The life and work of St. Paul

JUDAISM AND HEATHENISM. 183
Si Paul, indeed, must long have yearned for the day in which the Lord
should Bee fit to carry out His own promise " to send him far hence to the
Gentiles." 1 The more deeply he thought over his predicted mission, the more
would he realise that it had been predestined in the councils of God. Gentiles
worshipped idols, but so had their own fathers done when they dwelt beyond
Euphrates. Jewish Rabbis had admitted that, after all, Abraham himself
2
was but the earliest of the proselytes. If, as legend told, Terah had been a
maker of idols, and if Abraham had received his first call, as Stephen had
said, while yet living in Ur of the Chaldees, why should not thousands of the
heathen be yet numbered among the elect of God ? Had not God made of
one blood all the nations upon earth ? Had not the aged Simeon prophesied
that the infant Jesus should be a light to lighten the Gentiles, no less than the
glory of His people Israel ? And were there not to be reckoned among His
human ancestors Rahab, the harlot of Jericho, and Ruth, the loving woman of
the accursed race of Hoab ? Had not Hadassah been a sultana in the seraglio
of Xerxes P Had not Moses himself married a woman of Ethiopia ? 3 And
among the great doctors of recent days was it not asserted that Shammai was
descended from Hainan the Amalekite ? 4 And, however necessary had been
the active hostility to mixed marriages, and all other close intercourse with the
heathen in the reforming period of Ezra and Nehemiah, had not Zephaniah
declared in the voice of prophecy that " men should worship Jehovah every
one from his place, even all the isles of the heathen?" 6
Nay, did no deeper
significance than was suggested in the vulgar exegesis lie in the ancient
promise to Abraham, that "in him all families of the earth should be blessed P " 8
Did the prophecy that all the ends of the earth should see the salvation of our
God J
merely mean that they should see it as excluded aliens, or as wanderers
doomed to perish P If the Gentiles were to come to the light of Zion, and
kings to the brightness of her dawn if the isles were to wait for God, and the
ships of Tarshish 8 did this merely mean that the nations were but to be
distant admirers and tolerated servants, admitted only to the exoteric doctrines
and the less peculiar blessings, and tolerated only as dubious worshippers in
the Temple's outmost courts ? Would not this be to them a blessing like the
blessing of Esau, which was almost like a curse, that their dwelling should be
away from the fatness of the earth, and away from the dew of blessing from
above P 9
Or, after all, if such reasonings were inconclusive if, however con-
i Acts ix. 15, 16.
3 Josh. xxiv. 2. The apologue of the gazelle feeding among a flock of sheep, found
in the Talmud, and attributed to Hillel, beautifully expresses the toleration of the wiser
and more enlightened Rabbis ; but the proselytism contemplated is, of course, that
purchased by absolute conformity to Jewish precepts.
3 The Eabbis, to get over this startling fact, interpreted koosith ("Ethiopian
woman") by Gematria, and made it mean fair of face;" since ikooitth=736=the
Hebrew words for "fair of eyes."
4 Similarly it was said that Akibha descended from Sisera.
s
Zeph. ii. 11. Gen. xii. 3 ; Gal. iii. 14.
Isa. Iii. 10. 3 isa. k. 3} 9.
7 Gen. xxvii. 39, "Behold, toithout the fatness of the earth shall be thy dwelling,
and without the dew of heaven from above" (v. Kalisoh, in loc.).