Part 11 (2/2)
To the noise of a mighty roaring He sets her on fire- Blasted her branches!
The first of these verses repeats the charge of VII. 2-11: the people use the Temple for their sins. The word rendered _mischief_ is literally _devices_, and the meaning may be intrigues hatched from their false ideas of the Temple's security. But the word is mostly used of _evil devices_ and here the Greek has _abomination_. As with their Temple so with their vows and sacrifices. All are useless because of their wickedness. The nation must be punished. The second verse may well have been uttered after the defeat at Megiddo, or may be a prediction on the eve of that disaster to _the branches_ of the nation, which the nation as a whole survived.
This leads to another and more difficult question. Jeremiah has spoken doom on the Temple and the Nation; has he come to doubt the Law-Book itself or any part of it? As to that there are two pa.s.sages one of which speaks of a falsification of the Law by its guardians, while the other denies the Divine origin not only of the deuteronomic but of all sacrifices and burnt offerings.
Even before the discovery of the Law-Book the young prophet had said of _those who handle the Law_ that _they did not know the Lord_.(292) And now in an Oracle, apparently of date after the discovery, he charges the scribes with manipulating _the Law_, the _Torah_, so as to turn it to falsehood. The Oracle is addressed to the people of whom he has just said that they do not know _the Rule, the Mishpa?, of the Lord_.
How say you, ”We are the Wise, VIII. 8 The Law of the Lord is with us.”
But lo, the falsing pen of the scribes Hath wrought it to falsehood.
_Torah_, literally _direction_ or _instruction_, is either a single law or a body of law, revealed by G.o.d through priests or prophets, for the religious and moral practice of men. Here it is some traditional or official form of such law, for which the people have rejected the Word of the Lord-His living Word by the prophets of the time (verse 9).
Put to shame are the wise, 9 Dismayed and taken.
Lo, they have spurned the Word of the Lord- What wisdom is theirs?
Was this _Torah_ oral or written? And if written was it the discovered Book of the _Torah_, which in part at least was our Deuteronomy?
So far as the text goes the original _Torah_ may have been either oral or written, and the scribes have _falsified_ it, by amplification or distortion,(293) either when reducing it for the first time to writing or when copying and editing it from an already written form. This leaves open these further questions. If written was the _Torah_ the very _Book of the Torah_ discovered in the Temple in 621-20? And if so did the falsification affect the whole or only part of the Book? To these questions some answer No, on the ground of Jeremiah's a.s.sent to _this Covenant_, and the command to him to proclaim it.(294) Others answer Yes; in their view Jeremiah was opposed to the deuteronomic system as a whole, or at least to the detailed laws of ritual added to the prophetic and spiritual principles of the Book.(295) Another possibility is that Jeremiah had in view those first essays in writing of a purely priestly law-book, which resulted during the Exile in the so-called Priests' Code now incorporated in the Pentateuch.
In our ignorance both of the original form of Deuteronomy and of the extent and character of the activity of the scribes during the reign of Josiah we might hesitate to decide among these possibilities were it not for the following address which there is no good reason for denying to Jeremiah.
VII. 21. Thus saith the Lord,(296) Your burnt offerings add to your sacrifices and eat flesh(297)! 22. For I spake not with your fathers nor charged them, in the day that I brought them forth from the land of Egypt, concerning burnt-offering and sacrifice.
23. But with this Word I charged them, saying, Hearken to My Voice, and I shall be to you G.o.d, and ye shall be to Me a people, and ye shall walk in every way that I charge you, that it may be well with you.
