Chosen Peoples by Israel Zangwill — Read

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."