The ethics of the Old Testament

CHAPTER I Introductory

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Nature of Old Testament Ethics— Without scientific form yet progressive — An almost untrodden field — Gains from scientific study of Old Testament — Moral difficulties — Their solution impossible apart from general presentation of Old Testament Ethics — Every science should be set in its own light — Different aims of Theology and Ethics of Old Testament: (1) Contrast between THE Ethics of Old Testament and Ethics of Pagan Antiquity — Plato — Aristotle — Absence of knowledge of sin ; (2) Fundamental Principles of Old Testament Ethics — The Supreme Good — It is thrown forward into the future of Messianic hope — Establishment of a kingdom of righteousness the goal — Never an individual good, but a social one — Doctrine of Virtue — The will of God, not moral consciousness, the basis — The ^ibjective principle a free, loving obedience . . . 1-28

^ CHAPTER II

The Ethical Character of the Old Testament Revelation

The ethics connected with the history of Israel — A natural and theistic basis — Doctrine of evolu-

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tion applied to Israel's religion — The Hegelian school— Theory of Graf and Wellhausen— Religion merely an outcome of the Semitic genius Ethical view of life emerges from Israel's personal relationship to a holy God— Their ethical superiority over other races .... 29-36

CHAPTER III Determinative Principle of Morality in THE Old Testament

A positive principle in every code of morals — Foundation of virtue not found in the Old Testament in man's moral nature — Not a powerless empiricism — Hebrew morality has a religious basis — Apprehension of moral law runs parallel with conception of ethical character of Jehovah — Elohim, El Shaddai, Jahveh, Adonai, merciful and gracious, but full of resentment to sin. Theophanies— God no mere cosmic force, but the living and the Holy One — This relationship at the foundation of the Law — Important moral results from this, shaping life and conduct in Israel — Aid derived here from science of comparative religion — These facts constitute an ethical doctrine of God 37-56

CHAPTER IV Israel, the People of God's Possession

The Law based on this relationship — Separation and consecration of the nation for lofty ethical ends ■ — An election to service, pervaded by a social teleology— Progressive ethicising of this relationship — The truth of individualism not yet acknowledged, but the family comes first in importance — Birth into Israelite family reckoned

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as entrance into kingdom of God — But within this particularism lay the kernel of a universal religion 57-67

CHAPTER V Israel's Code of Dutt (1) ElGHTEOUSNESS IN THE OlD TESTAMENT — This

not equivalent to sinlessness — Use of the "word by Psalmists — The apprehension of sin not so profound and ethical as in New Testament — Rather a legal status than an ethical attainment indicated — Yet not legalism. (2) The Giving of THE Law — Given through Moses and accepted by Israel — Grace as well as command in it — Two different views of its purpose — A pedagogic aspect and an aspect of grace — Primarily, the Law was a distinguishing mark of God's favour to His people ; secondarily, a commandment to check trangression — Romans vii. a bit of autobiography — View of it in Gospels and Epistle to Hebrews 68-84

CHAPTER VI The Law of the Ten Words

Character of the Decalogue — Does it, together with the civil and ceremonial laws, constitute one legislative code ? or are there two codes ? — The Law makes no distinction within itself into permanent and transitory precepts — The Decalogue cast in an archaic mould — Its different forms — The two Tables — Apparent gradation in its commands — Its preface speaks of grace . . 85-98

CHAPTER VII The First Table

Our concern is with the original purport of the Commandments — Not to translate them in terms

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of a Cliristian's duty. The First Gommand/ment — Obedience rested on faith, and morality on religion — Exclusion of the evils of polytheism. The Second Commandment — Proclaims God's spirituality — Danger of Israel falling into idolatry — Worship of Egypt — It prohibited also human sacrifices — Eeason annexed. The Third Commandment — The correct rendering of the words — Forbids profanity generally, and especially one form of it, perjury. 77ie Fourth Commandment — A twofold law, commanding labour and also enjoining rest — Jewish Sabbath a day of rest. The Fifth Commandment — Importance of the family in Israel opposed to modern conception of individualism . . . 99-135

