I. YAHWEH’S DWELLING-PLACE IN HEAVEN
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H E R E L I G I O-H I S T O R I C A L O U T L O O K o f t h e W e l l h a u s e n school for a long time accepted more or less without question the proposition that only in the time of Ezekiel did Israel’s God Yahweh, as the result of a fusion of ancient Israelite *and Babylonian ideas, ‘grow to heavenly stature’.1 Before that it was impossible to speak of Yahweh as a sky-god.Today this conception has already received one severe blow simply from our increased knowledge of the Baa1 religion, in which Baa1 plays the part of a sky-god-a fact all the more crucial, the more strongly had the thesis been elaborated that Israelite religion after the Conquest was extensively assimilated to that of the land of Canaan.
But neither could such a view be maintained on the basis of the Old Testament evidence. Its strongest line of argument was the collation of all those texts which speak of Yahweh’s dwelling or presence in a particular place on earth. And indeed these statements do at first sight seem to betray a very restricted conception of Yahweh’s relation to the spatial order. In particular there are two series of statements which in their mutual relationship seem to be based on quite primitive ideas, the first being the accounts of Yahweh’s appearances on Sinai (especially Ex. I g and I Kings 19. I I), and the second the references to his presence in the sanctuaries of Canaan.2 From this starting-point attempts have been made to demonstrate a development from lower to higher along the following lines. Sinai was the ancient mountain of the gods, and as such Yahweh’s natural dwelling-place; but as a result of the invasion and settlement of Canaan his abode was
1 B. Stade,Biblische Tleologie des AT, 1905, p. 291.
2 Ex. 23.15; 34.20; II Sam. 15.25; II Kings 17.33; Deut. 16.16.
186
Y A H W E H ’ S D W E L L I N G - P L A C E 187 detached from Sinai, and transferred to Canaan, where by a fusion of Yahweh with the Baals it became identified with the sanctuaries of the Canaanite countryside. Thus the organic connection of Yahweh with the land became so close that without it he was no longer think- able, and the whole relationship of Israel to him was bound up with her occupation of his land in a way which meant a total assimilation to the popular Canaanite religion. The only serious setback to this heathen way of thinking resulted from the conflict between the prophets and the people. In order to deprive the people of the soft pillow of their belief that for his own sake Yahweh was bound to protect the land which was his dwelling-place the prophets returned to the old conception of Yahweh’s dwelling on Sinai-as, for example, did Elijah-and indeed enlarged the idea to imply that Yahweh never had come with his people into the land, but had remained on Sinai all the time.1
But however skilfully this line of development is drawn, it will not bear closer examination. In the first place there is no valid proof which can be adduced to show that in the earliest period Sinai as the mountain of the gods was regarded as the true dwelling-place of Yahweh. Even if the designation bar hZeZChim, mountain of God, does suggest that the mountain already had a sacred character in earlier times, this still tells us nothing about the nature of the divine revelation given to Moses. At the same time the Yahwist stratum- not to mention the Elohist 2---knows only of a coming of Yahweh to Sinai or a descent upon it, and says nothing of his permanent abiding there.3 Since this conception accords with the use of nomadic shrines in the Mosaic period,4 it is methodologically inadmissible on the one hand to disregard the testimony of the documents in the desire to reconstruct an underlying stage of thought for which the only adducible evidence is the analogy of certain heathen customs,5 while on the other studiously ignoring the fact that the unique effects of the Mosaic revelation point to a special quality in its source. Further- more there is no mention in later times of any kind of pilgrimage to Yahweh’s alleged dwelling-place, which on this showing one would
1 I Kings rg.8ff.; Ex. 33.1-5.
2 On the mode of Yahweh’s self-manifestation in E cf. vol. I, pp. rogff.
3Ex. 3.7ff.; 19.11, 18, 20; 34.5.
4 Cf. vol. I, pp. Io8f.
5 That points of contact with other conceptions already existed in ancient Near Eastern thought in general has been mentioned earlier: cf. vol. I, p. 104. n.3.
I88 THE CELESTIAL WORLD
expect to find in those groups within the nation influenced by the prophets.1
Moreover, if the prophets had, in fact, contrasted the theologou- menon of Yahweh’s dwelling on Sinai with the popular conception of his presence at the country sanctuaries, one would have expected to hear something of their polemic on this point! In fact, neither Elijah nor any of the later prophets inveigh against such a popular conception. On the contrary it is precisely in the writing prophets that we find repeated pronouncements about Canaan as Yahweh’s dwelling-place;2 and clearly they are aware neither of propagating something new nor of reviving an older idea. Instead the two con- ceptions, of Yahweh’s particular association with Sinai and with the cult sites of Canaan, are at all times found side by side, and indeed often in the same writers. Once again therefore the beautifully con- structed developmental theory comes to pieces in one’s hands.
It may, however, be asked whether these ideas do not, in fact, restrict Yahweh’s power within very narrow spatial limitations. The temptation to do so was certainly always present; and where in particular any considerable amalgamation with the Canaanites took place, men no doubt succumbed to it. This may have occurred especially in the form of a fission of the unitary conception of God, so that Yahweh now took different forms at different centres, just as Baa1 in each town bore his local character.3 Thus one could speak of the Yahweh of Shiloh, for example, to whom Elkanah according to I Sam. 1.3 went up year by year to pay homage and to sacrifice; or again, of the Yahweh of Hebron, to whom according to II Sam. 15.7 Absalom had made a vow which clearly could be paid only at the Hebron sanctuary. Hence the widely accepted interpretation of Deut. 6.4 as a protest against the disintegration of Yahweh into various local deities, the verse in this case being rendered: ‘Yahweh our God is a single Yahweh!’
The striking point, however, is that there is no sign of this dis- integration of the deity in the thought of the leading spirits of Israel.
It can be clearly proved that an assertion that Yahweh dwelt and manifested himself at a particular place involved absolutely no idea of limiting God to the place in question. In one of the oldest hymns, 1 Elijah’s journey to Horeb cannot be included in this category, since its purpose is precisely to portray the unique position of Elijah by placing him on a level with Moses.
s Cf. Hos. 8.1ff.; 9.3, 15; Isa. 6; 8.18.
s Cf. on this subject vol. I, pp. 103ff.
YAHWEH’S DWELLING-PLACE I89
Judg. 5, Yahweh comes from Sinai to the help of his people fighting in Canaan, thus testifying that even in the earliest period men did not think of Yahweh as spatially restricted to the mountain of God in the south, but believed that he heard and granted the prayer of his people in the Promised Land. According to I Kings 19.1 r Elijah received his revelation as the Lord passed by; God here, too, therefore appearing as the One who comes, and not as bound to his mi@m.
Moreover, that this view was a living reality to everyone even before the time of Elijah may be seen from the Yahwist narrative in Ex.
33.12-23 and 34.8ff., where Yahweh reveals himself to Moses on Sinai in a very similar way, and promises to go with him into the land of Canaan.
Just as little did belief in the particular presence of Yahweh at the cult sites of Canaan restrict the sphere of the divine power and existence virtually to the borders of the land. Judg. 16.28 shows Samson calling on Yahweh, and his act of vengeance, in Philistia;
Gen. 24.12 relates how Eliezer’s prayer was answered in Aram.
According to I Sam. 30.6ff., 23, 26, David remained a true Yahweh- worshipper in Philistia, just as Absalom did in Geshur (II Sam. 15.8).
Even if, generally speaking, a regular cultus was impracticable- though here, too, as in the case of Naaman (II Kings 5. I 7ff.), there is evidence of exceptions-yet in foreign lands men were still sure of the effective presence of Yahweh. Otherwise one would have to assume that when Hosea describes the heathen land as unclean and as a place where cultic worship cannot be offered1 he is denying the existence of Yahweh outside Canaan. In general, however, in order to see how completely untenable is the assertion that Yahweh’s effectiveness was restricted2 it is only necessary to bear in mind the whole early historical narrative, in which it is taken for granted that Yahweh has shown himself superior to all alien gods and peoples not only in Egypt and in the Wilderness, but also against the Amalekites and Moabites, the Philistines, Arameans and Edomites, in Damascus and in Phoenicia. Thus it is that a narrative which quite certainly goes back behind the Yahwist stratum can declare with magnificent assurance of faith (I Sam. 14.6) that for God nothing is impossible:
‘for nothing can hinder the LORD from saving by many or by few’.
1 Hos. 9.4, cf. 3.4; Deut. 28.36; Jer. 16.13.
s Even passages such as Gen. I 1.7; 18.21 are not evidence to the contrary. They may in part indicate echoes of the original form of the myth, and in part result from a striving after more vivid description.
‘90 T H E C E L E S T I A L W O R L D
If therefore the two series of conceptions, of the revelation of Yahweh on Sinai and of his dwelling at the cult sites of Canaan, neither contradict one another nor necessarily confine the deity within spatial limits,1 then t/ze fact that they exist side by side becomes of the greatest importance for the permanent distinction of Yahweh from the other
ancient Semitic gods. For this implies the confession that there was a time when Yahweh exercised his sovereignty over Israel even without possessing Canaan, and only later bestowed on them the Land of Promise in particular historical acts (cf. Judg. I .4, I g, 22). In this way his existence was elevated into a certainty in no sense dependent upon the land which was now designated as his particular inheritance; and the close association with Canaan was understood as his own free act.
Consequently the description of the land as the house and inheritance of Yahweh acquired a wholly different significance in Israel from that which the same terminology had, for example, in Moab. When Moab is called the land of Chemosh, this is in the sense of a naturalistic bond between the country and the god; the Moabites venerated their Chemosh as the god connected with the land from of old. By contrast Canaan is called the house of Yahweh in the sense that he has established himself there for the purpose of his revelation. Thus the statements about Yahweh’s dwelling-place do not imply a physically limited, bodily presence, but dynamic presence, his presence in revela- tion. Even though in early times men had no dogma of the omni- presence of Yahweh, they were nevertheless sure of his nearness wherever they had need of him; that is to say, that the revelation of Yahweh as a god near at hand took the place in its practical applicsi- tion of the formula of a metaphysical attribute.
Another influence resisting any narrow interpretation of the con- cept of Yahweh’s dwelling-place on earth was that of a third conception of his abiding-place, namely belief in his residing in heaven. Since we have already concluded from the divine names that Yahweh was known as the Most High and the Creator, and also that as Elohim he summed up the pantheon in his own person ,2 belief in his dwelling in heaven can only be regarded as the natural complement to this. Explicit evidence for the time of the Judges and the early monarchy is afforded by the following passages: Gen. I 1.5; 19.24; 21.17; 22.1 I;
24.7; 28.12; Pss. 2.4; 18.7; Ex. 19.18; I Kings 8.12.3 1 Cf. vol. I, pp. IOPff.
2 Cf. vol. I, pp. 181ff.
3 The exegetical devices by which scholars of an earlier generation tried to
Y A H W E H ’ S D W E L L I N G - P L A C E ‘91 In the prophetic period the widening of men’s vision of the world and the deepening of their grasp of Yahweh’s universal power gave them a special sensitivity to his exaltedness, with the result that the texts which speak of heaven as the true dwelling-place of Yahweh are multiplied. On Sinai he had spoken with the people from heaven;1 now it is in heaven that he sits enthroned in his palace as king of the universe.2 Thence-as Solomon’s prayer in the Temple expressed it3 -he answers the supplications of his people, when they spread out their hands toward heaven. In the Persian period preference is given more than ever to the description of Yahweh as the God of Heaven,4 because, as the name Elyon had done,5 it allowed of a link with the elements of truth in the heathen concept of God.
The decisive factor with regard to this localization of Yahweh, however, is not a metaphysical and speculative but a religious concern; Yahweh’s exalted position above the earth illustrates the fact that he sees everything, and that neither the iniquity nor the piety of men remains hidden from him.6 And as with his omniscience this is also the favourite illustration of his omnipotence; Isa. 40.22 describes men as grasshoppers in the presence of him who sits upon the circle of the earth.
When it is noted that assertions of Yahweh’s dwelling in heaven often occur in the selfsame authors as those of his revelation at places on earth,’ it becomes completely beyond question that such ex-
deny the value of these pieces of evidence strike us today as curious. Thus, for example, Stade’s opinion that Gen. I I can tell us nothing of the faith of early Israel because it is a ‘foreign myth’ rests on the na’ive idea that no ‘foreign myths’
were taken over by Israel until the Assyrian-Babylonian period, but that they adopted them en masse all at once! One good result of the study of the sagas has been to give us different notions of the migration of saga material and of its very gradual assimilation into alien systems of thought. If, then, Gen. II is foreign narrative material, it must have circulated in Israel long before the time of the Yahwist. Modern exegesis normally rejects the arbitrary excision of the phrase min-hd.&imuyim in passages such as Gen. I 9.24; 2 I. I 7 and 22. I I simply because it cannot be fitted into the theory.
1 Ex. 20.22; Deut. 4.36.
2 Isa. 31.4; Micah 1.2; Deut. 26.15; I Kings 8.30; Hab. 2.20; Ps. x1.4.
3 I Kings 8.22, 32, 34. Cf. also what has been said about the Temple as the dwelling-place of Yahweh’s Name: vol. I, pp. 106f., and pp. 4rf. above.
411 Chron. 36.23; Ezra 1.2; 5.12; 6.gf.; 7.12, 21, 23; Neh. 1.4f.; 2.4,20; Dan.
2.18f., 28, 37, 4.
