But the decisive rejection by the deepening moral consciousness in Israel of the doctrine that under the moral government of Yahweh the innocent are punished for the guilty left still unsolved the problem of the sufferings of the righteous--that problem which had at all times so troubled the pious Israelite, and for the solution of which so many different theories had been framed. The new teaching, or the implication of the new teaching, that such sufferings are not penal in character, that they are no sign of God’s displeasure with the sufferer, while a teaching of consolation, contributed nothing to the actual solution of the problem. But a new theory now offers a new interpretation. This theory assumes that all transgression must be atoned for by suffering, but teaches that this suffering may be borne vicariously by one not the transgressor, and the guilt thereby expiated. This idea worked itself out in the sorrow-burdened souls of the pious exiles in Babylon. Never did acquaintance with bitter sorrow yield sweeter fruit. The thought finds expression in Chapters LII and LIII of Isaiah.[406] The righteous Servant of Yahweh, who is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief, is the personified community of the pious Israelites, who are wounded for the transgressions and bruised for the iniquities of the nation.[407] Of all the ethical products of the troublous life of Israel, this idea that under the moral government of the world one may vicariously bear the burden of another’s fault and thus atone for it was the most important in its historical consequences. Six hundred years after the utterance of this message of consolation to the pious Israelite exiles, the ideal of the suffering Servant of Yahweh, thus held aloft by the Great Unknown, was incarnated, so it was believed, in Jesus of Nazareth. Clothed in actual flesh and blood, the sweet persuasiveness of the ideal--the nobility and divineness of suffering voluntarily borne in the stead of another--made unwonted appeal to the heart of humanity, and for eighteen hundred years and more, accepted as a true symbol and interpretation of the moral order, it has been a chief molding force in the moral life of the Western world. _3. The Moral Life in the Postexilic Age_ [Sidenote: A ritual morality] The chief moral fact in the postexilic period[408] was the putting into strict practice of the Levitical and Deuteronomic law, and the consequent triumph of ritual morality. From the establishment of this law till the rise of Christianity, orthodox morality in Judah consisted in the careful observance of the thousand and one minute rules and requirements of this Temple code. The good man was he who kept the law of the Lord.[409] All duties were in a sense religious duties; they were acts performed simply because of the supposed divine command that they should be performed.[410]