Yahweh Sentence Examples

He, like Jeremiah, was friendly to Nebuchadrezzar, regarding him as Yahweh's instrument for the chastisement of the nation.

The prevalent famine and distress are due to Yahweh's indignation at such remissness.

His strongest denunciation is directed against the religious practices of the time in Judea - the worship of the Canaanite local deities (the Baals), the Phoenician Tammuz, and the sun and other Babylonian and Assyrian gods (vi., viii., xvi., xxiii.); he maintained vigorously the prophetic struggle for the sole worship of Yahweh.

According to ' Yahweh's spirit, thought of as Yahweh's vital principle, as man's spirit is man's vital principle, is to be breathed into them, as, in Gen.

The wheels symbolize divine omniscience and control, and the whole vision represents the coming of Yahweh to take up his abode among the exiles.

The deity revealed himself in a new name, Yahweh, and with signs and wonders fortified Moses for his task.

The precepts of the law were valuable in the eyes of the Scribes because they were the seal of Jewish particularism, the barrier erected between the world at large and the exclusive community of Yahweh's grace.

In this form the seventh day's rest was one of the few outward ordinances by which the Israelite could still show his fidelity to Yahweh and mark his separation from the heathen.

To the Israelites, however, it was a miracle, an unexpected intervention on the part of Yahweh, and the first of many marvels which he performed on behalf of the people of his choice.

The tradition of the earliest document J ascribes the worship of Yahweh to much earlier times, in fact to the dawn of human life.

Under the name Shaddai (which Neldeke suggests 2 was originally Shed' " my demon ") it is possible to discern the name of a deity who in later times came to be identified with Yahweh.

This could never have been accomplished without unity of worship. The object of this worship was Yahweh.

As we have already indicated, the document J assumes that Yahweh was worshipped by the Hebrew race from the first.

But I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as El Shaddai and by my name Yahweh I did not make myself known to them."

According to this later tradition Yahweh was unknown till the days of Moses, and under the aegis of His power the Hebrew tribes were delivered from Egyptian thraldom.

Yahweh now becomes the supreme deity of the Hebrew people, and an ark analogous to the Egyptian and Babylonian arks portrayed on the monuments' was constructed as embodiment of the rumen of Yahweh and was borne in front of the Hebrew army when it marched to war.

We note (a) that in the worship of Yahweh the sacred seasons of new moon and Sabbath are obviously lunar.

It is probable that Moses held the larger rather than the narrower conception of Yahweh's sphere of influence.

While the ark carried with Israel's host symbolized His presence in their midst, He was also known to be present in the cloud which hovered before the host and in the lightning ('esh Yahweh or " fire of Yahweh ") and the thunder (kol Yahweh or " voice of Yahweh ") which played around Mount Sinai.

Through the influence of Mosaic teaching and law a definitely ethical character was ascribed to Yahweh.

The most strongly distinguishing feature of the code is the rigid exclusion of the worship of other gods than Yahweh.

From first to last the true religion of Yahweh was pure of sexual taint.

Of this tradition the Naboth incident in the time of Ahab furnishes a clear example which brings to light the contrast between the Tyrian Baal-cult, which was scarcely ethical, and of which Jezebel and Ahab were devotees, and the moral requirements of the religion of Yahweh of which Elijah was the prophet and impassioned exponent.

Again, the conception of Yahweh suffered modification.

Yahweh ceased to be exclusively regarded as god of the atmosphere, worshipped in a distant mountain, Horeb-Sinai, situated in the south country (negebh),and moving in the clouds of heaven before the Israelites in the desert, but he came to be associated with Israel's life in Canaan.

In this way Yahweh came to be called the Baal or " lord " of any sacred place where the armies of Israel by their victories attested " his mighty hand and outstretched arm."

For when Yahweh gradually became Israel's local Baal he became worshipped like the old Canaanite deity, and all the sensuous accompaniments of Kedeshoth,' as well as the presence of the asherah or sacred pole, became attached to his cult.

But the symbol carried with it the numen of the goddess symbolized, and there can be little doubt that Asherah came to be regarded as Yahweh's consort.

Just as we have in Assyria an Ishtar of Arbela and an Ishtar of Nineveh (treated in Assur-bani-pal's (Rassam) cylinder 2 like two distinct deities), as we have local Madonnas in Roman Catholic countries, so must it have been with the cults of Yahweh in the regal period carried on in the numerous high places, Bethel, Shechem, Shiloh (till its destruction in the days of Eli) and Jerusalem.

Each had a Yahweh of its own.

It was no easy task to establish Yahweh in permanent possession of the new lands conquered by the Hebrew settlers.

Even in the days of Hosea the rivalry between Yahweh and the old Canaanite Baal still continued.

External danger from a foreign foe, such as Midian or the Philistines, at once brought into prominence the claim and power of Yahweh, Israel's national war-god since the great days of the exodus.

The religion of Yahweh (as Wellhausen said) meant patriotism, and in war-time tended to weld the participating tribes into a national unity.

Despite the capture of the ark after the disastrous battle of Shiloh, Yahweh had in the end shown himself through a destructive plague superior in might to the Philistine Dagon.

Yahweh was god only of Israel and of Israel's land.

But the arts of the necromancer were always and without exception treated as foreign to the religion of Yahweh.

The special quality which distinguished these prophetic gilds or companies was an intense patriotism combined with enthusiastic devotion to the cause of Yahweh.

For the prophet's function became in an increasing degree a function of mind, and not merely of traditional routine or mechanical technique, like that of the diviner with his arrows or his lots which he cast in the presence of the ephod or plated Yahweh image.

Even as early as the time of David it would seem that Nathan assumed this more developed function as interpreter of Yahweh's righteous will to David.

We stand on safer ground when we come to Elijah's bold intervention on behalf of righteousness when he declared in the name of Yahweh the divine judgment on Ahab and his house for the judicial murder of Naboth.

Of this we have an interesting example in the vivid episode that preceded the battle of Ramoth-Gilead described in 1 Kings xxii., when Micaiah appears as the true prophet of Yahweh, who in his rare independence stands in sharp contrast with the conventional court prophets, who prophesied then, as their descendants prophesied more than two centuries later, smooth things.

This is due to the fact that it for the first time unfolded the true character of Yahweh, implicit in the old Mosaic religion and submerged in the subsequent centuries of Israel's life in Canaan, but now at length made clear and explicit to the mind of the 1 In Isa.

Even Elisha, the greatest prophet of the 9th century, had remained within these national limitations which characterized the popular conceptions of Yahweh.

Yahweh was Israel's wargod.

If Assyria finally overthrew Israel and carried off Yahweh's shrine, Assur (Asur), the tutelary deity of Assyria, was mightier than Yahweh.

This problem of religion was solved by Amos and by the prophets who succeeded him through a more exalted conception of Yahweh and His sphere of working, which tended to detach Him from His limited realm as a national deity.

Yahweh was not only the lord of the universe and possessed of sovereign power.

The prophet also emphasized with passionate earnestness that Yahweh was a God whose character was righteous, and God's demand upon His people Israel was not for sacrifices but for righteous conduct.

In the younger contemporary prophet of Ephraim, Hosea, the stress is laid on the relation of love (hesed) between Yahweh, the divine husband, and Israel, the faithless spouse.

Israel's faithlessness is shown in idolatry and the prevailing corruption of the high places in which the old Canaanite Baal was worshipped instead of Yahweh.

Compacts with a powerful foreign state, under whose aegis Israel was glad to shelter, involved covenants sealed by sacrificial rites in which the deity or deities of the foreign state were involved as well as Yahweh, the god of the weaker.

And so Yahweh's honour was compromised.

While these aspects of Israel's relation to Yahweh are emphasized by the Ephraimite prophet, the larger conceptions of Yahweh's character as universal Lord and the God of righteousness, whose government of the world is ethical, emphasized by the prophet of Tekoah, are scarcely presented.

Assyria is the " bee " and Egypt the " fly " for which Yahweh hisses.

These views of Duhm, in which a severe distinction is thus drawn between the representation of Yahweh's servant in the servant-passages, and that which meets us in the rest of the Deutero-Isaiah, have been challenged by a succession of critics.'

Finally the Deutero-Isaiah conveyed to captive Israel the message of Yahweh's unceasing love and care, and the certainty of their return to Judaea and the restoration of the national prosperity which Ezekiel had already announced in the earlier period of the exile.

Nowhere in the Old Testament does the doctrine taught by Amos of Yahweh's universal power and sovereignty 1 Viz.

Jerusalem) which Yahweh your God shall choose out of all your tribes to put His name there " (xii.

Doubtless such a reform met with strong resistance from the disestablished and vested interests, but it was firmly supported by royal influence and by the Jerusalem priesthood as well as by the true prophets of Yahweh who had protested against the idolatrous usages and corruptions of the high places.

The book of Deuteronomy, in conjunction with the reformation of Josiah's reign (which synchronizes with the rapid decline of Assyria and the reviving prestige of Yahweh), appeared to mark the triumph of the great prophetic movement.

Yahweh's care for other peoples does not appear.

Yahweh's servant David, whereas in the ideal scheme detailed in chap. xl.

By the older prophets this judgment of God or " day of Yahweh " was never held to be far removed from the horizon of the present or the world in which they lived.

It is only after a great war of destruction, a day of Yahweh's great judgment, that the dominion of God will begin " (Bousset).

Sebaoth, or " hosts," attached to the name of Yahweh, denoted the heavenly retinue of stars.

The story of the " exodus " is that of the religious birth of " Israel," joined by covenant with the national god Yahweh' whose aid in times of peril and need ' On the name see Jehovah, Tetragrammaton.

Amid a great variety of motives the prominence of Kadesh in south Palestine is to be recognized, but it is uncertain what clans or tribes were at Kadesh, and it is possible that traditions, originally confined to those with whom the new conception of Yahweh is connected, were subsequently adopted by others who came to regard themselves as the worshippers of the only true Yahweh.

External oppression and internal rivalries rent the Israelites, and in the religious philosophy of a later (Deuteronomic) age the period is represented as one of alternate apostasy from and of penitent return to the Yahweh of the " exodus."

Judaean tradition dated the sanctity of Jerusalem from the installation of the ark, a sacred movable object which symbolized the presence of Yahweh.

Yet again, Saul had been chosen by Yahweh to free his people from the Philistines; he had been rejected for his sins, and had suffered continuously from this enemy; Israel at his death was left in the unhappy state in which he had found it; it was the Judaean David, the faithful servant of Yahweh, who was now chosen to deliver Israel, and to the last the people gratefully remembered their debt.

Israel, on the other hand, had signed its death-warrant by the institution of calf-cult, a cult which, however, was scarcely recognized as contrary to the worship of Yahweh before the denunciations of Hosea.

The conflict between Yahweh and Baal and the defeat of the latter are the characteristic notes of the religious history of the period, and they leave their impression upon the records, which are now more abundant.

To one who favoured simplicity of cult the new worship was a desecration of Yahweh, and, braving the anger of the king and queen, he foreshadowed their fate.

Jehu (q.v.) became king as the champion of the purer worship of Yahweh.

Jehoash, it is said, turned away from Yahweh after the death of Jehoiada and gave heed to the Judaean nobles, " wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem for their guilt," prophets were sent to bring them back but they turned a deaf ear.

Here it is enough to observe that the highly advanced doctrines of the distinctive character of Yahweh, as ascribed to the 8th century B.C., presuppose a foundation and development.

Yahwism presents itself under a variety of aspects, and the history of Israel's relations to the God Yahweh (whose name is not necessarily of Israelite origin) can hardly be disentangled amid the complicated threads of the earlier history.

The view that the seeds of Yahwism were planted in the young Israelite nation in the days of the " exodus " conflicts with the belief that the worship of Yahweh began in the pre-Mosaic age.

The change from the dynasty of Omri to that of Jehu has been treated by several hands, and the writers, in their recognition of the introduction of a new tendency, have obscured the fact that the cult of Yahweh had flourished even under such a king as Ahab.

At Horeb, the mount of God, was located the dramatic theophany which heralded to Elijah the advent of the sword, and Jehu's supporter in his sanguinary measures belongs to the Rechabites, a sect which felt itself to be the true worshipping community of Yahweh and is closely associated with the Kenites, the kin of Moses.

Yahweh of Moses was found, and scattered traces survive of a definite belief in the entrance into Palestine of a movement uncompromisingly devoted to the purer worship of Yahweh.

The problem cannot be approached from modern preconceptions because there was much associated with the worship of Yahweh which only gradually came to be recognized as repugnant, and there was much in earlier ages and in other lands which reflects an elevated and even complex religious philosophy.

Much is related of his wickedness and enmity to the followers of Yahweh, but few political details have come down.

A roll, it is said, was found in the Temple, its contents struck terror into the hearts of the priests and king, and it led to a solemn covenant before Yahweh to observe the provisions of the law-book which had been so opportunely recovered.

