The
Torah, committed by Jehovah to their order, lays it on them as
their vocation to diffuse the knowledge of God in Israel,--the
knowledge that He seeks truthfulness and love, justice and
considerateness, and no gifts; but they, on the contrary, in a
spirit of base self-seeking, foster the tendency of the nation
towards cultus, in their superstitions over-estimate of which lies
their sin and their ruin.
"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; ye yourselves
(ye priests!) reject knowledge, and I too will reject you
that ye shall not be priests unto me; seeing ye have forgotten
the law of your God, so will I also forget you. The more they are,
the more they sin against me; their glory they barter for shame.
They eat the sin of my people, and they set their heart on their
iniquity."
From this we see how idle it is to believe that the prophets
opposed "the Law;" they defend the priestly Torah, which, however,
has nothing to do with cultus, but only with justice and morality.
In another passage (viii.11 seq.) we read,
"Ephraim has built for himself many altars, to sin; the altars
are there for him, to sin.
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