Whether from Jeremiah or not, this is one of the most critical texts of the Old Testament because while repeating what the Prophet has already fervently accepted,(298) that the terms of the deuteronomic Covenant were simply obedience to the ethical demands of G.o.d, it contradicts Deuteronomy and even more strongly Leviticus, in their repeated statements that in the wilderness G.o.d also commanded sacrifices. The issue is so grave that there have been attempts to evade it. None, however, can be regarded as successful. That which would weaken the Hebrew phrase, rightly rendered _concerning_ by our versions, into _for the sake of_ or _in the interest of_ (as if all the speaker intended was that animal sacrifice was not the chief end or main interest of the Divine legislation) is doubtful philologically, nor meets the fact that all the Hebrew codes a.s.sign an indispensable value to sacrifice. Inadmissible also is the suggestion that the phrase means _concerning the details of_, for Deuteronomy and especially Leviticus emphasise the details of burnt-offering and sacrifice. Nor is the plausible argument convincing that the Prophet spoke relatively, and meant only what Samuel meant by _Obedience is better than sacrifice_, or Hosea by _The Knowledge of G.o.d is more than burnt-offerings_.(299) Nor are there grounds for thinking that the Prophet had in view only the Ten Commandments; while finally to claim that he spoke in hyperbole is a forlorn hope of an argument. In answer to all these evasions it is enough to point out that the question is not merely that of the value of sacrifice, but whether during the Exodus the G.o.d of Israel gave any charge concerning sacrifice; as well as the fact that others than Jeremiah had either explicitly questioned this or implicitly denied it. When Amos, in G.o.d's Name repelled the burnt-offerings of his generation he asked, _Did ye bring unto Me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O House of Israel?_ and obviously expected a negative answer. And the following pa.s.sages only render more general the truth that Israel's G.o.d has no pleasure at any time in the sacrifices offered to Him, with the inst.i.tution of which-the natural inference is-He can have had nothing to do. _Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams or with ten thousands of rivers of oil. Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath declared to thee, O man, what is good: and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy G.o.d._ And these two utterances in the Psalms: _Shall I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? Offer unto G.o.d thanksgiving and pay thy vows to the Most High_; and _Thou desirest not sacrifice else would I give it, Thou delightest not in burnt-offering, The sacrifices of G.o.d are a broken spirit_.(300)
For the accuracy of these a.s.sertions or implications by a succession of prophets and psalmists there is a remarkable body of historical evidence.
The sacrificial system of Israel is in its origins of far earlier date than the days of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt. It has so much, both of form and meaning, in common with the systems of kindred nations as to prove it to be part of the heritage naturally derived by all of them from their Semitic forefathers. And the new element brought into the traditional religion of Israel at Sinai was just that on which Jeremiah lays stress-the ethical, which in time purified the ritual of sacrifice and burnt-offering but had nothing to do with the origins of this.
Therefore it is certain _first_ that Amos and Jeremiah meant literally what they stated or implicitly led their hearers to infer-G.o.d gave no commands at the Exodus concerning burnt-offerings and sacrifices-and _second_ that historically they were correct. But, of course, their interest in so saying was not historical but spiritual. Their aim was practical-to destroy their generation's materialist belief that animal sacrifice was the indispensable part of religion and wors.h.i.+p. Still his way of putting it involves on the part of Jeremiah a repudiation of the statements of Deuteronomy on the subject. So far, then, Jeremiah opposed the new Book of the Law.(301)
But with all this do not let us forget something more. While thus antic.i.p.ating by more than six centuries the abolition of animal sacrifices, Jeremiah, by his example of service and suffering, was ill.u.s.trating the subst.i.tute for them-the _human_ sacrifice, the surrender by man himself of will and temper, and if need be of life, for the cause of righteousness and the salvation of his fellow-men. The recognition of this in Jeremiah by a later generation in Israel led to the conception of the suffering Servant of the Lord, and of the power of His innocent sufferings to atone for sinners and to redeem them.
This starts a kindred point-and the last-upon which Jeremiah offers, if not a contradiction, at least a contrast and a supplement to the teaching of Deuteronomy. We have noted the absoluteness-or idealism-of that Book's doctrines of Morality and Providence; they leave no room for certain problems, raised by the facts of life. But Jeremiah had bitter experience of those facts, and it moved him to state the problems to G.o.d Himself. He owns the perfect justice of G.o.d; but this only makes his questioning more urgent.
Too righteous art Thou O Lord, XII. 1 That with Thee I should argue, Yet cases there are I must speak to Thee of: The way of the wicked-why doth it prosper, And the treacherous all be at ease?
Thou hast planted them, yea they take root, 2 They get on, yea they make fruit; Near in their mouths art Thou, But far from their hearts.
We shall have to deal with these questions and G.o.d's answer to them, when in a later lecture we a.n.a.lyse Jeremiah's religious experience and struggles. Here we only note the contrast which they present to Deuteronomy-a contrast between the Man and the System, between Experience and Dogma, between the Actual and the Ideal. And, as we now see, it was the System and the Dogma that were defective and the Man and his Experience of life that started, if not for himself yet for a later generation, pondering his experience, the solution of those problems, which against the deuteronomic teaching he raised in brave agony to G.o.d's own face.
Such serious differences between Jeremiah and Deuteronomy-upon the Law, the Temple, the Sacrifices, and Doctrines of Providence and Morality-suggest an important question with regard to the methods of Divine Revelation under the Old Covenant. Do they not prove that among those methods there were others than vision or intuition springing from the direct action of the Spirit of G.o.d upon the spirits of individual men?
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