It was not as if Jehovah had originally
been regarded as the God of the universe who subsequently became
the God of Israel; on the contrary, He was primarily Israel's
God, and only afterwards (very long afterwards) did He come to
be regarded as the God of the universe. For Moses to have given
to the Israelites an "enlightened conception of God" would have
been to have given them a stone instead of bread; it is in the
highest degree probable that, with regard to the essential nature
of Jehovah, as distinct from His relation to men, he allowed them
to continue in the same way of thinking with their fathers. With
theoretical truths, which were not at all in demand, He did not
occupy himself, but purely with practical questions which were
put and urged by the pressure of the times. The religious
starting-point of the history of Israel was remarkable, not for
its novelty, but for its normal character. In all ancient
primitive peoples the relation in which God is conceived to stand
to the circumstances of the nation--in other words,
religion--furnishes a motive for law and morals; in the case of
none did it become so with such purity and power as in that of
the Israelites.
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