or with ten thousands of rivers of oil?" (vi. 7.) And in the
innumerable passages in which Jahveh is said to be jealous of
other gods, to be angry, to be appeased, and to repent; in which
he is represented as casting off Saul because the king does not
quite literally execute a command of the most ruthless severity;
or as smiting Uzzah to death because the unfortunate man
thoughtlessly, but naturally enough, put out his hand to stay
the ark from falling--can any one deny that the old Israelites
conceived Jahveh not only in the image of a man, but in that of
a changeable, irritable, and, occasionally, violent man?
There appears to me, then, to be no reason to doubt that the
notion of likeness to man, which was indubitably held of the
ghost Elohim, was carried out consistently throughout the whole
series of Elohim, and that Jahveh-Elohim was thought of as a
being of the same substantially human nature as the rest, only
immeasurably more powerful for good and for evil.

The absence of any real distinction between the Elohim of
different ranks is further clearly illustrated by the
corresponding absence of any sharp delimitation between the
various kinds of people who serve as the media of communication
between them and men. The agents through whom the lower Elohim
are consulted are called necromancers, wizards, and diviners,
and are looked down upon by the prophets and priests of the
higher Elohim; but the "seer"<7> connects the two, and they are
all alike in their essential characters of media. The wise woman
of Endor was believed by others, and, I have little doubt,
believed herself, to be able to "bring up" whom she would from
Sheol, and to be inspired, whether in virtue of actual
possession by the evoked Elohim, or otherwise, with a knowledge