6 Cf. vol. I, pp. 181f.
6 Pss. I 1.4; 14.2; 33.13ff.; 102.2of.; I 13.5-7; 138.6; Isa. 57.15; Job 28.24.
7 Cf. Isa. 6.1; 8.18; 31.4; 18.4; Jer. 7.14 and 23.24; Ps. 20.3 and 7.
192 T H E C E L E S T I A L W O R L D
pressions do not imply an interest in any particular localization of Yahweh. In every case it is rather the religious need which is the criterion, now calling for the portrayal of a God near at hand or the recollection of the privilege of his self-revelation in the midst of his people, now preferring to set before men’s eyes the remote, exalted God, in order to educate them in reverence and trust. That even the conception of God as the God of heaven was not in itself an infallible protection against dragging him down to the human level is shown by Job 22.13-14, where the godless attempt to comfort themselves with the words: ‘What does God know? Can he judge through the deep darkness? Thick clouds enwrap him, so that he does not see, and he walks on the vault of heaven.’ But the same idea could be equally dangerous to living piety when God’s heavenly dwelling was taken to imply his separation from earth in a deistic sense, with the result that the feeling for the immediate nearness of God was lost. Such errors arouse frequent protests. In the present context it is interesting to note that none of this ever led to an assertion of Yahweh’s nature as purely spiritual,1 involving as this does an abstraction which it is always difficult for human thinking to make, but that men were content with the negative statement that Yahweh was too exalted even for heaven to contain him (I Kings 8.27). Or the two great domains are set on a par side by side as Yahweh’s realm: to Yahweh ‘belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it’
(Deut. 10.14) ; he alone ‘is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath’ (Deut. 4.39; Josh. 2.1 I); yea, he fills heaven and earth (Jer. 23.24).
The religious significance of these expressions is not, of course, lessened by the fact that Israel’s conception of the cosmos and of the place of heaven within it displays some decidedly ndive features, and is very largely in agreement with the cosmological conceptions of non- Israelite peoples. 2 That this should be so throws as little doubt on the primacy of the dynamic over the localized idea of Yahweh’s presence as on the distinctive character of the Israelite creation belief. And the effectiveness of this primacy may be seen in the control which it exercises over even the loftier statements about Yahweh’s dwelling and in the refusal to allow mythopoeic imagination to play arbitrarily about the figure of the Lord enthroned in heaven. The concept most frequently associated with Yahweh’s dwelling in heaven is that of the
1 Cf. vol. I, pp. PIOff.
2 cf. the remarks on pp. g3ff. above.
Y A H W E H ’ S D\YELLING-PLACE ‘93
sovereign and king; evidence for this is to be found in both earlier and later presentations, even those in which the title melek is not used. Of prime importance in this connection is Isa. 6. Here before the eyes of the prophet waiting in the Temple the earthly sanctuary opens up into the heavenly throne-room wherein Yahweh holds council as king in the midst of his celestial courtiers. That this was a visionary experience, in which, as is well known, traditional imagery plays a large part, does not exclude the possibility that particular elements in the vision, and especially that of Yahweh’s kingship, were already present beforehand in the prophet’s consciousness. Confirmation of this is afforded both by I Kings 22.19, in which Yahweh as king of heaven takes counsel with the entire heavenly host, standing beside him to right and left, how best to deceive Ahab, and by the old folk- tale of Job I and 2 with its very similar picture. Ex. 24. I o may also be adduced, where the theophany to the elders of Israel is described in the words: ‘there was under his feet as it were a pavement ofsapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness.’ The same association of royal sovereignty with heavenly grandeur occurs in many cultic poems.1 The earthly counterpart of the heavenly throne, however, is the Ark of Yahweh with the cherubim. This sacred object belongs to the class of empty divine thrones, and as the God of the Ark Yahweh acquires the epithetyo’.% /zakkerzXm, he wha is enthroned upon the cherubim.2 The nature of the cosmic conceptions associated with Yahweh’s enthronement in heaven is instructively indicated by the call-vision of Ezekiel (Ezek. I). Here again ancient traditions from the world-view of priestly circles take on new life in the visionary experience. In the cherub-throne memory patently returns to Yahweh enthroned upon the Ark; but the form has been changed. The plat- form of the throne, called ?-C&a’, is the reflection of the heavenly
r&a’, the dome of the sky, and like that contains within its hollow lightnings and flames. The one enthroned upon this r&u’ is a demzit
or mar’eh, a likeness of Yahweh who sits enthroned above the summit of the dome of the sky; and in this way striking expression is given to God’s transcendence, his supramundane character.3 The cosmic significance of the whole is confirmed by the four cherubim, who as the corner-pillars of the vault of heaven represent the four corners of
1 E.g. Pss. 29.10; 48.3; 68.25; 74.12.
2 I Sam. 4.4; II Sam. 6.2; II Kings x9.15; Ps. 80.2, etc.
3 CT. 0. Procksch, ‘Die Berufungsvision Hesekiels’, Budde-Festschrift, x920, pp.
14rff.