Prolegomena to the History of Israel

According to xix. 18-24 David flees to the old man at Ramah, where the school of the prophets is; Saul sends messengers to take him, but these, when they come near Samuel and see him in comman

avid, who had no need whatever to wait for Saul at Ramah to play him a trick there. The narrative, which is unknown to the author of xv. 35, arose out of the proverb which is quoted in it, but this receives elsewhere (x. 12) a much more worthy interpretation. We can scarcely avoid the suspicion that what we have before us here is a pious caricature; the point can be nothing but Samuel's and David's enjoyment of the disgrace of the naked king. For the general history of the tradition the most interesting circumstance is that Samuel has here become the head of a school of prophets and the leader of their exercises. In the original view of the matter

his is the justification of the gloss, ix. 9. *************************************** We cannot doubt that these distinctions rest on a h

three, not seven, know nothing of the anointing of the youngest, although they were present and heard their own claims discussed (xvii. 28). In the stories of David's persecution also, chapter xxiv. xxvi., Saul alone is the sacred person, the anointed of Jehovah, not David. A belief that David is chosen for high things by God is quite a different matter from an anointing which has already taken place in fact. And if consequent and antecedent be inseparable, we must remember how, accor

king in a tedious human way, and after many intermediate stages. Of Saul alone was it originally told that the sudden outbreak of the spirit with which he, unelected as he was, summoned the levy of Israel, placed himself at its head, defeated the Ammonites, and became king, was quietly prepared by an old seer, who pointed out to him his great calling, and filled him with confidence in himself by secretly anointing him in the name of Jehovah. All that was known of David was how by his own energy he raised himself from a soldier to be the leader of a band, from that to be the vassal prince, under the Philistines, of Ziklag and Judah, and from a v

t for the purpose, his destination to be Israel's deliverer and leader. This relation between seer and warrior must be held fast and regarded as historical if Samuel is to mean anything at all. Similar instances are those of Deborah and Barak in earlier times, and later, that of Elisha and Hazael, and still more, that of Elisha and Jehu. Samuel's greatness consists in this, that he rouses to activity the man who comes after him, and is greater than he: after kindling the light which now burns in its full brightness, he himself disappears. Bu

confirm in his reign the man whom He had chosen to be king, but overthrew his dynasty. Thus it becomes necessary that Samuel, who anointed Saul, should afterwards sorrowfully reject him. Even here he appears no longer as the simple seer

ll further; when he comes to Bethlehem the elders tremble at his approach (xvi. 4 seq.); and in xix. 18 seq. he has a magical power over men. Up to this stage, however, he has always been regarded as intellectually the author of the monarchy. It is reserved for the last (exilian or post-exilian) stage of

to David's disadvantage by Samuel's blessing; the picture of the one has not suf

are borrowed from the succeeding narrative. But in the narrative Solomon's conduct towards Adonijah, Abiathar, Joab, and Shimei is not dictated by any means by the testament, but by other considerations; and it is the declared object of the narrator to show

etween them and the seer. The belief that the latter was the founder and president of their guild is based on the worthless anachronistic anecdote, 1Samuel xix. 18 seq. Or was Samuel in conspiracy with the priests against Saul? This is inferred from 1Samuel xxi.-xxii. where Abimelech of Nob provides David with bread on his wanderings, and expiates this offence with his own death and that of the whole race of Eli. But in the first place these priests have no connection with Samuel. In the second place there is nothing to make it probable that they had an understanding with David, or were acquainted with his ambitious plans if he had then begun to cherish them. In

.I

y. Here also chronological and religious elements combine to the building

ivity, consists of eleven high priests; thus, reckoning the exile, we have again twelve generations of 40 years each. The detailed figures which compose the total are here more complicated, which is no doubt partly due to the fact that some of them are dates which the reviser found given. Yet in this instance also the number 40 is the basis of calculation, as we see in the reigns of the kings of Judah. From the division of the kingdom to the destruction of Samari

