06 OT Notion of Holiness

CHAPTER VI THE OLD TESTAMENT NOTION OF HOLINESS. As applied to things the word ’holy’ (vrdq) is commonly used in the Old Testament to distinguish them from things called " common " or " profane," or, to use a Hebraism, " things of profanity." l Thus in 1 Samuel 21:5, Abimelech the priest says to David : " There is no common bread under my hand, but there is holy bread." The prophet Ezekiel writes (Ezekiel 22:2 (i) : " Her priests have done violence to my law and have profaned my holy things : they have put no difference between the holy and the common." And again in a later chapter it is said that the priests, the Levites, the sons of Zadok " shall teach my people the difference between the holy and the common" (Ezekiel 44:23). In Ezekiel 48:13-15 a distinction is made between the land which was to be for the use of the priests, and that which was to be for common use. Of the priests’ land it is said : " They shall not sell of it, neither exchange it, nor shall the first-fruits of the land be alienated, for it is holy unto the Lord." But the five thousand reeds in front of the five and twenty thousand appropriated to the priests " shall be for common use, for the city, for dwelling and for suburbs : and the city shall be in the midst thereof." Again in Ezekiel 17:20 the wall round the temple is said to make a separation between that which was holy and that which was common. From these instances that have been given we see that a distinction is made between what is ’ holy ’ and what is ’ common.’ But there is nothing disparaging about the word ’ common.’ It is simply the regular epithet applied to things which are intended for ordinary use, in contradistinction to things set apart for a religious use, which are called ’ holy.’ The holy things are subject to certain restrictions in their use. Ground that is holy may not be trodden as ordinary ground. Thus Moses is told to take his shoes from off his feet because the place whereon he stood was " holy ground " (Exodus 3:5). It was holy, as the context shews, because of the presence of God in the burning bush. That which had to do with God was ’ holy.’ A vow vowed unto the Lord was sacred, and a man so bound might not break his word. The expression used in Numbers 30:2 is : " He shall not make his word common " (2rr)- This of course means that his vow may not be treated as an ordinary promise and be withdrawn or broken. This verb llh (to make common) is frequently used in the sense of ’profaning.’ Examples of this use are Psalms 124:7, where we have : " They have set thy sanctuary on fire, they have profaned the dwelling place of thy name even to the ground " ; and Isaiah 6:2 : " That keepeth the Sabbath from profaning it " ; and Zephaniah 3:4 : " Her priests have profaned the sanctuary." Numerous other instances might be given. But it does not seem that the verb llh necessarily denotes ’ profaning ’ in our sense of the word. By ’ profaning ’ we mean putting a thing which is meant for a religious use to a common one. Thus "profaning the Sabbath " means treating the Sabbath as an ordinary day, not setting it apart to its religious use as holy to Jehovah. Indeed our English word ’ pro- fane ’ is used in a depreciatory sense. But ppH is also used in the sense of treating a thing as common and for ordinary use, when there was no profanity (in our sense of the word) in so doing. For example in Deuteronomy 20:6 we read : " And what man is there that hath planted a vineyard and hath not used the fruit thereof" (literally hath not made it common). The same expression is found in Deuteronomy 28:30. The meaning of this expression is clear from Leviticus 19:23-25:" [It will be understood that there is nothing absurd in interpreting the words of Deut. and Jeremiah by a commandment found in the Levitical code. For even though this last be post exilic in its form, there is no reason to suppose that its requirements were all new, and that nothing was borrowed from previous legislation.] And when ye shall come into the land, and shall have planted all manner of trees for food, then ye shall count the fruit thereof as their uncircumcision. Three years shall they be as uncircumcised unto you ; it shall not be eaten. But in the fourth year all the fruit thereof shall be holy, for giving praise unto the Lord. And in the fifth year shall ye eat of the fruit thereof, that it may yield unto you the increase thereof." Of course there is no "profanation" in this act of the owner of the vine in " making the fruit common." He is not treating as common what is holy, but what once had been holy and is now so no more. Profanity comes in when that which actually is ’ holy ’ at the time is treated as if it were not. The common then is, as we see, the ordinary, the secular, as we say, as distinguished from the religious, which Hebrew calls holy. But the epithet ’ holy ’ is not only applied to things, it is applied also to persons, and as the word can have no ethical significance when used of things, it may well be that it had no such significance when used of persons. Indeed there can be no doubt that outside Hebrew religion the epithet ’ holy ’ was applied among the Semitic peoples to men and women in a sense far from ethical. Robertson Smith says : " While it is not easy to fix the exact idea of holiness in ancient Semitic religion, it is quite certain that it has nothing to do with morality and purity of life. Holy persons were such, not in virtue of their character but in virtue of their race, function, or mere material consecration ; and at the Canaanite shrines the name of ’holy’ was specially appropriated to a class of de- graded wretches, devoted to the most shameful practices of a corrupt religion, whose life, apart from its connection with the sanctuary, would have been disgraceful even from the standpoint of heathenism.[ Religion of the Semites, pp. 140, 1.] :

