Evidence from the Early Prophets.

It is argued with the greatest confidence by destructive critics that the prophets who lived and wrote before the Babylonian exile, betray such ignorance of the Levitical law as demonstrates its non-existence, and such ignorance of the distinctive laws of Deuteronomy as demonstrates its non-existence till its discovery by Hillkiah. W. Robertson Smith, following close in the track of Wellhausen, presents the argument so elaborately that  we shall let him be, in the main, our guide. His proposition, in its briefest and most comprehensive form, is this:  

The theology of the prophets before Ezekiel has no place for priestly sacrifice and ritual (O. T., 295).  

He does not hold that the prophets had "any objection to sacrifice and ritual in the abstract," but he claims that "they deny that these things are of positive divine institution, or have any part in the scheme on which Jehovah's grace is administered in Israel. Jehovah, they say, has not enjoined sacrifice" (ib.). Wellhausen goes further, and says: "The prophet (Hosea) had never once dreamed of the possibility of cultus being made the subject of Jehovah's directions" (quoted by Baxter in Sanctuary and Sacrifice, 179). Again Wellhausen says: "According to the universal opinion of the pre-exilie period, the cultus is indeed of very old (to the people), very sacred usage, but not a Mosaic institution" (ib., 180).  

In order to make good these assertions, our critics begin with Elijah and Elisha, and pass on to the writing prophets, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah and Jeremiah, in order.  

1. Elijah and Elisha. Robertson Smith says that Elijah and Elisha "had no quarrel with the sanctuaries of their nation;" meaning the sanctuaries of the calf-worship at Bethel and Dan. And he gives this as proof that neither the Levitical code, nor the code of Deuteronomy, was known in the northern kingdom (Prophets, 113). It is true that among the very few words quoted from these two prophets there is no allusion to these sanctuaries, but the paucity of these quotations makes this statement appear reckless. Moreover, if the argument is good, it is suicidal to him who offers it; for just below, on the same page, he says: "It is safe, therefore, to conclude that whatever ancient laws may have had currency in a written form must be sought in other parts of the Pentateuch, particularly in the book of the covenant (Ex. xxi.-xxiii.), which the Pentateuch itself presents as an older code than those of Deuteronomy and the Levitical legislation;" but this code, as well as the Second Commandment of the Decalogue which preceded it, forbade such idolatry as the calf-worship, and our critic's argument would prove that these also were unknown in Israel. The argument is a boomerang.  

If it is true that these two prophets, and especially Elijah, had no quarrel with the sanctuaries referred to, there is a very good reason for it that involves no such conclusion as Professor Smith has drawn to his own confusion. We are told by the historian that Ahab, "as if it had been a light thing to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Hebat, took to wife Jezebel, the daughter of Eth-baal, king of the Zidonians, and went and served Baal, and worshiped him" (I. Kings xvi. 30, 31). Comparatively speaking, it was "a light thing;' for Baal-worship was the most abominable form of idolatry ever known in Israel. Not only so, but it was cultivated in Ahab's reign to such an extent that all other forms of worship were thrown into complete obscurity. Four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal were fed at public expense, and all the prophets of Jehovah were slain or compelled to find safety in hiding. It was this gigantic power, backed by the authority of king and queen and aristocracy, that Elijah assailed single-handed. The calf-worship was, in his estimation, as in that of Ahab, a very "light thing," not to be thought of till this fiercer and more powerful foe was disarmed. When a Western hunter is fighting hand to paw a mountain bear, he pays little attention to a small dog that may be snapping at his heels. When Saul's kingdom was invaded by the Philistines, he very quickly turned his back upon David's little band, and hastened to repel the more dangerous foe. There were perhaps a thousand crimes being committed in Israel which Elijah might have denounced; and his silence about them may as well be used as proof that there was no law against them; but Professor Smith is himself able to see that this would be nonsense- While fighting the one great fight, on the result of which the very life of the nation depended, it would have been folly for Elijah to divide his energies by turning them against subordinate evils. While the American Union was fighting for existence during the great Civil War, it paid no attention to Maximilian's attempt to establish a monarchy in Mexico. Was this because the Monroe doctrine was not yet in existence? So some future Robertson Smith may argue.  

Wellhausen, whom Smith follows in the main, but sometimes contradicts, declares that Elijah and Elisha were "actual champions of the Jehovah of Bethel and Dan, and did not think of protesting against his pictorial representation'' (Prol., 283).(1) This is to assume that they knew nothing of the Decalogue and the book of the covenant, while Smith says, as quoted above, that they did. It is, moreover, an assertion that these prophets were "actual champions" of something that they never said a word about. One might as truthfully say that Wellhausen is an actual champion of the free and unlimited coinage of silver in the United States, and prove it by his Prolegomena, in which he says nothing about it.  

