An analysis of religious belief

by viscount John Russell Amberley

One great question has hitherto been left untreated—that of the theology and morals of the Hebrew Bible. Theology and morals are so intimately blended in its pages that the one can scarcely be discussed without involving the other. The character of Jehovah is the pattern of morality; his will is its fundamental law; his actions its exemplification. Hence to consider the character of Jehovah is of necessity to consider also the Hebrew notions of ethics; while to inquire into the Hebrew standard of ethics is to enquire into the commands of Jehovah. Let us try then to ascertain what manner of deity Jehovah is. To do so, our best course will be to select the salient features of his history, as related by the sacred writers.

Now, at the very outset of his proceedings we observe that he takes up towards mankind a very definite attitude: that of a superior entitled to demand implicit obedience. Whether the fact that he was man's creator justified so extensive a claim it is needless in this place to discuss. Suffice it that he had the power to enforce under the severest penalties the submission he demanded. But it might have been expected that a divine being, who assumed such unlimited rights over a race so vastly his inferiors in knowledge and in strength, should at least exercise them with discretion and moderation. It might have been expected that where he claimed obedience it would be with a view to the well-being of his creatures; not merely as an arbitrary exercise of his enormous power. What, on the contrary, is the conduct he pursued? His very first act after he had created Adam and Eve and placed them in Paradise was to forbid them, under penalty of death, to eat the fruit of a certain tree which grew in their garden. There is not even a vestige of a pretense in the narrative that the fruit of this tree would in itself, and apart from the divine prohibition, have done them any harm. Quite the contrary; the fact of eating it enlarged their faculties; making them like gods, who know good and evil. And Jehovah was afraid that they might, after eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, eat also that of the tree of life, after which he would be unable to kill them. So that it was his deliberate purpose in issuing this injunction to keep mankind feeble, ignorant and dependent. Nor is this by any means the whole extent of his misconduct. One of two charges he cannot escape. Either he knew when he created Adam and Eve that their nature was such that they would disobey, or he did not. In the first case, he knowingly formed them liable to fall, knowingly placed them amid conditions which rendered their fall inevitable; and then punished them for the catastrophe he had all along foreseen as the necessary result of the character he had bestowed upon them. In the second case, he was ignorant and shortsighted, being unable to guess what would be the nature of his own handiwork; and should not have meddled with tasks which were obviously beyond the scope of his faculties. And even in this latter case, the most favorable one for Jehovah, he acted with unpardonable injustice towards the man and woman in first creating them with a nature whose powers of resistance to temptation he could not tell, then placing temptation, raised to its utmost strength by a mysterious order, continually under their noses, then allowing a serpent to suggest that they should yield to it, and lastly punishing the unhappy victims of this chain of untoward circumstances by expulsion from their garden. A human parent who should thus treat his children would be severely and justly censured. It is a striking proof how rudimentary were the Hebrew conceptions of justice, that they should have accepted, in reference to their deity, a story which evinces so flagrant a disregard of its most elementary requirements (Gen. ii. 8, and iii). Just as in the case of Adam and Eve, he required implicit obedience to an arbitrary command, so in the case of Abraham he required implicit obedience to an immoral one. There was with him no fixed system of morality. Submission to his will was the alpha and omega of virtue. Observe now how superior is the feeling shown in the Hindu legend which has been quoted as a parallel to that of the projected sacrifice of Isaac. Although in that story the father was bound by a solemn promise to sacrifice his son, yet he is never blamed for his reluctance to do so, though Abraham is praised for his willingness; while the Brahman who is actually prepared to plunge the sacrificial knife into his child's breast is treated with scorn and reprobation for his unfeeling behavior. Even the service of the gods is not made supreme over every human emotion. But the conception of the existence of duties independent of the divine will seems not to have entered the minds of the Hebrew theologians who wrote these books.

