Holiness and ethics

[Pierac]

The chief and proper Hebrew word for ‘holiness’ is qodesh. This is the most intimately divine word of all. It has to do, as we shall see, with the very nature of deity; no word more so, nor indeed any other as much.

The word qodesh had a long and involved history, all the more difficult to detail because already in its earliest known stage it has come to be used exclusively in a religious context. Actually the etymological origin of the word it uncertain. So the ultimate decision must always depend upon a thorough examination of the actual use of the word itself at all stages of its development.

Something of the primary significance of the word qodesh may be gleaned from a comparison of the three Hebrew words which have to do with those things and affairs in which God and man are involved together, that borderland where the human and the supra-human may be said to overlap. These three words are qodesh (holiness), cherem (ban, devoted things, destruction), and chol (profaneness, common).
The original root goes back even farther than the noun, and doubtless the beginning of the notion goes back still farther yet. Presumably the noun qodesh was derived in the first place from a Semitic root which contained the three consonants q-d-sh.

The Etymological origin of ‘Qodesh’ and its earliest meaning:

There are two possibilities, though the choice between them has largely depended, so far as we are able to judge, upon a priori considerations as to the development of religion in general. One possibility is to find in the explanation of the Babylonian quddushu, which the syllabaries says is equivalent to ellu (bright, clear). This explanation is found in Gesenius, and is followed by Zimmern, Dillmann, Cheyne, K. Kohler, and others. The other possibility is the explanation offered by von Baudissin, when he said that ‘a comparison with ch-d-sh makes it natural to conjecture that q-d-sh means from the first "to be separated"’…

von Baudissin suggestion is that the root originally meant ‘separation’, and as much as it is clear that it deals with the things that belong to the gods as distinct from men. In a statement, however, that the root q-d-sh signifies ‘separation from, withdrawal’ needs considerable qualification, especially when it is maintained that this is supported by Old Testament usage. It is true that the root stands for the difference between God and man, but it refers positively, and not negatively, to that ‘Wholly Other’ of whom Rudolf Otto writes. (The Idea of Holy from the ninth German edition of Das Heilige, first published in 1917),pp. 6.

It refers positively to what is God's and not negatively to what is not man's. God is separate and distinct because he is God. He is not separated from this, that, or the other because of any of his attributes or qualities or the like. A person or a thing may be separate, or may come to be separated, because he or it has come to belong to God. When we used the word ‘separated’ as the rendering of any form of the root q-d-sh, we should think of ‘separated to’ rather than of ‘separated from.’

The verb in its causative form hiqdish means ‘make separate’ rather than ‘be separate’, but this is a derived form of the verb. We therefore insists, as of prime importance, at the root is positive rather than negative, that the emphasis is on the destination of the object and not on its initial character-all of which goes back to the fact that, in respect to the root q-d-sh, we must think of God first and a man and things second, and not vice versa. This is not denying that the Hebrew hiqdish can never mean ‘to separate, withdrawal from common (i.e. human) use’, but it is to say that such meanings belong to the periphery of the word and not to its central core.

The word qodesh originally had no moral content in our developed sense of the word ‘moral’, but it did involve pre-ethical restrictions.

The God of the Hebrews was essentially active in the world which He had made. We regarded it to be of the utmost importance that this fact should be recognized throughout the whole of the Old Testament theology. He was no static God in the sense of the philosophers. He was never thought of by the Hebrews as apart from the world, away in splendid isolation. Any such idea among the Hebrews with the development of very much later times, and belongs to the period when the Jews had been influenced by the speculations of the Greeks.

On the contrary, Jehovah is always active, always dynamically here, in this world. The Hebrew does not say Jehovah is, or that Jehovah exists, but that he does. Properly speaking, the Hebrew word hayah is not mean ‘to be’, so much as ‘to come to be’. Hebrew has no real verb of ‘being’, but one of ‘becoming’. The verb is active and not static. This attitude is most strongly marked in the Hebrew idea of God. Jehovah is known by what He does in the world. The whole of the religion is therefore concerned with the relationship of God and man. It is not, however, the relationship which is Holiness, but the God who is known only in the relationship.

The positive content of the word qodesh is clear. It is therefore not enough to say that the word stands for a relation, nor even to say that it stands for the separation between God and man. It comes to stand for the positive activity of that Personal Other, whom the Hebrews recognized as Jehovah.

Qodesh never meant anything else among the Hebrews. It meant precisely that which at any period was recognized to be the inner Nature of Deity. What is without parallel, is the new content which the eighth century prophets gave to the word. This they did because they had a conception of Deity which was without parallel.

There are two other observations which must be made prior to a proper examination of the teaching of the eighth century prophet in respect of Holiness and Righteousness.
Firstly, when we say they gave a new content to the idea of holiness by their association of it with the idea of righteousness, we do definitely mean that it was a new content. We go so far as to say that it was a distinctive content. Particularly, we mean that it was distinctive in origin, in emphasis, and, finally, in content, from those moral ideas which we have received from the Greeks. We say this because of the common tendency to equate the moral teachings of the Hebrew prophets with the ethical speculations of the Greeks. This we hold to be definitely an error, and to show a complete misunderstanding of the function and message of these prophets. It should be also pointed out that, even if the ethical teachings were identical, Amos proceeded Socrates by some three centuries or so, and Aristotle by rather more than four.
Secondly, it should be argued that the prophets were aware of the true nature of deity against primitive and immature notions, or as against the erroneous idea of the heathen, and we agree, through tentatively.

The actual word qodesh (holiness), qadosh (holy), etc., are rare in the eighth century prophets apart from Isaiah of Jerusalem. Amos and Hosea use the root only in its earlier sense of that which belongs to God alone is God’s, while Micah does not use the word at all. In the two cases of Amo's are ‘my holy Name’ ii, 7, and ‘hath sworn by His Holiness’, iv, 2. The one case in Hosea is xi. 9: ‘for I am God and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee’.

All four prophets combined into a solid unanimity in repeatedly reiterating the fact that Jehovah by His very Nature demands right conduct from His worshipers and will be content with nothing less…

The fact that the prophets based their conception of righteousness upon their knowledge of God, and not upon an ethical code is further to be seen in their attitude to sin. How, then, did the eighth century prophets think of sin? The word ‘sin’ can be used either in an ethical sense of transgression a moral code, or as a religious term in a sense of rebellion against God, and so being alien to Him. From this latter point of view, sin is ‘theofugal’; it leads away from God. The eighth century prophets thought of sin in this way. Primarily, it was rebellion against God. If the prophets had been in the first place teachers of ethics, they would have spoken against sin as a transgression against a code. A man need not be religious in order to speak in this way. On the other hand, no man can talk about sin as being rebellion against God unless he is religious. Such a man realizes that religion is primarily a matter of relationship with God, and secondarily is a matter of ethics.

When the eighth century prophets realize that Righteousness is of the very Nature of Jehovah, Holiness came to include Righteousness as the main element of its content… While Holiness stands for the difference between God and man, yet it never involved an ‘away-ness’ from man…

God truly is a different category from man. He is different, separate, but He is assuredly always near. Righteousness is the visible effect of this nearness of God in the affairs of this world. It is because Righteousness involves Salvation because of its connection, it is a travesty to think of anyone without the other. If first-Isaiah brought the word Holiness into the vocabulary of ethics, then second-Isaiah brought it right into the vocabulary of Salvation.

Information taken from N.H. Snaith The Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament

Yes, he's dead and his work is pretty much out of print, but boy what a scholar!

Paul