divine guidance in the solution of difficult questions, was now conceived of as incorporating the demands on the fulfilment of which His attitude towards Israel entirely depended.  In this way arose, from ideas which easily suggested it, but yet as an entirely new thing, the substance of the notion of covenant or treaty.  The name Berith, however, does not occur in the old prophets, not even in Hosea, who certainly presents us as clearly as possible with the thing, in his figure of the marriage of Jehovah and Israel (Isaiah i. 21).  That he was unacquainted with the technical usage of Berith is strikingly proved by ii. 20 and vi. 7; and these passages must decide the view we take of viii. 1, a passage which is probably interpolated.

The NAME Berith comes, it is likely, from quite a different quarter.  The ancient Hebrews had no other conception of law nor any other designation for it than that of a treaty.  A law only obtained force by the fact of those to whom it was given binding themselves to keep it.  So it is in Exodus xxiv. 3-8, and in 2Kings xxiii. 1-3; so also in Jeremiah xxxiv. 8 seq.—­curiously enough just as with the people of Mecca at the time of Mohammed (lbn Hisham, p. 230 seq.).  Hence also the term Sepher Berith for the Deuteronomic as well as the Jehovistic Book of the Law.

This use of the phrase Berith (ie., treaty) for law, fitted very well with the great idea of the prophets, and received from it in turn an interpretation, according to which the relation of Jehovah to Israel was conditioned by the demands of His righteousness, as set forth in His word and instruction.  In this view of the matter Jehovah and Israel came to be regarded as the contracting parties of the covenant by which the various representatives of the people had originally pledged each other to keep, say, the Deuteronomic law. 1

***************************************** I This variation gained entrance the more easily as Berith is used in various applications, e.g:, of the capitulation, the terms of which are imposed by the stronger on the weaker party:  that the contracting parties had equal rights was by no means involved in the notion of the Berith.  See the wavering of the notion in Jeremiah xxxiv. 13-18. *******************************************

After the solemn and far-reaching act by which Josiah introduced this law, the notion of covenant-making between Jehovah and Israel appears to have occupied the central position in religious thought:  it prevails in Deuteronomy, in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, in Isaiah xl.-lxvi., Leviticus xvii.-xxvi., and most of all in the Book of the Four Covenants.  The Babylonian exile no doubt helped, as the Assyrian exile had previously done, to familiarise the Jewish mind with the idea that the covenant depended on conditions, and might possibly be dissolved.

XI.II.