The Evolution of Old Testament Religion

by W. E. Orchard

It will be necessary for us to examine the circle of ideas which form the background of the Messianic hope and from which the idea of the Messiah emerges. When the Prophets speak of the future they often use a strange phrase: "the day of the Lord." This is found first in Amos (v. 18), but its occurrence there shows that it was already a term in use among the people, for Amos had to dissent from the popular idea of its character. The term comes from the Hebrew idiom of the "day" of battle, and it comes to be used of the great conflict in which Jehovah will entirely overthrow the enemies of Israel; it is therefore looked for with expectant hope. Amos points out that the manifestation of Jehovah will be fatal to sin, whether in Israel or in other nations: dies iræ, dies illa. Thus modified by Amos this is the conception which, with varying details, becomes the prophetic idea of the Day of the Lord. It may therefore come in some threatened invasion; later, it is conceived as a gathering of all the nations against Jerusalem, from which we get the picture of Armageddon, the last great war before the establishment of peace; and finally it becomes the world assize, and so the "day" of judgment of the New Testament. This "day" is to separate the history of God's dealings with men into two distinct periods, and will be the dividing line between the perfect and the imperfect; so that all the bright visions of the future are to be "after those days." The Prophets believe that reconstruction can only come after destruction, that history will reach its ideal over a precipice; they believe in a reform by cataclysm rather than by evolution. Every threatening of political change or national disaster may herald the coming of that day; it is always at hand; to their vision, they are living near the finality of things. There is a great deal in this imagery that fails to appeal to modern ideas of history and progress. It was part of the prophetic scheme and as such was a limitation of perfect vision; but shorn of its mere form it remains a witness to their consciousness of the activity of God in human history and of His judgment in the crises of the world. The form was a limitation essential to their stage of mental evolution and to its intelligibility to their age; its spirit is an eternal message to mankind.

Immediately after the Day of the Lord, the Messianic Age is ushered in, and in depicting the conditions of that time the lyrical genius of the Prophets reaches its supreme expression, and these passages still inspire the reformer and move men with their ideals of peace. The picture of that age is composed by projecting into the future their own institutions and especially their religious conceptions. They picture a condition of human society which is best described in the phrase, "the kingdom of God"; for although such an expression never breaks forth from their lips, its contents are obviously in their minds. It is to be a community in which the will of God is perfectly realised, when religion shall no longer consist in statutes and commands, but in the recognition of an inner law. Absolute righteousness, individual and civil, will prevail, and the nations shall learn war no more. The animal and natural creation will share in this beneficent order: the lion shall lie down with the lamb, and the wilderness shall blossom like the rose; the veil shall be torn from men's vision, all tears shall be wiped away, and death shall be swallowed up in victory.

When they come to depict the subjects of this kingdom they fail to attain to the inner and ethical requirements enunciated by Jesus, for national hopes and ambitions still cloud their outlook. There are two streams of thought—one frankly particularistic, where the future of the heathen is ignored, or where they are simply to be exterminated; and the other universalistic, where the conversion of the whole world is expected (Isa. xlv. 22; Jer. xii. 14 ff, xvi. 19; cp. Isa. xi. 14–16 with xix. 18–25). It is somewhat surprising, in view of the subsequent development of these ideas under Christian thought, that the sphere of this tremendous change is conceived to be this present earth; and even when the necessity of a new earth and a new heaven is considered, it is still earth that is to be the chief theatre of events. Heaven is conceived of as the dwelling place of Jehovah, but there is no idea that this great change is to be postponed or relegated to some heavenly condition; heaven is to come down to earth and Jehovah is to dwell among His people and be their God.

