Prolegomena to the History of Israel

by Julius Wellhausen

The great epoch of the work is the building of the temple. On this occasion Solomon makes a great dedicatory oration, in which he entreats Jehovah to hear from heaven the prayer of those who shall seek Him in this place. He concludes as follows:

"If they sin against Thee (for there is no man that sinneth not) and Thou be angry with them and deliver them to be carried away captive into the land of the enemy, far or near, if they then bethink themselves and make supplication to Thee, saying, We have sinned and have done perversely and are guilty, and so return unto Thee with all their heart and all their soul in the land of the enemies which led them away captive, and pray unto Thee toward their land which Thou gavest unto their fathers, the city which Thou hast chosen, and the house which Thou hast built for Thy name, then hear Thou in heaven their prayer and their supplication, and maintain their cause, and forgive thy people their unfaithfulness, and give them compassion before them that carried them away captive, that they may have compassion upon them. For they be Thy people and Thine inheritance, which Thou broughtest forth out of Egypt from the midst of the furnace of iron, and didst separate them to Thyself from among all the people of the earth, as Thou spakest by Moses thy servant."

What Jehovah answered to this we learn in chapter ix.

"I have heard thy prayer and thy supplication which thou hast made before me; I have hallowed this house, to put my name there for ever, and mine eyes and my heart shall be there perpetually. If thou wilt walk before me, as did David thy father, in integrity of heart and in uprightness, to do all that I have commanded thee, and wilt keep my statutes and my judgments, I will establish the throne of thy kingdom upon Israel for ever, as I promised to David thy father, saying, There shall not fail thee a man upon the throne of Israel. But if YE or YOUR CHILDREN turn away from me, and will not keep my statutes and my judgments which I have set before you, but worship other gods, then will I cut off Israel out of the land which I have given them, and this house which I have hallowed for my name I will cast out of my sight, and Israel shall be a proverb and a byword among all people, and this house a ruin. And when they ask: Why hath Jehovah done thus to this land and to this house? the answer shall be: Because they forsook Jehovah their God, who brought forth their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and have taken hold upon other gods, and have worshipped them and served them."

The division of the kingdom is also a very marked era in the history. It is introduced by a prophecy of Abijah to the first Jeroboam.

"Behold, I rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to thee; but he shall have one tribe for my servant David's sake, and for Jerusalem's sake, the city which I have chosen; because he has forsaken me, and worshipped Astarte of Sidon, and Chemosh of Moab, and Milcom of Ammon, and has not walked in my ways to do that which is right in my eyes, my statutes, and my judgments, like David his father. And it shall be, if thou wilt hearken unto all that I command thee, and wilt walk in my ways, and do what is right in my sight, to keep my statutes and my commandments as David my servant did, that I will be with thee and build thee a sure house as I built for David, and will give Israel unto thee. And I will for this afflict the seed of David, but not for ever."

We pass over a series of prophecies in a similar strain which occur regularly at the changes of dynasty in the northern kingdom, and cite only the concluding words which accompany the fall of the kingdom of the ten tribes (2Kings xvii.). This fall came about "because the children of Israel sinned against Jehovah their God, which brought them up out of the land of Egypt, and feared other gods, and walked in the statutes of the heathen whom they had driven out, and in the innovations of the kings of Israel; and because the children of Israel imputed to Jehovah their God things which are not so, and built them high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchman to the fenced city; and they set up pillars and Asheras on every high hill and under every green tree, and there they sacrificed in all the high places, as did the people whom Jehovah had driven out before them: and wrought wicked things to provoke Jehovah to anger, and served the abominations which Jehovah had forbidden. Yet Jehovah testified to them by all the prophets and seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes according to all the torah which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent unto you by my servants the prophets; but they would not hear, but hardened their necks like their fathers, that they did not believe in Jehovah their God; and they rejected His statutes and His covenant that He made with their fathers, and His testimonies with which He warned them, and they followed vanity and became vain, and went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom Jehovah had charged them that they should not do like them. And they left all the commandments of Jehovah their God, and made them molten images and an Asherah, and worshipped the whole host of heaven, and served Baal; and they caused their children to pass through the fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of Jehovah, to provoke Him to anger. And Jehovah was very wroth with Israel, and removed them out of His sight; there was none left but the men of Judah only. But they of Judah also kept not the commandment of their God, but walked in the manner of Israel: and Jehovah rejected the whole race of Israel, and humbled them, and delivered them unto the hand of spoilers, until He had cast them out of His sight." No special concluding discourse is given for Judah, but that for Israel applies to Judah as well. This we see both directly from the last words of the passage cited, and from the circumstance that two very characteristic abominations in the foregoing catalogue, the worship of the host of heaven and the sacrifice of children, were introduced, according to the testimony of the prophets, which alone can determine the point, not in the eighth but only in the seventh century, under Manasseh, and accordingly are not chargeable on Israel, but only on Judah.

The water accumulates, so to speak, at these gathering places of the more important historical epochs: but from these reservoirs it finds its way in smaller channels on all sides. /1/ The first

— Footnote 1. Such additions as MCWT YHWH, 1Kings xviii. 18 [LXX has correctly YHWH, without MCWT] (ZBW BRYTK [LXX correctly (ZBW without BRYTK] and more extensive ones, as 1Kings xviii. 31, 32a; 2Samuel vii. 2b [)#R NQR) WGW''] <error! read vi. 2b> ) I do not reckon because they proceed from various periods, and are mostly younger than the Deuteronomic revision, and belong rather to textual than to literary criticism. It is certainly in itself very important to detect and remove these re-touchings. The whole old tradition is covered with them. — Footnote

question asked with regard to each ruler is, what position he took up to the pure religion—whether he did what was right or what was evil in the sight of Jehovah. Even in the case of those who only reigned a week, this question receives an answer. In general it has to be stated that they did evil. All except David and Hezekiah and Josiah, were defective, says Jesus Sirach (xlix. 4),—not quite accurately perhaps, but yet truly in so far as there is always some objection even to the good kings. But the sin here reproved is no longer, at least not principally, the worship of strange gods; it is the perverted worship of Jehovah. A more special standard, and therefore a stricter one, is now employed, and we know the reason of this: the temple having once been built in the place which Jehovah has chosen for Himself, the kindly naturalness hitherto belonging to His worship comes to an end (Deuteronomy xii. 8): and in particular the prohibition of the bamoth comes into force (1Kings iii. 2). That these continued to exist is the special sin of the period, a sin widespread and persistent. It is aggravated by the fact, that with the bamoth all kinds of unlawful abuses crept into the worship of Jehovah, Maccebas and Asheras, evergreen trees, and prostitutes of both sexes. Israel, continually compared with Judah in the matter, is further charged with a second great sin, the sin of Jeroboam, i.e., the golden calves at Bethel and at Dan. The religious estimate combines with the chronological facts to form that scheme in which every single reign of the kings of Israel and Judah is uniformly framed. Sometimes the frame is well filled in with interesting matter, but in not a few cases historical matter is almost entirely absent. The scheme appears most nakedly in such chapters as 1Kings xv. xvi., 2Kings xiii. xiv. xv.