Now the notion of holiness must have been shared by the people of Israel with other Semitic peoples before they were specially chosen out to be the recipients of the Revelation of Jehovah. It is recognised by Joshua in his appeal to the people in the twenty-fourth chapter of the book called by his name that their " fathers dwelt of old time beyond the river, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nahor, and they served other gods." [This is given by Driver as belonging to the "Elohistic" section of the Hexateuch.] Now it is not to be supposed for an instant that when Abraham was called to leave his land to go forth to another land which was not his but which God would one day give to him, every religious notion he had hitherto had was suddenly obliterated, and an entirely new conception of the divine and the human, and of the relation between them, was substituted in the place of all that he had thought before. The mind of Abraham when he came forth to obey the command of God was still imbued with the religious notions of the people from whom he had come ; and the nature of the God who had called him could not become suddenly unfolded to him, nor to his son, nor to his son’s son after him. God’s first revelation of Himself was of His presence and of His favour. Therefore when we read the history of the patriarchs, and indeed the history of Israel generally, we must be prepared to find that there were many crude notions still possessing their minds. As an illustration we might mention the incident of the meditated sacrifice of Isaac, of which something has been said in an earlier chapter.

It would greatly help our understanding of the Old Testament if we could bear in mind that God deals with men as He finds them in order to educate them to a higher knowledge and service. When the total result is seen to be an evolution of good, we cannot quarrel with the Divine method because of its gradualness. It is God’s way to bring reason out of unreason, and the human out of the infra-human.

It is a matter of some importance, if we would trace the progress of religious thought in the Old Testament, to get behind its first beginnings as we find them there, and it is well to understand what were the conceptions underlying the religious practices of the Semites from whom God called Abraham. As then we find in the Old Testament exactly the same distinction between the " common " and the " holy " which belonged to the other Semitic religions, it is simplest to understand that the notion of holiness is one belonging to them all and springing from a common original notion.

We have become so accustomed to speak of the holiness of God, meaning by this the inherent per- perfection of His character, that it is not easy to realise that there was a time when the epithet ’holy’ did not in men’s minds apply to their God or gods in themselves so much as to times, places, persons and things in their relation to Deity. " The holiness of the gods is an expression to which it is hardly possible to attach a definite sense apart from the holiness of their physical surroundings ; it shows itself in the sanctity attached to the persons, places, things, and times through which the gods and men come in contact with one another." And " the idea of holiness comes into prominence wherever the gods come into touch with men ; it is not so much a thing that characterises the gods and divine things in themselves as the most general notion that governs their relations with humanity." [Religion of the Semites, p. 141] And it is remarkable how even in the Old Testament holiness is rarely predicated of Jehovah Himself until we come to the teaching of the great prophets. In Moses’ song of triumph, given in Exodus xv., we have (Exodus 5:11): " Who is like unto Thee, Jehovah, among the gods? Who is like Thee, glorious in holiness, Fearful in praises, doing wonders? " The term ’ holiness ’ here need have no reference to Divine Character as we should understand the word ; it would seem rather to refer to the manifestation of Jehovah’s Divinity. And it is important to bear in mind that even though fdq has originally no ethical meaning, but is rather a term to distinguish that to which it is applied from what is common, yet it does not mean uncommon or rare. It is always used in a religious sense. If there were no Deity, there would be nothing " holy/’ The word has an essentially religious application. It is Deity that makes things holy, and only in relation to Deity have they holiness. The use of the word witnesses to the fact that even in the mind of primitive man the distinctiveness of Deity is apprehended. This is in itself important. In the words quoted above the special point insisted on is the superiority of Jehovah (not His absolute supremacy, which was not yet known) over other gods. There had been no manifestation of Divinity such as He had given His chosen people. In Hannah’s song we have a like sentiment: [On Hannah’s Song see Driver’s Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament.] "There is none holy as Jehovah." It was a gradual discovery to Israel that Jehovah Alone, as He revealed Himself, was worthy to be called Holy or Divine. Other so- called gods were seen to be no gods.

