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Theology of the Old Testament: Volume 2
Looks at God's relationship with the world and the place of man in creation. Explores the relationship between God and man as individual and in community.
576 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
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October 8, 2025
This second volume of Walther Eichrodt’s magnificent Theology of the Old Testament, published ten years later in 1967, covers a miscellany of topics and should therefore be viewed as being more in the nature of a commentary or dictionary glossing certain key words (‘angel of the Lord’, ‘kabod’, ‘panim’ etc.). All of which means that what one finds here constitutes ground-level material essential to a full understanding of the scriptural text, though perhaps it falls short of the level of theological synthesis per se, as this is conveyed in the first volume (just reviewed by us, here).
Nevertheless, everything Eichrodt has to say in the present volume will prove helpful in disentangling various strata of tradition from primitive to late. In places, it can get a little technical with Hebrew grammar; thus, impossible for someone with limited knowledge of the language to follow but the author always explains what he means in English, too, with all desirable clarity.
Since vol. 2 contains no consecutive argument, for the remainder of this review we shall adopt the stratagem of quoting representative passages on the topics under review, which will bring to the fore Eichrodt’s scholarly position.
Spirit of God
That such a divinization of Nature did not come about was due to the fact that the Israelite view of Nature, like other beliefs, was determined by their historical experience of Yahweh’s sovereignty, which called for a corresponding absolute divine authority over the spirit of life as a demonstration that at every moment the creature was dependent upon the Creator. The classic text for this attitude is the story of the sons of God and the daughters of men (Genesis 6:1-4), in which an ancient pagan myth is used as a vehicle for Yahweh’s sentence of judgment, in order to make clear once for all that the creature’s share in the rūaḥ is a gift of grace, which can at any time be revoked, from the one who is the living Lord over the spirit of life. In contrast to the thought of heathenism, with its endless traditions about the generations of heroes, the same material is here used to indicate unmistakably the unbridgeable gulf which separates the creature from the eternal God. [pp. 48-49]
The unifying factors behind all these varied phenomena were first, that in them men saw the radiance of a higher kind of life, translating Man into direct contact with the divine world, and secondly, that they all occurred in the service of the establishment of the kingdom of God in Israel. [p. 51]
The imperishable divine life, which is Yahweh’s to command, and which in another passage Isaiah again terms rūaḥ, contrasting it with bāśār, that is to say, the limitations of earthly being, is here linked as closely as possible with God’s moral exaltedness, thus introducing the majesty of the ethical norm as a controlling principle into the marvelous realm of the spirit. Again, in the promise to the remnant of the nation (Isaiah 28:5f), the spirit of righteousness is inseparably associated with the divine glory as the moral power in which God himself draws near to his people….In this way there is an advance from a picture of power working externally to one involving the innermost foundations of the personal life. [pp. 58-59]
Hand in hand with this experience of the spirit’s guidance in the present goes the effort to bring greater and greater areas of life within the scope of its domain. Thus political activity, and the whole field of art, whether it be inspired poetry or the many varieties of craftsmanship, are subsumed under the operation of the spirit, and any skill in these directions is thankfully venerated as given by it. [p. 63]
Word of God
By contrast the priestly description of the creative word is already tending toward the static conception of a system which, after its once for all promulgation in the past, continues with absolute regularity for ever, entrusting to the earth forces working in accordance with fixed laws, assigning to the heavenly bodies the rule over day and night, and by the blessing pronounced upon the animals and Man liberating a power which from henceforward works automatically, in by which the whole of the future is already predetermined in a particular direction….Here we arrive at the consummation of the priestly view, for which the word is equated with the eternally valid institution of the divine lawgiver, subjecting to his will both Nature and human life alike. [pp. 75-77]
Wisdom as the Principle of Cosmic Order, and as Hypostasis
The first point to strike one on reading this literature is the way in which the concept of wisdom has been radically expanded. Not only the old skill in practical affairs but also the purpose and order discernible in the cosmos are now regarded as effects of wisdom….Here too (Proverbs 8:22-31), therefore, wisdom is the cosmic thought, proceeding from God, creatively organizing and acting, and an objective reality even to God himself. Henceforward this connection with the creation and sustaining of all things was inseparable from wisdom, as the literature of later Judaism bears witness (Ecclesiaticus 1:2-6 etc.). [pp. 83-85]
In opposition to them the poet [of the book of Job] stresses that God’s wisdom is not placed in its entirety within Man’s grasp for him to read off from the works of creation alone. Because Man can discover only traces of Wisdom, but never Wisdom herself, therefore there remain riddles in the course of the universe which Man cannot plumb, but can only accept in awe and adoration before the all-wise Creator. [p. 88]
Nevertheless the importance of the Wisdom hypostasis for the dialogue of the Old Testament faith with the world of Hellenistic spirituality should not be underestimated. Its significance within the congregation increased markedly as a result of its association with the Law, for this gave it new content in the form of knowledge of God to add to its practical wisdom and understanding of Nature. But this was not all. It also gave the community a platform from which they were able to answer the problem of truth posed by Hellenistic wisdom, without in the process evaporating or curtailing their faith in the revelation of God within Israel. [p. 91]
Cosmology and Creation
Although the statements in the Old Testament about God’s relation to the world are so many and various, they nevertheless show themselves at one in this, that throughout they stress the complete dependence of the earthly order on God. This outlook finds its most striking expression, however, in the statements about God’s creation of the world. That this is an immemorial belief in Israel can no longer be disputed, despite the fact that for years it was customary to doubt it….It is, of course, true that there is a manifest relationship between individual features of the biblical creation narratives and similar ideas in Babylonia, Phoenicia or Egypt. And yet even the most naïve of Israel’s ideas of creation is from the start fundamentally different from every heathen conception of the way in which the world came into being; and the similarity of the underlying material can, in fact, serve to make this difference all the more striking. [pp. 96-97]
By contrast, in the religions of the ancient oriental civilizations cosmogony always involves theogony, a principle of which the introduction to the Babylonian creation epic, enuma eliš, may stand as the classic example. The emergence of the gods from the chaotic primordial ground of the universe stamped them as deified natural forces; and even their association with the values of cultural and moral life, of which they were sometimes found as the guardians, cannot erase this character….Hence in Israel the assertion that God created the world acquires a new meaning not to be found elsewhere: creation is the free institution of a will which contains its own norm. [p. 99]
Causality is not the basic principle which determines the relation of the Creator to the creature; he is not ‘cause’ in the sense of part of a process, which can be arrived at by going back through a continuum. He is the ‘source’ of the cosmos in the sense of a self-sufficient norm which expresses itself in autonomous action. [p. 101]
In this way the concept of creation was thought out in Israel to its logical conclusion, and the deistic notion of God as prima causa, incorporated into the chain of cause and effect as one term in the process, was neutralized by the stress on the absolute freedom with which God acts. The world has its center of gravity not in itself but in God; it possesses no independent being. Even space and time are only established at the creation, for before the first day no time can possibly be conceived. [p. 106]
One important factor in this evaluation of the world was undoubtedly the absence of a belief in basic matter, independent of God, as a prerequisite of creation—a marked point of contrast with the heathen cosmogonies. For it is precisely to matter that imperfection is normally ascribed. Because according to Israel’s belief both matter and form proceed from God’s creative purpose, both must be good, that is, both must correspond to his purpose. That the predicate ‘good’ is to be understood in this sense, and is not meant to denote a state of unlimited perfection, follows from the way in which elsewhere it is held to be self-evident that good and evil, light and darkness, are both to be ascribed to Yahweh, and therefore that any idea of an alien power in the universe is to be rejected. [p. 108]
Place of Man in the Creation
By distributing the activity of creation over a period of a week, concluding with a day of rest which is now to be fixed as a permanent ordinance, the writer derives from a primal divine decree the belief that Man does not exist merely for heedless enjoyment—as innumerable myths of the beginnings of mankind like to relate—but is meant to find the development of his aptitudes and powers in purposeful labor, in which he is to possess a facsimile of the divine work of creation and its joy. Work is not, therefore, as it is regarded elsewhere in antiquity, a curse or the miserable lot of slaves, but a task assigned by God. The point of the day of rest, however, is to make Man aware that he is not chained to his work in ceaseless drudgery, but like God may rejoice in his labors. Even vis-à-vis his work he is to remain master, and not to sink to the position of a slave. [pp. 127-128]
