3. Israel. Until the emergence of belief in a resur-
rection and judgment of the dead in the second century
B.C., the ancient Hebrew conception of man limited
personal significance to this life. Moreover, since
Hebrew religion was essentially ethnic in origin and
character, the individual was significant only insofar
as he affected, by his behavior, the relation between
Yahweh, the god of Israel, and the holy nation, Israel.
A notable instance of this situation occurs in the Book
of Joshua (7: 1ff.). The Israelites had suffered a severe
defeat by the people of Ai. When Joshua, the Israelite
leader, inquired the reason of Yahweh, he was told that
Israel had sinned because some of the spoils, dedicated
to Yahweh in a previous victory, had been withheld
from him. Investigation revealed that an Israelite
named Achan had secretly retained certain articles.
After he and his family and animals had been stoned
to death by the other Israelites, Yahweh was appeased
and gave Israel victory over Ai. This barbaric act
graphically attests to the prevalence of a primitive
sense of communal guilt for the transgression of an
individual, and the need to make corporate expiation
to the offended deity.
The traditional Hebrew disposition to evaluate sin
primarily in terms of the relation of Yahweh and Israel
demands many other illustrations. Thus, the kings of
Israel are each appraised in a kind of set formula
relating to their attitude towards idolatry: “he clung
to the sin [i.e., idolatry] of Jeroboam the son of Nebat,
which he made Israel to sin; he did not depart from
it” (II Kings, 3:3; cf. 10:29; 13:2; etc.). This emphasis
upon the corporate aspect of sin, especially in the
matter of idolatry, has its classic expression in the
second of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:3-17).
After forbidding the making and worshipping of graven
images, Yahweh is represented as declaring that he is
“a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon
the children to the third and the fourth generation of
those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to
thousands of those who love me and keep my
commandments” (R.S.V.).
The Ten Commandments, just as the Egyptian
Declarations of Innocence and some expiatory Meso-
potamian texts, concern both religious and ethical
actions. Priority of order is given to the religious:
worship no other gods; do not commit idolatry; do not
take the name of Yahweh “in vain”; and, positively,
observe the sabbath. The reward promised for the
faithful keeping of these injunctions is confined to this
life, namely, divine beneficence and a long life “in the
land which the Lord your God gives you.”
Apart from these basic requirements for the mainte-
nance of a proper relationship between Yahweh and
Israel, Hebrew literature reveals a variety of ideas
about the cause and nature of sin. The story of the
Fall of Adam, in Genesis (Chs. 2-3), is the most notable
attempt to explain the origin and consequence of sin.
Since it is set in the Primeval History section of the
Yahwist philosophy of history, the story has a uni-
versalistic meaning, and it does not pertain specifically
to the destiny of Israel. Its theme, briefly, is that the
progenitors of mankind incurred the doom of mortality
for themselves and their descendants by disobedience
to their Maker's command. The part played by the
serpent in the fateful drama is enigmatical: it is repre-
sented as the suggesting to Eve of the advantages to
be gained from disobedience; but the decision to
disobey is distinctly taken by Adam and Eve. However,
shortly after the account of the Fall, the Yahwist writer
in describing the first murder (Genesis 4:2-7), makes
a curious reference to sin as a demonic being (rōbhēs),
“crouching at the door.” But the idea that sin is a
demon, which seizes the unwary, is not developed, and
the consequent suggestion that an evil power seeks to
win man from God does not appear in Hebrew thought
until the post-Exilic period (after 538 B.C.).
Psalm 51, though of unknown date, affords valuable
evidence of the currency of three distinct conceptions
of sin. In verses 1 and 2 the penitent beseeches God
to “... blot out my transgressions. Wash me thor-
oughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!”
In Hebrew, “transgressions” (pesha') meant “rebel-
lion”; “iniquity” ('āwōn) denoted a deliberate turning
aside from the right way; and “sin” (ḥaṭṭâth) signified
missing the mark or losing one's way through ignorance
or lack of skill. The Psalms, which generally show a
great sensitivity about offending God, raise many un-
solved questions as to whether they should be inter-
preted as personal confessions or as expressions of
corporate contrition, with the speaker representing
Israel in a ritual of atonement.
Salvation in ancient Hebrew literature could have
two connotations, namely, God's deliverance of Israel
from its enemies, the classic example of which was the
deliverance from the pursuing Egyptians and their
destruction in the Red Sea (Exodus 14:13ff.), and the
deliverance of individuals by God from misfortune
(e.g., Psalms 34:6). The ethnic or nationalist idea of
salvation steadily became the major theme of Jewish
religion as Israel's position worsened in the interplay
of power politics of the ancient Near East. The desire
and hope for divine deliverance found fervent expres-
sion in an apocalyptic literature that began to pro-
liferate from the second century B.C. The emphasis,
which the prophets had earlier placed on Israel's iniq-
uity as the cause of its political disasters, was now
shifted to that of the wickedness of their Gentile
oppressors. Belief in ultimate divine succor became
concentrated in the idea of Yahweh's Messiah, who
would come with supernatural power to overthrow and
judge the Gentiles and vindicate Israel as the Elect
People of God. It was this hope, that Yahweh would
mightily intervene in world affairs to save Israel, that
inspired the Zealots, who led the Jewish resistance to
the government of Rome, and that eventually caused
the fatal revolt of A.D. 66, which ended in the over-
throw of the nation and the destruction of Jerusalem
and its great Temple four years later.
Parallel with the development of the national hope
for divine salvation, went a quest for individual salva-
tion by divine grace. The ancient Yahwist doctrine of
man had limited the enjoyment of significant personal
life to this world. Yahweh, it was taught, blessed the
pious with long life and material prosperity, and
punished the impious by misfortune and early death.
But, as a sense of individuality emerged in Israel, the
speciousness of this doctrine became painfully evident.
It caused the questioning of Yahweh's justice that finds
such poignant expression in the Book of Job. Job is
the type-case of the innocent sufferer overwhelmed by
unmerited misfortune. His plight is the more tragic
because he accepts the traditional teaching that death
was the virtual end of personal life: beyond it lay only
the misery of Sheol. Job's problem was that his piety
had been unrewarded in this life, and he could expect
no divine salvation after death. Within the context of
the then contemporary Yahwist doctrine of man, Job's
problem, though faced courageously, could find no
satisfying answer. A viable answer did eventually be-
come possible in the second century B.C., when the
belief was established that God would finally resurrect
and judge the dead. Then the just would be rewarded
by a blessed post-mortem existence, while the unjust
were punished in Sheol, which was reconceived as the
place of eternal torment for the damned.
