Chapter LIX. The Ethics of Judaism and the Kingdom of God
1. The soul of the Jewish religion is its ethics. Its God is the Fountainhead and Ideal of morality. At the beginning of the summary of the ethical laws in the Mosaic Code stands the verse: “Ye shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.”[1527] This provides the Jew with the loftiest possible motive for perfection and at the same time the greatest incentive to an ever higher conception of life and life's purpose. Accordingly, the kingdom of God for whose coming the Jew longs from the beginning until the end of the year,[1528] does not rest in a world beyond the grave, but (in consonance with the ideal of Israel's sages and prophets) in a complete moral order on earth, the reign of truth, righteousness and holiness among all men and nations. Jewish ethics, then, derives its sanction from God, the Author and Master of life, and sees its purpose in the hallowing of all life, individual and social. Its motive is the splendid conception that man, with his finite ends, is linked to the infinite God with His infinite ends; or, as the rabbis express it, “Man is a co-worker with God in the work of creation.”[1529]
2. Both the term ethics (from the Greek ethos) and morality (from the Latin mores) are derived from custom or habit. In distinction to this, the Hebrew Scripture points to God's will as perceived in the human conscience as the source of all morality. Those ethical systems which dispense with [pg 478] religion fail to take due cognizance of the voice of duty which says to each man: “Thou shalt” or “Thou shalt not!” Duty distinguishes man from all other creatures. However low man may be in the scale of freedom, he is moved to action by an impulse from within, not by a compulsion from without. Of course, morality must travel a long road from the primitive code, which does not extend beyond the near kinsmen, to the ideal of civilized man which encompasses the world. Still man's steps are always directed by some rule of duty. The voice of conscience, heard clearly or dimly, is not, as is so often asserted, the product, but the original guiding factor of human society. The divine inner power of morality has made man, not man morality. Morality and religion, inseparably united in the Decalogue of Sinai, will attain their perfection together in the kingdom of God upon the Zion heights of humanity.
3. Ethical elements, greater or smaller, enter into all religions and codes of law of the various nations. Ancient Egypt, Persia and India even connected ethical principle and the future of the soul so closely, that certain ethical laws were to determine one's fate in heaven or hell. This led to the idea that this life is but the preparatory stage to the great hereafter. But antiquity also witnessed more or less successful attempts to emancipate ethics from religion. When the old beliefs no longer satisfied the thinking mind and no longer kept men from corruption, various philosophers attempted to provide general principles of morality as substitutes for the departed deities. Confucius built up in China a system of common-sense ethics based upon the communal life, but without any religious ideals; this satisfied the commonplace attitude of that country, but could not pass beyond the confines of the far East. A semi-religious ascetic system was offered at about the same time by Gautama Buddha of India, a prince garbed as a mendicant friar, who preached [pg 479] the gospel of love and charity for all fellow creatures. His leading maxims were blind resignation and self-effacement in the presence of the ills, suffering and death which rule the entire domain of life. All existence was evil to him, with its pleasure, passion and desire, its thought and feeling; his aim was a state of apathy and listlessness, Nirvana; while sympathy and compassion for fellow creatures were to offer some relief to a life of delusion and despair. The Hindu conception of the unbearable woe of the world corresponded more or less with the hot climate, which renders the people indolent and apathetic. In striking contrast to this was the vigorous manhood of the ethical systems developed on the healthy soil of Greece, under the azure canopy of a sky that fills the soul with beauty and joy. Life should be valued for the happiness it offers to the individual or to society. The good should be loved for its beauty, the just admired for its nobility. Greek ethics was thus both aristocratic and utilitarian; it took no heed of the toiling slave, the suffering poor, or the unprotected stranger. Both the Buddhist and the Hellenic systems lacked the energizing force and motive of the highest purpose of life, because both have left out of their purview the great Ruler who summons man to his duty, saying: “I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt and thou shalt not!”
4. Between the two extremes, the Hellenic self-expansion and the Buddhist self-extinction, Jewish ethics labors for self-elevation under the uplifting power of a holy God. The term which Scripture uses for moral conduct is, very significantly, “to walk in the ways of God.” The rabbis explain this as follows: “As God is merciful and gracious, so be thou merciful and gracious. As God is called righteous, so be thou righteous. As God is holy, so do thou strive to be holy.”[1530] Another of their maxims is: “How can mortal [pg 480] man walk after God, who is an all-consuming fire? What Scripture means is that man should emulate God. As He clothes the naked, nurses the sick, comforts the sorrowing, and buries the dead, so should man.”[1531] In other words, human life must take its pattern from the divine goodness and holiness.