It has already been pointed out above that the spirit of the individual man designated by the term rūaḥ is to be distinguished sharply from the concept of the Spirit of God. The new usage of the word is undoubtedly connected with the derivation of all earthly life from that supra-individual divine vital force which, as the breath of God, pervades the whole creation. But even though, in this sense, rūaḥ encountered Man as something far superior to him, never coming under his control, yet, if a man wished to talk of the vital energy dwelling within himself, it was possible for him to speak of ‘his’ rūaḥ, to attribute marked deteriorations in his physical or psychic state to its impairment or diminution, or to explain them as an unrest, a disturbance, of a vital element proper to himself. In so doing, rūaḥ was still at first kept as something independent of human subjectivity, since in all such cases it was a question of strong external influences operating upon men, and overwhelming them. But when the usage was extended from physical to psychic circumstances the first steps had been taken toward using rūaḥ in the sense of a psychological term….From this habit of describing movements within the psyche as manifestations of the rūaḥ present in Man there arose in later times, as men acquired a better understanding of the autonomy and unity of the psychic life, a development by means of a simple generalization whereby the rūaḥ was made responsible for all psychic effects, and indeed was virtually regarded as the organ of psychic life. [pp. 131-132]
At this point the relationship of nepeš to the concept of rūaḥ as the universal breath of life, supra-individual in character, is perfectly clear. If nepeš is the individual life in association with the body, rūaḥ is the life force present everywhere and existing independently over against the single individual. [p. 136]
In a formal context Israelite psychology attaches importance to distinguishing between spiritual activity and passivity. The major psychological concepts clearly develop in the direction of a perceptible contrast between instinctive activity conditioned by the animal life (nepeš) and conscious spiritual activity (lēb), and between both and domination by the impact of forces from outside (rūaḥ). The conscious distinction thus drawn between impulse and will in human decisions and conduct indicates how the Israelites arrived at a clear formation of ethical concepts. [p. 148]
But the lines extend even further, affecting Israel’s views on sin and redemption. For it is a consequence of their outlook on the psychic life that sin cannot be explained one-sidedly as concupiscentia, the desire of the flesh, but must be understood as a reality of the psyche as a whole, drawing the body into sympathy with it. Hence redemption must also be accomplished in a bodily event. [p. 149]
Law in the Natural Process
Already in this vivid sense of Nature as a living thing, ascribing to the non-human creation a relationship with its divine Lord analogous to that enjoyed by the people of God themselves, may be seen the marked and direct connection of natural events with God, of whose activity in history and in the life of the people they are the accompaniment. Hence the stage is nowhere reached at which the forces of Nature are credited with a mythological life of their own, as a result of which they might be able to assert themselves as independent entities over against God. It is certain the Israel knew of such mythological conceptions, partly from her own past, and partly from neighboring peoples. But just as she made use of the traditional material purely as poetic decoration, so her personifying view of Nature evinced no capacity for producing new ideas of this mythical kind. Conversely, however, it was possible just as spontaneously and axiomatically to portray natural events, which elsewhere might have been given an anthropomorphic life of their own, as a direct act of God. [pp. 152-153]
It is precisely the terms last mentioned which indicate most strikingly wherein lies the real importance of the miraculous for faith—not in its material factuality, but in its evidential character. Hence it is not, generally speaking, the especially abnormal character of the event which makes it a miracle; what strikes men forcibly is a clear impression of God’s care or retribution within it. Least of all does it occur to the devout Old Testament believer to make a breach of the laws of Nature a condicio sine qua non of the miraculous character of an event, though marvelous occurrences in this sense are not unknown. In contrast to our own scientific outlook, however, the Israelite does not think in terms of an unbreakable natural order such as would restrict even God’s operation. [p. 163]
Providence
