Lecture VII. The Sacred Books. 383
punishment and listen to the repentant words of the sinner, the
Babylonian polytheist was distracted by the uncertainty as to what
particular divinity he had offended, and to whom, therefore, his
penitent appeal should be addressed. In the penitential psalms,
accordingly, it is the vague and general“god”and“goddess”that
are invoked, rather than a particular deity. It is only occasionally
that the names of special gods are introduced, and then a long list
of them is sometimes given, in the hope that among them might
be the divinity whose anger had been excited, and whose wrath
the sufferer was eager to appease.
Sin, it must be remembered, in the eyes of the Babylonian
included a good deal more than moral wrong-doing. There were
ritual sins as well as moral sins, offences against the ceremonial
law as well as against the moral or spiritual code. The sin was
not unfrequently involuntary, and the sufferer did not even know
in what particular respect he had offended against the divine
laws. It may have been the eating of forbidden food, such as that
which drove Adam and Eve from the sinless garden of Paradise.
Or, again, it may have been a real sin, a sin of thought and
word committed in the secrecy of the heart.“Was he frank in [418]
speaking,”it is asked in a confession which is put into the mouth
of a suppliant,“but false in heart? Was it‘yes’with his mouth,
but‘no’in his heart?”So far as the punishment was concerned,
little distinction was made between moral and ceremonial sin;
both were visited alike, and the sin of ignorance was punished as
severely as the sin that was committed with deliberate intent.
The recitation of the penitential psalms was accompanied by
fasting.“Food I have not eaten,”the penitent is made to say,“pure
water I have not drunk.”And, as in the case of the incantations
and hymns, the recitation was antiphonal. Portions of the psalms
were recited by the priest, who acted as the mediator between the
penitent and the offended deity; other portions by the penitent
himself, or a choir of attendant ministers. The ideas which had
been associated with the use of the incantations still dominated