Amongst the “things which should come upon them,” which are described at large in the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth chapters of Deuteronomy, it is particularly said:—
“And the Lord shall scatter thee among all peoples, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth;...” (Ibid. xxviii. 64.)
But observe that subsequently we are told:—
“And the Lord thy God will bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it; and He will do thee good, and multiply thee above thy fathers.” (Ibid. xxx. 5.)
which promises do not appear to have been fulfilled during the time of the Babylonian captivity, or after the return from Babylon.
Here we have in plain words, simple and clear, the fundamental idea of Moses: the Jewish national future and the possession of the land for ever. This cannot be explained away by sophistry. In vain some Jews declare: We are not nationalist Jews, we are religious Jews! What is the Jewish religion if the Bible is not accepted as an Inspired Revelation? It is strange and sadly amusing that some Jews, adherents of the monotheistic principle, describe themselves as Germans, Magyars, and so on, “of the persuasion of Moses.” If this is not blasphemy, it is irony. The real Moses, the Moses of the Pentateuch, brands Dispersion as a curse, and his whole religious conception, with all the laws, ceremonies, feasts, etc., is built up on the basis of the covenant with the ancestors, a covenant immovable and unalterable. No matter whether Jews call themselves religious or nationalist: the Jewish religion cannot be separated from nationalism, unless another Bible is invented.
Judaism, or the Jewish religion, is based first upon the teaching of Moses, and next upon that of the prophets, and it is a favourite claim of the modern school of Jewish reform that their Judaism is “Prophetic Judaism,” in opposition to the Judaism of orthodox Jews, who lay particular stress upon the Talmud. But what do the prophets teach?
The next revelation in chronological order after the inspired predictions of Moses, is that of Joel the son of Pethuel, who began to prophesy to the Kingdom of Judah about eight hundred years before the civil era:—
“Then was the Lord jealous for His land,
And had pity on His people.” (Joel ii. 18.)