It is from the ground of these ideas that there arises the conception of the person known as the Messiah, who shall be the Divine instrument in bringing about this blessed condition. Messiah is from the Hebrew, Mashiah, and means "anointed one." The actual phrase, the Messiah, without further qualification, is not found in the Old Testament (Dan. ix. 25, A.V. "The Messiah" is incorrect; it should read: "an anointed one, a prince," as R.V. mar.); but after the closing of the Canon the phrase was constantly used to denote the Jewish hope of the appearance of a singular person, of Davidic descent, who should be superhumanly endowed, and who should overturn the enemies of the Jews and place their nation at the head of the world. The title recalls the mode of consecration used for priests and kings by anointing them with oil (Lev. iv. 3, 5, 16; vi. 22; 1 Sam. ii. 35; xii. 3), and "the anointed of Jehovah" is the common title for the kings of Israel. The origin of this idea of the Messianic King may certainly be traced to Nathan's promise to David of a perpetual seed which should occupy his throne and be the special delight and care of Jehovah (2 Sam. vii. 2–17). In the presence of a weak or unworthy occupant of the throne this promise would come to mind, and would gather new meaning as the Prophets saw in the troubles of their times the imminence of the Day of the Lord. It is to the prophet Isaiah that we owe a striking conception of a monarch who not only fulfils his promise but transcends it in a way that is hardly conceivable in a merely human king. The first emergence of this hope in the mind of the prophet occurs when he attempts to restrain Ahaz from joining the fatal confederacy of Syria and Ephraim against Assyria. When Ahaz demands some confirmation, the prophet promises the sign of a young woman who shall bear a child named Immanuel (Isa. vii. 14–17). Following Matthew, Christian expositors have taken this to be a prophecy of the virgin birth of Jesus; although it is difficult to see how this could be a sign to Ahaz. The subject is obscure to the last degree. The Hebrew word rendered "a virgin," although capable of such a special application, means simply a young woman. The translation "virgin" was first made by the Septuagint, and this may point to the fact that at the time this version was made the Messiah was expected to be born of a virgin. The prophecy seems to have arisen from the conviction that the Assyrian invasion would bring into existence some person who should represent the active presence of God with His people; and beyond this explanation there is nothing but mere speculation. But in a later oracle of Isaiah's (ix. 6f), the conception has grown in definiteness, and this expected person is crowned with such honorific titles as "Wonder of a Counsellor, Hero-God, Father of Eternity, Prince of Peace." To our ears these titles convey the sense of absolute Divinity, but it is questionable whether they meant that to Isaiah. Eastern monarchs have always been addressed with high-sounding titles, and Isaiah's language may have been coloured by foreign court customs; but still it would remain that the titles lead us to expect an unexampled figure who possesses attributes that mark him out as specially equipped by God. Once more Isaiah returns to this figure (xi. 1–12), and now definitely asserts that he shall spring from David's line; only now the majesty of his person is conceived as due to his seven-fold possession of the Spirit of Jehovah, and his character fits him rather for administrative and prophetic work. Micah, a contemporary of Isaiah, has much the same figure (v. 2–5) of a mighty prince of Davidic lineage and of mysterious birth (Bethlehem simply stands here for David's line, and "whose outgoings have been from eternity" probably means nothing more than that his descent shall spring from this ancient ancestor). There is an inexplicable element in these predictions, but they have been found elsewhere, outside Israel, in times of great national danger or expectation. In Israel, the idealisation of David, the personal element in her history, and the increased possibilities discovered in human personality when under the complete dominion of the Spirit of Jehovah, have contributed to the creation of this figure. It cannot be said that it was a mental vision of the person of Jesus that shaped the prophecy, for it must not be forgotten that it was an immediate fulfilment that they expected; and indeed their picture so utterly misled the Jews, that, when Christ claimed to be the Messiah, they treated His claim as blasphemous. While we can see that Christ was indeed a King, it is only by a spiritual conception of kingship, and only after the verdict of history has crowned Him as a true ruler of men; not by any actual resemblance to the external magnificence of the Messianic King. When the Messianic call came to Jesus He found in these passages a difficulty, for they outlined a programme He could only reject; but it was other and indirect allusions of the old Testament, some of which had never been considered as Messianic, that Jesus took for His pattern. This meant a reading of prophecy very different from that of the Jews of His time, and it is surely here that the views we have found ourselves forced to accept in regard to Old Testament prophecy can claim the support of Jesus Himself. It is important to grasp this point: the argument from predictions definitely fulfilled in Jesus has failed to convince the Jews, who ought to understand their own Scriptures best, and we must recognise that it is only a spiritual interpretation of prophecy and a valuation of Jesus which owes nothing to flesh and blood that can see in Him One of whom all the Prophets bore witness.

It is to these other conceptions, to which the spiritual intuition of Jesus led Him in His search for support for His Messianic ideals, that we must now turn.

