Prolegomena to the History of Israel Part 31

The only reason for the attempt to separate Leviticus xxvi. from xvii.-xxv. lies in the fact, that the exilic or post-exilic origin of this hortatory and denunciatory oration is too plain to be mistaken. To us, this circ.u.mstance can only prove that it belongs to xvii.-xxv., providing a weighty confirmation of the opinion we have already formed on other grounds as to the period which produced these laws.

"If ye will not for all this hearken unto me, but walk contrary to me, then I will also walk contrary to you in fury; and I will chastise you seven times for your sins. Ye shall eat the flesh of your sons and daughters, and I will destroy your high places, and cast down your sun-pillars' and cast your carca.s.ses upon the carca.s.ses of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you. And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries into desolation, and I will not smell the savour of your sweet odours. And I will bring the land into desolation, and your enemies who settle therein shall be astonished at it; and I will scatter you among the peoples, and will draw out the sword after you, and your land shall be desolate and your cities ruins. Then shall the land pay her sabbaths all the years of the desolation when you are in your enemies' land: even then shall the land rest and pay her sabbaths. As long as it lieth desolate it shall make up the celebration of the sabbaths which it did not celebrate as long as you dwelt in it. And upon them that are left alive of you I will send a faintness into their hearts in the land of their enemies, and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them, and they shall flee as fleeing from a sword, and they shall fall when none pursueth. And they shall fall one upon another as it were before a sword when none pursueth, and there shall be no stopping in the flight before your enemies. And ye shall lose yourselves among the peoples, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up. And they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies' lands, and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away. And they shall confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers in regard to their unfaithfulness which they committed against me, and that because they have walked contrary to me, I also walk contrary to them, and bring them into the land of their enemies. Then their uncirc.u.mcised heart is humbled, and then they pay their penalty, and I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham, and I remember the land.

The land also, left by them, pays its sabbaths, while she lieth without inhabitant and waste, and they themselves pay the penalty of their iniquity because, even because, they despised my judgments, and their soul abhorred my statutes. And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I have not rejected them, neither have I abhorred them to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them: for I am Jehovah their G.o.d. And I will for their sakes remember the covenant of their ancestors whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the peoples, that I might be their G.o.d: I am Jehovah" (xxvi. 27-45).

These words undoubtedly cannot have been written before the Babylonian exile. It is said that the a.s.syrian exile will explain the pa.s.sage: but where is there any similarity between the oration before us and the old genuine Isaiah? In Ezekiel's day such thoughts, feelings, and expressions as we have here can be shown to have prevailed: but it would be difficult to show that the fall of Samaria gave rise to such depression at Jerusalem: and Leviticus xxvi. was not written outside Jerusalem, for it presupposes unity of wors.h.i.+p. The _Jews_ are addressed here, as in Deuteronomy xxix., x.x.x., and they had no such lively feeling of solidarity with the deported Israelites as to think of them in connection with such threats. I even think it certain that the writer lived either towards the end of the Babylonian exile or after it, since at the close of the oration he turns his eyes to the restoration. In such prophets as Jeremiah and Ezekiel there is a meaning in such forecasting of the joyful future but here it contradicts both the historical position and the object of the threats, and appears to be explained most naturally as the result of an accident, i.e., of actuality. That in a comparison of Leviticus xxvi. with Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the former cannot claim priority, appears distinctly from the comparative use of the phrase _uncirc.u.mised heart_. That phrase originates in Jeremiah (iv. 4, ix. 24 seq.), but in Leviticus xxvi. it is used as a well-known set term. In the same way the phrase _pine away in their iniquity_ is repeated by Ezekiel as he heard it in the mouth of the people. He is its originator in literature; in Leviticus xxvi. it is borrowed. /1/

1. Horst tries to find a place for Leviticus xxvi. in the last years of king Zedekiah (op. cit. p. 65, 66), but in this he is merely working out his theory that the author was the youthful Ezekiel; and the theory is sufficiently condemned if it leads to this consequence. Delitzsch (Zeitschr. fur Kirchl. Wissench.

1880, p. 619) thinks it a piece of impertinence in me to read out of Ezekiel x.x.xiii. what that pa.s.sage says. On Deuteronomy x. 16, x.x.x. 6, and generally on the color Hieremia.n.u.s in Deuteronomy, see Jahrb. fur D. Thhcol., 1877, p. 464.

