It was the law that gave the Jewish religion its peculiar character.  But, on the other hand, a hope was not wanting to that religion; the Jews cherished the prospect of a reward for the fulfilling of the law.  This hope attached itself to the old prophecies, certainly in a very fantastic way.  The Jews had no historical life, and therefore painted the old time according to their ideas, and framed the time to come according to their wishes.  They stood in no living relation with either the past or the future; the present was not with them a bridge from the one to the other; they did not think of bestirring themselves with a view to the kingdom of God.  They had no national and historical existence, and made no preparations to procure such a thing for themselves; they only hoped for it as a reward of faithful keeping of the law.  Yet they dreamed not only of a restoration of the old kingdom, but of the erection of a universal world-monarchy, which should raise its head at Jerusalem over the ruins of the heathen empires.  They regarded the history of the world as a great suit between themselves and the heathen.  In this suit they were in the right; and they waited for right to be done them.  If the decision was delayed, their sins were the reason; Satan was accusing them before the throne of God, and causing the judgment to be postponed.  They were subjected to hard trials, and if tribulation revived their hopes, with much greater certainty did it bring their sins into sorrowful remembrance.  Outward circumstances still influenced in the strongest way their religious mood.

But the old belief in retribution which sought to justify itself in connection with the fortunes of the congregation proved here also unequal to the strain laid upon it.  Even in Deuteronomy it is maintained that the race is not to suffer for the act of an individual.  Jeremiah’s contemporaries thought it monstrous that because the fathers had eaten sour grapes the teeth of the children should be set on edge.  Ezekiel championed in a notable way the cause of individualism on this ground.  He denounced the Jews who had remained in Palestine, and who regarded themselves as the successors of the people of Jehovah because they dwelt in the Holy Land and had maintained some sort of existence as a people.  In his view only those souls which were saved from the dispersion of the exile were to count as heirs of the promise; the theocracy was not to be perpetuated by the nation, but by the individual righteous men.  He maintained that each man lived because of his own righteousness, and died because of his own wickedness; nay more, the fate of the individual corresponded even in its fluctuations to his moral worth at successive times.  The aim he pursued in this was a good one; in view of a despair which thought there was nothing for it but to pine and rot away because of former sins, he was anxious to maintain the freedom of the will, ie., the possibility of repentance and forgiveness.