Evolution of the God Concept Among the Hebrews

97:1.1Hos­tile pres­sure of the sur­round­ing peo­ples in Pales­tine soon taught the He­brew sheiks they could not hope to sur­vive un­less they con­fed­er­ated their tribal or­ga­ni­za­tions into a cen­tral­ized gov­ern­ment. And this cen­tral­iza­tion of ad­min­is­tra­tive au­thor­ity af­forded a bet­ter op­por­tu­nity for Samuel to func­tion as a teacher and re­former.

97:1.2Samuel sprang from a long line of the Salem teach­ers who had per­sisted in main­tain­ing the truths of Mel­chiz­e­dek as a part of their wor­ship forms. This teacher was a vir­ile and res­o­lute man. Only his great de­vo­tion, cou­pled with his ex­traor­di­nary de­ter­mi­na­tion, en­abled him to with­stand the al­most uni­ver­sal op­po­si­tion which he en­coun­tered when he started out to turn all Is­rael back to the wor­ship of the su­preme Yah­weh of Mo­saic times. And even then he was only par­tially suc­cess­ful; he won back to the ser­vice of the higher con­cept of Yah­weh only the more in­tel­li­gent half of the He­brews; the other half con­tin­ued in the wor­ship of the tribal gods of the coun­try and in the baser con­cep­tion of Yah­weh.

97:1.3Samuel was a rough-and-ready type of man, a prac­ti­cal re­former who could go out in one day with his as­so­ciates and over­throw a score of Baal sites. The prog­ress he made was by sheer force of com­pul­sion; he did lit­tle preach­ing, less teach­ing, but he did act. One day he was mock­ing the priest of Baal; the next, chop­ping in pieces a cap­tive king. He de­vot­edly be­lieved in the one God, and he had a clear con­cept of that one God as cre­ator of heaven and earth: “The pil­lars of the earth are the Lord’s, and he has set the world upon them.”

97:1.4But the great con­tri­bu­tion which Samuel made to the de­vel­op­ment of the con­cept of De­ity was his ring­ing pro­nounce­ment that Yah­weh was change­less, for­ever the same em­bod­i­ment of unerring per­fec­tion and di­vin­ity. In these times Yah­weh was con­ceived to be a fit­ful God of jeal­ous whims, al­ways re­gret­ting that he had done thus and so; but now, for the first time since the He­brews sal­lied forth from Egypt, they heard these startling words, “The Strength of Is­rael will not lie nor re­pent, for he is not a man, that he should re­pent.” Sta­bil­ity in deal­ing with Di­vin­ity was pro­claimed. Samuel re­it­er­ated the Mel­chiz­e­dek covenant with Abra­ham and de­clared that the Lord God of Is­rael was the source of all truth, sta­bil­ity, and con­stancy. Al­ways had the He­brews looked upon their God as a man, a super­man, an ex­alted spirit of un­known ori­gin; but now they heard the one­time spirit of Ho­reb ex­alted as an un­chang­ing God of cre­ator per­fec­tion. Samuel was aid­ing the evolv­ing God con­cept to as­cend to heights above the chang­ing state of men’s minds and the vi­cis­si­tudes of mor­tal ex­is­tence. Un­der his teach­ing, the God of the He­brews was be­gin­ning the as­cent from an idea on the or­der of the tribal gods to the ideal of an all-pow­er­ful and change­less Cre­ator and Super­vi­sor of all cre­ation.

97:1.5And he preached anew the story of God’s sin­cer­ity, his covenant-keep­ing re­li­a­bil­ity. Said Samuel: “The Lord will not for­sake his peo­ple.” “He has made with us an ev­er­last­ing covenant, or­dered in all things and sure.” And so, through­out all Pales­tine there sounded the call back to the wor­ship of the su­preme Yah­weh. Ever this en­er­getic teacher pro­claimed, “You are great, O Lord God, for there is none like you, nei­ther is there any God be­side you.”

97:1.6Thereto­fore the He­brews had re­garded the fa­vor of Yah­weh mainly in terms of ma­te­rial pros­per­ity. It was a great shock to Is­rael, and al­most cost Samuel his life, when he dared to pro­claim: “The Lord en­riches and im­pov­er­ishes; he de­bases and ex­alts. He raises the poor out of the dust and lifts up the beg­gars to set them among princes to make them in­herit the throne of glory.” Not since Moses had such com­fort­ing promises for the hum­ble and the less for­tu­nate been pro­claimed, and thou­sands of de­spair­ing among the poor be­gan to take hope that they could im­prove their spir­i­tual sta­tus.

97:1.7But Samuel did not pro­gress very far be­yond the con­cept of a tribal god. He pro­claimed a Yah­weh who made all men but was oc­cu­pied chiefly with the He­brews, his cho­sen peo­ple. Even so, as in the days of Moses, once more the God con­cept por­trayed a De­ity who is holy and up­right. “There is none as holy as the Lord. Who can be com­pared to this holy Lord God?”

97:1.8As the years passed, the griz­zled old leader pro­gressed in the un­der­stand­ing of God, for he de­clared: “The Lord is a God of knowl­edge, and ac­tions are weighed by him. The Lord will judge the ends of the earth, show­ing mercy to the mer­ci­ful, and with the up­right man he will also be up­right.” Even here is the dawn of mercy, al­beit it is lim­ited to those who are mer­ci­ful. Later he went one step fur­ther when, in their ad­ver­sity, he ex­horted his peo­ple: “Let us fall now into the hands of the Lord, for his mer­cies are great.” “There is no re­straint upon the Lord to save many or few.”

97:1.9And this grad­ual de­vel­op­ment of the con­cept of the char­ac­ter of Yah­weh con­tin­ued un­der the min­istry of Samuel’s suc­ces­sors. They at­tempted to pre­sent Yah­weh as a covenant-keep­ing God but hardly main­tained the pace set by Samuel; they failed to de­velop the idea of the mercy of God as Samuel had later con­ceived it. There was a steady drift back to­ward the rec­og­ni­tion of other gods, de­spite the main­te­nance that Yah­weh was above all. “Yours is the king­dom, O Lord, and you are ex­alted as head above all.”

97:1.10The keynote of this era was di­vine power; the proph­ets of this age preached a re­li­gion de­signed to fos­ter the king upon the He­brew throne. “Yours, O Lord, is the great­ness and the power and the glory and the vic­tory and the majesty. In your hand is power and might, and you are able to make great and to give strength to all.” And this was the sta­tus of the God con­cept dur­ing the time of Samuel and his im­me­di­ate suc­ces­sors.