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The Babylonian Underworld goddess or god has nothing to do with moral character, and among the Hebrews, so far as the statements in the Old Testament go, no special deity was assigned to the other world; whether such an Underworld deity once existed and was lost by the Hebrews, or has been expurged by the later editors of the Old Testament books, must remain uncertain; in the late pre-Christian period the national god, Yahweh, was regarded as controlling the Underworld as well as Heaven and Earth.
In the earlier Hebrew Version Yahweh smells the sweet savour of Noah's burnt offering and says in his heart he will no more destroy every living creature as he had done; while in the later Hebrew Version Elohim, after remembering Noah and causing the waters to abate, establishes his covenant to the same effect, and, as a sign of the covenant, sets his bow in the clouds.
Yahweh was a god of the lightning who thundered from Mount Sinai, and he was a god of battles, just as was Thor, the thunder-god of the Scandinavians. This war god naturally obtained their allegiance during the years of conflict with the Canaanites, and gained in prestige as time elapsed.
But the Hebrews made a fresh start long after they had isolated themselves from the general Semitic stock. Their migration from their ancient home could not help but wither the more local myths, and this tendency was reënforced by the adoption of a new god, Yahweh, the God of the Kenites.
Jensen, Keils Bibl. 3, 1, p. 23, proposes to read Nin-Ur-sag, but without sufficient reason, it seems to me. The writing being a purely ideographic form, an epitheton ornans, the question of how the ideographs are to be read is not of great moment. We may compare the poetic application 'rock' to Yahweh in the Old Testament, e.g., Job 1. 12, and frequently in Psalms, lxii. 3, 7; xcii. 16, 18, etc.
Of this latter class, so prominent in Greece and Rome, there is no clear trace in Semitic cults. The Hebrew Yahweh obviously controls all departments of nature and life. As he was somehow connected with the Kabiri, the "great gods," it is probable that he was a local divinity credited with general powers.
There are, however, a few passages which speak of subordinate superhuman beings other than the Mal'akh Yahweh or Elohim. There are the cherubim who guard Eden. In Gen. xviii., xix. At Bethel, Jacob sees the angels of God on the ladder, and later on they appear to him at Mahanaim. In all these cases the angels, like the Mal'akh Yahweh, are connected with or represent a theophany.
The pious and faithful part of the nation, the "Servant of Yahweh," had shared in its grievous sufferings, and, as the faithful did not deserve this punishment, the conclusion was drawn that they suffered for the iniquities of the body of the people; their suffering, however, was to end in victory and prosperity.
These creatures are monsters whom Yahweh makes captive before he orders the original chaos into a cosmos. In doing this, he is a counterpart of Marduk, the Babylonian creator. These monsters, like the gods who conquer them, are only personified forms of phenomena in the heavens above and the earth beneath. Let us now consider the stories of creation given in Genesis.
And society will need conversion as pressingly as scattered individuals in slums and tenements. Does it to-day stress the most important things? The State has been the servant of things as they are, not of things as they might be. A humanist's religion can admit no cunning division into the things which are God's and the things which are Cæsar's. Human values are as jealous as the Yahweh of Moses.
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