CHAPTER VIII The Second Table

The Sixth Gommand/ment — Duties to our fellow-creatures — A man's lif-e his most valued possession — Capital punishment — The land counted polluted — The jus talionis — Only the highest form of each crime specified. The Seventh Commandment — The sanctity of home — A wife regarded from the standpoint of goods — Morality based on the family — Ethics of divorce — The water of jealousy — Woman in the Wisdom Literature. The Eighth Commandment — Ethics of property — Law of inheritance — Poor-laws. Ninth Commandment — A"' man's goods and his good name — Courts of judgment — Perjury and slander. Tenth Commandment — Rightly ends the precepts of probity — Proves the Decalogue to be not merely a criminal code — Enters the region of motive — The prohibitory form of the Law — The Decalogue not an evolution of Hebrew thought 136-IY5

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CHAPTER IX Old Testament Legislation

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(1) In Relation to Nature — Ethical view of man's relation to the land and to cattle. (2) Legislation in Respect op Man— Rights of freedom — Bondmen in Greece and Canaan — Temple servants — War captives. (3) The Mosaic Law IN Reference to Sanitation fwr excellence a Sanitart Morality — Uncleanness and disease — Comparison with other nations . . . 176-192

CHAPTER X Mosaic Legislation (Continued)

(1) Laws regarding the Poor — Provision made for all — Produce of seventh year — Kindness towards the poor and the stranger, (2) Laws concerning Women and Children— Treatment of woman a moral test of legislation — Education of children in Pentateuch and Proverbs — A high moral ideal presented. (3) Laws relating to Worship — Condemnation of Moloch offerings — " As is the God, so is the religion '^^ Jehovah a moral Deity. (4) Laws relating to Sacrifice — Ethical meaning of offerings and atonement — Laws of purification — A moral idea at the root of all 193-210

CHAPTER XI Old Testament View op a Future Life

Absence of other-worldliness a feature — Contrast with the religion of Egypt — "Book of the Dead " — Doctrine of immortality rooted in precedent beliefs — The foundation of the hope laid

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in communion with God here — The saints feel it must be unending — More clearly developed by prophetism — Question of future rewards and punishments — Piety brings prosperity here — Yet not unmitigated eudeemonism — Prosperity plus God's blessing the end to be sought — The principle of fitness to the stage of moral progress here applicable 211-220

CHAPTER XII Advance and Development

A great pedagogic intent at the centre of the movement — Progress the mark of Old Testament ethics — Contrast with ethnic religions — Early ethical environment of Israel — The outer must become the inner — Morality in the Pentateuch — (1) In Hosea, Amos, Jeremiah, pre-Exilic and post-Exilic Psalms — The worthlessness of the opus operatv/m afi&rmed — Do EzeMel and Daniel encourage a legal externaHsm ? — Ethical monotheism — The golden age of protestants and reformers of Israel. (2) The Wisdom Literature — Proof that the rudimentary stage was passing away — Finds a divine teleology at work — Its subjective principle the fear of the Lord — This the spring of all virtues — The wise man not a utilitarian 221-238

CHAPTEE XIII

Ethics op the Later Judaism

Reactionary tendencies — Return of Ezra and reformation of morals — Scribism and the Talmud — Synagogues and their influence — Lapse into

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legalism — Ethical quibbles — Germs of pbarisaism — Development in the Greek period — Lines of cleavage in tbe Asmonean period — Etbics become utilitarian 239-248

CHAPTER XIV MoKAL Difficulties of Old Testament

Old Testament not to be judged from the polemical ^ platform of to-day — Laws may be given which are not absolutely perfect — May be but stages in a disciplinary process — Misunderstandings — Some general imperfections alleged : (a) Absence of systematic form in ethics — Objection answered ; (b) Ethics marred by a narrow particularism — Answer. Three classes of difficulties: First Class of Difficulties — Difficulties connected with the manner in which the character or action of God is presented — Eelt in Augustine's time — Destruction of Canaanites — The sentence clearly a judicial one — A drastic process, but moral surgery eometimee needed — Such a war of extermination nowadays impossible — Another objection : Does God employ evil spirits as His agents? — The question one of exegesis — Anthropomorphisms — Must not create ethical problems out of Orientalisms . . . 249-271

CHAPTER XV Second Class of Difficulties

(1) The imperfect character of some numbered among Old Testament saints and heroes — The real question, Does God demand only perfect agents ? — These men had virtues that God could make use of : Jacob — Moses — David — The Judges : Ehud and Deborah — Gideon and Sam-

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son. (2) Charges of a spirit of revenge and of worldliness — The imprecatory psalms — The alleged eudaemonism of Wisdom Literature. Third Class of Difficulties — Difficidties arising from alleged moral defects of the laws — Especially as to slavery and law of the Goel — These laws wrought for freedom and righteousness — Concluding remarks .... 272-292

ERRATUM

THE

ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Introduction

Our aim in this volume is to exhibit in short compass the Ethics of the Old Testament in its historic growth and development. It is desirable that we should know what were the sources of moral activity in Israel, and what is the correct interpretation of the life that was lived under the Mosaic Law. We shal] try to discover what good men in those days thought of duty, on what grounds they based obligation, and how they endeavoured to fulfil the great end of life.

The ethics of the Old Testament does not start with any abstract theory of virtue. We need not expect to find in it anything approaching scientific method. It was not given in a form that claimed perfection ; and it bears the marks of incompleteness on its face. It is a morality designed by God for a people at a rudimentary stage of religious education. Its fulfilment is to be found in a higher ethics, of which it is prophetic It ran its race through that early dispensation looking unto Jesus, in whom it blossomed into perfection, and emerged from the stage of hope into one of ever-deepening reality.

But although scientific form be wanting, we shall find, as we examine the history of Israel's growth, that there is a progress from the external to the internal, from the form to the substance, of true morality. Even when, after the Exile, a serious declension from a lofty ethical attitude takes place, the lapse only helps to exhibit the deficiency of the prevalent legalism, and in reality serves a highly educative purpose.

At the present time this subject is one of growing importance. Of recent years a great revival of Biblical study has taken place. The Scriptures of the Old Testament have been invested for all Christian minds with unusual interest, and therefore constitute a peculiarly inviting field of research. The richness of their material, the variety of their forms, the antiquity of their origin, and the unity in which that wonderful variety of topic and treatment is harmoniously blended, have all combined to render this study attractive. To many minds that old book is becoming a new book, standing in new relations, enriched with new contents, and filled with spiritual

INTEODUCTION 3

meaning. And at the heart of its great historical movement we see a Power, not ourselves, making for morality. The ethics of the Old and that of the New Testament are linted into a solidarity of life and interest. The historical method has helped us, as from a mountain top, to distinguish the trend of the great moral purpose which runs from the first chapter of Genesis to the last chapter of the Revelation of St. John. We understand more clearly the significance of St. Augustine's words : Novmn testmnentum in vetere latet : veins e novo patet.

The battle of the critics regarding the authenticity and literary features of these ancient writings is not yet ended. The grain is still upon the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite, and vigorous arms ply the flail. But we are confident that the inspired word will yet be victorious, and that this threshing-floor will be purchased for an altar to Jehovah (2 Sam. xxiv. 21). We have not, however, felt it necessary to the discussion of our main theme to enter into historical details or to determine anything as to the manner in which the Pentateuch was composed. It has been sufiicient for our immediate purpose to be able to trace a clear development of ethical truth parallel with the growth of Eevelation, and to note the well-marked stages of this advance. Of such ethical progress the evidence is ample, and is but little aff'ected by questions of historical criticism. If we should ultimately have to give up some old and revered traditions that have come down to us regarding the growth of the Canon of the Old Testament, yet the laying aside of these will only the more reveal the intrinsic beauty and perennial freshness of the Scriptures. The loss will prove a gain. The soil will be the better for the critics' sifting, and where weeds once stood, flowers and fruit will grow.

One gain we have already reaped. The results of the thorough methods of study applied to these sacred writings have now been gathered up into a very helpful Biblical Theology of the Old Testament. That theology has arranged the varied material in accordance with its historical development and its relative value, giving each part its proper setting in the organic whole. It has distinguished for us a theology of authors and periods, of law and prophets, of wisdom literature and psalms. It has found types of doctrine in the Old Testament as clearly defined as the Petrine, Pauline, and Johannine types in the New. And by a synthetic process it has sought so to combine all these together as to present the theology of the Old Testament in a unity ; while each portion finds its due place in the advancing history of Eevelation, and conduces to its organic completeness.

We mention this science because it has a very close connection with our subject. But we need scarcely add that every other part of the encyclopaedia of theology has shared in the benefit and received new life and vigour.

This revived interest in the Old Testament Scriptures will certainly awaken in many minds a deeper concern in the solution of those moral difficulties that connect themselves with that dispensation. Those difl&culties are not few, and have brought perplexity to many a tender Christian conscience. That perplexity has been increased rather than diminished by some of the methods employed in solving them. Deeds of very doubtful morality have been excused in a manner that could give little satisfaction to a thoughtful mind. The real difference between the old and new Covenants has been ignored or misunderstood. We are convinced that it is only in connection with a general presentation of Old Testament ethics that these difficult passages can be satisfactorily explained. The force of the argument drawn from them vanishes as soon as the course of ethical education in Israel is understood. No solution of any value can be offered until we have comprehended the disciplinary method of Revelation in the Law and the Prophets. It will be found impossible to explain the treachery of a Jael, or the blood-vengeance of a Gideon, or the employment, as instruments of God s revealing grace, of morally defective b THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

agents, unless we have first grasped the pedagogical purport of the Law, and apprehended the correct relationship of Jehovah to His people.

Of old time God spake to the fathers ''by divers portions and in divers manners." This was necessarily so ; for their moral training began at the very lowest stage. It was a long curriculum of education, by slow yet sure gradation, from those early days of ignorance, "^^ which God winked at," up to the fulness of time when Jesus Christ appeared. And it is absolutely necessary that we should learn to judge of the conduct of these men in relation to their moral environment and the stage of ethical advancement that they had reached. If wisely and rigidly carried out, this broad principle will go far to modify, if not remove, those difficulties we have mentioned. Individual cases may remain to be estimated on their own merits and in their historical connection. But once we have grasped the unifying divine purpose that threads all the parts of the Old Testament on its one string, and have learned to regard these parts in their relation to the whole historical development, we shall not fail to see "that the justification of the Old Testament method lies, not in itself at any particular staofe, but in its result as a whole." ^

It is a fundamental canon of literature that,

1 Lux Mundi, p. 329.

SCJR.IPTURE AN ORGANIC WHOLE 7

before we presume to pass judgment on any literary structure, we must know it not only in its parts but in its totality. Partial views are invariably mistaken views ; partial statements always give an imperfect representation. Critics will easily find difficulties in the Old Testament that ''violate every canon of conscience" if they do not make an effort to understand the method of Eevelation and the divine purpose of grace that runs like a golden thread through Hebrew history from its beRinnina: to its end. Let them be content to glance only at portions of it, without seeking to comprehend the grandeur of its proportions and the purity and benevolence of its aim as a whole, and it need not be to us a matter of any wonder that they should miss its true meaning. Just because they have not looked at the morality of the Old Testament in the light of the nation's strange history and environment, they will blunder over the incompleteness of its ethics, its rudimentary legislation, and its defective sense of individual rio;hts. But let us first re2:ard these Scriptures as a living organism ; let us ascertain the genesis andthe laws of the development of the ethics that they teach ; let us understand the determining principle out of which all originate, and to which they again yield a rich return ; let us think ourselves back to the exact circumstances of the time — and then we shall see these moral truths in their correct relation and perspective. And, in the light of the whole, we shall estimate aright the relation and significance of the various parts.

