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Title: The Expositor's Bible: The Book of the Twelve Prophets, Vol. 1

Author: George Adam Smith

Editor: Sir W. Robertson Nicoll

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE: THE BOOK OF THE TWELVE PROPHETS,
VOL. 1 ***

THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE. Edited by Rev.

W. R. Nicoll, D.D., Editor of London Expositor.
1st Series in 6 Vols.
MACLAREN, Rev. Alex.—COLOSSIANS—PHILEMON.
DODS, Rev. Marcus.—GENESIS.
CHADWICK, Rev. Dean.—ST. MARK.
BLAIKIE, Rev. W. G.—SAMUEL, 2 Vols.
EDWARDS, Rev. T. C.—HEBREWS.
2d Series in 6 Vols.
SMITH, Rev. G. A.—ISAIAH, Vol. I.
ALEXANDER, Bishop.—EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN.
PLUMMER, Rev. A.—PASTORAL EPISTLES.
FINDLAY, Rev. G. G.—GALATIANS.
MILLIGAN, Rev. W.—REVELATION.
DODS, Rev. Marcus.—1st CORINTHIANS.
3d Series in 6 Vols.
SMITH, Rev. G. A.—ISAIAH, Vol. II.
GIBSON, Rev. J. M.—ST. MATTHEW.
WATSON, Rev. R. A.—JUDGES—RUTH.
BALL, Rev. C. J.—JEREMIAH. Chap. I-XX.
CHADWICK, Rev. Dean.—EXODUS.
BURTON, Rev. H.—ST. LUKE.
4th Series in 6 Vols.
KELLOGG, Rev. S. H.—LEVITICUS.
STOKES, Rev. G. T.—ACTS, Vol. I.
HORTON, Rev. R. F.—PROVERBS.
DODS, Rev. Marcus.—GOSPEL ST. JOHN, Vol. I.
PLUMMER, Rev. A.—JAMES—JUDE.
COX, Rev. S.—ECCLESIASTES.
5th Series in 6 Vols.

DENNEY, Rev. J.—THESSALONIANS.
WATSON, Rev. R. A.—JOB.
MACLAREN, Rev. A.—PSALMS, Vol. I.
STOKES, Rev. G. T.—ACTS, Vol. II.
DODS, Rev. Marcus.—GOSPEL ST. JOHN, Vol. II.
FINDLAY, Rev. C. G.—EPHESIANS.
6th Series in 6 Vols.
RAINY, Rev. R.—PHILIPPIANS.
FARRAR, Archdeacon F. W.—1st KINGS.
BLAIKIE, Rev. W. G.—JOSHUA.
MACLAREN, Rev. A.—PSALMS, Vol. II.
LUMBY, Rev, J. R.—EPISTLES OF ST. PETER.
ADENEY, Rev. W. F.—EZRA—NEHEMIAH—ESTHER.
7th Series in 6 Vols.
MOULE, Rev. H. C. G.—ROMANS.
FARRAR, Archdeacon F. W.—2d KINGS.
BENNETT, Rev. W. H.—1st and 2d CHRONICLES.
MACLAREN, Rev. A.—PSALMS, Vol. III.
DENNEY, Rev. James.—2d CORINTHIANS.
WATSON Rev. R. A.—NUMBERS.
8th and Final Series in 7 Vols.
FARRAR, Archdeacon F. W.—DANIEL.
SKINNER, Rev. John.—EZEKIEL.
BENNETT, Rev. W. H.—JEREMIAH.
HARPER, Rev. Prof.—DEUTERONOMY.
ADENEY, Rev. W. F.—SOLOMON AND LAMENTATIONS.
SMITH, Rev. G. A.—THE MINOR PROPHETS, 2 Vols.
About 400 pages in each Volume. Price for either series, six volumes $6.06.
(Orders for 2 or more series at same rate will be sent by Express. prepaid.)
(Separate vols. $1.50 postpaid. Descriptive circular sent on application.)

THE BOOK
OF

THE TWELVE PROPHETS
COMMONLY CALLED THE MINOR

BY

GEORGE ADAM SMITH, D.D., LL.D.

PROFESSOR OF HEBREW AND OLD TESTAMENT EXEGESIS
FREE CHURCH COLLEGE, GLASGOW

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. I.—AMOS, HOSEA AND MICAH

WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND A SKETCH OF PROPHECY IN EARLY ISRAEL

NEW YORK

A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON

3 and 5 West Eighteenth Street
London: Hodder and Stoughton
1906

TO

HENRY DRUMMOND

PREFACE
The Prophets, to whom this and a following volume are dedicated, have, to
our loss, been haunted for centuries by a peddling and an ambiguous title.
Their Twelve Books are in size smaller than those of the great Three which
precede them, and doubtless none of their chapters soar so high as the
brilliant summits to which we are swept by Isaiah and the Prophet of the
Exile. But in every other respect they are undeserving of the niggardly
name of "Minor." Two of them, Amos and Hosea, were the first of all
prophecy—rising cliff-like, with a sheer and magnificent originality, to a
height and a mass sufficient to set after them the trend and slope of the
whole prophetic range. The Twelve together cover the extent of that range,
and illustrate the development of prophecy at almost every stage from the
eighth century to the fourth. Yet even more than in the case of Isaiah or
Jeremiah, the Church has been content to use a passage here and a passage
there, leaving the rest of the books to absolute neglect or the almost equal
oblivion of routine-reading. Among the causes of this disuse have been the
more than usually corrupt state of the text; the consequent disorder and in
parts unintelligibleness of all the versions; the ignorance of the various
historical circumstances out of which the books arose; the absence of
successful efforts to determine the periods and strophes, the dramatic
dialogues (with the names of the speakers), the lyric effusions and the
passages of argument, of all of which the books are composed.
The following exposition is an attempt to assist the bettering of all this. As
the Twelve Prophets illustrate among them the whole history of written
prophecy, I have thought it useful to prefix a historical sketch of the Prophet
in early Israel, or as far as the appearance of Amos. The Twelve are then
taken in chronological order. Under each of them a chapter is given of
historical and critical introduction to his book; then some account of the
prophet himself as a man and a seer; then a complete translation of the
various prophecies handed down under his name, with textual footnotes,
and an exposition and application to the present day in harmony with the
aim of the series to which these volumes belong; finally, a discussion of the

main doctrines the prophet has taught, if it has not been found possible to
deal with these in the course of the exposition.

An exact critical study of the Twelve Prophets is rendered necessary by the
state of the entire text. The present volume is based on a thorough
examination of this in the light of the ancient versions and of modern
criticism. The emendations which I have proposed are few and
insignificant, but I have examined and discussed in footnotes all that have
been suggested, and in many cases my translation will be found to differ
widely from that of the Revised Version. To questions of integrity and
authenticity more space is devoted than may seem to many to be necessary.
But it is certain that the criticism of the prophetic books has now entered on
a period of the same analysis and discrimination which is almost exhausted
in the case of the Pentateuch. Some hints were given of this in a previous
volume on Isaiah, chapters xl.-lxvi., which are evidently a composite work.
Among the books now before us, the same fact has long been clear in the
case of Obadiah and Zechariah, and also since Ewald's time with regard to
Micah. But Duhm's Theology of the Prophets, which appeared in 1875,
suggested interpolations in Amos. Wellhausen (in 1873) and Stade (from
1883 onwards) carried the discussion further both on those, and others, of
the Twelve; while a recent work by Andrée on Haggai proves that many
similar questions may still be raised and have to be debated. The general
fact must be admitted that hardly one book has escaped later additions—
additions of an entirely justifiable nature, which supplement the point of
view of a single prophet with the richer experience or the riper hopes of a
later day, and thus afford to ourselves a more catholic presentment of the
doctrines of prophecy and the Divine purposes for mankind. This general
fact, I say, must be admitted. But the questions of detail are still in process
of solution. It is obvious that settled results can be reached (as to some
extent they have been already reached in the criticism of the Pentateuch)
only after years of research and debate by all schools of critics. Meantime it
is the duty of each of us to offer his own conclusions, with regard to every
separate passage, on the understanding that, however final they may at

present seem to him, the end is not yet. In previous criticism the defects, of
which work in the same field has made me aware, are four: 1. A too rigid
belief in the exact parallelism and symmetry of the prophetic style, which I
feel has led, for instance, Wellhausen, to whom we otherwise owe so much
on the Twelve Prophets, into many unnecessary emendations of the text, or,
where some amendment is necessary, to absolutely unprovable changes. 2.
In passages between which no connection exists, the forgetfulness of the
principle that this fact may often be explained as justly by the hypothesis of
the omission of some words, as by the favourite theory of the later intrusion
of portions of the extant text. 3. Forgetfulness of the possibility, which in
some cases amounts almost to certainty, of the incorporation, among the
authentic words of a prophet, of passages of earlier as well as of later date.
And, 4. depreciation of the spiritual insight and foresight of pre-exilic
writers. These, I am persuaded, are defects in previous criticism of the
prophets. Probably my own criticism will reveal many more. In the
beginnings of such analysis as we are engaged on, we must be prepared for
not a little arbitrariness and want of proportion; these are often necessary
for insight and fresh points of view, but they are as easily eliminated by the
progress of discussion.

All criticism, however, is preliminary to the real work which the immortal
prophets demand from scholars and preachers in our age. In a review of a
previous volume, I was blamed for applying a prophecy of Isaiah to a
problem of our own day. This was called "prostituting prophecy." The
prostitution of the prophets is their confinement to academic uses. One
cannot conceive an ending, at once more pathetic and more ridiculous, to
those great streams of living water, than to allow them to run out in the
sands of criticism and exegesis, however golden these sands may be. The
prophets spoke for a practical purpose; they aimed at the hearts of men; and
everything that scholarship can do for their writings has surely for its final
aim the illustration of their witness to the ways of God with men, and its
application to living questions and duties and hopes. Besides, therefore,
seeking to tell the story of that wonderful stage in the history of the human

spirit—surely next in wonder to the story of Christ Himself—I have not
feared at every suitable point to apply its truths to our lives to-day. The
civilisation in which prophecy flourished was in its essentials marvellously
like our own. To mark only one point, the rise of prophecy in Israel came
fast upon the passage of the nation from an agricultural to a commercial
basis of society, and upon the appearance of the very thing which gives its
name to civilisation—city-life, with its unchanging sins, problems and
ideals.
A recent Dutch critic, whose exact scholarship is known to all readers of
Stade's Journal of Old Testament Science, has said of Amos and Hosea:
"These prophecies have a word of God, as for all times, so also especially
for our own. Before all it is relevant to 'the social question' of our day, to the
relation of religion and morality.... Often it has been hard for me to refrain
from expressly pointing out the agreement between Then and To-day."[1]
This feeling will be shared by all students of prophecy whose minds and
consciences are quick; and I welcome the liberal plan of the series in which
this volume appears, because, while giving room for the adequate
discussion of critical and historical questions, its chief design is to show the
eternal validity of the Books of the Bible as the Word of God, and their
meaning for ourselves to-day.

Previous works on the Minor Prophets are almost innumerable. Those to
which I owe most will be found indicated in the footnotes. The translation
has been executed upon the purpose, not to sacrifice the literal meaning or
exact emphasis of the original to the frequent possibility of greater
elegance. It reproduces every word, with the occasional exception of a
copula. With some hesitation I have retained the traditional spelling of the
Divine Name, Jehovah, instead of the more correct Jahve or Yahweh; but
where the rhythm of certain familiar passages was disturbed by it, I have
followed the English versions and written Lord. The reader will keep in
mind that a line may be destroyed by substituting our pronunciation of
proper names for the more musical accents of the original. Thus, for

instance, we obliterate the music of "Isra'el" by making it two syllables and
putting the accent on the first: it has three syllables with the accent on the
last. We crush Yerushalayîḿ into Jerúsalem; we shred off Asshûr into
Assyria, and dub Miṣraîḿ Egypt. Hebrew has too few of the combinations
which sound most musical to our ears, to afford the suppression of any one
of them.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
page

Preface vii

Chronological Table 1

INTRODUCTION

chap.

I. THE BOOK OF THE TWELVE 3

II. THE PROPHET IN EARLY ISRAEL 11

1. From the Earliest Times till
Samuel.
2. From Samuel to Elisha.

III. THE EIGHTH CENTURY IN ISRAEL 31

IV. THE INFLUENCE OF ASSYRIA UPON
PROPHECY 44

AMOS

V. THE BOOK OF AMOS 61

VI. THE MAN AND THE PROPHET 73

1. The Man and His Discipline (i. 1;
iii. 3-8; vii. 14, 15).

2. The Word and its Origins (i. 2; iii.
3-8; and passim).
3. The Prophet and His Ministry (vii.;
viii. 1-4).

VII. ATROCITIES AND ATROCITIES 121

Amos i. 3-ii.

VIII. CIVILISATION AND JUDGMENT 141

Amos iii.-iv. 3.

IX. THE FALSE PEACE OF RITUAL 156

Amos iv. 4-vi.

1. For Worship, Chastisement (iv.
4-13).
2. For Worship, Justice (v.).
3. "At Ease in Zion" (vi.).
4. A Fragment from the Plague (vi.
9, 10).

X. DOOM OR DISCIPLINE? 181

Amos viii. 4-ix.

1. Earthquake, Eclipse and Famine
(viii. 4-14).
2. Nemesis (ix. 1-6).
3. The Voices of Another Dawn (ix.
7-15).

XI. COMMON-SENSE AND THE REIGN
OF LAW 196

Amos iii. 3-8; iv. 6-13; v. 8, 9; vi. 12;
viii. 8; ix. 5, 6.

HOSEA

XII. THE BOOK OF HOSEA 211

XIII. THE PROBLEM THAT AMOS LEFT 227

XIV. THE STORY OF THE PRODIGAL WIFE 232

Hosea i.-iii.

XV. THE THICK NIGHT OF ISRAEL 253

Hosea iv.-xiv.

XVI. A PEOPLE IN DECAY: I. MORALLY 255

Hosea iv.-vii. 7.

1. The Lord's quarrel with Israel
(iv.).
2. Priests and Princes Fail (v. 1-
14).
3. Repentance Fails (v. 15-vii. 2).
4. Wickedness in High Places (vii.
3-7).

XVII. A PEOPLE IN DECAY: II.
POLITICALLY 269

Hosea vii. 8-x.

1. The Confusion of the nation (vii.
8-viii. 3).

2. Artificial Kings and Artificial
Gods (viii. 4-13).
3. The Effects of Exile (ix. 1-9).
4. "The Corruption that is through
Lust" (ix. 10-17).
5. Once More: Puppet-Kings and
Puppet-Gods (x.).

XVIII. THE FATHERHOOD AND HUMANITY
OF GOD 290

Hosea xi.

XIX. THE FINAL ARGUMENT 299

Hosea xii.-xiv. 1.

1. The People and Their Father
Jacob (xii.).
2. The Last Judgment (xiii.-xiv. 1).

XX. "I WILL BE AS THE DEW" 308

Hosea xiv. 2-10.

XXI. THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD 318

Hosea passim.

XXII. REPENTANCE 333

Hosea passim.

XXIII. THE SIN AGAINST LOVE 346

Hosea i.-iii.; iv. 11 ff.; ix. 10 ff.; xi. 8 f.

MICAH

XXIV. THE BOOK OF MICAH 357

XXV. MICAH THE MORASTHITE 375

Micah i.

XXVI. THE PROPHET OF THE POOR 386

Micah ii., iii.

XXVII. ON TIME'S HORIZON 400

Micah iv. 1-7.

XXVIII. THE KING TO COME 408

Micah iv. 8-v.

XXIX. THE REASONABLENESS OF TRUE
RELIGION 419

Micah vi. 1-8.

XXX. THE SIN OF THE SCANT MEASURE 426

Micah vi. 9-vii. 6.

XXXI. OUR MOTHER OF SORROWS 435

Micah vii. 7-20.

Index of Passages and Texts 439

CHRONOLOGY OF THE DOUBLE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL, c. 940-639
b.c.

*** c. = circa: it refers only to the accession of the kings of Judah and
Israel; the years are exact so far as they concern the Assyrian data. A date
opposite the mere name of a king signifies the year of his accession.
THE
JUDAH. ISRAEL. SYRIA, ETC. ASSYRIA.
PROPHETS.
940
Disruption of the Kingdom.
c.
Rehoboam. Jeroboam I.
Establishment of
calf images in N.
Israel.
923
Abijam.
c.
920
Asa.
c.
918
... Nadab.
c.
915
... Baasha.
c.
891
... Elah.
c.
888
... Zimri. Omri.
c.
Revolt of Mesha of
876
... Ahab. Moab: the Moabite
c.
Stone (circa 860).
874
Jehoshaphat. ... Elijah.
c.
First contact of
854 ... . . . and Syria with Assyria at the Battle of Ḳarḳar. 854
Israel
853
... Ahaziah.
c.
Joram. Invades
852
... Moab with Judah
c.
and Edom.
Campaigns in all these 3 yrs by Shalmaneser
850 ... ... ... II. of Assyria against Dadidri or Hadadezer 850
of Damascus.
849
Jehoram. ... ... 849
c.
Revolt of Edom
846 ... ... ... from Judah (2 Kings 846
viii. 20 ff.).
844
Ahaziah.
c.
842
Athaliah. Jehu. Elisha. ... Tribute from Jehu. 842
c.
... ... ... ... War of Hazael with Assyria. ...
839 ... ... ... War of Hazael with Assyria. 839
836 Hazael subdues
Joash. ... ... Gilead (Amos i. 3); ... 836
c.
attacks Gath, but is
814 bought off from
... Jehoahaz. ... ... 814
c. Jerusalem.
Accession of
812 ... ... ... ... 812
Ramman-Nirari.
806 ... ... ... Arpad, campaign against, by Assyria. 806

Damascus, under Meri, besieged and taken
803 ... ... ... by Assyria. 803
A year of pestilence.
798
... Joash.
c.
797
Amaziah.
c.
783
... Jeroboam II. ... ... Shalmaneser III. 783
c.
778 Uzziah
c. (Azariah).
Expedition to Cedar
775 ... ... ... 775
Jeroboam re- Country.
773 ... conquers Moab, ... Damascus, campaign against, by Assyria. 773
772 ... Gilead, and part of ... Hadrach, campaign against, by Assyria. 772
Aram. Accession of Assur-
765 ... ... A pestilence. 765
dan-il.
763 Total eclipse of the sun on June 15th visible in Syria and at Nineveh. 763
A pestilence in
759 ... ... ... ... 759
Western Asia.
755 ... ... ... Hadrach suffers attack from Assyria. 755
754 ... ... Amos. Arpad suffers attack from Assyria. 754
Accession of Assur-
753 ... ... ... ... 753
Nirari.
Accession of Tiglath-
745 ... ... ... ... 745
Pileser III.
Zechariah, son of
Jeroboam (6 mo.). Arpad besieged, and after two or three years
743 ... ... 743
Shallum (1 mo.). taken by Assyria.
Menahem.
742 ... ... ... 742
741 ... ... Hosea. 741
"The year King
740 Uzziah died."
...
736? Jotham sole
ruler.
738 ... Menahem is . . . mentioned as tributary to Assyria. 738
737
... Pekahiah.
c.
736 Pekah, the
Ahaz.
c. Gileadite.
by Rezin of
735 Ahaz is attacked both by Pekah and . . . ... 735
Damascus (Isa. vii.).
Captivity of Gilead, by Assyria (Isa. viii.,
734 ... . . . . . . 734
Galilee, etc., ix.).
733 ... ... ... Damascus besieged and taken by Assyria. 733
Ahaz pays
732 . . . . . . at Damascus to the King of Assyria. 732
homage
Tiglath-Pileser
becomes King of
731 ... ... ... ... 731
Babylon under the
name of Pul.
730
... Hoshea.
c.
727
Hezekiah. ... Isaiah. ... Shalmaneser IV. 727
c.
Siege of Samaria
725 ...
begins.
722 Sargon takes 722
... Fall of Samaria. ... ...
or 1 Samaria. or 1
720
720 Gaza overthrown by Sargon as he marches
... ... ... or
or 19 past Judah and defeats Egypt at Raphia.
19
by subjugated tribes
715 ... Samaria peopled . . . . . . deported from 715
Assyria.

Ashdod taken by
711 ... ... ... Sargon. 711
. . .
Sargon takes
709 ... ... ... ... Babylon from 709
Merodach-Baladan.
705 ... ... Micah. ... Death of Sargon. 705
War with Merodach-
704 ... ... ... ... 704
Baladan.
and of all Syria
Invasion of Judah . . . . . .
701 . . . by Sennacherib. 701
Deliverance of Jerusalem. Siege of Ekron.
Battle of Eltekeh.
695 Asarhaddon
Manasseh. ...
c.[2] succeeds.
Sennacherib
681 ... ... ... ... 681
murdered.
Phœnicia subdued
678 ... ... ... Asarhaddon. 678
by
tributary to
676 Manasseh . . . . . . Assyria. 676
. . .
Asarhaddon on his
Tyre taken by
671 ... ... ... march to Egypt and 671
. . .
conquest of Memphis.
668 ... ... ... ... Assurbanipal. 668
other Syrian kings
666 Manasseh and the . . . tributary to Assyria. 666
. . .
Tyre assists
641 . . .
Amon. ... ... Assurbanipal against 641
c. the Phœnician
Arvad.
639
Josiah.
c.

INTRODUCTION

Καὶ τῶν ιβ' προφητῶν τὰ ὀστᾶ
ἀναθάλοι ἐκ τοῦ τόπου αὐτῶν,
Παρεκάλεσαν δὲ τὸν Ἰακώβ
καὶ ἐλυτρώσαντο αὐτοὺς ἐυ πίστει ἐλπίδος.

And of the Twelve Prophets may the bones
Flourish again from their place,
For they comforted Jacob
And redeemed them by the assurance of hope.
Ecclesiasticus xlix. 10.

CHAPTER I
THE BOOK OF THE TWELVE

In the order of our English Bible the Minor Prophets, as they are usually
called, form the last twelve books of the Old Testament. They are
immediately preceded by Daniel, and before him by the three Major
Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah (with Lamentations) and Ezekiel. Why all
sixteen were thus gathered at the end of the other sacred books, we do not
know. Perhaps, because it was held fitting that prophecy should occupy the
last outposts of the Old Testament towards the New.
In the Hebrew Bible, however, the order differs, and is much more
significant. The Prophets[3] form the second division of the threefold
Canon: Law, Prophets and Writings; and Daniel is not among them. The
Minor follow immediately after Ezekiel. Moreover, they are not twelve
books, but one. They are gathered under the common title Book of the
Twelve;[4] and although each of them has the usual colophon detailing the
number of its own verses, there is also one colophon for all the twelve,
placed at the end of Malachi and reckoning the sum of their verses from the
first of Hosea onwards. This unity, which there is reason to suppose was
given to them before their reception into the Canon,[5] they have never since
lost. However much their place has changed in the order of the books of the
Old Testament, however much their own internal arrangement has differed,
the Twelve have always stood together. There has been every temptation to
scatter them because of their various dates. Yet they never have been
scattered; and in spite of the fact that they have not preserved their common
title in any Bible outside the Hebrew, that title has lived on in literature and
common talk. Thus the Greek canon omits it; but Greek Jews and Christians
always counted the books as one volume,[6] calling them "The Twelve
Prophets," or "The Twelve-Prophet" Book.[7]. It was the Latins who
designated them "The Minor Prophets": "on account of their brevity as
compared with those who are called the Major because of their ampler
volumes."[8] And this name has passed into most modern languages,[9]

including our own. But surely it is better to revert to the original, canonical
and unambiguous title of "The Twelve."
The collection and arrangement of "The Twelve" are matters of obscurity,
from which, however, three or four facts emerge that are tolerably certain.
The inseparableness of the books is a proof of the ancient date of their
union. They must have been put together before they were received into the
Canon. The Canon of the Prophets—Joshua to Second Kings and Isaiah to
Malachi—was closed by 200 b.c. at the latest, and perhaps as early as 250;
but if we have (as seems probable) portions of "The Twelve,"[10] which
must be assigned to a little later than 300, this may be held to prove that the
whole collection cannot have long preceded the fixing of the Canon of the
Prophets. On the other hand, the fact that these latest pieces have not been
placed under a title of their own, but are attached to the Book of Zechariah,
is pretty sufficient evidence that they were added after the collection and
fixture of twelve books—a round number which there would be every
disposition not to disturb. That would give us for the date of the first edition
(so to speak) of our Twelve some year before 300; and for the date of the
second edition some year towards 250. This is a question, however, which
may be reserved for final decision after we have examined the date of the
separate books, and especially of Joel and the second half of Zechariah.
That there was a previous collection, as early as the Exile, of the books
written before then, may be regarded as more than probable. But we have
no means of fixing its exact limits. Why the Twelve were all ultimately put
together is reasonably suggested by Jewish writers. They are small, and, as
separate rolls, might have been lost.[11] It is possible that the desire of the
round number twelve is responsible for the admission of Jonah, a book very
different in form from all the others; just as we have hinted that the fact of
there being already twelve may account for the attachment of the late
fragments to the Book of Zechariah. But all this is only to guess, where we
have no means of certain knowledge.
"The Book of the Twelve" has not always held the place which it now
occupies in the Hebrew Canon, at the end of the Prophets. The rabbis taught
that Hosea, but for the comparative smallness of his prophecy, should have
stood first of all the writing prophets, of whom they regarded him as the
oldest.[12] And doubtless it was for the same chronological reasons, that

early Christian catalogues of the Scriptures, and various editions of the
Septuagint, placed the whole of "The Twelve" in front of Isaiah.[13]
The internal arrangement of "The Twelve" in our English Bible is the same
as that of the Hebrew Canon, and was probably determined by what the
compilers thought to be the respective ages of the books. Thus, first we
have six, all supposed to be of the earlier Assyrian period, before 700—
Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah and Micah; then three from the late
Assyrian and the Babylonian periods—Nahum, Habbakuk and Zephaniah;
and then three from the Persian period after the Exile—Haggai, Zechariah
and Malachi. The Septuagint have altered the order of the first six,
arranging Hosea, Amos, Micah, Joel and Obadiah according to their size,
and setting Jonah after them, probably because of his different form. The
remaining six are left as in the Hebrew.
Recent criticism, however, has made it clear that the Biblical order of "The
Twelve Prophets" is no more than a very rough approximation to the order
of their real dates; and, as it is obviously best for us to follow in their
historical succession prophecies, which illustrate the whole history of
prophecy from its rise with Amos to its fall with Malachi and his
successors, I propose to do this. Detailed proofs of the separate dates must
be left to each book. All that is needful here is a general statement of the
order.
Of the first six prophets the dates of Amos, Hosea, and Micah (but of the
latter's book in part only) are certain. The Jews have been able to defend
Hosea's priority only on fanciful grounds.[14] Whether or not he quotes from
Amos, his historical allusions are more recent. With the exception of a few
fragments incorporated by later authors, the Book of Amos is thus the
earliest example of prophetic literature, and we take it first. The date we
shall see is about 755. Hosea begins five or ten years later, and Micah just
before 722. The three are in every respect—originality, comprehensiveness,
influence upon other prophets—the greatest of our Twelve, and will
therefore be treated with most detail, occupying the whole of the first
volume.
The rest of the first six are Obadiah, Joel and Jonah. But the Book of
Obadiah, although it opens with an early oracle against Edom, is in its

present form from after the Exile. The Book of Joel is of uncertain date, but,
as we shall see, the great probability is that it is late; and the Book of Jonah
belongs to a form of literature so different from the others that we may,
most conveniently, treat of it last.
This leaves us to follow Micah, at the end of the eighth century, with the
group Zephaniah, Nahum and Habakkuk from the second half of the
seventh century; and finally to take in their order the post-exilic Haggai,
Zechariah i.-ix., Malachi, and the other writings which we feel obliged to
place about or even after that date.
One other word is needful. This assignment of the various books to
different dates is not to be held as implying that the whole of a book
belongs to such a date or to the author whose name it bears. We shall find
that hands have been busy with the texts of the books long after the authors
of these must have passed away; that besides early fragments incorporated
by later writers, prophets of Israel's new dawn mitigated the judgments and
lightened the gloom of the watchmen of her night; that here and there are
passages which are evidently intrusions, both because they interrupt the
argument and because they reflect a much later historical environment than
their context. This, of course, will require discussion in each case, and such
discussion will be given. The text will be subjected to an independent
examination. Some passages hitherto questioned we may find to be unjustly
so; others not hitherto questioned we may see reason to suspect. But in any
case we shall keep in mind, that the results of an independent inquiry are
uncertain; and that in this new criticism of the prophets, which is
comparatively recent, we cannot hope to arrive for some time at so general
a consensus, as is being rapidly reached in the far older and more elaborated
criticism of the Pentateuch.[15]

Such is the extent and order of the journey which lies before us. If it is not
to the very summits of Israel's outlook that we climb—Isaiah, Jeremiah and
the great Prophet of the Exile—we are yet to traverse the range of prophecy

from beginning to end. We start with its first abrupt elevations in Amos. We
are carried by the side of Isaiah and Jeremiah, yet at a lower altitude, on to
the Exile. With the returned Israel we pursue an almost immediate rise to
vision, and then by Malachi and others are conveyed down dwindling
slopes to the very end. Beyond the land is flat. Though Psalms are sung and
brave deeds done, and faith is strong and bright, there is no height of
outlook; there is no more any prophet[16] in Israel.
But our "Twelve" do more than thus carry us from beginning to end of the
Prophetic Period. Of second rank as are most of the heights of this
mountain range, they yet bring forth and speed on their way not a few of the
streams of living water which have nourished later ages, and are flowing to-
day. Impetuous cataracts of righteousness—let it roll on like water, and
justice as an everlasting stream; the irrepressible love of God to sinful men;
the perseverance and pursuits of His grace; His mercies that follow the exile
and the outcast; His truth that goes forth richly upon the heathen; the hope
of the Saviour of mankind; the outpouring of the Spirit; counsels of
patience; impulses of tenderness and of healing; melodies innumerable,—
all sprang from these lower hills of prophecy, and sprang so strongly that
the world hears and feels them still.
And from the heights of our present pilgrimage there are also clear those
great visions of the Stars and the Dawn, of the Sea and the Storm,
concerning which it is true, that as long as men live they shall seek out the
places whence they can be seen, and thank God for His prophets.

CHAPTER II
THE PROPHET IN EARLY ISRAEL

Our "Twelve Prophets" will carry us, as we have seen, across the whole
extent of the Prophetical period—the period when prophecy became
literature, assuming the form and rising to the intensity of an imperishable
influence on the world. The earliest of the Twelve, Amos and Hosea, were
the inaugurators of this period. They were not only the first (so far as we
know) to commit prophecy to writing, but we find in them the germs of all
its subsequent development. Yet Amos and Hosea were not unfathered.
Behind them lay an older dispensation, and their own was partly a product
of this, and partly a revolt against it. Amos says of himself: The Lord hath
spoken, who can but prophesy?—but again: No prophet I, nor prophet's
son! Who were those earlier prophets, whose office Amos assumed while
repudiating their spirit—whose name he abjured, yet could not escape from
it? And, while we are about the matter, what do we mean by "prophet" in
general?
In vulgar use the name "prophet" has degenerated to the meaning of "one
who foretells the future." Of this meaning it is, perhaps, the first duty of
every student of prophecy earnestly and stubbornly to rid himself. In its
native Greek tongue "prophet" meant not "one who speaks before," but "one
who speaks for, or on behalf of, another." At the Delphic oracle "The
Prophētēs" was the title of the official, who received the utterances of the
frenzied Pythoness and expounded them to the people;[17] but Plato says
that this is a misuse of the word, and that the true prophet is the inspired
person himself, he who is in communication with the Deity and who speaks
directly for the Deity.[18] So Tiresias, the seer, is called by Pindar the
"prophet" or "interpreter of Zeus,"[19] and Plato even styles poets "the
prophets of the Muses."[20] It is in this sense that we must think of the
"prophet" of the Old Testament. He is a speaker for God. The sharer of
God's counsels, as Amos calls him, he becomes the bearer and preacher of
God's Word. Prediction of the future is only a part, and often a subordinate

and accidental part, of an office whose full function is to declare the
character and the will of God. But the prophet does this in no systematic or
abstract form. He brings his revelation point by point, and in connection
with some occasion in the history of his people, or some phase of their
character. He is not a philosopher nor a theologian with a system of doctrine
(at least before Ezekiel), but the messenger and herald of God at some crisis
in the life or conduct of His people. His message is never out of touch with
events. These form either the subject-matter or the proof or the execution of
every oracle he utters. It is, therefore, God not merely as Truth, but far more
as Providence, whom the prophet reveals. And although that Providence
includes the full destiny of Israel and mankind, the prophet brings the news
of it, for the most part, piece by piece, with reference to some present sin or
duty, or some impending crisis or calamity. Yet he does all this, not merely
because the word needed for the day has been committed to him by itself,
and as if he were only its mechanical vehicle; but because he has come
under the overwhelming conviction of God's presence and of His character,
a conviction often so strong that God's word breaks through him and God
speaks in the first person to the people.

1. From the Earliest Times till Samuel.

There was no ancient people but believed in the power of certain
personages to consult the Deity and to reveal His will. Every man could
sacrifice; but not every man could render in return the oracle of God. This
pertained to select individuals or orders. So the prophet seems to have been
an older specialist than the priest, though in every tribe he frequently
combined the latter's functions with his own.[21]
The matters on which ancient man consulted God were as wide as life. But
naturally at first, in a rude state of society and at a low stage of mental
development, it was in regard to the material defence and necessities of life,
the bare law and order, that men almost exclusively sought the Divine will.
And the whole history of prophecy is just the effort to substitute for these
elementary provisions a more personal standard of the moral law, and more
spiritual ideals of the Divine Grace.

By the Semitic race—to which we may now confine ourselves, since Israel
belonged to it—Deity was worshipped, in the main, as the god of a tribe.
Every Semitic tribe had its own god; it would appear that there was no god
without a tribe:[22] the traces of belief in a supreme and abstract Deity are
few and ineffectual. The tribe was the medium by which the god made
himself known, and became an effective power on earth: the god was the
patron of the tribe, the supreme magistrate and the leader in war. The piety
he demanded was little more than loyalty to ritual; the morality he enforced
was only a matter of police. He took no cognisance of the character or inner
thoughts of the individual. But the tribe believed him to stand in very close
connection with all the practical interests of their common life. They asked
of him the detection of criminals, the discovery of lost property, the
settlement of civil suits, sometimes when the crops should be sown, and
always when war should be waged and by what tactics.
The means by which the prophet consulted the Deity on these subjects were
for the most part primitive and rude. They may be summed up under two
kinds: Visions either through falling into ecstasy or by dreaming in sleep,
and Signs or Omens. Both kinds are instanced in Balaam.[23] Of the signs
some were natural, like the whisper of trees, the flight of birds, the passage
of clouds, the movements of stars. Others were artificial, like the casting or
drawing of lots. Others were between these, like the shape assumed by the
entrails of the sacrificed animals when thrown on the ground. Again, the
prophet was often obliged to do something wonderful in the people's sight,
in order to convince them of his authority. In Biblical language he had to
work a miracle or give a sign. One instance throws a flood of light on this
habitual expectancy of the Semitic mind. There was once an Arab chief,
who wished to consult a distant soothsayer as to the guilt of a daughter. But
before he would trust the seer to give him the right answer to such a
question, he made him discover a grain of corn which he had concealed
about his horse.[24] He required the physical sign before he would accept
the moral judgment.
Now, to us the crudeness of the means employed, the opportunities of fraud,
the inadequacy of the tests for spiritual ends, are very obvious. But do not
let us, therefore, miss the numerous moral opportunities which lay before
the prophet even at that early stage of his evolution. He was trusted to speak

in the name of Deity. Through him men believed in God and in the
possibility of a revelation. They sought from him the discrimination of evil
from good. The highest possibilities of social ministry lay open to him: the
tribal existence often hung on his word for peace or war; he was the mouth
of justice, the rebuke of evil, the champion of the wronged. Where such
opportunities were present, can we imagine the Spirit of God to have been
absent—the Spirit Who seeks men more than they seek Him, and as He
condescends to use their poor language for religion must also have stooped
to the picture language, to the rude instruments, symbols and sacraments, of
their early faith?
In an office of such mingled possibilities everything depended—as we shall
find it depend to the very end of prophecy—on the moral insight and
character of the prophet himself, on his conception of God and whether he
was so true to this as to overcome his professional temptations to fraud and
avarice, malice towards individuals, subservience to the powerful, or, worst
snares of all, the slothfulness and insincerity of routine. We see this moral
issue put very clearly in such a story as that of Balaam, or in such a career
as that of Mohammed.
So much for the Semitic soothsayer in general. Now let us turn to Israel.

Among the Hebrews the man of God,[25] to use his widest designation, is at
first called Seer,[26] or Gazer,[27] the word which Balaam uses of himself. In
consulting the Divine will he employs the same external means, he offers
the people for their evidence the same signs, as do the seers or soothsayers
of other Semitic tribes. He gains influence by the miracles, the wonderful
things, which he does.[28] Moses himself is represented after this fashion.
He meets the magicians of Egypt on their own level. His use of rods; the
holding up of his hands that Israel may prevail against Amaleq; Joshua's
casting of lots to discover a criminal; Samuel's dream in the sanctuary; his
discovery for a fee of the lost asses of Saul; David and the images in his
house, the ephod he consulted; the sign to go to battle what time thou
hearest the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees; Solomon's
inducement of dreams by sleeping in the sanctuary at Gibeah,—these are a
few of the many proofs, that early prophecy in Israel employed not only the
methods but even much of the furniture of the kindred Semitic religions.
But then those tools and methods were at the same time accompanied by the

noble opportunities of the prophetic office to which I have just alluded—
opportunities of religious and social ministry—and, still more, these
opportunities were at the disposal of moral influences which, it is a matter
of history, were not found in any other Semitic religion than Israel's.
However you will explain it, that Divine Spirit, which we have felt unable
to conceive as absent from any Semitic prophet who truly sought after God,
that Light which lighteth every man who cometh into the world, was
present to an unparalleled degree with the early prophets of Israel. He came
to individuals, and to the nation as a whole, in events and in influences
which may be summed up as the impression of the character of their
national God, Jehovah: to use Biblical language, as Jehovah's spirit and
power. It is true that in many ways the Jehovah of early Israel reminds us of
other Semitic deities. Like some of them He appears with thunder and
lightning; like all of them He is the God of one tribe who are His peculiar
people. He bears the same titles—Melek, Adon, Baal (King, Lord,
Possessor). He is propitiated by the same offerings. To choose one striking
instance, captives and spoil of war are sacrificed to Him with the same
relentlessness, and by a process which has even the same names given to it,
as in the votive inscriptions of Israel's heathen neighbours.[29] Yet,
notwithstanding all these elements, the religion of Jehovah from the very
first evinced, by the confession of all critics, an ethical force shared by no
other Semitic creed. From the first there was in it the promise and the
potency of that sublime monotheism, which in the period of our "Twelve" it
afterwards reached.[30] Its earliest effects of course were chiefly political: it
welded the twelve tribes into the unity of a nation; it preserved them as one
amid the many temptations to scatter along those divergent lines of culture
and of faith, which the geography of their country placed so attractively
before them.[31] It taught them to prefer religious loyalty to material
advantage, and so inspired them with high motives for self-sacrifice and
every other duty of patriotism. But it did even better than thus teach them to
bear one another's burdens. It inspired them to care for one another's sins.
The last chapters of the Book of Judges prove how strong a national
conscience there was in early Israel. Even then Israel was a moral, as well
as a political, unity. Gradually there grew up, but still unwritten, a body of
Torah, or revealed law, which, though its framework was the common
custom of the Semitic race, was inspired by ideals of humanity and justice
not elsewhere in that race discernible by us.

When we analyse this ethical distinction of early Israel, this indubitable
progress which the nation were making while the rest of their world was
morally stagnant, we find it to be due to their impressions of the character
of their God. This character did not affect them as Righteousness only. At
first it was even a more wonderful Grace. Jehovah had chosen them when
they were no people, had redeemed them from servitude, had brought them
to their land; had borne with their stubbornness, and had forgiven their
infidelities. Such a Character was partly manifest in the great events of their
history, and partly communicated itself to their finest personalities—as the
Spirit of God does communicate with the spirit of man made in His image.
Those personalities were the early prophets from Moses to Samuel. They
inspired the nation to believe in God's purposes for itself; they rallied it to
war for the common faith, and war was then the pitch of self-sacrifice; they
gave justice to it in God's name, and rebuked its sinfulness without sparing.
Criticism has proved that we do not know nearly so much about those first
prophets, as perhaps we thought we did. But under their God they made
Israel. Out of their work grew the monotheism of their successors, whom
we are now to study, and later the Christianity of the New Testament. For
myself I cannot but believe, that in the influence of Jehovah which Israel
owned in those early times, there was the authentic revelation of a real
Being.

2. From Samuel to Elisha.

Of the oldest order of Hebrew prophecy, Samuel was the last representative.
Till his time, we are told, the prophet in Israel was known as the Seer,[32]
but now, with other tempers and other habits, a new order appears, whose
name—and that means to a certain extent their spirit—is to displace the
older name and the older spirit.
When Samuel anointed Saul he bade him, for a sign that he was chosen of
the Lord, go forth to meet a company of prophets—Nebi'îm, the singular is
Nabi'—coming down from the high place or sanctuary with viols, drums
and pipes, and prophesying. There, he added, the spirit of Jehovah shall
come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned
into another man. So it happened; and the people said one to another, What
is this that is come to the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets?[33]

Another story, probably from another source, tells us that later, when Saul
sent troops of messengers to the sanctuary at Ramah to take David, they
saw the company of prophets prophesying and Samuel standing appointed
over them, and the spirit of God fell upon one after another of the troops; as
upon Saul himself when he followed them up. And he stripped off his
clothes also, and prophesied before Samuel in like manner, and lay down
naked all that day and all that night. Wherefore they say, Is Saul also
among the prophets?[34]
All this is very different from the habits of the Seer, who had hitherto
represented prophecy. He was solitary, but these went about in bands. They
were filled with an infectious enthusiasm, by which they excited each other
and all sensitive persons whom they touched. They stirred up this
enthusiasm by singing, playing upon instruments, and dancing: its results
were frenzy, the tearing of their clothes, and prostration. The same
phenomena have appeared in every religion—in Paganism often, and
several times within Christianity. They may be watched to-day among the
dervishes of Islam, who by singing (as one has seen them in Cairo), by
swaying of their bodies, by repeating the Divine Name, and dwelling on the
love and ineffable power of God, work themselves into an excitement
which ends in prostration and often in insensibility.[35] The whole process is
due to an overpowering sense of the Deity—crude and unintelligent if you
will, but sincere and authentic—which seems to haunt the early stages of all
religions, and to linger to the end with the stagnant and unprogressive. The
appearance of this prophecy in Israel has given rise to a controversy as to
whether it was purely a native product, or was induced by infection from
the Canaanite tribes around. Such questions are of little interest in face of
these facts: that the ecstasy sprang up in Israel at a time when the spirit of
the people was stirred against the Philistines, and patriotism and religion
were equally excited; that it is represented as due to the Spirit of Jehovah;
and that the last of the old order of Jehovah's prophets recognised its
harmony with his own dispensation, presided over it, and gave Israel's first
king as one of his signs, that he should come under its power. These things
being so, it is surprising that a recent critic[36] should have seen in the
dancing prophets nothing but eccentrics into whose company it was shame
for so good a man as Saul to fall. He reaches this conclusion only by
supposing that the reflexive verb used for their prophesying—hithnabbē'—

had at this time that equivalence to mere madness to which it was reduced
by the excesses of later generations of prophets. With Samuel we feel that
the word had no reproach: the Nebi'îm were recognised by him as standing
in the prophetical succession. They sprang up in sympathy with a national
movement. The king who joined himself to them was the same who sternly
banished from Israel all the baser forms of soothsaying and traffic with the
dead. But, indeed, we need no other proof than this: the name Nebi'îm so
establishes itself in the popular regard that it displaces the older names of
Seer and Gazer, and becomes the classical term for the whole body of
prophets from Moses to Malachi.
There was one very remarkable change effected by this new order of
prophets, probably the very greatest relief which prophecy experienced in
the course of its evolution. This was separation from the ritual and from the
implements of soothsaying. Samuel had been both priest and prophet. But
after him the names and the duties were specialised, though the specialising
was incomplete. While the new Nebi'îm remained in connection with the
ancient centres of religion, they do not appear to have exercised any part of
the ritual. The priests, on the other hand, did not confine themselves to
sacrifice and other forms of public worship, but exercised many of the so-
called prophetic functions. They also, as Hosea tells us, were expected to
give Tôrôth—revelations of the Divine will on points of conduct and order.
There remained with them the ancient forms of oracle—the Ephod, or
plated image, the Teraphim, the lot, and the Urim and Thummim,[37] all of
these apparently still regarded as indispensable elements of religion.[38]
From such rude forms of ascertaining the Divine Will, prophecy in its new
order was absolutely free. And it was free of the ritual of the sanctuaries. As
has been justly remarked, the ritual of Israel always remained a peril to the
people, the peril of relapsing into Paganism. Not only did it materialise faith
and engross affections in the worshipper which were meant for moral
objects, but very many of its forms were actually the same as those of the
other Semitic religions, and it tempted its devotees to the confusion of their
God with the gods of the heathen. Prophecy was now wholly independent
of it, and we may see in such independence the possibility of all the
subsequent career of prophecy along moral and spiritual lines. Amos
absolutely condemns the ritual, and Hosea brings the message from God, I
will have mercy and not sacrifice. This is the distinctive glory of prophecy

in that era in which we are to study it. But do not let us forget that it became
possible through the ecstatic Nebi'îm of Samuel's time, and through their
separation from the national ritual and the material forms of soothsaying. It
is the way of Providence to prepare for the revelation of great moral truths,
by the enfranchisement, sometimes centuries before, of an order or a nation
of men from political or professional interests which would have rendered it
impossible for their descendants to appreciate those truths without prejudice
or compromise.
We may conceive then of these Nebi'îm, these prophets, as enthusiasts for
Jehovah and for Israel. For Jehovah—if to-day we see men cast by the
adoration of the despot-deity of Islam into transports so excessive that they
lose all consciousness of earthly things and fall into a trance, can we not
imagine a like effect produced on the same sensitive natures of the East by
the contemplation of such a God as Jehovah, so mighty in earth and heaven,
so faithful to His people, so full of grace? Was not such an ecstasy of
worship most likely to be born of the individual's ardent devotion in the
hour of the nation's despair?[39] Of course there would be swept up by such
a movement all the more volatile and unbalanced minds of the day—as
these always have been swept up by any powerful religious excitement—
but that is not to discredit the sincerity of the main volume of the feeling
nor its authenticity as a work of the Spirit of God, as the impression of the
character and power of Jehovah.
But these ecstatics were also enthusiasts for Israel; and this saved the
movement from morbidness. They worshipped God neither out of sheer
physical sympathy with nature, like the Phœnician devotees of Adonis or
the Greek Bacchantes; nor out of terror at the approaching end of all things,
like some of the ecstatic sects of the Middle Ages; nor out of a selfish
passion for their own salvation, like so many a modern Christian fanatic;
but in sympathy with their nation's aspirations for freedom and her whole
political life. They were enthusiasts for their people. The ecstatic prophet
was not confined to his body nor to nature for the impulses of Deity. Israel
was his body, his atmosphere, his universe. Through it all he felt the thrill of
Deity. Confine religion to the personal, it grows rancid, morbid. Wed it to
patriotism, it lives in the open air and its blood is pure. So in days of
national danger the Nebi'îm would be inspired like Saul to battle for their
country's freedom; in more settled times they would be lifted to the

responsibilities of educating the people, counselling the governors, and
preserving the national traditions. This is what actually took place. After the
critical period of Saul's time has passed, the prophets still remain
enthusiasts; but they are enthusiasts for affairs. They counsel and they
rebuke David.[40] They warn Rehoboam, and they excite Northern Israel to
revolt.[41] They overthrow and they set up dynasties.[42] They offer the king
advice on campaigns.[43] Like Elijah, they take up against the throne the
cause of the oppressed;[44] like Elisha, they stand by the throne its most
trusted counsellors in peace and war.[45] That all this is no new order of
prophecy in Israel, but the developed form of the ecstasy of Samuel's day, is
plain from the continuance of the name Nebi'îm and from these two facts
besides: that the ecstasy survives and that the prophets still live in
communities. The greatest figures of the period, Elijah and Elisha, have
upon them the hand of the Lord, as the influence is now called: Elijah when
he runs before Ahab's chariot across Esdraelon, Elisha when by music he
induces upon himself the prophetic mood.[46] Another ecstatic figure is the
prophet who was sent to anoint Jehu; he swept in and he swept out again,
and the soldiers called him that mad fellow.[47] But the roving bands had
settled down into more or less stationary communities, who partly lived by
agriculture and partly by the alms of the people or the endowments of the
crown.[48] Their centres were either the centres of national worship, like
Bethel and Gilgal, or the centres of government, like Samaria, where the
dynasty of Omri supported prophets both of Baal and of Jehovah.[49] They
were called prophets, but also sons of the prophets, the latter name not
because their office was hereditary, but by the Oriental fashion of
designating every member of a guild as the son of the guild. In many cases
the son may have succeeded his father; but the ranks could be recruited
from outside, as we see in the case of the young farmer Elisha, whom Elijah
anointed at the plough. They probably all wore the mantle which is
distinctive of some of them, the mantle of hair, or skin of a beast.[50]
The risks of degeneration, to which this order of prophecy was liable, arose
both from its ecstatic temper and from its connection with public affairs.
Religious ecstasy is always dangerous to the moral and intellectual interests
of religion. The largest prophetic figures of the period, though they feel the
ecstasy, attain their greatness by rising superior to it. Elijah's raptures are

impressive; but nobler are his defence of Naboth and his denunciation of
Ahab. And so Elisha's inducement of the prophetic mood by music is the
least attractive element in his career: his greatness lies in his combination of
the care of souls with political insight and vigilance for the national
interests. Doubtless there were many of the sons of the prophets who with
smaller abilities cultivated a religion as rational and moral. But for the herd
ecstasy would be everything. It was so easily induced or imitated that much
of it cannot have been genuine. Even where the feeling was at first sincere
we can understand how readily it became morbid; how fatally it might fall
into sympathy with that drunkenness from wine and that sexual passion
which Israel saw already cultivated as worship by the surrounding
Canaanites. We must feel these dangers of ecstasy if we would understand
why Amos cut himself off from the Nebi'îm, and why Hosea laid such
emphasis on the moral and intellectual sides of religion: My people perish
for lack of knowledge. Hosea indeed considered the degeneracy of ecstasy
as a judgment: the prophet is a fool, the man of the spirit is mad—for the
multitude of thine iniquity.[51] A later age derided the ecstatics, and took one
of the forms of the verb to prophesy as equivalent to the verb to be mad.[52]
But temptations as gross beset the prophet from that which should have
been the discipline of his ecstasy—his connection with public affairs. Only
some prophets were brave rebukers of the king and the people. The herd
which fed at the royal table—four hundred under Ahab—were flatterers,
who could not tell the truth, who said Peace, peace, when there was no
peace. These were false prophets. Yet it is curious that the very early
narrative which describes them[53] does not impute their falsehood to any
base motives of their own, but to the direct inspiration of God, who sent
forth a lying spirit upon them. So great was the reverence still for the man
of the spirit! Rather than doubt his inspiration, they held his very lies to be
inspired. One does not of course mean that these consenting prophets were
conscious liars; but that their dependence on the king, their servile habits of
speech, disabled them from seeing the truth. Subserviency to the powerful
was their great temptation. In the story of Balaam we see confessed the base
instinct that he who paid the prophet should have the word of the prophet in
his favour. In Israel prophecy went through exactly the same struggle
between the claims of its God and the claims of its patrons. Nor were those
patrons always the rich. The bulk of the prophets were dependent on the

charitable gifts of the common people, and in this we may find reason for
that subjection of so many of them to the vulgar ideals of the national
destiny, to signs of which we are pointed by Amos. The priest at Bethel only
reflects public opinion when he takes for granted that the prophet is a
thoroughly mercenary character: Seer, get thee gone to the land of Judah;
eat there thy bread, and play the prophet there![54] No wonder Amos
separates himself from such hireling craftsmen!

Such was the course of prophecy up to Elisha, and the borders of the eighth
century. We have seen how even for the ancient prophet, mere soothsayer
though we might regard him in respect of the rude instruments of his office,
there were present moral opportunities of the highest kind, from which, if
he only proved true to them, we cannot conceive the Spirit of God to have
been absent. In early Israel we are sure that the Spirit did meet such strong
and pure characters, from Moses to Samuel, creating by their means the
nation of Israel, welding it to a unity, which was not only political but moral
—and moral to a degree not elsewhere realised in the Semitic world. We
saw how a new race of prophets arose under Samuel, separate from the
older forms of prophecy by lot and oracle, separate, too, from the ritual as a
whole; and therefore free for a moral and spiritual advance of which the
priesthood, still bound to images and the ancient rites, proved themselves
incapable. But this new order of prophecy, besides its moral opportunities,
had also its moral perils: its ecstasy was dangerous, its connection with
public affairs was dangerous too. Again, the test was the personal character
of the prophet himself. And so once more we see raised above the herd
great personalities, who carry forward the work of their predecessors. The
results are, besides the discipline of the monarchy and the defence of justice
and the poor, the firm establishment of Jehovah as the one and only God of
Israel, and the impression on Israel both of His omnipotent guidance of
them in the past, and of a worldwide destiny, still vague but brilliant, which
He had prepared for them in the future.

This brings us to Elisha, and from Elisha there are but forty years to Amos.
During those forty years, however, there arose within Israel a new
civilisation; beyond her there opened up a new world; and with Assyria
there entered the resources of Providence, a new power. It was these three
facts—the New Civilisation, the New World and the New Power—which
made the difference between Elisha and Amos, and raised prophecy from a
national to a universal religion.

CHAPTER III
THE EIGHTH CENTURY IN ISRAEL

The long life of Elisha fell to its rest on the margin of the eighth century.[55]
He had seen much evil upon Israel. The people were smitten in all their
coasts. None of their territory across Jordan was left to them; and not only
Hazael and his Syrians, but bands of their own former subjects, the
Moabites, periodically raided Western Palestine, up to the very gates of
Samaria.[56] Such a state of affairs determined the activity of the last of the
older prophets. Elisha spent his life in the duties of the national defence,
and in keeping alive the spirit of Israel against her foes. When he died they
called him Israel's chariot and the horsemen thereof,[57] so incessant had
been both his military vigilance[58] and his political insight.[59] But Elisha
was able to leave behind him the promise of a new day of victory.[60] It was
in the peace and liberty of this day that Israel rose a step in civilisation; that
prophecy, released from the defence, became the criticism, of the national
life; and that the people, no longer absorbed in their own borders, looked
out, and for the first time realised the great world, of which they were only
a part.
King Joash, whose arms the dying Elisha had blessed, won back in the
sixteen years of his reign (798-783) the cities which the Syrians had taken
from his father.[61] His successor, Jeroboam II., came in, therefore, with a
flowing tide. He was a strong man, and he took advantage of it. During his
long reign of about forty years (783-743) he restored the border of Israel
from the Pass of Hamath between the Lebanons to the Dead Sea, and
occupied at least part of the territory of Damascus.[62] This means that the
constant raids to which Israel had been subjected now ceased, and that by
the time of Amos, about 755, a generation was grown up who had not
known defeat, and the most of whom had perhaps no experience even of
war.

Along the same length of years Uzziah (circa 778-740) had dealt similarly
with Judah.[63] He had pushed south to the Red Sea, while Jeroboam pushed
north to Hamath; and while Jeroboam had taken the Syrian towns he had
crushed the Philistine. He had reorganised the army, and invented new
engines of siege for casting stones. On such of his frontiers as were opposed
to the desert he had built towers: there is no better means of keeping the
nomads in subjection.
All this meant such security across broad Israel as had not been known
since the glorious days of Solomon. Agriculture must everywhere have
revived: Uzziah, the Chronicler tells us, loved husbandry. But we hear most
of Trade and Building. With quarters in Damascus and a port on the Red
Sea, with allies in the Phœnician towns and tributaries in the Philistine, with
command of all the main routes between Egypt and the North as between
the Desert and the Levant, Israel, during those forty years of Jeroboam and
Uzziah, must have become a busy and a wealthy commercial power. Hosea
calls the Northern Kingdom a very Canaan[64]—Canaanite being the
Hebrew term for trader—as we should say a very Jew; and Amos exposes
all the restlessness, the greed, and the indifference to the poor of a
community making haste to be rich. The first effect of this was a large
increase of the towns and of town-life. Every document of the time—up to
720—speaks to us of its buildings.[65] In ordinary building houses of ashlar
seem to be novel enough to be mentioned. Vast palaces—the name of them
first heard of in Israel under Omri and his Phœnician alliance, and then only
as that of the king's citadel[66]—are now built by wealthy grandees out of
money extorted from the poor; they can have risen only since the Syrian
wars. There are summer houses in addition to winter houses; and it is not
only the king, as in the days of Ahab, who furnishes his buildings with
ivory. When an earthquake comes and whole cities are overthrown, the
vigour and wealth of the people are such that they build more strongly and
lavishly than before.[67] With all this we have the characteristic tempers and
moods of city-life: the fickleness and liability to panic which are possible
only where men are gathered in crowds; the luxury and false art which are
engendered only by artificial conditions of life; the deep poverty which in
all cities, from the beginning to the end of time, lurks by the side of the
most brilliant wealth, its dark and inevitable shadow.

In short, in the half-century between Elisha and Amos, Israel rose from one
to another of the great stages of culture. Till the eighth century they had
been but a kingdom of fighting husbandmen. Under Jeroboam and Uzziah
city-life was developed, and civilisation, in the proper sense of the word,
appeared. Only once before had Israel taken so large a step: when they
crossed Jordan, leaving the nomadic life for the agricultural; and that had
been momentous for their religion. They came among new temptations: the
use of wine, and the shrines of local gods who were believed to have more
influence on the fertility of the land than Jehovah who had conquered it for
His people. But now this further step, from the agricultural stage to the
mercantile and civil, was equally fraught with danger. There was the closer
intercourse with foreign nations and their cults. There were all the
temptations of rapid wealth, all the dangers of an equally increasing
poverty. The growth of comfort among the rulers meant the growth of
thoughtlessness. Cruelty multiplied with refinement. The upper classes were
lifted away from feeling the real woes of the people. There was a well-fed
and sanguine patriotism, but at the expense of indifference to social sin and
want. Religious zeal and liberality increased, but they were coupled with all
the proud's misunderstanding of God: an optimist faith without moral
insight or sympathy.
It is all this which makes the prophets of the eighth century so modern,
while Elisha's life is still so ancient. With him we are back in the times of
our own border wars—of Wallace and Bruce, with their struggles for the
freedom of the soil. With Amos we stand among the conditions of our own
day. The City has arisen. For the development of the highest form of
prophecy, the universal and permanent form, there was needed that
marvellously unchanging mould of human life, whose needs and sorrows,
whose sins and problems, are to-day the same as they were all those
thousands of years ago.
With Civilisation came Literature. The long peace gave leisure for writing;
and the just pride of the people in boundaries broad as Solomon's own,
determined that this writing should take the form of heroic history. In the
parallel reigns of Jeroboam and Uzziah many critics have placed the great
epics of Israel: the earlier documents of our Pentateuch which trace God's
purposes to mankind by Israel, from the creation of the world to the
settlement of the Promised Land; the histories which make up our Books of

Judges, Samuel and Kings. But whether all these were composed now or at
an earlier date, it is certain that the nation lived in the spirit of them, proud
of its past, aware of its vocation, and confident that its God, who had
created the world and so mightily led itself, would bring it from victory by
victory to a complete triumph over the heathen. Israel of the eighth century
were devoted to Jehovah; and although passion or self-interest might lead
individuals or even communities to worship other gods, He had no possible
rival upon the throne of the nation.
As they delighted to recount His deeds by their fathers, so they thronged the
scenes of these with sacrifice and festival. Bethel and Beersheba, Dan and
Gilgal, were the principal;[68] but Mizpeh, the top of Tabor,[69] and Carmel,
[70]
perhaps Penuel,[71] were also conspicuous among the countless high
places[72] of the land. Of those in Northern Israel Bethel was the chief. It
enjoyed the proper site for an ancient shrine, which was nearly always a
market as well—near a frontier and where many roads converged; where
traders from the East could meet half-way with traders from the West, the
wool-growers of Moab and the Judæan desert with the merchants of
Phœnicia and the Philistine coast. Here, on the spot on which the father of
the nation had seen heaven open,[73] a great temple was now built, with a
priesthood endowed and directed by the crown,[74] but lavishly supported
also by the tithes and free-will offerings of the people.[75] It is a sanctuary
of the king and a house of the kingdom.[76] Jeroboam had ordained Dan, at
the other end of the kingdom, to be the fellow of Bethel;[77] but Dan was far
away from the bulk of the people, and in the eighth century Bethel's real
rival was Gilgal.[78] Whether this was the Gilgal by Jericho, or the other
Gilgal on the Samarian hills near Shiloh, is uncertain. The latter had been a
sanctuary in Elijah's day, with a settlement of the prophets; but the former
must have proved the greater attraction to a people so devoted to the sacred
events of their past. Was it not the first resting-place of the Ark after the
passage of Jordan, the scene of the reinstitution of circumcision, of the
anointing of the first king, of Judah's second submission to David?[79] As
there were many Gilgals in the land—literally cromlechs, ancient stone-
circles sacred to the Canaanites as well as to Israel—so there were many
Mizpehs, Watchtowers, Seers' stations: the one mentioned by Hosea was
probably in Gilead.[80] To the southern Beersheba, to which Elijah had fled

from Jezebel, pilgrimages were made by northern Israelites traversing
Judah. The sanctuary on Carmel was the ancient altar of Jehovah which
Elijah had rebuilt; but Carmel seems at this time to have lain, as it did so
often, in the power of the Phœnicians, for it is imagined by the prophets
only as a hiding-place from the face of Jehovah.[81]
At all these sanctuaries it was Jehovah and no other who was sought: thy
God, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.[82] At Bethel
and at Dan He was adored in the form of a calf; probably at Gilgal also, for
there is a strong tradition to that effect;[83] and elsewhere men still
consulted the other images which had been used by Saul and by David, the
Ephod and the Teraphim.[84] With these there was the old Semitic symbol of
the Maççebah, or upright stone on which oil was poured.[85] All of them had
been used in the worship of Jehovah by the great examples and leaders of
the past; all of them had been spared by Elijah and Elisha: it was no wonder
that the common people of the eighth century felt them to be indispensable
elements of religion, the removal of which, like the removal of the
monarchy or of sacrifice itself, would mean utter divorce from the nation's
God.[86]
One great exception must be made. Compared with the sanctuaries we have
mentioned, Zion itself was very modern. But it contained the main
repository of Israel's religion, the Ark, and in connection with the Ark the
worship of Jehovah was not a worship of images. It is significant that from
this, the original sanctuary of Israel, with the pure worship, the new
prophecy derived its first inspiration. But to that we shall return later with
Amos.[87] Apart from the Ark, Jerusalem was not free from images, nor
even from the altars of foreign deities.
Where the externals of the ritual were thus so much the same as those of the
Canaanite cults, which were still practised in and around the land, it is not
surprising that the worship of Jehovah should be further invaded by many
pagan practices, nor that Jehovah Himself should be regarded with
imaginations steeped in pagan ideas of the Godhead. That even the foulest
tempers of the Canaanite ritual, those inspired by wine and the sexual
passion, were licensed in the sanctuaries of Israel, both Amos and Hosea
testify. But the worst of the evil was wrought in the popular conception of

