And all the remnant of the house of Israel,

Ye that are carried from the belly,

Or lifted up from the womb,

Even to old age I am He.

And so the last passage has ‘I am He, I am the first, I am the last.’

We have this anî hû in a fuller form in the Song of Moses (Deut. XXXII. 39), as anî anî hû, and the former is probably an abbreviation of the latter. But the latter is itself grammatically only a mode of expressing by pronouns what Ehye asher ehye expresses by verbs.[[698]] Now the Song of Moses and the Blessing of Moses, which is connected with it, are easily proved by an examination of their contents to move in much the same prophetical circle of ideas, except indeed that these ideas are already mingled with views which prevailed later, at the time of the compromise. To mention a few examples: the assertion that Jahveh made and established Israel (vv. 6, 15), but that Israel forgot him that made him (v. 18), the exhortation to the people to remember the days of old (v. 7), and the reference to the Tôrâ appointed by Moses (XXXIII. 4), vividly recall the speeches of the second Isaiah (XLIV. 2, LI. 13, XLVI. 9 etc.) and Malachi (III. 22 [IV. 4]). Besides these passages, Deut. XXXII. 2 may be compared with Is. LV. 10 and Job XXIX. 22 et seq.; v. 16 (where the idols are called zârîm ‘strangers’) with Jer. II. 25, III. 13, Is. XLIII. 12; v. 17 with Jer. XXIII. 23 (in both which the strange gods are called ‘gods from near’). If the reading êsh dâth in the Blessing of Moses v. 2 is correct, the word dâth points to a society accessible to Persian words; and the passage in Deut. XXXII. 39, where the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead is mentioned as a recognised article of faith,[[699]] confirms this impression. Thus also the anî anî hû[[700]] which occurs in this passage, compared with anî hû which is used by the second Isaiah, is a proof that metaphysical speculation on the idea of Jahveh arose only in the latest period of the development of Prophetism.

§ 4. In the time of the earlier Prophets, however, the chief weight of the Jahveistic confession was given to national and moral ideas.

The assertion which it is usual to insist upon, that Jahveh was the National God of the Hebrews, is therefore true in a certain degree. It is not true that the Prophets could conceive as the Familiar spirit of a handful of Hebrews that infinite Idea towards which their deepest desire and love was directed, which was to them the impersonation of that pure holiness which is the end of the Prophets’ ethics, and which in their eyes represents the infinite sublimity after which the prophetic spirit nobly strove. But it is true that in the view of the Prophets, the Hebrews were the first to understand Jahveh, and that the extension of this understanding over all mankind is the ideal of Prophetism as it affects the world’s history. If any one questions this cosmopolitan side of the Jahveistic theology, he will probably be cured of his error by impartially reading the speeches of the Prophets of all the various phases of prophecy; e.g. for the earlier time Is. II. 2–4, words which are almost literally repeated by Micah IV—a proof how deeply rooted in the mind of the Prophets was the conviction there expressed,—and for a later age, Is. LXVI. 18, 19. This great Prophet of the Captivity addresses mankind in general: ‘Hearken to me, ye islands, and attend, ye nations from afar’ (Is. XLIX. 1); and another Prophet of Israel in Babylonia, who speaks of a common festival of all mankind, knows of no Canaanites in the house of Jahveh (Zech. XIV. 16, 17). This cosmopolitan character of Jahveism is most precisely defined by a somewhat earlier Prophet, Zephaniah (III. 9, 10). No doubt it is true that in recognition of Jahveh the Prophets regard the Hebrew nation as the centre, and Mount Zion as the source of the streams of water which is henceforth to fill the whole earth ‘as water covers the bed of the sea’ (Is. XI. 9); and also that they treat Jahveh’s love of mankind as if the lion’s share of it would accrue to his own people. But on the other side it is equally true that, after the extension of the idea of Jahveh over the world, which the Prophets lay down as the ultimate and highest aim of spiritual effort, the prophetical view regards all nations of the earth, even Egypt and Assyria, as equal before Jahveh, the common God of them all. ‘In that day shall Israel be third in alliance with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the middle of the earth, whom Jahveh of hosts has blessed, saying Blessed be my people Egypt, and the work of my hands Assyria, and mine inheritance Israel’ (Is. XIX. 24, 25). It is, therefore, especially in reference to the then present time, at which ideals were only beginning to be framed by this free outlook to the future, that the distinctively National character of the idea of Jahveh is emphasised. This is very natural, since it was by national impulses that the Prophets were roused into enthusiasm for Jahveh; for that enthusiasm, as I have previously urged, was produced by an intense antipathy to the foreign elements which confronted them chiefly in the idea of Elôhîm, common to Israel and Canaan, and including all the abominations of the Canaanitish worship, and all the laxity of manners introduced from foreign parts into the higher ranks of society. With the Canaanites dissolute forms of worship were results naturally developed out of the previous history of their religion, and could be traced backwards to their origin in Mythology. Being such, they could not have so ruinous an influence on morals and character as among the Hebrews, who seized on the immorality as such, without having had any share in the previous historical stages which led to it. If for unbelief we substitute absence of historical preparation, the correct observation made by Constant on Roman Polytheism is applicable to this case also: that indecent rites may be practised by a religious nation without detriment to purity of heart; but if unbelief takes hold of the nation, such rites are the cause and the pretext for the most revolting corruption.[[701]]

