absolutely dependent on the Divine will with regard to what he effects, still acts from a disposition hostile to man. This is already hinted, 1 Chron. xxi. 1, in the standing up of Satan against Israel, and still more prominently brought forward in the prologue to Job, ch. i. sqq. It is true that Satan there appears as still in the midst of the D; but he comes from a predatory excursion upon earth, which he has evidently undertaken from hostility to men (to act as a spy upon them). It is evident that, as far as he is concerned, he does not question Job's righteousness for the sake of affording an occasion for confirming it, which is the purpose of God's counsel, but because he hopes that Job's piety will not endure temptation, and that he will thus cease to be an object of Divine complacency. That he may bring calamity upon Job, the Lord allows Satan the free disposal not only of the elements, the tempest, and the fire of heaven,-but also of human beings (the nomadic hordes), and at length he is permitted to smite him with a most terrible disease. But he is obliged to obtain from God the power of effecting all this; and the limit to the injury he is allowed to inflict is appointed by the will of God; comp. ii. 6. Of special significance, moreover, is the position of Satan with respect to the covenant people. This is shown with particular clearness in Zech. iii., while it is also briefly alluded to 1 Chron. xxi. The vision in Zechariah is as follows:-Joshua the high priest is standing in unclean garments before the angel of the Lord, and Satan is standing at his right hand to accuse him. The Lord repels with threats the accusations of Satan, acquits the high priest, and commands him, as a token of his acquittal, to put on clean festal garments. This passage has been by some expositors most erroneously referred to the slanders uttered against the people and Joshua at the Persian court; for how could an accusation to the Persian king be possibly represented by the prophet as being at the same time an accusation to the Lord? The high priest is the representative of the people (1). He is accused before the Lord, not on account of his own sins

as an individual, but in his capacity of high priest. His priestly garments are defiled. Satan affirms that for this sinful people there is no valid mediation before God; that Israel is rejected because there is no longer an atonement for them. The Lord will, however, have pity, according to ver. 2, on this brand plucked from the fire, the remnant of His people, and will not regard their sin. He therefore causes the high priest to be clothed in clean garments, thus acknowledging the validity of the high-priestly mediation, though with an intimation, ver. 8, that the day of grace is still future; that He by whom a perfect atonement for the people is to be effected (and that in one day) must first appear; and that this future Redeemer is the Servant of God, the Branch (Zemach), and therefore the Messiah. Thus the work of Satan is to question the forgiveness, the justification of the church, in which sense he is called, Rev. xii. 10, the accuser of our brethren. Hence he is here represented as the antithesis to the angel of the Lord, who, according to Zech. i. 12, like the high priest on earth, stands before the Lord to intercede for the people. With respect also to his agency among men, Satan, who desires (Job i.) to destroy the souls of men (see the particulars, § 197), forms a contrast to the, Job xxxiii. 23, whose occupation it is to excite men to repentance and confession of sin, that their souls may be rescued from destruction.

The allusion just made to the organic connection between the doctrine of Satan and other Old Testament doctrines, testifies decidedly against the theory which derives it from the Persian religion. Quite apart from the fact that in pre-Babylonian times, to which the Book of Job must absolutely be referred, the notion of Persian influence is inconceivable, the Satan of the Old Testament is devoid of essential characteristics which must be present to justify a comparison with Ahriman. The monism of the Old Testament utterly excludes the admission of a hostile principle opposed from the very first to Deity; nor does it know as yet of a kingdom of darkness over which

Satan presides with relative independence. The Satan of the Old Testament is not as yet the aрxwv тоû кóσμov of the New Testament, which disclosed the Báon Toû oаTava at the same time that it brought revelation to its completion. The New Testament doctrine of the xóopos, and of its antagonism to the kingdom of God, finds its parallel in the conflict between the secular monarchies and Israel; but though (as we have seen in the preceding section) this conflict is in Dan. x. and Isa. xxiv. connected with occurrences in the world of spirits, Satan does not appear upon the scene.

Of other evil angels nothing is distinctly taught in the Old Testament. By Azazel, Lev. xvi., we must probably understand, according to what was said, Part I. (§ 140), an evil spiritual power whom we may (with Hengstenberg) combine with the Satan of the later books, though the Old Testament itself will not furnish us with the middle terms necessary to prove the connection of the two.