The criticism of Leviticus xvii. seq. Ieads us to the result, that a collection of laws which took form during the period of the exile was received into the Priestly Code, and there clothed with fresh life. We need not then tremble at Schrader's threatening us with "critical a.n.a.lysis," and Graf's hypothesis will not be thereby overturned.

IX.II.3. Two or three further important traces of the final priestly revision of the Hexateuch may here find mention. In the story of the flood the verses vii. 6-9 are an editorial addition, with the object of removing a contradiction between JE and Q; it shares the ideas and speaks the language of the Priestly Code.

In the t.i.tle of Deuteronomy the verse, "It came to pa.s.s in the fortieth year, in the eleventh [(#TY] month, on the first day of the month, that Moses spake unto the children of Israel according to all that Jehovah had given him in commandment unto them" (i. 3) is shown by the most undoubted signs to belong to the Priestly Code, and is intended to incorporate Deuteronomy in that work. We have already shown that the Priestly Code in the Book of Joshua is simply a filling-up of the Jehovistic-Deuteronomistic narrative.

That the Priestly Code consists of elements of two kinds, first of an independent stem, the Book of the Four Covenants (Q), and second, of innumerable additions and supplements which attach themselves princ.i.p.ally to the Book of the Four Covenants, but not to it alone, and indeed to the whole of the Hexateuch--this a.s.sertion has not, strange to say, met with the opposition which might have been expected. Ryssel has even seen in the twofold nature of the Priestly Code a means to maintain the position of the Book of the Four Covenants before the exile: he sacrifices the additions, and places the necessary interval between them and the main body of the work. He thinks the close affinity between the two parts is sufficiently explained by the supposition that they both issued from the same circle, that of the priesthood of Jerusalem. Were it the case that the temple of Jerusalem was as autonomous and as solely legitimate in the days of Solomon as in those of the foreign domination, that the priests had as much to say under Ahaz, Hezekiah, and Josiah as after the exile, if it were allowable to represent them according as it suits one's views, and not according to the historical evidence, if, in short, there were no Israelite history at all, such an explanation might be allowed to stand. The secondary part of the Priestly Code of necessity draws the primary part with it. The similarity in matter and in form, the perfect agreement in tendencies and ideas, in expressions and ways of putting things, all compel us to think that the whole, if not a literary, is yet a historical, unity.

IX.III.

It has lately been the fas.h.i.+on to regard the language of the Priestly Code as an insuperable barrier to the destructive efforts of tendency criticism. But it is unfortunate that this veto of language is left as dest.i.tute of detailed proof, by Delitzsch, Riehm, and Dillmann, as the veto of critical a.n.a.lysis by Schrader; and we cannot be called upon to show proof against a contention which is unsupported by evidence. But I take advantage of the opportunity to communicate some detached observations, which I may perhaps remark did not occur to me in connection with the investigation of the Pentateuch, but on a quite different occasion.

In the pa.s.sage 2Samuel vi. 12 I was exceedingly struck with L(MT, and not less with BR) in the two pa.s.sages Isaiah iv. 5, Amos iv. 13, and while following out the distribution of these two words I came on the traces of similar phenomena.

The language of the pre-exilic historical books is in general much akin to that of the Jehovistic work; that of the Priestly Code, on the contrary, is quite different. It is common enough to interpret this fact, as if the latter belonged to an earlier period. But not to mention that in that case the Code must have been entirely without influence on the history of the language, it agrees ill with this view, that on going back to the oldest doc.u.ments preserved to us of the historical literature of the Hebrews we find the difference increasing rather than diminis.h.i.+ng.

Take Judges v. and 2Samuel i.; the poetical pieces in JE may be compared with them, but in Q there is nothing like them. And on the other hand, it is in the narratives which were introduced very late into the history, such as Judges xix.-xxi.; 1Samuel vii.

viii. x. 17 seq. xii.; 1Kings xiii., and the apocryphal additions in 1Kings vi.-viii. that we recognise most readily some linguistic approximation to the Priestly Code. And as in the historical so also in the prophetical literature. The speech of Amos, Isaiah, Micah, answers on the whole to that of the Jehovist, not to that of the priestly author.

Deuteronomy and the Book of Jeremiah first agree with the Priestly Code in certain important expressions. In Ezekiel such expressions are much more numerous, and the agreement is by no means with Leviticus xvii.-xxvi. alone. /1/

I Especially noticeable is P)T NGB TYMNH in Ezekiel and the Priestly Code. In the latter Negeb, even when it refers to the actual Negeb, yet is used as denoting south (Numbers x.x.xiv. 3, xxv. 2-4), i.e., it has completely lost its original meaning.