God. Let us remember again that Jehovah had no real rival at this time in
the devotion of His people, and that their faith was expressed both by the
legal forms of His religion and by a liberality which exceeded these. The
tithes were paid to Him, and paid, it would appear, with more than legal
frequency.[88] Sabbath and New Moon, as days of worship and rest from
business, were observed with a Pharisaic scrupulousness for the letter if not
for the spirit.[89] The prescribed festivals were held, and thronged by
zealous devotees who rivalled each other in the amount of their free-will
offerings.[90] Pilgrimages were made to Bethel, to Gilgal, to far Beersheba,
and the very way to the latter appeared as sacred to the Israelite as the way
to Mecca does to a pious Moslem of to-day.[91] Yet, in spite of all this
devotion to their God, Israel had no true ideas of Him. To quote Amos, they
sought His sanctuaries, but Him they did not seek; in the words of Hosea's
frequent plaint, they did not know Him. To the mass of the people, to their
governors, their priests, and the most of their prophets, Jehovah was but the
characteristic Semitic deity—patron of His people, and caring for them
alone—who had helped them in the past, and was bound to help them still
—very jealous as to the correctness of His ritual and the amount of His
sacrifices, but indifferent about real morality. Nay, there were still darker
streaks in their views of Him. A god, figured as an ox, could not be adored
by a cattle-breeding people without starting in their minds thoughts too
much akin to the foul tempers of the Canaanite faiths. These things it is
almost a shame to mention; but without knowing that they fermented in the
life of that generation, we shall not appreciate the vehemence of Amos or of
Hosea.
Such a religion had no discipline for the busy, mercenary life of the day.
Injustice and fraud were rife in the very precincts of the sanctuary.
Magistrates and priests alike were smitten with their generation's love of
money, and did everything for reward. Again and again do the prophets
speak of bribery. Judges took gifts and perverted the cause of the poor;
priests drank the mulcted wine, and slept on the pledged garments of
religious offenders. There was no disinterested service of God or of the
commonweal. Mammon was supreme. The influence of the commercial
character of the age appears in another very remarkable result. An
agricultural community is always sensitive to the religion of nature. They
are awed by its chastisements—droughts, famines and earthquakes. They

feel its majestic order in the course of the seasons, the procession of day
and night, the march of the great stars all the host of the Lord of hosts. But
Amos seems to have had to break into passionate reminders of Him that
maketh Orion and the Pleiades, and turneth the murk into morning.[92]
Several physical calamities visited the land. The locusts are bad in Palestine
every sixth or seventh year: one year before Amos began they had been
very bad. There was a monstrous drought, followed by a famine. There was
a long-remembered earthquake—the earthquake in the days of Uzziah. With
Egypt so near, the home of the plague, and with so much war afoot in
Northern Syria, there were probably more pestilences in Western Asia than
those recorded in 803, 765 and 759. There was a total eclipse of the sun in
763. But of all these, except perhaps the pestilence, a commercial people
are independent as an agricultural are not. Israel speedily recovered from
them, without any moral improvement. Even when the earthquake came
they said in pride and stoutness of heart, The bricks are fallen down, but we
will build with hewn stones; the sycamores are cut down, but we will
change to cedars.[93] It was a marvellous generation—so joyous, so
energetic, so patriotic, so devout! But its strength was the strength of cruel
wealth, its peace the peace of an immoral religion.
I have said that the age is very modern, and we shall indeed go to its
prophets feeling that they speak to conditions of life extremely like our
own. But if we wish a still closer analogy from our history, we must travel
back to the fourteenth century in England—Langland's and Wyclif's
century, which, like this one in Israel, saw both the first real attempts
towards a national literature, and the first real attempts towards a moral and
religious reform. Then as in Israel a long and victorious reign was drawing
to a close, under the threat of disaster when it should have passed. Then as
in Israel there had been droughts, earthquakes and pestilences with no
moral results upon the nation. Then also there was a city life developing at
the expense of country life. Then also the wealthy began to draw aloof from
the people. Then also there was a national religion, zealously cultivated and
endowed by the liberality of the people, but superstitious, mercenary, and
corrupted by sexual disorder. Then too there were many pilgrimages to
popular shrines, and the land was strewn with mendicant priests and
hireling preachers. And then too prophecy raised its voice, for the first time
fearless in England. As we study the verses of Amos we shall find again and

again the most exact parallels to them in the verses of Langland's Vision of
Piers the Plowman, which denounce the same vices in Church and State,
and enforce the same principles of religion and morality.

It was when the reign of Jeroboam was at its height of assured victory,
when the nation's prosperity seemed impregnable after the survival of those
physical calamities, when the worship and the commerce were in full
course throughout the land, that the first of the new prophets broke out
against Israel in the name of Jehovah, threatening judgment alike upon the
new civilisation of which they were so proud and the old religion in which
they were so confident. These prophets were inspired by feelings of the
purest morality, by the passionate conviction that God could no longer bear
such impurity and disorder. But, as we have seen, no prophet in Israel ever
worked on the basis of principles only. He came always in alliance with
events. These first appeared in the shape of the great physical disasters. But
a more powerful instrument of Providence, in the service of judgment, was
appearing on the horizon. This was the Assyrian Empire. So vast was its
influence on prophecy that we must devote to it a separate chapter.

CHAPTER IV
THE INFLUENCE OF ASSYRIA UPON PROPHECY

By far the greatest event in the eighth century before Christ was the
appearance of Assyria in Palestine. To Israel since the Exodus and
Conquest, nothing had happened capable of so enormous an influence at
once upon their national fortunes and their religious development. But
while the Exodus and Conquest had advanced the political and spiritual
progress of Israel in equal proportion, the effect of the Assyrian invasion
was to divorce these two interests, and destroy the state while it refined and
confirmed the religion. After permitting the Northern Kingdom to reach an
extent and splendour unrivalled since the days of Solomon, Assyria
overthrew it in 721 and left all Israel scarcely a third of their former
magnitude. But while Assyria proved so disastrous to the state, her
influence upon the prophecy of the period was little short of creative.
Humanly speaking, this highest stage of Israel's religion could not have
been achieved by the prophets except in alliance with the armies of that
heathen empire. Before then we turn to their pages it may be well for us to
make clear in what directions Assyria performed this spiritual service for
Israel. While pursuing this inquiry we may be able to find answers to the
scarcely less important questions: why the prophets were at first doubtful of
the part Assyria was destined to play in the providence of the Almighty?
and why, when the prophets were at last convinced of the certainty of
Israel's overthrow, the statesmen of Israel and the bulk of the people still
remained so unconcerned about her coming, or so sanguine of their power
to resist her? This requires, to begin with, a summary of the details of the
Assyrian advance upon Palestine.
In the far past Palestine had often been the hunting-ground of the Assyrian
kings. But after 1100 b.c., and for nearly two centuries and a half, her states
were left to themselves. Then Assyria resumed the task of breaking down
that disbelief in her power with which her long withdrawal seems to have
inspired their politics. In 870 Assurnasirpal reached the Levant, and took
tribute from Tyre and Sidon. Omri was reigning in Samaria, and must have

come into close relations with the Assyrians, for during more than a century
and a half after his death they still called the land of Israel by his name.[94]
In 854 Salmanassar II. defeated at Karkar the combined forces of Ahab and
Benhadad. In 850, 849 and 846 he conducted campaigns against Damascus.
In 842 he received tribute from Jehu,[95] and in 839 again fought Damascus
under Hazael. After this there passed a whole generation during which
Assyria came no farther south than Arpad, some sixty miles north of
Damascus; and Hazael employed the respite in those campaigns which
proved so disastrous for Israel, by robbing her of the provinces across
Jordan, and ravaging the country about Samaria.[96] In 803 Assyria
returned, and accomplished the siege and capture of Damascus. The first
consequence to Israel was that restoration of her hopes under Joash, at
which the aged Elisha was still spared to assist,[97] and which reached its
fulfilment in the recovery of all Eastern Palestine by Jeroboam II.[98]
Jeroboam's own relations to Assyria have not been recorded either by the
Bible or by the Assyrian monuments. It is hard to think that he paid no
tribute to the "king of kings." At all events it is certain that, while Assyria
again overthrew the Arameans of Damascus in 773 and their neighbours of
Hadrach in 772 and 765, Jeroboam was himself invading Aramean land,
and the Book of Kings even attributes to him an extension of territory, or at
least of political influence, up to the northern mouth of the great pass
between the Lebanons.[99] For the next twenty years Assyria only once
came as far as Lebanon—to Hadrach in 759—and it may have been this
long quiescence which enabled the rulers and people of Israel to forget, if
indeed their religion and sanguine patriotism had ever allowed them to
realise, how much the conquests and splendour of Jeroboam's reign were
due, not to themselves, but to the heathen power which had maimed their
oppressors. Their dreams were brief. Before Jeroboam himself was dead, a
new king had usurped the Assyrian throne (745 b.c.) and inaugurated a
more vigorous policy. Borrowing the name of the ancient Tiglath-Pileser, he
followed that conqueror's path across the Euphrates. At first it seemed as if
he was to suffer check. His forces were engrossed by the siege of Arpad for
three years (c. 743), and this delay, along with that of two years more,
during which he had to return to the conquest of Babylon, may well have
given cause to the courts of Damascus and Samaria to believe that the
Assyrian power had not really revived. Combining, they attacked Judah

under Ahaz. But Ahaz appealed to Tiglath-Pileser, who within a year (734-
733) had overthrown Damascus and carried captive the populations of
Gilead and Galilee. There could now be no doubt as to what the Assyrian
power meant for the political fortunes of Israel. Before this resistless and
inexorable empire, the people of Jehovah were as the most frail of their
neighbours—sure of defeat, and sure, too, of that terrible captivity in exile
which formed the novel policy of the invaders against the tribes who
withstood them. Israel dared to withstand. The vassal Hoshea, whom the
Assyrians had placed on the throne of Samaria in 730, kept back his tribute.
The people rallied to him; and for more than three years this little tribe of
highlanders resisted in their capital the Assyrian siege. Then came the end.
Samaria fell in 721, and Israel went into captivity beyond the Euphrates.
In following the course of this long tragedy, a man's heart cannot but feel
that all the splendour and the glory did not lie with the prophets, in spite of
their being the only actors in the drama who perceived its moral issues and
predicted its actual end. For who can withhold admiration from those few
tribesmen, who accepted no defeat as final, but so long as they were left to
their fatherland rallied their ranks to its liberty and defied the huge empire.
Nor was their courage always as blind, as in the time of Isaiah Samaria's so
fatally became. For one cannot have failed to notice, how fitful and
irregular was Assyria's advance, at least up to the reign of Tiglath-Pileser;
nor how prolonged and doubtful were her sieges of some of the towns. The
Assyrians themselves do not always record spoil or tribute after what they
are pleased to call their victories over the cities of Palestine. To the same
campaign they had often to return for several years in succession.[100] It
took Tiglath-Pileser himself three years to reduce Arpad; Salmanassar IV.
besieged Samaria for three years, and was slain before it yielded. These
facts enable us to understand that, apart from the moral reasons which the
prophets urged for the certainty of Israel's overthrow by Assyria, it was
always within the range of political possibility that Assyria would not come
back, and that while she was engaged with revolts of other portions of her
huge and disorganised empire, a combined revolution on the part of her
Syrian vassals would be successful. The prophets themselves felt the
influence of these chances. They were not always confident, as we shall see,
that Assyria was to be the means of Israel's overthrow. Amos, and in his
earlier years Isaiah, describe her with a caution and a vagueness for which

there is no other explanation than the political uncertainty that again and
again hung over the future of her advance upon Syria. It, then, even in those
high minds, to whom the moral issue was so clear, the political form that
issue should assume was yet temporarily uncertain, what good reasons must
the mere statesmen of Syria have often felt for the proud security which
filled the intervals between the Assyrian invasions, or the sanguine hopes
which inspired their resistance to the latter.
We must not cast over the whole Assyrian advance the triumphant air of the
annals of such kings as Tiglath-Pileser or Sennacherib. Campaigning in
Palestine was a dangerous business even to the Romans; and for the
Assyrian armies there was always possible besides some sudden recall by
the rumour of a revolt in a distant province. Their own annals supply us
with good reasons for the sanguine resistance offered to them by the tribes
of Palestine. No defeat, of course, is recorded; but the annals are full of
delays and withdrawals. Then the Plague would break out; we know how in
the last year of the century it turned Sennacherib, and saved Jerusalem.[101]
In short, up almost to the end the Syrian chiefs had some fair political
reasons for resistance to a power which had so often defeated them; while at
the very end, when no such reason remained and our political sympathy is
exhausted, we feel it replaced by an even warmer admiration for their
desperate defence. Mere mountain-cats of tribes as some of them were, they
held their poorly furnished rocks against one, two or three years of cruel
siege.
In Israel these political reasons for courage against Assyria were enforced
by the whole instincts of the popular religion. The century had felt a new
outburst of enthusiasm for Jehovah.[102] This was consequent, not only
upon the victories He had granted over Aram, but upon the literature of the
peace which followed those victories: the collection of the stories of the
ancient miracles of Jehovah in the beginning of His people's history, and of
the purpose He had even then announced of bringing Israel to supreme rank
in the world. Such a God, so anciently manifested, so recently proved,
could never surrender His own nation to a mere Goî[103]—a heathen and a
barbarian people. Add this dogma of the popular religion of Israel to those
substantial hopes of Assyria's withdrawal from Palestine, and you see cause,
intelligible and adequate, for the complacency of Jeroboam and his people

to the fact that Assyria had at last, by the fall of Damascus, reached their
own borders, as well as for the courage with which Hoshea in 725 threw off
the Assyrian yoke, and, with a willing people, for three years defended
Samaria against the great king. Let us not think that the opponents of the
prophets were utter fools or mere puppets of fate. They had reasons for their
optimism; they fought for their hearths and altars with a valour and a
patience which proves that the nation as a whole was not so corrupt, as we
are sometimes, by the language of the prophets, tempted to suppose.
But all this—the reasonableness of the hope of resisting Assyria, the valour
which so stubbornly fought her, the religious faith which sanctioned both
valour and hope—only the more vividly illustrates the singular
independence of the prophets, who took an opposite view, who so
consistently affirmed that Israel must fall, and so early foretold that she
should fall to Assyria.
The reason of this conviction of the prophets was, of course, their
fundamental faith in the righteousness of Jehovah. That was a belief quite
independent of the course of events. As a matter of history, the ethical
reasons for Israel's doom were manifest to the prophets within Israel's own
life, before the signs grew clear on the horizon that the doomster was to be
Assyria.[104] Nay, we may go further, and say that it could not possibly have
been otherwise. For except the prophets had been previously furnished with
the ethical reasons for Assyria's resistless advance on Israel, to their
sensitive minds that advance must have been a hopeless and a paralysing
problem. But they nowhere treat it as a problem. By them Assyria is always
either welcomed as a proof or summoned as a means—the proof of their
conviction that Israel requires humbling, the means of carrying that
humbling into effect. The faith of the prophets is ready for Assyria from the
moment that she becomes ominous for Israel, and every footfall of her
armies on Jehovah's soil becomes the corroboration of the purpose He has
already declared to His servants in the terms of their moral consciousness.
The spiritual service which Assyria rendered to Israel was therefore
secondary to the prophets' native convictions of the righteousness of God,
and could not have been performed without these. This will become even
more clear if we look for a little at the exact nature of that service.

In its broadest effects, the Assyrian invasion meant for Israel a very
considerable change in the intellectual outlook. Hitherto Israel's world had
virtually lain between the borders promised of old to their ambition—the
river of Egypt,[105] and the great river, the River Euphrates. These had
marked not merely the sphere of Israel's politics, but the horizon within
which Israel had been accustomed to observe the action of their God and to
prove His character, to feel the problems of their religion rise and to grapple
with them. But now there burst from the outside of this little world that
awful power, sovereign and inexorable, which effaced all distinctions and
treated Israel in the same manner as her heathen neighbours. This was more
than a widening of the world: it was a change of the very poles. At first
sight it appeared merely to have increased the scale on which history was
conducted; it was really an alteration of the whole character of history.
Religion itself shrivelled up, before a force so much vaster than anything it
had yet encountered, and so contemptuous of its claims. What is Jehovah,
said the Assyrian in his laughter, more than the gods of Damascus, or of
Hamath, or of the Philistines? In fact, for the mind of Israel, the crisis,
though less in degree, was in quality not unlike that produced in the religion
of Europe by the revelation of the Copernican astronomy. As the earth,
previously believed to be the centre of the universe, the stage on which the
Son of God had achieved God's eternal purposes to mankind, was
discovered to be but a satellite of one of innumerable suns, a mere ball
swung beside millions of others by a force which betrayed no sign of
sympathy with the great transactions which took place on it, and so faith in
the Divine worth of these was rudely shaken—so Israel, who had believed
themselves to be the peculiar people of the Creator, the solitary agents of
the God of Righteousness to all mankind,[106] and who now felt themselves
brought to an equality with other tribes by this sheer force, which, brutally
indifferent to spiritual distinctions, swayed the fortunes of all alike, must
have been tempted to unbelief in the spiritual facts of their history, in the
power of their God and the destiny He had promised them. Nothing could
have saved Israel, as nothing could have saved Europe, but a conception of
God which rose to this new demand upon its powers—a faith which said,
"Our God is sufficient for this greater world and its forces that so dwarf our
own; the discovery of these only excites in us a more awful wonder of His
power." The prophets had such a conception of God. To them He was
absolute righteousness—righteousness wide as the widest world, stronger

than the strongest force. To the prophets, therefore, the rise of Assyria only
increased the possibilities of Providence. But it could not have done this
had Providence not already been invested in a God capable by His character
of rising to such possibilities.
Assyria, however, was not only Force: she was also the symbol of a great
Idea—the Idea of Unity. We have just ventured on one historical analogy.
We may try another and a more exact one. The Empire of Rome, grasping
the whole world in its power and reducing all races of men to much the
same level of political rights, powerfully assisted Christian theology in the
task of imposing upon the human mind a clearer imagination of unity in the
government of the world and of spiritual equality among men of all nations.
A not dissimilar service to the faith of Israel was performed by the Empire
of Assyria. History, that hitherto had been but a series of angry pools,
became as the ocean swaying in tides to one almighty impulse. It was far
easier to imagine a sovereign Providence when Assyria reduced history to a
unity by overthrowing all the rulers and all their gods, than when history
was broken up into the independent fortunes of many states, each with its
own religion divinely valid in its own territory. By shattering the tribes
Assyria shattered the tribal theory of religion, which we have seen to be the
characteristic Semitic theory—a god for every tribe, a tribe for every god.
The field was cleared of the many: there was room for the One. That He
appeared, not as the God of the conquering race, but as the Deity of one of
their many victims, was due to Jehovah's righteousness. At this juncture,
when the world was suggested to have one throne and that throne was
empty, there was a great chance, if we may so put it, for a god with a
character. And the only God in all the Semitic world who had a character
was Jehovah.
It is true that the Assyrian Empire was not constructive, like the Roman,
and, therefore, could not assist the prophets to the idea of a Catholic
Church. But there can be no doubt that it did assist them to a feeling of the
moral unity of mankind. A great historian has made the just remark that,
whatsoever widens the imagination, enabling it to realise the actual
experience of other men, is a powerful agent of ethical advance.[107] Now
Assyria widened the imagination and the sympathy of Israel in precisely
this way. Consider the universal Pity of the Assyrian conquest: how state
after state went down before it, how all things mortal yielded and were

swept away. The mutual hatreds and ferocities of men could not persist
before a common Fate, so sublime, so tragic. And thus we understand how
in Israel the old envies and rancours of that border warfare with her foes
which had filled the last four centuries of her history is replaced by a new
tenderness and compassion towards the national efforts, the achievements
and all the busy life of the Gentile peoples. Isaiah is especially
distinguished by this in his treatment of Egypt and of Tyre; and even where
he and others do not, as in these cases, appreciate the sadness of the
destruction of so much brave beauty and serviceable wealth, their tone in
speaking of the fall of the Assyrian on their neighbours is one of
compassion and not of exultation.[108] As the rivalries and hatreds of
individual lives are stilled in the presence of a common death, so even that
factious, ferocious world of the Semites ceased to fret its anger and watch it
for ever (to quote Amos' phrase) in face of the universal Assyrian Fate. But
in that Fate there was more than Pity. On the data of the prophets Assyria
was afflicting Israel for moral reasons: it could not be for other reasons that
she was afflicting their neighbours. Israel and the heathen were suffering for
the same righteousness' sake. What could have better illustrated the moral
equality of all mankind! No doubt the prophets were already theoretically
convinced[109] of this—for the righteousness they believed in was nothing if
not universal. But it is one thing to hold a belief on principle and another to
have practical experience of it in history. To a theory of the moral equality
of mankind Assyria enabled the prophets to add sympathy and conscience.
We shall see all this illustrated in the opening prophecies of Amos against
the foreign nations.
But Assyria did not help to develop monotheism in Israel only by
contributing to the doctrines of a moral Providence and of the equality of all
men beneath it. The influence must have extended to Israel's conception of
God in Nature. Here, of course, Israel was already possessed of great
beliefs. Jehovah had created man; He had divided the Red Sea and Jordan.
The desert, the storm, and the seasons were all subject to Him. But at a time
when the superstitious mind of the people was still feeling after other
Divine powers in the earth, the waters and the air of Canaan, it was a very
valuable antidote to such dissipation of their faith to find one God swaying,
through Assyria, all families of mankind. The Divine unity to which history
was reduced must have reacted on Israel's views of Nature, and made it

easier to feel one God also there. Now, as a matter of fact, the imagination
of the unity of Nature, the belief in a reason and method pervading all
things, was very powerfully advanced in Israel throughout the Assyrian
period.
We may find an illustration of this in the greater, deeper meaning in which
the prophets use the old national name of Israel's God—Jehovah Ṣeba'oth,
Jehovah of Hosts. This title, which came into frequent use under the early
kings, when Israel's vocation was to win freedom by war, meant then (as far
as we can gather) only Jehovah of the armies of Israel—the God of battles,
the people's leader in war,[110] whose home was Jerusalem, the people's
capital, and His sanctuary their battle emblem, the Ark. Now the prophets
hear Jehovah go forth (as Amos does) from the same place, but to them the
Name has a far deeper significance. They never define it, but they use it in
associations where hosts must mean something different from the armies of
Israel. To Amos the hosts of Jehovah are not the armies of Israel, but those
of Assyria: they are also the nations whom He marshals and marches across
the earth, Philistines from Caphtor, Aram from Qir, as well as Israel from
Egypt. Nay, more; according to those Doxologies which either Amos or a
kindred spirit has added to his lofty argument,[111] Jehovah sways and
orders the powers of the heavens: Orion and Pleiades, the clouds from the
sea to the mountain peaks where they break, day and night in constant
procession. It is in associations like these that the Name is used, either in its
old form or slightly changed as Jehovah God of hosts, or the hosts; and we
cannot but feel that the hosts of Jehovah are now looked upon as all the
influences of earth and heaven—human armies, stars and powers of nature,
which obey His word and work His will.

AMOS

"Towers in the distance, like an earth-born Atlas ... such a man in such a
historical position, standing on the confines of light and darkness, like day
on the misty mountain-tops."

CHAPTER V
THE BOOK OF AMOS

The genuineness of the bulk of the Book of Amos is not doubted by any
critic. The only passages suspected as interpolations are the three references
to Judah, the three famous outbreaks in praise of the might of Jehovah the
Creator, the final prospect of a hope that does not gleam in any other part of
the book, with a few clauses alleged to reflect a stage of history later than
that in which Amos worked.[112] In all, these verses amount to only twenty-
six or twenty-seven out of one hundred and forty-six. Each of them can be
discussed separately as we reach it, and we may now pass to consider the
general course of the prophecy which is independent of them.
The Book of Amos consists of Three Groups of Oracles, under one title,
which is evidently meant to cover them all.
The title runs as follows:—

Words of 'Amoṣ—who was of the herdsmen of Teḳôa'—which he saw
concerning Israel in the days of 'Uzziah king of Judah, and in the days
of Jarab'am son of Joash,[113] king of Israel: two years before the
earthquake.

The Three Sections, with their contents, are as follows:—

First Section: Chaps. I., II. The Heathen's Crimes and Israel's.

A series of short oracles of the same form, directed impartially against
the political crimes of all the states of Palestine, and culminating in a
more detailed denunciation of the social evils of Israel, whose doom is
foretold, beneath the same flood of war as shall overwhelm all her
neighbours.

Second Section: Chaps. III.-VI. Israel's Crimes and Doom.

A series of various oracles of denunciation, which have no further
logical connection than is supplied by a general sameness of subject,
and a perceptible increase of detail and articulateness from beginning
to end of the section. They are usually grouped according to the
recurrence of the formula Hear this word, which stands at the head of
our present chaps. iii., iv. and v.; and by the two cries of Woe at v. 18
and vi. 1. But even more obvious than these commencements are the
various climaxes to which they lead up. These are all threats of
judgment, and each is more strenuous or explicit than the one that has
preceded it. They close with iii. 15, iv. 3, iv. 12, v. 17, v. 27 and vi. 14;
and according to them the oracles may be conveniently divided into six
groups.
1. III. 1-15. After the main theme of judgment is stated in 1, 2, we have
in 3-8 a parenthesis on the prophet's right to threaten doom; after
which 9-15, following directly on 2, emphasise the social disorder,
threaten the land with invasion, the people with extinction and the
overthrow of their civilisation.
2. IV. 1-3, beginning with the formula Hear this word, is directed
against women and describes the siege of the capital and their
captivity.
3. IV. 4-12, with no opening formula, contrasts the people's vain
propitiation of God by ritual with His treatment of them by various
physical chastisements—drought, blight and locusts, pestilence,
earthquake—and summons them to prepare for another, unnamed,
visitation. Jehovah God of Hosts is His Name.
4. V. 1-17, beginning with the formula Hear this word, and a dirge
over a vision of the nation's defeat, attacks, like the previous group, the
lavish ritual, sets in contrast to it Jehovah's demands for justice and
civic purity; and, offering a reprieve if Israel will repent, closes with
the prospect of an universal mourning (vv. 16, 17), which, though
introduced by a therefore, has no logical connection with what
precedes it.

5. V. 18-26 is the first of the two groups that open with Woe. Affirming
that the eagerly expected Day of Jehovah will be darkness and disaster
on disaster inevitable (18-20), it again emphasises Jehovah's desire for
righteousness rather than worship (21-26), and closes with the threat of
captivity beyond Damascus. Jehovah God of Hosts is His Name, as at
the close of 3.
6. VI. 1-14. The second Woe, on them that are at ease in Zion (1, 2): a
satire on the luxuries of the rich and their indifference to the national
suffering (3-6): captivity must come, with the desolation of the land (9,
10); and in a peroration the prophet reiterates a general downfall of the
nation because of its perversity. A Nation—needless to name it!—will
oppress Israel from Hamath to the River of the Arabah.

Third Section: Chaps. VII.-IX. Visions with Interludes.

The Visions betray traces of development; but they are interrupted by a
piece of narrative and addresses on the same themes as chaps. iii.-vi.
The First two Visions (vii. 1-6) are of disasters—locusts and drought
—in the realm of nature; they are averted by prayer from Amos. The
Third (7-9) is in the sphere, not of nature, but history: Jehovah
standing with a plumbline, as if to show the nation's fabric to be utterly
twisted, announces that it shall be overthrown, and that the dynasty of
Jeroboam must be put to the sword. Upon this mention of the king, the
first in the book, there starts the narrative (10-17) of how Amaziah,
priest at Bethel—obviously upon hearing the prophet's threat—sent
word to Jeroboam; and then (whether before or after getting a reply)
proceeded to silence Amos, who, however, reiterates his prediction of
doom, again described as captivity in a foreign land, and adds a
Fourth Vision (viii. 1-3), of the Ḳaits or Summer Fruit, which suggests
Ḳêts, or End of the Nation. Here it would seem Amos' discourses at
Bethel take end. Then comes viii. 4-6, another exposure of the sins of
the rich; followed by a triple pronouncement of doom (7), again in the
terms of physical calamities—earthquake (8), eclipse (9, 10), and
famine (11-14), in the last of which the public worship is again
attacked. A Fifth Vision, of the Lord by the Altar commanding to smite
(ix. 1), is followed by a powerful threat of the hopelessness of escape

from God's punishment (ix. 1b-4); the third of the great apostrophes to
the might of Jehovah (5, 6); another statement of the equality in
judgment of Israel with other peoples, and of their utter destruction (7-
8a). Then (8b) we meet the first qualification of the hitherto unrelieved
sentence of death. Captivity is described, not as doom, but as
discipline (9): the sinners of the people, scoffers at doom, shall die
(10). And this seems to leave room for two final oracles of restoration
and glory, the only two in the book, which are couched in the exact
terms of the promises of later prophecy (11-15) and are by many
denied to Amos.

Such is the course of the prophesying of Amos. To have traced it must have
made clear to us the unity of his book,[114] as well as the character of the
period to which he belonged. But it also furnishes us with a good deal of
evidence towards the answer of such necessary questions as these—whether
we can fix an exact date for the whole or any part, and whether we can trace
any logical or historical development through the chapters, either as these
now stand, or in some such re-arrangement as we saw to be necessary for
the authentic prophecies of Isaiah.
Let us take first the simplest of these tasks—to ascertain the general period
of the book. Twice—by the title and by the portion of narrative[115]—we are
pointed to the reign of Jeroboam II., circa 783-743; other historical
allusions suit the same years. The principalities of Palestine are all standing,
except Gath;[116] but the great northern cloud which carries their doom has
risen and is ready to burst. Now Assyria, we have seen, had become fatal to
Palestine as early as 854. Infrequent invasions of Syria had followed, in one
of which, in 803, Rimmon Nirari III. had subjected Tyre and Sidon,
besieged Damascus, and received tribute from Israel. So far then as the
Assyrian data are concerned, the Book of Amos might have been written
early in the reign of Jeroboam. Even then was the storm lowering as he
describes it. Even then had the lightning broken over Damascus. There are
other symptoms, however, which demand a later date. They seem to imply,
not only Uzziah's overthrow of Gath,[117] and Jeroboam's conquest of
Moab[118] and of Aram,[119] but that establishment of Israel's political
influence from Lebanon to the Dead Sea, which must have taken Jeroboam
several years to accomplish. With this agree other features of the prophecy

—the sense of political security in Israel, the large increase of wealth, the
ample and luxurious buildings, the gorgeous ritual, the easy ability to
recover from physical calamities, the consequent carelessness and pride of
the upper classes. All these things imply that the last Syrian invasions of
Israel in the beginning of the century were at least a generation behind the
men into whose careless faces the prophet hurled his words of doom.
During this interval Assyria had again advanced—in 775, in 773 and in 772.
[120]
None of these expeditions, however, had come south of Damascus, and
this, their invariable arrest at some distance from the proper territory of
Israel, may have further flattered the people's sense of security, though
probably the truth was that Jeroboam, like some of his predecessors, bought
his peace by tribute to the emperor. In 765, when the Assyrians for the
second time invaded Hadrach, in the neighbourhood of Damascus, their
records mention a pestilence, which, both because their armies were then in
Syria, and because the plague generally spreads over the whole of Western
Asia, may well have been the pestilence mentioned by Amos. In 763 a total
eclipse of the sun took place, and is perhaps implied by the ninth verse of
his eighth chapter. If this double allusion to pestilence and eclipse be
correct, it brings the book down to the middle of the century and the latter
half of Jeroboam's long reign. In 755 the Assyrians came back to Hadrach;
in 754 to Arpad: with these exceptions Syria was untroubled by them till
after 745. It was probably these quiet years in which Amos found Israel at
ease in Zion.[121] If we went down further, within the more forward policy
of Tiglath-Pileser, who ascended the throne in 745 and besieged Arpad from
743 to 740, we should find an occasion for the urgency with which Amos
warns Israel that the invasion of her land and the overthrow of the dynasty
of Jeroboam will be immediate.[122] But Amos might have spoken as
urgently even before Tiglath-Pileser's accession; and the probability that
Hosea, who prophesied within Jeroboam's reign, quotes from Amos seems
to imply that the prophecies of the latter had been current for some time.
Towards the middle of the eighth century—is, therefore, the most definite
date to which we are able to assign the Book of Amos. At so great a
distance the difference of a few unmarked years is invisible. It is enough
that we know the moral dates—the state of national feeling, the personages
alive, the great events which are behind the prophet, and the still greater
which are imminent. We can see that Amos wrote in the political pride of

the latter years of Jeroboam's reign, after the pestilence and eclipse of the
sixties, and before the advance of Tiglath-Pileser in the last forties, of the
eighth century.
A particular year is indeed offered by the title of the book, which, if not by
Amos himself, must be from only a few years later:[123] Words of Amos,
which he saw in the days of Uzziah and of Jeroboam, two years before the
earthquake. This was the great earthquake of which other prophets speak as
having happened in the days of Uzziah.[124] But we do not know where to
place the year of the earthquake, and are as far as ever from a definite date.
The mention of the earthquake, however, introduces us to the answer of
another of our questions—whether, with all its unity, the Book of Amos
reveals any lines of progress, either of event or of idea, either historical or
logical.
Granting the truth of the title, that Amos had his prophetic eyes opened two
years before the earthquake, it will be a sign of historical progress if we find
in the book itself any allusions to the earthquake. Now these are present. In
the first division we find none, unless the threat of God's visitation in the
form of a shaking of the land be considered as a tremor communicated to
the prophet's mind from the recent upheaval. But in the second division
there is an obvious reference: the last of the unavailing chastisements, with
which Jehovah has chastised His people, is described as a great
overturning.[125] And in the third division, in two passages, the judgment,
which Amos has already stated will fall in the form of an invasion, is also
figured in the terms of an earthquake. Nor does this exhaust the tremors
which that awful convulsion had started; but throughout the second and
third divisions there is a constant sense of instability, of the liftableness and
breakableness of the very ground of life. Of course, as we shall see, this was
due to the prophet's knowledge of the moral explosiveness of society in
Israel; but he could hardly have described the results of that in the terms he
has used, unless himself and his hearers had recently felt the ground quake
under them, and seen whole cities topple over. If, then, Amos began to
prophesy two years before the earthquake, the bulk of his book was spoken,
or at least written down, after the earthquake had left all Israel trembling.
[126]

This proof of progress in the book is confirmed by another feature. In the
abstract given above it is easy to see that the judgments of the Lord upon
Israel were of a twofold character. Some were physical—famine, drought,
blight, locusts, earthquake; and some were political—battle, defeat,
invasion, captivity. Now it is significant—and I do not think the point has
been previously remarked—that not only are the physical represented as
happening first, but that at one time the prophet seems to have understood
that no others would be needed, that indeed God did not reveal to him the
imminence of political disaster till He had exhausted the discipline of
physical calamities. For this we have double evidence. In chapter iv. Amos
reports that the Lord has sought to rouse Israel out of the moral lethargy
into which their religious services have soothed them, by withholding bread
and water; by blighting their orchards; by a pestilence, a thoroughly
Egyptian one; and by an earthquake. But these having failed to produce
repentance, God must visit the people once more: how, the prophet does not
say, leaving the imminent terror unnamed, but we know that the Assyrian
overthrow is meant. Now precisely parallel to this is the course of the
Visions in chapter vii. The Lord caused Amos to see (whether in fancy or in
fact we need not now stop to consider) the plague of locusts. It was so bad
as to threaten Israel with destruction. But Amos interceded, and God
answered, It shall not be. Similarly with a plague of drought. But then the
Vision shifts from the realm of nature to that of politics. The Lord sets the
plumbline to the fabric of Israel's life: this is found hopelessly bent and
unstable. It must be pulled down, and the pulling down shall be political:
the family of Jeroboam is to be slain, the people are to go into captivity. The
next Vision, therefore, is of the End—the Final Judgment of war and defeat,
which is followed only by Silence.
Thus, by a double proof, we see not only that the Divine method in that age
was to act first by physical chastisement, and only then by an inevitable,
ultimate doom of war and captivity; but that the experience of Amos
himself, his own intercourse with the Lord, passed through these two
stages. The significance of this for the picture of the prophet's life we shall
see in our next chapter. Here we are concerned to ask whether it gives us
any clue as to the extant arrangement of his prophecies, or any justification
for re-arranging them, as the prophecies of Isaiah have to be re-arranged,

according to the various stages of historical development at which they
were uttered.
We have just seen that the progress from the physical chastisements to the
political doom is reflected in both the last two sections of the book. But the
same gradual, cumulative method is attributed to the Divine Providence by
the First Section: for three transgressions, yea, for four, I will not turn it
back; and then follow the same disasters of war and captivity as are
threatened in Sections II. and III. But each section does not only thus end
similarly; each also begins with the record of an immediate impression
made on the prophet by Jehovah (chaps. i. 2; iii. 3-8; vii. 1-9).

To sum up:—The Book of Amos consists of three sections,[127] which seem
to have received their present form towards the end of Jeroboam's reign;
and which, after emphasising their origin as due to the immediate influence
of Jehovah Himself on the prophet, follow pretty much the same course of
the Divine dealings with that generation of Israel—a course which began
with physical chastisements, that failed to produce repentance, and ended
with the irrevocable threat of the Assyrian invasion. Each section, that is to
say, starts from the same point, follows much the same direction, and
arrives at exactly the same conclusion. Chronologically you cannot put one
of them before the other; but from each it is possible to learn the stages of
experience through which Amos himself passed—to discover how God
taught the prophet, not only by the original intuitions from which all
prophecy starts, but by the gradual events of his day both at home and
abroad.
This decides our plan for us. We shall first trace the life and experience of
Amos, as his book enables us to do; and then we shall examine, in the order
in which they lie, the three parallel forms in which, when he was silenced at
Bethel, he collected the fruits of that experience, and gave them their final
expression.

The style of the book is simple and terse. The fixity of the prophet's aim—
upon a few moral principles and the doom they demand—keeps his
sentences firm and sharp, and sends his paragraphs rapidly to their climax.
That he sees nature only under moral light renders his poetry austere and
occasionally savage. His language is very pure. There is no ground for
Jerome's charge that he was "imperitus sermone": we shall have to notice
only a few irregularities in spelling, due perhaps to the dialect of the deserts
in which he passed his life.[128]
The text of the book is for the most part well-preserved; but there are a
number of evident corruptions. Of the Greek Version the same holds good
as we have said in more detail of the Greek of Hosea.[129] It is sometimes
correct where the Hebrew text is not, sometimes suggestive of the
emendations required, and sometimes hopelessly astray.

CHAPTER VI
THE MAN AND THE PROPHET

The Book of Amos opens one of the greatest stages in the religious
development of mankind. Its originality is due to a few simple ideas, which
it propels into religion with an almost unrelieved abruptness. But, like all
ideas which ever broke upon the world, these also have flesh and blood
behind them. Like every other Reformation, this one in Israel began with
the conscience and the protest of an individual. Our review of the book has
made this plain. We have found in it, not only a personal adventure of a
heroic kind, but a progressive series of visions, with some other proofs of a
development both of facts and ideas. In short, behind the book there beats a
life, and our first duty is to attempt to trace its spiritual history. The attempt
is worth the greatest care. "Amos," says a very critical writer,[130] "is one of
the most wonderful appearances in the history of the human spirit."

1. The Man and His Discipline.

Amos i. 1; iii. 3-8; vii. 14, 15.

When charged at the crisis of his career with being but a hireling-prophet,
Amos disclaimed the official name and took his stand upon his work as a
man: No prophet I, nor prophet's son, but a herdsman and a dresser of
sycomores. Jehovah took me from behind the flock.[131] We shall enhance
our appreciation of this manhood, and of the new order of prophecy which
it asserted, if we look for a little at the soil on which it was so bravely
nourished.
Six miles south from Bethlehem, as Bethlehem is six from Jerusalem, there
rises on the edge of the Judæan plateau, towards the desert, a commanding
hill, the ruins on which are still known by the name of Teḳôa'.[132]

In the time of Amos Tekoa was a place without sanctity and almost without
tradition. The name suggests that the site may at first have been that of a
camp. Its fortification by Rehoboam, and the mission of its wise woman to
David, are its only previous appearances in history. Nor had nature been
less grudging to it than fame. The men of Tekoa looked out upon a desolate
and haggard world. South, west and north the view is barred by a range of
limestone hills, on one of which directly north the grey towers of Jerusalem
are hardly to be discerned from the grey mountain lines. Eastward the
prospect is still more desolate, but it is open; the land slopes away for
nearly eighteen miles to a depth of four thousand feet. Of this long descent,
the first step, lying immediately below the hill of Tekoa, is a shelf of stony
moorland with the ruins of vineyards. It is the lowest ledge of the settled
life of Judæa. The eastern edge drops suddenly by broken rocks to slopes
spotted with bushes of "retem," the broom of the desert, and with patches of
poor wheat. From the foot of the slopes the land rolls away in a maze of low
hills and shallow dales, that flush green in spring, but for the rest of the year
are brown with withered grass and scrub. This is the Wilderness or
Pastureland of Tekoa,[133] across which by night the wild beasts howl, and
by day the blackened sites of deserted camps, with the loose cairns that
mark the nomads' graves, reveal a human life almost as vagabond and
nameless as that of the beasts. Beyond the rolling land is Jeshimon, or
Devastation—a chaos of hills, none of whose ragged crests are tossed as
high as the shelf of Tekoa, while their flanks shudder down some further
thousands of feet, by crumbling precipices and corries choked with debris,
to the coast of the Dead Sea. The northern half of this is visible, bright blue
against the red wall of Moab, and the level top of the wall, broken only by
the valley of the Arnon, constitutes the horizon. Except for the blue water—
which shines in its gap between the torn hills like a bit of sky through rifted
clouds—it is a very dreary world. Yet the sun breaks over it, perhaps all the
more gloriously; mists, rising from the sea simmering in its great vat, drape
the nakedness of the desert noon; and through the dry desert night the
planets ride with a majesty they cannot assume in our more troubled
atmospheres. It is also a very empty and a very silent world, yet every stir
of life upon it excites, therefore, the greater vigilance, and man's faculties,
relieved from the rush and confusion of events, form the instinct of
marking, and reflecting upon, every single phenomenon. And it is a very

savage world. Across it all, the towers of Jerusalem give the only signal of
the spirit, the one token that man has a history.
Upon this unmitigated wilderness, where life is reduced to poverty and
danger; where nature starves the imagination, but excites the faculties of
perception and curiosity; with the mountain tops and the sunrise in his face,
but above all with Jerusalem so near,—Amos did the work which made him
a man, heard the voice of God calling him to be a prophet, and gathered
those symbols and figures in which his prophet's message still reaches us
with so fresh and so austere an air.
Amos was among the shepherds of Tekoa. The word for shepherd is
unusual, and means the herdsman of a peculiar breed of desert sheep, still
under the same name prized in Arabia for the excellence of their wool.[134]
And he was a dresser of sycomores. The tree, which is not our sycamore, is
very easily grown in sandy soil with a little water. It reaches a great height
and mass of foliage. The fruit is like a small fig, with a sweet but watery
taste, and is eaten only by the poor. Born not of the fresh twigs, but of the
trunk and older branches, the sluggish lumps are provoked to ripen by
pinching or bruising, which seems to be the literal meaning of the term that
Amos uses of himself—a pincher of sycomores.[135] The sycomore does not
grow at so high a level as Tekoa;[136] and this fact, taken along with the
limitation of the ministry of Amos to the Northern Kingdom, has been held
to prove that he was originally an Ephraimite, a sycomore-dresser, who had
migrated and settled down, as the peculiar phrase of the title says, among
the shepherds of Tekoa.[137] We shall presently see, however, that his
familiarity with life in Northern Israel may easily have been won in other
ways than through citizenship in that kingdom; while the very general
nature of the definition, among the shepherds of Tekoa, does not oblige us
to place either him or his sycomores so high as the village itself. The most
easterly township of Judæa, Tekoa commanded the whole of the wilderness
beyond, to which indeed it gave its name, the wilderness of Tekoa. The
shepherds of Tekoa were therefore, in all probability, scattered across the
whole region down to the oases on the coast of the Dead Sea, which have
generally been owned by one or other of the settled communities in the hill-
country above, and may at that time have belonged to Tekoa, just as in
Crusading times they belonged to the monks of Hebron, or are to-day

cultivated by the Rushaideh Arabs, who pitch their camps not far from
Tekoa itself. As you will still find everywhere on the borders of the Syrian
desert shepherds nourishing a few fruit-trees round the chief well of their
pasture, in order to vary their milk diet, so in some low oasis in the
wilderness of Judæa Amos cultivated the poorest, but the most easily grown
of fruits, the sycomore.[138] All this pushes Amos and his dwarf sheep
deeper into the desert, and emphasises what has been said above, and still
remains to be illustrated, of the desert's influence on his discipline as a man
and on his speech as a prophet. We ought to remember that in the same
desert another prophet was bred, who was also the pioneer of a new
dispensation, and whose ministry, both in its strength and its limitations, is
much recalled by the ministry of Amos. John the son of Zacharias grew and
waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his showing
unto Israel.[139] Here, too, our Lord was with the wild beasts.[140] How
much Amos had been with them may be seen from many of his metaphors.
The lion roareth, who shall not fear?... As when the shepherd rescueth from
the mouth of the lion two shin-bones or a bit of an ear.... It shall be as when
one is fleeing from a lion, and a bear cometh upon him; and he entereth a
house, and leaneth his hand on the wall, and a serpent biteth him.
As a wool-grower, however, Amos must have had his yearly journeys
among the markets of the land; and to such were probably due his
opportunities of familiarity with Northern Israel, the originals of his vivid
pictures of her town-life, her commerce and the worship at her great
sanctuaries. One hour westward from Tekoa would bring him to the high-
road between Hebron and the North, with its troops of pilgrims passing to
Beersheba.[141] It was but half-an-hour more to the watershed and an open
view of the Philistine plain. Bethlehem was only six, Jerusalem twelve
miles from Tekoa. Ten miles farther, across the border of Israel, lay Bethel
with its temple, seven miles farther Gilgal, and twenty miles farther still
Samaria the capital, in all but two days' journey from Tekoa. These had
markets as well as shrines;[142] their annual festivals would be also great
fairs. It is certain that Amos visited them; it is even possible that he went to
Damascus, in which the Israelites had at the time their own quarters for
trading. By road and market he would meet with men of other lands.
Phœnician pedlars, or Canaanites as they were called, came up to buy the
homespun for which the housewives of Israel were famed[143]—hard-faced

men who were also willing to purchase slaves, and haunted even the battle-
fields of their neighbours for this sinister purpose. Men of Moab, at the time
subject to Israel; Aramean hostages; Philistines who held the export trade to
Egypt,—these Amos must have met and may have talked with; their
dialects scarcely differed from his own. It is no distant, desert echo of life
which we hear in his pages, but the thick and noisy rumour of caravan and
market-place: how the plague was marching up from Egypt;[144] ugly
stories of the Phœnician slave-trade;[145] rumours of the advance of the
awful Power, which men were hardly yet accustomed to name, but which
had already twice broken from the North upon Damascus. Or it was the
progress of some national mourning—how lamentation sprang up in the
capital, rolled along the highways, and was re-echoed from the husbandmen
and vinedressers on the hillsides.[146] Or, at closer quarters, we see and hear
the bustle of the great festivals and fairs—the solemn assemblies, the
reeking holocausts, the noise of songs and viols;[147] the brutish religious
zeal kindling into drunkenness and lust on the very steps of the altar;[148]
the embezzlement of pledges by the priests, the covetous restlessness of the
traders, their false measures, their entanglement of the poor in debt;[149] the
careless luxury of the rich, their banquets, buckets of wine, ivory couches,
pretentious, preposterous music.[150] These things are described as by an
eyewitness. Amos was not a citizen of the Northern Kingdom, to which he
almost exclusively refers; but it was because he went up and down in it,
using those eyes which the desert air had sharpened, that he so thoroughly
learned the wickedness of its people, the corruption of Israel's life in every
rank and class of society.[151]
But the convictions which he applied to this life Amos learned at home.
They came to him over the desert, and without further material signal than
was flashed to Tekoa from the towers of Jerusalem. This is placed beyond
doubt by the figures in which he describes his call from Jehovah. Contrast
his story, so far as he reveals it, with that of another. Some twenty years
later, Isaiah of Jerusalem saw the Lord in the Temple, high and lifted up,
and all the inaugural vision of this greatest of the prophets was conceived in
the figures of the Temple—the altar, the smoke, the burning coals. But to
his predecessor among the shepherds of Tekoa, although revelation also
starts from Jerusalem, it reaches him, not in the sacraments of her sanctuary,

but across the bare pastures, and as it were in the roar of a lion. Jehovah
from Zion roareth, and uttereth His voice from Jerusalem.[152] We read of
no formal process of consecration for this first of the prophets. Through his
clear desert air, the word of God breaks upon him without medium or
sacrament. And the native vigilance of the man is startled, is convinced by
it, beyond all argument or question. The lion hath roared, who shall not
fear? Jehovah hath spoken, who can but prophesy?
These words are taken from a passage in which Amos illustrates prophecy
from other instances of his shepherd life. We have seen what a school of
vigilance the desert is. Upon the bare surface all that stirs is ominous. Every
shadow, every noise—the shepherd must know what is behind and be
warned. Such a vigilance Amos would have Israel apply to his own
message, and to the events of their history. Both of these he compares to
certain facts of desert life, behind which his shepherdly instincts have
taught him to feel an ominous cause. Do two men walk together except they
have trysted?—except they have made an appointment. Hardly in the
desert, for there men meet and take the same road by chance as seldom as
ships at sea. Doth a lion roar in the jungle and have no prey, or a young
lion let out his voice in his den except he be taking something? The hunting
lion is silent till his quarry be in sight; when the lonely shepherd hears the
roar across the desert, he knows the lion leaps upon his prey, and he
shudders as Israel ought to do when they hear God's voice by the prophet,
for this also is never loosened but for some grim fact, some leap of doom.
Or doth a little bird fall on the snare earthwards and there be no noose
upon her? The reading may be doubtful, but the meaning is obvious: no one
ever saw a bird pulled roughly down to earth when it tried to fly away
without knowing there was the loop of a snare about her. Or does the snare
itself rise up from the ground, except indeed it be capturing something?—
except there be in the trap or net something to flutter, struggle and so lift it
up. Traps do not move without life in them. Or is the alarum trumpet[153]
blown in a city—for instance, in high Tekoa up there, when some Arab raid
sweeps from the desert on to the fields—and do the people not tremble? Or
shall calamity happen in a city and Jehovah not have done it? Yea, the Lord
Jehovah doeth nothing but He has revealed His purpose to His servants the
prophets. My voice of warning and these events of evil in your midst have

the same cause—Jehovah—behind them. The lion hath roared, who shall
not fear? Jehovah hath spoken, who can but prophesy?[154]
We cannot miss the personal note which rings through this triumph in the
reality of things unseen. Not only does it proclaim a man of sincerity and
conviction: it is resonant with the discipline by which that conviction was
won—were won, too, the freedom from illusion and the power of looking at
facts in the face, which Amos alone of his contemporaries possessed.
St. Bernard has described the first stage of the Vision of God as the Vision
Distributive, in which the eager mind distributes her attention upon
common things and common duties in themselves. It was in this elementary
school that the earliest of the new prophets passed his apprenticeship and
received his gifts. Others excel Amos in the powers of the imagination and
the intellect. But by the incorrupt habits of his shepherd's life, by daily
wakefulness to its alarms and daily faithfulness to its opportunities, he was
trained in that simple power of appreciating facts and causes, which,
applied to the great phenomena of the spirit and of history, forms his
distinction among his peers. In this we find perhaps the reason why he
records of himself no solemn hour of cleansing and initiation. Jehovah took
me from following the flock, and Jehovah said unto me, Go, prophesy unto
My people Israel. Amos was of them of whom it is written, "Blessed are
those servants whom the Lord when He cometh shall find watching."
Through all his hard life, this shepherd had kept his mind open and his
conscience quick, so that when the word of God came to him he knew it, as
fast as he knew the roar of the lion across the moor. Certainly there is no
habit, which, so much as this of watching facts with a single eye and a
responsible mind, is indispensable alike in the humblest duties and in the
highest speculations of life. When Amos gives those naïve illustrations of
how real the voice of God is to him, we receive them as the tokens of a
man, honest and awake. Little wonder that he refuses to be reckoned among
the professional prophets of his day, who found their inspiration in
excitement and trance. Upon him the impulses of the Deity come in no
artificial and morbid ecstasy, removed as far as possible from real life. They
come upon him, as it were, in the open air. They appeal to the senses of his
healthy and expert manhood. They convince him of their reality with the
same force as do the most startling events of his lonely shepherd watches.

The lion hath roared, who shall not fear? Jehovah hath spoken, who can but
prophesy?
The influence of the same discipline is still visible when Amos passes from
the facts of his own consciousness to the facts of his people's life. His day
in Israel sweltered with optimism. The glare of wealth, the fulsome love of
country, the rank incense of a religion that was without morality—these
thickened all the air, and neither the people nor their rulers had any vision.
But Amos carried with him his clear desert atmosphere and his desert eyes.
He saw the raw facts: the poverty, the cruel negligence of the rich, the
injustice of the rulers, the immorality of the priests. The meaning of these
things he questioned with as much persistence as he questioned every
suspicious sound or sight upon those pastures of Tekoa. He had no illusions:
he knew a mirage when he saw one. Neither the military pride of the
people, fostered by recent successes over Syria, nor the dogmas of their
religion, which asserted Jehovah's swift triumph upon the heathen, could
prevent him from knowing that the immorality of Israel meant Israel's
political downfall. He was one of those recruits from common life, by
whom religion and the state have at all times been reformed. Springing
from the laity and very often from among the working classes, their
freedom from dogmas and routine, as well as from the compromising
interests of wealth, rank and party, renders them experts in life to a degree
that almost no professional priest, statesman or journalist, however honest
or sympathetic, can hope to rival. Into politics they bring facts, but into
religion they bring vision.
It is of the utmost significance that this reformer, this founder of the highest
order of prophecy in Israel, should not only thus begin with facts, but to the
very end be occupied with almost nothing else, than the vision and record
of them. In Amos there is but one prospect of the Ideal. It does not break till
the close of his book, and then in such contrast to the plain and final
indictments, which constitute nearly all the rest of his prophesying, that
many have not unnaturally denied to him the verses which contain it.
Throughout the other chapters we have but the exposure of present facts,
material and moral, nor the sight of any future more distant than to-morrow
and the immediate consequences of to-day's deeds. Let us mark this. The
new prophecy which Amos started in Israel reached Divine heights of hope,
unfolded infinite powers of moral and political regeneration—dared to blot

out all the past, dared to believe all things possible in the future. But it
started from the truth about the moral situation of the present. Its first
prophet not only denied every popular dogma and ideal, but appears not to
have substituted for them any others. He spent his gifts of vision on the
discovery and appreciation of facts. Now this is necessary, not only in great
reformations of religion, but at almost every stage in her development. We
are constantly disposed to abuse even the most just and necessary of
religious ideals as substitutes for experience or as escapes from duty, and to
boast about the future before we have understood or mastered the present.
Hence the need of realists like Amos. Though they are destitute of dogma,
of comfort, of hope, of the ideal, let us not doubt that they also stand in the
succession of the prophets of the Lord.
Nay, this is a stage of prophecy on which may be fulfilled the prayer of
Moses: Would to God that all the Lord's people were prophets! To see the
truth and tell it, to be accurate and brave about the moral facts of our day—
to this extent the Vision and the Voice are possible for every one of us.
Never for us may the doors of heaven open, as they did for him who stood
on the threshold of the earthly temple, and he saw the Lord enthroned,
while the Seraphim of the Presence sang the glory. Never for us may the
skies fill with that tempest of life which Ezekiel beheld from Shinar, and
above it the sapphire throne, and on the throne the likeness of a man, the
likeness of the glory of the Lord. Yet let us remember that to see facts as
they are and to tell the truth about them—this also is prophecy. We may
inhabit a sphere which does not prompt the imagination, but is as destitute
of the historic and traditional as was the wilderness of Tekoa. All the more
may our unglamoured eyes be true to the facts about us. Every common day
leads forth her duties as shining as every night leads forth her stars. The
deeds and the fortunes of men are in our sight, and spell, to all who will
honestly read, the very Word of the Lord. If only we be loyal, then by him
who made the rude sounds and sights of the desert his sacraments, and
whose vigilance of things seen and temporal became the vision of things
unseen and eternal, we also shall see God, and be sure of His ways with
men.
Before we pass from the desert discipline of the prophet, we must notice
one of its effects, which, while it greatly enhanced the clearness of his
vision, undoubtedly disabled Amos for the highest prophetic rank. He who

lives in the desert lives without patriotism—detached and aloof. He may see
the throng of men more clearly than those who move among it. He cannot
possibly so much feel for them. Unlike Hosea, Isaiah and Jeremiah, Amos
was not a citizen of the kingdom against which he prophesied, and indeed
no proper citizen of any kingdom, but a nomad herdsman, hovering on the
desert borders of Judæa. He saw Israel from the outside. His message to her
is achieved with scarcely one sob in his voice. For the sake of the poor and
the oppressed among the people he is indignant. But with the erring,
staggering nation as a whole he has no real sympathy. His pity for her is
exhausted in one elegy and two brief intercessions; hardly more than once
does he even call her to repentance. His sense of justice, in fact, had almost
never to contend with his love. This made Amos the better witness, but the
worse prophet. He did not rise so high as his great successors, because he
did not so feel himself one with the people whom he was forced to
condemn, because he did not bear their fate as his own nor travail for their
new birth. "Ihm fehlt die Liebe." Love is the element lacking in his
prophecy; and therefore the words are true of him, which were uttered of
his great follower across this same wilderness of Judæa, that mighty as were
his voice and his message to prepare the way of the Lord, yet the least in
the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he.

2. The Word and its Origins.

Amos i. 2; iii. 3-8; and passim.

We have seen the preparation of the Man for the Word. We are now to ask,
Whence came the Word to the Man?—the Word that made him a prophet.
What were its sources and sanctions outside himself? These involve other
questions. How much of his message did Amos inherit from the previous
religion of his people? And how much did he teach for the first time in
Israel? And again, how much of this new element did he owe to the great
events of his day? And how much demands some other source of
inspiration?
To all these inquiries, outlines of the answers ought by this time to have
become visible. We have seen that the contents of the Book of Amos consist
almost entirely of two kinds: facts, actual or imminent, in the history of his

people; and certain moral principles of the most elementary order. Amos
appeals to no dogma nor form of law, nor to any religious or national
institution. Still more remarkably, he does not rely upon miracle nor any so-
called "supernatural sign." To employ the terms of Mazzini's famous
formula, Amos draws his materials solely from "conscience and history."
Within himself he hears certain moral principles speak in the voice of God,
and certain events of his day he recognises as the judicial acts of God. The
principles condemn the living generation of Israel as morally corrupt; the
events threaten the people with political extinction. From this agreement
between inward conviction and outward event Amos draws his full
confidence as a prophet, and enforces on the people his message of doom as
God's own word.
The passage in which Amos most explicitly illustrates this harmony
between event and conviction is one whose metaphors we have already
quoted in proof of the desert's influence upon the prophet's life. When Amos
asks, Can two walk together except they have made an appointment? his
figure is drawn, as we have seen, from the wilderness in which two men
will hardly meet except they have arranged to do so; but the truth, he would
illustrate by the figure, is that two sets of phenomena which coincide must
have sprung from a common purpose. Their conjunction forbids mere
chance. What kind of phenomena he means, he lets us see in his next
instance: Doth a lion roar in the jungle and have no prey? Doth a young
lion let forth his voice from his den except he be catching something? That
is, those ominous sounds never happen without some fell and terrible deed
happening along with them. Amos thus plainly hints that the two
phenomena on whose coincidence he insists are an utterance on one side,
and on the other side a deed fraught with destruction. The reading of the
next metaphor about the bird and the snare is uncertain; at most what it
means is that you never see signs of distress or a vain struggle to escape
without there being, though out of sight, some real cause for them.[155] But
from so general a principle he returns in his fourth metaphor to the special
coincidence between utterance and deed. Is the alarum-trumpet blown in a
city and do the people not tremble? Of course they do; they know such
sound is never made without the approach of calamity. But who is the
author of every calamity? God Himself: Shall there be evil in a city and
Jehovah not have done it? Very well then; we have seen that common life

has many instances in which, when an ominous sound is heard, it is because
it is closely linked with a fatal deed. These happen together, not by mere
chance, but because the one is the expression, the warning or the
explanation of the other. And we also know that fatal deeds which happen
to any community in Israel are from Jehovah. He is behind them. But they,
too, are accompanied by a warning voice from the same source as
themselves. This is the voice which the prophet hears in his heart—the
moral conviction which he feels as the Word of God. The Lord Jehovah
doeth nothing but He hath revealed His counsel to His servants the
prophets. Mark the grammar: the revelation comes first to the prophet's
heart; then he sees and recognises the event, and is confident to give his
message about it. So Amos, repeating his metaphor, sums up his argument.
The Lion hath roared, who shall not fear?—certain that there is more than
sound to happen. The Lord Jehovah hath spoken, who can but prophesy?—
certain that what Jehovah has spoken to him inwardly is likewise no mere
sound, but that deeds of judgment are about to happen, as the ominous
voice requires they should.[156]
The prophet then is made sure of his message by the agreement between the
inward convictions of his soul and the outward events of the day. When
these walk together, it proves that they have come of a common purpose.
He who causes the events—it is Jehovah Himself, for shall there be evil in
a city and Jehovah not have done it?—must be author also of the inner
voice or conviction which agrees with them. Who then can but prophesy?
Observe again that no support is here derived from miracle; nor is any claim
made for the prophet on the ground of his ability to foretell the event. It is
the agreement of the idea with the fact, their evident common origin in the
purpose of Jehovah, which makes a man sure that he has in him the Word of
God. Both are necessary, and together are enough. Are we then to leave the
origin of the Word in this coincidence of fact and thought—as it were an
electric flash produced by the contact of conviction with event? Hardly:
there are questions behind this coincidence. For instance, as to how the two
react on each other—the event provoking the conviction, the conviction
interpreting the event? The argument of Amos seems to imply that the
ethical principles are experienced by the prophet prior to the events which
justify them Is this so, or was the shock of the events required to awaken
the principles? And if the principles were prior, whence did Amos derive

them? These are some questions that will lead us to the very origins of
revelation.
The greatest of the events with which Amos and his contemporaries dealt
was the Assyrian invasion. In a previous chapter we have tried to estimate
the intellectual effects of Assyria on prophecy.[157] Assyria widened the
horizon of Israel, put the world to Hebrew eyes into a new perspective,
vastly increased the possibilities of history and set to religion a novel order
of problems. We can trace the effects upon Israel's conceptions of God, of
man and even of nature.[158] Now it might be plausibly argued that the new
prophecy in Israel was first stirred and quickened by all this mental shock
and strain, and that even the loftier ethics of the prophets were thus due to
the advance of Assyria. For, as the most vigilant watchmen of their day, the
prophets observed the rise of that empire, and felt its fatality for Israel.
Turning then to inquire the Divine reasons for such a destruction, they
found these in Israel's sinfulness, to the full extent of which their hearts
were at last awakened. According to such a theory the prophets were
politicians first and moralists afterwards: alarmists to begin with, and
preachers of repentance only second. Or—to recur to the language
employed above—the prophets' experience of the historical event preceded
their conviction of the moral principle which agreed with it.
In support of such a theory it is pointed out that after all the most original
element in the prophecy of the eighth century was the announcement of
Israel's fall and exile. The Righteousness of Jehovah had often previously
been enforced in Israel, but never had any voice drawn from it this awful
conclusion that the nation must perish. The first in Israel to dare this was
Amos, and surely what enabled him to do so was the imminence of Assyria
upon his people. Again, such a theory might plausibly point to the opening
verse of the Book of Amos, with its unprefaced, unexplained
pronouncement of doom upon Israel:—

The Lord roareth from Zion,
And giveth voice from Jerusalem;
And the pastures of the shepherds mourn,
And the summit of Carmel is withered!

Here, it might be averred, is the earliest prophet's earliest utterance. Is it not
audibly the voice of a man in a panic—such a panic as, ever on the eve of
historic convulsions, seizes the more sensitive minds of a doomed people?
The distant Assyrian thunder has reached Amos, on his pastures, unprepared
—unable to articulate its exact meaning, and with only faith enough to hear
in it the voice of his God. He needs reflection to unfold its contents; and the
process of this reflection we find through the rest of his book. There he
details for us, with increasing clearness, both the ethical reasons and the
political results of that Assyrian terror, by which he was at first so wildly
shocked into prophecy.
But the panic-born are always the still-born; and it is simply impossible that
prophecy, in all her ethical and religious vigour, can have been the daughter
of so fatal a birth. If we look again at the evidence which is quoted from
Amos in favour of such a theory, we shall see how fully it is contradicted by
other features of his book.
To begin with, we are not certain that the terror of the opening verse of
Amos is the Assyrian terror. Even if it were, the opening of a book does not
necessarily represent the writer's earliest feelings. The rest of the chapters
contain visions and oracles which obviously date from a time when Amos
was not yet startled by Assyria, but believed that the punishment which
Israel required might be accomplished through a series of physical
calamities—locusts, drought and pestilence.[159] Nay, it was not even these
earlier judgments, preceding the Assyrian, which stirred the word of God in
the prophet. He introduces them with a now and a therefore. That is to say,
he treats them only as the consequence of certain facts, the conclusion of
certain premises. These facts and premises are moral—they are exclusively
moral. They are the sins of Israel's life, regarded without illusion and
without pity. They are certain simple convictions, which fill the prophet's
heart, about the impossibility of the survival of any state which is so
perverse and so corrupt.
This origin of prophecy in moral facts and moral intuitions, which are in
their beginning independent of political events, may be illustrated by
several other points. For instance, the sins which Amos marked in Israel
were such as required no "red dawn of judgment" to expose their flagrance
and fatality. The abuse of justice, the cruelty of the rich, the shameless

immorality of the priests, are not sins which we feel only in the cool of the
day, when God Himself draws near to judgment. They are such things as
make men shiver in the sunshine. And so the Book of Amos, and not less
that of Hosea, tremble with the feeling that Israel's social corruption is great
enough of itself, without the aid of natural convulsions, to shake the very
basis of national life. Shall not the land tremble for this, Amos says after
reciting some sins, and every one that dwelleth therein?[160] Not drought
nor pestilence nor invasion is needed for Israel's doom, but the elemental
force of ruin which lies in the people's own wickedness. This is enough to
create gloom long before the political skies be overcast—or, as Amos
himself puts it, this is enough

To cause the sun to go down at noon,
And to darken the earth in the clear day.[161]

And once more—in spite of Assyria the ruin may be averted, if only the
people will repent: Seek good and not evil, and Jehovah of hosts will be
with you, as you say.[162] Assyria, however threatening, becomes irrelevant
to Israel's future from the moment that Israel repents.
Such beliefs, then, are obviously not the results of experience, nor of a keen
observation of history. They are the primal convictions of the heart, which
are deeper than all experience, and themselves contain the sources of
historical foresight. With Amos it was not the outward event which inspired
the inward conviction, but the conviction which anticipated and interpreted
the event, though when the event came there can be no doubt that it
confirmed, deepened, and articulated the conviction.[163]
But when we have thus tracked the stream of prophecy as far back as these
elementary convictions we have not reached the fountain-head. Whence did
Amos derive his simple and absolute ethics? Were they original to him?
Were they new in Israel? Such questions start an argument which touches
the very origins of revelation.
It is obvious that Amos not only takes for granted the laws of righteousness
which he enforces: he takes for granted also the people's conscience of
them. New, indeed, is the doom which sinful Israel deserves, and original to
himself is the proclamation of it; but Amos appeals to the moral principles

which justify the doom, as if they were not new, and as if Israel ought
always to have known them. This attitude of the prophet to his principles
has, in our time, suffered a curious judgment. It has been called an
anachronism. So absolute a morality, some say, had never before been
taught in Israel; nor had righteousness been so exclusively emphasised as
the purpose of Jehovah. Amos and the other prophets of his century were
the virtual "creators of ethical monotheism": it could only be by a prophetic
licence or prophetic fiction that he appealed to his people's conscience of
the standards he promulgated, or condemned his generation to death for not
having lived up to them.
Let us see how far this criticism is supported by the facts.
To no sane observer can the religious history of Israel appear as anything
but a course of gradual development. Even in the moral standards, in
respect to which it is confessedly often most difficult to prove growth, the
signs of the nation's progress are very manifest. Practices come to be
forbidden in Israel and tempers to be mitigated, which in earlier ages were
sanctioned to their extreme by the explicit decrees of religion. In the
nation's attitude to the outer world sympathies arise, along with ideals of
spiritual service, where previously only war and extermination had been
enforced in the name of the Deity. Now in such an evolution it is equally
indubitable that the longest and most rapid stage was the prophecy of the
eighth century. The prophets of that time condemn acts which had been
inspired by their immediate predecessors;[164] they abjure, as impeding
morality, a ceremonial which the spiritual leaders of earlier generations had
felt to be indispensable to religion; and they unfold ideals of the nation's
moral destiny, of which older writings give us only the faintest hints. Yet,
while the fact of a religious evolution in Israel is thus certain, we must not
fall into the vulgar error which interprets evolution as if it were mere
addition, nor forget that even in the most creative periods of religion
nothing is brought forth which has not already been promised, and, at some
earlier stage, placed, so to speak, within reach of the human mind. After all
it is the mind which grows; the moral ideals which become visible to its
more matured vision are so Divine that, when they present themselves, the
mind cannot but think they were always real and always imperative. If we
remember these commonplaces we shall do justice both to Amos and to his
critics.

In the first place it is clear that most of the morality which Amos enforced is
of that fundamental order which can never have been recognised as the
discovery or invention of any prophet. Whatever be their origin, the
conscience of justice, the duty of kindness to the poor, the horror of wanton
cruelty towards one's enemies, which form the chief principles of Amos, are
discernible in man as far back as history allows us to search for them.
Should a generation have lost them, they can be brought back to it, never
with the thrill of a new lesson, but only with the shame of an old and an
abused memory. To neither man nor people can the righteousness which
Amos preached appear as a discovery, but always as a recollection and a
remorse. And this is most emphatically true of the people of Moses and of
Samuel, of Nathan, of Elijah and of the Book of the Covenant. Ethical
elements had been characteristic of Israel's religion from the very first.
They were not due to a body of written law, but rather to the character of
Israel's God, appreciated by the nation in all the great crises of their history.
[165]
Jehovah had won for Israel freedom and unity. He had been a spirit of
justice to their lawgivers and magistrates.[166] He had raised up a succession
of consecrated personalities,[167] who by life and word had purified the
ideals of the whole people. The results had appeared in the creation of a
strong national conscience, which avenged with horror, as folly in Israel,
the wanton crimes of any person or section of the commonwealth; in the
gradual formation of a legal code, founded indeed in the common custom of
the Semites, but greatly more moral than that; and even in the attainment of
certain profoundly ethical beliefs about God and His relations, beyond
Israel, to all mankind. Now, let us understand once for all, that in the ethics
of Amos there is nothing which is not rooted in one or other of these
achievements of the previous religion of his people. To this religion Amos
felt himself attached in the closest possible way. The word of God comes to
him across the desert, as we have seen, yet not out of the air. From the first
he hears it rise from that one monument of his people's past which we have
found visible on his physical horizon[168]—from Zion, from Jerusalem,[169]
from the city of David, from the Ark, whose ministers were Moses and
Samuel, from the repository of the main tradition of Israel's religion.[170]
Amos felt himself in the sacred succession; and his feeling is confirmed by
the contents of his book. The details of that civic justice which he demands
from his generation are found in the Book of the Covenant—the only one of

Israel's great codes which appears by this time to have been in existence;
[171]
or in those popular proverbs which almost as certainly were found in
early Israel.[172]
Nor does Amos go elsewhere for the religious sanctions of his ethics. It is
by the ancient mercies of God towards Israel that he shames and convicts
his generation—by the deeds of grace which made them a nation, by the
organs of doctrine and reproof which have inspired them, unfailing from
age to age. I destroyed the Amorite before them.... Yea, I brought you up out
of the land of Egypt, and I led you forty years in the wilderness, to possess
the land of the Amorites. And I raised up of your sons for prophets, and of
your young men for Nazirites. Was it not even thus, O ye children of Israel?
saith Jehovah.[173] We cannot even say that the belief which Amos
expresses in Jehovah as the supreme Providence of the world[174] was a new
thing in Israel, for a belief as universal inspires those portions of the Book
of Genesis which, like the Book of the Covenant, were already extant.
We see, therefore, what right Amos had to present his ethical truths to
Israel, as if they were not new, but had been within reach of his people from
of old.
We could not, however, commit a greater mistake, than to confine the
inspiration of our prophet to the past, and interpret his doctrines as mere
inferences from the earlier religious ideas of Israel—inferences forced by
his own passionate logic, or more naturally ripened for him by the progress
of events. A recent writer has thus summarised the work of the prophets of
the eighth century: "In fact they laid hold upon that bias towards the ethical,
which dwelt in Jahwism from Moses onwards, and they allowed it alone to
have value as corresponding to the true religion of Jehovah."[175] But this is
too abstract to be an adequate statement of the prophets' own consciousness.
What overcame Amos was a Personal Influence—the Impression of a
Character; and it was this not only as it was revealed in the past of his
people. The God who stands behind Amos is indeed the ancient Deity of
Israel, and the facts which prove Him God are those which made the nation
—the Exodus, the guidance through the wilderness, the overthrow of the
Amorites, the gift of the land. Was it not even thus, O ye children of Israel?
But what beats and burns through the pages of Amos is not the memory of
those wonderful works, so much as a fresh vision and understanding of the

Living God who worked them. Amos has himself met with Jehovah on the
conditions of his own time—on the moral situation provided by the living
generation of Israel. By an intercourse conducted, not through the distant
signals of the past, but here and now, through the events of the prophet's
own day, Amos has received an original and overpowering conviction of his
people's God as absolute righteousness. What prophecy had hitherto felt in
part, and applied to one or other of the departments of Israel's life, Amos is
the first to feel in its fulness, and to every extreme of its consequences upon
the worship, the conduct and the fortunes of the nation. To him Jehovah not
only commands this and that righteous law, but Jehovah and righteousness
are absolutely identical. Seek Jehovah and ye shall live ... seek good and ye
shall live.[176] The absoluteness with which Amos conceived this principle,
the courage with which he applied it, carry him along those two great lines
upon which we most clearly trace his originality as a prophet. In the
strength of this principle he does what is really new in Israel: he discards
the two elements which had hitherto existed alongside the ethical, and had
fettered and warped it.

Up till now the ethical spirit of the religion of Jehovah[177] had to struggle
with two beliefs which we can trace back to the Semitic origins of the
religion—the belief, namely, that, as the national God, Jehovah would
always defend their political interests, irrespective of morality; and the
belief that a ceremonial of rites and sacrifices was indispensable to religion.
These principles were mutual: as the deity was bound to succour the people,
so were the people bound to supply the deity with gifts, and the more of
these they brought the more they made sure of his favours. Such views were
not absolutely devoid of moral benefit. In the formative period of the nation
they had contributed both discipline and hope. But of late they had between
them engrossed men's hearts, and crushed out of religion both conscience
and common-sense. By the first of them, the belief in Jehovah's predestined
protection of Israel, the people's eyes were so holden they could not see
how threatening were the times; by the other, the confidence in ceremonial,
conscience was dulled, and that immorality permitted which they mingled
so shamelessly with their religious zeal. Now the conscience of Amos did
not merely protest against the predominance of the two, but was so
exclusive, so spiritual, that it boldly banished both from religion. Amos
denied that Jehovah was bound to save His people; he affirmed that ritual

and sacrifice were no part of the service He demands from men. This is the
measure of originality in our prophet. The two religious principles which
were inherent in the very fibre of Semitic religion, and which till now had
gone unchallenged in Israel, Amos cast forth from religion in the name of a
pure and absolute righteousness. On the one hand, Jehovah's peculiar
connection with Israel meant no more than jealousy for their holiness: You
only have I known of all the families of the earth, therefore will I visit upon
you all your iniquities.[178] And, on the other hand, all their ceremonial was
abhorrent to Him: I hate, I despise your festivals.... Though ye offer Me
burnt offerings and your meal offerings, I will not accept them.... Take thou
away from Me the noise of thy songs; I will not hear the music of thy viols.
But let justice run down as waters, and righteousness as a perennial stream.
[179]

It has just been said that emphasis upon morality as the sum of religion, to
the exclusion of sacrifice, is the most original element in the prophecies of
Amos. He himself, however, does not regard this as proclaimed for the first
time in Israel, and the precedent he quotes is so illustrative of the sources of
his inspiration that we do well to look at it for a little. In the verse next to
the one last quoted he reports these words of God: Did ye offer unto Me
sacrifices and gifts in the wilderness, for forty years, O house of Israel? An
extraordinary challenge! From the present blind routine of sacrifice Jehovah
appeals to the beginning of His relations with the nation: did they then
perform such services to Him? Of course, a negative answer is expected.
No other agrees with the main contention of the passage. In the wilderness
Israel had not offered sacrifices and gifts to Jehovah. Jeremiah quotes a still
more explicit word of Jehovah: I spake not unto your fathers in the day that
I brought them out of the land of Egypt concerning burnt offerings and
sacrifices: but this thing I commanded them, saying, Obey My voice, and I
will be your God, and ye shall be My people.[180]
To these Divine statements we shall not be able to do justice if we hold by
the traditional view that the Levitical legislation was proclaimed in the
wilderness. Discount that legislation, and the statements become clear. It is
true, of course, that Israel must have had a ritual of some kind from the
first; and that both in the wilderness and in Canaan their spiritual leaders
must have performed sacrifices as if these were acceptable to Jehovah. But

even so the Divine words which Amos and Jeremiah quote are historically
correct; for while the ethical contents of the religion of Jehovah were its
original and essential contents—I commanded them, saying, Obey My voice
—the ritual was but a modification of the ritual common to all Semites; and
ever since the occupation of the land, it had, through the infection of the
Canaanite rites on the high places, grown more and more Pagan, both in its
functions and in the ideas which these were supposed to express.[181] Amos
was right. Sacrifice had never been the Divine, the revealed element in the
religion of Jehovah. Nevertheless, before Amos no prophet in Israel appears
to have said so. And what enabled this man in the eighth century to offer
testimony, so novel but so true, about the far-away beginnings of his
people's religion in the fourteenth, was plainly neither tradition nor
historical research, but an overwhelming conviction of the spiritual and
moral character of God—of Him who had been Israel's God both then and
now, and whose righteousness had been, just as much then as now, exalted
above all purely national interests and all susceptibility to ritual. When we
thus see the prophet's knowledge of the Living God enabling him, not only
to proclaim an ideal of religion more spiritual than Israel had yet dreamed,
but to perceive that such an ideal had been the essence of the religion of
Jehovah from the first, we understand how thoroughly Amos was mastered
by that knowledge. If we need any further proof of his "possession" by the
character of God, we find it in those phrases in which his own
consciousness disappears, and we have no longer the herald's report of the
Lord's words, but the very accents of the Lord Himself, fraught with
personal feeling of the most intense quality. I Jehovah hate, I despise your
feast days.... Take thou away from Me the noise of thy songs; I will not hear
the music of thy viols.[182]... I abhor the arrogance of Jacob, and hate his
palaces.[183]... The eyes of the Lord Jehovah are upon the sinful kingdom.
[184]
... Jehovah sweareth, I will never forget any of their works.[185] Such
sentences reveal a Deity who is not only manifest Character, but surgent
and importunate Feeling. We have traced the prophet's word to its ultimate
source. It springs from the righteousness, the vigilance, the urgency of the
Eternal. The intellect, imagination and heart of Amos—the convictions he
has inherited from his people's past, his conscience of their evil life to-day,
his impressions of current and coming history—are all enforced and
illuminated, all made impetuous and radiant, by the Spirit, that is to say the
Purpose and the Energy, of the Living God. Therefore, as he says in the title

of his book, or as some one says for him, Amos saw his words. They stood
out objective to himself. And they were not mere sound. They glowed and
burned with God.
When we realise this, we feel how inadequate it is to express prophecy in
the terms of evolution. No doubt, as we have seen, the ethics and religion of
Amos represent a large and measurable advance upon those of earlier Israel.
And yet with Amos we do not seem so much to have arrived at a new stage
in a Process, as to have penetrated to the Idea which has been behind the
Process from the beginning. The change and growth of Israel's religion are
realities—their fruits can be seen, defined, catalogued—but a greater reality
is the unseen Purpose which impels them. They have been expressed only
now. He has been unchanging from old and for ever—from the first
absolute righteousness in Himself, and absolute righteousness in His
demands from men.

3. The Prophet and his Ministry.

Amos vii., viii. 1-4.

We have seen the preparation of the Man for the Word; we have sought to
trace to its source the Word which came to the Man. It now remains for us
to follow the Prophet, Man and Word combined, upon his Ministry to the
people.

For reasons given in a previous chapter,[186] there must always be some
doubt as to the actual course of the ministry of Amos before his appearance
at Bethel. Most authorities, however, agree that the visions recounted in the
beginning of the seventh chapter form the substance of his address at
Bethel, which was interrupted by the priest Amaziah. These visions furnish
a probable summary of the prophet's experience up to that point. While they
follow the same course, which we trace in the two series of oracles that now
precede them in the book, the ideas in them are less elaborate. At the same
time it is evident that Amos must have already spoken upon other points
than those which he puts into the first three visions. For instance, Amaziah
reports to the king that Amos had explicitly predicted the exile of the whole
people[187]—a conviction which, as we have seen, the prophet reached only

after some length of experience. It is equally certain that Amos must have
already exposed the sins of the people in the light of the Divine
righteousness. Some of the sections of the book which deal with this subject
appear to have been originally spoken; and it is unnatural to suppose that
the prophet announced the chastisements of God without having previously
justified these to the consciences of men.
If this view be correct, Amos, having preached for some time to Israel
concerning the evil state of society, appeared at a great religious festival in
Bethel, determined to bring matters to a crisis, and to announce the doom
which his preaching threatened and the people's continued impenitence
made inevitable. Mark his choice of place and of audience. It was no mere
king he aimed at. Nathan had dealt with David, Gad with Solomon, Elijah
with Ahab and Jezebel. But Amos sought the people, them with whom
resided the real forces and responsibilities of life: the wealth, the social
fashions, the treatment of the poor, the spirit of worship, the ideals of
religion.[188] And Amos sought the people upon what was not only a great
popular occasion, but one on which was arrayed, in all pomp and
lavishness, the very system he essayed to overthrow. The religion of his
time—religion as mere ritual and sacrifice—was what God had sent him to
beat down, and he faced it at its headquarters, and upon one of its high
days, in the royal and popular sanctuary where it enjoyed at once the
patronage of the crown, the lavish gifts of the rich and the thronged
devotion of the multitude. As Savonarola at the Duomo in Florence, as
Luther at the Diet of Worms, as our Lord Himself at the feast in Jerusalem,
so was Amos at the feast in Bethel. Perhaps he was still more lonely. He
speaks nowhere of having made a disciple, and in the sea of faces which
turned on him when he spoke, it is probable that he could not welcome a
single ally. They were officials, or interested traders, or devotees; he was a
foreigner and a wild man, with a word that spared the popular dogma as
little as the royal prerogative. Well for him was it that over all those serried
ranks of authority, those fanatic crowds, that lavish splendour, another
vision commanded his eyes. I saw the Lord standing over the altar, and He
said, Smite.
Amos told the pilgrims at Bethel that the first events of his time in which he
felt a purpose of God in harmony with his convictions about Israel's need of
punishment were certain calamities of a physical kind. Of these, which in

chapter iv. he describes as successively drought, blasting, locusts, pestilence
and earthquake, he selected at Bethel only two—locusts and drought—and
he began with the locusts. It may have been either the same visitation as he
specifies in chapter iv., or a previous one; for of all the plagues of Palestine
locusts have been the most frequent, occurring every six or seven years.
Thus the Lord Jehovah caused me to see: and, behold, a brood[189] of
locusts at the beginning of the coming up of the spring crops. In the Syrian
year there are practically two tides of verdure: one which starts after the
early rains of October and continues through the winter, checked by the
cold; and one which comes away with greater force under the influence of
the latter rains and more genial airs of spring.[190] Of these it was the later
and richer which the locusts had attacked. And, behold, it was after the
king's mowings. These seem to have been a tribute which the kings of Israel
levied on the spring herbage, and which the Roman governors of Syria used
annually to impose in the month Nisan.[191] After the king's mowings would
be a phrase to mark the time when everybody else might turn to reap their
green stuff. It was thus the very crisis of the year when the locusts
appeared; the April crops devoured, there was no hope of further fodder till
December. Still, the calamity had happened before, and had been survived;
a nation so vigorous and wealthy as Israel was under Jeroboam II. need not
have been frightened to death. But Amos felt it with a conscience. To him it
was the beginning of that destruction of his people which the spirit within
him knew that their sin had earned. So it came to pass, when the locusts had
made an end of devouring the verdure of the earth, that I said, Remit, I pray
Thee, or pardon—a proof that there already weighed on the prophet's spirit
something more awful than loss of grass—how shall Jacob rise again? for
he is little.[192] The prayer was heard. Jehovah repented for this: It shall not
be, said Jehovah. The unnameable it must be the same as in the frequent
phrase of the first chapter: I will not turn It back—namely, the final
execution of doom on the people's sin. The reserve with which this is
mentioned, both while there is still chance for the people to repent and after
it has become irrevocable, is very impressive.
The next example which Amos gave at Bethel of his permitted insight into
God's purpose was a great drought. Thus the Lord Jehovah made me to see:
and, behold, the Lord Jehovah was calling fire into the quarrel.[193] There
was, then, already a quarrel between Jehovah and His people—another sign

that the prophet's moral conviction of Israel's sin preceded the rise of the
events in which he recognised its punishment. And the fire devoured the
Great Deep, yea, it was about to devour the land.[194] Severe drought in
Palestine might well be described as fire, even when it was not
accompanied by the flame and smoke of those forest and prairie fires which
Joel describes as its consequences.[195] But to have the full fear of such a
drought, we should need to feel beneath us the curious world which the men
of those days felt. To them the earth rested in a great deep, from whose
stores all her springs and fountains burst. When these failed it meant that
the unfathomed floods below were burnt up. But how fierce the flame that
could effect this! And how certainly able to devour next the solid land
which rested above the deep—the very Portion[196] assigned by God to His
people. Again Amos interceded: Lord Jehovah, I pray Thee forbear: how
shall Jacob rise? for he is little. And for the second time Jacob was
reprieved. Jehovah repented for this: It also shall not come to pass, said the
Lord Jehovah.
We have treated these visions, not as the imagination or prospect of possible
disasters,[197] but as insight into the meaning of actual plagues. Such a
treatment is justified, not only by the invariable habit of Amos to deal with
real facts, but also by the occurrence of these same plagues among the
series by which, as we are told, God had already sought to move the people
to repentance.[198] The general question of sympathy between such purely
physical disasters and the moral evil of a people we may postpone to
another chapter, confining ourselves here to the part played in the events by
the prophet himself.
Surely there is something wonderful in the attitude of this shepherd to the
fires and plagues that Nature sweeps upon his land. He is ready for them.
And he is ready not only by the general feeling of his time that such things
happen of the wrath of God. His sovereign and predictive conscience
recognises them as her ministers. They are sent to punish a people whom
she has already condemned. Yet, unlike Elijah, Amos does not summon the
drought, nor even welcome its arrival. How far has prophecy travelled since
the violent Tishbite! With all his conscience of Israel's sin, Amos yet prays
that their doom may be turned. We have here some evidence of the struggle
through which these later prophets passed, before they accepted their awful

messages to men. Even Amos, desert-bred and living aloof from Israel,
shrank from the judgment which it was his call to publish. For two
moments—they would appear to be the only two in his ministry—his heart
contended with his conscience, and twice he entreated God to forgive. At
Bethel he told the people all this, in order to show how unwillingly he took
up his duty against them, and how inevitable he found that duty to be. But
still more shall we learn from his tale, if we feel in his words about the
smallness of Jacob, not pity only, but sympathy. We shall learn that prophets
are never made solely by the bare word of God, but that even the most
objective and judicial of them has to earn his title to proclaim judgment by
suffering with men the agony of the judgment he proclaims. Never to a
people came there a true prophet who had not first prayed for them. To have
entreated for men, to have represented them in the highest courts of Being,
is to have deserved also supreme judicial rights upon them. And thus it is
that our Judge at the Last Day shall be none other than our great Advocate
who continually maketh intercession for us. It is prayer, let us repeat,
which, while it gives us all power with God, endows us at the same time
with moral rights over men. Upon his mission of judgment we shall follow
Amos with the greater sympathy that he thus comes forth to it from the
mercy-seat and the ministry of intercession.
The first two visions which Amos told at Bethel were of disasters in the
sphere of nature, but his third lay in the sphere of politics. The two former
were, in their completeness at least, averted; and the language Amos used of
them seems to imply that he had not even then faced the possibility of a
final overthrow. He took for granted Jacob was to rise again: he only feared
as to how this should be. But the third vision is so final that the prophet
does not even try to intercede. Israel is measured, found wanting and
doomed. Assyria is not named, but is obviously intended; and the fact that
the prophet arrives at certainty with regard to the doom of Israel, just when
he thus comes within sight of Assyria, is instructive as to the influence
exerted on prophecy by the rise of that empire.[199]
Thus He gave me to see: and, behold, the Lord had taken His station—'tis a
more solemn word than the stood of our versions—upon a city wall built to
the plummet,[200] and in His hand a plummet. And Jehovah said unto me,
What art thou seeing, Amos? The question surely betrays some
astonishment shown by the prophet at the vision or some difficulty he felt in

making it out. He evidently does not feel it at once, as the natural result of
his own thinking: it is objective and strange to him; he needs time to see
into it. And I said, A plummet. And the Lord said, Behold, I am setting a
plummet in the midst of My people Israel. I will not again pass them over.
To set a measuring line or a line with weights attached to any building
means to devote it to destruction;[201] but here it is uncertain whether the
plummet threatens destruction, or means that Jehovah will at last clearly
prove to the prophet the insufferable obliquity of the fabric of the nation's
life, originally set straight by Himself—originally a wall of a plummet. For
God's judgments are never arbitrary: by a standard we men can read He
shows us their necessity. Conscience itself is no mere voice of authority: it
is a convincing plummet, and plainly lets us see why we should be
punished. But whichever interpretation we choose, the result is the same.
The high places of Israel shall be desolate, and the sanctuaries of Isaac laid
waste; and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword. A
declaration of war! Israel is to be invaded, her dynasty overthrown. Every
one who heard the prophet would know, though he named them not, that the
Assyrians were meant.
It was apparently at this point that Amos was interrupted by Amaziah. The
priest, who was conscious of no spiritual power with which to oppose the
prophet, gladly grasped the opportunity afforded him by the mention of the
king, and fell back on the invariable resource of a barren and envious
sacerdotalism: He speaketh against Cæsar.[202] There follows one of the
great scenes of history—the scene which, however fast the ages and the
languages, the ideals and the deities may change, repeats itself with the
same two actors. Priest and Man face each other—Priest with King behind,
Man with God—and wage that debate in which the whole warfare and
progress of religion consist. But the story is only typical by being real.
Many subtle traits of human nature prove that we have here an exact
narrative of fact. Take Amaziah's report to Jeroboam. He gives to the words
of the prophet just that exaggeration and innuendo which betray the wily
courtier, who knows how to accentuate a general denunciation till it feels
like a personal attack. And yet, like every Caiaphas of his tribe, the priest in
his exaggerations expresses a deeper meaning than he is conscious of. Amos
—note how the mere mention of the name without description proves that
the prophet was already known in Israel, perhaps was one on whom the

authorities had long kept their eye—Amos hath conspired against thee—yet
God was his only fellow-conspirator!—in the midst of the house of Israel—
this royal temple at Bethel. The land is not able to hold his words—it must
burst; yes, but in another sense than thou meanest, O Caiaphas-Amaziah!
For thus hath Amos said, By the sword shall Jeroboam die—Amos had
spoken only of the dynasty, but the twist which Amaziah lends to the words
is calculated—and Israel going shall go into captivity from off his own
land. This was the one unvarnished spot in the report.
Having fortified himself, as little men will do, by his duty to the powers that
be, Amaziah dares to turn upon the prophet; and he does so, it is amusing to
observe, with that tone of intellectual and moral superiority which it is
extraordinary to see some men derive from a merely official station or touch
with royalty. Visionary,[203] begone! Get thee off to the land of Judah; and
earn[204] thy bread there, and there play the prophet. But at Bethel—mark
the rising accent of the voice—thou shalt not again prophesy. The King's
Sanctuary it is, and the House of the Kingdom.[205] With the official mind
this is more conclusive than that it is the House of God! In fact the speech
of Amaziah justifies the hardest terms which Amos uses of the religion of
his day. In all this priest says there is no trace of the spiritual—only fear,
pride and privilege. Divine truth is challenged by human law, and the Word
of God silenced in the name of the king.
We have here a conception of religion, which is not merely due to the
unspiritual character of the priest who utters it, but has its roots in the far
back origins of Israel's religion. The Pagan Semite identified absolutely
State and Church; and on that identification was based the religious practice
of early Israel. It had many healthy results: it kept religion in touch with
public life; order, justice, patriotism, self-sacrifice for the common weal,
were devoutly held to be matters of religion. So long, therefore, as the
system was inspired by truly spiritual ideals, nothing for those times could
be better. But we see in it an almost inevitable tendency to harden to the
sheerest officialism. That it was more apt to do so in Israel than in Judah, is
intelligible from the political origin of the Northern Schism, and the
erection of the national sanctuaries from motives of mere statecraft.[206]
Erastianism could hardly be more flagrant or more ludicrous in its
opposition to true religion than at Bethel. And yet how often have the

ludicrousness and the flagrancy been repeated, with far less temptation!
Ever since Christianity became a state religion, she that needed least to use
the weapons of this world has done so again and again in a thoroughly
Pagan fashion. The attempts of Churches by law established, to stamp out
by law all religious dissent; or where such attempts were no longer possible,
the charges now of fanaticism and now of sordidness and religious
shopkeeping, which have been so frequently made against dissent by little
men who fancied their state connection, or their higher social position, to
mean an intellectual and moral superiority; the absurd claims which many a
minister of religion makes upon the homes and the souls of a parish, by
virtue not of his calling in Christ, but of his position as official priest of the
parish,—all these are the sins of Amaziah, priest of Bethel. But they are not
confined to an established Church. The Amaziahs of dissent are also very
many. Wherever the official masters the spiritual; wherever mere dogma or
tradition is made the standard of preaching; wherever new doctrine is
silenced, or programmes of reform condemned, as of late years in Free
Churches they have sometimes been, not by spiritual argument, but by the
ipse dixit of the dogmatist, or by ecclesiastical rule or expediency,—there
you have the same spirit. The dissenter who checks the Word of God in the
name of some denominational law or dogma is as Erastian as the
churchman who would crush it, like Amaziah, by invoking the state. These
things in all the Churches are the beggarly rudiments of Paganism; and
religious reform is achieved, as it was that day at Bethel, by the abjuring of
officialism.
But Amos answered and said unto Amaziah, No prophet I, nor prophet's
son. But a herdsman[207] I, and a dresser of sycomores; and Jehovah took
me from behind the flock, and Jehovah said unto me, Go, prophesy unto My
people Israel.
On such words we do not comment; we give them homage. The answer of
this shepherd to this priest is no mere claim of personal disinterestedness. It
is the protest of a new order of prophecy,[208] the charter of a spiritual
religion. As we have seen, the sons of the prophets were guilds of men who
had taken to prophesying because of certain gifts of temper and natural
disposition, and they earned their bread by the exercise of these. Among
such abstract craftsmen Amos will not be reckoned. He is a prophet, but not
of the kind with which his generation was familiar. An ordinary member of

society, he has been suddenly called by Jehovah from his civil occupation
for a special purpose and by a call which has not necessarily to do with
either gifts or a profession. This was something new, not only in itself, but
in its consequences upon the general relations of God to men. What we see
in this dialogue at Bethel is, therefore, not merely the triumph of a
character, however heroic, but rather a step forward—and that one of the
greatest and most indispensable—in the history of religion.
There follows a denunciation of the man who sought to silence this fresh
voice of God. Now therefore hearken to the word of Jehovah thou that
sayest, Prophesy not against Israel, nor let drop thy words against the
house of Israel; therefore thus saith Jehovah.... Thou hast presumed to say;
Hear what God will say. Thou hast dared to set thine office and system
against His word and purpose. See how they must be swept away. In
defiance of its own rules the grammar flings forward to the beginnings of its
clauses, each detail of the priest's estate along with the scene of its
desecration. Thy wife in the city—shall play the harlot; and thy sons and thy
daughters by the sword—shall fall; and thy land by the measuring rope—
shall be divided; and thou in an unclean land—shalt die. Do not let us
blame the prophet for a coarse cruelty in the first of these details. He did not
invent it. With all the rest it formed an ordinary consequence of defeat in
the warfare of the times—an inevitable item of that general overthrow
which, with bitter emphasis, the prophet describes in Amaziah's own words:
Israel going shall go into captivity from off his own land.
There is added a vision in line with the three which preceded the priest's
interruption. We are therefore justified in supposing that Amos spoke it also
on this occasion, and in taking it as the close of his address at Bethel. Then
the Lord Jehovah gave me to see: and, behold, a basket of Ḳaits, that is,
summer fruit. And He said, What art thou seeing, Amos? And I said, A
basket of Ḳaits. And Jehovah said unto me, The Ḳets—the End—has come
upon My people Israel. I will not again pass them over. This does not carry
the prospect beyond the third vision, but it stamps its finality, and there is
therefore added a vivid realisation of the result. By four disjointed
lamentations, howls the prophet calls them, we are made to feel the last
shocks of the final collapse, and in the utter end an awful silence. And the
songs of the temple shall be changed into howls in that day, saith the Lord
Jehovah. Multitude of corpses! In every place! He hath cast out! Hush!

These then were probably the last words which Amos spoke to Israel. If so,
they form a curious echo of what was enforced upon himself, and he may
have meant them as such. He was cast out; he was silenced. They might
almost be the verbal repetition of the priest's orders. In any case the silence
is appropriate. But Amaziah little knew what power he had given to
prophecy the day he forbade it to speak. The gagged prophet began to write;
and those accents which, humanly speaking, might have died out with the
songs of the temple of Bethel were clothed upon with the immortality of
literature. Amos silenced wrote a book—first of prophets to do so—and this
is the book we have now to study.

CHAPTER VII
ATROCITIES AND ATROCITIES
Amos i. 3-ii.

Like all the prophets of Israel, Amos receives oracles for foreign nations.
Unlike them, however, he arranges these oracles not after, but before, his
indictment of his own people, and so as to lead up to this. His reason is
obvious and characteristic. If his aim be to enforce a religion independent of
his people's interests and privileges, how can he better do so than by
exhibiting its principles at work outside his people, and then, with the
impetus drained from many areas, sweep in upon the vested iniquities of
Israel herself? This is the course of the first section of his book—chapters i.
and ii. One by one the neighbours of Israel are cited and condemned in the
name of Jehovah; one by one they are told they must fall before the still
unnamed engine of the Divine Justice. But when Amos has stirred his
people's conscience and imagination by his judgment of their neighbours'
sins, he turns with the same formula on themselves. Are they morally
better? Are they more likely to resist Assyria? With greater detail he shows
them worse and their doom the heavier for all their privileges. Thus is
achieved an oratorical triumph, by tactics in harmony with the principles of
prophecy and remarkably suited to the tempers of that time.
But Amos achieves another feat, which extends far beyond his own day.
The sins he condemns in the heathen are at first sight very different from
those which he exposes within Israel. Not only are they sins of foreign
relations, of treaty and war, while Israel's are all civic and domestic; but
they are what we call the atrocities of Barbarism—wanton war, massacre
and sacrilege—while Israel's are rather the sins of Civilisation—the
pressure of the rich upon the poor, the bribery of justice, the seduction of
the innocent, personal impurity, and other evils of luxury. So great is this
difference that a critic more gifted with ingenuity than with insight might
plausibly distinguish in the section before us two prophets with two very
different views of national sin—a ruder prophet, and of course an earlier,

who judged nations only by the flagrant drunkenness of their war, and a
more subtle prophet, and of course a later, who exposed the masked
corruptions of their religion and their peace. Such a theory would be as
false as it would be plausible. For not only is the diversity of the objects of
the prophet's judgment explained by this, that Amos had no familiarity with
the interior life of other nations, and could only arraign their conduct at
those points where it broke into light in their foreign relations, while Israel's
civic life he knew to the very core. But Amos had besides a strong and a
deliberate aim in placing the sins of civilisation as the climax of a list of the
atrocities of barbarism. He would recall what men are always forgetting,
that the former are really more cruel and criminal than the latter; that
luxury, bribery and intolerance, the oppression of the poor, the corruption of
the innocent and the silencing of the prophet—what Christ calls offences
against His little ones—are even more awful atrocities than the wanton
horrors of barbarian warfare. If we keep in mind this moral purpose, we
shall study with more interest than we could otherwise do the somewhat
foreign details of this section. Horrible as the outrages are which Amos
describes, they were repeated only yesterday by Turkey: many of the crimes
with which he charges Israel blacken the life of Turkey's chief accuser,
Great Britain.
In his survey Amos includes all the six states of Palestine that bordered
upon Israel, and lay in the way of the advance of Assyria—Aram of
Damascus, Philistia, Tyre (for Phœnicia), Edom, Ammon and Moab. They
are not arranged in geographical order. The prophet begins with Aram in the
north-east, then leaps to Philistia in the south-west, comes north again to
Tyre, crosses to the south-east and Edom, leaps Moab to Ammon, and then
comes back to Moab. Nor is any other explanation of his order visible.
Damascus heads the list, no doubt, because her cruelties had been most felt
by Israel, and perhaps too because she lay most open to Assyria. It was also
natural to take next to Aram Philistia,[209] as Israel's other greatest foe; and
nearest to Philistia lay Tyre. The three south-eastern principalities come
together. But there may have been a chronological reason now unknown to
us.
The authenticity of the oracles on Tyre, Edom and Judah has been
questioned: it will be best to discuss each case as we come to it.

Each of the oracles is introduced by the formula: Thus saith, or hath said,
Jehovah: Because of three crimes of ... yea, because of four, I will not turn
It back. In harmony with the rest of the book,[210] Jehovah is represented as
moving to punishment, not for a single sin, but for repeated and cumulative
guilt. The unnamed It which God will not recall is not the word of
judgment, but the anger and the hand stretched forth to smite.[211] After the
formula, an instance of the nation's guilt is given, and then in almost
identical terms he decrees the destruction of all by war and captivity.
Assyria is not mentioned, but it is the Assyrian fashion of dealing with
conquered states which is described. Except in the case of Tyre and Edom,
the oracles conclude as they have begun, by asserting themselves to be the
word of Jehovah, or of Jehovah the Lord. It is no abstract righteousness
which condemns these foreign peoples, but the God of Israel, and their evil
deeds are described by the characteristic Hebrew word for sin—crimes,
revolts or treasons against Him.[212]

1. Aram of Damascus.—Thus hath Jehovah said: Because of three crimes
of Damascus, yea, because of four, I will not turn It back; for that they
threshed Gilead with iron—or basalt threshing-sledges. The word is iron,
but the Arabs of to-day call basalt iron; and the threshing-sledges, curved
slabs[213] drawn rapidly by horses over the heaped corn, are studded with
sharp basalt teeth that not only thresh out the grain, but chop the straw into
little pieces. So cruelly had Gilead been chopped by Hazael and his son
Ben-Hadad some fifty or forty years before Amos prophesied.[214]
Strongholds were burned, soldiers slain without quarter, children dashed to
pieces, and women with child put to a most atrocious end.[215] But I shall
send fire on the house of Hazael, and it shall devour the palaces of Ben-
Hadad—these names are chosen, not because they were typical of the
Damascus dynasty, but because they were the very names of the two
heaviest oppressors of Israel.[216] And I will break the bolt[217] of Damascus,
and cut off the inhabitant from Biḳ'ath-Aven—the Valley of Idolatry, so
called, perhaps, by a play upon Biḳ'ath On,[218] presumably the valley

between the Lebanons, still called the Beḳ'a, in which lay Heliopolis[219]—
and him that holdeth the sceptre from Beth-Eden—some royal Paradise in
that region of Damascus, which is still the Paradise of the Arab world—and
the people of Aram shall go captive to Ḳir—Kir in the unknown north, from
which they had come:[220] Jehovah hath said it.
2. Philistia.—Thus saith Jehovah: For three crimes of Gaza and for four I
will not turn It back, because they led captive a whole captivity, in order to
deliver them up to Edom. It is difficult to see what this means if not the
wholesale depopulation of a district in contrast to the enslavement of a few
captives of war. By all tribes of the ancient world, the captives of their bow
and spear were regarded as legitimate property: it was no offence to the
public conscience that they should be sold into slavery. But the Philistines
seem, without excuse of war, to have descended upon certain districts and
swept the whole of the population before them, for purely commercial
purposes. It was professional slave-catching. The Philistines were exactly
like the Arabs of to-day in Africa—not warriors who win their captives in
honourable fight, but slave-traders, pure and simple. In warfare in Arabia
itself it is still a matter of conscience with the wildest nomads not to
extinguish a hostile tribe, however bitter one be against them.[221] Gaza is
chiefly blamed by Amos, for she was the emporium of the trade on the
border of the desert, with roads and regular caravans to Petra and Elah on
the Gulf of Akaba, both of them places in Edom and depots for the traffic
with Arabia.[222] But I will cut off the inhabitant from Ashdod, and the
holder of the sceptre from Askalon, and I will turn My hand upon Ekron—
four of the five great Philistine towns, Gath being already destroyed, and
never again to be mentioned with the others[223]—and the last of the
Philistines shall perish: Jehovah hath said it.
3. Tyre.—Thus saith Jehovah: Because of three crimes of Tyre and because
of four I will not turn It back; for that they gave up a whole captivity to
Edom—the same market as in the previous charge—and did not remember
the covenant of brethren. We do not know to what this refers. The
alternatives are three: that the captives were Hebrews and the alliance one
between Israel and Edom; that the captives were Hebrews and the alliance
one between Israel and Tyre;[224] that the captives were Phœnicians and the
alliance the natural brotherhood of Tyre and the other Phœnician towns.[225]

But of these three alternatives the first is scarcely possible, for in such a
case the blame would have been rather Edom's in buying than Tyre's in
selling. The second is possible, for Israel and Tyre had lived in close
alliance for more than two centuries; but the phrase covenant of brethren is
not so well suited to a league between two tribes who felt themselves to
belong to fundamentally different races,[226] as to the close kinship of the
Phœnician communities. And although, in the scrappy records of Phœnician
history before this time, we find no instance of so gross an outrage by Tyre
on other Phœnicians, it is quite possible that such may have occurred.
During next century Tyre twice over basely took sides with Assyria in
suppressing the revolts of her sister cities.[227] Besides, the other Phœnician
towns are not included in the charge. We have every reason, therefore, to
believe that Amos expresses here not resentment against a betrayal of Israel,
but indignation at an outrage upon natural rights and feelings with which
Israel's own interests were not in any way concerned. And this also suits the
lofty spirit of the whole prophecy. But I will send fire upon the wall of Tyre,
and it shall devour her palaces....

This oracle against Tyre has been suspected by Wellhausen,[228] for the
following reasons: that it is of Tyre alone, and silence is kept regarding the
other Phœnician cities, while in the case of Philistia other towns than Gaza
are condemned; that the charge is the same as against Gaza; and that the
usual close to the formula is wanting. But it would have been strange if
from a list of states threatened by the Assyrian doom we had missed Tyre,
Tyre which lay in the avenger's very path. Again, that so acute a critic as
Wellhausen should cite the absence of other Phœnician towns from the
charge against Tyre is really amazing, when he has just allowed that it was
probably against some or all of these cities that Tyre's crime was
committed. How could they be included in the blame of an outrage done
upon themselves? The absence of the usual formula at the close may
perhaps be explained by omission, as indicated above.[229]
4. Edom.—Thus saith Jehovah: Because of three crimes of Edom and
because of four I will not turn It back; for that he pursued with the sword
his brother, who cannot be any other than Israel, corrupted his natural
feelings—literally his bowels of mercies—and kept aye fretting[230] his
anger, and his passion he watched—like a fire, or paid heed to it—for ever.

[231]
But I will send fire upon Teman—the South Region belonging to Edom
—and it shall devour the palaces of Boṣrah—the Edomite Boṣrah, south-
east of Petra.[232] The Assyrians had already compelled Edom to pay tribute.
[233]

The objections to the authenticity of this oracle are more serious than those
in the case of the oracle on Tyre. It has been remarked[234] that before the
Jewish Exile so severe a tone could not have been adopted by a Jew against
Edom, who had been mostly under the yoke of Judah, and not leniently
treated. What were the facts? Joab subdued Edom for David with great
cruelty.[235] Jewish governors were set over the conquered people, and this
state of affairs seems to have lasted, in spite of an Edomite attempt against
Solomon,[236] till 850. In Jehoshaphat's reign, 873-850, there was no king of
Edom, a deputy was king, who towards 850 joined the kings of Judah and
Israel in an invasion of Moab through his territory.[237] But, soon after this
invasion and perhaps in consequence of its failure, Edom revolted from
Joram of Judah (849-842), who unsuccessfully attempted to put down the
revolt.[238] The Edomites appear to have remained independent for fifty
years at least. Amaziah of Judah (797-779) smote them,[239] but not it would
seem into subjection, for, according to the Chronicler, Uzziah had to win
back Elath for the Jews after Amaziah's death.[240] The history, therefore, of
the relations of Judah and Edom before the time of Amos was of such a
kind as to make credible the existence in Judah at that time of the feeling
about Edom which inspires this oracle. Edom had shown just the vigilant,
implacable hatred here described. But was the right to blame them for it
Judah's, who herself had so persistently waged war, with confessed cruelty,
against Edom? Could a Judæan prophet be just in blaming Edom and saying
nothing of Judah? It is true that in the fifty years of Edom's independence—
the period, we must remember, from which Amos seems to draw the
materials of all his other charges—there may have been events to justify
this oracle as spoken by him; and our ignorance of that period is ample
reason why we should pause before rejecting the oracle so dogmatically as
Wellhausen does. But we have at least serious grounds for suspecting it. To
charge Edom, whom Judah has conquered and treated cruelly, with restless
hate towards Judah seems to fall below that high impartial tone which
prevails in the other oracles of this section. The charge was much more

justifiable at the time of the Exile, when Edom did behave shamefully
towards Israel.[241] Wellhausen points out that Teman and Boṣrah are names
which do not occur in the Old Testament before the Exile, but this is
uncertain and inconclusive. The oracle wants the concluding formula of the
rest.[242]
5. Ammon.—Thus saith Jehovah: Because of three crimes of Ammon and
because of four I will not turn It back; for that they ripped up Gilead's
women with child—in order to enlarge their borders! For such an end they
committed such an atrocity! The crime is one that has been more or less
frequent in Semitic warfare. Wellhausen cites several instances in the feuds
of Arab tribes about their frontiers. The Turks have been guilty of it in our
own day.[243] It is the same charge which the historian of Israel puts into the
mouth of Elisha against Hazael of Aram,[244] and probably the war was the
same; when Gilead was simultaneously attacked by Arameans from the
north and Ammonites from the south. But I will set fire to the wall of
Rabbah—Rabbath-Ammon, literally chief or capital of Ammon—and it
shall devour her palaces, with clamour in the day of battle, with tempest in
the day of storm. As we speak of "storming a city," Amos and Isaiah[245] use
the tempest to describe the overwhelming invasion of Assyria. There
follows the characteristic Assyrian conclusion: And their king shall go into
captivity, he and his princes[246] together, saith Jehovah.
6. Moab.—Thus saith Jehovah: Because of three crimes of Moab and
because of four I will not turn It back; for that he burned the bones of the
king of Edom to lime.[247] In the great invasion of Moab, about 850, by
Israel, Judah and Edom conjointly, the rage of Moab seems to have been
directed chiefly against Edom.[248] Whether opportunity to appease that
rage occurred on the withdrawal of Israel we cannot say. But either then or
afterwards, balked of their attempt to secure the king of Edom alive, Moab
wreaked their vengeance on his corpse, and burnt his bones to lime. It was,
in the religious belief of all antiquity, a sacrilege; yet it does not seem to
have been the desecration of the tomb—or he would have mentioned it—
but the wanton meanness of the deed, which Amos felt. And I will send fire
on Moab, and it shall devour the palaces of The-Cities—Ḳerîoth,[249]
perhaps the present Ḳureiyat,[250] on the Moab plateau where Chemosh had

his shrine[251]—and in tumult shall Moab die—to Jeremiah[252] the
Moabites were the sons of tumult—with clamour and with the noise of the
war-trumpet. And I will cut off the ruler—literally judge, probably the
vassal king placed by Jeroboam II.—from her[253] midst, and all his[254]
princes will I slay with him: Jehovah hath said it.

These, then, are the charges which Amos brings against the heathen
neighbours of Israel.
If we look as a whole across the details through which we have been
working, what we see is a picture of the Semitic world so summary and so
vivid that we get the like of it nowhere else—the Semitic world in its
characteristic brokenness and turbulence; its factions and ferocities, its
causeless raids and quarrels, tribal disputes about boundaries flaring up into
the most terrible massacres, vengeance that wreaks itself alike on the
embryo and the corpse—cutting up women with child in Gilead, and
burning to lime the bones of the king of Edom. And the one commerce
which binds these ferocious tribes together is the slave-trade in its
wholesale and most odious form.
Amos treats none of the atrocities subjectively. It is not because they have
been inflicted upon Israel that he feels or condemns them. The appeals of
Israel against the tyrant become many as the centuries go on; the later parts
of the Old Testament are full of the complaints of God's chosen people,
conscious of their mission to the world, against the heathen, who prevented
them from it. Here we find none of these complaints, but a strictly objective
and judicial indictment of the characteristic crimes of heathen men against
each other; and though this is made in the name of Jehovah, it is not in the
interests of His people or of any of His purposes through them, but solely
by the standard of an impartial righteousness which, as we are soon to hear,
must descend in equal judgment on Israel.
Again, for the moral principles which Amos enforces no originality can be
claimed. He condemns neither war as a whole nor slavery as a whole, but

limits his curse to wanton and deliberate aggravations of them: to the slave-
trade in cold blood, in violation of treaties and for purely commercial ends;
[255]
to war for trifling causes, and that wreaks itself on pregnant women
and dead men; to national hatreds, that never will be still. Now against such
things there has always been in mankind a strong conscience, of which the
word "humanity" is in itself a sufficient proof. We need not here inquire into
the origin of such a common sense—whether it be some native impulse of
tenderness which asserts itself as soon as the duties of self-defence are
exhausted, or some rational notion of the needlessness of excesses, or
whether, in committing these, men are visited by fear of retaliation from the
wrath they have unnecessarily exasperated. Certain it is, that warriors of all
races have hesitated to be wanton in their war, and have foreboded the
special judgment of heaven upon every blind extravagance of hate or
cruelty. It is well known how "fey" the Greeks felt the insolence of power
and immoderate anger; they are the fatal element in many a Greek tragedy.
[256]
But the Semites themselves, whose racial ferocity is so notorious, are
not without the same feeling. "Even the Beduins' old cruel rancours are
often less than the golden piety of the wilderness. The danger past, they can
think of the defeated foemen with kindness, ... putting only their trust in
Ullah to obtain the like at need for themselves. It is contrary to the Arabian
conscience to extinguish a Kabîla."[257] Similarly in Israel some of the
earliest ethical movements were revolts of the public conscience against
horrible outrages, like that, for instance, done by the Benjamites of Gibeah.
[258]
Therefore in these oracles on his wild Semitic neighbours Amos
discloses no new ideal for either tribe or individual. Our view is confirmed
that he was intent only upon rousing the natural conscience of his Hebrew
hearers in order to engage this upon other vices to which it was less
impressionable—that he was describing those deeds of war and slavery,
whose atrocity all men admitted, only that he might proceed to bring under
the same condemnation the civic and domestic sins of Israel.
We turn with him, then, to Israel. But in his book as it now stands in our
Bibles, Israel is not immediately reached. Between her and the foreign
nations two verses are bestowed upon Judah: Thus saith Jehovah: Because
of three crimes of Judah and because of four I will not turn It back; for that
they despised the Torah of Jehovah, and His statutes they did not observe,
and their falsehoods—false gods—led them astray, after which their fathers

walked. But I will send fire on Judah, and it shall devour the palaces of
Jerusalem. These verses have been suspected as a later insertion,[259] on the
ground that every reference to Judah in the Book of Amos must be late, that
the language is very formal, and that the phrases in which the sin of Judah
is described sound like echoes of Deuteronomy. The first of these reasons
may be dismissed as absurd; it would have been far more strange if Amos
had never at all referred to Judah.[260] The charges, however, are not like
those which Amos elsewhere makes, and though the phrases may be quite
as early as his time,[261] the reader of the original, and even the reader of the
English version, is aware of a certain tameness and vagueness of statement,
which contrasts remarkably with the usual pungency of the prophet's style.
We are forced to suspect the authenticity of these verses.
We ought to pass, then, straight from the third to the sixth verse of this
chapter, from the oracles on foreign nations to that on Northern Israel. It is
introduced with the same formula as they are: Thus saith Jehovah: Because
of three crimes of Israel and because of four I will not turn It back. But
there follow a greater number of details, for Amos has come among his own
people whom he knows to the heart, and he applies to them a standard more
exact and an obligation more heavy than any he could lay to the life of the
heathen. Let us run quickly through the items of his charge. For that they
sell an honest man[262] for silver, and a needy man for a pair of shoes—
proverbial, as we should say "for an old song"—who trample to the dust of
the earth the head of the poor—the least improbable rendering of a corrupt
passage[263]—and pervert the way of humble men. And a man and his father
will go into the maid, the same maid,[264] to desecrate My Holy Name—
without doubt some public form of unchastity introduced from the
Canaanite worship into the very sanctuary of Jehovah, the holy place where
He reveals His Name—and on garments given in pledge they stretch
themselves by every altar, and the wine of those who have been fined they
drink in the house of their God. A riot of sin: the material of their revels is
the miseries of the poor, its stage the house of God! Such is religion to the
Israel of Amos' day—indoors, feverish, sensual. By one of the sudden
contrasts he loves, Amos sweeps out of it into God's ideal of religion—a
great historical movement, told in the language of the open air: national
deliverance, guidance on the highways of the world, the inspiration of
prophecy, and the pure, ascetic life. But I, I destroyed the Amorite[265]

before you, whose height was as the cedars, and he was strong as oaks, and
I destroyed his fruit from above and his roots from below. What a contrast to
the previous picture of the temple filled with fumes of wine and hot with
lust! We are out on open history; God's gales blow and the forests crash
before them. And I brought you up out of the land of Egypt, and led you
through the wilderness forty years, to inherit the land of the Amorite.
Religion is not chambering and wantonness; it is not selfish comfort or
profiting by the miseries of the poor and the sins of the fallen. But religion
is history—the freedom of the people and their education, the winning of
the land and the defeat of the heathen foe; and then, when the land is firm
and the home secure, it is the raising, upon that stage and shelter, of
spiritual guides and examples. And I raised up of your sons to be prophets,
and of your young men to be Nazirites—consecrated and ascetic lives. Is it
not so, O children of Israel? (oracle of Jehovah). But ye made the Nazirites
drink wine, and the prophets ye charged, saying, Prophesy not!
Luxury, then, and a very sensual conception of religion, with all their
vicious offspring in the abuse of justice, the oppression of the poor, the
corrupting of the innocent, and the intolerance of spiritual forces—these are
the sins of an enlightened and civilised people, which Amos describes as
worse than all the atrocities of barbarism, and as certain of Divine
vengeance. How far beyond his own day are his words still warm! Here in
the nineteenth century is Great Britain, destroyer of the slave-traffic, and
champion of oppressed nationalities—yet this great and Christian people, at
the very time they are abolishing slavery, suffer their own children to work
in factories and clay-pits for sixteen hours a day, and in mines set women to
a labour for which horses are deemed too valuable. Things improve after
1848, but how slowly and against what callousness of Christians Lord
Shaftesbury's long and often disappointed labours painfully testify. Even yet
our religious public, that curses the Turk, and in an indignation, which can
never be too warm, cries out against the Armenian atrocities, is callous, nay,
by the avarice of some, the haste and passion for enjoyment of many more,
and the thoughtlessness of all, itself contributes, to conditions of life and
fashions of society, which bear with cruelty upon our poor, taint our
literature, needlessly increase the temptations of our large towns, and render
pure childlife impossible among masses of our population. Along some of

the highways of our Christian civilisation we are just as cruel and just as
lustful as Kurd or Turk.

Amos closes this prophecy with a vision of immediate judgment. Behold, I
am about to crush or squeeze down upon you, as a waggon crushes[266] that
is full of sheaves.[267] An alternative reading supplies the same general
impression of a crushing judgment: I will make the ground quake under
you, as a waggon makes it quake, or as a waggon itself quakes under its
load of sheaves. This shock is to be War. Flight shall perish from the swift,
and the strong shall not prove his power, nor the mighty man escape with
his life. And he that graspeth the bow shall not stand, nor shall the swift of
foot escape, nor the horseman escape with his life. And he that thinketh
himself strong among the heroes shall flee away naked in that day—'tis the
oracle of Jehovah.

CHAPTER VIII
CIVILISATION AND JUDGMENT
Amos iii.-iv. 3.

We now enter the Second Section of the Book of Amos: chaps. iii.-vi. It is a
collection of various oracles of denunciation, grouped partly by the
recurrence of the formula Hear this word, which stands at the head of our
present chapters iii., iv. and v., which are therefore probably due to it; partly
by two cries of Woe at v. 18 and vi. 1; and also by the fact that each of the
groups thus started leads up to an emphatic, though not at first detailed,
prediction of the nation's doom (iii. 13-15; iv. 3; iv. 12; v. 16, 17; v. 26, 27;
vi. 14). Within these divisions lie a number of short indictments, sentences
of judgment and the like, which have no further logical connection than is
supplied by their general sameness of subject, and a perceptible increase of
articulateness from beginning to end of the Section. The sins of Israel are
more detailed, and the judgment of war, coming from the North, advances
gradually till we discern the unmistakable ranks of Assyria. But there are
various parentheses and interruptions, which cause the student of the text no
little difficulty. Some of these, however, may be only apparent: it will
always be a question whether their want of immediate connection with what
precedes them is not due to the loss of several words from the text rather
than to their own intrusion into it. Of others it is true that they are obviously
out of place as they lie; their removal brings together verses which
evidently belong to each other. Even such parentheses, however, may be
from Amos himself. It is only where a verse, besides interrupting the
argument, seems to reflect a historical situation later than the prophet's day,
that we can be sure it is not his own. And in all this textual criticism we
must keep in mind, that the obscurity of the present text of a verse, so far
from being an adequate proof of its subsequent insertion, may be the very
token of its antiquity, scribes or translators of later date having been unable
to understand it. To reject a verse, only because we do not see the
connection, would surely be as arbitrary, as the opposite habit of those who,

missing a connection, invent one, and then exhibit their artificial joint as
evidence of the integrity of the whole passage. In fact we must avoid all
headstrong surgery, for to a great extent we work in the dark.
The general subject of the Section may be indicated by the title: Religion
and Civilisation. A vigorous community, wealthy, cultured and honestly
religious, are, at a time of settled peace and growing power, threatened, in
the name of the God of justice, with their complete political overthrow.
Their civilisation is counted for nothing; their religion, on which they base
their confidence, is denounced as false and unavailing. These two subjects
are not, and could not have been, separated by the prophet in any one of his
oracles. But in the first, the briefest and most summary of these, chaps. iii.-
iv. 3, it is mainly with the doom of the civil structure of Israel's life that
Amos deals; and it will be more convenient for us to take them first, with
all due reference to the echoes of them in later parts of the Section. From iv.
4-vi. it is the Religion and its false peace which he assaults; and we shall
take that in the next chapter. First, then, Civilisation and Judgment (iii.-iv.
3); Second, The False Peace of Ritual (iv. 4-vi.).

These few brief oracles open upon the same note as that in which the
previous Section closed—that the crimes of Israel are greater than those of
the heathen; and that the people's peculiar relation to God means, not their
security, but their greater judgment. It is then affirmed that Israel's wealth
and social life are so sapped by luxury and injustice that the nation must
perish. And, as in every luxurious community the women deserve especial
blame, the last of the group of oracles is reserved for them (iv. 1-3).
Hear this word, which Jehovah hath spoken against you, O children of
Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt
—Judah as well as North Israel, so that we see the vanity of a criticism
which would cast out of the Book of Amos as unauthentic every reference
to Judah. Only you have I known of all the families of the ground—not
world, but ground, purposely chosen to stamp the meanness and mortality
of them all—therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities.

