The book of Deuteronomy, in conjunction with the reformation of Josiah’s reign (which synchronizes with the rapid decline of Assyria and the reviving prestige of Yahweh), appeared to mark the triumph of the great prophetic movement. It became at once a codified standard of purer religious life and ultimately served as a beacon of light for the future. But there was shadow as well as light. We note (a) that though the book of Deuteronomy bears the prophetic impress, the priestly impress is perhaps more marked. The writer “evinces a warm regard for the priestly tribe; he guards its privileges (xviii. 1-8), demands obedience for its decisions (xxiv. 8; cf. xvii. 10-12) and earnestly commends its members to the Israelites’ benevolence (xii. 18-19, xiv. 27-29, &c.).”[28] (b) In many passages Jewish particularism is painfully manifest. Yahweh’s care for other peoples does not appear. The flesh of a dead (unslaughtered) beast is not to be eaten, but it may be given to the “stranger within the gates”! (Deut. xiv. 21).[29] (c) Prophetic religion was a religion of the spirit which came to the messenger (Isa. lxi. 1) and expressed itself as a word of instruction of Yahweh (tōrah); see Isa. 1. 10. Now when the Hebrew religion was reduced to written form it began to be a book-religion, and since the book consisted of fixed rules and enactments, religion began to acquire a stereotyped character. It will be seen in the sequel that this was destined to be the growing tendency of Jewish religious life—to conform itself to prescribed rules, in other words, it became legalism. (d) Lastly, the old genial life of the high places, in which the “new moon” or Sabbath or the annual festival was a sacrificial feast of communion, in which the members of the local community or clan enjoyed fellowship with one another—all this picturesque life ceased to be. And though there was positive gain in the removal of idolatrous and corrupt modes of worship, there was also positive loss in the disappearance of this old genial phase of Hebrew social life and worship. It involved a vast difference to many a Judaean village when the festival pilgrimage was no longer made to the familiar local sanctuary with its hoary associations of ancient heroic or patriarchal story, but to a distant and comparatively unfamiliar city with its stately shrine and priesthood.
8. Ezekiel’s System.—Ezekiel was the successor of Jeremiah and inherited his conceptions. But though the younger prophet adopted the ideas respecting personal religion and individual responsibility from the elder, the characters of the two men were very different. Jeremiah, when he foretold the destruction of the external state and temple ritual, found no resource save in a reconstruction that was internal and spiritual. In this he was true to his prophetic impulse and genius. But Ezekiel was, as Wellhausen well describes him, “a priest in prophet’s mantle.” While Jeremiah’s tendency was spiritual and ideal, Ezekiel’s was constructive and practical. He was the first to foretell with clearness the return of his people from captivity foreshadowed by Jeremiah, and he set himself the task even in the midnight darkness of Israel’s exile to prepare for the nation’s renewed life. The external bases of Israel’s religion had been swept away, and in exchange for these Jeremiah had led his countrymen to the more permanent internal grounds of a spiritual renewal. But a religion could not permanently subsist in this world of space and time without some external concrete embodiment. It was the task of Ezekiel to take up once more the broken threads of Israel’s religious traditions, and weave them anew into statelier forms of ritual and national polity. The priest-prophet’s keen eye for detail, manifested in the elaborate vision of the wheels and living creatures (Ezek. i.) and in his lamentation on Tyre (chap. xxvii.), is also exhibited in the visions contained in chaps. xl.-xlviii., which describe the ideal reconstructed temple and theocracy of the restored Israel. The foreground is filled by the temple and its precincts. The officiating priests are now the descendants of the line of Zadok belonging to the tribe of Levi. Thus the priesthood is still further restricted as compared with the restriction already noted in the Deuteronomic legislation. It is the sons of Zadok only that have any right to offer sacrifice at the altar of burnt offering (xliii. 19, xliv. 15 foll.). The Levites, who formerly ministered in the high places, now discharge the subordinate offices of gate-keepers and slaughterers of the sacrificial victims.
Another element in this ideal scheme which comes into prominence is the sharp distinction between holy and profane. The word holiness (qodesh) in primitive Hebrew usage partook of the nature of taboo, and came to be applied to whatever, whether thing or person, stood in close relation to deity and belonged to him, and could not, therefore, be used or treated like other objects not so related, and so was separated or stood apart. The idea underlying the word, which to us is invested with deep ethical meaning, had only this non-ethical, ritual significance in Ezekiel. Unlike the old temple and city, the ideal temple of Ezekiel is entirely separate from the city of Jerusalem. In the immediate surroundings of the temple there is an open space. Then come two concentric forecourts of the temple. The temple stands in the midst of what is called the gizrah or space severed off. The outer court lies higher than the open space, the inner court higher still, and the temple-building in the centre highest of all. No heathen may tread the outer court, no layman the inner court, while the holiest of all may not be trodden even by the priest Ezekiel but only by the angel who accompanies him. “The temple-house has a graduated series of compartments increasing in sanctity inwards” (Davidson). In the innermost the presence of Yahweh abides.
We are here moving in a realm of ideas prevailing in ancient Israel respecting holiness, uncleanness and sin, which are ceremonial and not ethical; see especially Robertson Smith’s Religion of the Semites, 2nd ed., p. 446 foll. (additional note B.) on holiness, uncleanness and taboo. It is, of course, true that the ethical conception of sin as violation of righteousness and an act of rebellion against the divine righteous will had been developed since the days of Amos and Isaiah; but, as we have already observed, cultus and prophetic teaching were separated by an immense gulf, and in spite of the reformation of 621 B.C. still remain separated. In the sacrificial system of sin-offerings (ḥattāth and ’āshām) we have to do with sin as ceremonial violation and neglect (frequently involuntary), or violation of holiness in the old sense of the term or as personal uncleanness (touching a corpse, eating unclean food, sexual impurity, &c.). In the historical evolution of Hebrew sacrifice it is remarkable how long this non-ethical and primitive survival of old custom still survived, even far into post-exilian times. (See [Sacrifice]; also Moore’s art. “Sacrifice” in Ency. Bibl.)
