The “theos”(whether he be Jehovah or Jupiter)must of course remain invisible to the mass of the people.His priests,therefore,become his representatives on this earth and the executers of his commands.Their power is not unlike that of the viceroy of India,who rules hundreds of millions of people in the name of a distant and mysterious Emperor who resides in Buckingham Palace in London,and who is never seen by the inhabitants of Calcutta or Bombay.
Almost every country,at one time or another,has passed through that particular stage of political development.We find it in the valley of the Nile and in Babylonia.We hear of it in Greece and in Rome.The idea was strong enough to survive the chaos of the Middle Ages.It made the King of England the “Defender of the Faith.”It gave the Czar of Russia the opportunity to establish himself as the semi-divine head of both his Church and his State.Even to-day we are able to discover slight traces of the theocratic idea in the meetings of our Senate and our House of Representatives and all our state assemblies,where the proceedings are opened with an invocation (given by a member of the clergy)acknowledging the fact that no wise conclusions can be reached without the guidance of the divine spirit.
It is quite natural that primitive man,at the mercy of all the forces of nature,should have appealed to those holy priests who alone could protect him from the wrath of their gods.It is equally natural that such a favoured position in the state should have given one class of society unlimited power which was never relinquished willingly,and which gave rise to those terrible wars which accompany the change from a theocratic to a purely monarchical form of government.
Among the Jews (almost alone of all peoples)the idea of a theocracy had taken such a firm hold upon the imagination of the people that it could never be broken.
Moses,from the very beginning,had insisted upon a strictly theocratic form of government.The Ten Commandments were really the constitution of his new state.The High Priest,by his command,became the chief executive of the people.The Tabernacle was in a sense the national capital.
The struggle for the conquest of the land of Canaan had temporarily weakened the power of the church,and had given certain great advantages to the military leaders.Even so,many of the Judges were also priests and exercised a double influence upon the life of the country.
During the reign of David and Solomon,it seemed that the kings were about to establish an absolute monarchy in which the High Priest was to execute the will of his worldly master rather than that of Jehovah.
The revolution of Jeroboam,however,and the division of the state into two separate kingdoms gave new strength to the priesthood,and gave these shrewd men a chance to regain much of their old prestige.
Adversity has its advantages.
Rehoboam,the king of Judah,had lost two-thirds of his subjects and three-quarters of his territory,but he had retained Jerusalem,and this city,as the religious centre of the Jewish people,was worth more than half a dozen Samarias and Shechems.This will become clear to you if you will remember that in the tenth century B.C.the temple of Jerusalem had a practical monopoly of all divine worship in the land of the Jews.
It is not easy to imagine such a state of affairs.Nowadays we belong to a large number of denominations.We are Methodists or Catholics or Jews or Christian Scientists or Baptists or Lutherans.But we all live in the peaceful harmony of decent neighbours,and on Sunday (or whenever we please)we go to the church of our preference and worship according to the dictates of our conscience.
The ancient Jews,however,had no such choice.They had to make their offering before the altar of the Temple of Jerusalem or neglect their religious duties.
As the country was very small,this meant no great physical hardship.Most of the Jews,anyway,did not visit the Temple more than twice or three times in all their lives,and then only upon very solemn occasions.They did not mind the few days’travel necessary to reach the Holy of Holies.But it gave Jerusalem a tremendous hold upon the people.
During the Middle Ages,it was said that all roads led to Rome.In old Palestine,all roads led to the Temple of Solomon.
When the kings of Israel built the barrier which was to keep their own subjects separate from their hated Judaean neighbours,Jerusalem acquired an unexpected dignity.It assumed the role of a sacred martyr.The priests of the temple made common cause with the kings of Judah.They refused to recognise the “unlawful”rulers of Israel.They denounced the “rebels”of the north,who had refused to accept the “legitimate”candidate to the throne,and thereby had disobeyed the will of Jehovah.They practically excommunicated all Israelites,and cursed them for their wickedness.And when the poor kingdom of the north fell a victim to the political greed of Assyria,the guardians of the Judaean shrine were jubilant in their joy.
Jehovah,so they claimed,had punished his unfaithful children,and all was well with the world.
Alas!a hundred years later,they were to suffer a similar fate.And succeeding centuries of exile taught them the hard lessons of tolerance and mercy.