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These six things Jehovah hateth;

Yea, seven are the abomination of his soul:

Haughty eyes, a lying tongue,

And hands that shed innocent blood;

A heart that deviseth counsels of iniquity;

Feet that are swift to run to evil;

A false witness who will utter lies,

And he that sends forth discords among brethren.

(2) In the Book of Job. The problem of evil, as presented in the book of Job, is not a discussion of the nature of human sinfulness but rather a poetic presentation of the sufferings of a "perfect and upright man, who feared God, and turned away from evil." The author lived at a time when the obvious prosperity of the wicked in certain marked examples stood out in painful contrast to certain notable instances of bitter affliction falling upon the innocent, and prompting inquiry into the reason of such apparent injustice. The speeches of Job and his friends are acknowledged to be one-sided and mistaken utterances of men who "darkened counsel by words without knowledge" (comp. xxxviii, 2; xlii, 3). Two things, however, are insisted upon by Job, his own consciousness of integrity and innocency (x, 7; xiii, 18; xvi, 17; xxiii, 10, 11; xxvii, 5; xxix, 12-17), and the manifest power and prosperity of the wicked (xxi, 7-13). The answer of Jehovah out of the whirlwind (xxxviii-xli) does not assume to clear up the difficult problem of the patriarch and his disputatious friends, and is in substance a reminder of the limitations of human knowledge and power. But it brings Job into humility and reverent silence (xl, 4, 5; xlii, 1-6), and powerfully suggests that he who "laid the foundations of the earth" (xxxviii, 4), leads forth the constellations of heaven, and orders the ways of every living thing from the young ravens to the huge leviathan, knows well what he is doing and must surely care for all his servants who fear God and turn away from evil. The prologue of the poem is, accordingly, an imaginative apocalypse of the comforting thought that no sorrow or trial is permitted to come upon the servant of God without having been first considered in the gracious counsels of heaven, and a limit set to the hand of the adversary (i, 12; ii, 6). The outcome of the whole discussion (iii-xli) is to show the limitations of human knowledge in the questions of theodicy, and the need of some assuring revelations from on high. The epilogue (xlii, 7-17) shows how "Jehovah blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning," and thus the whole book affords a lesson in substance like that which Jesus taught in another case of sorrow: "Neither did this man sin, nor his parents"; the affliction was not

a punishment, "but that the works of God should be made manifest in him" (John ix, 3). There are forms of suffering and evil which afflict mankind which are not of the nature of penalty to the afflicted ones, but may test the virtue and exhibit the steadfast piety of the righteous servant of God.

(3) In the Song of Songs. If we adopt the shepherd-hypothesis of the Song of Songs, we find in that exquisite drama a condemnation of such unhallowed concubinage as that of David and the fair damsel Abishag, the Shunammite (1 Kings i, 1-4), and of Solomon, whose hundreds of wives and concubines turned away his heart after other gods (1 Kings xi, 3). As the book of Job exhibits the trials and the triumph of an upright man, so the Song of Songs extols the virtue and unchangeable affection of a true woman when put to the severest test. The Shulammite maiden of this drama resists all the blandishments of the uxorious king, rejects all his offers, and abides true to her shepherd-lover who feeds his flock among the lilies. Thus understood the Song is no composition of Solomon, but written rather to arraign and rebuke the flagrant offenses of his polygamy. It celebrates the changeless devotion of two faithful hearts, whom plighted love should unite as "one flesh" for a lifelong companionship. Herein we discern the divinely ordered foundation of the true marriage covenant, and by way of the nefarious contrast a stinging censure upon such sensual life as can talk complacently of "eighty concubines" (vi, 8), and show inordinate desire to add another to the number.

