Chosen Peoples by Israel Zangwill

Israel disappears, too, in whole books of the Old Testament. What has the problem of Job, the wisdom of Proverbs, or the pessimism of Ecclesiastes to do with the Jew specifically? The Psalter would scarcely have had so universal an appeal had it been essentially rooted in a race.

In the magnificent cosmic poem of Psalm civ -- half Whitman, half St. Francis -- not only his fellow-man but all creation comes under the benediction of the Hebrew poet's mood. "The high hills are for the wild goats; the rocks are a refuge for the conies. The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their food from God. man goeth forth unto his work, and to his labour until the evening. " Even in a more primitive Hebrew poet the same cosmic universalism reveals itself. To the bard of Genesis the rainbow betokens not merely a covenant between God and man but a "covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth."