663
TH E KING’S BUSINESS
place which Jehovah is to -choose.” —Prolegomena, p. 37.. “Awkwardly bashful” indeed, if Deuteronomy were written in the days of the Kingdom, in the midst of the sacred and historic traditions of Jerusalem, and with the design of setting up Jerusalem for the first time as the sole and central sanc tuary of the nation. The sorcalled “Deuteronomic com piler of Kings,” however, whom the critics suppose to have also written at a time when the glories of Jerusa lem lay behind him, is by no means “awkwardly bashful” about naming Jerusalem. He writes, 1 Kings xi, 32: “For Jerusalem’s sake, the city which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel;” 2 Kings xxiii, 27, “Jerusalem which I have chosen, and the house of which I have said my name shall be there!” xxi, 7, “In Jerusalem which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, will I put my name for ever.” What is the explanation of all this? What is the inner meaning of this absence of the name “Jerusalem” from the Pentateuch? Is it not this? That at the time the Pentateuch was written Jerusalem, with all her sacred glories, had not entered.yet into the life o f; Israel. SACRED SONG OMITTED The absence of any mention of sacred song from the ritual of the Pentateuch is in glaring contrast to the ritual of the Second Temple in which timbrels, harps, and Levite singers bore a conspicuous part. Yet it was just in the time of the Second Temple that the critics allege that a great portion of the Pentateuch was composed.r How is it then that none of these things occur in the Mosaic ritual ? It might have been expected that the priests In post-Exilic times
King Josiah, for the purpose of being used to stamp Jerusalem as the one and only sanctuary of the nation. Now in the Book of Deuteronomy the central sanctuary is referred to as “the place which the Lord thy God shall choose” (Deut. xii, 18, etc.), but not only is Jerusalem not named, but there is no intimation given that the central sanctuary is to be in a great city, nor any hint dropped as to which of the tribes should possess that sanc tuary within its borders. To those who hold the traditional view, however, that the Book of Deuteronomy was com posed in the Mosaic Age, this non occurrence of the name is only natural. When for example God commanded that the Passover should be sacri ficed, “in the place that the Lord shall choose to place his name there” (Deut. xvi, 2) it was inevitable that the command—though in the ulti mate issue it was destined to apply to Jerusalem—-should before the peo ple entered the Promised Land be simply delivered in this nameless way, because before it was to mean Jerusalem, it was to apply to at least one other shrine of Jehovah’s earlier choice, that is to say, to Shiloh, “where I set my name at the first” (Jer. vii, 12) and only in the end to mean Jerusalem. But from the view of the critics, the omission of the name of this place which the priests desired to hal low would be most strange indeed. Is it reasonable to suppose that those who produced the Book to stamp Jerusalem as the central sanctuary, would have shrunk from naming that great sanctuary, or at least indicating where it was to be?.~ It would seem as if Wellhausen himself was exercised by this strange reticence.. He.writes: “How modest, one might almost say- how awkwardly bashful, is the Deuteronomic reference to the future
Made with FlippingBook - Online Brochure Maker