The revived awareness of the prophetic message of the God who comes, of the marvel of that fellowship with God which can be personally experienced here in the present, and of the mystery of creation, which opens up an inner connection between Creator and creature, led to joyful affirmation of the divine freedom, which is quite another thing from caprice, and which reveals itself to those who trust in God rather as succor and grace. Here the way was opened to an understanding of a theonomy of human action leading far beyond all autonomy and heteronomy, and such as Paul, consistently with his Old Testament starting-points, was able to proclaim as the ἔννομος χριστοῦ (1 Corinthians 9:21). [p. 181]
It will be clear from what has been said earlier how greatly men’s eyes for the divine wisdom, in the sense of the systematic ordering of all events, must have been opened by the prophetic interpretation of history. When the early period spoke of God’s wisdom it did so more in the sense of miraculous knowledge, as when the angel of Yahweh is mentioned as the quintessence of wisdom (2 Samuel 14:17). The comprehensive vision of the world-process as a wondrous structure fashioned by the divine wisdom, which allots to every man his place and makes ‘everything beautiful in its time’, was first put into clear words by the prophets (Isaiah 28:23ff; cf. 14:24ff; 22:11; 29:14; 31:2; 37:26). [p. 184]
Now, it would be fascinating to continue excerpting in this fashion but space does not permit. Instead, out of the wealth of material in the second half of this volume we shall select only one point to comment upon, namely, where Eichrodt indicates why later Judaism scaled back on the importance of universalism despite its prominence in the OT tradition:
The first threat to moral understanding invades the community of the Law at the point where the ideal of the holy congregation is no longer thought of as the directional indication for her historical task in the present, nor as an exhortation to be prepared for the consummation which God himself is to bring about, but as the condition to be established by men, with the help of the legal system, a condition in which the divine purposes for the world will already have been realized….This dangerous abridgment of the original priestly attitude received support from the epigones of prophecy as a result of their readoption of a nationalist and particularist hope into the picture of the future. The world sovereignty of Israel, and the world status of the Jewish congregation, became the two sides of the final perfection, and provided common ground for the various religious tendencies of the post-exilic period….The apocalypse of Isaiah 24-27, too, can proclaim judgment and salvation as embracing the whole world. But the particularist tendency, which acquired its driving force from the absolute status accorded to the congregation, was the stronger, and it was this which became dominant in later Judaism. [pp. 342-344]
A closing observation: to read Eichrodt is in itself a moral education! If, indeed, one can transfer the lessons learned to one’s own life.
Nevertheless, everything Eichrodt has to say in the present volume will prove helpful in disentangling various strata of tradition from primitive to late. In places, it can get a little technical with Hebrew grammar; thus, impossible for someone with limited knowledge of the language to follow but the author always explains what he means in English, too, with all desirable clarity.
Since vol. 2 contains no consecutive argument, for the remainder of this review we shall adopt the stratagem of quoting representative passages on the topics under review, which will bring to the fore Eichrodt’s scholarly position.
Spirit of God
That such a divinization of Nature did not come about was due to the fact that the Israelite view of Nature, like other beliefs, was determined by their historical experience of Yahweh’s sovereignty, which called for a corresponding absolute divine authority over the spirit of life as a demonstration that at every moment the creature was dependent upon the Creator. The classic text for this attitude is the story of the sons of God and the daughters of men (Genesis 6:1-4), in which an ancient pagan myth is used as a vehicle for Yahweh’s sentence of judgment, in order to make clear once for all that the creature’s share in the rūaḥ is a gift of grace, which can at any time be revoked, from the one who is the living Lord over the spirit of life. In contrast to the thought of heathenism, with its endless traditions about the generations of heroes, the same material is here used to indicate unmistakably the unbridgeable gulf which separates the creature from the eternal God. [pp. 48-49]
The unifying factors behind all these varied phenomena were first, that in them men saw the radiance of a higher kind of life, translating Man into direct contact with the divine world, and secondly, that they all occurred in the service of the establishment of the kingdom of God in Israel. [p. 51]
The imperishable divine life, which is Yahweh’s to command, and which in another passage Isaiah again terms rūaḥ, contrasting it with bāśār, that is to say, the limitations of earthly being, is here linked as closely as possible with God’s moral exaltedness, thus introducing the majesty of the ethical norm as a controlling principle into the marvelous realm of the spirit. Again, in the promise to the remnant of the nation (Isaiah 28:5f), the spirit of righteousness is inseparably associated with the divine glory as the moral power in which God himself draws near to his people….In this way there is an advance from a picture of power working externally to one involving the innermost foundations of the personal life. [pp. 58-59]