The further proceedings of Jehovah are quite in keeping with his beginning in the garden of Eden. Throughout the whole course of the history he shows the most glaring partiality. In its earlier period he is partial to individuals; in its later, to the Hebrew race. Let us notice a few cases of this favoritism as shown towards individual favorites. Immediately after the curse upon Adam and Eve, and their banishment from Eden, we have the instructive story of Cain and Abel, so magnificently dramatized by Byron. These two brothers, sons of the original couple, both brought offerings to Jehovah; Cain, the fruit of the ground; Abel, the firstlings of his flock. But the Lord had respect to Abel and his offering, but not to Cain and his offering. Why was this difference made? Absolutely no reason is assigned for it, and it is not surprising, however lamentable, that it should have excited the jealousy of the brother who was thus ill-treated (Gen. iv. 1-8). Again, it has been remarked above that Abraham and Isaac had a singular way of passing off their wives as their sisters. Pharaoh was once deceived in this way about Sarah; Abimelech of Gerar, once about Sarah, and once about Rebekah. These two monarchs were plagued by Jehovah on account of their innocent mistake; the patriarchs were not even reproved for this cowardly surrender of their consorts to adulterous embraces (Gen. xii. 11-20, xx., xxvi. 7-11). Jacob is another favorite, while his brother Esau is coldly treated. Yet the inherent meanness of Jacob's character, and the comparative excellence of Esau's, are too obvious to escape even a careless reader. What can be more pitiful than the conduct of Jacob in taking advantage of a moment of weakness in his brother to purchase his birthright? (Gen. xxv. 29-34.) What more ungenerous than the odious trick by which he imposed upon his father, and cheated Esau of his blessing? (Gen. xxvii.) What again can be more magnanimous than the long subsequent reception by Esau of the brother whose miserable subserviency showed his consciousness of the wrong he had done him? (Gen. xxxiii. 1-15). Yet this is the man whom Jehovah selects as the object of his peculiar blessing, and whose very deceitfulness towards a kind employer he suffers to become a means of aggrandizement (Gen. xxx. 41-43).

The same partisanship which in these cases forms so conspicuous a trait in the character of Jehovah distinguishes the whole course of his proceedings in reference to the delivery of the Israelites from Egypt and their settlement in Palestine. Every other nation is compelled to give way for their advantage. Pharaoh and all the Egyptians are plagued for holding them in slavery, not in the least because Jehovah was an abolitionist (for he never troubled himself about slavery anywhere else), but because it was his own peculiar people who were thus in subjugation to a race whom he did not equally affect. Throughout the long journey from Egypt to the promised land, Jehovah accompanies the Israelites as a sort of commander-in-chief, directing them what to do, and giving them the victory over their enemies. As the Red Sea was divided to enable them to escape from their enemies on the one side, so the Jordan was cleft in two to enable them to conquer their enemies on the other (Ex. xiv. 21, 22.—Josh. iii. 7-17). The walls of a fortified city were thrown down to enable them to enter (Josh. vi. 20). The sun was arrested in his course to enable them to win a battle (Josh. x. 12-14). Hornets were employed to accomplish the expulsion of hostile tribes without trouble to the Israelites (Josh. xxiv. 12). Thus, as Jehovah afterwards took care to remind them, he gave them a land for which they did not labor, and cities which they did not build (Josh. xxiv. 13).

Nevertheless the lot of the race who were thus highly favored was far from happy. Their God was indeed a powerful protector, but he was also an exacting ruler. His service was at no time an easy one, and he was liable to outbursts of passion which rendered it peculiarly oppressive. Tolerant as he might be towards some descriptions of immorality, he had no mercy whatever for disloyalty towards himself. On one occasion he characterized himself by the name of "Jealous" (Ex. xxxiv. 14), which was but too appropriate, and implied the possession of one of the least admirable of human weaknesses. Now the Israelites were unfortunately prone to lapses of this kind. Such was the severity with which these offenses were treated that it is questionable whether it would not have been a far happier fate to be drowned in the Red Sea with the Egyptians than preserved with the children of Israel. A few instances of what they had to undergo will illustrate this remark.

Moses had impressed upon the people the importance of having no other deity but Jehovah, and had succeeded while he was actually among them in restricting them to his worship alone. But no sooner was he absent for a season than they immediately forsook Jehovah, and took to worshiping a golden calf. Worst of all, this new divinity was set up by Aaron, the brother of Moses, and high priest of the Jehovistic faith. That Jehovah should be rather vexed at such ungrateful behavior, after all the trouble he had taken in plaguing and slaughtering the Egyptians, was only natural; but it was surely an extraordinary want of self-control to propose to consume the whole nation at once, reserving only Moses as the progenitor of a better race. Here, as in other cases, Moses showed himself more merciful than his God. He ingeniously urged as a motive to clemency that the Egyptians would say extremely unpleasant things if the Israelites were destroyed; and after his return to the camp he contrived to appease him by inducing the Levites to perpetrate a fratricidal massacre, whereby three thousand people fell. This measure was described by Moses as a consecration of themselves to the Lord, that he might bestow his blessing upon them. It proved successful, for Jehovah now contented himself with merely plaguing the people instead of exterminating them (Ex. xxxii). Thus, he had scarcely finished plaguing the Egyptians before he began plaguing the Israelites in their turn. Indeed he was at this period peculiarly prone to sending plagues of one kind or another. Some complaints of the Israelites in the wilderness were visited by fire which burnt up those who were at the extremities of the camp (Num. xi. 1-3). When they began to pine for the varied food they had enjoyed in Egypt, and to lament the absence of flesh meat, he sent them quails indeed, but accompanied the gift with a very great plague, of which large numbers perished (Num. xi. 4-34). When they were dismayed by the reports brought them concerning the inhabitants of Palestine, and complained of their God for the position he had brought them into, he again fell into a rage and proposed to destroy them all by pestilence except Moses. But Moses a second time appealed to him on what seems to have been his weak side,—his regard for his reputation among the Egyptians. These had all heard of what he had been doing, and would not they and the other neighboring nations ascribe the destruction of the Israelites in the wilderness to his inability to bring them into the promised land? Moved by this reasoning, Jehovah consented to spare the people, but determined at the same time to avenge himself upon them by not permitting any of those that had come from Egypt (except Joshua and Caleb, who had reported in the proper spirit about Palestine) to set foot within the country to which he had solemnly engaged himself to conduct them (Num. xiv. 1-39). Thus, they were only saved from the Egyptians to perish in the wilderness. Truly, the tender mercies of the Lord were cruel.