Many books and pamphlets have been written on the moral difficulties of the Old Testament ; but with the exception of a few, they have dealt with them apart from the ethical principles that underlie the structure of the Old Testament Revelation. Need we, then, wonder that the solutions and explanations have been almost as many as the authors, and that scarcely one agrees with another ? We have spent some time in reading through a number of these pamphlets and books, and we have come from the study of them with the conviction that until the fundamental principles of Old Testament ethics have first been established, it is worse than useless to attempt the solution of these problems. They can be explained, and the justice and force of the explanation can be appreciated, only in the combined light of the progressive education of Israel and of the character of that early dispensation. We shall then see that the end is the test of a progressive revelation, and that Jehovah, in carrying out His moral purpose, was long-suffering and gracious, and content for the sake of ethical ends to ''take Israel by the hand," and to lead him even as a nurse leads a child.

In addition to the advantages of such a

RELATION TO OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY 9

treatment, in relation to these moral problems, other benefits will be apparent. Every science is the better for being set in its own light, and having its parts distributed according to their organic connection. Christian ethics is now being cultivated apart from the theology of the New Testament, to the advantage of the science, and with enormous benefit to every student of Scripture, and every preacher of divine truth. In like manner, it will be found useful to give the ethics ^of the Old Testament a separate treatment. Between this science and Old Testament theology there is a more intimate relation than between New Testament theology and Christian ethics. For the latter does not confine itself to the ethical material given in the Gospels and Epistles, else it should be called the ethics of the New Testament. Its duty is to give due interpretation to the Christian consciousness of to-day, as well as to that of the apostles. The spirit of Christ still dwells in Christians and brings forth the fruit of righteous character and holy living. Christian ethics is therefore "the science of the moral life determined by the Spirit of God."^ On the other hand, the Ethics of the Old Testament is in its origin and method historical. In no sense of the word can it be called a speculative science. It springs from an historical revelation, and it must consistently pursue the historical method.

We fully grant to Old Testament theology tlie right to deal with "the religious and the moral life of Israel as a connected whole." ^ But in this connection the ethics can receive only a very incidental and subsidiary treatment. We believe it will be found useful to remove it from that subordinate position, and to give it a treatment by itself. It has its own ground, its own essence, and its own great end. And these can be rightly set forth only when it is exhibited in its integrity and historical development.

The two sciences have much in common, but the aim of each will determine its method. Biblical theology deals with the objective revelation contained in the Old Testament. Ethics looks at that revelation as the rule to which Israel must subj ectively rise. The former will unfold that wonderful organism of Divine deeds and testimonies which begins with the creation, and advances towards its completion in the person and work of Christ. The latter will show how Israel was to cooperate in this purpose of grace as a free agent, and how that purpose met and satisfied ethical wants. The goal of Old Testament theology is Jesus Christ, the mystery hid from ages, but revealed in the fulness of time ; the goal of ethics is the moral perfection of Israel, and, through Israel, the realisation of the

1 Schultz, Old Testament Theology, chap. i. (T. & T. Clark's Trans.)

AN ETHICS OF HOPE 11

world-wide kingdom of God. Hence it is that we must speak of Old Testament ethics as an ethics of hope. The full reconciliation of man with Grod, the total removal of the terrible discord that divides them in the Old Testament, is yet to come. The perfect morality lies in the future. Its complete realisation is to be found in the world-embracing kingdom of God. This contrast will be referred to again in succeeding chapters ; but unless it be firmly grasped at the outset, the ethics of the Old Testament will be burdened with unnecessary difficulties. In Christianity alone does morality reach its perfection, since there alone man has attained to a full consciousness of sin, and has risen through redemption to moral freedom. But in the Old Testament man is only a pupil, to be educated by a wholesome discipline of law into a knowledge of his sinfulness and of his need of deliverance from sin's yoke. Not yet has God Himself, the objective ground of ethics, been personally and historically revealed by the Incarnate Son. Not yet has the Divine Spirit written His Law upon the heart of His people. The Israelite is still conscious of an antithesis subsisting betwixt him and Jehovah, and lives only in a hope, sustained and fed by sacrifice and symbol, of a coming reconciliation. Still is his adoption into true sonship distant, though he is encouraged in many ways to strive to realise it. The command to him is an outward thing, a yoke and a burden. If a faithful son of Abraham, he will give to it the obedience of a true servant ; but he cannot dare to rise up into the assured communion and frankness of one that is a freeborn son. He is still subject to the divine pedagogic spoken of by St. Paul in Gal. iii. 19: ''Wherefore then serveth the law ? It was added because of transgressions till the seed should come to whom the promise was made. . . . 24. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster (tutor) to bring us to Christ." '

L Contrast between the Ethics op the

Old Testament and the Ethics

of Pagan Antiquity.

