[335] It may be urged that the moral character given to Yahweh was the creation of the moral consciousness of his worshipers; but even so, this conception of deity once formed would inevitably react upon the moral sense to deepen and purify the feelings that gave it birth.
[336] Geschichte des Volkes Israel (1889), Bd. i, S. 429.
[337] Budde, Religion of Israel to the Exile (1899), pp. 35 ff.; Toy, Judaism and Christianity (1891), p. 307; W. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites (1894), pp. 75 ff.
[338] W. Robertson Smith urges that sacrifice among the Hebrews had its origin in the sacramental communal idea. According to this belief the clansmen and their god are of the same stock, and the bond of kinship is renewed and strengthened through the human and the divine members of the community partaking together of the flesh and blood of an animal slain.
[339] Job iii. 19.
[340] Eccl. ix. 5; and so ix. 10: “For there is no work, nor desire, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in Sheol, whither thou goeth.”
[341] Is. xxxviii. 18.
[342] See below, pp. 165 f.
[343] Cf. Chapter II.
[344] The oldest form of the Decalogue is found in Ex. xxxiv; cf. Ex. xxxiii.