But the miseries of these unfortunate wanderers were by no means ended. When, oppressed by the troubles and weariness of the way, they dared to murmur, and inquired of Moses why he had brought them out of Egypt to die in the wilderness, where there was neither tolerable bread, nor water, the resentment of Jehovah was excited by this audacity. They ought to have been only too grateful that they had remained alive. Jehovah had not caused the earth to swallow them as it had done Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, with their wives and little children, because they had ventured to complain of the government of Moses; nor had he destroyed them by plague, as he had destroyed 14,700 people because there had been some expressions of dissatisfaction at the sudden death of those seditious men. If then they had hitherto escaped destruction, they were certainly foolish in complaining of the hardships of the desert. At any rate Jehovah soon convinced them that their grumbling was useless. No constitutional opposition was permitted in those days. Fiery serpents were despatched to bite them, and many of them died in consequence. Such was the extent of the calamity that Moses, always more merciful than his God, interceded for his people; and was directed to set up a brazen serpent, by looking at which the bites of the living serpents were healed (Num. xxi. 1-9).

The extraordinary cruelty ascribed by the Hebrews to their national deity is shown in many other instances besides those that have been mentioned. And it is to be noticed that it is cruelty mingled with caprice. No one could tell beforehand precisely what actions he would visit with punishment, nor what would be the punishment with which he would visit them. Everything with him was uncertain. He had no fixed system of laws at all, and he sometimes condemned a criminal in virtue of ex post facto legislation. The deluge is an example of all these vices combined. It was an excessively cruel punishment; it was inflicted capriciously, and once in a way only, because God had changed his mind as to the propriety of having created man; and it was the result of a resolution arrived at after the offenses it was designed to chastise had already been committed. No human being could possibly have guessed beforehand that his crimes would be punished in that particular way. And after the crimes of the antediluvians had been thus punished, the survivors received a promise that no misconduct on their part would ever be visited upon them in the same way. So that any conceivable utility which the deluge might have had as a warning for the future was utterly destroyed. Equal caprice, though not equal cruelty, was shown towards the builders of the tower of Babel, who were suffered to begin their labors without hindrance, but were afterwards stopped by the confusion of their languages. Why it was wrong to erect such a tower is never stated. Could any of those engaged upon it have guessed that the attempt was one deserving of punishment? Still worse was Jehovah's behavior to the prophet Balaam, for he first ordered him to go with the men who were sent for him, and then was angry with him because he went (Num. xxii. 20, 22). Such conduct was on a level with that of a pettish woman. Instances of barbarous severity may be found in abundance. Nadab and Abihu, sons of Aaron, were devoured by "fire from the Lord," because they had taken their censers, and offered strange fire before him (Lev. x. 1, 2). A man who on the father's side was Egyptian, was ordered to be stoned for blaspheming and cursing the name of the Lord; Jehovah being peculiarly eager in avenging personal affronts (Lev. xxiv. 10-16). On this occasion no doubt a general law was announced affixing the penalty of stoning to the offense of blasphemy; but the law was ex post facto so far as the individual who suffered by its operation was concerned. On another occasion the heads of the people were ordered to be all hung for whoredom with the daughters of Moab, and for idolatry. Phinehas, Aaron's son, seeing an Israelite with a Midianitish woman, ran then both through the body with a javelin; for which heroic exploit against an unprepared man and a defenseless woman he was specially praised; was declared to have turned away God's wrath from Israel, and received a "covenant of peace" for himself and his posterity (Num. xxv. 1-15). At a much later period, when David was causing the ark to be brought back from the Philistines, an unfortunate man who had put out his hand to touch it because the oxen shook it, was immediately slain; an act at which even the pious David was displeased, and which caused him, not unnaturally, to be "afraid before the Lord that day" (2 Sam. vi. 6-9). In the reign of Jeroboam a prophet who had only been guilty of the involuntary error of believing