But Wellhausen attempts to support his startling assertion by arguing that if it were not so, Elijah at Mount Carmel, instead of the alternative, "If Baal is God, serve him, and if Jehovah is God, serve him," would have proposed choice between three, Jehovah, Baal and the calf! What we have said above about the complete predominance of Baal-worship at the time, shows that this would have been ridiculous. As well demand of the spectators of the supposed fight between the man and the bear, which will win, the man, the bear, or the little dog? The little dog, as the boys out West would say, "isn't in it;" and the calf "wasn't in it" in the reign of Ahab.  

2. The Prophet Amos. Of this prophet the same assertion Is made as of Elijah and Elisha: "Amos," says Robertson Smith, "never speaks of the golden calves as the sin of the northern sanctuaries, and he has only one or two allusions to the worship of false gods or idolatrous symbols" (Prophets, 140).  

This statement is true, but as respects the question at issue it is evasive and misleading. It is true that Amos never mentions the golden calves at all, and of course he does not speak of them "as the sin of the northern sanctuaries." But he does what amounts to the same thing. He denounces in unqualified terms the sin of the worship paid those calves. He says: "Hear ye, and testify against the house of Jacob, saith the Lord God, the God of hosts. For in the day that I shall visit the transgressions of Israel upon him, I will also visit the altars of Bethel, and the horns of the altar shall be cut off, and fall to the ground" (iii. 13, 14). The altars of Bethel were the altars on which sacrifice was offered to the golden calf. Herein lay the sin. The calf was nothing but the image of a dumb brute, and the making of it was in itself no sin. The sin was in worshiping it, and this was done by means of the altar. The altar was then the object for the prophet to denounce in denouncing the worship of the calf.  

Again the prophet exclaims: "Come to Bethel, and transgress; to Gilgal, and multiply transgression; and bring your sacrifices every morning, and your tithes every three days; and offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving of that which is leavened: for this liketh you, O ye children of Israel, saith Jehovah" (iv. 4, 5). What severer satire could be uttered against the whole of the worship at Bethel? The whole of it was transgression. The mention of Gilgal implies that the same unlawful worship had been extended to that place since Jeroboam first set up the calf at Bethel.  

Again the prophet exclaims: "Thus saith Jehovah to the house of Israel, Seek ye me, and ye shall live: but seek not Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and pass not to Beer-sheba: for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to nought. Seek Jehovah, and ye shall live; lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and there be none to quench it in Bethel" (v. 4-6). Here it is made as plain as words can make it, that the worship at these sanctuaries was not the worship of Jehovah; and the people are entreated, as they would save themselves from burning, to stop seeking these sanctuaries, and, in contrast therewith, to seek Jehovah.  

It is here worthy of remark that Robertson Smith, while seeming to set forth the attitude of Amos to these sanctuaries, and making assertions in direct contradiction of these three passages, fails to quote a single word from them, either in his Prophets of Israel, or his Old Testament in the Jewish Church. We leave the reader to account for this as best he can. No one can claim that the scientific, the inductive method, which takes into view all the facts before reaching a conclusion, is here observed.  

Once again we hear this same prophet, who never speaks against golden calves, addressing the worshipers before them in Jehovah's name, and exclaiming: "I hate, I despise your feasts, and I will take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Yea, though you offer me your burnt offerings, and meal offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols, but let judgment roll down like waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream" (v. 21-24). Thus, again, the whole system of worship at these sanctuaries, even those parts which are authorized in the Levitical law and in Deuteronomy when offered to Jehovah, is denounced as hateful to him. What a comment on Wellhausen's assertion that in fighting for the worship of Jehovah, Elijah was a champion of the Jehovah of Bethel and Dan! And what a comment on the assertion of Robertson Smith, that Amos never speaks of the golden calves as the sin of the northern sanctuaries!  

