Excerpted with permission from Walther Eichrodt, Ttiology of Old Testament (Philadelphia: Westminister, 1961), vol. 1: pp. 286-96.
Affirmations about the Divine Activity: Synthesis
lJ_286D The unique character of the picture of God in ancient Israel is de- rived in essence from the attempt to hold together the ideas of a I[2870 divine power without limitation and of a divine act of self-limitation in the es- tablishment of a b%t [‘covenant’] -an act where God makes himself known as sovere@z and personal will The conception of God’s power is given its special character by its association with first the idea of the divine holiness, that which is annihilating and inaccessible and utterly distinct from every created thing, and secondly the divine wrath, God being, in his sovereign freedom, inscrutable to men. Contrasted with this is God’s vol- untary engagement of his sovereignty to the covenant fellowship with Is- rael, by virtue of which he grants men to know his Zovingkindness as Father and Shepherd and demonstrates his righteousness by victoriously defending them against their enemies. Since these dealings of God with his people have as their object the establishment of his dominion in the holy land, the divine will is revealed as power directing history; and this implies a fullness of personal life which not only is different in principle from mere natural forces, but rejects as utterly alien the primitive conceptions of God attach- ing to the beliefs in spirits, ‘power’ and magic.
’ This unique attempt to combine the ideas of the manifest and the hid- den God by way of the claim which he made upon men established itself in the succeeding period in opposition to an understanding of the world and of life which had been enriched by foreign elements, and in the process gained in force both in comprehensiveness and profundity. No longer was it simply exceptional incidents and occasions which were seen in the light of the divine presence, but every detail of life was now interpreted with in- creasing logical consistency in this way. As a result the wrath
of
God was ever more closely connected with his punitive righteousness and with individual retribution, while his holiness was understood as the perfection of the divine be- ing, reflected in the Law as the pattern of life or the holy people and an- nihilating everything which resisted the purposes of that law. That all this was the work not of some impersonal world-order, but of the will of a per- sonal Lord, was newly comprehended and expressed in the recognition of love as the deepest meaning of election and of righteousness as the power ed- ucating the pious in the attainment of their own righteous conduct. Holi-Covenant 71
ness was now understood as God’s supremacy over the heathen; the idea of him as Father was extended to cover the whole Creation; the concept of love now applied to God’s relations with each individual member of the nation; and consequently men came to a new vision of how far-reaching might be the scope of their covenant God in his operations.
IT2881 This line of thought presented the divine activity as matched to human understanding and attuned to human needs, with the result that the ‘absolute’ quality of the divine, God’s being by nature ‘unintelligible’, receded in importance. But in the prophetic preaching the superhuman and enigmatic, nay irrational liberty and superiority of God returned in force. This came about not by a revival of the ancient Israelite way of look- ing at the matter, but by the ascription of a superhuman character even to God’s self-involvement. Indeed, God’s sovereignty appears to be raised to the highest possible power in the proclamation of the eschatological doom of wrath, which reveals the ultimate depth of the abyss between God and man and characterizes the whole of this world as a temporary and provi- sional order incapable of standing in the presence of the Holy One. But this very act of concluding every element of earthly existence in one vast community of guilt, breaking man’s link with God and hurling humanity far from his presence, becomes the means whereby God’s voluntary self- involvement is revealed as something transcending all human standards and shattering all men’s categories of retribution. It means that God’s cov- Pnant lovingkindness now becomes the free gift of mercy; his righteousness becomes that redeeming activity, which pleads even for the godless and restores not only Israel but the world; his holiness acquires its deepest meaning as the moral governance of the universe or the inconceivable power of love which suffers for the sake of the condemned, until it has achieved his salvation. Thus the ultimate secret of the divine personhood is manifested as loue concealed in wrath, redeeming righteousness, the loving- kindness that remains constant despite the instability of the covenant. The antinomies that must for human thought remain for ever insoluble are fitsed in the amazing truth that God is a living person; but this truth is manifested as a living reality only to the man who can apprehend by faith the breaking into this present aeon of God’s new world. 12890
The Instruments of the Covenant: The Charismatic Leaders
‘I ‘he Founder of the Religion
III the opinion of J. Burckhardt the forces at work in the emergence of a religion also determine its whole succeeding history.’ If this is true, then
1. Cf. Weltgesrhichtliche Betrachtungen, ed. J. Oeri, 1905, p. 42.
72 Walther Eichrodt
the figure dominant at the outset of Israelite religion must be of decisive importance for the interpretation of the spiritual mediators of the con- cept of Yahweh in later times.
Now it is characteristic of Moses that it should be impossible to classify him in any of the ordinary categories applicable to a leader of a nation; he is neither a king, nor a commander of an army, nor a tribal chieftain, nor a priest,2 nor an inspired seer and medicine man. To some extent he be- longs to all these categories; but none of them adequately explains his po- sition. In many respects he gives the impression of exercising kingly authority; he determines the direction of the line of march and appoints its destination; he gives laws and administers justice and orders the exter- nal details of the common life of the tribes. But that which is specifically characteristic of a king, prowess in war and leadership in battle, is just what is lacking in Moses. Similarly nothing is heard of his having made any arrangements for a son and successor to inherit his position. His giv- ing of tom,- - that is to say his instructions at the sanctuary and the organiza- tion of the cultus attributed to him, suggest the priest; but on the other hand his office of supreme judge is not to be regarded simply 112900 as a priestly function, and we are told nothing of his offering sacrifice, a task which seems to have been reserved to Aaron and the Levites, or to spe- cially chosen laymen such as the young men of Exodus 245. The seer seems to be suggested by many individual traits, such as the theophanies, his remaining forty days on the mount of God, his delivery of the divine decisions; but there is no tradition in the case of Moses of the one feature especially celebrated in other seers, miraculous foreknowledge of the fu- ture or clairvoyant explication of puzzling situations. Attempts have been made to explain him as a medicine man or magician;’ but even if isolated features can be made to support this view, in particular the various mira- cle stories, it is manifestly quite inadequate to cover the whole of this man’s life work and the traditions that have been connected with him.
For these reasons, and from a perfectly correct feeling that his most important work lay in the field of religion, the title of Prophet has often been conferred on him, in support of which a number of Old Testament passages from the later monarchy may certainly be quoted (Deut 34:lO;
18: 15, 18; Hos 12: 14). Nevertheless, it should be noted that the tradition of Israel taken as a whole does not regard Moses as the prophet Ka’I: ’ i~oxfp
[‘par excellence’l), but portrays him, in accordance with his various 2. The points which P. Volz (Moset, p. 100) enumerates as marks of his priestly character are not sufficient to justify this as an exclusive classification. (In the 2nd ed. of his work, pp. 57, 91fI’., 125f., Volz advances a quite different opinion.) A similar view of Moses as priest may be found in E. Meyer, Ilit ha&en, p. 72.
3. The view of Beer in his study Maw, 1912.
Covenant 73
achievements, as intercessor, miracle worker or lawgiver; it is only where there has been time to reflect on the analogy between Moses and prophe- tism, that he is explicitly displayed as the supreme preacher of the divine will, towering above all the prophets of later days (cf. Exod 4:16; 7:l; 33:ll and Num 11:24-30; 12:1-8). It is in keeping with this that Deuteronomy characterizes him as the mdiator between God and his people (5:24-28).
Justice, then, can never be done to the full historical reality, if the at- tempt is made to imprison this outstanding figure in any one of the ordi- nary categories of ‘holy men,’ homines religiosi. It is precisely the secret of this man’s greatness that he unites in himself gifts not normally found in combination, and is therefore able to work with lasting effect in the most diverse fields. If we ask, however, what is the muster kq to the career of this rarely endowed personality, the common factor which saves it from being a jumble of dissociated elements, the answer lies in the concrete historical tusk which was entrusted to him in the very hour in which he was seized of a new understanding of the whole nature of God. To bring a nation to Yahweh, the mighty Lord, a nation in which his sovereignty could I[2910 be established and his nature expressed, which furthermore he could forge into an instrument for the execution of his judgment upon the na- tions and the founding of a new world order4-that was the goal which dominated the life of this man whom Yahweh had conquered. To the ser- vice of this calling he dedicated all his wealth of gifts and became the mes- senger who should proclaim God’s will for social, political and cultic life, whether in the summons to escape from Egypt and in the holy war or in the mar- vellous redeeming acts of the perilous wandering in the wilderness. Only such personalities as Zoroaster or Mohammed, who were themselves founders of religions, and who likewise closely combined political and na- tional activity with their religious work, can be compared with him; and it is just the fact that it is only such leader-figures who are at all comparable that should warn us not to try to bring Moses down to the level of those more ordinary servants of God or consecrated men whose operations were confined to a restricted sphere.5
4. Cf. the view, long predominant in Israel, that Yahweh’s battles were the execution of his judgment upon his enemies: Num 23:22ff.; 24:8ff.; 10:35; Judg 5:20, 23, 31; Gen 15:16; 1 Sam
15:2, 33; Ps 2; 45:4ff.; 110 etc. It is possible to argue about how far the dominion of the new world order was thought to extend; but at least there can be no doubt that from the very be- ginning it was seen as extending beyond Israel, since it clearly applies to the nations overthrown by her.
5. An enterprising and most effective attempt to present this comprehensive interpreta- tion of the figure of Moses has been made by M. Buber (Moses) with complete disregard for prevailing source-criticism. His penetrating religious exposition will always be of value even for those who cannot follow him in his method or in many details. E. Auerbach in his book of the
74 Walther Eichrodt Covenant One thing, however, is clear at the start. This organizer who enjoyed
no proper political power, this national leader who boasted no prowess in war, this man who directed the worship of God without ever having re- ceived the status of priest, who established and mediated a new under- standing of God without any of the credentials of prophetic powers of prediction, this wonder-worker who was yet far above the domain of mere magic, confronts us from the very outset with one ineluctable fact: Israel- ite religion is not the product of a scrupulously guarded tradition, swollen with the accretions of history, nor does it rest on any sort of organization, 82920 however cleverly or successfully devised, but is a creation of that spirit which bloweth where it listeth, and which in mockery of our neat arrange- ments unites in the richness of marvellously equipped personalities things patently incompatible, in order that it may forward its own mighty and life-giving work. At the veq beginning of Israelite religion weJind the charisma, the special individual endowment of a person; and to such an extent is the whole structure based on it, that without it it would be inconceivable.
1. That m.en S relationship with God should be founded on the activity of one specially called and equipped mediator is of abiding significance for the whole character of their understanding and worship of God. The single historical event in which God encountered the nation becomes what the mediator declared it to be, the point of alignment for their belief in God; the redemption from Egypt received its definitive interpretation at the covenant-making on Sinai- and thus became the foundation and the orkntation of all the mutual relations of Yahweh and his pe0p.k. It has already been explained6 how this meant that man’s relationship with God was based on revelation in the strict sense of the word-that is to say, on God’s imparting of himself
‘through the contingency of historical circumstance-and required sub- mission to the will of God simply as that was made known here and now;
and further how this excluded any attempt to base a doctrine of God on general concepts or principles derived from human experience. It was also pointed out that this makes explicit the principle of God’s being undeter- mined by any involvement with Nature. It remains to add here, that the very fact of the emergence of a mediator supplied further confirmation of these basic features of the new relationship with God; for the activity of the
same title has adhered more closely to contemporary scholarship in his attempt to portray Is- rael’s ‘mightiest genius’; on occasion his simplifications and strongly rationalist interpreta- tion do violence to the material, but he has a sound feeling for the untenable nature of most criticism of Moses hitherto. Each of these authors has in his own way made abundantly clear the need for a new understanding of the accounts relating to the first preacher of the faith of Yahweh.
6. Cf. ch. 11, The Covenant Relationship, [Eichrodt 196l:J pp. 37ff.
mediator was an emphatic reminder of the distance between God and man, a distance not in any way lessened for the chosen people. That this was in- deed felt to be the significance of the mediator is indicated by the many in- terpretations of his work along these lines,7 but also by the sense, which loomed so large in Israel’s religion, that Yahweh was terrible and unap- proachable, and that to draw near to him without such mediation was to court destruction. The frequent references to the fact that Moses’ own in- tercourse with God was unique precisely [2931] because it was unmedi- ated, and that this constituted the special character of his position,8 prove that men never ceased to meditate on the gulf between God and man which he had bridged.
2. Moreover, the way in which Moses brought God near to his people became an important model for the future. For it made clear that the de-
mands of God in the Law, which strove to order every detail of the national life and to conform it to the mind of God himself, were those of a personal will. From thenceforward the legal regulation of the people’s conduct was not only raised to the status of a religious obligation, and distinguished definitely from all merely human opinions,g but it was also bound up with the type of lawgiving mediated by Moses. In the Torah of Moses, regard- less of whether this is held to be simply oral tradition or to have been fixed in writing, is to be found the source of all law, public and private.
Deuteronomy may have derived its distinctive form, the presentation of the law as an address from the founder of the religion, from the tradi- tional practice of having a reader of the law at local assemblies,” but it was a real dependence which made this established form the most fitting mode of expression. Again, the constantly recurring formula of the Priestly Law-‘And the Lord spake unto Moses’-in both early and late passages, bears witness to the feeling that the regulation of cultic life could only be carried out by associating it with the original giver of the Law. This means, however, that from the time of Moses onwards the will of God, as this applied to the nation, was conceived as being normative for all human relations and remaining ideally the same for ever, it was his proclama- tion of this will, and his application of it to the new problems that were arising, which brought about the submission of the people and caused the rule of God to be accepted. The whole intensity of Israel’s devotion to the Law, which arises from her knowledge that she is carrying out God’s un- changing will, rests ultimately on this foundation.
7. Exod 20:18ff.; 33:5; 33:7ff.; 34:9; 34:29ff.; N u m 11:2; 11:25ff.; 12:2ff.; 17:27f.; 21:7;
Deut 5:5, 22ff. Cf. also the way in which Moses is in general portrayed as an intercessor.
8. Exod 4:16; 7:l; Num 11:24-30; 12:1-8; Deut 5:24, 28.
9. Cf. chs. III and IV, The Covenant Statutes.
IO. Cf. A. KIostermann, DerPentateuch N. F., 1907.
76 Walther Eichrodt
Combined with this, however, is a renewed sense of the Word of God ad- dressed to the will as the true basis of man’s association with him; it is from this, and not from any naturalistic or mystical significance it may possess, that every sacred act derives its sanction; and the obedience of the pious comes to the forefront as the only justification of the sacramental.
The person of the mediator [294] determined for ever the personal character of man’s relations with God.
3. This divine will, which was normative for the whole of life, also in- dicated the role of the nation in men’s relationship with God, giving it on the one hand an undeniable importance, but on the other taking care that this importance should be clearly limited. Because the divine cove- nant did not embrace simply the Israelites as individuals or the tribes as separate entities, but the people as a whole, it was possible to recognize the existence of the nation as rooted in the will of God. National feeling was given an out-and-out religious colouring; under Moses’ leadership the tribes learnt that they had a duty of mutual support not, primarily, because they were all Israelites, but because they were all followers of Yahweh. Loyalty to the nation was made an explicitly religious obligation.”
There can be no question but that this subordination of the nation to the aims of the theocracy was achieved more easily in an age which knew none but a charismatic leader, and which was learning to make national unity an effective reality under his direction, than in the period in which the Israelite nation-state was emerging. Conflict only broke out in all its fierceness when nationalist ideals were confirmed and given independent validity under a strong monarchy, and Israel awoke with pride to the fact of her national coherence and power. It must, however, have been of the most essential importance for the clashes which at this stage had to come, that the work of the founder of the religion should already have included among its principal features a definite evaluation both of the importance and of the limitations of the nation, and that this should have become the common inheritance of a wide circle.
4. These considerations may have helped to clarify the underlying im- portance of the activity of the founder and mediator for the whole struc- ture of Israelite faith and worship. But they should not be allowed to obscure the fact that the continued injuence of Moses was essentially different from that of other great founder-personalities. The revelation of God which Moses mediated did not acquire its final form in his own lifetime;
his work only laid the initial foundation. From those beginnings was to de- velop a permanent intercourse between God and the nation, with all the 1 I. That this does not imply that Yahweh was included among the purely national deities, has already been explained in ‘ch. II: The Covenant Relationship.
Covenant 77
possibilities which that implied of further self-imparting by God. However highly the [295] Mosaic interpretation of God’s will was valued as deter- mining the line of development for all succeeding ages, it was never ac- corded the character of a final and definitive communication concerning God’s nature and q&ration; it pointed categorically to the future. It is significant in this connection that not one saying of the founder of the religion, not one A@tov [‘quotation’] of Moses, has been preserved as part of the con- tent of the revelation; there is nothing to compare with the Gathas of Zo- roaster or the Sums of Mohammed. Even the transmission of Moses’ law was carried out in a spirit of freedom, as the frequent additions, transpo- sitions and expansions of the Book of the Covenant and the various forms of the Decalogue and other basic laws make clear. An incessant process of ex- panding and adapting the law to meet the demands of changing situations was perfectly compatible with loyalty to the religious and social spirit of the Mosaic legislation. Just as little was it supposed that after Moses there would be no need of any further prophetic souls to interpret or reveal the divine will; on the contrary, an abundant provision of new men of God was regarded as the guarantee that Yahweh’s favour was still guiding the desti- nies of his people. The figure of the mediator was never ‘improved’ into a hagiological portrait, even though devout and thankful minds may have taken a delight in adding a good many decorative-but non-essential- details to the traditional account of his doings. In complete contrast to the case of the Patriarchs, there is no trace of any cultus of his tomb or relics;
the tradition lays particular stress on the fact that no man knew his grave.
It is this, among other things, which distinguishes him sharply from the or- dinary chieftain and medicine-man endowed with power, a well-known figure in the realm of primitive religion, even though certain stories, such as those of the miraculous demonstrations in the presence of Pharaoh, of his prayer prevailing in the battle with the Amalekites, or of the healing of the serpent-bites by means of a wonder-working idol,‘* might seem to sug- gest such an identification. It is precisely the fact that the powerful fasci- nation of this mysterious personality did not lead popular tradition, always particularly susceptible to phenomena of this kind, to exalt Moses into a wonder-working magician or tabs-man which is the most striking testi- mony to his belonging to a completely different sphere. Moreover, in his case magical power was quite distinct in character from that of the primi- tive sorcerer, for it was entirely subordinated to the activity of the Deity;
hence, [r296] even when similar in external appearance, there was no similarity whatever in significance. Furthermore, the death of the founder of‘ the religion before the conquest of the Promised Land for which he
12. Cf. on this point [[Eichrodt 1961:] pp. 112f.