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(4) In Ecclesiastes. The book of Ecclesiastes furnishes no contribution of much importance to the biblical doctrine of sin. The author's main outcry, repeated more than a score of times, is "vanity of vanities, the whole is vanity." He observes the emptiness of all the pleasures which wealth and power can supply (ii, 1-11). Though wisdom excel folly, the wise man dies like the fool, his labor often goes to benefit another, and so life itself seems like a hateful burden (ii, 12-23). All the conditions of human life present to this writer the aspects of an "evil business" (y), a "sore travail which God has given to the sons of men to be exercised therein" (iii, 10). In the mysteries of life he says: "I turned about, and my heart was set to know and to search out, and to seek wisdom and the reason of things, and to know that wickedness is folly, and that foolishness is madness; and I find a thing more bitter than death, even the woman whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands: whoso pleaseth

1 See the Song of Songs: An Inspired Melodrama. Analyzed, translated, and expounded by Milton S. Terrv. Cincinnati, 1893.

God shall escape from her; but the sinner shall be taken by her" (vii, 25, 26). Looking at all things on all sides, weighing one against another, human ambitions and pursuits appear to this unknown master of proverbs like empty things (Dan), and a striving after the wind. Wickedness often seems to triumph; tyrants oppress; as far as human eye can see Sheol is a realm of silence and darkness; the dust returns to dust, the soul to God; but whether to be reabsorbed in universal spirit, to ascend, or to go downward, no man can tell. The book ends as it began: "vanity of vanities-all is vanity!"

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(5) In the Later Jewish Literature. In the Old Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, and in the Targums, the Midrash, and the Talmud we meet with the later elaboration of Jewish doctrine which was current at the beginning of our era and some time before. It is noteworthy that the sin of Adam and Eve, their expulsion from the garden, and the farreaching consequences of their transgression first appear to have great doctrinal significance in this later literature. For vague allusions only appear in such texts as Ezek. xxviii, 13-15, and Job xv, 7, 8, and the phrase "like Adam" (D), in Job xxxi, 33; Psa. lxxxii, 7, and Hos. vi, 7, is better translated "like men," or "after the manner of man.' According to Gen. iii, 16-19, a curse was pronounced upon the serpent, the woman, the man, and the ground; but nothing was said about penal consequences destined to come upon any besides the original transgressors. But in Ecclesiasticus xxv, 24, it is written: "From a woman was the beginning of sin, and because of her we all die." In 2 Esdras vii, 48 (118), we read: "It had been better that the earth had not given Adam, or else, when it had given, to have restrained him from sinning. . . . O thou Adam, what hast thou done? For though it was thou that sinned, the evil has not fallen on thee alone, but upon all of us that come of thee." Compare also iii, 7, 21, 22, and iv, 30, 31. In the Wisdom of Solomon ii, 24, we are told that "by the envy of the devil death entered into the world," and this statement seems to have influenced Paul in the composition of Rom. v, 12. Here we also notice that Satan is conceived as the original tempter rather than the serpent. According to the Apocalypse of Baruch xxiii, 4, "when Adam sinned and death was decreed against those who should be born, then the multitude of those who should be born was numbered." The book of Jubilees iii, 28, says that on the same day on which Adam was driven from the garden "was closed the mouth of all beasts, and of cattle, and of birds, and of whatever walks or moves, so that they could no longer speak; for they had all spoken with one another with one lip and with one tongue."

The same book explains Adam's dying on the same day he sinned in that he lacked seventy years of being a thousand years old when he died, and "one thousand years are as one day in the testimony of the heavens." In the book of Enoch, however, the origin of sin is traced rather to the angels who kept not their heavenly habitation, but cohabited with the daughters of men and begat the Nephilim of Gen. vi, 4.'

9. Paul's Doctrine of Sin in the Flesh. There appears in Paul's epistles the peculiar doctrine of sin in the flesh. "When we were in the flesh," he says, "the sinful passions, which were through the law, wrought in our members to bring forth fruit unto death" (Rom. vii, 5). "I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing" (ver. 18). "I serve with the flesh the law of sin" (ver. 25). He speaks of "likeness of flesh of sin" and of "walking after the flesh" and "minding the things of the flesh" (viii, 3-5). "The mind of the flesh is death; it is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be." "They that are in the flesh cannot please God" (vers. 6-8). "If ye live after the flesh ye must die" (ver. 13). He also speaks of "lusts of the flesh," "filthiness of the flesh," "indulgence of the flesh," "works of the flesh," such as fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness (Gal. v, 19). "He that soweth unto his own flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption" (Gal. vi, 8). In Col. ii, 11, 18, we read of "a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off of the body of the flesh," and a "being vainly puffed up by one's fleshly mind” (ὑπὸ τοῦ νοὸς τῆς σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ, by the mind of his flesh). The Colossians are exhorted to slay or "make dead the members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, passion," etc. (iii, 5). In Rom. viii, 13, we are told that spiritual life is to be obtained by mortifying or "putting to death the deeds of the body." In 1 Cor. ix, 27, the apostle says: "I buffet my body, and bring it into bondage." One who is under the dominion of a sinful nature, or is easily influenced by passions of jealousy and strife, is called fleshly, carnal (σapkinós. Rom. vii, 14; 1 Cor. iii, 1, 3). Notice should also be taken of the phrases "body of sin" (Rom. vi, 6); "body of this death" (vii, 24); "passions of sins” (vii, 5).

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In these texts the words flesh, body, and members (σáps, owμa, and μéλn) are practically synonymous, although the natural distinction of flesh as the material or physical elements, body as the organism composed of these elements, and members as the various

See for fuller account of these later Jewish haggadah, F. R. Tennant, The Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin. Cambridge, 1903. Also Ferdinand Weber, Jüdische Theologie, pp. 218-259. Leipzig, 1897.

organs or parts need not be ignored. In other portions of his writings Paul employs all these words in their ordinary and popular meaning. He speaks of the flesh of men and of beasts (1 Cor. xv, 39); of the human body and its various members (1 Cor. xii, 17-20), and of celestial and terrestrial bodies (xv, 40). In other places the word flesh denotes, like in the Old Testament, weak and dependent human nature in contrast with God, and is also often used for men generally or mankind as a whole (comp. the phrases "all flesh," and "no flesh"). There are also other minor shades of meaning apparent in certain forms of expression which are of no importance in our present argument. But in the Pauline texts cited above the word flesh denotes the lower sensuous nature of man, dominated by sin, and so exercising control over the spiritual life and the conscience. The apostle does not conceive of sin as originating in the sensuous nature; much less does he hold the doctrine of an inherent and necessary sinfulness of the flesh, and think of matter as evil in itself. His doctrine of sin is profound and farreaching. He employs all those Greek terms (ἁμαρτάνω, ἁμαρτία, παράπτωμα, παράβασις) which designate sin as a culpable missing of the mark, a trespass, a violation of known law by personal and willful transgression, and he teaches that sin first entered into the world by the trespass of one man (Rom. v, 12-19). As a result of that original transgression sin has "abounded" and "reigned in death," and human nature universally presents the spectacle of sin so regnant in the mortal body that this writer says: "I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my members" (Rom. vii, 22, 23). Thus the flesh (oápš) and the body as the organized flesh (owua) have become the seat and citadel of all manner of vile passions. The members (uéλn) present themselves as "instruments of unrighteousness," and sin wields dominion over the whole man (Rom. vi, 13, 14). Rom. vii, 14-24, is a graphic picture of the awakened conscience when it recognizes this wretched bondage of sin, confesses "I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing," and cries

This condition and aspect of the matter are accordingly well stated as follows by Caird: "The sensuous appetites and passions acquire a new character when they become constituent elements in the life of a self-conscious, self-determining being. As motives to human action they lose their purely animal characteristics; they cease to be what they are in the animal-blind impulses acting under the law of physical necessity, and pointing to satisfactions which are limited and transient; they have infused into them a new element, or undergo a transforming process, in virtue of which they are raised out of the sphere of nature into that of spirit, and become rivals of the higher desires and aspirations of the spirit on their own ground."-Fundamental Ideas of Christianity, vol. ii, p. 38. Glasgow,

1899.

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