Another passage in Amos our critics never fail to quote; yet it is not another passage, but the concluding part of the one last cited: "Did ye bring unto me sacrifices and offerings forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? Yea, ye have borne Siccuth your king and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves" (v. 25, 26). The question here propounded naturally requires a negative answer, and upon this presumption Professor Smith remarks: "Amos proves God's indifference to ritual by reminding Israel that they offered no sacrifice and offerings to him in the wilderness during those forty years of wanderings, which he elsewhere cites as a special proof of Jehovah's covenant grace" (294). This is to assume that Amos' question requires an absolute negative—that they offered no sacrifices at all in the wilderness. If we suppose this to be true, it falls far short of proving that God was indifferent to ritual; for their failure might have been the result of willful disobedience; or it might Lave resulted from the want of animals. They certainly had but few animals, not even enough for a month's supply of food; for when God told Moses that he would give the people flesh to eat for a month, the latter demanded, "Shall flocks and herds be slain for them to suffice them? or shall all the fish of the sea be gathered together for them to suffice them?" (Num. xi. 18-22). Moreover, they repeatedly murmured for flesh to eat, and this is sufficient proof that they could have brought few, if any, voluntary offerings to the altar. The record in Leviticus and Numbers indicates that when the tabernacle was standing, the regular morning and evening sacrifice of a lamb was kept up, but even this was omitted when the host was on the move day by day, and no regular encampment was formed. Now, Amos' question certainly admits of a comparative answer. The people may have said, when he propounded it, No; we offered few, if any; and at the most we offered none in comparison with the multitude of victims that we are now bringing to the altars at Bethel, Gilgal, Dan and Beer-sheba. This is precisely the answer that would have been given if the contents of Leviticus and Numbers were perfectly well known to the people, and on the same supposition it meets completely the demands of the prophet. He is showing the people that the present superfluity of their sacrifices was not needed in order to gain the favor of God, and he proves it by the comparative absence of these in the wilderness where God favored them more conspicuously than ever before or since, and where all sacrifices were offered to Jehovah.  

We now see that the attempt to extract from the Book of Amos proof of the late date of the Levitical law and of the Book of' Deuteronomy is a failure; and that, like the most of arguments in favor of a bad cause, it is characterized by suppressing some of the evidence and misconstruing the rest. We shall see, in another part of this work, very clear evidence that Amos did know the law, and that the image-worshiping Israelites were not ignorant of it . (Part II., §9.)  

3. Hosea. The allusions of Amos to the transgressions at Bethel, at Gilgal and Beer-sheba are equally explicit with, those of Hosea; and yet, while denying that the former ever spoke in condemnation of the calves that were worshiped at these places, it is freely admitted that the latter did. This is a freak of criticism that is hard to be understood; for the only difference is that Hosea names the calves, while Amos makes unmistakable allusions to them. Robertson Smith says:  

There is no feature in Hosea's prophecy which distinguishes him from earlier prophets so sharply as his attitude to the golden calves, the local symbols of Jehovah adored in the northern sanctuaries. Elijah and Elisha had no quarrel with the traditional worship of their nation. Even Amos never speaks in condemnation of the calves; but in Hosea's teaching they suddenly appear as the very root of Israel's sin and misery. It is perfectly clear that in the time of Hosea, as in that of Amos, the oath of the worshipers at Gilgal and Bethel was "by the life of Jehovah" (iv. 15); the feasts of the Baalim were Jehovah's feasts (ii. 11, 13; ix. 5); the sanctuary was Jehovah's house (ix. 4); the sacrifices, his offerings (viii. 13). But to Hosea's judgment this ostensible Jehovah worship was really the worship of other gods (iii. 1). With the calves Jehovah has nothing in common (Prophets, 175, 176).  

On another page he says:  

Jehovah was not formally abjured for the Canaanite gods; but in the decay of all the nobler impulses of national life, he sank in popular conception to their level; in essential character as well as in name, the calves of the local sanctuaries had become Canaanite Baalim, mere sources of the physical fertility of the land (174).  

If this is true, and if, as said above, in the time of Amos, as in that of Hosea, the popular worship was only "nominally" Jehovah worship, how shameful it is to represent Amos as having no condemnation for it, and Elijah as having no quarrel with it! The sudden appearance in Hosea of the calves as "the very root of Israel's sin and misery," is but the sudden appearance of gross injustice done by critics to these two earlier prophets.  

But, while freely admitting, and even insisting, that Hosea had a quarrel with the calves, our professor sees no evidence in this that Hosea had any knowledge of the law. He says: "If the prophecy of Hosea stood alone, it would be reasonable to think that this attack on the images of the popular religion was simply based on the Second Commandment." So it would, and so it does. "But," says Smith, "when we contrast it with the absolute silence of the earlier prophets, we can hardly accept this explanation as adequate" (176). He ought to have said. The absolute silence of Robertson Smith; for, as I have plainly showed above, he is absolutely silent in regard to all those passages in Amos in which the latter calls the people to come to Bethel and transgress, to Gilgal and multiply transgression, etc Amos speaks plainly enough, and often enough in his own book, but he is gagged and made absolutely silent on this point in W. Robertson Smith's Prophets of Israel.  

Persisting in this denial, he says on the next page (177):  

Hosea does not condemn the worship of the calves, because Idols are forbidden by the law; he excludes the calves from the sphere of true religion, because the worship which they receive has no affinity to the true attitude of Israel to Jehovah.  