Hand in hand with this experience of the spirit’s guidance in the present goes the effort to bring greater and greater areas of life within the scope of its domain. Thus political activity, and the whole field of art, whether it be inspired poetry or the many varieties of craftsmanship, are subsumed under the operation of the spirit, and any skill in these directions is thankfully venerated as given by it. [p. 63]
Word of God
By contrast the priestly description of the creative word is already tending toward the static conception of a system which, after its once for all promulgation in the past, continues with absolute regularity for ever, entrusting to the earth forces working in accordance with fixed laws, assigning to the heavenly bodies the rule over day and night, and by the blessing pronounced upon the animals and Man liberating a power which from henceforward works automatically, in by which the whole of the future is already predetermined in a particular direction….Here we arrive at the consummation of the priestly view, for which the word is equated with the eternally valid institution of the divine lawgiver, subjecting to his will both Nature and human life alike. [pp. 75-77]
Wisdom as the Principle of Cosmic Order, and as Hypostasis
The first point to strike one on reading this literature is the way in which the concept of wisdom has been radically expanded. Not only the old skill in practical affairs but also the purpose and order discernible in the cosmos are now regarded as effects of wisdom….Here too (Proverbs 8:22-31), therefore, wisdom is the cosmic thought, proceeding from God, creatively organizing and acting, and an objective reality even to God himself. Henceforward this connection with the creation and sustaining of all things was inseparable from wisdom, as the literature of later Judaism bears witness (Ecclesiaticus 1:2-6 etc.). [pp. 83-85]
In opposition to them the poet [of the book of Job] stresses that God’s wisdom is not placed in its entirety within Man’s grasp for him to read off from the works of creation alone. Because Man can discover only traces of Wisdom, but never Wisdom herself, therefore there remain riddles in the course of the universe which Man cannot plumb, but can only accept in awe and adoration before the all-wise Creator. [p. 88]
Nevertheless the importance of the Wisdom hypostasis for the dialogue of the Old Testament faith with the world of Hellenistic spirituality should not be underestimated. Its significance within the congregation increased markedly as a result of its association with the Law, for this gave it new content in the form of knowledge of God to add to its practical wisdom and understanding of Nature. But this was not all. It also gave the community a platform from which they were able to answer the problem of truth posed by Hellenistic wisdom, without in the process evaporating or curtailing their faith in the revelation of God within Israel. [p. 91]
Cosmology and Creation
Although the statements in the Old Testament about God’s relation to the world are so many and various, they nevertheless show themselves at one in this, that throughout they stress the complete dependence of the earthly order on God. This outlook finds its most striking expression, however, in the statements about God’s creation of the world. That this is an immemorial belief in Israel can no longer be disputed, despite the fact that for years it was customary to doubt it….It is, of course, true that there is a manifest relationship between individual features of the biblical creation narratives and similar ideas in Babylonia, Phoenicia or Egypt. And yet even the most naïve of Israel’s ideas of creation is from the start fundamentally different from every heathen conception of the way in which the world came into being; and the similarity of the underlying material can, in fact, serve to make this difference all the more striking. [pp. 96-97]
By contrast, in the religions of the ancient oriental civilizations cosmogony always involves theogony, a principle of which the introduction to the Babylonian creation epic, enuma eliš, may stand as the classic example. The emergence of the gods from the chaotic primordial ground of the universe stamped them as deified natural forces; and even their association with the values of cultural and moral life, of which they were sometimes found as the guardians, cannot erase this character….Hence in Israel the assertion that God created the world acquires a new meaning not to be found elsewhere: creation is the free institution of a will which contains its own norm. [p. 99]
Causality is not the basic principle which determines the relation of the Creator to the creature; he is not ‘cause’ in the sense of part of a process, which can be arrived at by going back through a continuum. He is the ‘source’ of the cosmos in the sense of a self-sufficient norm which expresses itself in autonomous action. [p. 101]
