The chief aim was to fill the hearts of the king and the people with more lively faith; to attach the king and nation more closely to the worship of Jehovah, and, if possible, to pledge them definitely to support it; to gain the power of the state and the force of the law for the maintenance of this worship. The ancient writings of the priests contained, as we saw, in addition to the account of the fortunes of the people in ancient times, the ritual, the rubrics for the priests, the rules of purification, the most ancient legal sentences and canons of blood-vengeance and family law, together with all the usages of justice. The contents of these writings formed a code for the priests rather than the laity; this fact, and the connection in which these regulations stood with the historical narrative, as well as the extent of the whole, made these books ill-adapted for presenting to the king and the nation a synopsis of the most essential duties, and for impressing these duties upon them. The detailed rules for the priests must be removed; a law-book for the laity was required. For this purpose the regulations scattered through the old books were collected and arranged into a compendium of the requirements which every Israelite had to fulfil. The new conceptions of the prophets must be assimilated to the old regulations, and these brought into harmony with the deeper views of the prophets. Something was also deducted from any excessive and very ideal demands, in order to give a more certain currency to more moderate rules. Only of such a law could the hope be entertained that it would find adoption and win hearts, and be recognised by ruler and people as the fixed canon, the principal law of the land, and that it could be strictly enforced.