If Professor Smith were still alive, it would be pertinent to ask him how he knows all this. Where in the Book of Hosea does he give the latter reason for excluding the calves? And when we find a prophet of Jehovah who knew the second commandment of the law, as he admits that Hosea did, denouncing the worship of idols, how can he dare to say that the prophet does not condemn this worship because it is forbidden by the law? The truth is that neither he nor any other man who ever lived has known, or could know, that it is sinful to worship Jehovah under the symbol of calves, without a law forbidding it. Roman Catholics have not learned that it is wrong to worship Christ by bowing before a crucifix, even though they have been reading for a thousand years the express prohibition of such worship in the Scriptures.  

This denial is not only irrational in itself, but it is inconsistent with what Hosea says of the law. In the beginning of his special denunciation of this sinful worship, he says: "My people are destroyed: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no more priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I also will forget thy children" (iv. 6). Here the knowledge which they lacked, the knowledge which they had rejected, is proved by the collocation of the clauses to be the knowledge of the law of their God; and the charge, "Thou hast forgotten the law of thy God," shows that they had formerly known it. A few verses below he adds: "They shall commit whoredom, and shall not increase: because they have left off to take heed to Jehovah" (verse 10). They had ceased to take heed to Jehovah by forgetting and rejecting the knowledge of his law. Words could not make it plainer that they had formerly known the law of God. Again, speaking for God, he says: "I desire mercy, and not sacrifice; and knowledge of God more than burnt offerings" (vi. 6). The first clause of this sentence, as is proved by the parallel in the second, is an example of the well-known hebraism of an absolute negative where the relative is meant; and it means, "I desire mercy more than sacrifice" He desires sacrifice, and he desires burnt offerings; but he esteems mercy toward their fellow men, and knowledge of himself, more highly than either. This is also the teaching of Christ, who adopted these words of Hosea on two different occasions (Matt . ix. 13; xii. 7). But the knowledge of God, without which they would have no incentive to mercy, was derived only from his law, another proof that they had once possessed the law, but had rejected and forgotten it.  

Finally Hosea, speaking in the name of Jehovah, covers the whole ground by the well-known words: "Because Ephraim hath multiplied altars to sin, altars have been unto him to sin. Though I write for him my law in ten thousand precepts, they are counted as a strange thing" (viii. 11, 12). Here is an unquestionable reference to written law; and the clause "they are counted as a strange thing," is equivalent to the rejecting and the forgetting of the law in the previous citations. This clause, moreover, being expressed in the present tense, shows that the writing spoken of had already taken place. The first clause, then, can not mean, "though I should write my law." Neither can the clause mean, "though I am writing my law." It is a law which had been written. The alternative rendering in the margin of the Revised Version brings out this thought. "I wrote for him the ten thousand things of my law, but they are counted as a strange thing." The connection of this sentence with the preceding, "Because Ephraim hath multiplied altars to sin, altars have been unto him to sin," shows that the sin of these altars is the one chiefly referred to as counting the written law a strange thing.  

The position taken by the destructive critics is so completely overthrown by the evidence in these passages, that they have taxed their ingenuity to the uttermost in seeking to attach to them a different meaning. The Hebrew word rendered "law" is torah; and we are gravely told that in these early prophets it means, not a written law, but the oral teaching of the prophets. "torah," says Robertson Smith, "is the living prophetic word." And again he says: "The torah is not yet a finished and complete system, booked and reduced to a code, but a living word in the mouth of the prophets" (O. T., 300).(2) But where was this "living word in the mouth of the prophets," by which the calf-worship had been so severely condemned? Just three prophets had figured in Israel since the calves were set up; and with reference to them Professor Smith has already dug away the ground from under his own feet, by saying that Elijah and Elisha had no quarrel with the calf-worship, and that Amos said nothing against it. Where, then, is the torah, the "living word in the mouth of the prophets," to which Hosea appeals? It vanishes into thin air as soon as you make the inquiry.  

On another page (303) Professor Smith says that when Hosea says to the priests, "Thou hast forgotten the torah ox thy God" (Hos. iv. 6), it "can not fairly be doubted that the torah which the priests have forgotten is the Mosaic torah;" but he still denies that it was written. He says, "It is simple matter of fact that the prophets do not refer to a written torah as the basis of their teaching, and we have seen that they absolutely deny the existence of a binding ritual law" (302). But if Hosea appealed to a torah in his denunciation of the calf-worship, whether a "living word in the mouth of the prophets," or a traditional torah transmitted orally from Moses, this torah must of necessity have been more or less of a ritual character, in that it condemned the worship of the calves. The right or the wrong of worshiping Jehovah, or any other god, under the symbol of calves, is a question of ritual, and nothing else. Unwittingly, then, in the very act of affirming that the prophets "absolutely deny the existence of a binding ritual law," our critics prove that they recognized one Such is the self-contradiction in which this form of criticism repeatedly involves itself.  

