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led to a prolonged cessation of the work. Nor were the prospects of the community materially improved even at a later time, when the temple had been completed and the national worship organized on the levitical system. Jehovah's promises seemed to have come to nought. Things remained as before. In the place of Babylon, the heathen power of Persia had brought Israel under an oppressive yoke. Moreover, the restored worship of the temple provided no effective compensation for the miseries of the time. The book of Malachi bears witness to the prevailing temper of the prophet's contemporaries. Evidently the requirements of Jehovah's service were regarded as an oppressive and costly burden. The strict discipline of the Law provoked a spirit of moroseness, of religious indifference, and even of resentment against God1. The community as a whole, and even the priesthood, had apparently sunk into listless apathy and heartless formalism.

Meanwhile, the ideal which reformers like Ezra and Nehemiah set before themselves was that of a holy community, separated by elaborate restrictions from the pollutions of heathendom, and from the semi-paganism of the 'people of the land.' In pursuance of this ideal even the habits and incidents of daily life were brought under the discipline of an all-embracing system, the result of which was a gradual change in men's moral conceptions. The righteousness which the prophets had preached as Jehovah's supreme requirement came to be identified with an anxious and scrupulous legalism, the culminating point of which was eventually reached in Pharisaism.

The tendency to externalism in religion manifested itself most conspicuously in the zeal expended upon the worship of the national sanctuary. The restriction of the levitical cultus to the temple tended to make

1 See Mal. ii. 17; iii. 14. Cp. Cornill, Der Isr. Prophetismus, pp. 155, 156; Hunter, op. cit. part i. pp. 121 foll.; ii. p. 242.

a particular spot the centre of religious interest. Everything came to be regarded from the point of view of Jerusalem, and the sacrificial system by which the nation maintained its covenant-union with Jehovah gradually assumed a disproportionate importance. From this point of view a characteristic product of Judaism is to be found in the books of Chronicles. The writer does more than display a devout and passionate interest in the temple and its services. He makes the legal cultus a standard by which the conduct of the Jewish kings in pre-exilic days is judged. This standpoint in fact colours his entire representation of Hebrew history. On the supposition that the levitical system prevailed in the days of the first temple, the chronicler commends or blames the various monarchs according as he believes them to have religiously observed or wilfully neglected the legal observances.

But although the tendency to externalism was no doubt most decidedly pronounced in Jerusalem itself, even among the habitual worshippers in the temple. there must have been some to whom the sacrificial cultus was the centre of a deeply-rooted spiritual life and a true means of spiritual education. The very calamities of the time would impel devout minds to seek for solace in the services of the sanctuary. Nor must we overlook the very important influence of the synagogue-worship. The synagogues of Judaism replaced the local sanctuaries of the earlier religion, and they became centres of spiritual education-prayer and the reading of the Law being the most prominent features in their services1. The effect of such an institution as the synagogue could not fail to be important. 'It actively helped,' says Mr. Montefiore, ' to individualize religion, and to bring it home to the hearts and understanding of all.' The synagogue in fact provided a

1 See Kuenen, Religion of Israel, vol. iii. chap. 9.

2 Hibbert Lectures, p. 391. Cp. Riehm, ATI. Theologie, p. 397; Hunter, op. cit. p. 222.

certain spiritual satisfaction for the growing needs of the personal religious life, and while on the one hand it helped to diffuse the knowledge of the Law, thus giving an impulse to the temper of legalism, it could not fail also to suggest more profound ideas of the divine requirement. It served in some measure to counteract the tendency to lay inordinate stress on the sacrificial cultus of the temple.

It would accordingly be a serious mistake to suppose that the post-exilic age was a barren period in the religion of Israel. The Psalter alone affords evidence sufficient that the triumph of the nationalistic and legalistic element in Judaism did not fatally impede the growth of personal religion. As a matter of fact it seems to have acted in two ways. In some cases the fervid ecclesiasticism of the time probably tended to produce a temper of sceptical reaction, such as we find reflected in the pessimism of the Preacher: the elaborate cultus of the temple may have seemed to exclude the presence or action of the living God. On the other hand, to some the levitical worship seemed rather to bring God nearer, and to give vitality to the thought of Jehovah's presence in the midst of His people to such the cultus was full of symbolic teaching, and the study of the Torah a great means of communion with God. The Psalter has been said to illustrate the combination of prophetic principles with warm attachment to the purified forms in which religion was outwardly clothed ".' In the Psalms the religion of the prophets is perpetuated: their sacred hopes and fears, their joy in God, their boundless devotion to His service. The Psalter testifies that the discipline of the Law did not necessarily quench the

1 Montefiore, p. 385: 'Spiritual communion with God and the pure joy of a felt nearness to Him were born from participation in the Temple service.' Cp. Schechter, Studies in Judaism, p. 292; Kuenen, Hibbert Lectures, p. 165.

2 Montefiore, p. 386. See a valuable passage in Bruce, Apologetics, pp. 272 foll., as to the religious significance of the critical view in regard to the origin and date of the Psalter.

life of religious emotion, but rather purified it and imparted to it a new intensity. Nor is it only from the Psalter that we can infer the actual spiritual effects of the period of legalism. In the other writings which complete the Hagiographa we are brought face to face with characteristic products of Judaism. The number and variety of the books composing this group is significant; they bear witness to the zeal, literary culture, and religious devotion of the post-exilic age.

The Hagiographa testify to a growing receptivity of the Jewish mind, a capacity for assimilating ideas derived from Persia or Greece, and for clothing old faiths in new forms. They practically represent the religious life of a people which had passed through many chequered experiences. They comprise the products of religious reason exercising itself upon the problems of life and of religious emotion striving to find for itself adequate utterance. They embrace books so opposite in character as Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, and the Psalms. Thus they embody divergent phases and types of spiritual experience, and give to the Old Testament a peculiarly representative character, making it a book which reflects the needs, perplexities, and aspirations of humanity at large.

As to the Psalms and Wisdom literature, it is sufficiently obvious that they reflect much more than the spirit of one particular age. They do indeed give utterance to ideas and conceptions peculiarly Jewish : the Psalms, for instance, display here and there the characteristic temper of Judaism: its passionate sense of national rectitude, its haunting consciousness of uncleansed guilt, its rigid exclusiveness, its vehement hatred of national foes. But, on the other hand, the Psalms are the product of a spirit which has realized the mystery and blessedness of communion with God; they give expression to its infinite yearnings, its awe, its agonies, its desolation, its exultation. The Old Testament Wisdom also, while it busies itself with the problems of human life, or gathers up the lessons of

age-long moral experience, displays to some extent the limitations of Judaism. To the Jewish sage,

for instance, the existence of God is an axiom which lies beyond the range of possible question. But though Jewish thought always works with a religious background, it deals with universal problems, and those the most urgent-the anomalies of human life, the purpose and meaning of pain, the mystery of retribution. And if the Hebrew sages do not solve the problems into which they inquire, it may at least be claimed that they adequately state them'.

Again, the sacred histories, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and Ruth, are connected together by the fact that they are 'studies' of particular periods of Jewish history, written from a particular point of view, and dictated more or less by a didactic purpose. The first three books, which seem originally to have formed together a single work and are closely connected in style and method, reflect in a very instructive way the general effect on thought and character of Judaism in its earlier stages. Their point of view is purely religious and particularistic: their aim is to illustrate the blessings of faithfulness to the requirements of the levitical code. The book of Nehemiah even displays some traces of the growth of a doctrine of merit, and a consciousness of personal righteousness which occasionally meets us in the Psalter also. The book of Esther has been variously judged. Doubtless it reflects the fierce passions awakened by the Maccabean struggle, and so far, in the vindictive spirit which characterizes it, the story serves the purpose of practically illustrating a leading defect of the Old Testament discipline. But though the inclusion of Esther in the Canon was perhaps designed for instruction rather than spiritual edification, the book is by means altogether wanting in religious characteristics 3. The LXX. translation seems to bring out 2 Nehem. v. 19; xiii. 14, 22.

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1 Cp. Bruce, Apologetics, p. 242.

Cp. Delitzsch, O. T. History of Redemption, § 81. See Luther's verdict,

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