Between the ethics of pagan antiquity and that of the Old Testament there is a difference of the widest and most radical kind. There is no trace of gradual transition from the one to the other. That difference is first seen in the pagan conception of God and of man's ethical relationship to Him. When God is conceived of as a great nature power, it is impossible for man to stand in free relationship to such a deity. If God is but another name for the cosmos, which is clothed with all the attributes of deity, -then personal relations

1 Oehler's Old Testament Theology, S. 5 (T. & T. Clark) ; Ewald's Lehreder Bibelvon Gott, chap. i. ff.

ETHICS OF PAGAN ANTIQUITY 13

with such a divinity are out of the question, and morality becomes but a calculus of prudential obedience and adjustment to a power greater than man. Now, as distinguished from the ethics of the Old Testament, where the relations of man to God are all-important, we find that the attention of heathendom is directed mainly, if not altogether, to man's relations to the natural w^orld, or to the supersensible world of abstract being. But since to paganism the deity was only another name for the cosmos, or (as Plotinus would have said) for the highest kind of abstract being, the result was that the Greek and the Alexandrian never realised their personal relationship to God. In fact they could not, from their ethical point of view, rise beyond the morality of the state, or that morality which would realise its ideal by abstraction from all that is earthly and sensuous. But where morality is merged in politics, or where the ethical life is conceived of as deliverance from the defilements of corporeal life, or as a mystical elevation to some supersensuous sphere, it is clear that no progress in ethics is possible. We need not wonder, therefore, if in Greece and Eome the sphere of morals did not stretch beyond the narrow limits of nature, and was never regarded as including anything more than national and tribal law. It follows from this that it was essentially a morality between man and man. For where man's relation to a personal God is not apprehended, anything approaching an universal ethics is impossible, and only individual virtues can be manifested. Ethics was thus deprived of its unity. An individual might be esteemed for his generosity though lacking in the counterbalancing virtue of thrift ; or the sin of unchastity might be glossed over by the offender s patriotism. Morality became but a catalogue of separate virtues, and was deprived of that penetrating bond of union which it receives when the realm of human personalities is bound by innumerable links to the great central personality, God.

Even as between man and man, this morality was not unlimited. Plato could not speak of it as valid for the slaves, without whose help, notwithstanding, he believed society was unable to exist. Eegarding virtue as right insight into life, as simply knowledge of a superior kind, he was convinced such knowledge could not be mastered by slaves. The path to virtue was consequently a royal road, open only to the elite of mankind — the philosophers, who were able to take high flights of thought beyond this earth's horizon into that spiritual ether where God dwelt. The cultivation of ethical truth was not for slaves and such like ; it was the proper task and privilege of the aristocracy of talent. This is a view which contradicts the essential idea of morality, and differs toto

ETHICS OF PAGAN ANTIQUITY 15

cwlo from that of the Old Testament. Plato has, no doubt, an apprehension of man beingmade in the image of God, since he urges his pupils to aim at likeness to God as the highest good, and affirms that mundane life should be shaped after the model of the divine ideas. But this likeness to God is never spoken of with any assurance. And to Plato the real relation of mankind in general to God remains an uncertainty.

Any bond that the philosophy of the Academy sought to weave between morality and religion was entirely dissolved by Aristotle. According to the latter, conduct has no relation to the supramundane realm, but only to the state. Obedience to God is out of the question, since He has no ethical relation to man. Morality springs entirely from our rational nature ; and being confined in the sphere of its action to the state, it assumes of necessity a political aspect. And hence it came about in the life of the Greeks that religion and morality were totally dissevered, and we find at last in that country the lamentable resultant of an irreligious morality and an immoral religion.