HISTORY OF ISRAEL LIBRARY

The History of Ezra and of the Hagiocracy in Israel To the time of Christ.

BOOK 1
THE HAGIOCRACY

INTRODUCTION. 

III.

THE SPECIAL CHARACTER OF THE NEW PERIOD.

1.

The Hagiocracy.

As soon as the commonwealth of Israel was in a position to remodel itself in the ancient fatherland, there was an immediate rewakening of all the national pretensions and efforts which had formerly moved even the nobler heart of the people, inasmuch as they had become indissolubly connected with its knowledge of the true God, and its consciousness that this knowledge and with it the kingdom of this God must rule over all individuals and nations. During the general misery which accompanied the decline of the kingdom, both Jahveh's people, and with it the religion of the true God which it had hitherto supported, had fallen into deeper and deeper contempt with the great masses of every heathen nation; and this feeling was only strengthened after its final overthrow.

Israel then bore the twofold guilt of having by its perversity made not itself alone but also the everlasting truths which had hitherto been entrusted to it an object of contempt and scorn in the eyes of the great world,—a point which Ezekiel brought out at the time with the utmost emphasis. Thus there rose most vividly in the minds of the new prophets who discoursed towards the end of the exile, the fresh conviction that Jahveh would now once more reveal to the world his unique power and truth in all their might. Too long already, as it were, in the turmoil of the world's great race, had he held silence and restrained himself, too long permitted his name to be despised and rejected amongst the nations of the earth. Now, however, he neither would nor could hold his peace any longer; with the thunder of his voice he would make the earth tremble from end to end, and step into the battle as the only true and eternal hero, to re-establish, even though by the profoundest perturbation which could no longer be avoided, and by the conflict of all the gravest forces of the earth, the eternal right that had been overthrown. With this he would restore his fear and the glory of his name, so that salvation, as the final object of all divine energy, might be accomplished. Thus had the great Unnamed been impelled in the fulness of inspiration to unveil the hidden purpose of the true God who ruled the age, in anthropomorphic images of unusual force, as a consequence of the great excitement of the age itself, but yet corresponding completely to the inner truth.

The object of the deepest prophetic yearning was now at last realised, if not at once in all its extent, yet at least so far that a first beginning was assured. The community of the true God could again raise its head upon earth in independence, with external honour, and move freely; nay, in the first moments a clear future of an unique kind, and as yet without a cloud, spread out before it. The very nations which had hitherto poured out their bitter scoffs against Israel as Jahveh's people, now saw it set at liberty, and that too as if by the simple decree of the heavens above, without attempting itself, with all its spiritual activity, to take up the sword against its former destroyers. The conquerors of the age paid honour to it; and in accordance with the inseparable connection in which nationality stood to religion among the ancients, the great change in the national destiny of Israel must in itself have been the cause which enabled the religion entirely peculiar to it suddenly, and for the first time in the world's history, to attract in the furthest circles an attention and respect from the heathen proportionate to the somewhat more accurate knowledge of its character which now (for the first time also) spread far and wide among them. And therefore a thousand varied forms of such words as these

Yahveh roles, the earth trembles,

ring with a sacred joy never before experienced in so high a degree through the songs of the time; and a perfectly new and prouder consciousness henceforth runs through every vein of this people, reborn as it were from the dead. Since the first establishment of the community of Jahveh none of the nations of the earth, not even the most powerful, had been able to destroy it. All the more consistently and boldly, then, did it now rise up, with the innermost consciousness of its divine privileges and its eternal destiny, in opposition to them all, rejoicing in the victory of its ever true God, feeling its ultimate though as yet scantily acknowledged power over them all, and foreseeing that its universal dominion must finally be acknowledged, even externally. Once before, it is true, the community had quivered through and through with a similar joyful exultation and presentiment. It was almost two hundred years earlier, towards the close of Isaiah's life; but at that time Israel had not yet learned as it now had to survive the absolute collapse of its external empire and sanctuary, and so the kingdom soon afterwards fell once more into all the deeper confusion and calamities. But now the trust in God, which had been first kindled then, returned to the regenerated people, as it glanced far into the future, in all the greater purity and strength; nor was it ever again to vanish from its inmost heart. On the other hand, it was to become a firm foundation stone for the rising edifice of the next great period of its history.