It is part of the scheme which runs through the book of Kings, and its apparent object is to show that the Temple planned by David and founded by Solomon ultimately gained its true position as the only sanctuary of Yahweh to which his worshippers should repair.

Cyrus was hailed as the divinely appointed saviour, the anointed one of Yahweh.

The new temple heralded a new future; the mournful fasts commemorative of Jerusalem's disasters would become feasts; Yahweh had left the Temple at the fall of Jerusalem, but had now returned to sanctify it with his presence; the city had purged its iniquity and was fit once more to become the central sanctuary.

But the former gained the day, and, realizing that the only hope of maintaining a pure worship of Yahweh lay in a forcible isolation from foreign influence, its adherents were prepared to take measures to ensure the religious independence of their assembly.

At a time when men were attracted by the wisdom and science of the Greeks, he taught that all wisdom came from Yahweh who had chosen Israel to receive it in trust.

The centre of the life of Israel was the Temple, over which the high priest presided and which was inhabited by Yahweh, the God of Israel.

A massacre took place, and Antiochus braved the anger of Yahweh by entering and pillaging the Temple with impunity.

The Philistines for once directed their forces towards the plain of Jezreel (Esdraelon) in the north; and Saul, forsaken by Yahweh, already gave himself up for lost.

The wish was gratified at the risk of the lives of three brave men, and he recognized the solemnity of the occasion by pouring out the water as an offering unto Yahweh.

Meanwhile the ark of Yahweh, the only sanctuary of national significance, had remained in obscurity since its return from the Philistines in the early youth of Samuel.

It was not unnatural that the king who had his palace built by Tyrian artists should have proposed to erect a permanent temple to Yahweh.

The incident is a valuable picture of crude ideas of Yahweh, and, if nothing else were needed, it was sufficient to involve David in a feud with the Benjamites.

The conceptions of Yahweh and of the religion which was acceptable to him were constantly being elevated and purified.

It is in David's history that the clans of the south first attained prominence, and some of them are known to have been staunch upholders of a purer worship of Yahweh, or to have been associated with the introduction of religious institutions among the Israelites.

The name of the god signifies the "high one" and he was probably a god of the atmospheric region above the earth - perhaps a storm god like Adad, or like Yahweh among the ancient Hebrews.

This last name is evidently meant to be Hebrew, "Yahweh of the heavens," the God of the Jews being of a secondary rank in the usual Gnostic style.

The history of Baalism among the Hebrews is obscured by the difficulty of determining whether the false worship which the prophets stigmatize is the heathen worship of Yahweh under a conception, and often with rites, which treated him as a local nature god; or whether Baalism was consciously recognized to be distinct from Yahwism from the first.

Later religious practice was undoubtedly opposed to that of earlier times, and attempts were made to correct narratives containing views which had come to be regarded as contrary to the true worship of Yahweh.

The Old Testament depicts the history of the people as a series of acts of apostasy alternating with subsequent penitence and return to Yahweh, and the question whether this gives effect to actual conditions depends upon the precise character of the elements of Yahweh worship brought by the Israelites into Palestine.

There is strong evidence at all events that many of the conceptions are contrary to historical fact, and the points of similarity between native Canaanite cult and Israelite worship are so striking that only the persistent traditions of Israel's origin and of the work of Moses compel the conclusion that the germs of specific Yahweh worship existed from his day.

It is possible that he offered sacrifice to Yahweh in Jerusalem.

Jeremiah promised them as a reward of their obedience that they should never lack a man to represent them (as a priest) before Yahweh, whence perhaps the later Jewish tradition that the Rechabites intermarried with the Levites and so entered the temple service.

The latter were concerned only with the maintenance of the sole worship of Yahweh and of social morality.

The fuller titles of the ark originate in the belief that it contained the "covenant" (berith) or "testimony" (`eduth), the technical terms for the Decalogue; primarily, however, it would seem to have been called "the ark of Yahweh" (or "Elohim"), or simply "the ark."

This saying appears to imply a settled life in Canaan, but both affirm the warlike significance of Yahweh and the ark.

Thus it is the permanent pledge of Yahweh's gracious presence; it guides the people on their journey and leads them to victory.

It is no mere receptacle, but a sacrosanct object as much to be feared as Yahweh himself.

Once at Jerusalem, it seems to have lost its unique value as the token of Yahweh's presence; its importance was apparently merged with that of the Temple which Solomon built.

Whether the ark originally contained some symbol of Yahweh or not has been the subject of much discussion.

Thus, it has been held that it contained stone fetishes (meteoric stones and the like) from Yahweh's original abode on Sinai or Horeb.

The second book among the minor prophets in the Bible is entitled The word of Yahweh that came to Joel the son of Pethuel, or, as the Septuagint, Latin, Syriac and other versions read, Bethuel.

The most remarkable part of the book is the eschatological picture with which it closes; and the way in which the plague of locusts appears to be taken as foreshadowing the final judgment - the great day or assize of Yahweh, in which Israel's enemies are destroyed - is so unique as greatly to complicate the exegetical problem.

The book, therefore, must have been written before the ethico-spiritual and the popular conceptions of Yahweh came into conscious antagonism, or else after the fall of the state and the restoration of the community of Jerusalem to religious rather than political existence had decided the contest in favour of the prophets, and of the Law in which their teaching was ultimately crystallized.

That the Persians do not appear as enemies of Yahweh and his people is perfectly natural.

To Joel Judah and the people of Yahweh are synonyms; northern Israel has disappeared.

But in ancient times it was not so; and under Joash, the contemporary of Elisha, such a limitation of the people of Yahweh is wholly inconceivable.

In other words, the daily offering is the continual symbol of gracious intercourse between Yahweh and his people and the main office of religion.

In the first the prophet speaks in his own name, addressing himself to the people in a lively description of a present calamity caused by a terrible plague of locusts which threatens the entire destruction of the country, and appears to be the vehicle of a final consuming judgment (the day of Yahweh).

The second part of the book is Yahweh's answer to the people's prayer.

In the new prosperity of the land the union of Yahweh and his people shall be sealed anew, and so the Lord will proceed to pour down further and higher blessings.

Egypt and Edom, on the other hand, shall be desolate, because they have shed the blood of Yahweh's innocents.

Then another mysterious form appears on the scene, bearing the honourable title of "Servant of Yahweh," through whom God's gracious purposes for Israel and the world are to be realized.

These two oracles agree in the elaborateness of their description of the fearful fate of the enemies of Yahweh (Babylon and Edom are merely representatives of a class), and also in their view of the deliverance and restoration of Israel as an epoch for the whole human race.

Once more such ideas as those of "the day of Yahweh" and the "new heavens and a new earth" were constantly re-edited with fresh nuances in conformity with their new settings.

The divine chariots and horses that make the round of the world by Yahweh's orders return to the heavenly palace and report that there is still no movement among the nations, no sign of the Messianic crisis.

It is to have no walls, that its population may not be limited, and it needs none, for Yahweh is its protection.

The catastrophe of " the land of the north " is near to come; then the exiles of Zion shall stream back from all quarters, the converted heathen shall join them, Yahweh Himself will dwell in the midst of them, and even now He stirs Himself from His holy habitation.

The high priest Joshua is accused before Yahweh by Satan, but is acquitted and given rule in Yahweh's house and courts, with the right of access to Yahweh in priestly intercession.

The divine teams, four in number, again traverse the world toward the four winds, to execute Yahweh's commands.

Jews from Babylon have brought gold and silver to Jerusalem; of these the prophet mist make a crown designed for the " branch " who is to build Yahweh's house and sit king on the throne, but retain a good understanding with the high priest.

Noteworthy is the affinity between some notions evidently not first framed by the prophet himself and the prologue to Job - the heavenly hosts that wander through the earth and bring back their report to Yahweh's throne, the figure of Satan, the idea that suffering and calamity are evidences of guilt and of accusations presented before God.

Yahweh first gives victory to the countryfolk of Judah and then they rescue the capital.

The Yahweh, at a time known only to Himself, shall appear with all His saints on Mount Olivet and destroy the heathen in battle, while the men of Jerusalem take refuge in their terror in the great cleft, that opens where Yahweh sets His foot.

Now the new era begins, and even the heathen do homage to Yahweh by bringing due tribute to the annual feast of tabernacles.

There is no reason to impugn the soundness of this substantially consentient testimony to the pronunciation Yahweh or Jahveh, coming as it does through several independent channels.

These various forms are perfectly regular if the divine name was Yahweh, and, taken altogether, they cannot be explained on any other hypothesis.

Recent scholars, accordingly, with but few exceptions, are agreed that the ancient pronunciation of the name was Yahweh (the first h sounded at the end of the syllable).

Jahveh or Yahweh is apparently an example of a common type of Hebrew proper names which have the form of the 3rd pers.

A serious objection to this theory in every form is that the verb hayah, " to be," has no causative stem in Hebrew; to express the ideas which these scholars find in the name Yahweh the language employs altogether different verbs.

This assumption that Yahweh is derived from the verb "to be," as seems to be implied in Exod.

This hypothesis is not intrinsically improbable - and in Aramaic, a language closely related to Hebrew, " to be " actually is hawa - but it should be noted that in adopting it we admit that, using the name Hebrew in the historical sense, Yahweh is not a Hebrew name.

The derivation of Yahweh from hawah is formally unimpeachable, and is adopted by many recent scholars, who proceed, however, from the primary sense of the root rather than from the specific meaning of the nouns.

It is obvious that if the derivation be correct, the significance of the name, which in itself denotes only " He falls" or "He fells," must be learned, if at all, from early Israelitish conceptions of the nature of Yahweh rather than from etymology.

A more fundamental question is whether the name Yahweh originated among the Israelites or was adopted by them from some other people and speech.'

It appears, therefore, that in the tradition followed by the Israelite historian the tribes within whose pasture lands the mountain of God stood were worshippers of Yahweh before the time of Moses; and the surmise that the name Yahweh belongs to their speech, rather than to that of Israel, has considerable probability.

The Kenites also, with whom another tradition connects Moses, seem to have been worshippers of Yahweh.

It is probable that Yahweh was at one time worshipped by various tribes south of Palestine, and that several places in that wide territory (Horeb, Sinai, Kadesh, &c.) were sacred to him; the oldest and most famous of these, the mountain of God, seems to have lain in Arabia, east of the Red Sea.

From some of these peoples and at one of these holy places, a group of Israelite tribes adopted the religion of Yahweh, the God who, by the hand of Moses, had delivered them from Egypt.2 The tribes of this region probably belonged to some branch of the great Arab stock, and the name Yahweh has, accordingly, been connected with the Arabic hawa, " the void " (between heaven and earth), " the atmosphere," or with the verb hawa, cognate with Heb.

The attempts to connect the name Yahweh with that of an Indo-European deity (Jehovah-Jove, &c.), or to derive it from Egyptian or Chinese, may be passed over.

But one theory which has had considerable currency requires notice, namely, that Yahweh, or Yahu, Yaho, 3 is the name of a god worshipped throughout the whole, or a great part, of the area occupied by the Western Semites.

There remain, however, some cases in which it is highly probable that names of nonIsraelites are really compounded with Yahweh.

We should thus have in the tablets evidence of the worship of Yahweh among the Western Semites at a time long before the rise of Israel.

In a tablet attributed to the 14th century B.C. which Sellin found in the course of his excavations at Tell Ta'annuk (the Taanach of the O.T.) a name occurs which may be read Ahi-Yawi (equivalent to Hebrew Ahijah); 6 if the reading be correct, this would show that Yahweh was worshipped in Central Palestine before the Israelite conquest.

The fact that the full form Yahweh appears, whereas in Hebrew proper names only the shorter Yahu and Yah occur, weighs somewhat against the interpretation, as it does against Delitzsch's reading of his tablets.

Assuming that Yahweh was primitively a nature god, scholars in the 19th century discussed the question over what sphere of nature he originally presided.

The association of Yahweh with storm and fire is frequent in the Old Testament; the thunder is the voice of Yahweh, the lightning his arrows, the rainbow his bow.

Yahweh leads Israel through the desert in a pillar of cloud and fire; he kindles Elijah's altar by lightning, and translates the prophet in a chariot of fire.

In Ezekiel the throne of Yahweh is borne up on Cherubim, the noise of whose wings is like thunder.

As the God of Israel Yahweh becomes its leader and champion in war; he is a warrior, mighty in battle; but he is not a god of war in the specific sense.

In many passages the name seems to be only a more solemn substitute for the simple Yahweh, and as such it has probably often been inserted by scribes.

Other interpretations are "posterity of God" or "his name (shemo; perhaps Yahweh's) is God."

After a period of oppression, Samuel suddenly reappears as a great religious leader of Israel, summons the people to return to Yahweh, and convenes a national assembly at Mizpah.

The Philistines are defeated at Ebenezer (near Mizpah) through the direct interposition of Yahweh, and Samuel rules peacefully as a theocratic judge (vii).

Samuel is a local seer consulted by Saul, and is bidden by Yahweh to see in the youth the future ruler.

Further, while on the one side the institution of the monarchy is subsequently regarded as hostile to the preeminence of Yahweh, Samuel's connexion with the history of David belongs to a relatively late stage in the history of the written traditions where events are viewed from a specifically Judaean aspect.

Nevertheless 3000 of them fell at the hands of the Levites who, in answer to the summons of Moses, declared themselves on the side of Yahweh.

The prophetic thought is that the daughter (population) of Zion shall not be saved by her present rulers or defensive strength; she must come down from her bulwarks and dwell in the open field; there, and not within her proud ramparts, Yahweh will grant deliverance from her enemies.

Yahweh is king on Mount Zion, and no inventions of man come between Him and His people.

Yahweh appears to plead with His people for their sins, but the sinners are no longer a careless and oppressive aristocracy buoyed up by deceptive assurances of Yahweh's help, by prophecies of wine and strong drink; they are bowed down by a religion of terror, wearied with attempts to propitiate an angry God by countless offerings, and even by the sacrifice of the first-born.

Yahweh's judgments are multiplied against the land, and the issue can be nothing else than its total desolation.

Then Yahweh shall arise mindful of His oath to the fathers, Israel shall be forgiven and restored, and the heathen humbled.

It could be explained as a contraction of Malachiah, messenger of Yahweh "; but the Septuagint is probably right in not regarding it as a proper name (" by the hand of His messenger ").

In view of these conditions, the prophet's message is to reassert the true relation of Israel to Yahweh, and to call for a corresponding holiness, especially in regard to questions of ritual and of marriage.

At an earlier date the prophet Haggai had taught that the people could not expect Yahweh's blessing while the Temple lay in ruins.

It was in vain to complain, saying, " Every one that doeth evil is good in the eyes of Yahweh," or " Where is the God of judgment ?

He calls the people to repentance, and he enforces the call by proclaiming the approach of Yahweh in judgment against Lhe sorcerers, the adulterers, the false swearers, the oppressors of the poor, the orphan and the stranger.

The Sun of Righteousness shall shine forth on those that fear Yahweh's name; they shall go forth with joy, and tread the wicked under foot.

The prophet Elijah must reappear to bring back the hearts of fathers and children before the great and terrible day of Yahweh come.

But David was resigned to the will of Yahweh and refused to entertain the suggestions.

Beersheba, which figures in both, is celebrated by the planting of a sacred tree and (like Bethel) by the invocation of the name of Yahweh.

He became to the Hebrews the embodiment of their ideals, and stood at their head as the founder of the nation, the one to whom Yahweh had manifested his love by frequent promises and covenants.

From the time when he was bidden to leave his country to enter the unknown land, Yahweh was ever present to encourage him to trust in the future when his posterity should possess the land, and so, in its bitterest hours, Israel could turn for consolation to the promises of the past which enshrined in Abraham its hopes for the future.

Possessing no images of Yahweh the Jews were also not exposed to the same risk as were idolaters of having their gods stolen by their foes and used against them.

It emphasizes more particularly the position of the Hebrews as a religious community, bound together by common aims and by their covenant-relation with the national God, Yahweh.

Balak, king of Moab, became alarmed, and sent for Balaam to curse Israel; Balaam came after some hesitation, but when he sought to curse Israel Yahweh compelled him to bless them.

He sends back word that he can only do what Yahweh commands.

Nevertheless Balaam sets out with two servants to go to Balak, but the Angel of Yahweh meets him.

Yahweh at last enables Balaam to see the Angel, who tells him that he would have slain him but for the ass.

Balak offers sacrifices, but Yahweh inspires Balaam with a blessing on Israel.

He was one of the Anakim, or giants of Palestine; he read the books of Abraham, where he got the name Yahweh, by virtue of which he predicted the future, and got from God whatever he asked.

Yahweh is as much the God of Balaam as he is of Moses.

Probably the original tradition goes back to a time when Yahweh was recognized as a deity of a circle of connected tribes of which the Israelite tribes formed a part.

But the retention of the story without modification may imply a continuous recognition through some centuries of the idea that Yahweh revealed his will to nations other than Israel.

Rites are practised in the name of religion which are abhorrent to Yahweh, because they either have no moral meaning at all, and are mere forms.

He means this - that he is no mere ecstatic enthusiast or "dervish," whose primary aim is to keep up the warlike spirit of the people, taking for granted that Yahweh is on the people's side, and that he is perfectly free from the taint of selfishness, not having to support himself by his prophesying.

Hence they came to be used collectively of superhuman beings, distinct from Yahweh, and therefore inferior, and ultimately subordinate.'

So, too, the angels are styled " holy ones," 2 and " watchers," 3 and are spoken of as the " host of heaven " 4 or of " Yahweh."

Those who see the Mal' akh Yahweh say they have seen God.

In the earlier literature the Mal'akh Yahweh or Elohim is almost the only mal'akh (" angel ") mentioned.

There are, however, a few passages which speak of subordinate superhuman beings other than the Mal'akh Yahweh or Elohim.

Thus the pre-exilic literature, as we now have it, has little to say about angels or about superhuman beings other than Yahweh and manifestations of Yahweh; the pre-exilic prophets hardly mention angels.

Somewhat later, in the visions of Zechariah, angels play a great part; they are sometimes spoken of as " men," sometimes as mal'akh, and the Mal'akh Yahweh seems to hold a certain primacy among them.21 Satan also appears to prosecute (so to speak) the High Priest before the divine tribunal.

The seven angels of Ezekiel may be compared with the seven eyes of Yahweh in Zech.

Angels are constantly spoken of as " men," and, including even the Angel of Yahweh, are spoken of as discharging the various functions of human life; they eat and drink 12, walk 13 and speak 14.

The function of the angels is that of the supernatural servants of God, His agents and representatives; the Angel of Yahweh, as we have seen, is a manifestation of God.

Large sections of the old history are devoted to the religion and politics of the ten tribes, which are altogether unintelligible and uninteresting when measured by a strictly Levitical standard; and in general the whole problems and struggles of the prophetic period turn on points which had ceased to be cardinal in the life of the New Jerusalem, which was no longer called to decide between the claims of the Word of Yahweh and the exigencies of political.

Yahweh appeared to Solomon in a dream and offered to grant whatever he might ask.

