The first important element which needs to be reckoned with is that it was a religion of choice rather than a religion of nature. We saw that it was difficult to conceive how the religion of Jehovah could have been adopted by Israel unless there had been some previous contact. What is so difficult to understand is nevertheless the one element that contained the possibility of progress. The relation of Israel to Jehovah was neither by physical descent nor through the connection of the god with the land, as with the heathen Semitic religions. Jehovah was at first conceived of as the God of the tribe only, but even this was not by nature, but by His gracious choice. Their land was given to them by Jehovah, but His natural connection was with a far distant shrine. This fact in itself must have rendered necessary some more spiritual conception of His habitation, and, though hard enough for the common people to realise, when they entered Canaan and found a full-grown cultus and religion in connection with the god of the land already in possession, it was this fact upon which the Prophets fastened and which could not be denied: the religion of Jehovah was a matter of choice and not of racial or local connection. That choice had been ratified by solemn covenant, to which the Prophets appealed. The relation between Jehovah and Israel depended therefore on the conditions of the covenant being faithfully kept. When we compare the religions of the other Semites, which made the relation of the god and his people one which nothing could break, and from which neither the god nor the people could escape, we can see how this difference constituted one of the ethical germs of the religion which was destined to grow into fuller power and life. There was another important conception, which was intensified by the fact that the religion of Jehovah was a religion of choice: that of the jealousy of Jehovah. This was often interpreted, especially in the pre-prophetic period, in a very crude and in even a cruel way. The jealousy of Jehovah was very like the human passion: uncertain, arbitrary and irrational, manifesting itself according to the popular mind in outbreaks of fury for ceremonial mistakes, or for causes even less comprehensible (Num. iii. 4; 2 Sam. vi. 7). In all the religions it was thought to be a serious thing to depart from the allegiance to the rightful god, and sure to lay one open to his jealousy and vengeance; but something more is now found in this idea as it develops in Hebrew thought: it is that the jealousy of Jehovah is due to the great difference between Him and the other gods, a difference which came to be recognised as one of character. Something of this must go back to Moses himself.