It is true that there is the appeal in Leviticus (Leviticus 19:2) : " Ye shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy," where the Divine Holiness is made the ground of the nation’s holiness, but it is not necessary to consider this here, for the words occur in the group of chapters conveniently designated " The Law of Holiness," which is not pre-exilic. They do not then disturb the position here taken up that holiness is hardly at all predicated of God in the Old Testament until the teaching of the great prophets.

If we have been in the habit of supposing that the very basis of a revelation must have been the character of Him who made it, and that the appeal ’ Be ye holy for I am holy ’ is the most natural one to be made by a perfect Being in choosing a people whom He would make worthy of Himself, a very little reflection will serve to shew how impossible this is. This would be to read into the first religious conceptions of man the thought which could only be gradually evolved. How could man understand the Perfection of the Divine Being all at once?

It is not of course denied here that the ultimate purpose of revelation was the revelation of God Himself in the perfection of His Being, as One Holy. But we can see that God did not reveal Himself in His Character all at once. Such revelation as He gave to patriarchs and through Moses was not so much a revelation of Himself, as of His Presence, His Power and His working in the world. It is a matter of some importance, if we are to understand the Old Testament, to bear this in mind. In fact we may say that the earlier part of the Old Testament is characterised more by an exhibition of Divine Presence and Power, and an inculcation of human duty, than by a revelation of the nature of the Divine Being, though it must be admitted that those prepared the way for this other.

It is, I think, in the close connection that exists between the revelation God made of Himself to Israel, and the giving of the law for their obedience that we shall find ultimately the explanation of the transition of the non-ethical conception of holiness to that which is ethical. For it must be remembered that the nucleus of the Mosaic law was distinctly what we should call moral as distinguished from ceremonial. We have as a perpetual reminder of this the words of the prophet Jeremiah : " I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices : but this thing I commanded them, saying, Hearken unto my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people : and walk ye in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you " (Jeremiah 7:22; Jeremiah 7:3). The table of the ten commandments is the very centre of the Mosaic code. In this are definite instructions in morality set forth as the declared will of Him who has called the nation to be holy. " If ye will obey my voice indeed and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me among all peoples : for all the earth is mine : and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and an holy nation " (Exodus 19:5; Exodus 19:6). This last expression is most striking, and I have not been able to learn that there is anything like it in other Semitic religions. An holy nation this call to be holy implies a relationship between the people and the God who calls them. For what was " holy " might not be used except in relation to Deity. And with this call into a relationship of the nation with Jehovah is associated obedience to certain moral precepts given by Jehovah Himself. Though it might not be recognised at the time, yet it can now be seen that there is here a first step towards an ethical conception of holiness. And let it be noticed that the appeal of the Decalogue is an appeal to the moral reason. Israel’s gratitude to Jehovah is asked for on the ground of His deliverance of them from bondage. He has done them good and He asks their service in return. The first four commandments are an appeal for their service of Himself. The other commandments find their basis in that intuition of the moral reason which we have called Love or regard for the good of others. The honour to parents inculcated in the fifth commandment may be said to be based also on the intuition of the duty of gratitude.

It was the function of the prophets of Israel to interpret the holiness of Jehovah ethically. They had to teach that the holiness or relationship with Jehovah was impossible unless the moral law was observed. And the relationship is expressed in tender terms. In Hosea first do we find the terms of human re- lationship used to express the relation between Jehovah and Israel. " When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt" (Hosea 11:1). Or again Israel is as the prophet’s false wife Gomer ; the nation has forsaken the Lord, committing whoredom in going after the Baalim. Jehovah invites her to return and to become faithful to Himself. " I will betroth thee unto me for ever ; yea I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving-kindness and in mercies. I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness, and thou shalt know the Lord" (Hosea 2:19; Hosea 2:20).