So too it is the idea of sacrificing the firstborn to Yahweh that is discussed and rejected in Micah vi.

It is indeed plain that such a sacrifice - for we have here to do, not with human victims in general, but with the sacrifice of the dearest earthly thing - could only be paid to the supreme deity; and Manasseh and his people never ceased to acknowledge Yahweh as the God of Israel..

In each case the people thought themselves to be worshipping Yahweh under the title of Molech or Baal; but the prophet refuses to admit that this is so, because the worship itself is an apostasy to heathenism.

The object of the observances was to cleanse the sanctuary, the priesthood and the people from all their sins, and to renew and maintain favourable relations between Yahweh and Israel.

It is further said that after Enos was born, men began to worship Yahweh.

The cherub-images, where such occur, represent to the imagination the supernatural bearers of Yahweh's throne or chariot, or the guardians of His abode; the cherub-carvings at least symbolize His presence, and communicate some degree of His sanctity.

Yahweh was Israel's only god, who tolerated no other god beside Himself, and who claimed to be the sole object of the Israelite's reverence.

Moses had used different documents, and that of these the two chief were distinguished by their use of different divine names - Elohim and Yahweh; by the use of this clue he gave a detailed analysis of the passages belonging to the several documents.

It is regarded as a departure from the worship of Yahweh, although the writer of ver.

It was perhaps only in time of war, when Israel felt himself to be fighting the battles of Yahweh, that the Hebrew was stirred to the depths of his nature by emotions of a religious colour.

Thus the deeper feelings of religion were embodied in warlike patriotism, and these feelings the Philistine oppression had raised to extreme tension among all who loved liberty, while yet the want of a captain to lead forth the armies of Yahweh against his foemen deprived them of their natural outlet.

The worship of the local sanctuaries did nothing to promote the sense of the religious unity of Israel; Yahweh in the age of the Judges ran no small risk of being divided into a number of local Baals, givers of natural good things each to his own locality.

The struggle for freedom called forth a deeper sense of the unity of the people of the one Yahweh, and in so doing raised religion to a loftier plane; for a faith which unites a nation is necessarily a higher moral force than one which only unites a township or a.

Yahweh's ever-present kingship in Israel, which was the chief religious idea brought into prominence by the national revival, demanded a more continuous manifestation of His revealing spirit than was given either by the priestly lot or by the rise of occasional seers; and where could this be sought except among the prophets?

It does not, of course, follow that everyone who had shared in the divine afflatus of prophetic enthusiasm gave forth oracles; but the prophets as a class stood nearer than other men to the mysterious workings of Yahweh, and it was in their circle that revelation seemed to have its natural home.

A most instructive passage in this respect is i Kings xxii., where we find some four hundred prophets gathered together round the king, and where it is clear that Jehoshaphat was equally convinced, on the one hand, that the word of Yahweh could be found among the prophets, and on the other that it was very probable that some, or even the mass of them, might be no better than liars.

And here it is to be observed that Micaiah, who proved the true prophet, does not accuse the others of conscious imposture; he admits that they speak under the influence of a spirit proceeding from Yahweh, but it is a lying spirit sent to deceive.

The fundamental idea that Yahweh guides His people by the word of revelation is older than the separation of special classes of theocratic organs; Moses, indeed, is not only prophet and priest, but judge and ruler.

Io, 13), and also the sentences of awful judgment by which Yahweh rebukes rebellion (Hos.

Again, Moses differs from all other prophets in that Yahweh speaks to him face to face, and he sees the similitude of Yahweh.

Formerly the prophets of Yahweh had been all on the same side; their opponents were the prophets of Baal.

But henceforth there were two parties among the prophets of Yahweh themselves, the new prophets accusing the old of imposture and disloyalty to Yahweh, and these retaliating with charge of disloyalty to Israel.

But the false prophets were by no means mere common impostors; they were the accredited exponents of the common orthodoxy of their day, for the prophets who opposed Jeremiah took their stand on the ground of the prophetic traditions of Isaiah, whose doctrine of the inviolability of Yahweh's seat on Zion was the starting-point of their opposition to Jeremiah's predictions of captivity.

The popular faith was full of heathenish superstition strangely blended with the higher ideas which were the inheritance left to Israel by men like Moses and Elijah; but the common prophets accepted all alike, and combined heathen arts of divination and practices of mere physical enthusiasm with a not altogether insincere pretension that through their professional oracles the ideal was being maintained of a continuous divine guidance of the people of Yahweh.

And this it knows, not by a mere ethical judgment on the visible state of society, but because it has read Yahweh's secret written in the signs of the times and knows that He has condemned His people.

To the mass these signs are unintelligible, because they deem it impossible that Yahweh should utterly cast off His chosen nation; but to those who know His absolute righteousness, and confront it with the people's sin, the impending approach of the Assyrian can have only one meaning and can point to only one issue, viz.

Only, while they are hopeless about their nation they have absolute faith in Yahweh and His purpose.

That that wrath must be followed by fresh mercies is not in itself a new thought, but only the necessary expression of the inherited conviction that Yahweh whom they preach as the judge of all the earth, is nevertheless, as past history has proved, the God who has chosen Israel as His people.

Yahweh's kingdom cannot perish even for a time; nay, Isaiah argues that it must remain visible, and visible not merely in the circle of the like-minded whom he had gathered round him and who formed the first germ of the notion of the church, but in the political form of a kingdom also.

Zion at least, the sacred hearth of Yahweh, the visiblecentre of His kingdom, 1 It must not be supposed that this conception necessarily came into force as soon as it was recognized that Yahweh was the creator of the universe.

They tell us that Yahweh will call His people and that they will answer; but this is only putting in another form the axiom that the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.

Elisha still stands firmly planted on the old national conception of the religion of Yahweh; his ideals are such as do not lie beyond the range of practical politics.

These conceptions break through the old particularistic idea of Yahweh and His religion at every point.

Zion is now not the centre of a mere national cult, but the centre of all true religion for the whole world; and more than once the prophet indicates not obscurely that the necessary issue of the great conflict between Yahweh and the gods of the heathen must be the conversion of all nations, the disappearance of every other religion before the faith of the God of Israel.

But this all-conquering religion is not the popular Yahweh worship; why then can the prophet still hold that the one true God is yet the God of Israel, and that the vindication of His Godhead involves the preservation of Israel?

But till this was realized Isaiah was right in teaching that the law of continuity demanded that the nation within which Yahweh had made Himself known to His spiritual prophets must be maintained as a nation for the sake of the glory of God and the preservation of the "remnant."

