“And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be My people, and I will be your God” (Ibid. 28).
There is not one passage in which the promised restoration is represented as anything other than a distinct proof of reconciliation between God and his ancient People, or dispersion as anything other than a punishment. The People and the Land of Israel are so linked with one another that whatever continuity is ascribed to the one must, on all strict principles of interpretation, be also attributed to the other. In the twenty-sixth chapter of Leviticus we find Moses giving the people, as warning and encouragement, a prophetic outline of their future history, which forms the real basis, and, in fact, makes up the substance of all that is found in the later prophets as regards the people of Israel. It is true that both the judgments there threatened and the mercies there promised are set forth hypothetically, on the supposition of their wickedly departing from the Lord and afterwards repenting—“if ye walk contrary unto Me, and will not hearken unto Me,” on the one hand; “if they shall confess their iniquity” on the other. But since the conditional statements are changed—as they are in other places—into absolute announcements of what is to take place, the hypothetical forms of expression must be regarded as merely the appropriate mode of conveying warnings against defection and an encouragement to repentance:—
“And they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, ... and also that they have walked contrary to Me” (Leviticus xxvi. 40).
“I also will walk contrary unto them, and bring them into the land of their enemies; ... and they shall then be paid the punishment of their iniquity” (Ibid. 41).
“then will I remember My covenant with Jacob, and also My covenant with Isaac, and also My covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land” (Ibid. 42).
It is impossible to deny that the “remembrance of the covenant” and the “remembrance of the land” here go together. If we allegorize the one, we must allegorize the other as well, and then there is neither land, people, covenant, prophets nor law—an obvious absurdity which at once refutes itself. The fundamental Mosaic principle is clear, plain and positive. The land is to be held in perpetuity by the Jewish nation, provided the conditions of the covenant are fulfilled. The infringement of the covenant subjects the rebel to bondage and makes him an outcast from the land of his inheritance. The promise of redemption is a rescue from the penalties thus incurred. Therefore, he explains, the Agadist did not say heglom, “He drove them out,” which is the usual expression, but pizrom, “He spread, scattered them,” because, so long as the Galuth lasts, they have to live in various countries. Yet it is absurd to think that the state of Galuth, predicted by Moses as a curse, is a blessing. Here we have in short Manasseh’s ideas as to the Galuth and Restoration. We know that he also acted in full accord with these ideas.[¹]
[¹] The British Museum has a copy of the Nishmath Chayyim, Amsterdam, 1651, with autograph annotations of R. Jacob Emden [Jacob Israel] (1697–1776) ben Zebi Hirsch Ashkenazi (1658–1718). Two of these annotations are of special interest. Manasseh writes (fol. 6b) about the physical weakness of the Jews when compared with Gentiles. On this Emden remarks: I admit this only with regard to the Jews in the Galuth; when the Jews lived in their own land they amazed the Romans by their great heroes and athletes, and more so at the time of the First Temple. In another passage (fol. 8a), where Manasseh writes about the shorter life of those who keep the Law as compared with others, Emden again remarks: But in Palestine the Jews distinguished themselves by much greater longevity. (M. Seligsohn, the author of Emden’s biography in the Jewish Encyclopedia, who enumerates various books with Emden’s autograph annotations, does not seem to have had any knowledge of these annotations.)
The constitution established by Moses was a theocracy. The true King of Israel was God, and the constitution was the Law. The priests and Levites were God’s ministers; the prophets were God’s ambassadors, commissioned to convey his instructions not only to the people but to the King himself. The Kingdom was thus emphatically the Kingdom of God, and the King was the earthly viceroy of the invisible Sovereign. He was more limited than a constitutional monarch; he was subject not only to the Law, but also to those who were entitled to explain the Law. Such a state of things never existed in any other nation, either in ancient or in modern times. The Jewish nation regards it as an Ideal State, and looks forward to a future in which this idea will be accepted by the whole world, when God will be the King; but this will take place only after the establishment of this Divine order in Palestine. Therefore Jews pray to God to give them their judges and their counsellors as in ancient times, i.e. to restore their life under God’s order, a life of justice and peace and wisdom; they hope also that this will influence all mankind to recognize the Kingdom of God, i.e. the rule of justice, mercy and love. Then the promise to Abraham will be fulfilled:—
“... and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; ...” (Genesis xxii. 18).
and the blessings and privileges of God’s Kingdom will be offered freely to all mankind. Here the influence of Abrabanel is evident.[¹] Another interesting point in Manasseh’s theory is his combination of the idea of the Nefesh Ha’yisraelith with the principle of heredity. He terms this principle Mizgé[²] Ha’aboth, that is, the particular character of the nationality inherited from the ancestors. This is Jewish nationality, which is part of the Jew’s inheritance at birth.[³]