Evolution of the God Concept Among the Hebrews

97:2.1In the tenth cen­tury be­fore Christ the He­brew na­tion be­came di­vided into two king­doms. In both of these po­lit­i­cal di­vi­sions many truth teach­ers en­deav­ored to stem the re­ac­tionary tide of spir­i­tual deca­dence that had set in, and which con­tin­ued dis­as­trously af­ter the war of sep­a­ra­tion. But these ef­forts to ad­vance the He­braic re­li­gion did not pros­per un­til that de­ter­mined and fear­less war­rior for righ­teous­ness, Eli­jah, be­gan his teach­ing. Eli­jah re­stored to the north­ern king­dom a con­cept of God com­pa­ra­ble with that held in the days of Samuel. Eli­jah had lit­tle op­por­tu­nity to pre­sent an ad­vanced con­cept of God; he was kept busy, as Samuel had been be­fore him, over­throw­ing the al­tars of Baal and de­mol­ish­ing the idols of false gods. And he car­ried for­ward his re­forms in the face of the op­po­si­tion of an idol­a­trous monarch; his task was even more gi­gan­tic and dif­fi­cult than that which Samuel had faced.

97:2.2When Eli­jah was called away, El­isha, his faith­ful as­so­ciate, took up his work and, with the in­valu­able as­sis­tance of the lit­tle-known Mi­ca­iah, kept the light of truth alive in Pales­tine.

97:2.3But these were not times of prog­ress in the con­cept of De­ity. Not yet had the He­brews as­cended even to the Mo­saic ideal. The era of Eli­jah and El­isha closed with the bet­ter classes re­turn­ing to the wor­ship of the su­preme Yah­weh and wit­nessed the restora­tion of the idea of the Uni­ver­sal Cre­ator to about that place where Samuel had left it.