Once more, though this is to anticipate a little, the later Jahweh-worship seems to have absorbed into itself certain astrological elements which were originally quite alien to it, belonging to the cult of other gods. Such for example is the institution of the Sabbath, the unlucky day of the malign god Kewân or Saturn, on which it was undesirable to do any kind of work, and on which accordingly the superstitious Semite rested altogether from his weekly labours. The division of the lunar month (the sacred period of Astarte, the queen of heaven) into four weeks of seven days each, dedicated in turn to the gods of the seven planets, belongs obviously to the same late cult of the elemental and astrological gods, or, rather, of the gods with whom these heavenly bodies were at last identified under Akkadian influence. The earlier prophets of the exclusive Jahweh-worship denounce as idolatrous such observation of the Sabbath and the astrological feasts—“Your Sabbaths and your new moons are an abomination to me”; and according to Amos, Kewân himself had been the chief idolatrous object of worship by his countrymen in the wilderness. Later on, however, the Jehovistic party found itself powerless to break the current of superstition on the Sabbath question, and a new modus vivendi was therefore necessary. They arranged a prudent compromise. The Sabbath was adopted bodily into the monotheistic Jahweh-worship, and a mythical reason was given for its institution and its sacred character which nominally linked it on to the cult of the ethnical god. On that day, said the priestly cosmogonists, Jahweh rested from his labour of creation. In the same way, many other fragments of external cults were loosely attached to the worship of Jahweh by a verbal connection with some part of the revised Jehovistic legend, or else were accredited to national Jehovistic or Jehovised heroes.
Having thus briefly sketched out the gradual changes which the conception of Jahweh himself underwent during the ages when his supremacy was being slowly established in the confederacy of Israel, let us now hark back once more and attack the final problem, Why did the particular cult of Jahweh become at last exclusive and monotheistic?
To begin with, we must remember that from the very outset of the national existence, Jahweh was clearly regarded on all hands as the ethnical god, the special god of Israel. The relation of such ethnical gods to their people has been admirably worked out by Dr. Robertson Smith in The Religion of the Semites. Even though we cannot, however, accept as historical the view given us of the exodus in the Pentateuch, nor admit that Jahweh played anything like so large a part in the great national migration as is there indicated, it is yet obvious that from the moment when Israel felt itself a nation at all, Jahweh was recognised as its chief deity. He was the “god of Israel,” just as Milcom was the god of the Ammonites, Chemosh the god of Moab, and Ashtaroth the goddess of Sidon. As distinctly as every Athenian, while worshipping Zeus and Hera and Apollo, held Athene to be the special patron of Athens, so did every Israelite, while worshipping the Baalim and the Molech and the local deities generally, hold Jahweh to be the special patron of Israel.
Moreover, from the very beginning, there is reason to suppose that the Israelites regarded Jahweh as their supreme god. Most pantheons finally settle down into a recognised hierarchy, in which one deity or another gradually assumes the first place. So, in Hellas, the supremacy of Zeus was undoubted; so, in Rome, was the supremacy of Jupiter. Sometimes, to be sure, as among our Teutonic ancestors, we see room for doubt between two rival gods: it would be difficult to assign the exact priority to either of the two leading deities: among the English, Woden rather bore it over Thunor; among the Scandinavians, Thor rather bore it over Odin. In Israel, in like manner, there was apparently a time when the Presidency of the Immortals hovered between Jahweh and one or other of the local Baalim. But in the end, and perhaps even from the very beginning, the suffrages of the people were mainly with the sacred stone of the ark. He was the God of Israel, and they were the chosen people of Jahweh.
The custom of circumcision must have proved at once the symbol and in part the cause, in part the effect, of this general devotion of the people to a single supreme god. At first, no doubt, only the first-born or other persons specially dedicated to Jahweh, would undergo the rite which marked them out so clearly as the devotees of the god of fertility. But as time went on, long before the triumph of the exclusive Jahweh-worship, it would seem that the practice of offering up every male child to the national god had become universal. As early as the shadowy reign of David, the Philistines are reproachfully alluded to in our legends as “the uncircumcised”; whence we may perhaps conclude (though the authority is doubtful) that even then circumcision had become coextensive with Israelitish citizenship. Such universal dedication of the whole males of the race to the national god must have done much to ensure his ultimate triumph.
If we look at the circumstances of the Israelites in Palestine, we shall easily see how both religious unity and intense national patriotism were fostered by the very nature of their tenure of the soil; and also why a deity mainly envisaged as a god of generation should have become the most important member of their national pantheon. Their position during the first few centuries of their life in Lower Syria may be compared to that of the Dorians in Peloponnesus: they were but a little garrison in a hostile land fighting incessantly with half-conqùered tributaries and encircling foes; now hard-pressed by rebellions of their internal enemies; and now again rendered subject themselves to the hostile Philistines on their maritime border. The handful of rude warriors who burst upon the land under such bloodthirsty leaders as the mystical Joshua could only hope for success by rapid and constant increase of their numbers, and by avoiding as far as possible those internal quarrels which were always the prelude to national disgrace. To be “a mother in Israel” is the highest hope of every Hebrew woman. Hence it was natural that a god of generation should become the chief among the local deities, and that the promise held out by his priests of indefinite multiplication should make him the most popular and powerful member of the Israelitish pantheon. And though all the stone gods were probably phallic, yet Jahweh, as the ethnical patron, seems most of all to have been regarded as the giver of increase to Israel.
