It is from this point of view that the import of the Divine covenant affirmed to have been made with the patriarch, and the assurances which it conveyed of a great future in store for their posterity, must be considered. The ultimate greatness of Israel existed potentially from the first; and those who held the course of the world to be ordered by a Divine will naturally and rightly believed that the destiny of their race was providentially directed. In this, indeed, they were not singular. The idea that the fortunes of a nation were the special care of the nation's god was shared by Israel with Moab, Assyria, and other peoples; and is familiar enough in classical literature. But the destiny of Israel did not culminate with national aggrandizement, though it is possible that in the promises recorded to have been made by God to the patriarchs this is principally in the mind of the historian. The development of a doctrine of God which the civilized world has made its own, and the gradual shaping of hopes which found their fulfilment in our Lord, give to the early beliefs of Israel a distinction the equal of which cannot be claimed for those of any other ancient people.
While other nations had the misleading idea that this or that, other than righteousness, is saving, and it is not; that this or that, other than conduct, brings happiness, and it does not; Israel had the true idea that righteousness is saving, that to conduct belongs happiness. Nor let it be said that other nations, too, had at least something of this idea. They had, but they were not possessed with it; and to feel it enough to make the world feel it, it was necessary to be possessed with it. It is not sufficient to have been visited by such an idea at times, to have had it forced occasionally on one's mind by the teachings of experience. No; he that hath the bride is the bridegroom; the idea belongs to him who has most loved it. Common prudence can say: Honesty is the best policy; morality can say: To conduct belongs happiness. But Israel and the Bible are filled with religious joy, and rise higher and say: “Righteousness is salvation!”-and this is what is inspiring. “I have stuck unto thy testimonies! Eternal, what love have I unto thy law! all the day long is my study in it. Thy testimonies have I claimed as mine heritage for ever, and why? they are the very joy of my heart!” This is why the testimonies of righteousness are Israel's heritage for ever, because they were the very joy of his heart. Herein Israel stood alone, the friend and elect of the Eternal. “He sheweth his word unto Jacob, his statutes and ordinances unto Israel. He hath not dealt so with any nation, neither have the heathen knowledge of his laws.”1 [Note: Matthew Arnold, Literature and Dogma.]
In studying the religious development of the Hebrews, two important points must be emphasized from the first. Israel was surrounded by the traditions of five great empires-Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, the Hittites, and the Cretans. Directly or indirectly, the Hebrews drew the whole of their secular arts, even the simplest, from one or other of these, and in all material matters, peaceable or warlike, these empires were incomparably their superiors. And yet the polytheism of these imposing neighbours exercised no influence to speak of upon the beliefs and ritual of the small and divided nation set in their midst. And the second point is like unto the first. Besides the great nations, Israel was surrounded by numbers of smaller tribes-Moab, Edom, Amalek, and the rest-their near kin in blood and language, and, in point of culture, very much on the same level with themselves. And yet Israel, that unoriginal, semi-civilized people, who could not cut a tunnel straight through the rock of their metropolis, in the one realm of religion shot ahead of all their contemporaries and passed in the rapid course of a few centuries from polytheism (or perhaps more correctly polydaemonism) through henotheism to the uncompromising monotheism of the later prophets and psalmists. When we take into account first the environment, which was not only hostile to such a development, but even left no room or precedent for such a conception, and, secondly, the exaggerated conservatism of religion in the Semite; when also we take into account the natural unfitness for new ideas which Israel displayed in material affairs; we can but wonder in silence. Nothing like it has ever happened in the world. The miracles recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures may possibly in time be all accounted for, with the advance of natural or critical science: but each step taken in that direction only brings into greater prominence this central miracle of the Old Testament, which no account of soi-disant Rationalism can explain away.1 [Note: R. A. S. Macalister, A History of Civilization in Palestine, 83.]