5. Obviously, Jewish ethics had to go through the same long process of development as the Jewish religion itself. A very high stage is represented by that disinterested goodness taught by Antigonus of Soko in the second pre-Christian century and by ben Azzai in the second century of the present era, which no longer anticipates reward or punishment, but does good for its own sake and shuns evil because it is evil.[1532] As long as the law tolerated slavery, polygamy, and blood vengeance, and man's personality was not recognized on principle as being made in the image of God, the practical morality of the Hebrews could not rise above that of other nations, except in so far as the shepherd's compassion for the beast occasioned sympathy also for the fellow-man. After all, Jewish ethics became the ethics of humanity because of the God-conception of the prophets,—the righteous, merciful, and holy God, the God “who executeth the judgment of the fatherless and the widow, and loveth the stranger in giving him food and raiment.”[1533] The conception of Jewish ethics as human ethics is voiced in the familiar verse: “It hath been told thee, O man, what is good and what the Lord doth require of thee: only to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.”[1534] The all-ruling and all-seeing God of the Psalmist made men feel that only such a one can stand in His holy place “who hath [pg 481] clean hands and a pure heart, who hath not lifted up his soul unto falsehood, nor sworn deceitfully.”[1535] After law-giver, prophet, and psalmist came the wise, who gave ethics a more practical and popular character in the wisdom literature, and then came the Hasidim or Essenes, who, while seeking the highest piety or saintliness as life's aim, deepened and spiritualized their ethical ideals. Some of these considered the essential principles of morality to be love of God and of the fellow-man;[1536] while rabbinical ethics in general laid great stress on motive as determining the value of the deed. The words, “Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God,” so often repeated in the law, are taken to mean: Fear Him who looks into the heart, judging motives and intentions.[1537]
6. As the Mosaic Code presented the ceremonial and moral laws together as divine, so the rabbinical schools treated them all as divine commandments without any distinction. Hence the Mishnah and the Talmud fail to give ethics the prominent place it occupies in the prophetic and wisdom literature of the Bible and did not even make an attempt to formulate a system of ethics. The ethical rules in the “Sayings of the Fathers” and similar later collections make no pretentions to being general or systematic. The ethical teachings became conspicuous only through contact with the Hellenic world in the propaganda literature, with its aim to win the Gentile world to Judaism. Thus at an early period handbooks on ethics were written and circulated in the Greek language, some of which were afterward appropriated by the Christian Church. This entire movement is summed up in the well-known answer of Hillel to the heathen who desired to join the Jewish faith: “What is hateful to [pg 482] thee, do thou not unto thy fellow man; this is the law, and all the rest is merely commentary.”[1538]
On the whole, rabbinical Judaism elaborated no ethical system before the Middle Ages. Then, under Mohammedan influence, the Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic philosophies in vogue gave rise to certain ethical works more or less in accord with their philosophic or mystic prototypes. In addition, ethical treatises were often written in the form of wills and of popular admonitions, which were sometimes broad and human, at other times stern and ascetic. One thought, however, prevailed through the ages: as life emanates from the God of holiness, so it must ever serve His holy purposes and benefit all His earthly children. “All the laws given by God to Israel have only the purification and ennobling of the life of men for their object,” say the rabbis.[1539]
7. Perhaps the best summary of Jewish ethics was presented by Hillel in the famous three words: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am for myself alone, what am I? And if not now, when then?”[1540] We find here three spheres of duty: toward one's self, toward others, and toward the life before us. In contrast to purely altruistic or socialistic ethics, Jewish morality accentuated the value of the individual even apart from the social organism. Man is a child of God, a. self-conscious personality, who is to unfold and improve the powers implanted by his divine Maker, in both body and soul, laboring in this way toward the purpose for which he was created. Man was created single, says one of the sages in the Mishnah,[1541] that he might know that he forms a world for himself, and the whole creation must aid him in unfolding the divine image within himself. Accordingly, self-preservation, self-improvement and self-perfection [pg 483] are duties of every man. This implies first the care for the human body as the temple which enshrines the divine spirit. In the eyes of Judaism, to neglect or enfeeble the body, the instrument of the soul, is altogether sinful. As the Sabbath law demands physical rest and recreation after the week's work, so the Jewish religion in general trains men to enjoy the gifts of God; and the rabbis declare that their rejection (except for disciplinary reasons) is ingratitude for which man must give an account at the last Judgment Day.[1542] The Pharisean teacher who opposed the Essenic custom of fasting and declared it sinful, unless it be for special purposes, would have deprecated even more strongly the ascetic Christian or Hindoo saint who castigated his body as the seat of sin.[1543] As Hillel remarked: “See what care is bestowed upon the statue of the emperor to keep it clean and bright; ought we not, likewise, keep God's image, our body, clean and free from every blemish?”[1544]
In regard to our moral and spiritual selves the rabbinical maxim is: “Beautify thyself first, and then beautify others.”[1545] Only as we first ennoble ourselves can we then contribute to the elevation of the world about us. Our industry promotes the welfare of the community as well as of ourselves; our idleness harms others as well as ourselves.[1546] Upon self-respect rest our honor and our character. Virtue also is the result of self-control and self-conquest.[1547] “There shall be no strange God in thee.” This Psalm verse is taken by the rabbis to mean that no anger and passion nor any evil desire or overbearing pride shall obtain their mastery over thee.[1548] Man asserts himself in braving temptation and trial, in overcoming sin and grief. Greater still is the hero who, in complete [pg 484] self-mastery, can sacrifice himself in a great cause. Martyrdom for the sake of God, which the rabbis call sanctification of the name of God,[1549] is really the assertion of the divine life in the midst of death. But desertion of life from selfish motives through suicide is all the more despicable. He who sells his human birthright to escape pain or disgrace, though greatly to be pitied, has forfeited his claim and his share in the world to come.[1550]