History as past ethics; an introduction to the history of morals

by P. V. N. Myers

It was the great unknown prophet of the Exile, the so-called Second Isaiah, who wrote just after the capture of Babylon by the Persian king Cyrus (539 B.C.), who was the representative of the essentially new conceptions of Yahweh and of the requirements of the moral law which characterize this ethical development.[391]

Ethical monotheism at last; religion and morality at one

Shut out from participation in political affairs, the best energies of the exiled community seem to have been turned to the things of the inner life, and consequently the development in the religious and moral spheres went on apace. The conception of God—of what is pleasing to him and what he requires of man—was elevated and purified.

We meet now for the first time monotheism pure and absolute. Yahweh is conceived as the only God; the gods of the other nations are no gods at all. Some of the earlier prophets had, it is true, caught sight of this lofty truth; but the multitude of the people certainly had no such idea of their patron god. The prophets of the Exile are the first to proclaim this doctrine with such emphasis as to cause it to become a part of the indestructible religious consciousness of Israel.[392]

One cannot read the declarations which the unknown prophet puts in the mouth of Yahweh—“Before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me;”[393] “I am the first and I am the last; and besides me there is no God;”[394] “I am Yahweh who wrought everything, who stretched forth the heavens above, who spread forth the earth—who was with me;”[395] “I am Yahweh and there is none beside me;”[396] “I am God, and there is none else, I am God, and there is none like me”[397]—one cannot read these declarations without being convinced that they were not phrased by one to whom the idea of the unity of God had become a commonplace, but rather by one to whom the thought was something in the nature of a discovery.[398]

But it was not merely the idea of the oneness of deity, of Yahweh as the sole God, that was the element of supreme significance in this practically new thought of God. There is nothing unethical in the belief in many gods; nor, on the other hand, is there anything ethical in the belief that there is only one God. The historically important thing about the monotheism of Israel is that it was ethical monotheism. Up to the time of the Exile the multitude in Israel, notwithstanding the teachings of the prophets Amos and Hosea, Isaiah and Micah, had never thought of Yahweh as an absolutely just god, but rather as one who would favor his people under all circumstances. Put in the language of to-day, they conceived Yahweh as a partisan, who would be for his people right or wrong. But under the discipline of the Exile the more spiritual-minded of the nation came to accept the teaching that Yahweh’s favor “is conditioned by a law of absolute righteousness.”[399]

This conception of God marks a turning point in the moral evolution of humanity. It lifted a new ethical standard. It effected a union of religion and morality. This, it is true, was not a wholly new thing in history. In the worship of the good Osiris in Egypt these elements had been united; in the Zoroastrian worship of Ahura Mazda they had also been brought together; and at this very time in Greece there was an effort being made to unite them in the worship of the Delphian Apollo. But the union effected by the prophets of Israel was the only one destined to have large and permanent historical consequences. Because of the ethical content given the god idea by them, their conception of deity constituted the most precious part of the spiritual heritage bequeathed by Judaism to Christianity.

Repudiation of the doctrine of collective responsibility

The progressive clarification of the moral consciousness in Israel disclosed by this truer conception of the divine character is further shown by the definite and emphatic repudiation by the prophets of the Exile of the doctrine of collective responsibility.[400]

There was an ironical proverb current in Israel, which, expressing bitter protest against the unequal ways of Yahweh in visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children,[401] ran thus: “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”[402] The prophet Ezekiel says to the people that they shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb.[403] With clear moral vision he sees how impossible it is that the moral government of Yahweh should rest upon the principle of collective responsibility, and that the innocent should be punished for the guilty. Declaring that the ways of God are just and equal, he annuls all earlier provisions of the law by boldly proclaiming that the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son.[404]