While Smith, in common with his German teachers, thus boldly denies that the prophets refer to a written torah as the basis of their teaching, here comes Prof. T. K. Cheyne, more radical in some respects than he, to flatly contradict him. In his introduction to the Book of Hosea (Cambridge Bible for Schools), he makes the following statements:  

All that Is certain In regard to Hosea's relation to the law, Is what he tells us himself; viz.: that laws with a sanction which, though ignored by the northern Israelites, he himself recognized as divine, were in course of being written down (viii. 12). Our present text makes him even say that the divine precepts might be reckoned by myriads, but this would not apply even to our present Pentateuch, and we should probably correct ribbo, "myriad," into dibhre, "words" (of my law). There may, of course, either have been various small law-books, or one large one; we can not determine this point from the Book of Hosea (36, 37).  

It is morally certain that so radical a critic as Cheyne is known to be, would not have made this admission in opposition to his fellow critics had he not been constrained to do so by the evidence in the case.  

It will be observed, however, that in making this concession, Professor Cheyne is by no means willing to concede thnt the written law-book referred to by Hosea could have been our Pentateuch; and his reason for holding that it was not, is curious enough. It is, that the exact term "myriads" could not apply to our present Pentateuch. I suppose that no one pretends that in its literal sense it could; but when Hosea speaks of God's law as being written in ten thousand precepts, where is the simpleton who ever supposed that he used the numeral literally? But, further, if this huge numeral could not apply to the precepts of the Pentateuch, what about the precepts in his "various small law-books"? Had they as many written precepts as we find in our present Pentateuch? No critic will answer yes. Then, why try to cut off the head of the Pentateuch with a knife which, in the very attempt, cuts off the critic's own head?  

4. Isaiah. In further proof that "the theology of the prophets before Ezekiel has no place for the system of priestly sacrifice and ritual," Prof. Robertson Smith quotes a well-known passage in the first chapter of Isaiah; and he quotes it as follows:

"What are your many sacrifices to me, saith Jehovah: I delight not in the blood of bullocks, and lambs, and hegoats. When ye come to see my face, who hath asked this at your hands, to tread my courts? Bring no more vain oblations . . . my soul hateth your new moons and your feasts; they are a burden upon me; I am weary to bear them"—Isa. i. 11, seg. (O. T., 293).  

Quoted thus, Isaiah would prove not merely that he had no place for the priestly sacrifice and ritual, but that Jehovah hated such things, and rebuked the people for presenting them —that he forbade such worshipers to "tread his courts." This is to prove too much; for on another page the same author says that the prophets have "no objection to sacrifice and ritual in the abstract;" they only deny that God has enjoined sacrifice (295).  

But in thus quoting the passage, a part is omitted where the dots are printed, which, if copied, would prove, by the same line of argument, that Jehovah also hated the Sabbath. It reads: "Incense is an abomination to me; new moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies—I can not away with iniquity and the solemn meeting." Whatever may be thought of the new moon holy day here mentioned, and of the solemn meetings referred to, no sane man can believe that Isaiah, in the name of Jehovah, held the Sabbath to be an abomination.  

Furthermore, this quotation stops too soon. It leaves out the words: "And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide my face from you: yea, when you make many prayers, I will not hear." Did Jehovah hate prayer? And was prayer one of the ritual observances for which the early prophets had "no place in their theology"? So it would seem if there h any sense in the use which Robertson Smith, in common with bis fellow critics, makes of this passage. But the climax of misquotation and misapplication is reached in omitting the last clause of Isaiah's philippic, which explains all that precedes: "Your Lands are full of blood!" This is the reason which Jehovah himself gives why the-sacrifices, the incense, the new moon holy days, the sabbath, the solemn meetings and the prayers of that people, were an abomination to him. The same is true to-day, and it ever has been. If a church were crowded to-day with worshipers whose hands were full of blood, every prayer they could offer, and every hymn they could sing, would be as abominable as were those denounced by Isaiah. It is therefore a fearful abomination to employ these words of the prophet as if the specified acts of worship, when rightly rendered from clean hands and pure hearts, were hateful to Jehovah. It is high time that this perversion of Jehovah's words, first invented by the enemies of the Bible, were abandoned by those who profess to be its friends.  

