—Psalm 96:11-13.
Yahwe is king; let the earth rejoice;
Let the multitude of isles be glad.
—Psalm 97:1.
Shout to Yahwe all the earth;
Break forth and sing for joy, yea sing praises.
—Psalm 98:4.
It is important to bear in mind that the conception of God as judge, even as the conception of God as king, is very old, and that Yahwe appears as king and judge in hymns that are not eschatological. It is only when religious faith extends Yahwe’s kingship and judgeship to the whole world, and conceives of Yahwe as triumphantly transforming the world in accordance with justice and truth, that the conception of Yahwe as Judge becomes eschatological.
Chapter XV
CONCLUSION
It is now universally recognized by scholars that the Hebrew nation came late upon the stage of history, and that when the Hebrew Bedouin passed over out of the desert into the land of Canaan, they entered a land that had already experienced millenniums of civilization. In successive decades and centuries the Hebrew conquerors took over not only the land with its walled cities and its cultivated fields, but they took over also the land’s sanctuaries, and in large measure its religious and moral ideas.