The first of these in importance is undoubtedly "the Servant of the Lord." We saw when examining this idea that it was an ideal of a nation rather than of an individual, and yet it was upon this that Jesus fixed, and it was this idea that seemed to mould His whole conception of His mission. According to Luke, the first discourse of Jesus took place in the Synagogue at Nazareth, where He set forth His programme and policy, and stated them to be identical with those the prophet had outlined for the nation centuries before (Luke iv. 16–21; Isa. lxi. 1, 2); and the evangelist Matthew sees in the methods of Jesus a fulfilment of the prophecy of the Servant (Matt. xii. 18–21; Isa. xlii. 1–4). It was probably as Jesus saw the clouds gather about His life and disaster began to threaten that He was led to study the career of that Servant and see that it involved suffering, being despised and rejected of men; and so He came to find the key to the mystery of His Cross in that classic of the vicarious life, the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. Jesus was probably the first to interpret that passage in a Messianic sense.

His reason for adopting the title of "the Son of Man" is exceedingly difficult to trace; it may be said that no completely satisfactory explanation of the origin or meaning of the term has yet been discovered, and in the present state of research on the subject it would be folly to commit ourselves to any of the theories that have been propounded. We can only keep in mind the various facts, which the use of this title in the Gospels presents to us. It is clear that Jesus did not intend the title to be a declaration to the world that He had accepted the Messianic call; for all along it was His deliberate purpose to conceal His Messiahship, and for reasons that are obvious, when we consider the difference between His conception of Messianic function and that of the Jews of His day. Again, although there is a slight difference between Daniel, where we only hear of "one like unto a son of man," and Jesus who calls Himself "the son of man," yet when challenged by the high-priest Jesus certainly quotes from Daniel (Dan. vii. 13; Mark xiv. 62). Now in Daniel it is not a person who is figured by this title, so much as a humane kingdom which is to replace the kingdoms that were more like beasts in their character. It is only in the Book of Enoch that the Son of Man is definitely identified with the Messiah. Did Jesus ever read that Book, or were its ideas at all commonly known? If so we should have to concede that the Son of Man meant the Messiah, both to Jesus and to the people, and yet this is an apparent contradiction of His general motive in keeping the Messiahship secret.

Perhaps, and the suggestion is made with the knowledge that in the present state of the problem it can be nothing more than a suggestion, there is a line that has not been exhausted, and along which help may yet be found. It starts from the fact that Jesus seems to have adopted the character of the Servant of the Lord under the name of the Son of Man; and we have seen that both these are ideals of a community or a nation rather than of a person. Again, that somehow the title "the Son of Man" had Messianic significance, and in the mind of Jesus was connected with the figure in Daniel, is seen from His confession before Caiaphas. The contradiction between these facts and the purpose of concealing His Messiahship can perhaps be solved by noticing that Jesus never explicitly identifies Himself with the Son of Man; and if all the passages where this title is found in the Synoptics are examined, they seem to separate themselves into three distinct groups: (1) where the reference might be not only to Jesus Himself but to Man fulfilling his ideal; (2) where the reference is to the suffering which the Son of Man must undergo; (3) and most important, this term is always used when Jesus speaks of that mysterious return on the clouds which is known as the Second Advent. The conclusion to which it is suggested all these facts point is that although Jesus believed Himself to be the personal centre on which the Messianic hope converged, it was not to Himself personally, but to the new humanity which His Spirit should beget, that He looked for the complete fulfilment of the Messianic hope. Thus at least are linked together the fact that the Prophets are occupied rather with the Messianic community than with the Messiah, and the fact that Jesus made the centre and aim of His teaching the Kingdom rather than its personal embodiment in Himself. Jesus certainly read these Prophets more according to their real inwardness than any of His contemporaries or than many generations of Christian scholars; and there is no better preparation for the serious study of the Gospels than a careful examination of the growing revelation of the Old Testament religion, and the inner meaning of the Messianic hope.

Of this wonderful growth and moving revelation, it can be said, in a way deeper than the old typological and prophetic methods of study could understand, that Christ is the aim and the goal; not only Jesus of Nazareth with His unique Personality, but that still more transcendent mystery, the Christ within the heart, Christ the head of every man. If we have learned nothing else, surely we have learned this: that behind the hopes of mankind, behind their misty dreams, their gropings after truth, their struggles for righteousness, are the eternal thoughts of God; and although these may transcend their poor reflection in the mind of man, as the heavens the earth, yet this remains: that for every hope implanted, there is an answer beyond our expectation; for every desire Godward, the revelation of the Father-friend; for every ideal of the human heart, the Christ; and for every effort after human progress, the ever nearer coming of the Kingdom of God.