The time of respite had been wasted, all attempts at national reformation had failed; how should Yahweh spare a nation which had shown no tokens of fitness to discharge the vocation of Yahweh's people ?

The theodicea of the prophets is national; they see Yahweh's righteousness working itself out with unmistakable clearness in the present, and know that all that He brings upon Israel is manifestly just; but from the days of Jeremiah' the fortunes of Israel as a nation are no longer the one thing which religion has to explain; the greater question arises of a theory of the divine purpose which shall justify the ways of God with individual men or with His "righteous servant" - that is, with the ideal community of true faith as distinct from the natural Israel.

There is sufficient evidence that down to the last age of the Judaean monarchy practices not essentially different from divination were current in all classes of society, and were often in the hands of men who claimed to speak as prophets in the name of Yahweh.

The seer, in the sense in which all antiquity believed in seers, is simply a man who sees what others cannot see, no matter whether the thing seen be of public or of mere private interest; but the prophet is an organ of Yahweh's kingship over His people - he sees and tells so much of the secret purpose of Yahweh as is needful for His people to know.

We have already seen how Amos and Hosea put this (supra, p. zoii), and it does not appear that they were introducing a conception of prophecy formally novel - the new thing was their conception of Yahweh's purpose.

And so too with the following great prophets; the important thing in their work was not their moral earnestness and not their specific predictions of future events, but the clearness of spiritual insight with which they read the spiritual significance of the signs of the time and interpreted the movements of history as proofs of Yahweh's actual moral sovereignty exercised over Israel.

So long as the great problems of religion could be envisaged as problems of the relation of Yahweh to Israel as a nation the prophets continued to speak and to bring forth new truths; but the ultimate result was that it became apparent that the idea of moral government involved the destruction of Israel, and then the function of prophecy was gone because it was essentiall y national in its objects.

After the captivity it was no longer a question that the prophetic conception of Yahweh was the only possible one.

Thenceforth the religion of Yahweh and the religion of the prophets are synonymous; no other reading of Israel's past was possible, and in fact the whole history of the Hebrews in Canaan, as it was finally shaped in the exile, is written from this point of view, and has come down to us, along with the remains of actual prophetic books, under the collective title of "The Prophets."

The Pharaoh is hostile, and Yahweh, the Israelite deity, is moved to send a deliverer; on the events that followed see Exodus, Book Of; Moses.

The hope of the advent of an ideal king was only one feature of that larger hope of the salvation of Israel from all evils, which was constantly held forth by all the prophets, from the time when the seers of the 8th century B.C. proclaimed that the true conception of Yahweh's relation to His people could become a practical reality only through a great deliverance following a sifting judgment of the most terrible kind.

But all agree in giving the central place to the realization of a real effective kingship of Yahweh; in fact the conception of the religious subject as the nation of Israel, with a national organization under Yahweh as king, is common to the whole Old Testament, and connects prophecy proper with the so-called Messianic psalms and similar passages which speak of the religious relations of the Hebrew commonwealth, the religious meaning of national institutions, and so necessarily contain ideal elements reaching beyond the empirical present.

In the period of the Hebrew monarchy the thought that Yahweh is the divine king of Israel was associated with the conception that the human king reigns by right only if he reigns by commission or" unction "from Him.

This conception, however, is not one of the constant elements of prophecy; other prophecies of Isaiah look for the decisive interposition of Yahweh in the crisis of history without a kingly deliverer.

To the prophets the kingship of Yahweh was not a mere ideal, but an actual reality.

Its full manifestation indeed, to the eye of sense and to the unbelieving world, lay in the future; but true faith found a present stay in the sovereignty of Yahweh, daily exhibited in providence and interpreted to each generation by the voice of the prophets.

And, while Yahweh's kingship was a living and present fact, it refused to be formulated in fixed invariable shape.

But when the prophets were succeeded by the scribes, the interpreters of the written word, and the yoke of foreign oppressors rested on the land, Yahweh's kingship, which presupposed a living nation, found not even the most inadequate expression in daily political life.

Yahweh was still the lawgiver of Israel, but His law was written in a book, and He was not present to administer it.

The nation threw itself on the side of the Pharisees; not in the spirit, of punctilious legalism, but with the ardour of a national enthusiasm deceived in its dearest hopes, and turning for help from the delusive kingship of the Hasmonaeans to the true kingship of Yahweh, and to His vicegerent the king of David's house.

We find Philo Judaeus endeavouring to free the concept of the Old Testament Yahweh from anthropomorphic characteristics and finite determinations.

The people simply expected deliverance from their miseries and burdens by the intervention of Yahweh, because He had chosen Israel for His people.

The prophets had an ethical conception of Yahweh; the sin of His own people and of other nations called for His intervention in judgment as the moral ruler of the world.

Yahweh had been worshipped there, and his.

In striking contrast to the "vain repetitions" of the false prophets are the simple words with which Elijah makes his prayer to Yahweh.

So convincing a sign was irresistible; all the people fell on their faces and acknowledged Yahweh as the true God.

It expresses the spirituality of Yahweh in a way that indicates a marked advance in the conception of his nature.

The people complain bitterly to Moses, who appeals to Yahweh and is assured by him of the future deliverance of Israel "by a strong hand."

Thus Yahweh smites the river so that the fish die and render the water undrinkable.

E regularly uses the phrase "and Pharaoh's heart was strong (pin)," or "and Yahweh made strong (p'Tn) Pharaoh's heart" and "he would not let the children of Israel (or, them) go."

The formula employed by P is "and Pharaoh's heart was strong (pin)," or, "and Pharaoh made strong (p'in) his heart," as in E, but it is distinguished from E's phrase by the addition of "and he hearkened not unto them as Yahweh had spoken."

Yahweh then causes a strong east wind to blow all that night, which drives back the waters from the shallows, and so renders it possible for the host of Israel to cross over.

In this account the mountain is called "Sinai" throughout, and "Yahweh" appears instead of "Elohim" (rib, 18, 20 f.).

Yahweh himself refuses to accompany Israel owing to their disobedience, but in response to Moses'.

It is a plausible conjecture that the original narratives of J and E also contained directions for the construction of an ark,' as a substitute for the personal presence of Yahweh, and also for the erection of a "tent of meeting" outside the camp, and that these commands were omitted by R P in favour of the more elaborate instructions given in ch.

The third commandment might be rendered, "Thou shalt not utter the name of the Lord thy God vainly," but it is possible that the meaning is that Yahweh's name is not to be used for purposes of sorcery.