Thus in Hosea we are made to feel that Jehovah is to be known by moral obedience. But we do not yet find Jehovah’s holiness spoken of as expressive of His character; it is rather the distinctive title of His Godhead. " I am God, and not man ; the Holy One in the midst of thee " (Hosea 11:9). When we come to Isaiah there cannot be much doubt that in his oft-repeated expression The, Holy One of Israel the word ’ holy ’ is used in an ethical sense. It will be remembered that Isaiah’s call dated from his vision of Jehovah, and his overwhelming sense of the Divine holiness. " Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts " was the song of the seraphim one to another. And the prophet’s consciousness of the Divine holiness was the consciousness also of his own uncleanness. " Woe is me I for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts."

" In Hebrew idiom," says Robertson Smith, [Prophets of Israel, p. 231.] " a man’s words include his purposes on the one hand, his actions on the other, and thus impurity of lips means inconsistency of purpose and action with the standard of Divine holiness." The whole drift of Isaiah’s prophecies makes it clear that the expression The Holy One of Israel meant with him that there was a certain character of the Deity with which the conduct of the people must be brought into correspondence. His complaint is that the people " despised the Holy One of Israel," that they hated the moral drift of the prophet’s teaching as interpreting the holiness of Jehovah, that they said : " Cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us" (Isaiah 30:11). They would have no more of Jehovah’s holiness because, when Isaiah spoke of it, he did so to censure the nation’s apostasy in the matter of morality. Sacrifices were offered in abundance to Jehovah. He was " full of the burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts." It was not apostasy from Jehovah that the prophet was rebuking, but an unreadiness to recognise what Jehovah really was. A low estimate of His person was at the root of the national sin, a contempt of His holiness. Jehovah must vindicate His character : God the Holy One shewed Himself holy in righteousness (Isaiah 5:16).

Micah had to reprove the senseless security which could say : " Is not Jehovah in the midst of us? no evil shall come upon us." He had to remind the nation that the Lord had, since His bringing of them up from Egypt, had a righteous plan for them. " He hath shewed thee, O men, what is good; and what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God? " (Micah 6:8). The prophets then were not content with an acknowledgment of Jehovah as the national Deity, not even as the sole national Deity, without a recognition of His true character. Jeremiah expresses the utter fallacy of a trust in Jehovah which is not based on such recognition. " Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of Jehovah, the temple of Jehovah, the temple of Jehovah are these. For if ye thoroughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye thoroughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbour; if ye oppress not the stranger, the father- less and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your own hurt, then I will cause you to dwell in this place" ( Jeremiah 7:4-7). We mark these words " to your own hurt." The worship of the false gods was wrong because of utter corruptness, the worship of Jehovah was faulty because they knew not Him they worshipped. To the Jews of Jeremiah’s day it seemed quite absurd that Jehovah should give them up. Was He not their Deity? How could a holy nation specially consecrated to Jehovah, Whom they duly served with their sacrifices, be deserted? So necessary then had it become that Judah should undergo a temporary captivity for the purifying of the national faith. Had the people been allowed to dwell securely in their own land they would never have understood the holiness of Jehovah. But what a change the captivity wrought ! The punishment inflicted by Jehovah gave the nation, or rather its best members, time to think. And the conception of Jehovah’s holiness as we have it in the Priest’s Code of Leviticus and particularly in The Law of Holiness (Leviticus 17:1-16:-xxvi.) is most striking. Jehovah’s holiness is now made the ground of the nation’s holiness. " Sanctify yourselves and be ye holy, for I am holy " (Leviticus 11:44). " Ye shall be holy for I the Lord your God am holy " (Leviticus 19:2). " I the Lord which sanctify you am holy " (Leviticus 21:8). Jehovah is henceforth seen to be far above the gods of the heathen. He has a Character. The character of the nation which He has called His own must correspond with His Character. Hence the laws of moral and ceremonial cleanness and uncleanness. There is no fear of Judaism now being mixed up with the worship of other gods, or with the immorality attaching to it, not if it is true to itself. We remember how it struggled for its own peculiar position under the Maccabees, nor after that does it seem ever to have shewn any tendency towards idolatry nor to have compromised itself by the admixture of the immoral practices of other religious worships. But we cannot forget the ultimate decadence of Judaism. But the decadence of Judaism was due to its formalism rather than to its vice. The letter of the law became a substitute for its spirit. There was moreover a confusion in the Jewish mind between the ceremonial and the moral. But the Jew did not now forget that the moral law was part of the covenant with Jehovah.

We see then that the Old Testament revelation takes as its essential basis a relationship between man and God. Man is brought into connection with God. He is holy according to the primitive meaning of the term. Certain rules of holiness had to be observed. Such rules of holiness were a part of the experience of all Semitic peoples. But in the case of Israel the rules of holiness were largely moral as distinguished from ceremonial. It was not easy for a primitive people to grasp the moral purport of their religion all at once. They soon became satisfied with the notions of the heathen around them. Sacrificial duty was thought to be a substitute for moral obedience. But Jehovah left not Himself without witness, and the breach of the moral law was found to lead to the confusion of His people. Prophets were raised up, some to declare the Divine Will in special cases, that they might guide the action of those who professed the service of Jehovah, and some to discern and make known the general principles of Jehovah’s government of the people, and indeed of the whole world, which was at length seen to be His. To this latter class belonged those prophets whose writings, in the providence of God, have come down to us. And such prophetic teaching is not confined to what we call the " prophetical books." The Psalter is pervaded by it. There we see how the direct relationship with God of the people and of individuals among the people is sought after as the satisfaction of the soul. There recognition is found of the great moral foundation of Israel’s covenant with Jehovah. Take such words as those of Psalms 1:16-23.

16. " But unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, And that thou hast taken my covenant in thy mouth?

17. Seeing thou hatest instruction, And castest my words behind thee.

18. When thou sawest a thief, thou consentedst with him, And hast been partaker with adulterers.

19. Thou givest thy mouth to evil, And thy tongue frameth deceit.

20. Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother ; Thou slanderest thine own mother’s son.

21. These things hast thou done, and I kept silence ; Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself : But I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.

22. Now consider this, ye that forget God,Lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.

23. Whoso offereth the sacrifice of thanksgiving glorifieth me ; And to him that ordereth his conversation aright Will I shew the salvation of God." These words speak for themselves, declaring to the end of all time, to Christians as well as to Jews, that there can be no divorce permitted by God of the moral from the ceremonial. "If I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear " (Psalms 66:18).

We see from the Psalter how communion with Jehovah was entered into by pious individuals speaking for themselves or for their nation. We note how real such communion could be on the ground of what Jehovah was in Himself righteous, gracious, merciful. The religious fervour of the Psalmists is so deep, their expression of human need so true, their realisation of the Divine supply of that need so intense, that their hymns and prayers and confessions are found to express still some of the innermost thoughts of a Christian heart. But this is not the place to illustrate this point. The review that has here been made of the notion of holiness in the Old Testament impresses upon us three chief points: (1) the pre-existence of the notion, (2) its persistence, (3) its purification. On the first of these points a good deal has been written by those who are competent to deal with the question, and such a book as Robertson Smith’s Religion of the Semites is invaluable to the study of it. What impresses one after reading books which deal with the crude primitive conceptions of deity and of man’s relation thereto is how remarkable it is that such a notion as that of holiness should have persisted as it did, until it became transformed into the Christian conception. By the persistence of the notion I do not of course mean its stationariness. The conception changed, but it was never lost and was never intended to be lost. For there was in the notion even in its crudest form a permanent truth of human life. If the notions of primitive religion respecting the relation between man and his gods seem to us crude and revolting, that only proves their insufficiency for ourselves at the stage of development to which God has brought us. If the gods were conceived of as a part of the material universe so that only by the aid of material things could man hold converse with them, if the rules of that converse seem to us ridiculous, we can with patience discern elements of truth in such things. The point, as it seems to me, that we ought to lay hold of is that in spite of all that was crude in ancient worship, yet worship there was, persistent worship, because worship is a permanent instinct in man. The wonder is, not that the primitive conception of holiness was so mean, but that from so mean a conception has come forth by the operation of God’s Spirit within man the great and all-important notion of Absolute Good, and of man’s relation thereto.

Man’s unworthy thoughts of God have proceeded from his sin and selfishness, from the fact that he is yet carnal ; but that he has any thoughts of God at all proves him to be on the way to become spiritual. As carnal, man thinks that God is such an one as himself; but God is in His love and infinite wisdom giving him reproof and setting in order before his eyes, that, so far from God being what man is, man is being brought into what God Himself is.

There were undreamt of depths of meaning in that old word ’ holiness ’ which the prophets of Israel partly saw, and which Jesus Christ has perfectly revealed.