Ezekiel first pointed out the way which was suited for the time.  He is the connecting link between the prophets and the law.  He claims to be a prophet, and starts from prophetic ideas:  but they are not his own ideas, they are those of his predecessors which he turns into dogmas.  He is by nature a priest, and his peculiar merit is that he enclosed the soul of prophecy in the body of a community which was not political, but founded on the temple and the cultus.  The chapters xl.-xlviii. are the most important in his book, and have been called by J. Orth, not incorrectly, the key of the Old Testament.

Thus arose that artificial product, the sacred constitution of Judaism.  In the Priestly Code we have the picture of it in detail. 1

****************************************** 1.  It is not the case that the hierocracy is based on the Priestly Code:  that code was only introduced after the hierocracy was already in existence, but helped, no doubt, to consolidate and legalise it.  The written law afterwards undermined the rule of the priests; and the scriptures played into the hands of the scribes and Pharisees. (Compare the case of the Parsees and Sabians, and the reference given here,.. namely “p.157, note” is in error.  There is no note on p. 157 and I do not know what is being referred to ...) ******************************************

The distinction, drawn with such pains between the Mosaic theocracy and the post-exilic hierocracy, is too fine.  Theocracy as a constitution is hierocracy.  If Moses founded such a constitution, he did it prophetically, with a view to circumstances which only arose a thousand years after his day, V.II.1.; VII.II.4..  Old Israel had not shrunk to a religious congregation, public life was not quite absorbed in the service of the sanctuary; the high priest and the dwelling of Jehovah were not the centre round which all revolved p.170 is not correct; .  These great changes were wrought by the destruction of the political existence first of Samaria, then of Judah.  In this way the people became “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” as we read in a Deuteronomistic passage, Exodus xix. 6.  If the divine rule was formerly a belief supporting the natural ordinances of human society, it was now set forth in visible form as a divine state, in an artificial sphere peculiar to itself and transcending the ordinary life of the people.  The idea had formerly informed and possessed the natural body, but now, in order that it might be thoroughly realised, it was to have spiritual body of its own.  There arose a material, external antithesis of a sacred and profane; men’s minds came to be full of this, and it was their great endeavour to draw the line as sharply as possible and to repress the natural sphere more and more.  Holiness is the ruling idea in Ezekiel, in Leviticus xvii.-xxvi., and in the Priestly Code.  The notion is a somewhat empty one, expressing rather what a thing is not than what it is; at first it meant the same as divine, but now it is used mainly in the sense of spiritual, priestly, as if the divine could be distinguished from the worldly, the natural, by outward visible marks of that kind.