I . T H E N A T U R E O F SIN1
I. One can speak of sin in the proper sense of the word only where there is the feeling that an unconditional Ought is being con- travened; and therefore insight into the real seriousness of sin is inseparably bound up with the greater or lesser degree of clarity with which men are consciously aware of this unconditional quality of moral obligation. Consequently, it is easy to appreciate that, although an understanding of that which we call sin is found in all religions, its importance for religious life and thought nevertheless varies to an extraordinary extent, and that only in a few religions is it possible for the effort to conquer sin to become a central concern.
In Israel both the high level of the content, and the compelling force of the claim to validity, which characterize the divinely appointed norms of life lead us to expect that here men’s failure with regard to them, and the struggle to eliminate this, will play an important role. The nature of sin in the Old Testament is, in fact, already very clearly characterized by the various terms used to denote it. And from these it does not emerge as primarily misfortune, or evil chance, or anything of that kind, even though this element is not entirely lacking, but as conduct contrary to the norm.
The root h-t-‘, which is the one most frequently used to designate both sinful conduct, the sin itself (hat@‘t, &t’, &~‘i or !za#d’d), and the sinner (ha&?, found only in the feminine singular and in the plural), has as its original meaning ‘go astray’, ‘miss the mark’, a univocal and easily understandable expression for the formal aspect of the concept of sin, presenting it as a failure with regard to the norm, an offence against a commandment or prohibition. Hence, alongside
1 Cf. C. Ryder Smith, Th Biblical Doctrine of Sin, 1953.
380
T H E N A T U R E O F S I N 331
the religious usage, the word is also extensively applied as a legal‘.
concept in the sense of ‘crime’ or ‘misdemeanour’.l The incorpora- tion of the word into the religious sphere is exactly in keeping with the importance of superior norms for the religious life of Israel.
Sirnilarly, the description of sin by the root C-w-h, used almost entirely in the substantive form ‘&~6n, derives from a verb of motion meaning ‘bend’, ‘veer’, ‘go aside from the right way’. Always implicit in the use of this word, moreover, is the agent’s awareness of the culpability of his action, so that the formal aspect is here already supplemented by one of moral content. The root p-C’ mostly has an active sense, and both as a verb and as the noun peSa’ charactcr- izes sin as ‘rebellion’ or ‘revolt’. Finally, a distinctive nuance is imported into the concept of sin by the verb S@a/r and the associated noun &gEg& in so far as the emphasis here is on the aspect of ‘error’, unintended transgression.
Clearly contained in all these terms is the uni&zg basic conception
of
action contrary to the norm. This can be seen, however, to be con- tinually qualified in one direction or the other, according as the emphasis is to be placed in particular on the action itself, or on the accompanying psychic process. The structural affinity between this view and that of juristic thinking is obvious, and points back to the juristic element present in the foundation of Israel’s relationship with God in the berit.2 The use of such very common juristic concepts as saddik and r&W to describe the moral ideal illuminates the same situation from a different angle.In view of the marked predominance of the formal term b-J- in linguistic usage, especially of the pre-prophetic period, one might be inclined to the opinion that the Israelite concept of sin was primarily concerned with establishing an objective offence, which then has to be made good by an equally objective act of reparation. And it so happens that various instances can be adduced in which all the emphasis falls on the objective o&me, while the sinful will of the person involved manifestly plays no part. To this category belong such cases as the outrage which brings a curse on the whole land, even though its inhabitants are not responsible for any part of the act itself, or the
1 Deut. rg.I$f.; 21.22; 22.26; II Kings 18.14; Isa. 29.21; Gen. 40.1; 4I.g,etc.;
cf. G. Quell, ‘Die Siinde lrn AT’, TW.hT I, pp. 267ff.
2 Cf. vol. I, pp. 36-39.
3 Taddik, ‘righteous’, refers primarily to the man who is vindicated by the judg- mcnt of the court, r%i’, ‘evildoer’, to the man who is found guilty.
332 S I N A N D F O R G I V E N E S S
unwitting adultery which lays on them guilt punishable by death,1 11
or the undiscovered murder which brings with it the threat of re- ]
venge for the shedding of innocent blood,2 or a breach of the vow of the ban by a compatriot which, passing undetected, has placed the whole community under the curse of God,3 or an accidental homicide which has polluted the land.4 It is a common view that an unwitting ritual offence involves punishable guilt, even to the extent of the death penalty.5 Related to this seems to be the idea that even a curse incurred quite unjustifiably in perfect innocence is dangerous to the person concerned, or to his family, so long as it is not lifted by a blessing, or turned back on the curser by punishing him.6 In all these cases the decisive factor is the objective offence, with no reference to the element of volition.7
Such views clearly present us with the after-effkts of a d3)namistic system of thought, in which sin is seen as the transgression of the com- mandment of an alien power which reacts automatically against it, or has the effect of contagious matter, which threatens with destruc- tion even the person who comes into contact with it unconsciously.
These ideas are indeed well known to us from the spiritual history of Babylonia, Egypt and Greece, and reveal once again the natural soil of Israelite religiosity, which has been encountered in other contexts.8 Here, then, the supreme norm of action is the inviolability of the tabu, which means that the essential thing about sin can only be the objective fact of the sinful action, and that reflection makes no : attempt to go beyond this to consider the personal attitude of the agent; but assessment in moralistic and juridical term-s brings a new ij element into consideration. Because the old taboo laws were in- I
1 Gen. 20.3ff.; 26.10.
s Deut. 2 I. I-g, which despite its late date undoubtedly witnesses to an age-old ,,
ritual. j
s Josh. 7.11.
4 Ex. 2 I. I nff. ; Num. 35.3 I ff. In the same way the violation of a married woman is a capital crime, regardless of whether the offender knew that the woman was married or not: Deut. 22.22ff.
5 1 .%IXL 14.43ff.; LeV. 4; 5.1-6, 14-19.
6 This conception must be the explanation of the shocking testamentary dis- position of David, I Kings 2.8ff.; cf. II Sam. 16.5-13. Similarly also II Sam. 21.3.
7 Num. 22.34 can hardly be included under this head, since vv. 22 and 32 assume a deliberate offence by Balaam, which brings down upon him the threatening of Yahweh’s angel. His confession, ‘I have sinned’ (v. 34), therefore refers to the obstinacy with which he persisted on his wrong journey, even though he should have taken warning from the behaviour of his beast.
s Cf. especially the remarks on the cultus, vol. I, pp. g8-ror.
T H E N A T U R E O F S I N 383
corporated into the new legal system established by the hit,1 they were necessarily understood as the will of the divine lawgiver, and their obligatory character acquired a markedly personal quality.
Transgression of the Law was saved from a purely formalist, juristic objectivity, in which attention is paid only to the factual failure in performance, and interest is confined to reparation by a correspond- ing equivalent, by the unconditional authority of the covenant God, which claimed the right to shape the life of the covenant people, and in increasing measure subjected one sphere after another to itself.
The old outlooks were now slowly but inevitably annulled.Behind custom and usage, cultic and moral law, became visible the personal sovereign will, with which all sinful action came into conflict. It has already been noted2 how powerfully this determined the whole development of legal life, as regards both its gradual permeation by religion and the process of moral internalization. Similarly, we have been able to show elsewhere how the continuing influence in the cultus of belief in mana and magic was overcome by giving the rituals concerned new meaning. s As far as the understanding of sin was concerned, this process meant that sin was comprehended as a conscious and responsible act, by which Man rebelled against the un- conditional authority of God in order to decide for himself what way he should take, and to make God’s gifts serve his own ego. Thus it comes about that there is a multiplication of terms stressing the wrong attitude of the will in the sinful action.4 This inevitably did much to counteract the tendency to objectivize sin by weakening the element of personal responsibility; for now the decisive feature was the con.icting directions of two wills, the divine and the human, and this conflict could only be resolved by dealings between two persons.
Thus even in the early period of Israel’s history we see a surprisingly sure grasp of the development of sin in Man, indicating a high level
1 Cf. vol. I, pp. 134ff., 162ff.
s Cf. vol. I, pp. 84ff.
sCf. vol. I, pp. 115ff., 121ff., 124ff., 133ff., 142f., 151, 154f., 1 5 8 - 6 2 . T h e significance of this increased prominence of the divine ‘I’, and of his personal relation with men. for the religious attitude and for ethical behaviour has already been demonstrated in chs. XX-XXII.
4 Cf., e.g., two words particularly close in meaning to#-~-~, viz. m-r-d and m-r-h,
‘to be rebellious’. m-‘-l. ‘to act undutifullv’. the Pie1 and Hiohil of the root j-h-t, ‘to corrupt’, m-‘-s, ‘;o despise’, g-‘-i, ‘to abhor’, p-r-r I in the kiphil, ‘to break; make of no effect’, 15’ S-m-‘, ‘not to listen’, iam2- -‘, ‘to hate’; also the nouns ?Gu%, ‘violence’, tO’Cbti, ‘abomination’, rcmiyyci II and mirrmi, ‘deceit’, zimnxi, ‘sensual depravity’,
“dwen, ‘wickedness, falsehood’, $e&er, ‘lie’, ‘awLi and ‘iwel, ‘perversion’, etc.
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of understanding of the volitional element in the sinner’s conduct.
I Sam. x7-20 describes with great sensitivity the gradual growth of jealousy in King Saul, by which he is increasingly blinded, finally falling under the sway of an evil power which derives him to insane and atrocious actions.1 And throughout the centuries the mastery with which, in Gen. 3, the growth of sin is described, from the first external stimulus, through covetousness, mistrust, and rebellion, to the final eruption in the act of disobedience, has aroused boundless admiration.
In view of this securely established assessment of sin as trans- gression deriving from the responsible will of Man instances to the contrary may be understood as simply relics from the inheritance of the past, retained with a tenacious persistence. The adjustment of these elements to the situation created by the divine covenant- making was not achieved without difficulty. Nevertheless, objective guilt is now regarded in a new light, inasmuch as it is seen in the per- spective of what God is doing to establish his holy people. The world of sinister and maleficent power, from contact with which contagion and pollution proceed even without the will of the agent, now be- comes the world of alien divine powers hostile to Yahweh; and from this Yahweh’s people must at all times keep themselves strictly apart in order not to endanger their belonging to the holy God. Inasmuch as this makes the ritual commandments weapons in the struggle for the exclusive worship of Yahweh, it is easily understandable that the infringement of them by even a single member affects the nation as a whole, and disturbs its relationship with God, if care is not taken to punish the transgressor. And the same applies to a moral offence, where the offender remains unknown. For here again objective guilt is firmly rooted in the obligation incumbent upon the whole nation to watch that the writ of the sovereign divine will shall run every- where without restriction, and so no longer bears any sort of magical character. The punishment of unwitting offences against the moral norm, however, is patently justified by something far transcending the old dynamistic anxiety about pollution, namely the basic princi- ple of all national law, that where objective damage has been caused atonement is required. In all these cases the thinking is strictly based on the nation as a whole and its needs.
1 J. Koberle (&‘&de und Crude, 1905, p. 51) rightly emphasizes that only the particular attacks of raving anger, but not the king’s steadily increasing jealousy, and the actions that stem from it, are ascribed to the evil spirit sent from Yahweh.
T H E N A T U R E O F S I N 335
Nevertheless, there are certainly many instances where the older ways of thought still retain their influence, as, for example, when the doom of sin is seen working itself out in the impersonal transmission of curse-laden impurity, in particular in ritual transgressions,1 and in those two offences distinguished as capital crimes by age-old tabooistic ideas, murder and adultery.2 But the law restricts the application of such ideas in practice by a rational assessment of damage, which sets the well-understood interests of the community above the old views of the contagious power of sin, and thus protects the unintentional or unwitting crime from an all too severe retri- bution. This tendency can be shown to have existed also outside Israel; but faith in God’s rule as bringing salvation to his people gave it encouragement which should not be underestimated.4 And where the old compulsions retained their ancestral power, it was the will of this God which would not allow them to operate in unmitigated harshness, but either by a direct warning to the person in dangers or by instituting the means of atonement,6 nullified the sinister power of the world of dynamistic forces. The degree to which, despite all this, these forces were still able to stunt the concept of sin was no longer sufficient to endanger the decisive importance of personal guilt,
1 Cf. vol. I, pp. r58f.
2 Cf. the check placed on this by the right of asylum in cases of unintentional homicide (Ex. 21.12ff.; Deut. rg.rff.), a crime which, according to Num, 35.32f., may not be commuted by the payment of ransom, since to do so would pollute the land. Cf. further the severe punishment of adultery, without any attempt to ascertain whether the offence was committed knowingly or in ignorance: Deut.
22.22ff.
3 This may be seen particularly clearly in the case of the goring ox (Ex. 2 I .28ff.), where, although the old view of the maleficent power of the offence still asserts itself in the stoning of the guilty animal, on the other hand the punishment of the owner can no lon2er be enforced. Rationalization has gone farther in the Code of Hammurabi, in Which, according to 3 250, the animal; too, is allowed to live. Cf.
also Ex. 22.1, where the killing of a burglar is free from guilt; Ex. 21.18f., where unpremeditated bodily injury goes unpunished, though here, too, rationalization has gone farther in the Code of Hammurabi, inasmuch as $5 206-8 stipulate that monetary compensation shall suffice, even when death has been the outcome of a brawl; Num. 15.22ff., which give the regulations for offences committed by mistake (PgZgi) .
4 The clearest example of this influence is the rejection of indirect talion on the basic principle that normally punishment should not be extended to the children of the offender: cf. vol. I, pp. 77f.
s Gen. 2o.6f.; according to I Sam. 14.45 an indemnity may be paid in cases of unwitting transgression.
e
The exoiatorv effect of nurification rites derives not from their material quality, but ?rom the saving will of the covenant God who institutes them.386 S I N A N D F O R G I V E N E S S
any more than men’s awareness of occasionally incomprehensible anger on the part of Yahweh was able to cast doubt on the moral nature of his will.1
But it is also clear how exclusively the power of resistance to &namistic and moralistic weakenings of the concept of sin rests on the constantlv renewed conviction of God’s presence and self-attestation. Violent conflicts were therefore bound to break out, once familiarity with the Canaanite environment had for many caused that assurance to crumble, and had directed religious thinking along naturalistic paths. Here the one- sided development by which the covenant obligations became no more than rigidly stipulated performances prepared the way for a false moralism in the evaluation of sin. Furthermore, the elements of an impersonal, dynamistic conception of the sphere of divine power and of its infringement which remained from the pre-Mosaic period were able, when combined with the elaborate development of the cultus, to influence religious thinking once more in the direction of tabooism. For where the God-Man relationship was distorted into one of objective works, there, too, magico-sacrificial lines of thought revived, and located the destructiveness of sin less in the offence against the divine person than in the encroachment on the sphere of divine power, the quasi-material holiness of which could be restored by automatically effective means of atonement.
II. It was against the inroads of these ideas that the defensive battle of theprophets was fought. The whole secret of their influence was that they had been gripped by a powerful divine will, which subjected the whole of life to its unconditional demand, and allowed no one to evade its call to decision. To the extent to which the prophets suc- ceeded in turning the gaze of their contemporaries toward the divine Lord drawing near to judgment they also destroyed the objectifica- tion which rendered sin harmless by believing that it could be expiated by some equivalent reparation, and made men aware of the real seriousness of the injury to the personal relationship between God and Man. This God had shown himself in the history of his people as holy love, unwearying faithfulness, righteousness calling 1 Cf. vol. I, pp. 260f. The punishment of sin by a compulsion to sin, sent by God, and the whole problem of hardening, which Hempel would like to include in this context (Ethos des AT, 1938, p. 54), is not really relevant here (cf. vol. I, pp. 376f., 38of.). The judgment decreed on the heathen for their transgression of God’s will likewise has nothing to do with objective guilt, for such threats of judg- ment rest on the assumption that certain moral norms are known to, and valid for, all nations. On the subject of collective guilt cf. further pp. 428ff., 435ff. below.
T H E N A T U R E O F S I N 387
for the response of trust, compassionate kindness; but at the same time he had solicited from men their personal consent to his offer, their unreserved self-surrender, and their willing obedience. For him no material performance, be it ever so great, could be a substitute for the living movement of the heart, expressing in love, faith, know- ledge of God, and gratitude, a personal assent to his claim. Because the will of God was in this way relevant to the totality of human personal life, individual o$ences against this will could not be regarded atomisticaZ@, listed in the rubric as objective failures of a more, or less, serious degree, to be made good after the manner of legal restitution, or, like tabooistic pollutions, cancelled by the use of sacral techniques of expiation. Instead, the individual actions, as affronts to the divine will, point to a perverted direction of the human will. Behind the sin stands sin, in the sense of a wrong condition of human nature, since that nature has turned aside from its only proper goal in God. The prophets describe this condition of human nature sometimes as ingratitude (Amos), or as inner aversion and hostility (Hosea), as arrogance and self-exaltation (Isaiah), or as a deep-seated falsity (Jeremiah). But they all point in the same direction, namely toward an alienation from God which, because it is a voluntary abandonment of Yahweh, breaks the bond between God and Man, and can there- fore be nothing other than a disruption and destruction of the divine order.
There can be no doubt that this conception of sin stands in a direct line with that of ancient Israel. At the same time it has been deepened and broadened by the insight into the full richness of the divine nature, and by the new unfolding of human individuala& The majesty of God, which fills the whole world, and which the prophets so passionately proclaim, leaves the sinner no possibility of flight, and for the first time makes his responsibility quite inescapable. While the partisans of things foreign found adequate reason for not taking Yahweh’s demands any too seriously in the fact that the sphere of his power was so limited when compared with that of the gods of the world-empires, the prophets proclaimed the overthrow of all gods by the enthrone- ment of the One who alone is exalted, and whose judgment no man can escape, though he flee to the ends of the world.1 Furthermore, by teaching men to understand the rule of this universal God as the dealing of the most personal kind of love and loyalty, and thus pro- viding a rationale of his commandments which created an internal
‘Amos g.rff.; Isa. 2.1of., 19, 21.