God as he hath commanded us." (Deut. vi. 25.) Here (
Hebrew characters)
cannot possibly signify almsgiving. And again,
(Hebrew characters)
"And he believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness (not for almsgiving)." (Gen. xv. 6.) And again,
(Hebrew characters)
"O Lord, righteousness belongeth unto thee, but unto us
confusion of face" (Dan. ix. 7), where it is impossible to say
that "Almsgiving belongeth unto the Lord." The oral law is
therefore guilty of perverting the meaning of one of the plainest
and most commonly repeated words in the Bible, and of course
of thereby giving an erroneous sense to the passage where it
occurs. Thus it says, as we have seen above, "that by almsgiving
the throne of Israel is established and the law of truth
standeth," and it proves this assertion by referring to a verse
of Isaiah, where the word (Hebrew characters) occurs, and which signifies
"by righteousness shalt thou be established," but which it
perverts to mean "by almsgiving thou shalt be established."
Here then the oral law is plainly convicted of falsifying the
Word of God, and perverting its meaning in order to serve its
own purposes and favour its own false doctrine. To teach false
doctrine is bad enough, but to pervert the plain sense of Scripture
is a great deal worse. Either charge, if proved, would be
sufficient to prove that the oral law is a false religion, but here
both charges are proved together. The oral law here teaches
that almsgiving can do that which it cannot do, namely, bribe
God to have mercy; and it supports its false doctrine by interpreting
(Hebrew characters) to signify "almsgiving," whereas it plainly
signifies "righteousness." A religion guilty of such error
cannot be from God. It is for the Jews, then, to consider
whether they will persist in upholding the truth of a system
which opposes the doctrines of Moses and the prophets, and
perverts the Word of God. The great boast of the Jews is,
that they are faithful to Moses and to the religion of Moses:
but this boast is vain so long as they profess Judaism. If Moses
were to rise from the dead, and get the oral law into his hands,
he would not be able to recognise it as the religion which he
left to Israel. And, as to the commands about almsgiving, he
would not be able even to translate them, for in his time (Hebrew characters)
signified righteousness.
The prophet Isaiah would feel equal astonishment if he were to return and learn, that the oral law quoted him as an authority for the assertion, that Zion is to be redeemed, not with righteousness, but with almsgiving. And we doubt not that both Moses and Isaiah would protest as earnestly as we do against a doctrine based upon perversion. But it is extraor-
