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CONTRADICTIONS.

TABLE OF JEHOVAH I.—

continued.

Jehovah said, 'Who shall deceive Ahab?... And there came forth a spirit, and stood before Jehovah, and said, I will deceive him. And Jehovah said, Wherewith? And he said, I will go forth and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets. And he said, Thou shalt deceive him, and prevail also go forth and do so. Now, therefore, Jehovah hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and Jehovah hath spoken evil concerning thee' (1 Kings xxii.). See Ezek. xx. 25.

Deut xx. 10-18, is a complete instruction for invasion, murder, rapine, eating the spoil of the invaded, taking their wives, their cattle, &c., all such as might have been proclaimed by a Supreme Bashi-Bazouk.

TABLE OF JEHOVAH II.—
continued.

Exod. xx. 16. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.'

Exod. xx. 17. 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour's.'

Instances of this discrepancy might be largely multiplied. Any one who cares to pursue the subject can trace the building upon the powerful personal Jehovah of a religion of human sacrifices, anathemas, and priestly despotism; while around the moral ruler and judge of the same name, whose personality is more and more dispersed in pantheistic ascriptions, there grows the common law, and then the more moral law of equity, and the corresponding sentiments which gradually evolve the idea of a parental deity.

It is obvious that the more this second idea of the deity prevails, the more he is regarded as 'merciful,' 'longsuffering,' 'a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right,' 'delighting not in sacrifice but mercifulness,' 'good

PROCESS OF DETACHMENT.

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to all,' and whose tender mercies are over all his works,' and having no pleasure in the death of him that dieth;' the less will it be possible to see in the very same being the 'man of war,' 'god of battles,' the 'jealous,' 'angry,' 'fire-breathing' one, who 'visits the sins of the fathers upon the children,' who laughs at the calamities of men and mocks when their fear cometh. It is a structural necessity of the human mind that these two shall be gradually detached the one from the other. From one of the Jehovahs represented in parallel columns came the 'Father' whom Christ adored: from the other came the Devil he abhorred.

CHAPTER VI.

THE CONSUMING FIRE.

The Shekinah-Jewish idols-Attributes of the fiery and cruel Elohim compared with those of the Devil-The powers of evil combined under a head-Continuity-The consuming fire spiritualised.

THAT Abraham was a Fire-worshipper might be suspected from the immemorial efforts of all Semitic authorities to relieve him of traditional connection with that particular idolatry. When the good and evil powers were being distinguished, we find the burning and the bright aspects of Fire severally regarded. The sign of Jehovah's covenant with Abram included both. 'It came to pass that when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces' (of the sacrifice). In the legend of Moses we have the glory resting on Sinai and the burning bush, the bush which, it is specially remarked, was 'not consumed,' an exceptional circumstance in honour of Moses. To these corresponded the Urim and Thummim, marking the priest as source of light and of judgment. In his favourable and adorable aspect Jehovah was the Brightness of Fire. This was the Shekinah. In the Targum, Jonathan Ben Uzziel to the Prophets, it is said: The mountains trembled before the Lord; the mountains Tabor, Hermon, Carmel said one to the other: Upon me the Shekinah will rest, and to me will it come. But the

THE SHEKINAH.

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Shekinah rested upon Mount Sinai, weakest and smallest of all the mountains. This Sinai trembled and shook, and its smoke went up as the smoke of an oven, because of the glory of the God of Israel which had manifested itself upon it.' The Brightness 1 passed on to illumine every event associated with the divine presence in Semitic mythology; it was the glory of the Lord' shining from the Star of Bethlehem, and the figure of the Transfiguration.

The Consuming Fire also had its development. Among the spiritual it was spiritualised. 'Who among us shall dwell with the Devouring Fire?' cries Isaiah. 'Who among us shall dwell with the Everlasting Burnings? He that walketh righteously and speaketh uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil.' It was by a prosaic route that the Devouring Fire became the residence of the wicked.

After Jeroboam (1 Kings xiii.) had built altars to the Elohim, under form of Calves, a prophet came out of Judah to denounce the idolatry. And he cried against the altar in the word of Jehovah, and said, O altar, altar! thus saith Jehovah, Behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall be burnt upon thee.' It was deemed so important that this prophecy should be fulfilled in the letter, when it could no longer be fulfilled in reality, that some centuries later Josiah dug up the

It is not certain, indeed, whether this Brightness may not have been separately personified in the 'Eduth' (translated 'testimony' in the English version, Exod. xvi. 34), before which the pot of manna was laid. The word means 'brightness,' and Dr. Willis supposes it may be connected with Adod, the Phoenician Sun-god (Pentateuch, p. 186).

bones of the Elohistic priests and burned them upon their long-ruined altars (2 Kings xxiii.).

The incident is significant, both on account of the prophet's personification of the altar, and the institution of a sort of Gehenna in connection with it. The personification and the Gehenna became much more complete as time went on. The Jews originally had no Devil, as indeed had no races at first; and this for the obvious reason that their so-called gods were quite equal to any moral evils that were to be accounted for, as we have already seen they were adequate to explain all physical evils. But the antagonists of the moral Jehovah were recognised and personified with increasing clearness, and were quite prepared for connection with any General who might be theoretically proposed for their leadership. When the Jews came under the influence of Persian theology the archfiend was elected, and all the ElohimMoloch, Dagon, Astarte, Chemosh, and the rest-took their place under his rebellious ensign.

The descriptions of the Devil in the Bible are mainly borrowed from the early descriptions of the Elohim, and of Jehovah in his Elohistic character. In the subjoined parallels I follow the received English version.

Gen. xxii. 1. 'God tempted Abraham.'

Exod. v 3. 'I (Jehovah) will harden Pharaoh's heart;' v. 13, 'He hardened Pharaoh's heart.'

Matt. iv. I. 'Then was Jesus led up into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.' See also I Cor. vii. 5, 1 Thes. iii. 5, James

i. 13.

John xiii. 2. The devil having now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him.

1 It is important not to confuse Satan with the Devil, so far as the Bible is concerned. Satan, as will be seen when we come to the special treatment of him required, is by no means invariably diabolical. In the Book of Job, for example, he appears in a character far removed from hostility to Jehovah or goodness.