Yahweh—God of the Hebrews

96:5.1Moses was an ex­traor­di­nary com­bi­na­tion of mil­i­tary leader, so­cial or­ga­nizer, and re­li­gious teacher. He was the most im­por­tant in­di­vid­ual world teacher and leader be­tween the times of Ma­chi­venta and Je­sus. Moses at­tempted to in­tro­duce many re­forms in Is­rael of which there is no rec­ord. In the space of one man’s life he led the poly­glot horde of so-called He­brews out of slav­ery and un­civ­i­lized roam­ing while he laid the foun­da­tion for the sub­se­quent birth of a na­tion and the per­pet­u­a­tion of a race.

96:5.2There is so lit­tle on rec­ord of the great work of Moses be­cause the He­brews had no writ­ten lan­guage at the time of the ex­o­dus. The rec­ord of the times and do­ings of Moses was de­rived from the tra­di­tions ex­tant more than one thou­sand years af­ter the death of the great leader.

96:5.3Many of the ad­vances which Moses made over and above the re­li­gion of the Egyp­tians and the sur­round­ing Lev­an­tine tribes were due to the Ken­ite tra­di­tions of the time of Mel­chiz­e­dek. With­out the teach­ing of Ma­chi­venta to Abra­ham and his con­tem­po­raries, the He­brews would have come out of Egypt in hope­less dark­ness. Moses and his fa­ther-in-law, Jethro, gath­ered up the residue of the tra­di­tions of the days of Mel­chiz­e­dek, and these teach­ings, joined to the learn­ing of the Egyp­tians, guided Moses in the cre­ation of the im­proved re­li­gion and rit­ual of the Is­raelites. Moses was an or­ga­nizer; he se­lected the best in the re­li­gion and mores of Egypt and Pales­tine and, as­so­ci­at­ing these prac­tices with the tra­di­tions of the Mel­chiz­e­dek teach­ings, or­ga­nized the He­brew cer­e­mo­nial sys­tem of wor­ship.

96:5.4Moses was a be­liever in Prov­i­dence; he had be­come thor­oughly tainted with the doc­trines of Egypt con­cern­ing the super­nat­u­ral con­trol of the Nile and the other el­e­ments of na­ture. He had a great vi­sion of God, but he was thor­oughly sin­cere when he taught the He­brews that, if they would obey God, “He will love you, bless you, and mul­ti­ply you. He will mul­ti­ply the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land—the corn, wine, oil, and your flocks. You shall be pros­pered above all peo­ple, and the Lord your God will take away from you all sick­ness and will put none of the evil dis­eases of Egypt upon you.” He even said: “Re­mem­ber the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the power to get wealth.” “You shall lend to many na­tions, but you shall not bor­row. You shall reign over many na­tions, but they shall not reign over you.”

96:5.5But it was truly piti­ful to watch this great mind of Moses try­ing to adapt his sub­lime con­cept of El Elyon, the Most High, to the com­pre­hen­sion of the ig­no­rant and il­lit­er­ate He­brews. To his as­sem­bled lead­ers he thun­dered, “The Lord your God is one God; there is none be­side him”; while to the mixed mul­ti­tude he de­clared, “Who is like your God among all the gods?” Moses made a brave and partly suc­cess­ful stand against fe­tishes and idol­a­try, declar­ing, “You saw no simil­i­tude on the day that your God spoke to you at Ho­reb out of the midst of the fire.” He also for­bade the mak­ing of im­ages of any sort.

96:5.6Moses feared to pro­claim the mercy of Yah­weh, pre­fer­ring to awe his peo­ple with the fear of the jus­tice of God, say­ing: “The Lord your God is God of Gods, and Lord of Lords, a great God, a mighty and ter­ri­ble God, who re­gards not man.” Again he sought to con­trol the tur­bu­lent clans when he de­clared that “your God kills when you dis­obey him; he heals and gives life when you obey him.” But Moses taught these tribes that they would be­come the cho­sen peo­ple of God only on con­di­tion that they “kept all his com­mand­ments and obeyed all his statutes.”

96:5.7Lit­tle of the mercy of God was taught the He­brews dur­ing these early times. They learned of God as “the Al­mighty; the Lord is a man of war, God of bat­tles, glo­ri­ous in power, who dashes in pieces his en­e­mies.” “The Lord your God walks in the midst of the camp to de­liver you.” The Is­raelites thought of their God as one who loved them, but who also “hard­ened Pharaoh’s heart” and “cursed their en­e­mies.”

96:5.8While Moses pre­sented fleet­ing glimpses of a uni­ver­sal and benef­i­cent De­ity to the chil­dren of Is­rael, on the whole, their day-by-day con­cept of Yah­weh was that of a God but lit­tle bet­ter than the tribal gods of the sur­round­ing peo­ples. Their con­cept of God was prim­i­tive, crude, and an­thro­po­mor­phic; when Moses passed on, these Bed­ouin tribes quickly re­verted to the semibar­baric ideas of their olden gods of Ho­reb and the desert. The en­larged and more sub­lime vi­sion of God which Moses ev­ery now and then pre­sented to his lead­ers was soon lost to view, while most of the peo­ple turned to the wor­ship of their fe­tish golden calves, the Pales­tinian herds­man’s sym­bol of Yah­weh.

96:5.9When Moses turned over the com­mand of the He­brews to Joshua, he had al­ready gath­ered up thou­sands of the col­lat­eral de­scen­dants of Abra­ham, Na­hor, Lot, and other of the re­lated tribes and had whipped them into a self-sus­tain­ing and par­tially self-reg­u­lat­ing na­tion of pas­toral war­riors.