another prophet who had told him a falsehood, was killed by a lion sent expressly for his punishment, while the man who had deceived him escaped scot free (1 Kings xiii. 1-32). Another man suffered for refusing to obey the word of a prophet what this one had suffered for obeying it. Being desired by one of the "sons of the prophets" to smite him so as to cause a wound, and having declined the office, he was informed that for his disobedience to the voice of the Lord he would be slain by a lion, which accordingly happened (1 Kings xx. 35, 36). Mercy towards a conquered enemy was sometimes an actual crime. Because he spared Agag, Saul was rejected from being king over Israel, and the Lord repented that he had appointed so weak-minded a man. Samuel, who was made of sterner stuff, had no scruple in carrying out the behests of his God, for he "hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord" (1 Sam. xv). In like manner Ahab was reproved for sparing the life of Ben-hadad, King of Syria (1 Kings xx. 42, 43). The same monarch whose leniency had thus brought him into trouble was afterwards the victim of a sanguinary fraud practiced upon him by Jehovah. Tired of his reign, and eager to effect his destruction, the Lord put a lying spirit into the mouth of all his prophets, who were thus induced to prophesy victory in an engagement which actually terminated in his defeat and death (1 Kings xxii. 1-40). Observe, that however foolish Ahab may have been in believing the false prophets and disbelieving Micaiah, this does not excuse Jehovah, who according to his own chosen spokesman, deliberately arranged this scheme for the overthrow of the king in the court of heaven. Other barbarous deeds followed upon this. To gratify Elijah, a hundred men who were guiltless of any crime whatever, were consumed by fire (2 Kings i. 9-12). To assuage the wounded vanity of Elisha, forty-two little children were eaten by bears (2 Kings ii. 23, 24). To maintain the glory of the true God, Elijah slaughtered the prophets of Baal to the number of many hundreds (1 Kings xviii. 17-40). To reëstablish the orthodox faith, Jehu got rid of the worshipers of Baal, collected together by an infamous trick, in one indiscriminate massacre; an atrocity for which he was specially praised and rewarded by "the Lord" (2 Kings x. 18-30).

It is needless to prolong the list of cruelties practiced upon private individuals. But the subject would be incompletely treated, did we not observe that the same spirit prevailed in the dealings of Jehovah with nations. Thus, when the Israelites were about to enter the land of Canaan, they were desired utterly to destroy the seven nations who possessed it already (Deut. vii. 2). When they captured Jericho, they slew all its inhabitants, young and old, except the household of the prostitute with whom their messengers had lodged, and who had shamelessly betrayed her countrymen. Her, with her family they saved (Josh. vi. 1-25). All the inhabitants of Ai were utterly destroyed (Josh. viii. 26). All the inhabitants of Makkedah were utterly destroyed (Josh. x. 28). All the inhabitants of many other places were utterly destroyed (Josh. x. 29-43, and xi. 11, 14). One city alone made peace with Israel; all the rest were taken in battle, and that because Jehovah had deliberately and of set purpose hardened the hearts of their inhabitants, that they might be utterly destroyed (Josh. xi. 20).

Such a catalogue of crimes—and the number is by no means exhausted—would be sufficient to destroy the character of any pagan divinity whatsoever. I fail to perceive why the Jews alone should be privileged to represent their God as guilty of such actions without suffering the inference which in other cases would undoubtedly be drawn—namely, that their conceptions of deity were not of a very exalted order, nor their principles of morals of a very admirable kind. There is, indeed, nothing extraordinary in the fact that, living in a barbarous age, the ancient Hebrews should have behaved barbarously. The reverse would rather be surprising. But the remarkable fact is, that their savage deeds, and the equally savage ones attributed to their God, should have been accepted by Christendom as flowing in the one case from the commands, in the other from the immediate action of a just and beneficent Being. When the Hindus relate the story of Brahma's incest with his daughter, they add that the god was bowed down with shame on account of his subjugation by ordinary passion (O. S. T., vol. i. p. 112). But while they thus betray their feeling that even a divine being is not superior to all the standards of morality, no such consciousness is ever apparent in the narrators of the passions of Jehovah. While far worse offenses are committed by him, there is no trace in his character of the grace of shame.