Evolution of the God Concept Among the Hebrews

97:4.1A great step in the tran­si­tion of the tribal god—the god who had so long been served with sac­ri­fices and cer­e­monies, the Yah­weh of the ear­lier He­brews—to a God who would pun­ish crime and im­moral­ity among even his own peo­ple, was taken by Amos, who ap­peared from among the south­ern hills to de­nounce the crim­i­nal­ity, drunk­en­ness, op­pres­sion, and im­moral­ity of the north­ern tribes. Not since the times of Moses had such ring­ing truths been pro­claimed in Pales­tine.

97:4.2Amos was not merely a re­storer or re­former; he was a dis­cov­erer of new con­cepts of De­ity. He pro­claimed much about God that had been an­nounced by his pre­de­ces­sors and coura­geously at­tacked the be­lief in a Di­vine Be­ing who would coun­te­nance sin among his so-called cho­sen peo­ple. For the first time since the days of Mel­chiz­e­dek the ears of man heard the de­nun­ci­a­tion of the dou­ble stan­dard of na­tional jus­tice and moral­ity. For the first time in their his­tory He­brew ears heard that their own God, Yah­weh, would no more tol­er­ate crime and sin in their lives than he would among any other peo­ple. Amos en­vi­sioned the stern and just God of Samuel and Eli­jah, but he also saw a God who thought no dif­fer­ently of the He­brews than of any other na­tion when it came to the pun­ish­ment of wrong­do­ing. This was a di­rect at­tack on the ego­is­tic doc­trine of the “cho­sen peo­ple,” and many He­brews of those days bit­terly re­sented it.

97:4.3Said Amos: “He who formed the moun­tains and cre­ated the wind, seek him who formed the seven stars and Orion, who turns the shadow of death into the morn­ing and makes the day dark as night.” And in de­nounc­ing his half-re­li­gious, time­serv­ing, and some­times im­moral fel­lows, he sought to por­tray the in­ex­orable jus­tice of an un­chang­ing Yah­weh when he said of the evil­do­ers: “Though they dig into hell, thence shall I take them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down.” “And though they go into cap­tiv­ity be­fore their en­e­mies, thence will I di­rect the sword of jus­tice, and it shall slay them.” Amos fur­ther star­tled his hear­ers when, point­ing a re­prov­ing and ac­cus­ing fin­ger at them, he de­clared in the name of Yah­weh: “Surely I will never for­get any of your works.” “And I will sift the house of Is­rael among all na­tions as wheat is sifted in a sieve.”

97:4.4Amos pro­claimed Yah­weh the “God of all na­tions” and warned the Is­raelites that rit­ual must not take the place of righ­teous­ness. And be­fore this coura­geous teacher was stoned to death, he had spread enough leaven of truth to save the doc­trine of the su­preme Yah­weh; he had in­sured the fur­ther evo­lu­tion of the Mel­chiz­e­dek rev­e­la­tion.

97:4.5Hosea fol­lowed Amos and his doc­trine of a uni­ver­sal God of jus­tice by the res­ur­rec­tion of the Mo­saic con­cept of a God of love. Hosea preached for­give­ness through re­pen­tance, not by sac­ri­fice. He pro­claimed a gospel of lov­ing-kind­ness and di­vine mercy, say­ing: “I will be­troth you to me for­ever; yes, I will be­troth you to me in righ­teous­ness and judg­ment and in lov­ing-kind­ness and in mer­cies. I will even be­troth you to me in faith­ful­ness.” “I will love them freely, for my anger is turned away.”

97:4.6Hosea faith­fully con­tin­ued the moral warn­ings of Amos, say­ing of God, “It is my de­sire that I chas­tise them.” But the Is­raelites re­garded it as cru­elty bor­der­ing on trea­son when he said: “I will say to those who were not my peo­ple, ‘you are my peo­ple’; and they will say, ‘you are our God.’” He con­tin­ued to preach re­pen­tance and for­give­ness, say­ing, “I will heal their back­slid­ing; I will love them freely, for my anger is turned away.” Al­ways Hosea pro­claimed hope and for­give­ness. The bur­den of his mes­sage ever was: “I will have mercy upon my peo­ple. They shall know no God but me, for there is no sav­ior be­side me.”

97:4.7Amos quick­ened the na­tional con­science of the He­brews to the rec­og­ni­tion that Yah­weh would not con­done crime and sin among them be­cause they were sup­pos­edly the cho­sen peo­ple, while Hosea struck the open­ing notes in the later mer­ci­ful chords of di­vine com­pas­sion and lov­ing-kind­ness which were so ex­qui­sitely sung by Isa­iah and his as­so­ciates.