The material basis on which the theocracy rested in fact,
namely, the foreign domination, is put out of sight, and it is
counted heathenism in the old Israelites that they cared for the
external conditions of their national existence, that they are a
people in the full sense of the word, and seek to maintain
themselves as such with the weapons which are found necessary in
the work-a-day world. It naturally never came into the heads of
these epigoni to conceive that the political organisation and
centralisation which the monarchy called into being provided the
basis for the organisation and centralisation of the worship, and
that their church was merely a spiritualised survival of the
nation. What is added to Moses is taken away from the monarchy.
One more point has to be noticed. The chapters vii. viii. x. 17
seq. xii. betray a close relationship with Judges xix.-xxi.,
not only by their general tendency, but by a geographical
detail in which the two passages agree. It is only here that
Mizpeh, near Jerusalem, occurs as the place of meeting of all
Israel; we find no further mention of the place in the whole
period of the judges and the kings.
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