D'

It is true that the destroyers (D), who are in Job xxxiii. 22 contrasted with the , must probably be referred not to fatal diseases, but to angels; this does not, however, imply that the Old Testament teaches the doctrine of a special class of angels of death, like the angel of death (Samael) of later Jewish theology. It is not the nature of these angels, but the Divine commission, which makes them destroyers. So also in Ps. lxxviii. 49, the Dy are not evil angels, who would have been called D DND, but angeli malorum, angels of evil, who ministered in the Egyptian plagues as the instru ments of God, the collective conception of the in, who, according to Ex. xii. 13, 23, executes the last judgment upon the Egyptians, but who, as the nne, 2 Sam. xxiv. 16, 1 Chron. xxi. 15, comp. Isa. xxxvii. 36, is the angel of the Lord (2). The spectral being n, Isa. xxxiv. 14, i.e. nocturna, regarded by the Talmudists a demon who specially lies in wait for children, and the D, xiii. 21, by whom goat-footed demons are usually understood, cannot of course be comprised

in the category of evil angels, apart from the fact that not a word is said in these passages concerning the real existence of such sprites (3).

(1) What was said, § 96, on the meaning of the highpriestly office may be here referred to.

(2) The saying of Ode (De angelis, p. 741), Deum ad puniendos malos homines mittere bonos angelos, et ad castigandos pios usurpare malos, may so far be recognised as Old Testament doctrine. (3) Later Jewish theology, on the contrary, presents us with a fully-developed demonology, traces of which are found in the Asmodeus of the apocryphal Book of Tobit.

SECOND DIVISION.

MAN'S RELIGIOUS AND MORAL RELATION TO GOD.

I. DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE CEREMONIAL AND

THE MORAL LAW.

§ 201.

The ceremonial and moral precepts are (as has been shown in Part I. § 84) in the Mosaic law co-ordinate. The object and meaning of the law are, however, shown, as was there pointed out, on the one hand, by the motives set forth for fulfilling the commands; on the other, by the fact that even the ceremonial ordinances are everywhere translucent with a spiritual meaning. Hence it is but a result of that tuition. of the law which advances from the outer to the inner, that prophecy should carry out the distinction between the ceremonial and the moral law, and emphatically declare that the performance of the external ordinances of the law, and especially the offering of sacrifice, were, as merely outward acts, worthless; that the will of God aimed at the sanctification of

the heart and the surrender of the will to God; and that the observance of the ceremonial law had no value except as the expression of a godly disposition. The words of Samuel to Saul (1 Sam. xv. 22, § 164, and note 3) may in this respect, as we have already remarked, be regarded as the programme of prophecy. The same thought forms the theme of many prophetic addresses; comp. as chief passages Hos. vi. 6, Amos v. 21 sqq., Isa. i. 11 sqq., lviii. 3 sqq., Jer. v. 20, vii. 21 sqq., xiv. 12, Mic. vi. 6 sqq. (1). Many passages in the Psalms also declare obedience to the Divine will, the thwarting of selfwill and pride, and the struggle for the purification of the inner man, to be the sacrifice acceptable to God; comp. Ps. xl. 7, 1., li. 18 sq. So, too, a godly conversation and all that appertains thereto is often the subject of psalms in which not a word is said of sacrifice; see e.g. how purity of heart and conduct are brought forward, Ps. xxiv. 4–6, and xv., as the tokens by which the genuine covenant people are to be recognised. On the other hand, however, the experience of the Divine favour is, in the view of the Psalmist, connected with the sanctuary and its acts of worship, on which account these are the objects of delight and aspiration; comp. xxvi. 7 sq., xxvii. 4, Ps. xlii. sq., lxiii., lxxxiv. The latter contains a hint of the manner in which the polemics of the prophets against the rites of worship must be regarded. According to a view frequently advanced, the prophets are said to have taken exception to sacrificial services in general, while Jeremiah in particular is declared to have refused to sacrifice the character of a Divine institution (so Hitzig, Graf, and others); see vi. 20, but especi ally vii. 22 sq. (2). Nor are these passages to be got over by the distinction that the private sacrifices of the law were for the most part voluntary, that the law merely prescribed the manner in which they should be offered (so Schmieder), and that the positive injunction of sacrifice related chiefly to public offerings, of which Jeremiah was not here speaking. Nor can Jeremiah's recognition of the ceremonial law be argued from the