One conspicuous feature of Ezekiel’s system is the predominance of piacular sacrifice. It undoubtedly existed in pre-exilian Israel, especially in times of crisis or calamity, for the appeasement of an offended deity (2 Sam. xxiv. 18 foll.), and in Deut. xxi. 1-9, we have details of the purificatory rite which was necessary when human blood was shed; but now and in the future propitiatory sacrifice and ideas of propitiation began to overshadow all the other forms of sacrifice and their ideas. Ezekiel prescribes a half-yearly ritual of sin-offering whereby atonement was to be made (xlv. 18-20). We shall see subsequently to what great institution this led the way.
Ezekiel’s system constituted an ecclesiastical in place of a political organization, a church-state in place of a nation. We clearly discern how this reacted on his Messianic conceptions. In his earlier oracles (xxxiv. 23 foll.) we find one shepherd ruling over united Israel, viz. Yahweh’s servant David, whereas in the ideal scheme detailed in chap. xl. et seq. the rôle of the prince as a ruler is a very shadowy one. The prince, it is true, has a central domain, but his functions are ecclesiastical and subordinate and his powers strictly limited (xlvi. 3-8, 12, 16-18).
Thus the exile period marks the parting of the ways in the development of Hebrew religion. In the Deutero-Isaiah we reach the highest point in the evolution of prophetism. It is true that we have some noble resounding echoes in the lyrical passages lx.-lxii. In the Trito-Isaiah during the post-exilian period, and in such psalm literature as Pss. xxii., xxxvii., l., lxii., cvii., cxlv. 9-12 and others; and also in Isa. xxxv., which is obviously a lyrical reproduction of earlier literature. But it cannot be said that we possess in later literature any fresh contribution to the conception of God or any presentation of a higher ideal of human life[30] or national destiny than that which meets us in chap. xl. or in the servant-passages of the Deutero-Isaiah. It may with truth be said that after Jeremiah we discern the parting of the ways. The first is represented by the Deutero-Isaiah, who constitutes the climax and close of Hebrew prophetism, which is henceforth (with the possible exception of the Trito-Isaiah, Malachi and Jonah, who reproduce some features of the earlier prophecy) a virtually arrested development. The second path is that which is traced out by the priest-prophet Ezekiel, and is that of legalism, which was destined to secure a permanent place in the life and literature of the Jewish people. It is essentially the path which may be summed up in the word Judaism, though, as will be shown in the sequel, Judaism came to include many other factors. The statement, however, remains virtually true, since Judaism is mainly constituted by the body of legal precepts called the Tōrah, and, moreover, by the post-exilian Tōrah.
9. Post-exilian Law—The Priestercodex.[31]—The oracles of Malachi clearly reveal the continued influence of the book of Deuteronomy in his day. But the new conditions created by the return of the exiles and the germinating influence of Ezekiel’s ideas developed a process of new legislative construction. The code of holiness (Lev. xvii.-xxvi.) is the most obvious product of that influence. The ideas of expiation and atonement so prevalent in Ezekiel’s scheme, which there find expression in the half-yearly sacrificial celebrations, are expressed in Lev. xvi. in the single annual great fast of atonement. It is impossible to enter here into the numerous details of that impressive ceremonial. Two special features, however, which characterize the celebration should here be noted: (a) The person of the high priest, who is throughout the entire drama the chief and indeed the sole actor. This supreme official, who was destined ultimately to take the place of the king in the church-nation of post-exilian Judaism, is mentioned for the first time in Zech. iii. 1[32] (in the person of Joshua). In the Priestercodex he stands at the head of the priests, who are, in the post-exilian system, the sons of Aaron and possessed the sole right to offer the temple sacrifices. On the great day of atonement the high priest appears in a vicarious and representative capacity, and offers on behalf of the whole nation which he was considered to embody in his sacred person. (b) The rite of the goat devoted to Azazel. There can be little doubt that Azazel was an evil demon (like an Arabic Jinn) of the desert. The goat set apart for Azazel was in the concluding part of the ceremonial brought before the high priest, who laid both his hands upon it and confessed over it the sins of the people. It was then carried off by an appointed person to a lonely spot and there set free.
In later post-exilian times this great day of atonement became to an increasing degree a day of humiliation for sin and penitent sorrow, accompanied by confession; and the sins confessed were not only of a purely ceremonial character, whether voluntary or inadvertent, but also sins against righteousness and the duties which we owe to God and man. This element of public confession for sin became more prominent in the days when synagogal worship developed, and prayer took the place of the sacrificial offerings which could only be offered in the Jerusalem temple. The development of the priestly code of legislation (Priestercodex) was a gradual process, and probably occupied a considerable part of the 5th century B.C. The Hebrew race now definitely entered upon the new path of organized Jewish legalism which had been originally marked out for it by Ezekiel in the preceding century. It became a holy people on holy ground. Circumcision and Sabbath, separation from marriage with a foreigner, which rendered a Jew unclean, as well as strict conformity to the precepts of the Tōrah, constituted henceforth an adamantine bond which was to preserve the Jewish communities from disintegration.
10. The later Post-exilian Developments in Jewish Religion.—These may be briefly referred to under the following aspects: