure of the Saviour; but while the
Messiah, though having celestial features, remains a man whose
origin is earthly and who appears in the world by way of generation
and birth, the Son of Man is a celestial figure who assumes a human
form only when he manifests himself. Here we are in the presence
of a new line of thought which is very different from both the
Davidic Messiamsm and the prophetic Messianism represented by
the Servant of Yahweh. This original figure, however, is not un¬
connected with Israelite tradition. Belief in a “ primordial man ”,
as we have seen, constituted the fundamental structure from which
other forms of Messianism issued and we think that one of
Bentzen’s great merits1 is to have brought to light the unity of
the various Messianic currents. In the eschatology of bar ’enash
we have the return of a concept which had been eclipsed by the
prophets, through an anti-Canaanite and anti-mythological reaction,
in favour of historical realities. This transference on to the historical
plane had made the hope of Israel into an actual and ever-present
power, but at the same time it risked opening the door to a this-
worldliness and to an identification of religion with politics, at a
time when the faith had become less dynamic and less spiritual than
at the time of an Isaiah. With this recall of transcendence, which
is the main theme, other themes became incorporated which the
figure of the Son of Man allowed to reach their full significance:
it is said of the divine glory, which the prophet Ezekiel presents as
one form of Yahweh’s appearance, that it had “ a resemblance to a
son of man” (Ez. 1.26; 10.16) and this function is stressed by the
connection between the glory and the cloud (Ez. 1.4; 10.3-4), the
1 Messias, Moses redivivus, Menschensobn, Zurich 1948.
 342 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

latter being the normal accompaniment of theophanies and parti¬

cularly of eschatological theophanies (cf. Nah. 1.3; Ps. 97.2). The
coming of the Son of Man on the clouds puts his appearance not in
the category of theophanies of the angels, who are never given
this dignity (Dan. 8.15; 9.21; 10.5-16), but among those of God
himself. The glory is again set in relationship with man in a text
which there is general agreement in considering as the best biblical
commentary on Gen. 1.26: Psalm 8 celebrates the greatness of
man “crowned [man is a king] with glory and majesty” (v. 6).
The Son of Man is, then, a real king, his function overlaps the
Messiah’s, but by giving him the title of man the author of the
book of Daniel seeks to disentangle Messianism from national ties
and to link it with the universal outlook of Genesis. The identifi¬
cation of the Son of Man with the “ people of the saints ” (Dan.
7.18, 22) is secondary to the vision of the individual who is “the
one whom the Most High has for centuries reserved and by whom
he wishes to redeem the creation” (4 Esdr. 13.26). If the Son of
Man is a “synthetic figure” who arose to unify the Messianic
hopes which broke up into an ever greater multiplicity of varied
and often contradictory aspects, according to political flunctuations,
it must be recognized that this figure allowed Judaism to safeguard
certain specifically religious and transcendent values.
In bringing to an end our study of eschatology, we draw the con¬
clusion that the notion of God’s action in history to which the whole
content of the Old Testament is referred could not do without his
personal presence in men or in certain institutions such as the law
and the temple. At the last stage of this history, the synthetic
figures of the Servant of Yahweh and the Son of Man, which are
among the most perfect creations of Israel’s theological thought,
will themselves be harmonized in a new unity.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alt, A., “ Gedanken iiber das Konigtum Jahwes ”, Kleine Scbriften 1, p.

357-

Baumann, Eb., “ Shub shebut. Eine exegetische Untersuchung ”, ZAW,

1929, p- 17.
Bentzen, A., Messias, Moses redivivus, Menschensohn, Zurich 1948.
Brandt, Th., “ Prophetie und Geschichte in Deuterojesaja ”, Wort und
Geist, (Festgabe K. Heim), p. 13.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
343
Buber, M., Das Kommende I: Konigtum Gottes, Berlin 1936.
Campbell, J. C., “ God’s People and the Remnant ”, Scottish Journal of
Theology, 1950, p. 78.
Cerny, L., The Day of Yahweh & Some Relevant Problems, Prague 1948.
Cossmann, W., Die Entwicklung des Gerichtsgedankens bei den altt.
Propheten, BZAW 29, 1915.
Dennefeld, L., “ Le Messianisme ”, Diet. Theol. cathol. T.X, 2.
Dietrich, E. L., Shub shebut. Die endzeitliche Wiederherstellung bei
den Propheten, BZAW 40, 1925.
Durr, L., Ursprung und Ausbau der isr.-jiid. Heilandserwartung, Berlin
I925-
Edelkoort, A. H., De Christus-verwachting in het oude Testament,
Wageningen 1941.
Eliade, Mircea, “ La nostalgic du Paradis dans les traditions primitives ”,
Diogene 3, 1953, p. 34.
Feuillet, A., “Les Psaumes du regne de Yahweh”, NRTh 1951, pp. 244
and 352.
Frost, S. B., Old Testament Apocalyptic, Its origin and growth, London
1952.
Gall, A. von, Basileia tou theou, Heidelberg 1926.
Gressmann, H., Der Messias (new edition of Der Ursprung der isr.-jiid.
Eschatologie) 1929.
Imschoot, P. van, Le regne de Dieu dans I’A.T., Coll. Gand 22, 1936,
p. 253.
Jeremias, A., Die biblische Erldsererwartung, 1931.
Knight, G. A. F., “ Eschatology in the O.T.”, Scottish Journal of Theology,
l951’ P- 355-
Koehler, L., “ Christus im Alten und im Neuen Testament ”, ThZ, 1954,
p. 241.
Kraeling, C. H., Anthropos and Son of Man, New York 1927.
Lindblom, J., The Servant Songs in Deutero-Isaiah, Lund 1951.
Mowinckel, S., Psalmenstudien II. Das Thronbesteigungsfest Jahwes und
der Ursprung der Eschatologie, 1922.
He that cometh, Engl, trans. by G. W. Anderson,
Oxford 1955.
North, C. R., The Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah, Oxford 1948
(gives complete bibliog. prior to that date).
Obersteiner, J., Die Christusbotschaft des A.T., 1947.
Orelli, C. von, Die altt. Weissagung von der Vollendung des Gottes-
reiches, Vienna 1882.
Pidoux, G., Le Dieu qui vient, Neuchatel & Paris 1947.
“ La notion biblique du temps ”, RThPh, 1952, p. 120.
Ploeg, J. van der, “L’esperance dans 1’A.T.”, RB 1954, p. 481,
344 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Procksch, O., “ Christus im A.T.”, NKZ, 1933, p. 57.

Ringgren, H., “Konig und Messias”, ZAW, 1952, p. 128.
Rowley, H. H., The Servant of the Lord and other Essays on the Old
Testament, London 1952.
Schmidt, H., Der Mythos vom wiederkehrenden Konig im A.T., 1925.
Sellin, E., Die isr.-jiid. Heilandserwartung (Bibl. Zeitfragen), 1909.
Staerk, W., Soter. Die bihlische Erlosererwartung, t.I. Der biblische
Christus, Giitersloh 1933; t.2. Die Erlosererwartung in den ostlichen
Religionen, Stuttgart 1938.
Stamm, J. J., “ La prophetie d’Emmanuel ”, RHPR, 1943, p. 1.
“ Die Immanuelweissagung. Ein Gesprach mit E. Ham-
mershaimb.” VT, 1954, p. 20.
Steuernagel, C., “ Strukturlinien der Entwicklung der jiid. Eschatologie ”,
Festschrift A. Bertholet, p. 479.
Vaux, R. de, “ Le reste d’Israel ”, RB, 1933, p. 538.
Volz, P., “ Der eschatologische Glaube im A.T.”, Festschrift G. Beer,
1935, p. 72.
Vriezen, Th. C., “Prophecy and Eschatology”, Supplements to VT 2,
1953, p. 199.
Wolff, H. H., “ Herrschaft Jahwes und Messiasgestalt ”, ZAW, 1936,
p. 168.
INDEXES
 GENERAL INDEX