It seems clear, too, that the common worship of Jahweh was at first the only solid bond of union between the scattered and discordant tribes who were afterwards to grow into the Israelitish people. This solidarity of god and tribe has well been insisted on by Professor Robertson Smith as a common feature of all Semitic worship. The ark of Jahweh in its house at Shiloh appears to have formed the general meeting-place for Hebrew patriotism, as the sanctuary of Olympia formed a focus later for the dawning sense of Hellenic unity. The ark was taken out to carry before the Hebrew army, that the god of Israel might fight for his worshippers. Evidently, therefore, from a very early date, Jahweh was regarded in a literal sense as the god of battles, the power upon whom Israel might specially rely to guard it against its enemies. When, as the legends tell us, the national unity was realised under David; when the subject peoples were finally merged into a homogeneous whole; when the last relics of Canaanitish nationality were stamped out by the final conquest of the Jebusites; and when Jerusalem was made the capital of a united Israel, this feeling must have increased both in extent and intensity. The bringing of Jahweh to Jerusalem by David, and the building of his temple by Solomon (if these facts be historical), must have helped to stamp him as the great god of the race: and though Solomon also erected temples to other Hebrew gods, which remained in existence for some centuries, we may be sure that from the date of the opening of the great central shrine, Jahweh remained the principal deity of the southern kingdom at least, after the separation.
There was one characteristic of Jahweh-worship, however, which especially helped to make it at last an exclusive cult, and thus paved the way for its final development into a pure monotheism. Jahweh was specially known to be a “jealous god”: this is a trait in his temperament early and often insisted on. We do not know when or where the famous “Ten Words” were first promulgated; but we have every reason to believe that in essence at least they date from a very antique period. Now, at the head of these immemorial precepts of Jahweh stands the prohibition of placing any other gods before his face. Originally, no doubt, the prohibition meant exactly what it states; that Jahweh would endure no companion gods to share his temple; that wherever he dwelt, he would dwell alone without what the Greeks would have called fellow shrine-sharers. Thus we know that no ashera was to be driven into the ground near Jahweh’s ark; and that when Dagon found himself face to face with the Rock of Israel, he broke in pieces, and could not stand before the awful presence of the great Hebrew Pillar. No more than this, then, was at first demanded by “the jealous god”: he asked of his worshippers that they should keep him apart from the society of all inferior gods, should allow no minor or rival deity to enter his precincts.
Gradually, however, as Jahweh-worship grew deeper, and the conception of godhead became wider and more sublime, the Jahweh-worshipper began to put a stricter interpretation upon the antique command of the jealous god. It was supposed that every circumcised person, every man visibly devoted to Jahweh, owed to Jahweh alone his whole religious service. Nobody doubted as yet, indeed, that other gods existed: but the extreme Jehovists in the later days of national independence held as an article of faith that no true Israelite ought in any way to honour them. An internal religious conflict thus arose between the worshippers of Jahweh and the worshippers of the Baalim, in which, as might be expected, the devotees of the national god had very much the best of it. Exclusive Jahweh-worship became thenceforth the ideal of the extreme Jehovists: they began to regard all other gods as “idols,” to be identified with their images; they began to look upon Jahweh alone as a living god, at least within the bounds of the Israelitish nation.
To this result, another ancient prohibition of the priests of Jahweh no doubt largely contributed. The priesthood held it unlawful to make or multiply images of Jahweh. The one sacred stone enclosed in the ark was alone to be worshipped: and by thus concentrating on Shiloh, or afterwards on Jerusalem, the whole religious spirit of the ethnical cult, they must largely have succeeded in cementing the national unity. Strict Jehovists looked with dislike upon the adoration paid to the bull-images in the northern kingdom, though those, too, were regarded (at least in later days) as representatives of Jahweh. They held that the true god of Abraham was to be found only in the ark at Jerusalem, and that to give to the Rock of Israel human form or bestial figure was in itself a high crime against the majesty of their deity. Hence arose the peculiar Hebrew dislike to “idolatry”; a dislike never equally shared by any but Semitic peoples, and having deep roots, apparently, at once in the inartistic genius of the people and in the profound metaphysical and dreamy character of Semitic thinking. The comparative emptiness of Semitic shrines, indeed, was always a stumbling-block to the Greek, with his numerous and exquisite images of anthropomorphic deities.