In this way the concept of creation was thought out in Israel to its logical conclusion, and the deistic notion of God as prima causa, incorporated into the chain of cause and effect as one term in the process, was neutralized by the stress on the absolute freedom with which God acts. The world has its center of gravity not in itself but in God; it possesses no independent being. Even space and time are only established at the creation, for before the first day no time can possibly be conceived. [p. 106]
One important factor in this evaluation of the world was undoubtedly the absence of a belief in basic matter, independent of God, as a prerequisite of creation—a marked point of contrast with the heathen cosmogonies. For it is precisely to matter that imperfection is normally ascribed. Because according to Israel’s belief both matter and form proceed from God’s creative purpose, both must be good, that is, both must correspond to his purpose. That the predicate ‘good’ is to be understood in this sense, and is not meant to denote a state of unlimited perfection, follows from the way in which elsewhere it is held to be self-evident that good and evil, light and darkness, are both to be ascribed to Yahweh, and therefore that any idea of an alien power in the universe is to be rejected. [p. 108]
Place of Man in the Creation
By distributing the activity of creation over a period of a week, concluding with a day of rest which is now to be fixed as a permanent ordinance, the writer derives from a primal divine decree the belief that Man does not exist merely for heedless enjoyment—as innumerable myths of the beginnings of mankind like to relate—but is meant to find the development of his aptitudes and powers in purposeful labor, in which he is to possess a facsimile of the divine work of creation and its joy. Work is not, therefore, as it is regarded elsewhere in antiquity, a curse or the miserable lot of slaves, but a task assigned by God. The point of the day of rest, however, is to make Man aware that he is not chained to his work in ceaseless drudgery, but like God may rejoice in his labors. Even vis-à-vis his work he is to remain master, and not to sink to the position of a slave. [pp. 127-128]
It has already been pointed out above that the spirit of the individual man designated by the term rūaḥ is to be distinguished sharply from the concept of the Spirit of God. The new usage of the word is undoubtedly connected with the derivation of all earthly life from that supra-individual divine vital force which, as the breath of God, pervades the whole creation. But even though, in this sense, rūaḥ encountered Man as something far superior to him, never coming under his control, yet, if a man wished to talk of the vital energy dwelling within himself, it was possible for him to speak of ‘his’ rūaḥ, to attribute marked deteriorations in his physical or psychic state to its impairment or diminution, or to explain them as an unrest, a disturbance, of a vital element proper to himself. In so doing, rūaḥ was still at first kept as something independent of human subjectivity, since in all such cases it was a question of strong external influences operating upon men, and overwhelming them. But when the usage was extended from physical to psychic circumstances the first steps had been taken toward using rūaḥ in the sense of a psychological term….From this habit of describing movements within the psyche as manifestations of the rūaḥ present in Man there arose in later times, as men acquired a better understanding of the autonomy and unity of the psychic life, a development by means of a simple generalization whereby the rūaḥ was made responsible for all psychic effects, and indeed was virtually regarded as the organ of psychic life. [pp. 131-132]
At this point the relationship of nepeš to the concept of rūaḥ as the universal breath of life, supra-individual in character, is perfectly clear. If nepeš is the individual life in association with the body, rūaḥ is the life force present everywhere and existing independently over against the single individual. [p. 136]
In a formal context Israelite psychology attaches importance to distinguishing between spiritual activity and passivity. The major psychological concepts clearly develop in the direction of a perceptible contrast between instinctive activity conditioned by the animal life (nepeš) and conscious spiritual activity (lēb), and between both and domination by the impact of forces from outside (rūaḥ). The conscious distinction thus drawn between impulse and will in human decisions and conduct indicates how the Israelites arrived at a clear formation of ethical concepts. [p. 148]
But the lines extend even further, affecting Israel’s views on sin and redemption. For it is a consequence of their outlook on the psychic life that sin cannot be explained one-sidedly as concupiscentia, the desire of the flesh, but must be understood as a reality of the psyche as a whole, drawing the body into sympathy with it. Hence redemption must also be accomplished in a bodily event. [p. 149]
Law in the Natural Process