Immediately after quoting this passage in his own way, together with one from Amos, which we have noticed, Robertson Smith says: "It is sometimes argued that such passages mean only that Jehovah will not accept the sacrifices of the wicked, and that they are quite consistent with a belief that sacrifice and ritual are a necessary accompaniment of true religion. But there are other texts which absolutely exclude such a view." We shall examine these other texts.  

5. Micah. The first of these which remains to be noticed is the oft-quoted passage in Micah, which Professor Smith introduces thus:

Micah declares that Jehovah does not require sacrifice. He asks nothing of his people but "to do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with their God"—Mic. vl. 8 (ib., 294).  

We shall best understand the passage by having the whole of it before the eye at once: "Wherewith shall I come before Jehovah, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, and with calves a year old? Will Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" (Mic. vi. 6-8).  

The four questions here expounded by the prophet require negative answers. They all point to the one end brought out in the last, the removal of "my transgression," the "sin of my soul." The one point of inquiry is, when I come before Jehovah to obtain his favor, will I secure it by burnt offerings? Will the offering of even a thousand rams secure it? Will offerings of oil secure it, even if I offer ten thousand rivers of it? Having failed with all of these, can I secure it by offering my firstborn? The answer is, No. And this is the answer, whether we think that the Levitical law was in force at the time or not. No man of intelligence over lived under that law who would have answered otherwise. Only the superstitious and hypocritical under the Levitical law ever pretended that God's favor to men depended on the multitude of his sacrifices, or their costliness. The law itself precluded any such pretense by prescribing as the sin-offering, whether for the sins of an individual, or those of the whole people, only a single victim, and this most usually only a lamb or a kid. It was also made perfectly plain by the law that even by these a man's sins could not be removed. The sinner was required to bring the victim to the altar, lay his hand upon its head, confess his sin, and slay the victim; and without these he knew that the offering would be ineffective (Lev. iv. 27-vi. 7). Seeing, then, that under the full sway of the Levitical law these questions would be pertinent, and would be answered in the negative, it is absurd to use them as proof that the Levitical law was not yet in existence.  

To this conclusive reasoning we are able to add demonstration; for it is admitted by all the negative critics that the law in Deuteronomy recognizes the ritual of sacrifice, and even restricts the offering of sacrifices to the altar at the central sanctuary; but the author of that law employs almost the identical words of Micah when he demands: "And now, Israel, what doth Jehovah thy God require of thee, but to fear Jehovah thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve Jehovah thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul, to keep the commandments of Jehovah, and his statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good?" (Deut. x. 12, 13). Does the Deuteronomist, then, whosoever he may be, exclude here the sacrifices which he elsewhere enjoins? or does he include them in walking in Jehovah's ways, serving him, and keeping his statutes? There is only one answer. And how could a man, if he lived under the Levitical law, "walk humbly with his God," as Micah requires, without offering such sacrifices as God's law required of him? A neglect of these would be pride and rebellion. On the other hand, offering a thousand rams, or ten thousand rivers of oil, if it were possible, would be a piece of vainglory, while offering his firsthorn would be heathenism.  

This method of perverting the Scriptures would have a parallel, if one should argue that Jesus, in saying, "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven," excludes the ordinance of baptism from his requirements. It would be a stupid fellow indeed who would not see that we do the will of our Father in heaven in part by being baptized. So the Jew walked humbly with his God by offering without fail for his sins the sacrifices appointed.  

6. Last of all we come to the prophet Jeremiah. He is constantly quoted by negative critics as denying that God appointed sacrifice when he led Israel out of Egypt- Thus Robertson Smith (O. T., 294):  

Jeremiah vii. 21, seg., says in express words, "Put your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat flesh. For I spake not to your fathers, and gave them no command in the day that I brought them out of Egypt concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices. But this thing I commanded them. Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people, etc. (Comp. Isa. zliii. 23, seq.)  

Commenting further on this and similar passages, Smith says:  

This does not prove that they (the prophets) have any objection to sacrifice and ritual in the abstract.. But they deny that these things are of positive divine institution, or have any part in the scheme on which Jehovah's grace is administered in Israel. Jehovah, they say, has not enjoined sacrifice. This does not imply that he has never accepted sacrifice, or that ritual service is absolutely wrong. But it is at least mere form, which does not purchase any favor from Jehovah, and might be given up without offense. It is impossible to give a flatter contradiction to the traditional theory that the Levitical system was enacted in the wilderness (ib., 295).  

