in heaven or on earth, but comes to the aid of his people and exhibits his power where he will, be it in Egypt, at Sinai, or in Canaan. He is no personification of natural force to be appeased by ritual (in Israel’s faith nature is “de-mythologized”); he is a moral Being who controls nature and history, and in them reveals his righteous will and summons men to obey it.
This notion of God is no late development in Israel, but is very ancient. As far back as the biblical records go, we see the God who is powerful over nature and history.13 It is he who, having created all things, disposes of the destinies of all the families of men and calls Abraham to serve his purpose. It is he who humbles the pride of pharaoh to the dust and engulfs his army in the sea. He delivers his people from all their foes, provides sustenance for them in the wilderness, dries up the flood of Jordan, brings Jericho’s walls tumbling to the ground, and paralyzes the Canaanites with terror. The dark powers of the plagues do his bidding, as do the sea waters and the wind (Exod. 15:1-17), the sun and the moon and the stars (Josh. 10:12-13; Judg. 5:20), and the rain (Judg. 5:4, 21). It is he, too, who when his people have sinned, turns the battle against them and delivers them to their foes (Josh. 7; I Sam. 4).
2. The God of Israel stands before us as one God—invisible, Creator of all things, Ruler of nature and history—absolutely unique in the ancient world. But that is not all. Israel did not believe merely that such a God existed; she was convinced that this God had, in a historical act, chosen her, entered into covenant with her, and made her his people.14
We can find no period in her history when Israel did not believe that she was the chosen people of Yahweh. And this choosing had taken place in history. The Bible story traces this history of election back to Abraham, but it was in the Exodus events that Israel saw her real beginnings as a people.15 The memory of the Exodus towered over the national consciousness for all time to come. The prophets harked back to it repeatedly. Here is the unforgettable example of the power and grace of God (Amos 2:9-11; Mic. 6:2-5; Ezek. 20:5-7), here he carried infant Israel as a little child (Hos. 11:1), here he married her in the covenant ceremony and claimed her loyalty forevermore (Hos. 2; Jer. 2:2-3). But this was no esoteric notion advanced by the spiritual leaders; the people were saturated with it. Indeed, so confident were they that they were God’s chosen and favored people, that the prophet preaching of doom could only seem to them the most utter nonsense. It was a conceit that the prophets, from Amos to Jeremiah, found it impossible to penetrate.
A confidence so powerfully entrenched can have had its origin only in the memory of the Exodus events themselves. The hypercritical attitude toward the Exodus narrative, formerly so popular, can no longer be maintained.16 There can be no doubt that a band of Hebrews were slaves in Egypt; that Moses, under the impetus of a tremendous religious experience, led them thence to the accompaniment of happenings so stupendous that they were never forgotten; and that they then came to the mountain in the wilderness where there took place those events which made them a people and gave them that distinctive religion which would mold the whole course of their history. Israel’s origins are thus linked to historical events as surely as are those of Christianity. As Israel absorbed new blood into her tribal structure, the Exodus tradition extended itself and became normative for all, even for those whose ancestors had not participated in the Exodus.17
Since this is so, far more important than the actual events is the interpretation Israel laid upon them in the light of her faith. The Exodus was viewed as a sheer act of God’s grace. The signs and wonders in Egypt, the wind that drove the sea waters back, the deliverance from pharaoh’s army—all are illustrations of that grace (ḥesed). It was grace because it was absolutely unmerited. The Old Testament never suggests that Israel was chosen for any merit that was in her; on the contrary, the Exodus narratives are at pains to depict a people who are cowardly, ungrateful, and utterly unworthy. The Exodus was the act of a God who chose for himself a people that they might choose him. The covenant concluded at Sinai could, then, be understood in Hebrew theology only as a response to grace: man’s ḥesed for God’s ḥesed.18 The Old Testament covenant was thus always properly viewed, like the New, as a covenant of grace. This ought to be kept in mind. The strictures of Paul and others (e.g., Gal. 4:24-25; Heb. 8) against a covenant of works, however justified they may have been, were far more apropos to the Judaism of their own day than to the Old Testament faith. For Israel had begun its history as a nation summoned by God’s grace to be his people, to serve him alone and to obey his covenant law. The notion of a people of God, called to live under the rule of God, begins just here, and with it the notion of the Kingdom of God.19
3. These ideas were tremendously dynamic and creative. On the one hand, a deeply moral note was injected into Israel’s notion of her place as a chosen people which she was never allowed to forget, however much she might try. On the other hand, there was kindled a lively hope which nothing could erase. This note is sounded in the oldest Exodus narrative, and it is not too much to say that the entire prophet preaching is based upon it: “Now therefore, if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all peoples” (Exod. 19:5). In this sentence, and in the faith that produced it, there lie the germs both of the prophet preaching of doom and of their eschatological hope.
Conditioned by this faith Israel could never properly take her status as a chosen people for granted; it was morally conditioned. She was no superior race, favored because she deserved it. Her God was not a sort of national genius, blood kin to her, whose worship and favor were posited in the scheme of things. Hers was a cosmic God who in a historical act had chosen her, and whom she in a free, moral act had chosen. The covenant bond between them was thus neither mechanical nor eternal. While it could not be called a bargain—it was not between equals—it nevertheless partook of the nature of a bargain in that it was a bilateral compact. God would give Israel a destiny as his people, would defend and establish her, but only so long as she obeyed him. The covenant laid heavy demands on Israel. Specifically it demanded ḥesed, a grateful and complete loyalty to the God of the covenant to the exclusion of all other gods. Equally, it demanded strict obedience to the laws of the covenant in all human relationships within the covenant brotherhood. Before these demands Israel had to live continually in judgment. That judgment the prophets pronounced, and it is in the light of this theology that we must understand their verdict upon the nation.
But at the same time this covenant-people idea imparted to Israel a tremendous sense of destiny and a confidence that would not down. Every reader knows that the Old Testament faith housed a glorious hope which no tragedy, however total, could defeat. The careful reader knows, too, of a fatuous popular optimism which had no business to exist, but which the fist of the prophet word was powerless to demolish. Israel’s faith was strongly eschatological in orientation, because history itself was to the Hebrew mind eschatologically orientated: it was guided to a destination by God. And this gave to the Israelite a robust confidence in the future.
This, too, is no late development. To be sure, a definite notion of “the last things” emerged only in a later period, and it may be misleading to use the word “eschatology” in connection with the faith of early Israel. But the germs of it are there. In the earliest literature that we have (see note 13 above), we may observe the confidence that events are moving toward a destination, an effective terminus beyond which one need not look. We see it in the ancient epic of the Patriarchs, told for centuries about nomad campfire and at pilgrim shrine: there is a good land “flowing with milk and honey” which our God has promised us (Exod. 3:8, 17); there is a mighty nation which we shall one day be (Gen. 12:2). God will defend us from all our foes (Num. 23:21-24; 24:8-9) and will make us great (Num. 23:9-10; 24:5-7). He will make us to live in unimagined peace and plenty (Gen. 49:25-26; Deut. 33:13-17), until the divinely sent leader appears whom all the nations will serve (Gen. 49:10; Num.24:17-19). He has called us to a destiny, to serve his purpose in the world (Gen. 12:3; 18:18; 22:18). Such a faith, we may believe, filled the future with light and carried Israel over insurmountable obstacles into the Promised Land.
Thus to expect great things of the future, it must be emphasized, lay in the
