The custom of circumcision must have proved at once the symbol and in part the cause, in part the effect, of this general devotion of the people to a single supreme god. At first, no doubt, only the first-born or other persons specially dedicated to Jahweh, would undergo the rite which marked them out so clearly as the devotees of the god of fertility. But as time went on, long before the triumph of the exclusive Jahweh-worship, it would seem that the practice of offering up every male child to the national god had become universal. As early as the shadowy reign of David, the Philistines are reproachfully alluded to in our legends as “the uncircumcised”; whence we may perhaps conclude (though the authority is doubtful) that even then circumcision had become coextensive with Israelitish citizenship. Such universal dedication of the whole males of the race to the national god must have done much to ensure his ultimate triumph. If we look at the circumstances of the Israelites in Palestine, we shall easily see how both religious unity and intense national patriotism were fostered by the very nature of their tenure of the soil; and also why a deity mainly envisaged as a god of generation should have become the most important member of their national pantheon. Their position during the first few centuries of their {216}life in Lower Syria may be compared to that of the Dorians in Peloponnesus: they were but a little garrison in a hostile land fighting incessantly with half-conqùered tributaries and encircling foes; now hard-pressed by rebellions of their internal enemies; and now again rendered subject themselves to the hostile Philistines on their maritime border. The handful of rude warriors who burst upon the land under such bloodthirsty leaders as the mystical Joshua could only hope for success by rapid and constant increase of their numbers, and by avoiding as far as possible those internal quarrels which were always the prelude to national disgrace. To be “a mother in Israel” is the highest hope of every Hebrew woman. Hence it was natural that a god of generation should become the chief among the local deities, and that the promise held out by his priests of indefinite multiplication should make him the most popular and powerful member of the Israelitish pantheon. And though all the stone gods were probably phallic, yet Jahweh, as the ethnical patron, seems most of all to have been regarded as the giver of increase to Israel.