A tendency to remodel the form of Judaism was a consequence of the spiritual Messianic ideal. When struggling against rival religions, Jahvism, as we saw in the last chapter, was forced to become strongly exclusive. To keep itself pure from corruption, and also to assert its own high dignity, it had to enclose itself in a hard shell of formal observance. But when it developed into Judaism, and sought to become a world-conquering religion, this formalism was a hindrance to its purpose. The barriers that were so useful for defence interfered with offensive movements. Accordingly, the prophets who recognized the higher ideal of Judaism revolted against its formalism. Its initial rite, circumcision, was the chief mark of separation between the Jews and the mass of the Gentiles. But the whole sacrificial system was also, in its way, an expression of exclusive tendencies. Sacrificing in one manner distinguished the Jew from the Gentile, who sacrificed in another manner. Moreover, circumstances at this time were accentuating the exclusiveness of Judaism. As Israel fell more and more into the power of strangers, of course the people’s hatred of strangers grew stronger. This feeling, which, by throwing the people back on the national religion, was in one respect of service to the prophets, naturally expressed itself in Judaism by increasing its exclusiveness. So Judaism was tending to be narrowed just when the prophets wished it to be enlarged.
The prophets met this tendency with a crusade against formalism. Circumcision they declared to be only a symbol of obedience. A people “uncircumcised in heart” Jeremiah called his countrymen. They pronounced sacrifices of small importance in comparison with personal righteousness. “Wherewith shall I come before Jahveh and bow myself before the high God?” said Micah. “Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? Will Jahveh be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgressions, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth Jahveh require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”[43] Here the regular sacrifices of orthodox Jahvism are actually compared with the human sacrifices of corrupted Jahvism, and are subjected to the same condemnation. The second Isaiah even goes so far as to assert that sacrifices are offensive to Jahveh, as it is degrading him to suppose that such offerings can please him.[44] Of course the high development of their religion had also some effect in making the prophets adopt this principle. A system of animal sacrifices did not accord well with their noble theism. A righteous life, besides, they felt to be the best offering to God, and they knew that formal observances distracted attention from morality. But still they assailed the formalism of Judaism mainly because it imprisoned the religion of Jahveh in nationality; they wished Judaism to be a purely spiritual religion to which all national customs would be equally foreign.
Of course they expressed their desires in their Messianic dreams. They dwell upon the glories of the spiritual religion of which Jerusalem was to be the centre, when Jahveh would speak face to face with all his people, with no barrier of priestly formalism between. From the time of the prophets, all who clung to the spiritual Messianic ideal must have shared their feelings; and when Christianity afterwards broke through the fetters of Jewish ceremonialism, its action was strictly in accordance with the principles of those who originated and continued the movement in Judaism of which it was finally the issue.
The spiritual Messianic ideal from the prophetic age necessarily formed the ideal of the best and purest Jews. In the writings of the prophets, especially in those of the second Isaiah, it remained before the people, a constant incentive to all who grasped the true principles of their pure religion. It was easily blended with the additions then beginning to be made to Judaism, the supernaturalism which rendered Judaism less cold and unattractive. But though this ideal was sure to continue as the expression of the noblest aspirations of Israel, and though endeavours were certain to be made to realize it, in its completeness it was destined to inevitable failure. So far as the prophets dreamed of Israel’s glory being found in sharing the religion of the one God with the Gentiles, they dreamed an unrealizable dream. From the time of the prophets down to the destruction of Jerusalem, the great mass of the Jews, as the years went by, hated all Gentiles with a bitterer hatred. Their religion became more confined within the limits of their nationality, and Jahveh more peculiarly the God worshipped by Jews alone. It is easy to see that Judaism as Israel’s religion could not have expanded itself, and that the national pride of Israel could not thus have been gratified. Only by leaving nationality behind, by a movement outward from Judaism of the most spiritual Jews, could the God of Israel become the God of the world.[45]
In this Messianic ideal the conception of the Messiah personally was vague and undefined. The second Isaiah expected that the Messiah would simply bring the captivity to a close, and that the Messianic glories would then follow spontaneously as a result of the exhibition of Jahveh’s power. This more indistinct picture of the spiritual Messiah was of great service to Christianity.
The belief in atonement by vicarious suffering mentioned in the last chapter was connected in a special manner with the spiritual Messianic ideal. All the prophets believed in atonement by suffering; they all thought that Jahveh was punishing his people for their sins, and that the punishment was the necessary antecedent to the restoration of his favour. But to those who accepted this Messianic ideal Israel’s suffering plainly seemed to be a means of realizing it. The great preacher of it, the second Isaiah, writing towards the close of the captivity, saw an obvious connection between it and the crowning misfortune of his country. Dispersed among the heathen, the worshippers of Jahveh appeared to him missionaries of the true religion, revealers to the world of its God. He believed that the restoration would be accomplished by the return of the Israelites under the guardianship of the converted Gentiles, to be their priests in the Holy Land.[46] But when the captivity was recognized as an instrument of Gentile conversion, it was of course regarded as a blessing to the Gentiles. Beneficial to the Gentile world, it was not the less harmful to Israel, whose nationality it almost destroyed. Thus the hurt of Israel was a blessing to the Gentiles. It would follow from this, in a mind nursed in the ideas of the Jewish sacrificial system, that the suffering of Israel was an atonement for Gentile sins. The Gentiles clearly had sinned against God, their ignorance of him was a sin; but in revealing himself to them he was blessing them, and in blessing them he was of course forgiving their sins. But this forgiveness was shown by means of Israel’s suffering; therefore Israel’s suffering was an atonement for Gentile sins accepted by God.
We find the results of this train of reasoning clearly expressed by the second Isaiah. In the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, which is the great Messianic chapter of orthodox Christians, and which probably exercised an important influence over the mind of Christ, three kinds of atonement are described. Partly Israel’s sufferings are represented as an atonement offered for Israel’s own sins; partly Israel’s sins are regarded as atoned for by the undeserved suffering of the few righteous Israelites, faithful adherents of Jahveh, on whom the national misfortunes fell as well as on the rest of the people; while put more strongly, and running through the whole chapter, is the idea that Israel’s sufferings atoned for Gentile sins. The beautiful phrase at the end, “He made intercession for the transgressors,” means that Israel, though oppressed and bruised by the Gentiles, was still ready to be a mediator leading them to God. In the previous chapter the astonishment of the Gentiles at the fact that so insignificant a people possessed so great a revelation, is described by the same method of personal illustration, universally adopted by the prophets.[47] Interpreted Messianically, in a literal sense, these passages were afterwards of importance to Christianity.
The prophetic age, as a whole, was thus essentially a period of transition. In it Judaism was established, and the movement towards Christianity begun. Throughout the whole course of Israel’s history we see a gradual development of religion, religious forces steadily tending upwards and evolving higher ideas of God. Before the time of the prophets, these forces were working out a pure and moral monotheism; during and after it, they were working out the release of this monotheism from the fetters of nationalism, and preparing a religion for the civilised world.