But this sovereignty of Jahveh in which Israel was now prepared to take a purer and serener joy than ever before, could never again be the same, in an external sense, as it had formerly been, prior to the destruction of the ancient kingdom, a fact which was necessarily taught soon enough by the development of the history. Every spiritual power which stirs within us necessarily strives to find a corresponding external representation and expression. The spiritual power, however, which moved in Israel, was from the first animated by the supreme desire to subdue all mankind to itself; and the strength of the opposition of the whole of the great world as it stood undivided and unmoved only increased the darkness but at the same time the boldness of its inextinguishable longing and hope to see all this heathen world subjected, even externally, to Jahveh's rule. But the new energy with which this hope and expectation now arose on Israel's side soon encountered, as it became bolder, a corresponding increase in the fixedness of the status quo. The conversion of the heathen in the mass would not come to pass. The community, when liberated from the Chaldean supremacy, was still subject to the same heathens who had released it; when the opportunity of returning was given, it became clear how many and what potent ties already bound the remnant of the ancient people to its home amid the heathen; and so, since an outward kingdom of Israel had of necessity none but the humblest and scantiest foundations on which to rebuild itself, the modest stem of a new Jerusalem long remained a shoot only too feeble. Thus, while ardent longing might behold a sovereignty of Jahveh over all the heathen realized even externally, yet meanwhile the ancient independence and power of this rule could not be re-established even in the holy land itself; and a contradiction between the pretensions and the actuality of this newly-restored community, to which all were keenly sensible but which none could remove, necessarily sank deeper and deeper into its heart. But this contradiction in the nature of the dominion which now presented itself, was in reality only the same that we have already observed rising in another form in the far higher region of the eternal and the temporal destiny of Israel. These grave internal contrasts and obscure contradictions are brought to the front by every decided step forward in the great development of human history; for every advance of this kind at once becomes the vital of a general reorganisation, and this will be restrained by the principles and exigencies of the previous organisation until it has developed itself internally to such a degree as to enable it to rise in the right course above its predecessor.

It was, then, impossible to re-establish now a sovereignty of Jahveh in the earlier sense, either as in the preceding period, under a human king of Israel, with prophets and priests at his side, nor yet without a monarch, while Israel formed a compact nationality and an earthly kingdom under the invisible King alone, as in the first period of all this history. Nevertheless the community could by no means bring itself absolutely to tolerate the supremacy of the heathen, however well disposed they might be. With irrepressible force there rose within it a loftier consciousness, causing it to feel that its destiny was rather to rule over the heathen element and dissolve it in its own power. The community, now forming itself anew, might learn to endure the heathen supremacy in all the outward circumstances of life, so long as this did not more directly touch its daily religion; just as the many individuals who remained behind among the heathen were compelled to learn obedience to their masters in what related merely to material possessions and actions. And in the lesson of peaceful obedience to the heathen supremacy on the part of the whole new community, as well as of the many scattered individuals, there lay, as has been already remarked, one of the mightiest, and, at the present crisis, one of the most necessary instruments for developing the true religion. But the line between material things within the jurisdiction of the temporal power and the purely spiritual is in itself difficult to draw, and in those times had never been sufficiently clearly understood and sharply laid down; it is only the close of the whole of this history which is capable of teaching this lesson. For the present, then, the new community might certainly learn to tolerate the heathen supremacy so far as it went, simply to gain the new experience of the extent to which it might be permanently possible; but it could not possibly recognise it as perfectly satisfactory and final when it was further tried by the law of the true religion.

But yet there must always be some higher power by which a whole community, just as much as the individual members, if truly noble, feels immediately supported and restrained. In the last resort there must inevitably be a genuine and absolute supremacy in which the mind can place perfect trust, and to which it can consecrate all its most earnest efforts. If, then, neither the heathen supremacy nor the immediate establishment of a purely national kingdom could offer the shelter under which Israel could now assemble and commence a new development with full confidence, there was nothing left to exercise power and dominion over its heart except that very sanctity which had now been growing for a thousand years into an inalienable blessing in its midst. The true religion itself, as the vicissitudes and trials of a great history, and the progressive spirit of the great prophets of the earth, had stamped it more and more definitely and clearly upon Israel and caused it to sink deeper and deeper into its heart ever since the days of Moses,—this, and this alone, was the one great blessing of infinite price which Israel had rescued from its ancient days, and grasped with an earnestness never known before as its highest possession, and it had determined, with a vigour hitherto unseen, not to suffer anything ever to tear it away, or even to lessen or obscure it. This, then, was the power and dominion to which it submitted as to no other, and from which it expected all the salvation of the better life. But this religion, with its customs and ordinances, was even then far from retaining the ductility and plasticity of youth. Although not yet internally complete, inasmuch as it was still impossible for it to reach its own culminating point, it was already so far exalted above all the other religions of the time that it might easily pass for the perfect religion; and the thousand years of its history had already cast it in so firm a mould, and welded it so inseparably with the noblest life and efforts of its people, that it came down to those now living as an ancient and holy blessing, with a meaning peculiar to itself, to be prized above everything else. Thus the elements of its religion, which Israel now reverenced and embraced with a depth of zeal altogether new, might well be not only its inward and eternal truth, but also that which was simply venerable from its antiquity, and had acquired an outward sanctity. And, indeed, this temptation was so immediate, and of such unknown seductive power, that it soon gained an overwhelming ascendency in determining the course of events.