In the subsequent post-exilic prophets down to Malachi the points of contact are limited to details, but do not cease to occur; they occur also in the Psalms and in Ecclesiastes. Reminiscences of the Priestly Code are found nowhere but in the Chronicles and some of the Psalms. For that Amos iv. 11 is borrowed from Genesis xix. 29 is not a whit more clear than that the original of Amos i. 2 must be sought in Joel iv. 19 [iii. 16].

The Priestly Code maintains its isolated literary character as against the later literature also. This is the result partly of the use of a number of technical terms, partly of the incessant repet.i.tion of the same formulae, and of its great poverty of language. But if we neglect what is due to the stiff and hard idiosyncrasy of the author, it is undoubtedly the case that he makes use of a whole series of characteristic expressions which are not found before the exile, but gradually emerge and come into use after it. The fact is not even denied, it is merely put aside. To show what weight is due to it we may find room here for a short statement of the interesting points for the history of language to be found in Genesis i.

Genesis i. 1, R)#YT means in the older Hebrew, not the COMMENCEMENT of a process which goes forward in time, but the FIRST (and generally the BEST) part of a thing. In the sense of a beginning in time, as the contrary to )XRYT, it is first found in a pa.s.sage of Deuteronomy, xi. 12; then in the t.i.tles in the Book of Jeremiah, xxvi. 1, xxvii. 1, xxviii. 1, xlix. 34, and in Isaiah xlvi. 10, and lastly in the Hagiographa, Job viii. 7, xili. 12; Proverbs xvii. 14; Ecclesiastes vii. 8. In Genesis x. 10 R)#YT MMLKTW has a different meaning from that in Jeremiah xxvi. 1 in the one it is the princ.i.p.al part of the kingdom; in the other it is the beginning of the reign. _In the beginning_ was in the early time, if absolute, BFR)#NH, BATTXLH; if relative, BTXLT TXLT. /1/

1 The vocalisation B:R#YT is very curious: we should expect BFRA$YT. It has been attempted to do justice to it by translating: "In the beginning, when G.o.d created heaven and earth--but the earth was without form and void, and darkness lay upon the deep, and the spirit of G.o.d brooded over the water--then G.o.d spake: Let there be light."

But this translation is desperate, and certainly not that followed by the punctuators, for the Jewish tradition (Septuagint, Aquila, Onkelos) is unanimous in translating: "In the beginning G.o.d created heaven and earth."

In Aramaic, on the contrary, such adverbs take, as is well known, the form of the _status constructus_. Cf. RBT Psalm lxvv. 10, cxx. 6.

We have already spoken of the word BR), a word remarkable for its specific theological import. Apart from Amos iv. 13 and Isaiah iv. 5 it is first found outside the Priestly Code in the Deuteronomist in Exodus x.x.xiv. 10, Numbers xvi.

30 (?), Deuteronomy iv. 32, and in the Book of Jeremiah, x.x.xi. 22: then in Ezekiel xxi. 35, xxviii. 13, 15; Malachi ii. 10; in Psalms li. 12, lx.x.xix. 13, 48, cii. 19, civ. 30, cxlviii. 5; Ecclesiastes xii. 1. It occurs, however, most frequently, 20 times in fact, in Isaiah xl.-lxvi.; and curiously enough, never in Job, where we should expect to find it. It has nothing to do with B"R") (cut down wood) and BRY) (fat). /2/

2. I do not speak of the use of _Elohim_ and the application of the names of G.o.d in the Priestly Code: the matter is not yet clear to me. Very curious is H#M, Leviticus xxiv. 11.

Genesis i. 2, THW WBHW occurs also in Jeremiah iv. 23; Isaiah x.x.xiv.

11. THW alone is not so rare, but it also occurs, Isaiah xxix. 21 excepted, only in the later literature Deuteronomy x.x.xii. 10; 1Samuel xii. 21; Isaiah xxiv. 10, xl. 17, 23, xli. 29, xliv. 9, xlv.

18 seq., xlix. 4, lix. 4; Job vi. 18, xii.24, xxvi. 7; Psalm cvii. 40. The verb RXP (brood), which is common in Aramaic, only recurs in a single pa.s.sage in the Old Testament, and that a late one, Deuteronomy x.x.xii. 11. Yet the possibility must be conceded that there was no occasion for its more frequent employment.

Genesis i. 4, HBDYL and NBDL (divide and divide one's self), common in the Priestly Code, is first used by Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomist (Deuteronomy iv. 41, x.8, xix. 7, xxix. 10; 1Kings viii. 53), then by Ezekiel (xxii. 26, x.x.xix. 14, xlii. 10) and the author of Isaiah xl. seq. (lvi. 3, lix. 2). It is most used by the writer of Chronicles, (1Chronicles xii. 8, xxiii. 13, xxv. 1; 2Chronicles xxv. 10; Ezra vi. 21, viii.24, ix. 1, x. 8, 11, 16 ; Nehemiah x. 2, 29, xiii. 3). On YWM )XD Genesis i. 5 compare Josephus, Antiquities I. i. 1: "That now would be the FIRST day, but Moses says ONE day; I could give the reason of this here, but as I have promised (in the Introduction) to give such reasons for everything in a separate work, I shall defer the exposition till then." The Rabbis also, in Genesis Rabba, feel the difficulty of the expression, which, however, has its parallel in the )XD LXD#, which belongs to the later way of speaking. In Syriac the ordinary expression is XD B#B); hence in the New Testament MIA SABBATWN for the first day of the week.

Genesis i. 6, RQY( (firmament) is found, outside the Priestly Code, only in Ezekiel (i. 22-26, x. 1), and in still later writers ; Psalms xix. 2, cl. 1 ; Daniel xii. 3; cf. Job x.x.xviii. 18. /1/

1. It does not mean, as is generally a.s.sumed, that which is beaten out thin, is stretched out. For, firstly, the heaven is never considered to be made of sheet-metal; secondly, the meaning in question only belongs to the Piel, and the substantive derived from it is RIQQUA(. The Kal, with which RQY( must be connected, is found in Isaiah xiii. 5, xliv. 24; Psalms cx.x.xvi. 6. It is generally translated _spread out_, but quite unwarrantably.

Parallel with it are YSD and KWNN (compare Psalms xxiv. 2 with cx.x.xvi.

6); the Septuagint translates in all three pa.s.sages with stereoun, and accordingly renders RQY( with STEREWMA (firmamentum). This rendering, which alone is supported by tradition, and which is very satisfactory, is confirmed by the Syriac, where the verb RQ( is frequent in the sense of _fortify_.

Genesis i. 10 YMYM (the sea, singular, see i. 22; Leviticus xi. 9, 10), is rare in older times, and belongs to lofty poetical language; it is, on the contrary, frequent in Ezekiel (ten times), and in the Psalms (seven times); and occurs besides in Job vi. 3; Nehemiah ix. 6 ; Jonah ii. 4 ; Daniel xi. 45. Genesis i. 11 MYN (kind), a very peculiar word, especially in the form _Jeminehu_, is found outside of this chapter and Leviticus xiv., Genesis vi. 20, vii. 14, only in Deuteronomy xiv. and Ezekiel xlvii. 10.

Genesis i. 26, DMWT (likeness, verses 1, 3) does not occur in the earlier literature. It first appears in 2Kings xvi. 10, in a post-Deuteronomic pa.s.sage, for the writer is that of chapter xi.

seq., xxi. seq. Then in Ezekiel (15 times), Isaiah xiii. 4, xl.

18; 2Chronicles iv. 3; Psalms lxviii. 5. It is a borrowed word from Aramaic; and the corresponding verb only came into use in the period when Aramaic began to find its way in.

Genesis i. 27 ZFKFR (male) is in earlier times ZFKW.R; for this is the vocalization in Exodus xxiii. 17, x.x.xiv. 23; Deuteronomy xvi. 16, xx. 13; and if it is right in these pa.s.sages, as we cannot doubt it is, it must be introduced in Exodus x.x.xiv. 19; Deuteronomy xv. 19; 1Kings xi. 15 seq. as well. In the Priestly Code ZFKFR occurs with great frequency, and elsewhere only in the later literature, Deuteronomy iv. 16; Jeremiah xx. 15, x.x.x. 6; Ezekiel xvi.

17; Isaiah lxvi. 7; Malachi i. 14; Judges xxi. 11, 12; 2Chronicles x.x.xi. 16; Ezra viii. As for NQBH (female), matters are even worse.

Outside the Priestly Code it is only found in Jeremiah (x.x.xi. 22) and the Deuteronomist (iv. 16). The Jehovist, it is well known, always says )Y#, W)Y#H even of the lower animals: the editor of the Hexateuch, on the contrary, always follows the usage of the Priestly Code.

Genesis i. 28 XYH HRM#T attracts attention by the omission of the article with the substantive and its being merely prefixed to the following adjective; as if one should say in Greek, )ANHR (O )AGATHOS instead of (O )ANER (O )AGATHOS. In the same way i. 21 YWM H##Y, and ii. 3 YWM H#BY(Y. In Arabic there are some a.n.a.logies for this, but on seeking one in Hebrew we have to come down to the period when it was usual to say KNST HGDWLH. KB# and RDH are Aramaisms. In KBSHWH we find the only verbal suffix in Genesis i. Instead we have always the forms )TM )TW; this is so in the Priestly Code generally. In the Jehovistic main work, in J, these subst.i.tutes with )T are only used sometimes and for special reasons: it may be generally a.s.serted that they are more used the later we come down. Parallel with this is the use of )nky in J and )ny in the Priestly Code; the latter form grows always more frequent in later times.

These remarks carry us beyond Genesis i.; for the Priestly Code generally I am now able to refer to F. Giesebrecht's essay on the criticism of the Hexateuch. Such words as QRBN, (CM, L(MT, (#TY are each, by itself, strong arguments for a.s.suming a late date for the production of the Priestly Code. We cannot believe that such everyday words should never have come into use in the other literature before the exile, if they were in existence.

They cannot be counted technical terms: QRBN used in Hebrew for sacrifice and offering is simply as if an English writer should say priere instead of wors.h.i.+p. In such comparisons of the vocabulary we have, however, to consider first the working up and revision which has been at work in every part of the books of the Bible, and secondly the caprice of the writers in apparent trifles, such as )NKY and )NY, especially outside the Pentateuch.

These two agencies have so dislocated the original facts in this matter, that in general we can only deal in proportions, and must be content with showing that a word occurs say 3 times in the other literature and 27 times in an equal extent of the later. /1/

1. Too much importance must not be attached to Aramaisms: even when they admit of clear demonstration they prove little while occurring merely in single instances. We early find remarkable phenomena, such as NDR for NZR (hence NZYR = vovens), N+R for NCR (Amos i. 11 , Y+R for Y+RP?), comp. Arabic _lata_ for _laisa_, Sur.

38, 2. Hudh. 84, 1. And yet such an Aramaism as BT #NTH in Numbers xv. 27, or even QRBN, is very remarkable.

IX.III.2. The study of the history of language is still at a very elementary stage in Hebrew. In that which pertains to the lexicographer it would do well to include in its scope the proper names of the Old Testament; when it would probably appear that not only Parnach (Numbers x.x.xiv. 25) but also composite names such as Peda-zur, Peda-el, Nathana-el, Pazi-el, Eli-asaph, point less to the Mosaic than to the Persian period, and have their a.n.a.logies in the Chronicles. On the other hand, the prepositions and particles would have to be examined the use of the prepositions Beth and Lamed in the Priestly Code is very peculiar. That would lead further, to syntax; or better still, to rhetoric and style--a diffcult and little cultivated field of study, but one of great importance and lending itself readily to comparative treatment.

This treatment yields the most far-reaching results in the case of those parallels which have an undoubted and direct relation to each other. The dependence of the Priestly Code on the Jehovist cannot be more strikingly demonstrated than by comparing its CDYQ, Genesis vi. 9, with the CDYQ BDWR HZH, of Genesis vii. 1 (JE.).

The plural DRWT is quite on a line with the MYNYM, and the (MY H)RC, of the Rabbis, and the SPERMATA of Galatians iii. 15; it does not denote the successive generations, but contemporaries, the contemporaneous individuals of one and the same generation.

From words we are brought back to things again by noting that the age of the word depends in many cases on the introduction of the thing. The name BTR in the Song of Songs, for example, presupposes the cultivation of the malobathron in Syria and Palestine. The Priestly Code enumerates colours, stuffs, goldsmiths' work and jewels, which nowhere occur in the older literature: along with the Book of Ezekiel it is the princ.i.p.al quarry in the Old Testament for the history of art; and this is the less likely to be due to chance, as the geographical horizon of the two works is also the same. There is also some contact in this respect, though to a less degree, between the Priestly Code and Isaiah xl.-lxvi., and this must doubtless receive a historical explanation in the circ.u.mstances of the Babylonian age. /l/

1. On Canticles cf. Schuerer's Theol. Lit. Z., 1879, p. 31. It also, by the names of plants and similar details mentioned in it, is an important source for the history of external civilisation.