Note 154.1 — Chapter VIII · Religion and Morality.

This mental attitude is supported in the older and later Mesopotamian system by a vivid polydaimonism; the evil demon is on the alert to destroy the family and the individual; and where the demon is in possession the god departs. As the demon takes advantage of every accidental act, whether conscious or unconscious, the idea arises in the over-anxious spirit that one cannot be sure when or how often one has sinned, and all illness or other misfortune is attributed to some unknown offence.154.1 The utterance of the Hebrew psalmist, “who can tell how oft he offendeth: cleanse Thou me from my secret faults,” may express the intense sensitiveness of a very spiritual morality, or it may be merely ritualistic anxiety. This latter is certainly the explanation of the strikingly similar phrases in a Babylonian penitential hymn—“the sins that I have done I know not; the trespass that I have committed I know not.”154.2 The feeling of sin is here deep and very moving—“take away from me my wickedness as a cloak… my God, though my sins be seven times seven, yet undo my sins”; yet the context that illustrates this passionate outpouring of the heart, shows that the sin might be such as the accidental stepping on filth. Such ideas, allowed to obsess the mind, easily engender despondency and pessimism; and this tone is heard and once or twice is very marked in some of the most striking products of Babylonian religious poetry; for instance, in the penitential hymn just quoted from, the poet sorrowfully exclaims: “Men are dumb, and of no understanding: all men who live on the earth, what do they understand? Whether they do right, or wrong, they understand nothing.” But the strangest example of this is a lyric of lamentation that reminds us vividly of the book of Job, found in the library of Assurbanipal, and of great antiquity and of wide vogue, as Zimmern shows.155.1 It is a masterpiece of the poetry of pessimism: the theme is the sorrow and tribulation of the righteous who has served God faithfully all his life, and feels at the last that he has had no profit of it; and his main thought is expressed in the lines, “If I only knew that such things were pleasing before God; but that which seems good to a man’s self, is evil in the sight of God: and that which according to each man’s sense is to be despised, is good in the sight of his God. Who can understand the counsel of the Gods in heaven? A god’s plan is full of darkness, who hath searched it out?”