Part 2 of 2
[161] Now, therefore, in regard to monotheism and the relationship to the true god, with whose glory the head of Abraham is surrounded not only in the Old Testament, but in the legends of the entire Orient (they unite in calling him the friend of God)—and a subsequent fiction could never have produced this correspondence between the traditions—I wish first and foremost to draw attention to the constancy with which Genesis says of Jehovah, but never, to my knowledge, of the Elohim, that he appeared102 to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; this in itself presupposes that he was not the immediate content of their consciousness, as those think who propose revelation as the one and only first principle of explanation. No less noteworthy is the way the patriarchs at significant moments call Jehovah by name,103 as one calls someone whom one wishes to detain, or who should show himself. If Jehovah is only called and only shows himself, then the immediate content of their consciousness can only be the god who in the Mosaic scriptures is called Elohim. Here is the place for us to provide an explanation of this name. A plural in grammatical form, the verb which follows it too is occasionally in the plural—not, as some believe, due to merely mechanical adaptation to the form; for a closer investigation of the passages shows that the plural form of the verb is written only in specific cases, and thus not randomly, for if it is, in the account of the Babylonian tower for instance, Jehovah who speaks, saying “Let us go down, and there confound their language,” then the reason is clear, for God must replicate himself in order to fragment humanity. Similarly in the creation story, where Elohim alone speaks, saying “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” for the absolutely One god as such is without image. When Abraham says that the godsCCXXXII have caused him to wander from his father‟s house, [162] to go, that is to say, into the desert, to choose the nomadic life,104 then, because the word “Elohim” is not coupled here, as it is elsewhere, with the article,105 actual gods can be understood (Abraham fled from the idolatry becoming increasingly influential in the house of his father), and the other passages, where Jehovah orders him to flee,106 would not be inconsistent with this, since the two can be in existence together. But when, in a passage like the one already quoted, the god explicitly named “Jehovah Elohim” says “Behold, Adam is become as one of us,” when this god, thus, himself distinguishes, and contrasts with the others, one god within himself, then certainly a plurality must be understood. Nor may the plural form of the name, or the construction with the plural of the verb, be explained as the remnant of an earlier polytheism, as many have thought. But certainly it may be explained from the fact that God as Jehovah is indeed always One, but as Elohim is that god who is still exposed to the solicitations of multiplicity, and in addition actually does become, for the consciousness otherwise clinging to the oneness, a multiplicity which is just always suppressed. It is not an older polytheism which intrudes here, but the later one, to the presentiments of which even Abraham, for instance, was not immune. But now, apart from this plural meaning which appears from time to time, there can no longer be any doubt that “Elohim” had, like many other plurals, a singular meaning, and is a plural not of multiplicity but of magnitude (pluralis magnitudinis, qui unam sed magnam rem indicat107 CCXXXIII), which is used whenever something has to be expressed which is large, powerful, or astonishing of its kind. But that universal god, the god beside whom, in his time, there was no other, indisputably had the first claim to a name so expressive of astonishment. Indeed the name itself expresses only astonishment, since it derives from a verb [163] which has precisely this meaning in Arabic (obstupuit, attonitus fuit CCXXXIV ). Thus in “Elohim” the original Semitic name of the primal god has indeed indubitably been preserved for us, which is consistent with the fact that here, in contrast to other cases, the singular (Eloah) is formed from the plural, as may be seen from the fact that this singular only appears in later books of the Old Testament, mostly just in the poetical ones. Since in Genesis, and to some extent in the following books still, the names “Elohim” and “Jehovah” alternate, attempts have been made to base on that the hypothesis that Genesis in particular might have been put together from sources of two kinds; one was called the “Elohim” source, and the other the “Jehovah.” But it is easy to satisfy oneself that in the narratives the names do not change randomly, but are used to draw an intentional distinction, and that the use of the one or the other has its reason in the subject matter, and is not determined by a merely external or chance circumstance. At times, specifically in the story of the Fall, both names are conjoined, but only when the narrator speaks, not the woman or the serpent; Adam too, had he been given a speaking part, would have said only “Elohim,” for the first man still knew nothing of Jehovah. The Elohim is the god whom the nations too, the heathens, still feared,108 and who also comes in a dream to Abimelech, the king of Gerar, and to Laban the Syrian.109 The dream seems to be the natural mode of operation of the god who is already beginning to succumb to the past. Abraham prays to the natural god, constantly present simply because natural, to Elohim, for the restoration to health of Abimelech the king of Gerar. Since here the literal word is used for “pray,” it is evident from that that the “calling Jehovah by name” does not amount to “praying.”110 In reference to Abraham himself it is the Elohim, and indeed quite specifically so, as is clearly seen when the passage is read in context, 111 [164] who ordains for him the circumcision which was a religious custom as old as time, common also among a section of the nations, and a tribute brought to the primal god. It is the Elohim, the universal god, by whom, and for whom, Abraham is tempted to slay his son as a burnt offering in the manner of the heathens, but Jehovah manifesting himself who restrains him from the execution. For because Jehovah can only become manifest, very frequently “the angel,” that is to say the manifestation of Jehovah, is written in place of “Jehovah,” even in later scriptures.112
The original human race had, in the relatively-One and eternal, in fact really understood the true, the essentially-One and eternal. Only the advent of the second god brings consciousness to the point where it distinguishes the essentially-eternal, which in the merely accidentally-eternal had been the true, the genuine god—where it distinguishes the essentially-eternal from that which was so only for one era. Here must be assumed that it was still open, even to those who took the path of polytheism, to turn to the essentially-eternal, which had been the true god within the other (the accidentallyeternal), to turn, thus, to the true god. Up to here the path of the human race is the same; only at this point does it divide. Without the second god—without the solicitation to polytheism, there would also have existed no advance to genuine monotheism. The same potence which becomes the immediate cause of multitheism in one part of humanity, elevates a chosen race to the true religion. Abraham, after the god whom even the primal era already worshipped, although unknowingly, in the relatively-One—after this god has appeared to him, that is to say has became revealed and distinguishable, turns to the god voluntarily and consciously. For him this god is not the original god, he is the god who has come to be for him, manifested himself, but he had no more invented this god than found him through thought; [165] all he does here is hold fast to the god who has been seen by him (been revealed to him); but as he holds fast to the god, the latter also leads him on, and enters into a special relationship with him, through which he is set wholly apart from the societies. Because there is no knowledge of the true god without distinguishing him, that is why the name is so important.CCXXXV The worshippers of the true god are those who know his name; the heathens, who do not know his name, theyCCXXXVI are not totally (not, that is, also in respect of substance) ignorant of the god, they simply do not know his name, that is to say they do not know him as distinct. Yet Abraham cannot, after he has seen the true god, as it were break loose from the precondition of that god. The immediate content of his consciousness remains for him the god of the primal era, who did not come to be for him, and thus also was not revealed, and who—we are obliged to put it this way—is his natural god. In order that the true god might become manifest to him, the basis must remain for the manifestation of the first god, in whom aloneCCXXXVII can that true god constantly come to be for him. The true god is mediated for him by the natural god not just transiently, but constantly, for him the true god is never the existing god, but constantly only the god coming to be, which in itself would suffice to explain the name “Jehovah,” in which that same concept of coming to be is pre-eminently expressed. Abraham‟s religion does not therefore consist in his abandoning that god of the primal time, and becoming untrue to him, in fact it is the heathens who do that; the true god himself was revealed to Abraham only in that god of the primal time, and is thus indivisible from him, indivisible from the god who always was, the El Olam, as he is called.
This expression is usually translated as “the eternal god”; but one would be wrong to take that as referring to metaphysical eternity. Quite literally the word olam designates the time before which humankind know of no time, the time in which they find themselves in the way that they find themselves, the time which did not come to be for them,CCXXXVIII and which in this sense is admittedly an eternity. The prophet calls the Chaldeans a nation me olam,113 a society which has existed since the time in which there existed no societies. Thus Luther [166] translates it correctly as “which has been the most ancient nation”; CCXXXIX olam is the time when there existed no societies. In the same sense the fragment mentioned earlier,CCXL about the heroes and mighty men of prehistory, says that they were renowned me olam, that is to say from the time which preceded the coming into existence of societies. Joshua says to the children of Isræl, “Your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates me olam,114 CCXLI from the time, that is to say, when there were not yet any societies, thus ever since societies existed. The first historical era, the first era which is known, finds them there. The El Olam is thus the god who existed not since, but already in, that time when societies did not yet exist, the god prior to whom there was none, of whose coming into existence thus no one knows, the absolutely primal god, the god from time immemorial.CCXLII Contrasted with the El Olam are the Elohim Chadaschim, the new gods “that came newly up,” who have only just come into existence.115 And so for Abraham too the true god is not eternal in the metaphysical sense, but as the god in whom no beginning is known.
Just as the true god is for him the same as the El Olam, similarly this true god is the same as the god of heaven and earth; for as such was once worshipped the god common to the whole human race. For Abraham, Jehovah is not a materially different god from this one, for him he is simply the true god of heaven and earth. When he has his eldest servant swear that he will take no wife for him from the children of the heathens,116 CCXLIII he says “Swear to me by Jehovah, the God of heaven and of the earth.”CCXLIV This god is for him thus still common to the whole ancient human race. A figure who belongs to this same race is that Melchizedek, the king of Salem and priest of El Elioun the highest god, who appears again under this name in the fragments of Sanchuniathon,CCXLV the god who, as it is said, possesses heaven and earth. Everything about this figure emerging from the obscurity of prehistory is remarkable, even the names, his own as much as the name of the land or locality of which [167] he is called king. The words sedek, saddik do indeed also mean “justice” and “just,” but the original meaning, as may still be seen from the Arabic, is steadfastness, immobility. Melchizedek is thus the immovable one, that is to say, he who remains immovably with the One.117 CCXLVI The same thing is contained in the name “Salem,” which is used elsewhere when it has to be said that a man is or walks wholly, that is to say undividedly, with Elohim.118 It is the same word from which “Islam” and “Moslem” are formed. “Islam” means nothing other than the complete, that is to say the whole, the undivided religion; “Moslem” is that which is wholly devoted to the One. Even that which is quite recent is understood only if one has understood what is most ancient. Those who deny the monotheism of Abraham, or consider his whole story to be a romance, have certainly never reflected on the consequences of Islam, consequences of such a frightful kind, issuing from a part of humanity which had remained thousands of years in evolution behind the part which it conquered and laid waste before it, that they are only explicable by way of the immense power of a past which, re-emerging in what has come to be and taken shape in the interval, intrudes destructively and devastatingly. CCXLVII Mohammed‟s doctrine of oneness could never have produced this catastrophic effect if it had not persisted since primæval times in these children of Hagar, who had been passed by without a trace by the whole period from their patriarch until Mohammed. But with Christianity there came into being a religion which no longer merely excluded polytheism as it had been excluded by Judaism. It was precisely there, at this stage in the evolution, where the rigid, onesided oneness had been entirely overcome, that the old primal religion had to come forth once again—blindly and fanatically, as it was bound to have appeared, set off against the much more advanced times. The reaction was not merely towards the idolatry embraced in Mohammed‟s time to some extent even among a section of the Arabs who had not abandoned the nomadic life, but far more towards the apparent [168] multitheism of Christianity, to which Mohammed opposed the rigid immobile god of the primal time. Everything here hangs together; Mohammed‟s law even forbade wine to his followers, just as the Rechabites rejected it.
So Abraham subordinates himself to this king of Salem and priest of the highest god, for Jehovah is himself only an appearance stemming from that highest, primal god. Abraham submits to him by giving him tithes of all. A younger but pious era always reveres the older one, as being closer to the source, so to speak. Melchizedek came from that race which depended simply, without doubt and without making any distinction, on the primal god, and unknowingly worshipped in him the true god, in contrast to which race Abraham is already in the situation of being to some extent less pure; for he has not remained free from the temptations which came in the wake of the societies, although he has withstood them and has saved from them the true god distinguished and known as such. In comparison, Melchizedek offers Abraham bread and wine, the symbols of the new era; for while Abraham did not become unfaithful to the old bond with the primal god, he would at least have had to distance himself from him, so as to distinguish the true god as such; in contradistinction to the most ancient race, he shares the distancing with the societies, who forsook that bond entirely and entered into another, whose offerings they consider bread and wine to be.
For Abraham, Jehovah is simply the primal god in his true enduring essence. To that extent this god is also for him the El Olam, god of the primal time, the god of heaven and earth,119 he is also, for him, the El Shaddai: this is his third attribute. The form in itself points to the highest antiquity; shaddai is an archaistic plural, another plural of magnitude. The basic concept of the word is strength, power, which is indeed no less the basic concept in the likewise very ancient word [169] el (distinguished from “Elohim” and “Eloah”). “El Shaddai” could be translated as “the strength of the strong,” but shaddai does also stand alone, and seems thus to be associated with el merely through apposition, so that the two together mean “the god who is the power and strength exalted above everything.” Now Jehovah says to Abraham “I am the El Shaddai.”120 Here “El Shaddai” has the function of the explanatory predicate, and in contrast to Jehovah the status of what was previously known, thus also of what went before. Now in the second book of Moses121 there is a famous passage of great historical importance, where on the contrary the Elohim says to Moses “I am Jehovah,” where Jehovah, thus, is presupposed as the god already better known, and “I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob—beel shaddai,” in the El Shaddai.CCXLVIII So here we have the explicit evidence that the El Shaddai, that is to say the god of the primal time, was the medium of revelation, or of manifestation, of the true god, Jehovah. Our own view of the first revelation could not have been expressed more clearly than it is here, set in the mouth of Jehovah himself. Jehovah did not appear to Abraham directly; as a consequence of the spirituality of his concept he cannot appear directly, he appeared to Abraham in the El Shaddai.122 But now in the second clause there appear the words “and in or under my name Jehovah was I not known to them (the fathers).” It is principally these words from which people wished to conclude that the name “Jehovah” was, in accordance with Moses‟ own submission, not ancient, but was first taught by him; if one regards the books of Moses from beginning to end as not having been written by him himself, then one could, indeed, take this name right down to the period of David and Solomon. But it is at least possible that the words mentioned are not intended to say [170] what people would like to find in them. The ground rule of the Hebraic style is known to be parallelism, where, that is, there are always two successive clauses which say the same thing in different words, but mostly in such a way that what is affirmed in the first section is expressed in the second through denial of the contrary, for example “I am the Lord, and there is none other beside me,” or “the honour is mine, and I shall allow it to none other.”CCXLIX Now if here the first clause says “I appeared to the fathers in the El Shaddai,” then the second, “and in my name Jehovah was I not known to them,” can only be repeating the same thing in a negative way; it can only be saying “Directly (this simply means: in my name Jehovah), without the mediation of the El Shaddai, they knew nothing of me.” The “bischmi” (in my name) is just another way of writing “in my own nature.” In the El Shaddai have they seen me, in my own nature have they not seen me. The second clause thus only confirms the first; and certainly a later and higher phase of consciousness, which knows Jehovah also independently of the El Shaddai—a consciousness such as we have to ascribe to Moses for other reasons too, is indicated by the words. But a proof of the alleged later origin of the name, through which the principal content of Genesis itself would be lost, is not to be found, not in the passage in question, at least.
Everything I have said up to this point shows what kind of monotheism Abraham‟s was, in fact that it was not an absolutely unmythological monotheism, for it had as its precondition the god who is just as much the precondition of polytheism, and for Abraham the manifestation of the true god is so closely bound up with this other god that Jehovah manifesting himself regards obedience to the inspirations of the other god as obedience to himself. 123 The monotheism of Abraham is not a totally unmythological one, I said just now: for it has as its precondition the relatively-One, which is itself only the first potence of polytheism. The reason it is the way in which the true god becomes manifest, is because the manifestation cannot break away from [171] its precondition—even this is a wholly mythological precondition,CCL that is to say one of a kind in which the polytheistic always intervenes. People have been inclined to judge as sinful the idea of treating all the accounts, especially that in Genesis, as myths, but they are at the very least evidently mythical; they are not, it is true, myths in the sense in which the word is usually understood, that is to say fables, on the contrary, it is actual facts which are recounted, although mythological facts: subject, that is to say, to the conditions of mythology.
This dependence on the relatively-One god is a limitation which must also be felt as such, and which consciousness strives to surmount. But it cannot eliminate it for the present, it will therefore overcome this limitation only to the extent that it recognizes the true god as the god indeed now merely appearing, but at the same time as the god who at some time shall be. Seen from this side, the religion of Abraham is pure authentic monotheism, but this is for him not the religion of the present—in the present his monotheism is subject to the restriction of mythology—certainly, though, it is for him the religion of the future; the true god is the one who shall be, that is his name. When Moses asks under which name he should proclaim the god who will lead the people out of Egypt, this god answers “I shall be the I shall be”;124 CCLI here, thus, where the god speaks in his own person, the name is translated from the third person into the first, and it would be quite inadmissible to find here too the expression of the metaphysical eternity or immutability of God. It is true that the correct pronunciation of the name “Jehovah” is unknown to us, but grammatically it cannot be other than an archaistic future of hawa, or in the later form hayah = exist; the current pronunciation could never be the correct one, because since very ancient times the vowels of a second word (“Adonai”), which means “Lord,” have been set below the name which in fact may not be uttered, which is also the reason why, already in the Greek translation and in all later ones, “the Lord” is written instead of [172] “Jehovah.” With the true vowels the name could be read “Yiveh” (likewise very ancient), or analogously with other forms of proper names (like “Jacob”CCLII ), “Yahvo,” the former consistent with the “Yevo” in the fragments of Sanchuniathon, the latter with the Yao (Ἰά ω ) in Diodorus of Sicily and in the well-known fragment in Macrobius.CCLIII
We earlier explained the name “Jehovah” as the name of the one who is coming to be—perhaps this was its initial meaning, but according to that explanation it is, in the case of Moses, the name of the future one, of the one who is now only coming to be, who will one day exist, and all his pledges too concern the future. Promises are all that Abraham is given. It is promised to him, who is now no nation, that he “shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him,” for in him lay the future of that monotheism through which one day all the societies presently scattered and separated are to be reunited.125 It may well be convenient, and in the interest of the spiritual laziness which is often promoted as rational enlightenment, to see in all these promises just fanciful notions born of the later Jewish national pride. But where, in the whole history of the Abrahamic race, is there a point of time in which such a promise, in the accepted sense of political greatness, could have been thought up? Just as Abraham has to believe in this promised greatness of his people, so also does he believe in the future religion, which will do away with the principle under which he is constrained, and this belief is even accounted to him as consummate religion. 126 In respect to this future religion Abraham is termed, right at the start, a prophet,127 for he still stands outside the law under which his descendants will be constrained even more firmly, and so sees beyond it, just as the later so-called prophets saw beyond it.128 CCLIV
[173] If in fact the religion of the patriarchs is not free from the precondition which allows the true god only to appear as such, not to exist, then the law given through Moses is even more closely tied to this precondition. The content of the Mosaic law is indeed the oneness of God, but is certainly just as much the fact that this god should be only a mediated god.
According to some passages which cannot really be understood in any other way, a direct relationship was vouchsafed to the lawgiver, who in that capacity stands to a certain extent apart from the people; with him the Lord speaks “face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend,”129 he saw the Lord “as he is,”130 CCLV and a “prophet like him, with whom the Lord spoke as with him, will arise no more”;131 CCLVI but on the people the law is imposed like a yoke. To the extent that, as mythology advances, relative monotheism is already contending with unambiguous polytheism, and the dispensation of Cronus now extends over the nations, then, even for the nation of the true god, the relative god, in whom it has to preserve for itself the basis of the absolute god, must become ever more strict, more exclusive, and more jealous of his oneness. This character of exclusiveness, of the strictest negative uniqueness, can only derive from the relatively- One; for the true, the absolute god is not, in this exclusive way, One, and, as that which excludes nothing, is also threatened by nothing. The Mosaic religious law is nothing other than relative monotheism, in the only form in which it could still have been preserved and asserted as real in one particular era in opposition [174] to the heathenism encroaching on all sides.132 That principle, moreover, had to be preserved not for its own sake, but in fact simply as a basis, and thus the Mosaic religious law too is pregnant with the future, towards which, mutely like an image, it points the way. The heathenish quality, by which it is evidently pervaded, has only a temporary significance, and will be eliminated simultaneously with heathenism itself. But while, obedient to necessity, it primarily only seeks to preserve the basis for the future, the true principle of the future is implanted in prophetism, the other, complementary aspect of Hebrew religious law, and just as essential to it and characteristic. But in the prophets the expectation of, and the hope for, the future liberating religion no longer breaks out merely in isolated utterances, it is the principal goal and content of their speeches, and no longer is this the religion merely of Isræl, but of all nations; the feeling of negation under which the prophets themselves suffer gives them an equivalent feeling for the whole of humanity, and even among heathendom they begin to see the future.
It has thus now been proved from the most ancient document, from the very scripture accepted as revealed, that humanity did not begin with pure or absolute monotheism, but with relative. I shall now add a few general remarks about this most ancient condition of the human race, a condition which is significant for us not merely as a religious one, but also in the general context.
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Notes:
79 vv. 25, 26.
80 For the linguistic usage refer to Isa. 43:1; it is not קִרָאתִ ף֨ בְשִמִף but only .קִרָאתִ בְשִמִף
81 Deu. 31:19-21.
82 1. Chr. 28:9. In other ways too the books of the Chronicle prefer to return to the most ancient phraseology where religious matters are concerned.
83 ibid. 29:18.
84 In his commentary on Ge. 6:2, J. D. Michælis says: “Hitherto the human race had been divided into two major parts: the better part, who believed in one god, named themselves „sons of God,‟ after the true god; the rest, who were languishing not in superstition, since we find no trace of that before the Flood, but in entire unbelief, Moses calls „sons of men.‟” However the missing clue was, as shown, already to be found in Ge. 4:26, where the Chaldaic translator and the oldest Jewish commentators, who after all had no interest in having multitheism begin so early, had also found it, albeit by way of an incorrect interpretation.
85 This last is expressly stated in Ge. 7:1.
86 Ge. 8:21, cf. 6:5.
87 The references may be found together in a summarized form in Rosenmüller‟s Old and New East, part I, p. 23. (Also in Stolberg‟s History of the Religion of Jesus Christ, part I, p. 394).
88 Compare Eichhorn in the Repertory of Biblical and Eastern Literature, V, p. 216.
89 Ge. 9:20.
90 Jer. 35.
91 Ge. 14:1. There is no reason to take Goyim itself as the name of a nation, the Goyites, of whom otherwise nothing at all is known, and every other contrived explanation would be equally uncalled-for; the appellative interpretation is fully supported by the viewpoint above.
92 See Gesenius, History of the Hebrew Language and Script, p. 11.
93 Ge. 12:6, where it is used of Abraham himself; 37:28, then 2 Ki . 4:8, 9 etc.
94 Ge. 17:8, 35:27, 37:1. The promises of Jehovah to give him and his seed after him, for an everlasting possession, the land wherein he is a stranger, achieve thereby a more definite meaning.
95 Compare Ge. 47:9.—The only one of the explanations of the name “He brew” state d above which might be given preference would be that of choice, which, based on the fact that עֲרָבָה , for which a plural, עֲרָבוׂת (Jer. 5:6, 2 Ki . 25:5), also appears, means desert, gives rise to the fertile suggestion that Ibrim (Hebrew), Arabim (Arab), and Aramim (Aramæan) are mere variations, indeed intelligible in an analogous way, of the same name. Nothing in the subject under discussion, what is more, would be changed.
96 Ge. 25:27.
97 1 Sa. 8:5.
98 ibid. v. 8.
99 See Gibbon’s History c. X.
100 J. Grimm sees it as an intensifying prefix. Götting. Gelehrte Anzeigen 1835, p. 1105.
101 Ammian. Marcell. L. XVI, c. 2.
102 Ge. 12:7, 17:1, 18:1, 26:2, 28:12. But Chapter 35? Here Elohim appears, but only in order to summon up the memory of the god who “appeared” (v. 1) and to confirm the blessing of the latter (v. 11).
103 Ge. 12: 8, 13: 4, 21: 33, 26: 25.
104 Ge. 20:13.
105 cf. e.g. 35:7.
106 Ge. 12:1, 24:7.
107 cf. Storrii Obss. p. 97. Examples: jamim means the great sea (p. 46, 3), thanim = draco sed grandis, schamaim = altitudo, sed grandis.
108 Ge. 20:11.
109 Ge. 20:6, 31:24.
110 Ge. 20:17.
111 Ge. 17:9; from 1-8 Jehovah was speaking. That this is no accident is evident from 21:4, where the commandment is simply mentioned again, and ye t it re ads “as Elohim had commanded him.”
112 The principal passage naturally Ge. 22:11. The angel of Jehovah not distinguished from Jehovah himself Judg. 6:12, cf. 14, 16, 22. Where Jehovah and the angel of Jehovah are, there, naturally, is also the Elohim, ibid. 13:21 cf. with 22.
113 Jer. 5:15.
114 Jos. 24:2.
115 Deu. 32:17.
116 Ge. 24:3.
117 Clearly saddik in Ge. 6:9 is also to be understood in this sense.
118 Ge. 5:22, 6:9.
119 Abraham alone, incidentally, and not Melchizedek, calls the god of heaven and earth “Jehovah.” Ge . 14:22, cf. 19, 20.
120 Ge. 17:1.
121 Ex. 6:2 f.
122 If, which in any case there is no reason to do, one wished to explain the ב in בְאֵל as the familiar ב prædicati (see Storrii Obss. p. 454), although it could be construed in this way with difficulty, then it would amount to the same thing, it would be like saying “I appeared to them as El Shaddai .”
123 Cf. Ge. 22:1 with 22:12 and 15-16.
124 Ex. 3:14.
125 Ge. 18:18, 19, 26:4.
126 Ge . 15:6. Abraham “believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness.”
127 Ge. 20:7.
128 All the thoughts in the Old Testament are directed towards the future in this way, so that the pious narrator in Ge. 4:1 already sets a prophecy in the mouth of Eve (what is more by way of a far-fetched explanation of the name “Cain,” which according to the same etymology permits of a much more likely one): “I have gotten the man the Jehovah.” With the continuance of the human race, which is guaranteed by the first male birth, the true god too, whom they do not yet possess, is assured to humanity.—I would quarrel with no one who was inclined to see actual words of Eve in the speech; as long as he then also admitted it to be historically proved that the true god was for the first men only a future god.
129 Ex. 33:11.
130 Nu. 12:8.
131 Deu. 34:10.
132 To think it possible that superstitious customs such as are prescribed by the Mosaic ceremonial law could still perhaps have come into being in times such as those of David or his successors, presupposes a lack of knowledge of the general course of religious evolution which forty years ago could have been excused; for in those days it was still pardonable to hold the view that a phenomenon like the Mosaic law could be evaluated outside the grand and universal context. Today, though, it is not an unreasonable requirement that everyone should first take steps to acquire a higher education, before venturing to speak out about topics of such high antiquity.