It is urged by many critics that Moses cannot have prohibited the worship of Yahweh by images; for the subsequent history shows us a descendant of Moses as priest in the idolatrous sanctuary of Dan.

There were teraphim in David's house, and the worship of Yahweh under the image of a calf was the'state religion of the kingdom of Ephraim.

They prohibit (1) the worship of other gods, (2) the making of molten images; they ordain (3) the observance of the feast of unleavened bread, (4) the feast of weeks, (5) the feast of ingathering at the end of the year, and (6) the seventhday rest; to Yahweh belong (7) the firstlings, and (8) the firstfruits of the land; they forbid also (9) the offering of the blood of sacrifice with leaven, (io) the leaving-over of the fat of a feast until the morning, and (r1) the seething of a kid in its mother's milk.

This scheme ignores the command to appear thrice in the year before Yahweh which recapitulates Nos.

In the Psalter he is considered merely as a servant of Yahweh.

Among the Hebrews, Yahweh, some of whose features associate him with thunder, lightning and storm, and with the gifts of the earth, has now become the national god, like the Moabite Chemosh or the Ammonite Milcolm.

No images of Yahweh or of earlier Canaanite deities have been unearthed; but images belong to a relatively advanced stage in the development of religion, and the aniconic stage may be represented by the sacred pillars and posts, by the small models of heads of bulls, and by the evidence for calf-cults in the Old Testament.

Although no goddess is associated with the national god Yahweh, female deities abounded, as is amply shown by the numerous plaques of the great mother-goddess found in course of excavation.

The notion of a Yahweh scarcely less limited in power than man, the naïve views of supernatural beings and their nearness to man, and the persistence of features which stand relatively low in the scale of mental culture, only serve to enhance the reality of the spirit which inspired the endeavour to reform.

There is indeed a development, but it is none the less noteworthy that the post-exilic priestly ritual preserves in the worship of the universal and only God Yahweh, Develop- rites, practices and ideas which can be understood only in the light of other nature-religions, especially that of Babylonia, with which there are striking parallels.'

It is the adaptation of the prophets' conceptions of Yahweh to old religious ideas, the building up of new conceptions upon an old basis, a fusion " between old heathen notions and prophetic ideas," and " this fusion is characteristic of the entire priestly law."

This legislation appears as that of the Israelites, newly escaped from bondage in Egypt, joined by an ethical covenant-relation with Yahweh, and waiting in the desert to enter and conquer the land of their ancestors.

The introduction, spread and prominence of the name Yahweh, the development of conceptions concerning his nature, his supremacy over other gods and the lofty monotheism which denied a plurality of gods, are questions of o.

The biblical history is a " canonical " history which looks back to the patriarchs, the exodus from Egypt, the law-giving and the covenant with Yahweh at Sinai, the conquest of Palestine by the Israelite tribes, the monarchy, the rival kingdoms, the fall and exile of the northern tribes, and, later, of the southern (Judah), and the reconstructions of Judah in the times of Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes.

The worship of Zeus Olympius replaced the worship of Yahweh, and swine were offered as in the Eleusinian mysteries.

The history, therefore, falls into recurring cycles, each of which begins with religious corruption, followed by chastisement, which continues until Yahweh, in answer to the groans of his oppressed people, raises up a "judge" to deliver Israel, and recall them to the true faith.

I the "angel of Yahweh," who, according to Exod.

It is now generally assumed that the word is the causative form (hiph`il) and should be pronounced Yahveh or Yahweh (accent on second syllable).

Possibly " Matthew " (Yahweh's gift) was his Christian surname, since two native names, neither being a patronymic, is contrary to Jewish usage.

It is Yahweh who is all and in all, the father, the leader, the hope, the hero of his people.

The lot falls on Jonah, who has been roughly awakened by the captain, and when questioned frankly owns that he is a Hebrew and a worshipper of the divine creator Yahweh, from whom he has sought to flee (as if He were only the god of Canaan).

This, after praying to Yahweh, they actually do; at once the sea becomes calm and they sacrifice to Yahweh.

Three days and three nights he is in the fish's belly, till, at a word from Yahweh, it vomits Jonah on to the dry ground.

Thereupon Jonah beseeches Yahweh to take away his worthless life.

As an answer Yahweh "appoints" a small quickly-growing tree with large leaves (the castor-oil plant) to come up over the angry prophet and shelter him from the sun.

This company of faithful but not always sufficiently charitable men represented their people, so that it might be said that Israel itself (the second Isaiah's "Servant of Yahweh" - see IsAIAH) had taken up its duty, but in an ungenial spirit which grieved the All-merciful One.

Pfleiderer employed the word to denote a relative monotheism like that of the early religion of Israel, whose teachers demanded that the nation should worship but one god, Yahweh, but did not deny the existence of other gods for other peoples.

Judgment, indeed, was an inevitable outcome of the sovereignty of Yahweh, but it would be passed upon the nation in the immediate scene of its misdoings; and even when the scope of the divine doom 8 Von Kremer, Die Herrschenden Ideen des Islams, p. 233 ff.

When in 734-733 B.C. Ahaz, king of Judah, alarmed at the preparations made against him by the Syro-Ephraimitish alliance, was inclined to seek aid from Tiglath-pileser of Assyria, the prophet Isaiah endeavoured to allay his fear by telling him that the danger would pass away, and as a sign from Yahweh that this should be so, any young woman who should within the year bear a son, might call his name Immanuel in token of the divine protection accorded to Judah.

In the Holy of Holies was a " cloud of light " (shekinah), symbolical of the presence of Yahweh, and before it stood the candlestick with six branches, on each of which and on the central stern was a lamp eternally burning; while in the forecourt was an altar on which the sacred fire was never allowed to go out.

The ceremony terminates with the appearance of the glory of Yahweh, accompanied by a fire which consumes the sacrifices on the altar.

The term " holiness " in this connexion consists positively in the fulfilment of ceremonial obligations and negatively in abstaining from the defilement caused by heathen customs and superstitions, but it also includes obedience to the moral requirements of the religion of Yahweh.

The various laws are clearly defined by the formula " I am Yahweh," or " I am Yahweh your God," phrases which are especially characteristic of chaps.

Characteristic of the priestly calendar are (1) the enumeration of " holy convocations," (2) the prohibition of all work, (3) the careful determination of the date by the day and month, (4) the mention of " the offerings made by fire to Yahweh," and (5) the stereotyped form of the regulations.