(1) If this is the real position of the prophets, it is most unaccountable; for if Jehovah had never enjoined sacrifice in his service, how could it be supposed by the prophets, or by any sane person, that it could be acceptable—that the daily slaughter of innocent victims, and frequent holocausts in which thousands of animals were slain and burned, making the house of God, as some irreverent skeptics have expressed it, a veritable slaughter-house, could be accepted by him at any time or under any circumstances? Such will-worship would have been met by every true prophet of God with the rebuke which Isaiah administered to the hypocrites whose hands were full of blood, and who yet had the impudence to bring a multitude of sacrifices into the temple. "Who," says the indignant prophet, "hath required this at your hands, to trample my courts?" (Isa. 1. 10-15). And how could Solomon, without rebuke, have erected his costly and splendid temple, whose every appointment was arranged with reference to the offering of sacrifices, if God had never enjoined sacrifice as a part of his worship? The position is absurd in the highest degree; and if Jeremiah assumed it, he is either guilty of absurdity himself, or he charges it upon the whole host of Israelite worshipers from the beginning to the end.  

(2) Again, if Jeremiah, or any of the prophets, is to be thus understood, then they deny what all of our critics except the most radical admit, the divine origin of the "book of the covenant." For in that book we have this well-known divine enactment: "An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, and thy peace offerings, thy sheep and thine oxen: in every place where I record my name I will come unto thee and I will bless thee. And if thou make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stones: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it" (Ex. xx. 24, 25). Here is a positive enactment of sacrifice, accompanied by precise directions as to the kind of altar on which they could be acceptably offered. Jeremiah, if he could have had the motive, could not have had the daring to unite with our modern critics in denying that God had thus legislated.  

(3) It is admitted by even the radical critics that Jeremiah knew the Book of Deuteronomy, and believed that it was God's law by the hand of Moses. But to understand him as denying the divine enactment of sacrifice, is to make him contradict that book in which he believed, and the teaching of which he was zealously assisting King Josiah to enforce upon the consciences of the people. For this book represents Moses in the last year of the wanderings as saying: "Unto the place which Jehovah your God shall choose out of all your tribes to put his name there, even unto his habitation shall ye seek, and thither thou shalt come: and thither ye shall bring your burnt offerings, and your sacrifices, and your tithes^ and the heave-offering of your hand, and your freewill offerings, and the firstlings of your herd and of your flock" (xii. 5, 6). Our critics are never weary of quoting this passage when they are seeking to prove that it was the introduction of a law never before known in Israel; but here they come with the Book of Jeremiah in their hands—Jeremiah, who believed in the divine authority of this law, and whose book they tell us is saturated with reminiscences from Deuteronomy —and make him flatly deny the truth of this passage. Wasever inconsistency more glaring or more inexcusable? Scientific criticism!  

(4) The absurdity of thus interpreting Jeremiah's words appears still more monstrous when we take into view some of his own utterances on this subject in other passages. In xi. 3, 4, he expressly cites the covenant given at Mount Sinai in these solemn words: "Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel: Cursed be the man that heareth not the words of this covenant, which I made with your fathers in the day that I brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the iron furnace, saying, Obey my voice, and do them, according to all which I command you: so shall ye be my people, and I will be your God." But one of the things commanded when this covenant was made, was that they should erect an altar, as we have quoted above, on which to offer sacrifices and burnt offerings. In xiv. 11, 12, he says: "Jehovah said to me, Pray not for this people for their good. When they fast, I will not hear their cry; and when they offer burnt offering and oblation, I will not accept them: but I will consume them by the sword, and by the famine, and by the pestilence." Here it is clearly implied that but for the extreme wickedness of the people, on account of which they were to be no longer subjects for prayer, and their burnt offerings and oblations would not be accepted, all these acts of worship would be accepted; and it is just as reasonable to say that fasting and prayer were not authorized, by God, as to say that sacrifices were not.  

Finally, passing by several other passages having a similar bearing, in xvii. 24-26 Jehovah promises, on condition that the people "hearken to him," that Jerusalem shall remain forever, and he adds: "They shall come from the cities of Judah, and from the cities round about Jerusalem, and from the land 0f Benjamin, and from the lowland, and from the mountains, and from the South, bringing burnt offerings, and sacrifices, and oblations, and frankincense, and bringing sacrifices of thanksgiving, unto the house of Jehovah." Here the whole found of Levitical sacrifices is described, and the fact that all are to be zealously observed is the crowning blessing in a gracious promise. Can we imagine Jehovah through the prophet speaking thus of a ritual which he had never authorized, and which, though observed in the right spirit, could secure no favor at his hand?  

What, then, is the meaning of Jeremiah in the passage so confidently employed by the critics to prove that Jehovah had never spoken to the fathers concerning such a service? If men will but use the knowledge which they easily command when they are not swayed by prepossessions, it is not far to seek. It is found in that well-known Hebrew idiom by which, in comparing two objects or courses of action, the universal, negative is used with the one that is inferior. A few examples of it may remind the intelligent reader of that which he already knows, but is apt, on account of its difference from our own usage, to forget . When Joseph had revealed himself to his guilty brethren, and was seeking to comfort them, he said: "Be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life. . . . So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God'* (Gen. xlv. 5-8). In Deut, v. 2, 3, Moses says to the people: "Jehovah our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. Jehovah made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day." He means, Jehovah made a covenant not with our fathers only, or specially, but with us also, Jesus says: "Think not that I came to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace, but a sword" (Matt, x. 34). The people of Samaria say to the woman who had met Jesus at the well: "How we believe, not because of thy speaking: for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world;" and yet it had just been said, "Many of the Samarians believed on him because of the word of the woman" (John iv. 39-42). They believed finally, not because of her speaking alone. Paul says to the Corinthians, "I was sent not to baptize, but to preach the gospel" (I. Cor. i. 17)—not to baptize alone, or chiefly, but to preach the gospel. He also says to Timothy: "Be no longer a drinker of water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities" (I. Tim. v. 23). These are a few examples of the idiom, and others are to be found in all parts of the Scriptures. Instances of its use are determined, as in the case of all other figurative language, by the nature of the case, by the context, or by the known sentiments of the writer.  

The passage under discussion in Jeremiah is an example of this idiom; and the prophet means by it, "I spake not to your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices as their chief service; but this I commanded them as the chief thing, saying, Hearken unto my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people." We are forced to this conclusion, both by the sentiments of the prophet expressed in the other passages quoted above, and by the context preceding this passage. The discourse in which our passage is found begins with the chapter. It was delivered as the prophet stood in the gate of the temple. He first denounces the men of Judah for trusting to the temple of Jehovah, as false prophets had taught them, for security against the disasters which he predicted; and tells them that they are trusting in "lying words." He demands of them, as their ground of safety, the abandonment of crimes which they were committing; and with respect to the temple and its services, he indignantly demands: "Will ye steal, and murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn incense to Baal, and walk after other gods, whom ye have not known, and come and stand before me in this house which is called by my name, and say, We are delivered; that we may do all these abominations? Is this house which is called by my name become a den of robbers in your eyes?" Then he reminds them of the destruction of Shiloh, where he caused his name to dwell at the first, and he tells them: "I will do unto the house which is called by my name, wherein ye trust, and the place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I have done to Shiloh." He then tells Jeremiah not to pray for the people. Even now, since Josiah's reformation had taken place, and public idolatry had been suppressed, they were still worshiping the heavenly bodies in secret. "The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead the dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink-offerings to other gods, that they may provoke me to anger." It was in view of this hypocrisy that the prophet declares in the name of Jehovah: "I spake not to your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices: but this I commanded them, saying, Hearken unto my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people." In view of this context, and in view of the indisputable fact that both Jeremiah and the people whom he addressed recognized as true what is said of the "book of the covenant" and in Deuteronomy of God's commands in respect to sacrifice, why have our critics, who are quick to recognize this idiom in other places, so blindly failed to see it here? "There are none so blind as those who will not see."  

We have now examined all of the principal passages which are used to prove that the pre-exilic prophets had no knowledge of the Levitical law, and that all of them except Jeremiah were ignorant of Deuteronomy; and we are seriously mistaken if every unprejudiced reader will not agree that they furnish no such proof. On the contrary, all of them, when fairly construed, are in perfect harmony with such knowledge, some of thorn presuppose it, and many passages which these critics have overlooked bear positive testimony in its favor. So elaborate and painstaking an attempt to sustain a false assumption has seldom proved so complete a failure.  

1. Kuenen inclines to the same preposterous assumption, but he expresses himself more cautiously: "Their attitude toward the bull-worship was not the same as that of their successors: rather must we infer from the narratives concerning them and the kings who ruled under their influence, that they either approved of it, or, at all events, did not oppose it" (Rel. of Israel, I. 221).

2. With this Kuenen agrees, but he modifies the thought by adding: "Nothing hinders us from even assuming that they had also in view collections of laws and admonitions to which a higher antiquity or even a Mosaic origin was attributed" (Rel. of Israel, I. 56). Wellhausen differs from Kuenen at this point. He says: "It is certain that Moses was the founder of the torah;" but he explains it by adding: "In fact, it can be shown that throughout the whole of the older period the torah was no finished legislative code, but consisted entirely of the oral decisions and instructions of the priests" (Israel," Encyc. Brit., p. 409, c. 2). He escapes the absurdity of referring it to prophets, when there were none before Amos and Hosea to promulgate laws, but in doing so he stands against his fellow critics, who deny that there was a regular priesthood in "the older period" of which he speaks.