Already in this vivid sense of Nature as a living thing, ascribing to the non-human creation a relationship with its divine Lord analogous to that enjoyed by the people of God themselves, may be seen the marked and direct connection of natural events with God, of whose activity in history and in the life of the people they are the accompaniment. Hence the stage is nowhere reached at which the forces of Nature are credited with a mythological life of their own, as a result of which they might be able to assert themselves as independent entities over against God. It is certain the Israel knew of such mythological conceptions, partly from her own past, and partly from neighboring peoples. But just as she made use of the traditional material purely as poetic decoration, so her personifying view of Nature evinced no capacity for producing new ideas of this mythical kind. Conversely, however, it was possible just as spontaneously and axiomatically to portray natural events, which elsewhere might have been given an anthropomorphic life of their own, as a direct act of God. [pp. 152-153]
It is precisely the terms last mentioned which indicate most strikingly wherein lies the real importance of the miraculous for faith—not in its material factuality, but in its evidential character. Hence it is not, generally speaking, the especially abnormal character of the event which makes it a miracle; what strikes men forcibly is a clear impression of God’s care or retribution within it. Least of all does it occur to the devout Old Testament believer to make a breach of the laws of Nature a condicio sine qua non of the miraculous character of an event, though marvelous occurrences in this sense are not unknown. In contrast to our own scientific outlook, however, the Israelite does not think in terms of an unbreakable natural order such as would restrict even God’s operation. [p. 163]
Providence
The revived awareness of the prophetic message of the God who comes, of the marvel of that fellowship with God which can be personally experienced here in the present, and of the mystery of creation, which opens up an inner connection between Creator and creature, led to joyful affirmation of the divine freedom, which is quite another thing from caprice, and which reveals itself to those who trust in God rather as succor and grace. Here the way was opened to an understanding of a theonomy of human action leading far beyond all autonomy and heteronomy, and such as Paul, consistently with his Old Testament starting-points, was able to proclaim as the ἔννομος χριστοῦ (1 Corinthians 9:21). [p. 181]
It will be clear from what has been said earlier how greatly men’s eyes for the divine wisdom, in the sense of the systematic ordering of all events, must have been opened by the prophetic interpretation of history. When the early period spoke of God’s wisdom it did so more in the sense of miraculous knowledge, as when the angel of Yahweh is mentioned as the quintessence of wisdom (2 Samuel 14:17). The comprehensive vision of the world-process as a wondrous structure fashioned by the divine wisdom, which allots to every man his place and makes ‘everything beautiful in its time’, was first put into clear words by the prophets (Isaiah 28:23ff; cf. 14:24ff; 22:11; 29:14; 31:2; 37:26). [p. 184]
Now, it would be fascinating to continue excerpting in this fashion but space does not permit. Instead, out of the wealth of material in the second half of this volume we shall select only one point to comment upon, namely, where Eichrodt indicates why later Judaism scaled back on the importance of universalism despite its prominence in the OT tradition:
The first threat to moral understanding invades the community of the Law at the point where the ideal of the holy congregation is no longer thought of as the directional indication for her historical task in the present, nor as an exhortation to be prepared for the consummation which God himself is to bring about, but as the condition to be established by men, with the help of the legal system, a condition in which the divine purposes for the world will already have been realized….This dangerous abridgment of the original priestly attitude received support from the epigones of prophecy as a result of their readoption of a nationalist and particularist hope into the picture of the future. The world sovereignty of Israel, and the world status of the Jewish congregation, became the two sides of the final perfection, and provided common ground for the various religious tendencies of the post-exilic period….The apocalypse of Isaiah 24-27, too, can proclaim judgment and salvation as embracing the whole world. But the particularist tendency, which acquired its driving force from the absolute status accorded to the congregation, was the stronger, and it was this which became dominant in later Judaism. [pp. 342-344]
A closing observation: to read Eichrodt is in itself a moral education! If, indeed, one can transfer the lessons learned to one’s own life.
October 13, 2013
Eichrodt's OT theology was an important work in the field. It is still relevant to today's scholarship. However, in his second volume his covenant system begins to fall apart when dealing with anthropology.
September 22, 2012
Commentaries are on going reading projcts
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews