Lectures on the religion of the Semites. First series : the fundamental institutions / by W. Robertson Smith.

Date:: 1889

Credit: Lectures on the religion of the Semites. First series : the fundamental institutions / by W. Robertson Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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$AT JERUSALEM. it is usually translated, a brazen altar was removed to make way for Ahaz's altar, but this sense is got by straining a corrupt text; a-|p''1 cannot govern the preceding accusative, and to get sense we must either omit ni]m HNI at the beginning of the verse or read for ns. The former course, which has the authority of the LXX., seems preferable; but in either case it follows that we must point mp^l, and that the whole verse is an elaborate description of the new ritual introduced by the king. The passage in fact now runs thus (v. 12): The king went up upon the new altar (v. 13) and burned his holocaust and his cereal oblation, and poured out his libation; and he dashed the blood of the peace-offerings that were for himself against the altar (v. 14) of brass that was before Jehovah, and drew nigh from before the naos, between the naos and the (new) altar (cf. Ezek. viii. 16; Joel ii. 17) and applied it (i.e. some of the blood) to the northern flank of the altar. The brazen altar, therefore, stood quite close to the naos, and the new altar stood somewhat further off, pre- sumably in the middle of the court, which since Solomon's time had been consecrated as the place of burnt-offering. Further, it appears that the brazen altar was essentially an altar for the sprinkling of blood; for the king dashes the blood of his shelamlm against it before applying the blood to the new altar. But, according to ver. 15, he ordains that in future the blood of sacrifices shall be applied to the new or great altar, while the brazen altar is reserved for one particular kind of offering by the king himself (npab 'h, E.V. for me to inquire by ). The nature of this offering is not clear from the words used in ver. 15, but from ver. 14 it appears that it consisted of sheldmlm offered by the king in person. In gliort, the old altar is not degraded but reserved for special use J henceforth none but the king himself is to pour sacrificial blood upon it. {b) It appears, then, that the brazen altar was an ancient and sacred thing, which had existed long before Ahaz, and continued after his time. Yet there is no separate mention of a brazen altar either in the description of Solomon's temple furniture (1 Kings vii.) or in the list of brazen utensils carried off by the Chald£eans. The explanation suggested by Wellhausen {Prolegomena, 3rd ed. p. 45), that the making of the brazen altar has been omitted from 1 Kings vii. by some redactor, who did not see the need of a new brazen altar in addition to that which the priestly author of the Pentateuch ascribes to Moses, does not fully meet the case, and$