Yahweh—God of the Hebrews

96:4.1The evo­lu­tion and el­e­va­tion of the Mo­saic teach­ing has in­flu­enced al­most one half of all the world, and still does even in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury. While Moses com­pre­hended the more ad­vanced Egyp­tian re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy, the Bed­ouin slaves knew lit­tle about such teach­ings, but they had never en­tirely for­got­ten the god of Mount Ho­reb, whom their an­ces­tors had called Yah­weh.

96:4.2Moses had heard of the teach­ings of Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek from both his fa­ther and his mother, their com­mon­ness of re­li­gious be­lief be­ing the ex­pla­na­tion for the un­usual union be­tween a woman of royal blood and a man from a cap­tive race. Moses’ fa­ther-in-law was a Ken­ite wor­shiper of El Elyon, but the eman­ci­pa­tor’s par­ents were be­liev­ers in El Shad­dai. Moses thus was ed­u­cated an El Shad­daist; through the in­flu­ence of his fa­ther-in-law he be­came an El Ely­on­ist; and by the time of the He­brew en­camp­ment about Mount Sinai af­ter the flight from Egypt, he had for­mu­lated a new and en­larged con­cept of De­ity (de­rived from all his for­mer be­liefs), which he wisely de­cided to pro­claim to his peo­ple as an ex­panded con­cept of their olden tribal god, Yah­weh.

96:4.3Moses had en­deav­ored to teach these Bed­ou­ins the idea of El Elyon, but be­fore leav­ing Egypt, he had be­come con­vinced they would never fully com­pre­hend this doc­trine. There­fore he de­lib­er­ately de­ter­mined upon the com­pro­mise adop­tion of their tribal god of the desert as the one and only god of his fol­low­ers. Moses did not specif­i­cally teach that other peo­ples and na­tions might not have other gods, but he did res­o­lutely main­tain that Yah­weh was over and above all, es­pe­cially to the He­brews. But al­ways was he plagued by the awk­ward predica­ment of try­ing to pre­sent his new and higher idea of De­ity to these ig­no­rant slaves un­der the guise of the an­cient term Yah­weh, which had al­ways been sym­bol­ized by the golden calf of the Bed­ouin tribes.

96:4.4The fact that Yah­weh was the god of the flee­ing He­brews ex­plains why they tar­ried so long be­fore the holy moun­tain of Sinai, and why they there re­ceived the ten com­mand­ments which Moses pro­mul­gated in the name of Yah­weh, the god of Ho­reb. Dur­ing this lengthy so­journ be­fore Sinai the re­li­gious cer­e­mo­ni­als of the newly evolv­ing He­brew wor­ship were fur­ther per­fected.

96:4.5It does not ap­pear that Moses would ever have suc­ceeded in the es­tab­lish­ment of his some­what ad­vanced cer­e­mo­nial wor­ship and in keep­ing his fol­low­ers in­tact for a quar­ter of a cen­tury had it not been for the vi­o­lent erup­tion of Ho­reb dur­ing the third week of their wor­ship­ful so­journ at its base. “The moun­tain of Yah­weh was con­sumed in fire, and the smoke as­cended like the smoke of a fur­nace, and the whole moun­tain quaked greatly.” In view of this cat­a­clysm it is not sur­pris­ing that Moses could im­press upon his breth­ren the teach­ing that their God was “mighty, ter­ri­ble, a de­vour­ing fire, fear­ful, and all-pow­er­ful.”

96:4.6Moses pro­claimed that Yah­weh was the Lord God of Is­rael, who had sin­gled out the He­brews as his cho­sen peo­ple; he was build­ing a new na­tion, and he wisely na­tion­al­ized his re­li­gious teach­ings, telling his fol­low­ers that Yah­weh was a hard taskmas­ter, a “jeal­ous God.” But nonethe­less he sought to en­large their con­cept of di­vin­ity when he taught them that Yah­weh was the “God of the spir­its of all flesh,” and when he said, “The eter­nal God is your refuge, and un­der­neath are the ev­er­last­ing arms.” Moses taught that Yah­weh was a covenant-keep­ing God; that he “will not for­sake you, nei­ther de­stroy you, nor for­get the covenant of your fa­thers be­cause the Lord loves you and will not for­get the oath by which he swore to your fa­thers.”

96:4.7Moses made a heroic ef­fort to up­lift Yah­weh to the dig­nity of a su­preme De­ity when he pre­sented him as the “God of truth and with­out in­iq­uity, just and right in all his ways.” And yet, de­spite this ex­alted teach­ing, the lim­ited un­der­stand­ing of his fol­low­ers made it nec­es­sary to speak of God as be­ing in man’s im­age, as be­ing sub­ject to fits of anger, wrath, and sever­ity, even that he was venge­ful and eas­ily in­flu­enced by man’s con­duct.

96:4.8Un­der the teach­ings of Moses this tribal na­ture god, Yah­weh, be­came the Lord God of Is­rael, who fol­lowed them through the wilder­ness and even into ex­ile, where he pres­ently was con­ceived of as the God of all peo­ples. The later cap­tiv­ity that en­slaved the Jews in Baby­lon fi­nally lib­er­ated the evolv­ing con­cept of Yah­weh to as­sume the mono­the­is­tic role of the God of all na­tions.

96:4.9The most unique and amaz­ing fea­ture of the re­li­gious his­tory of the He­brews con­cerns this con­tin­u­ous evo­lu­tion of the con­cept of De­ity from the prim­i­tive god of Mount Ho­reb up through the teach­ings of their suc­ces­sive spir­i­tual lead­ers to the high level of de­vel­op­ment de­picted in the De­ity doc­trines of the Isa­iahs, who pro­claimed that mag­nif­i­cent con­cept of the lov­ing and mer­ci­ful Cre­ator Fa­ther.