Generally speaking, whenever an institution which has been dominant in earlier times is revived in a later day, or when one first framed in distant lands or ages is adopted by strangers with fresh predilection or enthusiasm, there is great danger that its dazzling and misleading externalities rather than its essence will attract the eye and sink into the heart of the majority. Even if the case is one of a religion already sanctified by its former greatness and its antiquity, the holiness which is embraced with new fervour may very easily be nothing but that outward sanctity which itself in the first instance was only hallowed by the true and eternal holiness of the life and contents of the religion. Everything external in which the inmost life and aim of the religion has moved, the ordinances and customs which its spirit formed, the vessels and the localities in which its power and will were expressed most vividly to men, the writings in which its contents are perpetuated, and, finally, even the men who are its immediate channels and interpreters, all readily acquire the appearance of sanctity. These externalities are the most immediate vehicle of the impulse of its inner life and will; they are the most visible modes of its activity; its memory and name at least are most permanently associated with them, and it is inevitable, therefore, that they should themselves revive with every awakening of the inner power of the religion, and the more their observance has for a time been neglected, the more forcibly do they obtrude themselves now, as the easiest illustrations, the most obvious manifestations, and the readiest instruments, of the religion itself. But these sacred externalities are then apt to be substituted more and more completely and injuriously in the place of the religion, and a holy zeal and faith are directed to them which ought rather to be consecrated to the pure and eternal truths and forces of the religion itself. It is still holiness, however, to whose dominion men submit themselves; but it is now no longer the original holiness which is ever the same, namely, God himself, and his clearly revealed will; it has only a derived sanctity, the simple reflection, as it were, of a pure light which has retired behind it. The result is something which we may correctly designate by the ambiguous word Hagiocracy (Sovereignty of the Holy), since the usual signification of this term would point to the lower side; for it is self-evident that sanctity in the true sense of the word ought to rule, but in this purest sense it is more clearly denominated at once, when dominion is spoken of as God himself.

 2.

The Progressive Development of the Hagiocracy.

When, however, a hagiocracy has once succeeded in tranquilly establishing itself, it seeks to preserve its form as long as possible unaltered. It dreads every innovation, and can the more easily concentrate the whole of its strength on maintaining its rigid attitude in proportion to the intensity of its conviction that it is already itself in possession of the highest and holiest blessings which can draw high to men. And so in Israel, too, a sort of numbness seems to fall upon the aspiration after holiness for entire centuries. All freedom of fresh spiritual progress seems crushed, while the hagiocracy through the weary course of ages becomes more and more like a rock, against the immovable strength of which every storm shatters itself in vain. But in fact, the whole previous history of Israel had already established in it for all time too large a measure of the higher spiritual life and noblest effort, and also of urgent hope, and too much of what its deepest yearning expected, and, as it were, demanded, was still held back, to permit the coining ages to remain long content in any benumbing rest which might creep over them. On the other hand, beneath this hard rind there soon rose up a fresh life, full of movement, change, and variety, which often became all the more restless and stormy with the growth of fresh and unsuspected forces in the midst of outward tranquillity.

If we proceed to ask in what manner the long ages of the hagiocracy which was now established are divided by the changes which occurred in them, and by what progressive steps the life which heaved more and more mightily beneath them was developed, we cannot fail to discern that during all these centuries the destinies of Israel were most powerfully determined by the purely external influence of foreign nations. We have seen that this could not well be otherwise; and with the more marked revolutions in the supremacy of the great nations of the world, the position and fate of the surviving remnant of the ancient and independent people of Israel also assumed another form. It is, then, in correspondence with the succession of the powerful supremacies of the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans, that the long extent of the history of this third and last great phase of the destinies of Israel falls into its three broad primary sections, while the power of the contemporary Parthian empire plays but an unimportant part in its chief events. But the forces and movements which exercised the most potent influence were in reality very different, and, in the long run, very much mightier. Coming forth from the inmost heart of the people, and the deepest impulses of its most peculiar claims, efforts, and hopes, they at first simply helped to guide the course of events, and then laid it down with more peculiar and irresistible decision. If we investigate it more closely, we shall see that it is ultimately nothing but that one fundamental conception which, ever since the high noon of the history of Israel, had worked itself more and more deeply into its progress, and now re-appeared in this stage also as the principle which nothing could completely cancel, and which must at last lay hold of and determine everything by itself. It is the conception of the Messianic hope of Israel, with its fascination now so long hallowed, and the unbounded power of its mysterious purport. It reached back through the furthest conceivable spaces of the past, and it pointed forward to the glowing expectations of the future; and it is henceforth present with its dangerous inflammatory power and the fire which the true religion, in the form it had already assumed, could never quench, but rather supplied with nourishment ever new. Little as we might suspect from a superficial glance over the period of nearly six centuries, up to the time of Christ, that this fundamental conception was most profoundly and irrevocably determining their course, nevertheless the fact becomes proportionately certain as we take closer cognisance of the inner life and movement of the history as a whole.

The whole of this long period, in truth, far more than either of the former stages of Israel's history, was from the first, as appears from all that has been said above, dissatisfied and unreconciled internally. It moved amongst contradictions which none of the powers it had yet possessed could remove, and never again found true or enduring rest and happiness.

It opens with the loftiest hopes and boldest enterprises, and soon falls all the more deeply into despair and misery; it rises afresh from time to time to still more daring and even audacious ideas, and then loses again all outward power and glory. It feels that the best of which the whole life and effort of Israel is capable is still absent, and yet it cannot reach it by any of the methods hitherto adopted; it seeks to fortify and tranquillise itself in what at last it finds to be provisionally the best because already hallowed by the better past, and yet even so it gains no real joy or blessedness. The power which would not let it rest was no other than the fundamental Messianic idea, which was never again to be completely stifled. This idea included in itself a hope which all through Israel's history up to the present time had been too necessary ever to be lost again, too glorious and already too clear and certain to allow those who lived under its active influence to be permanently content with any of the imperfect products of the past, and too true to be laid to rest except by its own fulfilment. But this fundamental conception, with its unique and marvellous purport, re-enters again and again into the great history of the nation and the world, because it affects all dominion, even the loftiest and most powerful. It must of necessity, therefore, be involved in a violent contest with everything else which passed for a more or less justifiable sovereignty throughout the long course of these centuries. It could not avoid encountering the heathen supremacy, which at that time included Israel together with so many other highly civilised nations; and it must be brought into fresh collision with every succeeding heathen dominion, without ever being able entirely to assimilate or reconcile itself to any one of them, because the kingdom of the true and perfect religion, on which its heart and eye were fixed, is diametrically opposed to all heathenism. They could only rest in peace together transitionally, for a period more or less disturbed and of longer or shorter duration. Again, the violence of this collision would inevitably vary according to the different character of the successive heathen supremacies. At one time it would be sharper, at another more gentle, now full of hope and now of despair. Even a deadly struggle might take place with manifold results, whether victorious or ruinous, initial or final. A fresh encounter could never be completely and for all future time evaded, so to speak, even if the previous attempt had been unsuccessful, or the fundamental idea had long been dormant.

The power which gave its deepest impulse to the whole of this history, and which was never completely at rest, lay in this fundamental Messianic conception, and nothing but the fulfilment of its indestructibly sacred hopes for the perfection of the true religion and of its kingdom could ultimately bring about any conclusion which, by attaining the goal of all the history of Israel, would necessarily coincide with the termination of this its third and last stage. But, further, any great power or sovereignty which established itself within the community of ancient Israel was inevitably brought sooner or later into collision with this idea, and on this field nothing could equal the importance of the collision with the hagiocracy itself; for this form of government, as has been already said, attained a solitary pre-eminence of power and determined the condition of everything within its reach during all these centuries, and even aimed at stepping completely into the place of the Theocracy as the primitive constitution of the community from the time of Moses. Ultimately, then, the whole question which this term of Israel's history has to decide, necessarily hinged on the manner in which its fundamental conception (this being after all only a return to that of the original pure Theocracy, simply endeavouring to fertilise it anew, and, as it were, bring it to full maturity and strength) could take the place of the hagiocracy, and even overcome its defects and its serious faults when they had assumed their full proportions.

only from the point of view of this leading idea and its complications with the ruling powers that we can take a correct survey either of the inner life and texture or of the progress and articulation of the development of all this long history.

3.

The Duration of the Exile.

At this point, however, we must for a moment once more turn to the beginning of this long period, and observe how this internal transformation, which was brought about in Israel by the exile, produced from the first such important results, that, as soon as ever affairs had come to their crisis, which they did (as we shall see) under Zerubbabel as the first governor of the new Jerusalem, it at once led up to the hagiocracy, which was henceforth the only enduring constitution in the centuries which elapsed before the close of this whole term. And unless the way for the profound transformation and regeneration of Israel had been already prepared, as has been amply explained above, long before the beginning of the general exile, and unless the change had been brought on by the great prophets themselves, it certainly could not have been accomplished in so short a time as that for which the exile really lasted.

Strictly speaking, its duration was only forty-seven years, if we reckon by the Canon of Ptolemy, from the nineteenth year of Nabuchadrezzar to the first of Cyrus; or better, forty-nine years, if we add on, as we probably ought to do, the two years' reign of the Median king whom Cyrus set on the throne of Babylon. Besides this we have evidence to the same effect, though it is certainly somewhat remote, in the Old Testament itself, for the Book of Daniel reckons seven times seven years from Jeremiah's prediction concerning the destruction and subsequent rebuilding, of Jerusalem up to a princely anointed one, under whom Cyrus is evidently signified. This evidence, at any rate, gains more weight from the fact that the Book of Daniel limits the time during which Jerusalem was completely in ruins to these forty-nine years. But another method of computation was frequently employed at an early period. Jeremiah had fixed the duration of the Chaldean supremacy which still remained at seventy years. This, indeed, as the prophet most distinctly explained, was nothing but a round number, to signify a space of time reaching to the third generation, or about the extent of a whole lifetime, and to indicate that only the smallest possible number of those then living would see the end of this supremacy. Accordingly, Ezekiel, in speaking a considerable number of years later, reduces the round number to forty. To this it may be added that Jeremiah fixed the term of servitude at seventy years with reference not to Israel alone but to all the weaker nations as well, and did not definitely specify any particular year from which the seventy were to be counted. This number was first given out by him eighteen years before the destruction of Jerusalem, and was afterwards repeated without alteration in subsequent years, as a fixed number, although it is clear that he always let the year in which he first uttered this grand oracle concerning the future of all the nations of the time stand as the immediate commencement of the seventy years, and purposely abstained from altering it. The oracle itself was indeed fulfilled in the same sense as others were, for a year or two more or less need not be considered in the ease of so large a round number, and it was this that soon brought the figure into such universal renown and constant use. But Jeremiah had not intended the number seventy to serve as a historical datum, still less did he wish to specify by it the number of years during which Jerusalem was to lie in a state of absolute ruin. As, however, this prediction about Israel had been, broadly speaking, entirely fulfilled, Jeremiah, too, being in later times the most renowned prophet of the decline of the kingdom, it gradually became usual to transfer Jeremiah's seventy years to the period of the exile in its narrowest sense, i.e. the time during which Jerusalem was in ruins. The first instance of this is furnished by the Chronicler; but even if we take the period of the exile in the wider sense, that is, if we count from Jehoiachin's banishment eleven years before the destruction of Jerusalem, the number seventy is still too high.

It is only by reckoning the Captivity from the year of Josiah's death and the beginning of the Egyptian vassalage that we make out about seventy years before 538 B.C., but this year cannot be regarded in this light, and the whole computation would be opposed to the spirit of antiquity. On the other hand, about twenty years after the first year of Cyrus, Zechariah, as the first witness we can call, still speaks of seventy years during which the great affliction of Israel was then going on; for we shall soon see that the keenest sufferings of the age were by no means terminated at once with the first year of Cyrus. And when several centuries later in Jerusalem they still felt themselves heavily oppressed by the supremacy of the stranger, they thought that the seventy years of Jeremiah were not yet over, and endeavoured to find a secret meaning in the number, as though it must needs signify a period of much longer duration.

THE PERSIAN SUPREMACY.