The idea of Jahveh, therefore, according to the intention of the Prophets, was to stimulate a return to National enthusiasm; and the zeal against the spreading vice and immorality is directed more against the foreign character of the vice than against the immorality itself. ‘O house of Jacob,’ says Isaiah (II. 5–7), in close contact with the speech in which he anticipates the moral redemption of mankind through beating their swords into scythes and their spears into ploughshares, ‘come ye! we will walk in the light of Jahveh. For thou hast forsaken thine own people, O house of Jacob, because they (i.e. the members of that house) are full of divination[[702]] and soothsayers, like the Philistines, and join hands (i.e. contract friendship) with the children of strangers, and their land was filled with silver and gold, and there was no end of their treasures, and their land was filled with horses and there was no end of their chariots.’ In these words we see unequivocally how the ‘light of Jahveh’ is contrasted with foreign customs. It ought to be observed that in Deuteronomy, the book which stands nearer than any other part of the Pentateuch to the Prophets’ views on the world and religion, the collecting of much silver and gold and horses[[703]] is censured (XVII. 16 sq.), in fear lest the people should be denationalised thereby and inclined towards the ‘foreign,’ which in Deuteronomy always means Egypt.

Many scholars hold the utterly incorrect view that the idea of Jahveh was, even from the Egyptian age before the Exodus, the property of a few élites, either Levitical priests or Prophets; a sort of esoteric religion, into which no uninitiated could pry, and from which Prophetism grew up. If this view were as correct as it is impossible, considering the circumstances of the development of Hebrew religion, we should still have to consider the first appearance of the idea of Jahveh quite independently of any such secret society. And it must also be borne in mind that Egypt was to the Hebrews a ‘House of slaves’ (bêth ʿabhâdîm), as the Bible says (Ex. XIII. 3 etc.), not a Theological College. In Egypt they appropriated very few religious ideas. Were it otherwise, we should assuredly not have to wait till after the Babylonian Captivity to find the belief in immortality among them. It is also a special characteristic of the Prophetic Jahveism, that it insists that this idea was destined to be universally recognised in the Hebrew nation itself; and this contributes to the sublimity of the prophetic conception. In contrast to the secret society cautiously locking up its mystic knowledge, how grand looks a free corporation, whose hopes are concentrated on the idea that at that time ‘I [Jahveh] will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters will prophesy, and upon your slaves and handmaids I will pour out my spirit in those days;’ ‘and all thy sons will be disciples of Jahveh;’ ‘and they shall all know me, from the least to the greatest of them,’ etc. (Joel III. 1 sq. [28 sq.], Is. LIV. 13, Jer. XXXI. 34).