he sum of the parallel years of Judah; and the Israelite years from 1 Jeroboam to 9 Hosea fall short of the years in Judah from 1 Rehoboam to 6 Hezekiah by about the same number. This shows that no effort was made at first to synchronise the individual reigns in the two series. The 242 years of the northern kingdom are divided, by the epoch of 1 Jehu, into 98 and 144. If we take them at 240, the half of 480, the 98 must be changed into 96, which then agree with the contemporary 96 Jewish years. The deduction must be mad

of Ezekiel iv. was first published by Bernhard Duhm (Theol. dir Proph., p. 253). The number 390, given in the Massoretic text in verse 5 for the duration of the captivity of the northern Israelites, is impossible. For Ezekiel cannot mean that they have been 350 years in exile already, and on the other hand he cannot reckon the remaining period of their punishment at more than 40 years, because 40 years is his calculation of the period of exile of Judah, and the restitution of Israel and that of Judah are in his view to take place at the same time; and indeed that of Egypt as well, obviously because brought about by the same cause (xxix. 1 1-16), the fall of th

uch more frequent in Kings than in Judges and Samuel. It makes no difference whether the writer speaks in his own person, or by the mouth of another; in reviews of

en their prayer and their supplication, and maintain their cause, and forgive thy people their unfaithfulness, and give them compassion before them that carried them away captive, that they may have compassion upon them. For they be Thy people and Thine inheritance, which Thou broughtest forth out of Egypt from the midst of the furnace of iron, and didst separate them to Thyself from among all the people of the earth, as Thou spakest by Moses thy servant." What Jehovah answered to this we learn in chapter ix. "I have heard thy prayer and thy supplication which thou hast made before me; I have hallowed this house, to put my name there for ever, and mine eyes and my heart shall be there perpetually. If thou wilt walk before me, as did David thy father, in integrity of heart and in uprightness, to do all that I have commanded thee, and wilt k

e city which I have chosen; because he has forsaken me, and worshipped Astarte of Sidon, and Chemosh of Moab, and Milcom of Ammon, and has not walked in my ways to do that which is right in my eyes, my statutes, and my judgments, like David his father. And it shall be, if thou wilt hearken unto all that I co

Jehovah had forbidden. Yet Jehovah testified to them by all the prophets and seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes according to all the torah which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent unto you by my servants the prophets; but they would not hear, but hardened their necks like their fathers, that they did not believe in Jehovah their God; and they rejected His statutes and His covenant that He made with their fathers, and His testimonies with which He warned them, and they followed vanity and became vain, and went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom Jehovah had charged them that they should not do like them. And they left all the commandments of Jehovah their God, and made them molten images and an Asherah, and worshipped the whole host of heaven, and served Baal; and they caused their children to pass through the fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evi

the more important historical epochs: but from these reservoirs

xviii. 31, 32a; 2Samuel vii. 2b [)#R NQR) WGW''] ) I do not reckon because they proceed from various periods, and are mostly younger than the Deuteronomic revision, and belong rather to

ed worship of Jehovah. A more special standard, and therefore a stricter one, is now employed, and we know the reason of this: the temple having once been built in the place which Jehovah has chosen for Himself, the kindly naturalness hitherto belonging to His worship comes to an end (Deuteronomy xii. 8): and in particular the prohibition of the bamoth comes into force (1Kings iii. 2). That these continued to exist is the special sin of the period, a sin widespread and persistent. It is aggravated by the fact, that with the bamoth all kinds of unlawful abuses crept into the worship of Jehovah, Maccebas

the point of view from which it proceeds. The mere fact that the narrative extends to the destruction of Jerusalem, nay, to the death of the captive king Jehoiachin, shows that we must place the date of the work not earlier than the Babylonian exile, and, indeed, the second p

omon's reign. But such a starting-point is entirely unnatural; Solomon's 40 years cannot be torn up in this way: if we are to make a division at all in that period, it must be at the disruption of the monarchy, the natural point of departure for the series of kings of Israel and of Judah. It deserves remark, that the 37 years of Jehoiachin, at the close of the older mode of calculation, which perhaps only tried to bring out generations of 40 years, but also perhaps a period of 500 years from David (40+40+20+ 41+40+40+81 + 38+ 80 + 79

. This is the light in which the work is to be read; it shows why the catastrophe was unavoidable. It was so because of unfaithfulness to Jehovah, because of the utterly perverted tendency obstinately followed by the people in spite of the Torah of Jehovah and His prophets. The narrative becomes, as it were, a gre

nly trace the guilt of the present up to the commencement, but he exemplifies the principle (like Micah, chapter vi.) chiefly from the early history of Jacob and Moses: as for the really historical period he belongs to it too much himself to survey it from so high a po

t is supplemented by a positive and greatly more suggestive view; we find it also in Deuteronomy xxviii.-xxx., and in Leviticus xxvi. The whole of the past is regarded as one enormous sin, which is to be expiated in the exile (Jeremiah xxxii. 30; Ezekiel

ter the destruction of Samaria by the Assyrians does Judah continue the history alone. Almost the same reverence is paid to David and his house as to the city and the temple. His house has the promise of eternal continuance, with regard to which the writer likes to make use of the words of Jeremiah xxxiii. 17. The book closes, doubtless not by chance, with the liberation from prison of the

citly regarded as the standard is that the discovery of which under Josiah is circumstantially narrated in 2Kings xxii. xxiii., viz., Deuteronomy. We are led to this conclusion, it is allowed on all hands, both by the phraseology of the reviser and by the spirit of his judgments. He condemns those sins specially against which Deuteronomy and the reformation of King Josiah were directed. And the one verbal quotation made from the book of the Torah is from Deuteronomy (2Kings xiv. 6; Deuteronomy xxiv. 16). On the other hand, there are clear signs that the author of the revision was not acquainted with

existence under the influence of Deuteronomy, which pervaded the whole century of the exile. The difference between Deute

me of the kings, are 1Samuel ii. 27 seq.; 2Samuel vii, 1 seq.; 2Kings xviii. 13, 17 se

y demonstration is connected with the mode of dating. The last reviser distinguishes the months not by their old Hebrew names, Zif, Bul, Ethanim, but by numbers,

n religious views. In these views an interest in the prophets mingles with the interest in worship. It is not meant that the selection is due entirely to the last reviser, though it is thoroughly according to his taste; others

y: the history is that of the temple rather than of the kingdom. The fortunes of the sanctuary and its treasures, the institution and arrangements of the kings with reference to worship-we are kept au courant about these, bu

measure: often there is nothing but the names and succession of the kings. We learn hardly anything about King Omri, the founder of the town of Samaria and re-founder of the kingdom, who seems to have reduced Judah also to the position of a dependent ally, nor do we learn more about Jeroboam II., the last great ruler of Israel; while the conflict with the Assyrians and the fall of Samaria are despatched in a couple of verses which tell us scarcely anything at all. Sometimes a brilliant breaks in on the surrounding night (2Kings ix. x.), but a

thing became a sin; for the people went as one man, even unto Dan. And he made temples of high places, and took priests from the midst of the people which were not of the house of Levi; whomsoever he would he installed as priest of the high places " (1Kings xii. 26-30, xiii. 33). The perversion is scarcely so great as in Chronicles, but the anachronism is sufficiently glaring in the mode of view discernible in these reflections of Jeroboam, who appears to feel that the Ephraimite kingdom was illegitimate in its origin and could only be kept separate from the south by artificial means. The blessing of Jacob and the blessing of Moses show us what the sentiment of Northern Israel actually was. In the former Joseph is called the crowned of his brethren, in the second we read "His first-born bullock, full of majesty (the king), has the horns of a buf

om the Jewish pattern are represented as intentional innovations of the first king, in whose sin posterity persisted. But in making Bethel and Dan temples of the kingdom-that he set up high places, is a statement which need not be considered-Jeroboam did nothing more than Solomon had done before him; only he had firmer ground un

, as wrong as to regard Aaron's golden calf as a copy of Apis. The peculiarity of the animal-worship of Egypt, and of its bull-worship in particular, was that sanctit

ns of the Jehovah of Bethel and Dan, and did not think of protesting against His pictorial representation; even Amos makes no such protest, Hosea is the first

also set up high places and pillars on every high hill, and under every green tree, and whoredom at sacred places was practiced in the land." This state of things continued to exist, with some fluctuations, till near the time of the exile. If then the standard a

by the prophet Abijah of Shiloh, he caused the Ephraimite Jeroboam, who then had the supervision of the forced labour of the house of Joseph in the fortification of the city of David, to be nominated as the future king of the ten tribes. So we read in 1Kings xi. But Edom, and, as it appears, Damascus as well, broke away from the kingdom of David immediately after his death (xi. 2I seq., 25); and the fortification of the citadel, in which Jeroboam was employed when incited to revolt by Abijah, though it falls somewhat later, yet belongs to the first half of Solomon's reign, since it is connected with the rest of his buildings (ix. 15, 24). Now Solomon cannot have been punished by anticipation, in his youth, for an offence which he only

s the case in Chronicles. What reminds us most strongly of Chronicles is the introduction from time to time of a prophet

1 seq. In many instances no doubt the reviser found flints in his sources and worked them out in his own style; thus, 1Kings xiv. 7 seq., xxi 21 seq. 2Kings ix. 7 seq. In these passages the Deuteronomistic ideas and the phraseology of Jeremiah and Ezekiel are distinctly present [ HNNY MBY) R(h ], but detac

ical worthlessness may compare with Judges xix.-xxi. or 1Samuel vii. seq., or even stands a step lower, is 1Kings xiii. A man of God from Judah here denounces the altar of Bethel, at which King Jeroboam is in the act of offering sacrifice, in these terms: "O altar, altar, behold a son shall be born to 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 burned upon thee." And to guarantee the truth of this prophecy, to be fulfilled three hundr

re in, by their brevity and directness of statement and the terseness of their form, and have the semblance of contemporary records. In spite of their looseness of arrangement these form the real basis of our connected knowledge of the period; and the religiou

. 1 seq., gives a good example of this; we at once pick out the terse )z ybnh wgw''

th anecdotic chaff. They are afterwards found principally, almost exclusively, in the

ed to the brief notices spoken of above, and appear to be based on them. It may be surmised that such definite numbers, existing at one time in much greater abundance, afforded the data for an approximate calculation of the figures on which the systematic chronology is built up. These single dates at any rate are not themselves

ree very well with this theory, for the sons of Zadok were, down to Josiah's time, nothing else than the obedient servants of the successors of David, and regarded the unconditional authority claimed by these kings over their sanctuary as a matter of course (2Kings xvi. TO seq., xii. 18). These notices, however, as we have them, are not drawn from the documents themselves, but from a secondary compilation, perhaps from the two sets of chronicles cited at the end of each reign of the kings of Israel and those of Judah, from whi

omistic scheme. Of these the Jewish ones are the minority, the greater part are Samaritan, but they all belong to a very limited period of ti

th that he was not to be found there. Now, however, necessity obliged him to think of other things; he had to go out himself with his minister Obadiah to seek fodder for the still remaining war-horses (Amos vii. 1). In this humiliating situation he all at once met the banished man. He did not believe his eyes. "Is it thou, O troubler of Israel?" "I have not troubled Israel, but thou and thy father's house!" After this greeting Elijah challenged the king to institute a contest between the 450 prophets of Baal, and him, the only prophet of Jehovah left remaining. A trial by sacrifice took place on Mount Carmel before the whole people. Each party was to prepare a bullock and lay it on the altar without setting fire to the wood; and the divinity who should answer by fire was the true God. The prophets of Baal came first and sought after their own manner to influence their deity. They shouted and

the direst vengeance, the instruments of which he is himself to summon to their task, is to go forth on all the worshippers of Baal, and that those 7000 who have not bowed their knee to Baal shall gain the day-"Thou shalt anoint Hazael to be King over Damascus, and Jehu ben Nimshi shalt thou anoint to be iiing over Israel, and Elisha ben Shaphat to be prophet in thy room; and him that escapeth the sword of Hazael shall Jehu slay, and him that escapeth the sword of Jehu shall Elisha slay." The account of the execution of these commands by Elijah is at present wanting; we shall soon see why it was omitted. The conclusion of chapter xix. only tells us that he called Elisha from the plough to follow him. Of the account of the judgment which overtook the worshippers of Baal, this group of narratives contains only the beginning, in chapter xxi. Ahab wanted to have a vineyard which was

wer to the announcement in chapter xix. and xxi.; they are drawn from other sources. According to xix. 1 7 the Syrian wars ought to result in vengeance on the worshippers of Baal, and specially on the idolatrous royal house; but in the narrative of the wars (1Kings xx. xxii. 2Kings vii. ix. ) this point of view does not prevail. On

ix. 1 seq.). This is the reason of the above remarked omission after 1King

of Ahab is to be shed at Jezreel; according to 2Kings ix. 25 his son's blood was shed there, to avenge Naboth. It is true, the explanation is appended in xxi. 27-29, that, as the king took to heart the threats of Elijah, Jehovah m

d xxii. 38 "and they washed the chariot in the pool of Samaria, and the dogs licked up his blood, and the harlots bathed in it, according to the word of Jehovah." Thus it is explained how the dogs were able to lick his blood in Samaria, though it had had plenty of time to dry up after

vineyard, but about the field of Naboth, which lay some distance from the town. His family was put to death along with him, and on the following day, when Ahab rode out IN COMPANY WITH JEHU and Ben Deker to take

rely extirpated at the time and Elijah alone left surviving. The prophetic guilds at Bethel, Jericho, and Gilgal continued without any interruption. In the Syrian wars prophets of Jehovah stand by the side of Ahab; before his last campaign there are four hundred of them collected in his capital, one of them at least long known to the king as a prophet of evil, but left alive before and left alive now, though he persisted in his disagreeable practices. Of the sons whom Jezebel bore him, Ahab called one Ahaziah, i.e. Jehovah holds, and another Jehoram, i.e. Jehovah is exalted: he adhered to Jehovah as the god of Israel, though to please his wife he founded at Samaria a temple and a cultus of the Syrian goddess. This being so, Elijah's contest with Baal cann

n talent for murder. He was not borne along by any general movement against the dynasty; the people, which he despised (x. 9), stood motionless and horrified at the sight of the crimes which came so quickly one after another; even a hundred years afterwards the horror at the massacre of Jezreel still lived (Hosea i. 4). The crown once gained, the reckless player showed his gratitude to the fanatics, and sent the priests and worshippers of Baal after the priests of Jehovah whom he had slaughtered along with all belonging to the royal house (x. 11). The manner in which he led them into the snare (x. 18 seq.) shows that no one had thought before this of regarding him as the champion of Jehovah; and even at this time his zeal was manifestly only ostensible: he was not fighting for an idea (x. 15. seq.). Thus we see that Baal did not bring about the fall of the house of Ahab, but common treason; the zealots em

t have been drawn as we have it except from the impression produc

Deuteronomy i. 2. A man of Judah could not easily make so considerable a mistake about the distance, though we have to remember that with this narrator the situation of Horeb can scarcely have been that which we have long been accustomed to assume. An

they become the principal personages. They were important ideally, and influenced the future rather than the present; but this was not enough, a real tangible importance is attributed to them. In the time of Ahab and Jehu the Nebiim were a widespread body, and organised in orders of their own, but were not highly respected; the average of them were miserable fellows, who ate out of the king's hand and were treated with disdain by members of the leading classes. Amos of Tekoa, who, it is true, belonged to

lour, which is quite a different thing from tendency. I think only of that uniform stamp impressed on the tradition by men who regarded history exclusively from the point of view of their own principles. Here we observe first a religious influence, which in the Books of Samuel and Kings turns out to be the prophetical one. The view appears to me erroneous that it is to the prophets that the Hebrew people owe their history as a whole. The song, Judges v., though perhaps the oldest historical monument in the Old Testament, cannot be cited in support of that view, for even if it

g, for the new generation. A continuous revision of them was made, not only in the Chronicles, at the beginning of the Greek domination, but, as we have seen in this chapter, even in the Babylonian exile. The style of the latter revision differed from that of the former. In Chronicles the past is remodelled on the basis of the law: transgressions take place now and then, but as exceptions from the rule. In the Books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings, the fact of the radical difference of the old practice from the law is not disputed. In these works also the past is in some cases remodelled on the basis of the ideal, but as