Yahweh—God of the Hebrews

96:6.1Upon the death of Moses his lofty con­cept of Yah­weh rapidly de­te­ri­o­rated. Joshua and the lead­ers of Is­rael con­tin­ued to har­bor the Mo­saic tra­di­tions of the all-wise, benef­i­cent, and al­mighty God, but the com­mon peo­ple rapidly re­verted to the older desert idea of Yah­weh. And this back­ward drift of the con­cept of De­ity con­tin­ued in­creas­ingly un­der the suc­ces­sive rule of the var­i­ous tribal sheiks, the so-called Judges.

96:6.2The spell of the ex­traor­di­nary per­son­al­ity of Moses had kept alive in the hearts of his fol­low­ers the in­spi­ra­tion of an in­creas­ingly en­larged con­cept of God; but when they once reached the fer­tile lands of Pales­tine, they quickly evolved from no­madic herders into set­tled and some­what se­date farm­ers. And this evo­lu­tion of life prac­tices and change of re­li­gious view­point de­manded a more or less com­plete change in the char­ac­ter of their con­cep­tion of the na­ture of their God, Yah­weh. Dur­ing the times of the be­gin­ning of the trans­mu­ta­tion of the aus­tere, crude, ex­act­ing, and thun­der­ous desert god of Sinai into the later ap­pear­ing con­cept of a God of love, jus­tice, and mercy, the He­brews al­most lost sight of Moses’ lofty teach­ings. They came near los­ing all con­cept of mono­the­ism; they nearly lost their op­por­tu­nity of be­com­ing the peo­ple who would serve as a vi­tal link in the spir­i­tual evo­lu­tion of Uran­tia, the group who would con­serve the Mel­chiz­e­dek teach­ing of one God un­til the times of the in­car­na­tion of a be­stowal Son of that Fa­ther of all.

96:6.3Des­per­ately Joshua sought to hold the con­cept of a su­preme Yah­weh in the minds of the tribes­men, caus­ing it to be pro­claimed: “As I was with Moses, so will I be with you; I will not fail you nor for­sake you.” Joshua found it nec­es­sary to preach a stern gospel to his dis­be­liev­ing peo­ple, peo­ple all too will­ing to be­lieve their old and na­tive re­li­gion but un­will­ing to go for­ward in the re­li­gion of faith and righ­teous­ness. The bur­den of Joshua’s teach­ing be­came: “Yah­weh is a holy God; he is a jeal­ous God; he will not for­give your trans­gres­sions nor your sins.” The high­est con­cept of this age pic­tured Yah­weh as a “God of power, judg­ment, and jus­tice.”

96:6.4But even in this dark age, ev­ery now and then a soli­tary teacher would arise pro­claim­ing the Mo­saic con­cept of di­vin­ity: “You chil­dren of wicked­ness can­not serve the Lord, for he is a holy God.” “Shall mor­tal man be more just than God? shall a man be more pure than his Maker?” “Can you by search­ing find out God? Can you find out the Al­mighty to per­fec­tion? Be­hold, God is great and we know him not. Touch­ing the Al­mighty, we can­not find him out.”