ng Jahveh was understood
to be a high crime and misdemeanour, worthy of death, under ordinary
circumstances, yet, for this once, he "laid not his hand on the nobles
of Israel"; "that they beheld Elohim and did eat and drink"; and that
afterwards Moses saw his back (Exod. xxxiii. 23)--is not this Deity
conceived as manlike in form? Again, is not the Jahveh who eats with
Abraham under the oaks at Mamre, who is pleased with the "sweet savour"
of Noah's sacrifice, to whom sacrifices are said to be "food" [6]--is
not this Deity depicted as possessed of human appetites? If this were
not the current Israelitish idea of Jahveh even in the eighth century
B.C., where is the point of Isaiah's scathing admonitions to his
countrymen: "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto
me? saith Jahveh: I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams and the fat
of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs,
or of he-goats" (Isa. i. 11). Or of Micah's inquiry, "Will Jahveh be
pleased with thousands of rams or with ten thousands of rivers of oil?"
(vi. 7.) And in the innumerable passages in which Jahveh is said to be
jealous of other gods, to be angry, to be appeased, and to repent; in
which he is represented as casting off Saul because the king does not
quite literally execute a command of the most ruthless severity; or as
smiting Uzzah to death because the unfortunate man thoughtlessly, but
naturally enough, put out his hand to stay the ark from falling--can any
one deny that the old Israelites conceived Jahveh not only in the image
of a man, but in that of a changeable, irritable, and, occasionally,
violent man? There appears to me, then, to be no reason to doubt that
the notion of likeness to man, which was indubitably held of the ghost
Elohim, was carried out consistently throughout the whole series of
Elohim, and that Jahveh-Elohim was thought of as a being of the same
substantially human nature as the rest, only immeasurably more powerful
for good and for evil.

The absence of any real distinction between the Elohim of different
ranks is further clearly illustrated by the corresponding absence of any
sharp delimitation between the various kinds of people who serve as the
media of communication between them and men. The agents through whom
the lower Elohim are consulted are called necromancers, wizards, and
diviners, and are looked down upon by the prophets and priests of the
higher Elohim; but the "seer"