'Ah, 6iff. 237, 264-5, 2®2> 299> 3°4> 318-19,

Abraham, 77, 179, 205, 206, 208, 336'7
217, 222, 296, 300 Cherubim, 68ff., 257, 259
Adam, 283ft. chesed, 72, 103!?., 108, 116, 174-7.
’adam, 156 180, 219, 291
‘Adon, 58-60 Christ (Christology), 12, 14-17, 22,
allegory, 12-16, 29. v. typology 24-6, 32, 75, 328
angel (messenger), 66, 68-71, 75ft, Chronicler, 82, 151, 184, 196, 221,
78, 127, 130, 134, 218-19, 25°’ 342 261, 270, 328
animal, 40, 42, 74, 151-3, 159, 165, Church, 18-19, 30-1, 43
169-71, 326 circumcision, 200, 221, 285, 305
anointing, 235-6 cloud, 73, 80-1, 256, 341-2
anthropomorphism, 32, 39-41, 74, 78, compassion, 106, 151
80, 82, 114, 116, 121-3, 127, 142, conscience, 164-5, 24°> 286
254 consciousness, 164
apocalyptic, 16, 196, 201, 312, 319, conversion, 286, 289, 341
325 cosmos, 136-7, i44ff.
ark, 55, 69, 73, 80, 87, 91, 186, 247, court (heavenly assembly), 41, 66, 68,
256, 257, 259, 260, 263, 267, 284-6, 71’ 77
332 covenant, 11-15, 18-19, 22, 24, 28,
atonement (festival), 70, 295-6, 340 46, 53, 57-8, 66, 89, 90, 93, 95,
97, 101, 104ft., 109, 114-16, 119,
124, 129, 136-8, 148-9, 153, 177,
Baal, 42, 47, 56ft., 60, 66, 84-5, 156,
186, 193, 200, 207, 209ff., 261, 266,
187, 202, 211, 214, 224, 255, 304,
311 27I< 273'4« 294> 3*4’ 331- 341
covenant, new, 137, 216, 274, 297,
blessing, 53, 79, 179
326-7, 337-8
blood, 160, 169, 177, 212, 296
creation, 46, 67-8, 73, 79, 95, 107,
body, 157, 301, 313
118-19, 124, 129, i36ff., 155, 170,
breath, 121-2, 134, 143, 159, 160-4,
177, 300. v. spirit 173, l75 x97> 2I5'i6> 223> 227*
~&>

3i8'i9- 336> 342

creator, 45, 62, i36ff., 265, 337
Canaan (conquest, settlement), 28, 40, credo, 28, 136, 184, 191-3
42, 46, 58, 100, 115, 137, 186, 191, cult (cultus), 28, 38, 60, 79, 80, 82,
214, 218, 227, 256 91-2, 175, 222, 234, 240, 246, 254,
chance, 189, 228 262®., 272, 317
chaos, 140-5, 148, 170, 178, 193, 216, cult, Canaanite, 57, 199, 364ft.

347
 348 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Daniel, 68, 74, 102, 170, 188, 251, evil, 123, 165, 170-1, 228, 28iff. v.
274, 318 demon

darkness, 83, 140-1, 146, 168, 259, Exile, 101, 116, 133, 192-3, 196, 207,
264, 299, 303. v. chaos 224, 292, 322, 324, 337

David, 15, 66, 84, 104, in, 115, 179, existence (of God), 37, 52, 107
186, 191-6, 204, 213, 236, 238, Exodus, 28-9, 53, 83, 121, 183, 185,
251, 267, 270, 312, 326-9, 33iff. 189-92, 195, 203, 205, 214, 224,
day, 115, 190, 198, 265, 319, 320-1 273, 287, 292, 318, 326-7, 339
death, 39, 72, 115, 151ft, i6off., 178, expiation, 250, 270, 294
180, 220, 235, 282, 287-8, 295ft. Ezekiel, 53-4, 74, 81, 92, 126, 154,
demon (demonic), 68ft, 72, 74, 114, i9°ff-> 255> 261, 270, 274, 289, 319,
116, 123, 161, 282-3, 294
337
desert, 70, 78, 185-6, 193, 296, 299,

326’ 339 face (of God), 77ft, 115, 127, 134,

Deuteronomist, 67, 83, 131, 133,
163. v. anthropomorphism
195-6, 207-8, 214-15
faith, 37, 39, 144ft, 174, 183-4, J95>
dogmatics, 13, 16, 18-20, 24-5, 31
213, 225, 265, 274, 309
dream, 241, 258
faithfulness, 174, 193, 211, 290
dualism, 72, 158, 163, 189, 196, 229,
Fall, 18, 68, 141, 152, 166, 172, 283
3°7 flesh, 41, 151, 158, 166, 172

Flood, 137, 151-2, 166, 183, 286, 326

ecstasy, 242-3
forgiveness (pardon), 289, 290-3, 340
education (pedagogy), no-12, 229,

252, 288-9

’El, 38, 43ft., 51, 56-7, 65, 203-4, 21 glory, 73, 79ft, 88, 101, 261, 341-2

218, 255, 327 goddess, 41, 69, 118, 282

’El Elyon, 45, 47, 57, 144, 332 go’el, 90, 292, 309. v. redemption

’El Shadday, 45-7 grace, 14, 18, 41, 101, 106, no, 209,

’Elohim, 38, 4iff., 77, 98, 118, 123, 286

144, 170, 236-7, 284, 299 grave, 302-3

election, 90-1, 101, 108-12, 119, 148, guilt, 283-7

I53> I55> i89> I92> 201-20, 223,

227> 233> 24*> 245> 249> 272, 322- hate, 109

3, 330. v. covenant
heart, 76, 126-8, 157, 159, 163ft, 283,
Elijah, 66, 73, 123, 130, 187, 224-5, 285, 290

239> 243> 255> 264- 3°7'8> 323 heaven(s), 141-8, 255, 258-9, 307,
Elisha, 76, 224-5
314. v. sky
ephod, 42, 248
history, 73, 80-1, 95, 107, 112, 124,
eschatology, 19, 54, 61, 82, in, 142,
129, 131-2, 136ft, 183ft, 214,
148, 190, 198, 216, 221, 227, 267-8,
222'3> 235> 262'3> 267> 318-19, 338
3IO> 314> 3r7ff- holy, holiness, 21, 69, 79, 86ft, 98,
eternity, 38, 52, 318
100, 115-16, 127, 169, 188, 204,
ethics, 105, 200, 268, 321
216, 245, 248-9, 256-7, 260-1
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
349
hope, 142, 180, 196, 203, 227, 267, kingdom (of God), 18, 82, 87, 175,

300, 308 194-6, 224-7, 246, 321-3

hypostasis, 65, 79, 83-4, 98, 118-19, kingship (of God), 59ft., hi, 115,

134, 144 190, 200, 212, 222, 267, 288,

317-18, 327, 334ft.

knowledge, 37, 109, 118, 152, 164-5,

image (of God), 40, 63, 74, 81, 137,
i74» 239, 241, 243, 246, 248, 253,
152, 165ft.
282, 284, 299, 306
images (idols), 42, 67, 220, 248

imagination, 165

Immanuel, 336, 341

lamp, 80, 237, 305
immortality, 124, 325-8
law (decree), 52, 112, 119, 129, 139,
intercession, 296
175, 200, 201, 209, 211, 215-16,
Isaiah (son of Amoz), 73, 82, 89, 100,
238, 248, 253, 270#., 286-7. v-
242, 260, 282, 323-4, 335-6
torah
Isaiah (Second), 12, 54, 61, 67, 101,
Levites, 203, 247, 259, 293
131-3, 137, 148, 19011., 208, 220-1,
lex talionis, 287-8, 322
261, 337-8
life, 38-9, 42, 46, 50, 56, 86-8, 91, 97,

116, 121-2, 159-61, 177ft-, 227, 235,

jealousy (of God), 42, 46, 53, 58, 66,
237, 269, 295, 299, 309, 311, 325
90, 115-16, 119, 203, 218, 220
life, future, 299ft.
Jeremiah, 67, 99, 101, 125, 130, 154,
light, 80, 82, 140, 178, 220, 264, 313
172, 187, 202, 228-9, 245, 260, 285,
literature (extra-canonical), 32, 118-19,
290, 296, 337, 340
134, 172, 225, 250, 256, 297
Jerusalem, 45-6, 60, 83, 95, 98, 109,
living God, 38-9, 51, 63, 73, 116, 190,
130, 186, 198-9, 20X, 219-21, 259,
290, 309
266-7, 327, 331-2
love, io6ff., 165, 175, 202ft., 217, 220,
Jesus, 112, 254, 262, 272. v. Christ
222, 254, 273, 290-1, 300
joy, 175, 275

Judaism, 13, 21, 23, 32, 61, 92, 102,

104, 129, 133, 143, 145, 164, 188,

magic, 243-6, 269
201, 239, 253, 270, 274, 342
man (concept of), 41, 115, 137, 141,
Judges, 96, 126, 162, 204, 247, 329
143, 147, 151ft., 172-3, 177ft., 189,
judgment, 89, 90, 96, 98, 115, 145,
199, 283, 304, 327-8, 338, 341-2
192, 207, 260, 288, 313, 320-2
marriage, 105, 109, 112, 153, 156, 172,
justice, 66, 70, 97, 119, 219, 227, 238,
177, 202, 209
251, 263, 309. v. righteousness
martyr(dom), 220, 297, 310, 313-14
justify, 96ft., 100, 217
mediator, 213, 329-31

Melchizedek, 46-7, 98, 331-2

Karatepe, 50, 144, 255 mercy, 102ft., 219, 283, 287-8, 297

king, 96, 99, 128, 167, 179-80, 199, Messiah (messianic), 12, 99, 101, 112,

208, 213, 219, 2341!., 249, 253, 264, 120, 143, 208, 213, 237-8, 250, 320,

287-8, 3I2> 325> 330-1 > 334- 339*4° 327ff.

35° THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

miracle, 141, 185, 206, 223ft. prayer, 69, 79, 167, 175-6, 179, 238,

mission, 205, 208, 217ft., 253, 330,

243
338, 341 preaching, 245ft., 259, 270, 289, 335

monogamy, 173 presence (of God), 32, 40, 51-4, 59, 69,

monotheism, 21, 39, 44ft., 65-6, 148, 73-81, 107, 127, 148, 176, 189, 198,

218, 220 201, 209, 211, 223, 243, 253-9, 261,

Moses, 12, 14, 49ft., 65-6, 73, 76, 78, 270, 275, 317, 332, 342

105, 126, 131, 183, 185, 189, 193, priest, 213, 237, 239-40, 246ft., 253,

204, 206, 207, 212, 217, 247, 254,

34°
274> 3°7’ 339> &c- Priestly writer, n, 46, 81, 136, 139,

mountains, 145-6, 198, 256 143-4, 147, 166, 168, 171, 183, 196,

mysticism (mystical), 62, in, 176-7, 215, 228, 250, 318, 326

243, 270 promise, 53, hi, 137, 193, 195, 207,

myth (mythology), 57, 66ff., 138, 140, 217-18, 220, 225, 314

145, 148, 152, 169, 197-9, 201, 214, prophecy, 22, 82, 162, 250

234, 245> 263. 266-7, 3"> 325®- prophets, 60, 66-7, 77, 83, 95, 105-6,

112, 116, 119, 125-6, 129-32, 134,

name, 43, 51, 82ft., 87-8, 259, 268 207, 209, 214-16, 225, 233, 238ft.,

nature, 37, 46, 73-4, 84, 88, 119, 127, 248-9, 252-4, 259-60, 273, 286,
129, 132, 137, 140, 144ft., 153, 169, 321-2, 340

175, 200, 226, 264-5, 2®6> 331 prophets, false, 125, 130, 241, 245,
nature (laws of), 137, 139, 145-6, 152,
323
223, 227, 264 prostitute, 86, 109
necromancy, 146, 306 prostitution, 306

nepbesh, 39, 88, 157, 159ft., 163, 228, providence, 139, 149, 189, 226ft.
300 punishment, 53, 68, 76, 81, 99, 100,
New Year, 138, 200, 237, 264ft., 310, niff., 153, 193, 203, 286ft., 300,

339 322

Passover, 191, 200, 207, 266, 295

patriarchs, 38, 46, 49, 53, 57, 139, Qumran, 32, 228, 239

*85, 195, 199, 204-5, 2°7> 2I2> 247

personality (corporate), 154-5, l%5>

237 Rabbinical literature, tradition, 102,
personality (of God), 40, 96, 127 169, 183, 271, 289
piety, 39, 104, 107, 133, 173, 257, redemption, 148, 176, 193, 244, 281ft.,
259, 266, 274 292ft.
polytheism, 46, 65 Red Sea, 29, 137, 141, 193, 206, 224-5
poor, 101-2, 229
remnant, 207, 246, 286, 313, 320-5
power, 38, 42ft., 59, 73, 79, 80, 84, repent(ance), 289, 291, 336. v. return
86-8, 90, 96, 107, 115, 122, 124, resurrection, 235, 309-13
129, 161, 179, 188, 219, 223-4, 227> return (Return), 137, 290, 292, 320,
229, 261
327
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
351
revelation, 22, 24, 27, 30, 37, 43, spirit, 41, I2iff., 134, 139, 143-4, 1 51’
51-2, 6i, 68, 73, 78, 83-4, 91, 103, 157, 159, i6iff., 165, 216, 235-6,
123, 125, 129, 133, 148, 178, 183, 242-3, 336

*93’ x97> 2°6> 214, 224, 248, 262-3, spirits, 54-5, 123, 153, 229. v. demons
268, 272-3, 283 star, 54-5, 145, 218, 313, 329
righteousness, 94ft., 119, 173, 180, substitution, 294ft., 338, 340
237, 285. v. justice suffering, 116, 180, 229, 312, 338

symbolic action, 133, 176, 243-5

Sabbath, 176, 221, 263

Tabernacles, 213, 248, 258, 266
sacrifice, 28, 60, 91, 175-6, 211, 222,
tehom, 140-1, 197
250, 268-9, 294-5
Temple, 62, 79, 81, 83-4, 91, 130,
salvation (saviour), 81, 96, 99, 101,
136, 178, 183, 192-5, 198, 200, 208,
121, 124, 126, 132-3, 137, 148, 153,
237, 246, 255, 258-62, 311, 332,
178, 183-4, I9I> 208-9, 245, 260,
340
265, 273, 275, 328-30, 335, 338ft.
Tent, 73, 80, 256, 260, 263
sanctuaries, 178, 214, 239, 247-8,
throne (enthrone), 145, 256-7, 266,
257-8, 263
320
Satan, 7off., 123, 282
time, 17, hi, 138, 155, 179, 183, 224,
sea (ocean), 140-1, 146-7, 299, 304
227, 259, 263
seraphim, 68ff., 81
time (end of), 82, 131, 142, 166, 180,
serpent, 72, 74, 170-1, 242, 249, 281-
222, 318, 330
2, 306, 311, 328
Torah, 61, 91, 119, 132, 238, 247-8,
Servant, 126, 132, 155, 169, 183, 193,
253, 271ft. v. law
204, 208-9, 216, 220, 228-9, 254,
transcendence, 40-1, 51, 59, 74, 76,
261, 297, 312, 314, 3381?.
82, 249, 311, 341
shalom (peace), 50, 98, 126, 179-80,
typology, 12, 15, 18-19, i83’ 273- v-
245, 259, 326
allegory
Sheol, 118, 146, 178, 299!?.

shepherd, 203, 326

sickness (disease), 283, 299 Ugarit, 45, 48-9, 56-7, 65, 98, 144,

sin, 14, 37, 88, 99, 116, 119, 141-2, 156, 199, 251, 264, 304-5, 311, 331

158, 228, 245, 269, 28iff., 322, 340

Sinai, 74, 80, 185, 192, 198, 212-15,

vision, 241-5. v. dream
238, 256, 259, 266

sky, 83, 91, 145. v. heaven

Solomon, 105, 238, 251-3 war, 40, 55, 171, 326

son (of God), 236 water, 178, 305. v. sea

son (of man), 341-2 will (of God), 37, 200, 227, 246, 296

soul, 75-6, 88, 157, 301. v. nepbesb wisdom, n8ff., 127, 132, 134, 144,

sovereignty (of God), 37, 61, 97, 114, 148, 153, 164, 180, 221, 251^., 263,

136, 143, 171, 174, 198, 20iff., 226, 289

245-6, 262, 269ft., 304, 307 wise (man), 119, 132, 152, 165, 251ft.
352 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

woman, 172-3, 251 116, 123, 130, 140, 161, 170, 188,

word, 73, x2iff., 139, 143-4, i89> l9°< 200, 202-6, 211, 215, 218-19, 223,

196, 207, 244-5, 2% 228, 238, 255, 257, 267, 284, 292,

wrath, 99, 100, in, 114ft., 151 317, 319 etc.

Yah wist, 11, 66, 68, 78, 118, 139,

Yahweh, 38-42, 45ft., 59, 61, 66-70, 147, 151, 171ft., 178, i95ff., 206-7,

73> 75'7> 82> 84'5- 88-90, 99, no, 217, 227, 252, 28iff., 299, 322
 INDEX OF BIBLICAL REFERENCES
Genesis 7-11 >45 20.10 128
1 r32> 170, 172, 312 7-J5 122 21.17 255
1.1 138, ,44 7.16 40 22.1 128
1.2 44- 124, 144 8.21 2l6, 283 22.11 255
!-3 39 8.22 *37 22.16 77
f-9 140 8.27 >39 22.18 217
1.11 *39 91 179 22.20 128
LI4 264 9-4 160 23.10 7l
1.22 x39 9-5 286 24-7 76, 255
1.26 x43- 166, 327> 342 9.6 166, 169 24.12 105, 174
1.27 *43- 166 9.9 216 24-35 179
1.28 139- 179- 216 9.15 I5I 26.4 217
1.29 152 9.26 49- 179 26.24 204
1.31 !36 10 218 26.28 210
2.1 68 n.5 255 26.30 210
2.4 x39 "•7 40 26.35 162
2-5 x78 12.1 179 27.29 179
2-7 151. 158, 161 12.3 199. 2°5- 27.36 43
2.8 142, *47 12.6 271 28.12 255
2.1 off. 198, 325 13.16 t79 28.14 217
2.16 152 14.18 98 28.17 257
2.18 43 I4-I9 144- 332 28.20 52
2.19 I5I> r59 14.21 161 29.31 109
2.23 >57- *73 14.22 47- *44 311 79
3-r5 328 lS 210 3I-I3 236
4-1 140 15.15 300 31.21 164
4-2 109 15.16 286 31.26 164
4-5 77 15.20 3°5 3I29 43
4-7 170, 283 16.5 97 3i-44 211
4r3 286 i6.7ff. 77 3'-46 210
4-25 140 16.13 76 3J-5° 211
4.26 49 !7 200 3r-54 210
5-1 166 *7-7 216 32 74- XI5*
5-3 166 17.19 216 34-7 200
5-24 307 18 74 34-*9 109
5-29 199 18.2 68 34-3° 247
6.1 198 18.10 140 35-11 43
6.2 41 18.14 223 35.18 160, 300
6.3 68, 58 18.18 217 35-29 3°3
6.5 68, 1 65, 199, 283 18.19 68 36.5 5°
6.6 4° 18.20 227 36.14 5°
6.7 J51 18.21 255 37-35 301, 302
6.12 39 18.27 88 38.26 95
6.17 122 19.1 68 40.1 128
7-1 J54 1 x9-x9 104 42.22 286
353
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
354
Genesis (cont.) 14.21 121
29-33 91
42.38 301 14.31 29.37
i8 -9 339 92
286 40 29.43 80
43-9 ! 5-3
44.16 286 15.8 121 30.8 52
44.29 301 91, 292, 326 30.10
I 5-r3 92

45-13 79 15.18 6o, 212 30.12

293
162, 310 15.25 271
45-27 30.18
91
46.18 161 16.4 272 30.26 236

46.27 185, 218 16.6ft. 183 127

3>-3
46.28 271 16.10 80 160
31-1?
48.1 128 16.12 32.6 269
39
48.15 17.15 32.11
75 53 339
48.16 292 212 204
> 9-24 32-I3
48.20 217 i9.4ff. 272 32.20
247
247 204 32.28 320
49-5 J9-5
49.8 33° 19.6 250 250
179. 32-29
49.22ft. i79 19-9 ”5 33 78
49.24 329 19.11 255 33.2ft. 76, 78
49.25 46, 140 19.19 74 33-7ff- 80, 247, 256

49-33 3°3 20.1 129 33.11

78
20.4 33.12
42> *45 339
20.5
4°> >53 33l8 43- 80
20.6 105
33-!9 51
Exodus 20.18 74 33.20
78> "5
185 20.21 259 129
>•7 34-lff-
1.8 20.22 255
*95 42> 34-4 339
3.8 191 20.24 263
34-5 io5
3-12 52 21.6 98
34-7 106

3-J4 50ff., 273 21.8 203

293 34-9
225 21.23
4-1 l59 34.10 223
4.10 21.28 169
339 40.31 250
4.12 272 21.30 40.34
293 80

4J3 51 22.8 281 40.36ft. 80

244 22.17 306
4-I5
4.19 22.18 152
*59
4.21 285 22.23
294 Leviticus
4.22 202 23.12 160
M 294
4.24 200 23.15 78 2.3, 10 92
4.29 23.19 82
M5 3*7 52
189 23.27
4-31 ”5 4-!5 296
129
5.5, 23 339 M -3 4.20 294
6.2 24.6
43 247 4.24 296
6.3 46 24.8
339 5.14ft.
293
6.6 292, 339 24.9 146 5.16
294
6.20 24.11 78
49 6.10 92
287 24.16ft. 80
7-9 6.11 52
285 25.8
7-3 5
2 8 6.13
295
7.8 225 25.17 69 6.18, 22 92
10.11 I57 26.33 92 9.23 80
12.11 266 28.2
91 10.1 81
12.37 lS7 28.3 127 10.17 249
13.12 292 28.38 91, 249 11.15 52
14.4ft. 80 29.22 250 11.44
'74
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
355
Leviticus (cont.) 5-J7 91 26-59 49
14.11 1 bo 5.30 123, 162 27.16 162
I4-13 92 6.5 92 35-3lff 293
16.165. 295, 296 6.6 161
16.22 70 6.22 248
16.32 250 6.25 79 Deuteronomy
I7-7 69 8.7 !58 1.8 207
*7-!4 160 8.16, 17 250 1.39 284
18.3 273 IO.IO J75 3.n 3°5
18.5 52 IO-35 55- 257 3.24 339
18.23 152 11.11 339 273
4-1
19.2ft 52> 92 11.14 256 112
4-5
19.18 *75 11.175. 126 164
4-9
19.20ft 293 11.25 339 4.10 339
19.26 293 11.29 246 163, 259
4-11
19.28 161 I2.6ff. 339 4.12®. 42
19.31 306 12.8 78 4.I9 207, 218
19.34 273 14-I4 78 212
4-31
19.36 95 I4*I9 106 67
4-35
20.2ft 60 14.21 82 4.36 112, 255
20.3 88 15.225. 293 78, hi
4-37
20.6 306 16 92 164
4-39
20.7ft 92 16.5 250 266
5-3
20.15 J52 16.19 80, 256 40
5-9
20.17 i°3 16.22 122, 162 5.10 io5
20.23 40 16.30 223 6.4ff. 67, 165, 208, 273
20.27 306 16.32 146 6.10 207
21.iff. 161 16.42 81 6.15 116
2I.6ff. 92 17.7 80 6.20 191
21.11 161 18.1 249, 250 7.2 104
21.21 250 18.19 213 7.6 204
22.2 88 18.20 203 109, hi, 211
7-7
22.9 92 2o.6ff. 256 7.8 293
22.31 92 20.13 89 7-9 104
22.32 88 21.4 160 7.12 104, 212, 339
23.40 *75 21.5 *57 8.3 132
23-43 266 21.6 69 8.65. 209
26.6 326 21.28 292 8.15 69
26.15 r57 22 76 8.18 212
26.41 166 22.16 13° 9*1 273
26.43®. 275 22.22, 32 70 9.45. hi
26.45®. 273 22.38 244 9-5 191, 207, 212
23.5ft 244 9.6ff. 110
23.10 161 9.l8 339
Numbers 23r9 41 9.26 293
1 46 23.21 60, 212 9.27 204
3.12 250 24.15. 334 IO.9 203
3*3 52 24-4 46, 246 IO.IO 339
3.40®. 250, 293 24-7 60 10.11 207
4.16 295 24.16 46 10.14 no, 145
5-5 293 24.i7 329- 337 10.15 111
5-7 161 24.18 "5 10.16 166
5-*4 123, 162 24-23 329 II.10 191
 356 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Deuteronomy (cont.) 32.10 110 6.12

52
11.16 116 32. !5 203 6.15
329
J25 83, 91, 32.1? 69 6.22 76

12.7 32.26 156 6.34 123

J75
12.10 191 32.3I 62 8.23 60, 212

12.18 269 32.36ff 62,204 8.26 248

12.23 116, 160 67 8.33

32-39 57
91, 212 204
12.26 32-43 9-3 3l9
12.31 295 32-47 133
9-4 57. 211
293
I3-5 32-5° 3°3 9.27 269

13.11 273 33-2 256 9.46 57- 211

13.19 116 33-5 60, 203, 212 IO.lff. 96

204 33-8
I4-7 247 10.16 160

14.26 *75 33-I3 I4°* 329> 33° 11.12

I3°
15.1 273 33-x7 329 11.23 66

15.16 108
33-*9 95 I2.8ff. 96

16.6 33-26 40, 203 I3.3ff.

91 68

16.11 J75 34-5 339 13.20 162

17.20 238 I 3-22 76, 115

18.2 203 14.6 I23, I24, l62
Joshua
18.11 306 14.8, 9 3QI
18.15 131, 196
3-7 52 14.15®.
3.16 226 329
18.18 244 14.22 130

19.6 292
4-5- J3 257 162
200 I5-I4
5-7
19.21 l59 68, 199
15.19 122

20.1 273
5-r3 16.15
7.14s. 157, 200 i65
21.15 109 16.16 160
7.19
22.21 200 79 16.31 161
23.2 219
7-24 l53 247
9.6ff. 210 x7
24.18 207, 273 248, 250
IO.I 98 »7-5ff-
26. iff. 269 18.6 271
10.12 226
26.5 136, 184, 19.23 200
10.13 203
26.15 91, 255 20.10 200
12.4
26.16 2 66 3°5
20.3 292
26.18 204
23.16 116
27.21 152 1 Samuel
24.25.
179 191
28. iff. 109
2 4-7 226 *•5
28.32
43 24.12 1'15 160
28.58 82 ”5 2.6
24-r9 90 3°7
28.63 112 2.14 204
212
28.69 212
24-25
2.35®. 249
29.15 116 80
3-3
29.27 116 Judges 293
3-i4
30.1 207 98
*•5 3.18 290
3o.5ff. 215 >•7 287 263
4-4
30.6 166 3.30 320
4-7 257
3°.9ff. 112, 133
4-23 320 4.19 91
30.19 180 5 186 4.21 80
30.20 207 5.3ff.
57 6.10
I25
31.10 248 50, 256
5-5 6.19
”5
32.4 62 100, 204
5-11 6.20 88
32.6 !44 5.28 25i 8.7 60
32.8 218 6.11 68 9.9 241
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
35 7
/ Samuel (cont.) 5.10 54 24.10 286
9.21 329 5.16 57 24.14 290
IO.I 203 5.24 257 24.16 76
10.6 123, l62 6 87 24.23 109
10.10 7X« 123 6.2 55
10.24 208 6.6 286
11. iff. 210 6.7 115 1 King J
14.6 223 6.11 154 1 249
x4-23 320 6.15 270 1-2 194
15.29 318 6.18 55 1.31 179
I5-33 329 7 333 2.6 301
00

i6.6£E. 163, 7.2ff. 55 2.32 286

0

16. i3ff. 235 7.3 165 2.44 164

17-20 287 7-r3 83. 334 2.46 x94
i7.45ff. 55- 329 7-r4 236 3.6 I05
i8-3 210, 211 7.23 223 3” 99
18.7 329> 333 7.29 179 3'3 79
18.10 162 8.9®. 49 4.20ft 252
18.16 123, 333 9-3 i74 5.18 70
18.20 108 9.20 194 5.19 334
19.10ft 42 10.2 104, 174 6.16 92
20.14 x74 11.21 58 7.50 92
21.6 92 12.24 io9 8.6 92
21.9 248 13.12 200 8.12 83, 259
»3-x3 51 14.11 292 8.16ft 334
23.16ft 211 14.13 204 8.23 IO4
24.6 286 14.14 251, 291, 301 8.27 83
24. t3 97 14- I7 237 8.29 259
25.25 43 14.20 118 8.32 100
25.29 228 15- 6ff. 164 8.36 272
25.31ft 163, i65 15.11 269 8.43 268
26.19 39- 66, 256 15.20 51, 105, 174 8.46 283
28.3ft 306 16.1 oft 290 8.48 208
28.18 ”4 16.14 160 9-3 83
28.19 302 16.18 235 10.5 162
29.4 70 16.23 25i 10.18 237
30.24 333 17.10 165 n.5 4i
3I1Q 301 r9-23 70 11.13 208
19.36 284 11.14ft 70
20.l8ff. 251 11.29ft 196
2 Samuel 21.1 237 n.33 41
1.12 204 2I.9 >53 11.36 83, 196, 208
1.16ft 203, 286, 329 21.11 69 12.28 200
2.4 236 2I.14 "5 r4-5 129
2.6 x74 2I.I7 237 15.13 41
2.8 58 22.5 146 15.19 211
3.12ft 210 22.51 i°5 i6-34 294
3.21 211 23. iff. 334 x7-x 38
4-4 58 23.2 235 17.17 3°9
4-9 293 23.4 331 I7.18 282
4-11 286 23.5 213 17.21 300, 310
5-3 211 24 72* 17.22 160, 310
5.6 332 24.1 ”5 18.12#. 125, 126, 243
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

i Kings 14.21 6.5 60, 291

(cont.) 236 ”5-
18.22 15.38 6.10 285
323 3°3
18.26 204 16.7 61 6.11 302

249 6.13
18.29 265 i6.ioff. 323
18.36
255 16.15 265 7-4 x74
18.40 16.19 7.1 off. 336
323 3°3
122 204 7.n 225
i8-45 *7* *3
7.18 67
19 73> 2 65 I7*I9> 39-
8
19.2
x59 24 323 x33
19.3 18.20 8.7ff. 67
323 X3X
19.10 18.28 130 8.11 126, 242
54
19.13 in 8.13 88
78 *9-34
19.17(1. 20.10 226 8.18 260
323
20.3 130 20.20 8.19 306
i°3
20.31 219 208, 8.20 265
2I7 3°3
336
20.34 210 21.24 236 9 99-
178
21.1 286 23.2 212 9X
21 *5 162 2 3-3 211 9-2 >75
198, 3X9
21.27 158 23.8 69 9-3
180, 224
22 123 23.21 207 9-5
22.5ff. 129, 240 33
2 - ° 236 97 X3X> x34
22.I9 23.3! 212 9.1 off. 116
74
25.27(1. 10.3
22.21 123 337 79
22.27 130 5
2 .37ff. 196 io.4ff. 67, 116

10.5 116, 321

10.17 90

2 Kings Isaiah 10.22 100

1 10.26
i.6ff. 196 97 3 x9
1.2 11 120, 336
2. iff. 3°7 207, 321 99-
2.95. 123 286 11.2 125, 126,
M 235
1.13 265 n.4
2.14 48 x43
321 1 i.6ff. 326
2.16 125, 243 i.i8ff. *53-

3*2 1.26 11.9

*34 98, 326 3X7
3.27 116, 295 1.27 100 11.13 146

4.23 265 2. iff. 219, 261 12.3 264

4.29 2.2ff. 326 13.6 47

3°9
248, 272 13.10 142
57 237 2-3
5-x5 256 2.20 32° 13.12 156

5.18 292 287 13.3S1 70, 283

3-9
5.26 76 3.10, II 322 x4 x 99- 3°3- 3°4
6.2 226 3.13 321 X4X3 44- 198
6.30 158 320 14.29 69
3-x7
8.1 3.20 14.32 260,
51 *59 324
8.24 303 4-2 16.12
325> 337 91
204, 286 4-5 326 16.20 116
97
5. iff. 203 i7.3ff.
9*5 323 323
10.5 326 5.16 100 17.10 311

10.11 5.24 90 17.12 140

323 87.
11 I l6 i8.iff.
249 5-25 X 3X
11.18 167 5.30 320 18.4®. 288

12.9 6 69, 82, 88, 19.1 322

3°3 81.
13.17 271 242, 260, 286 19.3 306

13.21 6. iff. 19.16(1. 222

3°9 74
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
359
Isaiah (cont.) 37.16 263 44.27
l33
22.14
39 3723 90 44.28 261
24-27
312 37-31 324 45. iff. 208
24.6 156 in 204
37-35 45-4
24.21 219 38.9 310 45.6 225
3°4>
25-7 219 38.10 179. 306 45.11 90
25.8 325 45.12
39 253 142
26.8 160 40. iff. 116
45-H 9°
26.18 121, 313 40.2 IOI, 286 189
45-*5
27.1
3l9 4°-3ff- 339 45.18 142, M3
28.5 320 40.5 82, 225 45.20 IOI, 127
28.7 240 40.6 103, 158 45.22 67
28.15 »74 40.8 46.1 322
X3X
28.16 260 40.11 326 46.2 157
28.17 100, 145 40.12 142 46.7 127
28.19 224 40.18 167 90
47-4
28.233. 192 40.22 47.6
*45 x93
28.26 272 40.25 87 189
47-7
29.4 306 40.27 208 47.14 r57
29.10 285 40.28 48.7
3l8 M3- 223
29-x3 250 67 48.9 82
41-1
29.14 224 48.10 201
4r-4 54- I3I> 3l8
29.16 203 41.8 204, 208 48.11
79
29.19 41.18 326, 48.12
336 339 54- 132
29.23 88 41.21 hi. 127, 48.13 142
339
30. iff. 126 41.26 IOI 48.14 109
30.6 69 41.29 121 48.17 90
30.12 90 42. iff. 126, 48.19 208
339
30.13 287 42.4 48.20 225
339
30.15 90, 174, 289-90 42.6 IOI, 216, 48.21
339 339
30.18 100 42.7 216 49.2
339
30.20 272 42.8 49.6 213
79 54-
30.27 83 42.12 225 90
49-7
30.30 *45 42.14 49.8 216
J93
31-1 90 42.18 208 49.14 208
3!.2 118 42.19 204 49.17 l37
3!-3 41, 124, 151, 158 42.22 49.26 158
339 54.
3M 255 42.24 272 50.1 202
126
32I5 43-Jff- x43> 292 50.4 244, 339
32.16s. 336 43.2 50.8
293 IOI

32-x7 180 43-3 90 50.10 !78

33-1 322 43-9 67, IOI, 127 50.34 292

33-2 265 43.10 13I> 204 51*2 208
33.8 156 43-M 90
5x-3 325
33-17 336 43.26 IOI 51.6 142
33.18 164 43.28 261 5i.9ff. 39. 66,
34-4 149, 322 44.1, 2 204
x97* 3X9
34.11 7°> *44 44-2 203, 204 52.4
x93
69 44-3 126 61
34-*4 52-7
35-2 79 44.6 67, *3J 292
52-9
326 44-9 220 52.10 225
35-9 39-
36.10 I31 44.22 292 52.1 I
339
37-6S- 122, 243 44.24 *45 52.12 326
 360 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Isaiah (cont.) 66.1 39 9.25 166

52.i3ff. 338. 339 66.2 i63 10.9ft. 39
314, 322 66.20 222 10.11 322
53
283 66.23 265 10.12 148
53-5
53.10 297 66.24 3l3 10.24 101
53.11 339 n-5 212

53-12 160, 339 244

11-9
54 l93 Jeremiah 11.15 91
54. iff. 220 1 286 11.18ff. 243
54-5 58, 202 1 *9 244 12.1 100, 243

547 106 1.11 224, 241, 244 12.4 J53

54-9 l37 I-I4 321 12.6 272

54-13 246, 253 2 97> 207 12.7ft. 112, 203

l33 2. iff. 202, 244 12.12 158

55
55.!ff. l93’ 339 2.11 67 13.23 285

55-3 106, 216 2.23 321 14.2 !53

55.8 189 3-4 61 14.11 296
55.11 3.10 290 14.12 321
*3*
55.12 339 3.nff. 202 14.21 hi, 260
56.1 102, 275 3.12 106, 290
J74 *5-7
56.6 84 3.16 164, 257 15.9 300
56.11 160 317 260 15.16 *3°
57-l5 90, 163 3.22fiE. 283 15.17 242
57.16 162, 283 4.2 205 15.19 243, 244, 286
57 l7 165, 283 4-3 261 15.21 293
58.8 82, 178 4-4 166, 285 16.12 283
58.10 265 4-9 240 16.19 220
59.2 281 4.23ff. 142, M4 17.1 r57- l65
59.16 296 5-1 322, 324 151, 158
'7-5
59.19 82 5.7ft. 67 17.9 283, 285
59.2! 216 5-9 161 17.12 91, 260
00

00
JO

60.1 5'12 48 18.8 203, 290

37>
6o.8ff. M5 5-r3 121, 18.10 322
I25
60.19 341 5-'4 18.11 290
54- r34> 244
61.3 95 322 18.12 283
5j9
61.6 250 5.21 164 18.18 129, 248, 251
61.8 216 5.24
J39> 223 18.20 296
62.4ft. 202 5.29 161, 233 244
J9
63. iff. 40 6.9 19.5 295
324
63-3 39 6.19 287 20.8 r34
63.7 106 6.23 20.9
M1 I3°
63.9 78 7-5 261 21.5 116
63.10 127 7.8 321 22.16 177, 238
63.11 203 7.12 84 22.18 312
63.! 5 91 7.16 296 23.5 99- 243, 337
63.16ft. 61, 202, 205 7.!9 287 23.9
i63
63.18 92 7.24 23.11 130, 261
l57
64.7 202, 203 7.25 204 290
23J4
64.8 61
7-31 295 23.21 245
65.4 306 8.3 223
324 23-24
65.7 M3 8.7 223 23.25 241
65.17 164, 341 9.9 23.29
324 *34
65.20 325 9.12 272 24.4ft. 324
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Jeremiah (cont.) 34.1 off. 210 10.3s. 341

25-5 290 326
35-2 "•5 123, 126, 162
25.9 208 290 11.10
35i5 53- *9°
25I5 321 36-3> 7 290 11.13 324
25.18 116 38.16 11.19 166
39
25.31 158 12.16
39-i5ff- 323 53
26.3 290 42.7 132 12.25 51
26.4 272 42.1 off. 251
324 I4I4
26.5 204 43.6 161 16 no, 202
26.7 240 208 16.38 116
4310
26.17 ft. x3° 290 16.52
44-5 95
27
244 44-IO> i6-53 320
27.5 272
39 23 i6-59ff. 289
27.6 208 158 16.60 216
45-5
27.8 321 46.25 219 211
27.9 241 48.1 321 17.19 39
27.13 48.13 322
321 18.31 162
29.1 240
49-3 322 20.25 295
29.8 241 49.6 32° 20.32 162
29.21 323 49.16 20.33 n4
165
29.22 217 50.20 292,297 20.35 J93
29.23 200 50.25 116 20.41 89
29.26 243 50.26 20.44 82
323
30.16 322 50.27 321 21.4 158
3°. 18 250 50.29 89,322 21.32 33°
30.19 261 51.6 89 22.26 248
31 326 51.50 164 22.30 296, 322
3T-3 108 60 22.31 287
5r-57
3Mff- 261 202
23
3J-9 61 23.14 167
31.15 306 Ezekiel 23.20 158
31.18 290 126 24.25 160
!-3
31.22 143, 223 69> 341 24.27 289
M
3I27 J37 1.12 74 25.7 289
31.3 iff. 216, 274 1.26 81,341 28. iff. 199
3J-33 246 2.2 126 28.3 251
3r-34 253, 292, 297 3.10 164 28.10 3°5
3*-35 x37 3.12 126 28.13 69, 325, 327
31.36 *39 242 28.22 89
3-M
32.18 105, 106 3.24 126 28.25 89
32.23 272 116 29.16 289
5-!3
32.25 60 5.21 30.19 289
91
32.27 158 6.36. 321
3I-3 325
32-35 295 6.75. 190 31.18 3°5
32.37 116 6.12 321 32 3°3> 3°4
32.385. 216 6.13 53 32.15 289
33-8 292, 297 7.26 251 32.27 3° 1
33.11 io5 7.27 53- r9° 33.6 161
33.145. 337 8 261 33.11 39
33-lS 250 8.14 311 33-24 208
33.20!!. 139, 213 9.2 68 33.29 289

33-21 250 9.3ff. 81

34-3 53
34-5 312 IO 261 34.23 3I2> 338
362 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Ezekiel (cont.) 4.12 123 3*3 54

34-25 216, 326 5-4 I23 4.2 88

36-37 >93 512 40 4-6ff. 288

36.6 116 283 142,
5*3 4-x3 *43
36.20 ff. 5.14 40 5. iff.
89 I3I
36.22 127 6. iff. 283, 310 5-3 I3I> 323
36.23 216 6.6 176 5.8 140

00
36.26 166

Is,
M
7-1 283 5.18 140,
36.27 274 7.M 164 5.23 270
36.28 338 8.4ff. 236 5.26 167

37-x®- 126, 310 8.13 108 6.8 88, l6l

37-9 310 125, 242 6.14

9-7 54
37-13®- 53 9.10 110 7. iff. 296

37-24 312, 338 u.iff. 203, 207 7-2ff. 291

37.26 216 11.7 112, 283
7-4 142

38 227 11.8 288, 291 8. iff. 241

38-39 327 11.9 41. 87, 89, 90, 8.5 265

38.8 320 114, 116 8.9 142, 320
38.16 89, 320 11.10 40 8.14 272
38.17 204 12.6 54 9*1 74
39-7 89, 90 12.10 9.2
53 3°7
39.27 12.13
89 254 9-3 3X9
40—48 274 13.1 58 9.4 39
40.1 126 40 9.6 142
*3-7
4M 92 13.15 122 67
9-7
42I3 92 *4-3 270 9-I2ff.
323- 325
42-I4 91
43-2®- 81
43.12 92 Joel Obediah
44-7 166 1.15 47 l7 324
44-13 92 2.23 97, IOI
44.16 250 2.28ff. 246
44.23 248 161 Jonah
31
45.10 95 1.9
3-5 324 255
47 x93- 208 3.12 221 2.4 i63
4.2 321
2-5 91
4.18 325 2.6, 7 146
Hosea 2.9 103
1.9 274, 322

2-4 322 Amos

2.9 289 1 227 Micah
2.10 47> 1-2 116
58 1.2 91, 255, 321
2.13 265 1.2 2.1
259 43
2.15 58 i.3ff. 67, 321 2.11 121
2.17 2°3 1.8 2.13 60
323
2.18 320 2.7 82, 88 125
3-8
2.19 58 2.16 320-1 3.n 240
2.20 *53- 326 3-2 no, 191, 205, 207, 3*12 I3°
2.21 IOI, 106 227 4. iff. 219, 261
4.1, 2 321 3-6 70, 189, 228 4.2 248
4-5 240 189, 204,
3-7 244 4-7-9 60
4.6 248, 27I, 322 3.8 5. iff.
x3° 326, 329- 335
4.8 160 3.12 324
323 5-7®-
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 363

Micah (cont.) 208 16 180,

3-2 3°9
6 60, 3-6ff.
97- 321 337 16.3 87
67 295 6.9ff. 16.5 203
337
6.8 105, 7.12 126, 272
*75- 273 16.9 88, 158
7.8 178, 271 8.4 106
325 "7-7
7-9 IOI, 116, 178 8.13 265
2I7 I7-I5 79-
7-15 224 8.21 261 18.7
255
9 99 18.8 J45
9.9 IOI, 340 18.11 69, 257
Nahum 9.11 216 18.16 121, 146
1.2 116 40 18.17
9-x3 91
r*3 39- 342 10.8 51 18.24 285
3-5 3<” 12.1 122 18.26 IOO

13.2 123 18.51 i°5

!3-7 34° 19 84. r45-
Habakkuk
84 19.5 223
x4-9
1.12 39- 52, 62, 309 14.16 221, 324 19.6
2.11 243
*45
19.9 178
2.I4 82, 3*7 20.5 i65
3-3 87 Malachi 20.7 223
3.8 40
91-
1.2 111 21.5 l79
311 *45 1.6 62 21.10 78
1.11 67, 222 22.29 312
Zephaniah 2-4 2I3> 250 23-3 95
2-7 248 24 260, 268
I.2ff. 142
3-1 58. 2l6 24.2 142, 146
1.15 I4O
3-2 321 24.4 160
2-3 324
3X7 62, 204 24-7 60
2.11 322
3.23ff. 308 24.8 40
3-5 IOO, 265
25.8 272
3.8 IOO, 116, 321
25.10 103
220,
3-9 324 Psalms 26.6
3.12 324
259
1 n9 27.1 178
3I5 60
2 334 27-4 259
3-l7 40
27.11 272
2-4 39- 255
2-7 236, 335 27.12 160

4-3 156 28.9 203

Haggai
I.I3 4-4 106 29 88
77
4.6 29.1
IX4 162 95 79
5.8 29.2 91, *33
2.6 261 91
2.7 6-3 283 29-3 74
79
2.10 92 6.6 3°4 29-5 *45
00

7.9ff.
N
ro

IOO 29.10 61,

2.11 248
8 148, 170 30.3 283
2I3 161
8.2 84 30.6 116
2.23 208
8.4 223 3OI3 88
8.5 156, 327 3X-X3 164
Zechariah 8.6 342 31.22 106
1.3 290 11.40 91 32-3 289
1.6 204 59- l57 32-5 286
I2-5
2.5 261 178 32.8 272
x3-4
2.16 91 37 33-5 107
I41
VO
00

3. iff. 70 260, 33.6 M3

»5 132.
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Psalms (cont.) 56.5 !58 78.62 203

33-12 203 57.6 82 78.68 109

238 79.1 91
33*3 59-9 39
179 61.7®. 179 79.2 205
34-13
34-19 163 61.8 103 79-5 116
36.2 48 62.10 156 79-9 hi

36.7 44, 107, 152 62.12 103 80 290

36.9 63.2 80.2 263
325 79
36.10 178 63.4 180 80.4, 8 79
38.19 289 63.10 302 80.11 44
39.2 289 64.7 80.20 79
i63
301 65.3 158 81 266
39-14
40 270 66.5 267 81.4s. 265
302 68.4 122 82 66, 218
4°-3
40.8 269 68.7ff. 256 82.1 98
40.11 103 68.25 90 83.19 47
160 68.52 203 84.3 39- 158
4!-3
42.3 39- 78- 259 69.2 160 84.4 6l
42.5 161, 259 69.18 292 84.103. 237
69.29 228 84.11 259
43-4 259
44.27 293 71.1 iff. 70 85.10 IOI
98 71.22 87, 85.1 iff. 98
45 89
271 72 85.12 97>
45-5 99. 334 98
236 72.2 85.14 98
457 97
45.18 335 72.15 238 86.5 106
46 327 72.16 86.11 272
237> 331
46.5 47 72.19 82 86.13 302
46.6 265 73 82, 180, 3O9 87.2 109
*73-
46.7 *33 73.11 87.4 221
47
46.9 267 73-22 152 87.5 47
47.10 222, 237 73.23 308 88.7 302
48.3 I98 73.28 229 88.11 224
48.9 267 74 138 88.12
3°3
49-3 j56 74.2 66, 203, 292 88.13 140,304
49.8 294 106
74-7 83 89
49-15 308 74.12 197 89.4 213
49.16 293, 294, 308 89.6 224
74-r3 3l9
49-17 79 75-4 146 89.9 54
5° 270 75.8 98 89.10 197
50.5 104 77.12 191, 224 89.11 !38
50.6 98 90 89.15
77-14 98
5OI4 47 77-*5 292 89.19 89, 237
50.36 104 77.17 141, 267 89.25 84
283, 291 78 191, 224 89.26 236
51
51.12 143, 163, 166 78.12 224 89.29 104, 213

5I-13 127 78.23 89.303.

*45 334
51.16 IOI 78-35 292 89.34 104
163
5*-x9 78-38 I5I> 283, 29I 89.36 88
51.21 95 78.39 !58 89.38 M5
53.2 37 78.4! 89.39 340
89
54-3 84 78.42 89.46 179
293
55-23 108 78.49 89.47 291
”4
55-24 i79 78-54 92. 144 89.51 205
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 365
Psalms (cont.) 105.6 204 143.!° 127
90.1 52 105.8ft. 132 144.2
io3
90.2 38, 142 105.42 204
x44-3 291
9°-3 156 106.1 105 106
x45-8
9°. 13 205 106.2 224 145.15 140
91.1 47 106.5 203
I45-I7 x74
9r-5 70 106.7 106 !45.2I
r58
9XI4 109 106.8 hi 283
x47-3
91.16 179 106.10 292 140
x47-8
93-99 61 106.37 69
I47-I5 *33
93-1 146 106.40 203 148.1 68
93-5 90 107 141 148.4
x45
94-5 203 107.1 148.6
i°5 r39> 223
94-17 3°3> 3°4 107.8 106
r48-7 140
95.7ff. 266, 285 107.15 105, 106 I48.8
x33
96.9 107.18 283
91 148.9
37
96.13 268 107.20 132
97.2 98, 342 107.24 224
97. IT 178 108.8 88 Job
98.3 267 109.6!?. 70 1.6
71
98.8 268 110 328, 332 1.21 82, 142
98.9 110.3
97 93- 331 2.6
r59
99 88 110.6 2.10
3OI> 335 37
99.1 263 I IO.IO 120
3-*7 3°3
100.2 112.4 178 4.15
79 !58
100.5 io5 4.!7ff. 283
”4-7 59
102.6 158 149 296
XI5-3 5-1
102.12 306 223
115-I7 3°3> 3°4 5-9
102.20 91 118.18 288 7.6 306
102.24 306 119, 132, 275 146
IX9 7-9
102.26 318 119.1 272 7.21 3°!
102.27 52 119.64 107 9.8 x45
103.1 84, 161 119.90 142 9.10 224
io3-4 292 119.120 158 9.24 70
103.10 283 123.1 255 10.4 156
103.14 291 124.7 157, 161 10.12 122
103.15 I5I 126 320 10.21
3°3
103.19 238 130 291 11.8 146
104 74- x38- x47- 227 130.5 132 164
12*3
104.3 122, 145 131.2 161 12.13 118
io4-4 121 132.1 iff. 266, 334 14.1ft. 115, 151
io4-5 223 135.6 149 283
*4-4
104.7 140 !36 !9I
*4-5 J39
104.9 *39 136.5 107, 148 14.195. 3DI
104.15 77 138.2
xo3 r5-7 328
104.19 139 228 15.8
*45 118
104.26 139, 149, i97> 319 x39-5 39 289
I5-I7
104.29 122, 162, 318 I39I3 144 15.25
*57
104.30 I39-I5 142, 302 16.3 121
*43
104.31 139.16 38 16.9
*75 XI5
104.35 i4i 141.8 160 16.22 146
191 143.1 IOI 19.11
io5 ”5
224 x43-2 283, 291 1 19.26 292, 308, 309
io55
 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Job (cont.) 3.27 2.26 *75

43
252 122
20.23 M4 4-5 3-1
118 148
26.5 146, 303 4.8 3-11
26.6 118, 304 4.10 179 3.19 I5I
3.20
26.7 146 4.22 158 301
180
26.10 138, 197 4.23 164 4-2
271 256
26.11 x45 6.13 5-2
28 118, 144 6.32 164 5-11 158
28.12 *53 7-4 118 7-2 *65
28.22
3°3> 3°4 7-7 164 7-x5 95
28.27 118 8.2 252 7.17 306
/
28.28 120 8.22ff. 118, 144, 148, 153, 7.20 283

7.22 i65
30.25 161 *75
164
33-9 285 8.286. 146 7-23
148
33l8 302 9.IO 120 7-29
229 9.I I 179 8.15 *75
33-x9
33.22 296 IO.27 179 9-4 3°3
33.24s. 293 I 1.17 169 9-5 180, 3°4
34-4 201 I I.30 325 9-7 J75
12.10 9.10 177
34.10 164 *52
272 13.12 325 9.21 122
34-32
132 11.96.
34-34 164 I3-I3 *75
229 103 11.10 !58
36.7 *4-34
12.7 122, 301
37-5 74 *5-4 325
37.18 15.11 12.8 152
*45 3°3
224 15.13 77
37-»9
38 >53 16.20 132

38.! 197 16.32 162 Lamentations

j36 148 3.10 40
38.4 • 7-5
17.16 252 106
38.7 68, 145, *75 3-32
20.9 283 156
38.8 !38 3-33
21.2 189
38.10 139, 146 166 3-37 7°>
21.4 165 302
38.16 223 3-55
23.2 160 114
38.17 303 4-11
38.22
>45 23.13 164 4.13 240

38.28 142 25.10 4.20 237

io3
38.39 140 25.28 162 4-31 325
4°-7ff- 171 27.20
3°3 5-21 290

40.9 149 178

2 9-13
170 30.15 108
4*-24
42.3 30.23 109 Esther
x49
6.6 165
42.6 88 31 *73
42.10 165
320 7-5
300
42I7

Ruth Daniel
Proverbs 3*3 292 1-6 5
2 x
120 2 196
1-7
1.20 252 2.2off. 118

3.2 180 2.28 320

3.12 112, 229, 289 Ecclesiastes 2-35- 44 !96

l8o 6l
3-*7 J-5 *45 3-33
3.19 148 2.8 204 I52
4*3
 theology of the old testament
3 67
Daniel (cont.) 12.22
44 Wisdom
4.16 165 12.38 165 2.23 172
4.24 102
*4-7 57 2.24 72, 282
4.3 iff. 61
17-7 55 7.17 149
5-2! 165 i7.nff. 334 7.22 119
7 196 17.21
293 7.25
x34
7-l3 341 21 70, 72 9.9 n9
7.18ft. 2I.l6
342 76 9.15 158
7.27 22.7
3>3 i65
8.15 342 22.10
334 7 Maccabees
9-4 104 28.6 334 1.62
9.6 204 28.1 iff. 258
3X4
9.10 242 204
2-57 337
29-3
9.18 102 29.11 6l
9.20 29.23 2 Maccabees
243 238
9.21 68, 342 l-7 92
9.24 236 1.19 225
2.4ft.
9.27 216 257
10.5 2.21 225
342 2 Chronicles
10.13 68 6.14 104 3-23 225

7.22
10.14 320 6.18 259 3*3
7.28
11.28 216
7-1 82 x43
12.42
12
3*3 9.8
237 297
297
12.2
3°3 11.15 69 I5-I4
20 225
20.8 Tobit
83
Ezra 20.29 48 2.12
297
265 I2.I9 68
9-4 25-J9 165
9.8ff. 324 26.16 i65
9.11 204 28.23 66 Baruch
32.8 151, *58 3-4 297
32.26 i65 3.29 n9
Nehemiah 32.32
io3
*■5 IO4 208
33-7 A foe. Saruch
1.10 272
35-3 257 14.18
*47
2.2 77 35-26 io3 21.4ft.
*43
5-5 43 36.16
1 *4 46.7 308
8-9 3*9 36.22 162 76.2 308
8.10 212
9.30 126
Jubilees
9.32 104
10.30 212
2.2 x44
Ecclesiasticus
13.22 106 2.10 3X4
13.26 109 6.16 228 4 Maccabees
1.12 Il8
I I.26ff. 3r4
17.2 172 x3-i9 I l8

1 Chronicles 24.3
!34
5.26 162 24.8 119, 253 Enoch
7.10 5° 25.24 283 32.24
325
8-33 57 40.1 142, 282
39-7 3*3
57 42.15 42.1ft.
9-39 *43 n9
12.6 43.12 104.2
57 *45 3*3
12.18 I23 48.1 off. 308 108.13
3*3
368 THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

4 Esdras II.5I 250 Galatians

6.38 12.31 4.21
r44 72 12
7.36 325 14.6 272

13.26 17-6fF.
342 85
I3-44 225 Hebrews
308
”•3 x43
Acts
2 Peier
S. Matthew 320
3-21
12
6.1 102
13 I9I 3-5®-
12.6 262

22.30 I 12
Revelation
Romans 2.?
323
325
”•5 12.9 282
11.24 70 16.20 282
20.2 282
14.26 IO9
21.1
r4r
2I.3
33.
5. /ofcn 2 Corinthians 22.2
325
I29, 263 3.18 81
I-I4 22.5
M1
2.20 262 72 22.l6 329
4-4
6.45 246 12.2 22.24 325
*45
 3 1T27 0DDL5SS5 1

I1 DATE DUE

DEMCO 38-296 --—