This famous text has been called by various writers "the keynote," "the
licence" and "the charter" of prophecy. But the names are too petty for what
is not less than the fulmination of an element. It is a peal of thunder we
hear. It is, in a moment, the explosion and discharge of the full storm of
prophecy. As when from a burst cloud the streams immediately below rise
suddenly and all their banks are overflowed, so the prophecies that follow
surge and rise clear of the old limits of Israel's faith by the unconfined,
unmeasured flood of heaven's justice that breaks forth by this single verse.
Now, once for all, are submerged the lines of custom and tradition within
which the course of religion has hitherto flowed; and, as it were, the surface
of the world is altered. It is a crisis which has happened more than once
again in history: when helpless man has felt the absolute relentlessness of
the moral issues of life; their renunciation of the past, however much they
have helped to form it; their sacrifice of every development however costly,
and of every hope however pure; their deafness to prayer, their indifference
to penitence; when no faith saves a Church, no courage a people, no culture
or prestige even the most exalted order of men; but at the bare hands of a
judgment, uncouth of voice and often unconscious of a Divine mission, the
results of a great civilisation are for its sins swept remorselessly away.
Before the storm bursts, we learn by its lightnings some truths from the old
life that is to be destroyed. You only have I known of all the families of the
ground: therefore will I visit your iniquities upon you. Religion is no
insurance against judgment, no mere atonement and escape from
consequences. Escape! Religion is only opportunity—the greatest moral
opportunity which men have, and which if they violate nothing remains for
them but a certain fearful looking forward unto judgment. You only have I
known; and because you did not take the moral advantage of My
intercourse, because you felt it only as privilege and pride, pardon for the
past and security for the future, therefore doom the more inexorable awaits
you.
Then as if the people had interrupted him with the question, What sign do
you give us that this judgment is near?—Amos goes aside into that noble
digression (vv. 3-8) on the harmony between the prophet's word and the
imminent events of the time, which we have already studied.[268] From this
apologia, verse 9 returns to the note of verses 1 and 2 and develops it. Not
only is Israel's responsibility greater than that of other people's. Her crimes

themselves are more heinous. Make proclamation over the palaces in
Ashdod—if we are not to read Assyria here,[269] then the name of Ashdod
has perhaps been selected from all other heathen names because of its
similarity to the Hebrew word for that violence[270] with which Amos is
charging the people—and over the palaces of the land of Egypt, and say,
Gather upon the Mount[271] of Samaria and see! Confusions manifold in the
midst of her; violence to her very core! Yea, they know not how to do
uprightness, saith Jehovah, who store up wrong and violence in their
palaces.
"To their crimes," said the satirist of the Romans, "they owe their gardens,
palaces, stables and fine old plate."[272] And William Langland declared of
the rich English of his day:—

"For toke thei on trewly · they tymbred not so heigh,
Ne boughte non burgages · be ye full certayne."[273]

Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Siege and Blockade of the Land![274]
And they shall bring down from off thee thy fortresses, and plundered shall
be thy palaces. Yet this shall be no ordinary tide of Eastern war, to ebb like
the Syrian as it flowed, and leave the nation to rally on their land again. For
Assyria devours the peoples. Thus saith Jehovah: As the shepherd saveth
from the mouth of the lion a pair of shin-bones or a bit of an ear, so shall
the children of Israel be saved—they who sit in Samaria in the corner of the
diwan and ... on a couch.[275] The description, as will be seen from the note
below, is obscure. Some think it is intended to satirise a novel and affected
fashion of sitting adopted by the rich. Much more probably it means that
carnal security in the luxuries of civilisation which Amos threatens more
than once in similar phrases.[276] The corner of the diwan is in Eastern
houses the seat of honour.[277] To this desert shepherd, with only the hard
ground to rest on, the couches and ivory-mounted diwans of the rich must
have seemed the very symbols of extravagance. But the pampered bodies
that loll their lazy lengths upon them shall be left like the crumbs of a lion's
meal—two shin-bones and the bit of an ear! Their whole civilisation shall
perish with them. Hearken and testify against the house of Israel—oracle of
the Lord Jehovah, God of Hosts[278]—those addressed are still the heathen
summoned in ver. 9. For on the day when I visit the crimes of Israel upon
him, I shall then make visitation upon the altars of Bethel, and the horns of
the altar, which men grasp in their last despair, shall be smitten and fall to
the earth. And I will strike the winter-house upon the summer-house, and
the ivory houses shall perish, yea, swept away shall be houses many—
oracle of Jehovah.
But the luxury of no civilisation can be measured without its women, and to
the women of Samaria Amos now turns with the most scornful of all his
words. Hear this word—this for you—kine of Bashan that are in the mount
of Samaria, that oppress the poor, that crush the needy, that say to their
lords, Bring, and let us drink. Sworn hath the Lord Jehovah by His holiness,
lo, days are coming when there shall be a taking away of you with hooks,
and of the last of you with fish-hooks. They put hooks[279] in the nostrils of

unruly cattle, and the figure is often applied to human captives;[280] but so
many should these cattle of Samaria be that for the last of them fish-hooks
must be used. Yea, by the breaches in the wall of the stormed city shall ye
go out, every one headlong, and ye shall be cast ...[281] oracle of Jehovah. It
is a cowherd's rough picture of women: a troop of kine—heavy, heedless
animals, trampling in their anxiety for food upon every frail and lowly
object in the way. But there is a prophet's insight into character. Not of
Jezebels, or Messalinas, or Lady-Macbeths is it spoken, but of the ordinary
matrons of Samaria. Thoughtlessness and luxury are able to make brutes out
of women of gentle nurture, with homes and a religion.[282]

Such are these three or four short oracles of Amos. They are probably
among his earliest—the first peremptory challenges of prophecy to that
great stronghold which before forty years she is to see thrown down in
obedience to her word. As yet, however, there seems to be nothing to justify
the menaces of Amos. Fair and stable rises the structure of Israel's life. A
nation, who know themselves elect, who in politics are prosperous and in
religion proof to every doubt, build high their palaces, see the skies above
them unclouded, and bask in their pride, heaven's favourites without a fear.
This man, solitary and sudden from his desert, springs upon them in the
name of God and their poor. Straighter word never came from Deity:
Jehovah hath spoken, who can but prophesy? The insight of it, the justice of
it, are alike convincing. Yet at first it appears as if it were sped on the
personal and very human passion of its herald. For Amos not only uses the
desert's cruelties—the lion's to the sheep—to figure God's impending
judgment upon His people, but he enforces the latter with all a desert-bred
man's horror of cities and civilisation. It is their costly furniture, their lavish
and complex building, on which he sees the storm break. We seem to hear
again that frequent phrase of the previous section: the fire shall devour the
palaces thereof. The palaces, he says, are simply storehouses of oppression;
the palaces will be plundered. Here, as throughout his book,[283] couches
and diwans draw forth the scorn of a man accustomed to the simple

furniture of the tent. But observe his especial hatred of houses. Four times
in one verse he smites them: winter-house on summer-house and the ivory
houses shall perish—yea, houses manifold, saith the Lord. So in another
oracle of the same section: Houses of ashlar ye have built, and ye shall not
inhabit them; vineyards of delight have ye planted, and ye shall not drink of
their wine.[284] And in another: I loathe the pride of Jacob, and his palaces I
hate; and I will give up a city and all that is in it.... For, lo, the Lord is
about to command, and He will smite the great house into ruins and the
small house into splinters.[285] No wonder that such a prophet found war
with its breached walls insufficient, and welcomed, as the full ally of his
word, the earthquake itself.[286]
Yet all this is no mere desert "razzia" in the name of the Lord, a nomad's
hatred of cities and the culture of settled men. It is not a temper; it is a
vision of history. In the only argument which these early oracles contain,
Amos claims to have events on the side of his word. Shall the lion roar and
not be catching something? Neither does the prophet speak till he knows
that God is ready to act. History accepted this claim. Amos spoke about
755. In 734 Tiglath-Pileser swept Gilead and Galilee; in 724 Shalmaneser
overran the rest of Northern Israel: siege and blockade of the whole land!
For three years the Mount of Samaria was invested, and then taken; the
houses overthrown, the rich and the delicate led away captive. It happened
as Amos foretold; for it was not the shepherd's rage within him that spoke.
He had seen the Lord standing, and He said, Smite.
But this assault of a desert nomad upon the structure of a nation's life raises
many echoes in history and some questions in our own minds to-day. Again
and again have civilisations far more powerful than Israel's been threatened
by the desert in the name of God, and in good faith it has been proclaimed
by the prophets of Christianity and other religions that God's kingdom
cannot come on earth till the wealth, the culture, the civil order, which men
have taken centuries to build, have been swept away by some great political
convulsion. To-day Christianity herself suffers the same assaults, and is told
by many, the high life and honest intention of whom cannot be doubted, that
till the civilisation which she has so much helped to create is destroyed,
there is no hope for the purity or the progress of the race. And Christianity,
too, has doubts within herself. What is the world which our Master refused

in the Mount of Temptation, and so often and so sternly told us that it must
perish?—how much of our wealth, of our culture, of our politics, of the
whole fabric of our society? No thoughtful and religious man, when
confronted with civilisation, not in its ideal, but in one of those forms which
give it its very name, the life of a large city, can fail to ask, How much of
this deserves the judgment of God? How much must be overthrown, before
His will is done on earth? All these questions rise in the ears and the heart
of a generation, which more than any other has been brought face to face
with the ruins of empires and civilisations, which have endured longer, and
in their day seemed more stable, than her own.
In face of the confused thinking and fanatic speech which have risen on all
such topics, it seems to me that the Hebrew prophets supply us with four
cardinal rules.
First, of course, they insist that it is the moral question upon which the fate
of a civilisation is decided. By what means has this system grown? Is
justice observed in essence as well as form? Is there freedom, or is the
prophet silenced? Does luxury or self-denial prevail? Do the rich make life
hard for the poor? Is childhood sheltered and is innocence respected? By
these, claim the prophets, a nation stands or falls; and history has proved the
claim on wider worlds than they dreamt of.
But by themselves moral reasons are never enough to justify a prediction of
speedy doom upon any system or society. None of the prophets began to
foretell the fall of Israel till they read, with keener eyes than their
contemporaries, the signs of it in current history. And this, I take it, was the
point which made a notable difference between them, and one who like
them scourged the social wrongs of his civilisation, yet never spoke a word
of its fall. Juvenal nowhere calls down judgments, except upon individuals.
In his time there were no signs of the decline of the empire, even though, as
he marks, there was a flight from the capital of the virtue which was to keep
the empire alive. But the prophets had political proof of the nearness of
God's judgment, and they spoke in the power of its coincidence with the
moral corruption of their people.
Again, if conscience and history (both of them, to the prophets, being
witnesses of God) thus combine to announce the early doom of a

civilisation, neither the religion that may have helped to build it, nor any
remanent virtue in it, nor its ancient value to God, can avail to save. We are
tempted to judge that the long and costly development of ages is cruelly
thrown away by the convulsion and collapse of an empire; it feels impious
to think that the patience, the providence, the millennial discipline of the
Almighty are to be in a moment abandoned to some rude and savage force.
But we are wrong. You only have I known of all the families of the ground,
yet I must visit upon you your iniquities. Nothing is too costly for justice.
And God finds some other way of conserving the real results of the past.
Again, it is a corollary of all this, that the sentence upon civilisation must
often seem to come by voices that are insane, and its execution by means
that are criminal. Of course, when civilisation is arraigned as a whole, and
its overthrow demanded, there may be nothing behind the attack but
jealousy or greed, the fanaticism of ignorant men or the madness of
disordered lives. But this is not necessarily the case. For God has often in
history chosen the outsider as the herald of doom, and sent the barbarian as
its instrument. By the statesmen and patriots of Israel, Amos must have
been regarded as a mere savage, with a savage's hate of civilisation. But we
know what he answered when Amaziah called him rebel. And it was not
only for its suddenness that the apostles said the day of the Lord should
come as a thief, but also because of its methods. For over and over again
has doom been pronounced, and pronounced truly, by men who in the eyes
of civilisation were criminals and monsters.
Now apply these four principles to the question of ourselves. It will scarcely
be denied that our civilisation tolerates, and in part lives by, the existence of
vices which, as we all admit, ruined the ancient empires. Are the political
possibilities of overthrow also present? That there exist among us means of
new historic convulsions is a thing hard for us to admit. But the signs
cannot be hid. When we see the jealousies of the Christian peoples, and
their enormous preparations for battle; the arsenals of Europe which a few
sparks may blow up; the millions of soldiers one man's word may mobilise;
when we imagine the opportunities which a general war would furnish to
the discontented masses of the European proletariat,—we must surely
acknowledge the existence of forces capable of inflicting calamities, so
severe as to affect not merely this nationality or that type of culture, but the
very vigour and progress of civilisation herself; and all this without our

looking beyond Christendom, or taking into account the rise of the yellow
races to a consciousness of their approach to equality with ourselves. If,
then, in the eyes of the Divine justice Christendom merits judgment,—if life
continue to be left so hard to the poor; if innocence be still an impossibility
for so much of the childhood of the Christian nations; if with so many of the
leaders of civilisation prurience be lifted to the level of an art, and
licentiousness followed as a cult; if we continue to pour the evils of our
civilisation upon the barbarian, and "the vices of our young nobles," to
paraphrase Juvenal, "are aped in" Hindustan,—then let us know that the
means of a judgment more awful than any which has yet scourged a
delinquent civilisation are extant and actual among us. And if one should
reply, that our Christianity makes all the difference, that God cannot undo
the development of nineteen centuries, or cannot overthrow the peoples of
His Son,—let us remember that God does justice at whatever cost; that as
He did not spare Israel at the hands of Assyria, so He did not spare
Christianity in the East when the barbarians of the desert found her careless
and corrupt. You only have I known of all the families of the ground,
therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities.

CHAPTER IX
THE FALSE PEACE OF RITUAL
Amos iv. 4-vi.

The next four groups of oracles[287]—iv. 4-13, v. 1-17, v. 18-27 and vi.—
treat of many different details, and each of them has its own emphasis; but
all are alike in this, that they vehemently attack the national worship and the
sense of political security which it has engendered. Let us at once make
clear that this worship is the worship of Jehovah. It is true that it is mixed
with idolatry, but, except possibly in one obscure verse,[288] Amos does not
concern himself with the idols. What he strikes at, what he would sweep
away, is his people's form of devotion to their own God. The cult of the
national God, at the national sanctuaries, in the national interest and by the
whole body of the people, who practise it with a zeal unparalleled by their
forefathers—this is what Amos condemns. And he does so absolutely. He
has nothing but scorn for the temples and the feasts. The assiduity of
attendance, the liberality of gifts, the employment of wealth and art and
patriotism in worship—he tells his generation that God loathes it all. Like
Jeremiah, he even seems to imply that God never instituted in Israel any
sacrifice or offering.[289] It is all this which gives these oracles their interest
for us; and that interest is not merely historical.
It is indeed historical to begin with. When we find, not idolatry, but all
religious ceremonial—temples, public worship, tithes, sacrifice, the praise
of God by music, in fact every material form in which man has ever been
wont to express his devotion to God—scorned and condemned with the
same uncompromising passion as idolatry itself, we receive a needed lesson
in the history of religion. For when one is asked, What is the distinguishing
characteristic of heathenism? one is always ready to say, Idolatry, which is
not true. The distinguishing characteristic of heathenism is the stress which
it lays upon ceremonial. To the pagan religions, both of the ancient and of
the modern world, rites were the indispensable element in religion. The

gifts of the gods, the abundance of fruits, the security of the state, depended
upon the full and accurate performance of ritual. In Greek literature we
have innumerable illustrations of this: the Iliad itself starts from a god's
anger, roused by an insult to his priest, whose prayers for vengeance he
hears because sacrifices have been assiduously offered to him. And so too
with the systems of paganism from which the faith of Israel, though at first
it had so much in common with them, broke away to its supreme religious
distinction. The Semites laid the stress of their obedience to the gods upon
traditional ceremonies; and no sin was held so heinous by them as the
neglect or infringement of a religious rite. By the side of it offences against
one's fellow-men or one's own character were deemed mere
misdemeanours. In the day of Amos this pagan superstition thoroughly
penetrated the religion of Jehovah, and so absorbed the attention of men,
that without the indignant and complete repudiation of it prophecy could
not have started on her task of identifying morality with religion, and of
teaching men more spiritual views of God. But even when we are thus
aware of ceremonialism as the characteristic quality of the pagan religions,
we have not measured the full reason of that uncompromising attack on it,
which is the chief feature of this part of the permanent canon of our
religion. For idolatries die everywhere; but everywhere a superstitious
ritualism survives. It continues with philosophies that have ceased to
believe in the gods who enforced it. Upon ethical movements which have
gained their freedom by breaking away from it, in the course of time it
makes up, and lays its paralysing weight. With offers of help it flatters
religions the most spiritual in theory and intention. The Pharisees, than
whom few parties had at first purer ideals of morality, tithed mint, anise and
cummin, to the neglect of the essence of the Law; and even sound
Christians, who have assimilated the Gospel of St. John, find it hard and
sometimes impossible to believe in salvation apart from their own
sacraments, or outside their own denominational forms. Now this is because
ritual is a thing which appeals both to the baser and to the nobler instincts of
man. To the baser it offers itself as a mechanical atonement for sin, and a
substitute for all moral and intellectual effort in connection with faith; to the
nobler it insists on a man's need in religion of order and routine, of
sacrament and picture. Plainly then the words of Amos have significance
for more than the immediate problems of his day. And if it seem to some,
that Amos goes too far with his cry to sweep away all ceremonial, let them

remember, besides the crisis of his times, that the temper he exposes and
seeks to dissipate is a rank and obdurate error of the human heart. Our Lord,
who recognised the place of ritual in worship, who said, Thus it behoveth us
to fulfil all righteousness, which righteousness in the dialect of His day was
not the moral law, but man's due of rite, sacrifice, tithe and alms,[290] said
also, I will have mercy and not sacrifice. There is an irreducible minimum
of rite and routine in worship; there is an invaluable loyalty to traditional
habits; there are holy and spiritual uses in symbol and sacrament. But these
are all dispensable; and because they are all constantly abused, the voice of
the prophet is ever needed which tells us that God will have none of them;
but let justice roll on like water, and righteousness like an unfailing stream.
For the superstition that ritual is the indispensable bond between God and
man, Amos substitutes two other aspects of religion. They are history as
God's discipline of man; and civic justice, as man's duty to God. The first of
them he contrasts with religious ceremonialism in chap. iv. 4-13, and the
second in chap. v.; while in chap. vi. he assaults once more the false
political peace which the ceremonialism engenders.

1. For Worship, Chastisement.

Amos iv. 4-13.

In chap. ii. Amos contrasted the popular conception of religion as worship
with God's conception of it as history. He placed a picture of the sanctuary,
hot with religious zeal, but hot too with passion and the fumes of wine, side
by side with a great prospect of the national history: God's guidance of
Israel from Egypt onwards. That is, as we said at the time, he placed an
indoors picture of religion side by side with an open-air one. He repeats that
arrangement here. The religious services he sketches are more pure, and the
history he takes from his own day; but the contrast is the same. Again we
have on the one side the temple worship—artificial, exaggerated, indoors,
smoky; but on the other a few movements of God in Nature, which, though
they all be calamities, have a great moral majesty upon them. The first
opens with a scornful call to worship, which the prophet, letting out his
whole heart at the beginning, shows to be equivalent to sin. Note next the
impossible caricature of their exaggerated zeal: sacrifices every morning

instead of once a year, tithes every three days instead of every three years.
[291]
To offer leavened bread was a departure from the older fashion of
unleavened.[292] To publish their liberality was like the later Pharisees, who
were not dissimilarly mocked by our Lord: When thou doest alms, cause not
a trumpet to be sounded before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues
and in the streets, that they may have glory of men.[293] There is a certain
rhythm in the taunt; but the prose style seems to be resumed with fitness
when the prophet describes the solemn approach of God in deeds of doom.
Come away to Bethel and transgress,
At Gilgal exaggerate your transgression!
And bring every morning your sacrifices,
Every three days your tithes!
And send up the savour of leavened bread as a thank-offering,
And call out your liberalities—make them to be heard!
For so ye love to do, O children of Israel:
Oracle of Jehovah.
But I on My side have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and
want of bread in all your places—yet ye did not return to Me: oracle of
Jehovah.

But I on My side withheld from you the winter rain,[294] while it was still
three months to the harvest: and I let it rain repeatedly on one city, and
upon one city I did not let it rain: one lot was rained upon, and the lot that
was not rained upon withered; and two or three cities kept straggling to one
city to drink water, and were not satisfied—yet ye did not return to Me:
oracle of Jehovah.
I smote you with blasting and with mildew: many of your gardens and your
vineyards and your figs and your olives the locust devoured—yet ye did not
return to Me: oracle of Jehovah.

I sent among you a pestilence by way of Egypt:[295] I slew with the sword
your youths—besides the capture of your horses—and I brought up the
stench of your camps to your nostrils—yet ye did not return to Me: oracle of
Jehovah.

I overturned among you, like God's own overturning of Sodom and
Gomorrah, till ye became as a brand plucked from the burning—yet ye did
not return to Me: oracle of Jehovah.
This recalls a passage in that English poem of which we are again and again
reminded by the Book of Amos, The Vision of Piers Plowman. It is the
sermon of Reason in Passus V. (Skeat's edition):—

"He preved that thise pestilences · were for pure synne,
And the southwest wynde · in saterday et evene
Was pertliche[296] for pure pride · and for no poynt elles.
Piries and plomtrees · were puffed to the erthe,
In ensample ze segges[297] · ze shulden do the bettere.
Beches and brode okes · were blowen to the grounde.
Torned upward her tailles · in tokenynge of drede,
That dedly synne at domesday · shal fordon[298] hem alle."

In the ancient world it was a settled belief that natural calamities like these
were the effects of the deity's wrath. When Israel suffers from them the
prophets take for granted that they are for the people's punishment. I have
elsewhere shown how the climate of Palestine lent itself to these
convictions; in this respect the Book of Deuteronomy contrasts it with the
climate of Egypt.[299] And although some, perhaps rightly, have scoffed at
the exaggerated form of the belief, that God is angry with the sons of men
every time drought or floods happen, yet the instinct is sound which in all
ages has led religious people to feel that such things are inflicted for moral
purposes. In the economy of the universe there may be ends of a purely
physical kind served by such disasters, apart altogether from their meaning
to man. But man at least learns from them that nature does not exist solely
for feeding, clothing and keeping him wealthy; nor is it anything else than
his monotheism, his faith in God as the Lord both of his moral life and of
nature, which moves him to believe, as Hebrew prophets taught and as our
early English seer heard Reason herself preach. Amos had the more need to
explain those disasters as the work of the God of righteousness, because his
contemporaries, while willing to grant Jehovah leadership in war, were
tempted to attribute to the Canaanite gods of the land all power over the
seasons.

What, however, more immediately concerns us in this passage is its very
effective contrast between men's treatment of God and God's treatment of
men. They lavish upon Him gifts and sacrifices. He—on His side—sends
them cleanness of teeth, drought, blasting of their fruits, pestilence, war and
earthquake. That is to say, they regard Him as a being only to be flattered
and fed. He regards them as creatures with characters to discipline, even at
the expense of their material welfare. Their views of Him, if religious, are
sensuous and gross; His views of them, if austere, are moral and ennobling.
All this may be grim, but it is exceeding grand; and short as the efforts of
Amos are, we begin to perceive in him something already of the greatness
of an Isaiah.
And have not those, who have believed as Amos believed, ever been the
strong spirits of our race, making the very disasters which crushed them to
the earth the tokens that God has great views about them? Laugh not at the
simple peoples, who have their days of humiliation, and their fast-days after
floods and stunted harvests. For they take these, not like other men, as the
signs of their frailty and helplessness; but as measures of the greatness God
sees in them, His provocation of their souls to the infinite possibilities
which He has prepared for them.
Israel, however, did not turn even at the fifth call to penitence, and so there
remained nothing for her but a fearful looking forward to judgment, all the
more terrible that the prophet does not define what the judgment shall be.
Therefore thus shall I do to thee, O Israel: because I am going to do this to
thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel. For, lo, He that formeth the
mountains, and createth the wind, and declareth to man what His thought
is, that maketh morning darkness, and marcheth on the high places of earth,
Jehovah, God of Hosts, is His Name.[300]

2. For Worship, Justice.

Amos v.

In the next of these groups of oracles Amos continues his attack on the
national ritual, and now contrasts it with the service of God in public life—
the relief of the poor, the discharge of justice. But he does not begin with

this. The group opens with an elegy, which bewails the nation as already
fallen. It is always difficult to mark where the style of a prophet passes from
rhythmical prose into what we may justly call a metrical form. But in this
short wail, we catch the well-known measure of the Hebrew dirge; not so
artistic as in later poems, yet with at least the characteristic couplet of a
long and a short line.
Hear this word which I lift up against you—a Dirge, O house of Israel:—

Fallen, no more shall she rise,
Virgin of Israel!
Flung down on her own ground,
No one to raise her!

The Virgin, which with Isaiah is a standing title for Jerusalem and
occasionally used of other cities, is here probably the whole nation of
Northern Israel. The explanation follows. It is War. For thus saith the Lord
Jehovah: The city that goeth forth a thousand shall have an hundred left;
and she that goeth forth an hundred shall have left ten for the house of
Israel.
But judgment is not yet irrevocable. There break forthwith the only two
promises which lighten the lowering darkness of the book. Let the people
turn to Jehovah Himself—and that means let them turn from the ritual, and
instead of it purge their civic life, restore justice in their courts and help the
poor. For God and moral good are one. It is seek Me and ye shall live, and
seek good and ye shall live. Omitting for the present all argument as to
whether the interruption of praise to the power of Jehovah be from Amos or
another, we read the whole oracle as follows.
Thus saith Jehovah to the house of Israel: Seek Me and live. But seek not
Bethel, and come not to Gilgal, and to Beersheba pass not over—to come
to Beersheba one had to cross all Judah. For Gilgal shall taste the gall of
exile—it is not possible except in this clumsy way to echo the prophet's
play upon words, "Ha-Gilgal galoh yigleh"—and Bethel, God's house, shall
become an idolatry. This rendering, however, scarcely gives the rude force
of the original; for the word rendered idolatry, Aven, means also falsehood
and perdition, so that we should not exaggerate the antithesis if we

employed a phrase which once was not vulgar: And Bethel, house of God,
shall go to the devil![301] The epigram was the more natural that near
Bethel, on a site now uncertain, but close to the edge of the desert to which
it gave its name, there lay from ancient times a village actually called Beth-
Aven, however the form may have risen. And we shall find Hosea
stereotyping this epigram of Amos, and calling the sanctuary Beth-Aven
oftener than he calls it Beth-El.[302] Seek ye Jehovah and live, he begins
again, lest He break forth like fire, O house of Joseph, and it consume and
there be none to quench at Bethel.[303] ...[304] He that made the Seven Stars
and Orion,[305] that turneth the murk[306] into morning, and day He
darkeneth to night, that calleth for the waters of the sea and poureth them
out on the face of the earth—Jehovah His Name. He it is that flasheth out
ruin[307] on strength, and bringeth down[308] destruction on the fortified.
This rendering of the last verse is uncertain, and rightly suspected, but there
is no alternative so probable, and it returns to the keynote from which the
passage started, that God should break forth like fire.

Ah, they that turn justice to wormwood, and abase[309] righteousness to the
earth! They hate him that reproveth in the gate—in an Eastern city both the
law-court and place of the popular council—and him that speaketh
sincerely they abhor. So in the English mystic's Vision Peace complains of
Wrong:—

"I dar noughte for fere of hym · fyghte ne chyde."[310]

Wherefore, because ye trample on the weak and take from him a present of
corn,[311] ye have built houses of ashlar,[312] but ye shall not dwell in them;
vineyards for pleasure have ye planted, but ye shall not drink of their wine.
For I know how many are your crimes, and how forceful[313] your sins—ye
that browbeat the righteous, take bribes, and bring down the poor in the
gate! Therefore the prudent in such a time is dumb, for an evil time is it
indeed.
Seek good and not evil, that ye may live, and Jehovah God of Hosts be with
you, as ye say He is. Hate evil and love good; and in the gate set justice on
her feet again—peradventure Jehovah God of Hosts may have pity on the
remnant of Joseph. If in the Book of Amos there be any passages, which, to

say the least, do not now lie in their proper places, this is one of them. For,
firstly, while it regards the nation as still responsible for the duties of
government, it recognises them as reduced to a remnant. To find such a
state of affairs we have to come down to the years subsequent to 734, when
Tiglath-Pileser swept into captivity all Gilead and Galilee—that is, two-
thirds, in bulk, of the territory of Northern Israel—but left Ephraim
untouched. In answer to this, it may, of course, be pointed out that in thus
calling the people to repentance, so that a remnant might be saved, Amos
may have been contemplating a disaster still future, from which, though it
was inevitable, God might be moved to spare a remnant.[314] That is very
true. But it does not meet this further difficulty, that the verses (14, 15)
plainly make interruption between the end of ver. 13 and the beginning of
ver. 16; and that the initial therefore of the latter verse, while it has no
meaning in its present sequence, becomes natural and appropriate when
made to follow immediately on ver. 13. For all these reasons, then, I take
vv. 14 and 15 as a parenthesis, whether from Amos himself or from a later
writer who can tell? But it ought to be kept in mind that in other prophetic
writings where judgment is very severe, we have some proof of the later
insertion of calls to repentance, by way of mitigation.
Ver. 13 had said the time was so evil that the prudent man kept silence. All
the more must the Lord Himself speak, as ver. 16 now proclaims. Therefore
thus saith Jehovah, God of Hosts,[315] Lord: On all open ways lamentation,
and in all streets they shall be saying, Ah woe! Ah woe! And in all vineyards
lamentation,[316] and they shall call the ploughman to wailing and to
lamentation them that are skilful in dirges—town and country, rustic and
artist alike—for I shall pass through thy midst, saith Jehovah. It is the
solemn formula of the Great Passover, when Egypt was filled with wailing
and there were dead in every house.
The next verse starts another, but a kindred, theme. As blind as was Israel's
confidence in ritual, so blind was their confidence in dogma, and the
popular dogma was that of the Day of Jehovah.
All popular hopes expect their victory to come in a single sharp crisis—a
day. And again, the day of any one means either the day he has appointed,
or the day of his display and triumph. So Jehovah's day meant to the people
the day of His judgment, or of His triumph: His triumph in war over their

enemies, His judgment upon the heathen. But Amos, whose keynote has
been that judgment begins at home, cries woe upon such hopes, and tells his
people that for them the day of Jehovah is not victory, but rather insidious,
importunate, inevitable death. And this he describes as a man who has lived,
alone with wild beasts, from the jungles of the Jordan, where the lions lurk,
to the huts of the desert infested by snakes.
Woe unto them that long for the day of Jehovah! What have you to do with
the day of Jehovah? It is darkness, and not light. As when a man fleeth from
the face of a lion, and a bear falls upon him; and he comes into his home,
[317]
and, breathless, leans his hand upon the wall, and a serpent bites him.
And then, as if appealing to Heaven for confirmation: Is it not so? Is it not
darkness, the day of Jehovah, and not light? storm darkness, and not a ray
of light upon it?
Then Amos returns to the worship, that nurse of their vain hopes, that false
prophet of peace, and he hears God speak more strongly than ever of its
futility and hatefulness.
I hate, I loathe your feasts, and I will not smell the savour of your
gatherings to sacrifice. For with pagan folly they still believed that the
smoke of their burnt-offerings went up to heaven and flattered the nostrils
of Deity. How ingrained was this belief may be judged by us from the fact
that the terms of it had to be adopted by the apostles of a spiritual religion,
if they would make themselves understood, and are now the metaphors of
the sacrifices of the Christian heart.[318] Though ye bring to Me burnt-
offerings and your meal-offerings I will not be pleased, or your thank-
offerings of fatted calves, I will not look at them. Let cease from Me the
noise of thy songs; to the playing of thy viols I will not listen. But let justice
roll on like water, and righteousness like an unfailing stream.
Then follows the remarkable appeal from the habits of this age to those of
the times of Israel's simplicity. Was it flesh- or meal-offerings that ye
brought Me in the wilderness, forty years, O house of Israel?[319] That is to
say, at the very time when God made Israel His people, and led them safely
to the promised land—the time when of all others He did most for them—
He was not moved to such love and deliverance by the propitiatory bribes,
which this generation imagine to be so availing and indispensable. Nay,

those still shall not avail, for exile from the land shall now as surely come
in spite of them, as the possession of the land in old times came without
them. This at least seems to be the drift of the very obscure verse which
follows, and is the unmistakable statement of the close of the oracle. But ye
shall lift up ... your king and ... your god, images which you have made for
yourselves;[320] and I will carry you away into exile far beyond Damascus,
saith Jehovah—God of Hosts is His Name![321] So this chapter closes like
the previous, with the marshalling of God's armies. But as there His hosts
were the movements of Nature and the Great Stars, so here they are the
nations of the world. By His rule of both He is the God of Hosts.

3. "At Ease in Zion."

Amos vi.

The evil of the national worship was the false political confidence which it
engendered. Leaving the ritual alone, Amos now proceeds to assault this
confidence. We are taken from the public worship of the people to the
private banquets of the rich, but again only in order to have their security
and extravagance contrasted with the pestilence, the war and the captivity,
that are rapidly approaching.

Woe unto them that are at ease in Zion[322]—it is a proud and overweening
ease which the word expresses—and that trust in the mount of Samaria!
Men of mark of the first of the peoples—ironically, for that is Israel's
opinion of itself—and to them do the house of Israel resort!...[323] Ye that
put off the day of calamity[324] and draw near the sessions of injustice[325]—
an epigram and proverb, for it is the universal way of men to wish and
fancy far away the very crisis that their sins are hastening on. Isaiah
described this same generation as drawing iniquity with cords of hypocrisy,
and sin as it were with a cart-rope! That lie on ivory diwans and sprawl on
their couches—another luxurious custom, which filled this rude shepherd
with contempt—and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the midst of
the stall[326]—that is, only the most delicate of meats—who prate or purr or
babble to the sound of the viol, and as if they were David himself invent for
them instruments of song;[327] who drink wine by ewerfuls—waterpotfuls—

and anoint with the finest of oil—yet never do they grieve at the havoc of
Joseph! The havoc is the moral havoc, for the social structure of Israel is
obviously still secure.[328] The rich are indifferent to it; they have wealth,
art, patriotism, religion, but neither heart for the poverty nor conscience for
the sin of their people. We know their kind! They are always with us, who
live well and imagine they are proportionally clever and refined. They have
their political zeal, will rally to an election when the interests of their class
or their trade is in danger. They have a robust and exuberant patriotism, talk
grandly of commerce, empire and the national destiny; but for the real woes
and sores of the people, the poverty, the overwork, the drunkenness, the
dissoluteness, which more affect a nation's life than anything else, they have
no pity and no care.
Therefore now—the double initial of judgment—shall they go into exile at
the head of the exiles, and stilled shall be the revelry of the dissolute—
literally the sprawlers, as in ver. 4, but used here rather in the moral than in
the physical sense. Sworn hath the Lord Jehovah by Himself—'tis the oracle
of Jehovah God of Hosts: I am loathing[329] the pride of Jacob, and his
palaces do I hate, and I will pack up a city and its fulness.[330]... For,
behold, Jehovah is commanding, and He will smite the great house into
ruins and the small house into splinters. The collapse must come, postpone
it as their fancy will, for it has been worked for and is inevitable. How
could it be otherwise? Shall horses run on a cliff, or the sea be ploughed by
oxen[331]—that ye should turn justice to poison and the fruit of
righteousness to wormwood! Ye that exult in Lo-Debar and say, By our own
strength have we taken to ourselves Ḳarnaim. So Grätz rightly reads the
verse. The Hebrew text and all the versions take these names as if they were
common nouns—Lo-Debar, a thing of nought; Ḳarnaim, a pair of horns—
and doubtless it was just because of this possible play upon their names,
that Amos selected these two out of all the recent conquests of Israel.
Karnaim, in full Ashteroth Karnaim, Astarte of Horns, was that immemorial
fortress and sanctuary which lay out upon the great plateau of Bashan
towards Damascus; so obvious and cardinal a site that it appears in the
sacred history both in the earliest recorded campaign in Abraham's time and
in one of the latest under the Maccabees.[332] Lo-Debar was of Gilead, and
probably lay on that last rampart of the province northward, overlooking the
Yarmuk, a strategical point which must have often been contested by Israel

and Aram, and with which no other Old Testament name has been
identified.[333] These two fortresses, with many others, Israel had lately
taken from Aram; but not, as they boasted, by their own strength. It was
only Aram's pre-occupation with Assyria now surgent on the northern flank,
which allowed Israel these easy victories. And this same northern foe would
soon overwhelm themselves. For, behold, I am to raise up against you, O
house of Israel—'tis the oracle of Jehovah God of the hosts[334]—a Nation,
and they shall oppress you from the Entrance of Hamath to the Torrent of
the 'Arabah. Every one knows the former, the Pass between the Lebanons,
at whose mouth stands Dan, northern limit of Israel; but it is hard to identify
the latter. If Amos means to include Judah, we should have expected the
Torrent of Egypt, the present Wady el 'Arish; but the Wady of the 'Arabah
may be a corresponding valley in the eastern watershed issuing in the
'Arabah. If Amos threatens only the Northern Kingdom, he intends some
wady running down to that Sea of the 'Arabah, the Dead Sea, which is
elsewhere given as the limit of Israel.[335]
The Assyrian flood, then, was about to break, and the oracles close with the
hopeless prospect of the whole land submerged beneath it.

4. A Fragment from the Plague.

In the above exposition we have omitted two very curious verses, 9 and 10,
which are held by some critics to interrupt the current of the chapter, and to
reflect an entirely different kind of calamity from that which it predicts. I do
not think these critics right, for reasons I am about to give; but the verses
are so remarkable that it is most convenient to treat them by themselves
apart from the rest of the chapter. Here they are, with the verse immediately
in front of them.
I am loathing the pride of Jacob, and his palaces I hate. And I will give up a
city and its fulness to ...(perhaps siege or pestilence?). And it shall come to
pass, if there be left ten men in one house, and they die,[336] ... that his
cousin[337] and the man to burn him shall lift him to bring the body[338] out
of the house, and they shall say to one who is in the recesses of the house,
[339]
Are there any more with thee? And he shall say, Not one ... and they
shall say, Hush! (for one must not make mention of the name of Jehovah).

This grim fragment is obscure in its relation to the context. But the death of
even so large a household as ten—the funeral left to a distant relation—the
disposal of the bodies by burning instead of the burial customary among the
Hebrews[340]—sufficiently reflect the kind of calamity. It is a weird little bit
of memory, the recollection of an eye-witness, from one of those great
pestilences which, during the first half of the eighth century, happened not
seldom in Western Asia.[341] But what does it do here? Wellhausen says that
there is nothing to lead up to the incident; that before it the chapter speaks,
not of pestilence, but only of political destruction by an enemy. This is not
accurate. The phrase immediately preceding may mean either I will shut up
a city and its fulness, in which case a siege is meant, and a siege was the
possibility both of famine and pestilence; or I will give up the city and its
fulness..., in which case a word or two may have been dropped, as words
have undoubtedly been dropped at the end of the next verse, and one ought
perhaps to add to the pestilence.[342] The latter alternative is the more
probable, and this may be one of the passages, already alluded to,[343] in
which the want of connection with the preceding verses is to be explained,
not upon the favourite theory that there has been a violent intrusion into the
text, but upon the too much neglected hypothesis that some words have
been lost.
The uncertainty of the text, however, does not weaken the impression of its
ghastly realism: the unclean and haunted house; the kinsman and the body-
burner afraid to search through the infected rooms, and calling in muffled
voice to the single survivor crouching in some far corner of them, Are there
any more with thee? his reply, None—himself the next! Yet these details are
not the most weird. Over all hangs a terror darker than the pestilence. Shall
there be evil in a city and Jehovah not have done it? Such, as we have heard
from Amos, was the settled faith of the age. But in times of woe it was held
with an awful and a craven superstition. The whole of life was believed to
be overhung with loose accumulations of Divine anger. And as in some fatal
hollow in the high Alps, where any noise may bring down the impending
masses of snow, and the fearful traveller hurries along in silence, so the men
of that superstitious age feared, when an evil like the plague was imminent,
even to utter the Deity's name, lest it should loosen some avalanche of His
wrath. And he said, Hush! for, adds the comment, one must not make
mention of the name of Jehovah.

This reveals another side of the popular religion which Amos has been
attacking. We have seen it as the sheer superstition of routine; but we now
know that it was a routine broken by panic. The God who in times of peace
was propitiated by regular supplies of savoury sacrifice and flattery, is
conceived, when His wrath is roused and imminent, as kept quiet only by
the silence of its miserable objects. The false peace of ritual is tempered by
panic.

CHAPTER X
DOOM OR DISCIPLINE?
Amos viii. 4-ix.

We now enter the Third Section of the Book of Amos: chaps. vii.-ix. As we
have already treated the first part of it—the group of four visions, which
probably formed the prophet's discourse at Bethel, with the interlude of his
adventure there (vii.-viii. 3)[344]—we may pass at once to what remains:
from viii. 4 to the end of the book. This portion consists of groups of
oracles more obscure in their relations to each other than any we have yet
studied, and probably containing a number of verses which are not from
Amos himself. They open in a denunciation of the rich, which echoes
previous oracles, and soon pass to judgments of a kind already threatened,
but now with greater relentlessness. Then, just as all is at the darkest, lights
break; exceptions are made; the inevitable captivity is described no more as
doom, but as discipline; and, with only this preparation for a change, we are
swept out on a scene, in which, although the land is strewn with the ruins
that have been threatened, the sunshine of a new day floods them; the
promise of restoration is given; Nature herself will be regenerated, and the
whole life of Israel planted on its own ground again.
Whether it was given to Amos himself to behold this day—whether these
last verses of the book were his "Nunc Dimittis," or the hope of a later
generation, which found his book intolerably severe, and mingled with its
judgments their own new mercies—we shall try to discover further on.
Meanwhile there is no doubt that we start with the authentic oracles of the
prophet. We know the ring of his voice. To the tyranny of the rich, which he
has so often lashed, he now adds the greed and fraud of the traders; and he
paints Israel's doom in those shapes of earthquake, eclipse and famine with
which his own generation had recently become familiar. Note that in this
first group Amos employs only physical calamities, and says nothing of war
and captivity. If the standard which we have already applied to the growth

of his doctrine be correct, these ought therefore to be counted among his
earlier utterances. War and captivity follow in chap. ix. That is to say, this
Third Section follows the same line of development as both the First and
the Second.

1. Earthquake, Eclipse and Famine.

Amos viii. 4-14.

Hear this, ye who trample the needy, and would put an end to[345] the lowly
of the land, saying, When will the New-Moon be over, that we may sell
grain, and the Sabbath, that we may open corn (by making small the
measure, but large the weight, and falsifying the fraudulent balances;
buying the wretched for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes!), and that
we may sell as grain the refuse of the corn! The parenthesis puzzles, but is
not impossible: in the speed of his scorn, Amos might well interrupt the
speech of the merchants by these details of their fraud,[346] flinging these in
their teeth as they spoke. The existence at this date of the New-Moon and
Sabbath as days of rest from business is interesting; but even more
interesting is the peril to which they lie open. As in the case of the Nazirites
and the prophets, we see how the religious institutions and opportunities of
the people are threatened by worldliness and greed. And, as in every other
relevant passage of the Old Testament, we have the interests of the Sabbath
bound up in the same cause with the interests of the poor. The Fourth
Commandment enforces the day of rest on behalf of the servants and
bondsmen. When a later prophet substitutes for religious fasts the ideals of
social service, he weds with the latter the security of the Sabbath from all
business.[347] So here Amos emphasises that the Sabbath is threatened by
the same worldliness and love of money which tramples on the helpless.
The interests of the Sabbath are the interests of the poor: the enemies of the
Sabbath are the enemies of the poor. And all this illustrates our Saviour's
saying, that the Sabbath was made for man.
But, as in the rest of the book, judgment again follows hard on sin. Sworn
hath Jehovah by the pride of Jacob, Never shall I forget their deeds. It is as
before. The chief spring of the prophet's inspiration is his burning sense of
the personal indignation of God against crimes so abominable. God is the

God of the poor, and His anger rises, as we see the anger of Christ arise,
heavy against their tyrants and oppressors. Such sins are intolerable to Him.
But the feeling of their intolerableness is shared by the land itself, the very
fabric of nature; the earthquake is the proof of it. For all this shall not the
land tremble and her every inhabitant mourn? and she shall rise like the
Nile in mass, and heave and sink like the Nile of Egypt.[348]
To the earthquake is added the eclipse: one had happened in 803, and
another in 763, the memory of which probably inspired the form of this
passage. And it shall be in that day—'tis the oracle of the Lord Jehovah—
that I shall bring down the sun at noon, and cast darkness on the earth in
broad day.[349] And I will turn your festivals into mourning, and all your
songs to a dirge. And I will bring up upon all loins sackcloth and on every
head baldness, and I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the
end of it as a bitter day.
But the terrors of earthquake and eclipse are not sufficient for doom, and
famine is drawn upon.
Lo, days are coming—'tis the oracle of the Lord Jehovah—that I will send
famine on the land, not a famine of bread nor a drouth of water, but of
hearing the words of Jehovah. And they shall wander from sea to sea, and
from the dark North to the Sunrise shall they run to and fro, to seek the
word of Jehovah, and they shall not find it; ... who swear by Samaria's Guilt
—the golden calf in the house of the kingdom at Bethel[350]—and say, As
liveth thy God, O Dan! and, As liveth the way to Beersheba! and they shall
fall and not rise any more. I have omitted ver. 13: in that day shall the fair
maids faint and the youths for thirst; and I append my reasons in a note.
Some part of the received text must go, for while vv. 11 and 12 speak of a
spiritual drought, the drought of 13 is physical. And ver. 14 follows 12
better than it follows 13. The oaths mentioned by Bethel, Dan, Beersheba,
are not specially those of young men and maidens, but of the whole nation,
that run from one end of the land to the other, Dan to Beersheba, seeking for
some word of Jehovah.[351] One of the oaths, As liveth the way to
Beersheba,[352] is so curious that some have doubted if the text be correct.
But strange as it may appear to us to speak of the life of the lifeless, this
often happens among the Semites. To-day Arabs "swear wa hyât, 'by the life

of,' even of things inanimate; 'By the life of this fire, or of this coffee.'"[353]
And as Amos here tells us that the Israelite pilgrims swore by the way to
Beersheba, so do the Moslems affirm their oaths by the sacred way to
Mecca.
Thus Amos returns to the chief target of his shafts—the senseless, corrupt
worship of the national sanctuaries. And this time—perhaps in
remembrance of how they had silenced the word of God when he brought it
home to them at Bethel—he tells Israel that, with all their running to and fro
across the land, to shrine after shrine in search of the word, they shall suffer
from a famine and drouth of it. Perhaps this is the most effective contrast in
which Amos has yet placed the stupid ritualism of his people. With so many
things to swear by; with so many holy places that once were the homes of
Vision, Abraham's Beersheba, Jacob's Bethel, Joshua's Gilgal—nay, a whole
land over which God's voice had broken in past ages, lavish as the rain;
with, too, all their assiduity of sacrifice and prayer, they should nevertheless
starve and pant for that living word of the Lord, which they had silenced in
His prophet.
Thus, men may be devoted to religion, may be loyal to their sacred
traditions and institutions, may haunt the holy associations of the past and
be very assiduous with their ritual—and yet, because of their worldliness,
pride and disobedience, never feel that moral inspiration, that clear call to
duty, that comfort in pain, that hope in adversity, that good conscience at all
times, which spring up in the heart like living water. Where these be not
experienced, orthodoxy, zeal, lavish ritual, are all in vain.

2. Nemesis.

Amos ix. 1-6.

There follows a Vision in Bethel, the opening of which, I saw the Lord,
immediately recalls the great inauguration of Isaiah. He also saw the Lord;
but how different the Attitude, how other the Word! To the statesman-
prophet the Lord is enthroned, surrounded by the court of heaven; and
though the temple rocks to the intolerable thunder of their praise, they bring
to the contrite man beneath the consciousness of a life-long mission. But to
Amos the Lord is standing and alone—to this lonely prophet God is always

alone—and His message may be summed up in its initial word, Smite.
There—Government: hierarchies of service, embassies, clemencies,
healings, and though at first devastation, thereafter the indestructible hope
of a future. Here—Judgment: that Figure of Fate which terror's fascinated
eye ever sees alone; one final blow and irreparable ruin. And so, as with
Isaiah we saw how constructive prophecy may be, with Amos we behold
only the preparatory havoc, the levelling and clearing of the ground of the
future.
I have seen the Lord standing over the Altar, and He said, Smite the capital
—of the pillar—that the very thresholds[354] quake, and break them on the
head of all of them! It is a shock that makes the temple reel from roof-tree
to basement. The vision seems subsequent to the prophet's visit to Bethel;
and it gathers his whole attack on the national worship into one decisive and
irreparable blow. The last of them will I slay with the sword: there shall not
flee away of them one fugitive: there shall not escape of them a single
survivor! Neither hell nor heaven, mountain-top nor sea-bottom, shall
harbour one of them. If they break through to Sheol, thence shall My hand
take them; and if they climb to heaven, thence shall I bring them down. If
they hide in Carmel's top, thence will I find them out and fetch them; and if
they conceal themselves from before Mine eyes in the bottom of the sea,
thence shall I charge the Serpent and he shall bite them; and if they go into
captivity before their foes—to Israel as terrible a distance from God's face
as Sheol itself!—thence will I charge the sword and it shall slay them; and I
will set Mine eye upon them for evil and not for good.
It is a ruder draft of the Hundred and Thirty-Ninth Psalm; but the Divine
Pursuer is Nemesis, and not Conscience.
And the Lord, Jehovah of the Hosts; Who toucheth the earth and it melteth,
and all its inhabitants mourn, and it rises like the Nile, all of it together, and
sinks like the Nile of Egypt; Who buildeth His stories in the heavens, and
His vault on the earth He foundeth; Who calleth to the waters of the sea and
poureth them forth on the face of the earth—Jehovah of Hosts is His Name.
[355]

3. The Voices of Another Dawn.

Amos ix. 7-15.

And now we are come to the part where, as it seems, voices of another day
mingle with that of Amos, and silence his judgments in the chorus of their
unbroken hope. At first, however, it is himself without doubt who speaks.
He takes up the now familiar truth, that when it comes to judgment for sin,
Israel is no dearer to Jehovah than any other people of His equal
Providence.
Are ye not unto Me, O children of Israel—'tis the oracle of Jehovah—just
like the children of Kushites? mere black folk and far away! Did I not bring
up Israel from Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor, and Aram from Ḳir?
Mark again the universal Providence which Amos proclaims: it is the due
concomitant of his universal morality. Once for all the religion of Israel
breaks from the characteristic Semitic belief that gave a god to every
people, and limited both his power and his interests to that people's territory
and fortunes. And if we remember how everything spiritual in the religion
of Israel, everything in its significance for mankind, was rendered possible
only because at this date it broke from and abjured the particularism in
which it had been born, we shall feel some of the Titanic force of the
prophet, in whom that break was achieved with an absoluteness which
leaves nothing to be desired. But let us also emphasise, that it was by no
mere method of the intellect or observation of history that Amos was led to
assert the unity of the Divine Providence. The inspiration in this was a
moral one: Jehovah was ruler and guide of all the families of mankind,
because He was exalted in righteousness; and the field in which that
righteousness was proved and made manifest was the life and the fate of
Israel. Therefore to this Amos now turns. Lo, the eyes of the Lord Jehovah
are on the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from the face of the ground.
In other words, Jehovah's sovereignty over the world was not proved by
Israel's conquest of the latter, but by His unflinching application of the
principles of righteousness, at whatever cost, to Israel herself.
Up to this point, then, the voice of Amos is unmistakable, uttering the
doctrine, so original to him, that in the judgment of God Israel shall not be
specially favoured, and the sentence, we have heard so often from him, of
her removal from her land. Remember, Amos has not yet said a word in
mitigation of the sentence: up to this point of his book it has been presented

as inexorable and final. But now to a statement of it as absolute as any that
has gone before, there is suddenly added a qualification: nevertheless I will
not utterly destroy the house of Jacob—'tis the oracle of Jehovah. And then
there is added a new picture of exile changed from doom to discipline, a
process of sifting by which only the evil in Israel, all the sinners of My
people, shall perish, but not a grain of the good. For, lo, I am giving
command, and I will toss the house of Israel among all the nations, like
something that is tossed in a sieve, but not a pebble[356] shall fall to earth.
By the sword shall die all the sinners of My people, they who say, The
calamity shall not reach nor anticipate us.[357]
Now as to these qualifications of the hitherto unmitigated judgments of the
book, it is to be noted that there is nothing in their language to lead us to
take them from Amos himself. On the contrary, the last clause describes
what he has always called a characteristic sin of his day. Our only
difficulties are that hitherto Amos has never qualified his sentences of
doom, and that the change now appears so suddenly that the two halves of
the verse in which it does so absolutely contradict each other. Read them
again, ver. 8: Lo, the eyes of the Lord Jehovah are on the sinful nation, and I
will destroy it from off the face of the ground—nevertheless destroying I
shall not destroy the house of Jacob: 'tis the oracle of Jehovah. Can we
believe the same prophet to have uttered at the same time these two
statements? And is it possible to believe that prophet to be the hitherto
unwavering, unqualifying Amos? Noting these things, let us pass to the rest
of the chapter. We break from all shadows; the verses are verses of pure
hope. The judgment on Israel is not averted; but having taken place her ruin
is regarded as not irreparable.
In that day—the day Amos has threatened of overthrow and ruin—I will
raise again the fallen hut of David and will close up its breaches, and his
ruins I will raise, and I will build it up as in the days of old,[358] that they
may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations upon whom My Name
has been called—that is, as once their Possessor—'tis the oracle of
Jehovah, He who is about to do this.
The fallen hut of David undoubtedly means the fall of the kingdom of
Judah. It is not language Amos uses, or, as it seems to me, could have used,
of the fall of the Northern Kingdom only.[359] Again, it is undoubted that

Amos contemplated the fall of Judah: this is implicit in such a phrase as the
whole family that I brought up from Egypt.[360] He saw then the day and the
ruins of which ver. 11 speaks. The only question is, can we attribute to him
the prediction of a restoration of these ruins? And this is a question which
must be answered in face of the facts that the rest of his book is unrelieved
by a single gleam of hope, and that his threat of the nation's destruction is
absolute and final. Now it is significant that in face of those facts Cornill
(though he has changed his opinion) once believed it was "surely possible
for Amos to include restoration in his prospect of ruin," as (he might have
added) other prophets undoubtedly do. I confess I cannot so readily get over
the rest of the book and its gloom; and am the less inclined to be sure about
these verses being Amos' own that it seems to have been not unusual for
later generations, for whom the daystar was beginning to rise, to add their
own inspired hopes to the unrelieved threats of their predecessors of the
midnight. The mention of Edom does not help us much: in the days of
Amos after the partial conquest by Uzziah the promise of the rest of Edom
was singularly appropriate. On the other hand, what interest had so purely
ethical a prophet in the mere addition of territory? To this point we shall
have to return for our final decision. We have still the closing oracle—a
very pleasant piece of music, as if the birds had come out after the
thunderstorm, and the wet hills were glistening in the sunshine.
Lo, days are coming—'tis the oracle of Jehovah—when the ploughman shall
catch up the reaper, and the grape-treader him that streweth the seed. The
seasons shall jostle each other, harvest following hard upon seed-time,
vintage upon spring. It is that "happy contention of seasons" which
Josephus describes as the perpetual blessing of Galilee.[361] And the
mountains shall drip with new wine, and all the hills shall flow down. And I
will bring back the captivity of My people Israel, and they shall build the
waste cities and dwell in them, and plant vineyards and drink the wine
thereof, and make gardens and eat their fruits. And I will plant them on
their own ground; and they shall not be uprooted any more from their own
ground which I have given to them, saith Jehovah thy God.[362] Again we
meet the difficulty: does the voice that speaks here speak with captivity
already realised? or is it the voice of one who projects himself forward to a
day, which, by the oath of the Lord Himself, is certain to come?

We have now surveyed the whole of this much-doubted, much-defended
passage. I have stated fully the arguments on both sides. On the one hand,
we have the fact that nothing in the language of the verses, and nothing in
their historical allusions, precludes their being by Amos; we have also to
admit that, having threatened a day of ruin, it was possible for Amos to
realise by his mind's eye its arrival, and standing at that point to see the
sunshine flooding the ruins and to prophesy a restoration. In all this there is
nothing impossible in itself or inconsistent with the rest of the book. On the
other hand, we have the impressive and incommensurable facts: first, that
this change to hope comes suddenly, without preparation and without
statement of reasons, at the very end of a book whose characteristics are not
only a final and absolute sentence of ruin upon the people, and an outlook
of unrelieved darkness, but scornful discouragement of every popular vision
of a prosperous future; and, second, that the prophetic books contain
numerous signs that later generations wove their own brighter hopes into
the abrupt and hopeless conclusions of prophecies of judgment.
To this balance of evidence is there anything to add? I think there is; and
that it decides the question. All these prospects of the future restoration of
Israel are absolutely without a moral feature. They speak of return from
captivity, of political restoration, of supremacy over the Gentiles, and of a
revived Nature, hanging with fruit, dripping with must. Such hopes are
natural and legitimate to a people who were long separated from their
devastated and neglected land, and whose punishment and penitence were
accomplished. But they are not natural to a prophet like Amos. Imagine him
predicting a future like this! Imagine him describing the consummation of
his people's history, without mentioning one of those moral triumphs to
rally his people to which his whole passion and energy had been devoted.
To me it is impossible to hear the voice that cried, Let justice roll on like
waters and righteousness like a perennial stream, in a peroration which is
content to tell of mountains dripping with must and of a people satisfied
with vineyards and gardens. These are legitimate hopes; but they are the
hopes of a generation of other conditions and of other deserts than the
generation of Amos.

If then the gloom of this great book is turned into light, such a change is not
due to Amos.

CHAPTER XI
COMMON-SENSE AND THE REIGN OF LAW
Amos iii. 3-8; iv. 6-13; v. 8, 9; vi. 12; viii. 8; ix. 5, 6.

Fools, when they face facts, which is seldom, face them one by one, and, as
a consequence, either in ignorant contempt or in panic. With this inordinate
folly Amos charged the religion of his day. The superstitious people, careful
of every point of ritual and very greedy of omens, would not ponder real
facts nor set cause to effect. Amos recalled them to common life. Does a
bird fall upon a snare, except there be a loop on her? Does the trap itself
rise front the ground, except it be catching something—something alive in it
that struggles, and so lifts the trap? Shall the alarum be blown in a city, and
the people not tremble? Daily life is impossible without putting two and
two together. But this is just what Israel will not do with the sacred events
of their time. To religion they will not add common-sense.
For Amos himself, all things which happen are in sequence and in
sympathy. He has seen this in the simple life of the desert; he is sure of it
throughout the tangle and hubbub of history. One thing explains another;
one makes another inevitable. When he has illustrated the truth in common
life, Amos claims it for especially four of the great facts of the time. The
sins of society, of which society is careless; the physical calamities, which
they survive and forget; the approach of Assyria, which they ignore; the
word of the prophet, which they silence,—all these belong to each other.
Drought, Pestilence, Earthquake, Invasion conspire—and the Prophet holds
their secret.
Now it is true that for the most part Amos describes this sequence of events
as the personal action of Jehovah. Shall evil befall, and Jehovah not have
done it?... I have smitten you.... I will raise up against you a Nation....
Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel![363] Yet even where the personal impulse
of the Deity is thus emphasised, we feel equal stress laid upon the order and
the inevitable certainty of the process. Amos nowhere uses Isaiah's great

phrase: a God of Mishpat, a God of Order or Law. But he means almost the
same thing: God works by methods which irresistibly fulfil themselves. Nay
more. Sometimes this sequence sweeps upon the prophet's mind with such
force as to overwhelm all his sense of the Personal within it. The Will and
the Word of the God who causes the thing are crushed out by the "Must Be"
of the thing itself. Take even the descriptions of those historical crises,
which the prophet most explicitly proclaims as the visitations of the
Almighty. In some of the verses all thought of God Himself is lost in the
roar and foam with which that tide of necessity bursts up through them. The
fountains of the great deep break loose, and while the universe trembles to
the shock, it seems that even the voice of the Deity is overwhelmed. In one
passage, immediately after describing Israel's ruin as due to Jehovah's word,
Amos asks how could it have happened otherwise:—
Shall horses run up a cliff, or oxen plough the sea? that ye turn justice into
poison, and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood.[364] A moral order
exists, which it is as impossible to break without disaster as it would be to
break the natural order by driving horses upon a precipice. There is an
inherent necessity in the sinners' doom. Again, he says of Israel's sin: Shall
not the Land tremble for this? Yea, it shall rise up together like the Nile, and
heave and sink like the Nile of Egypt.[365] The crimes of Israel are so
intolerable, that in its own might the natural frame of things revolts against
them. In these great crises, therefore, as in the simple instances adduced
from everyday life, Amos had a sense of what we call law, distinct from,
and for moments even overwhelming, that sense of the personal purpose of
God, admission to the secrets of which had marked his call to be a prophet.
[366]

These instincts we must not exaggerate into a system. There is no
philosophy in Amos, nor need we wish there were. Far more instructive is
what we do find—a virgin sense of the sympathy of all things, the thrill
rather than the theory of a universe. And this faith, which is not a
philosophy, is especially instructive on these two points: that it springs from
the moral sense; and that it embraces, not history only, but nature.
It springs from the moral sense. Other races have arrived at a conception of
the universe along other lines: some by the observation of physical laws
valid to the recesses of space; some by logic and the unity of Reason. But

Israel found the universe through the conscience. It is a historical fact that
the Unity of God, the Unity of History and the Unity of the World, did, in
this order, break upon Israel, through conviction and experience of the
universal sovereignty of righteousness. We see the beginnings of the
process in Amos. To him the sequences which work themselves out through
history and across nature are moral. Righteousness is the hinge on which
the world hangs; loosen it, and history and nature feel the shock. History
punishes the sinful nation. But nature, too, groans beneath the guilt of man;
and in the Drought, the Pestilence and the Earthquake provides his
scourges. It is a belief which has stamped itself upon the language of
mankind. What else is "plague" than "blow" or "scourge"?
This brings us to the second point—our prophet's treatment of Nature.
Apart from the disputed passages (which we shall take afterwards by
themselves) we have in the Book of Amos few glimpses of nature, and
these always under a moral light. There is not in any chapter a landscape
visible in its own beauty. Like all desert-dwellers, who when they would
praise the works of God lift their eyes to the heavens, Amos gives us but the
outlines of the earth—a mountain range,[367] or the crest of a forest,[368] or
the bare back of the land, bent from sea to sea.[369] Nearly all his figures are
drawn from the desert—the torrent, the wild beasts, the wormwood.[370] If
he visits the meadows of the shepherds, it is with the terror of the people's
doom;[371] if the vineyards or orchards, it is with the mildew and the locust;
[372]
if the towns, it is with drought, eclipse and earthquake.[373] To him,
unlike his fellows, unlike especially Hosea, the whole land is one theatre of
judgment; but it is a theatre trembling to its foundations with the drama
enacted upon it. Nay, land and nature are themselves actors in the drama.
Physical forces are inspired with moral purpose, and become the ministers
of righteousness. This is the converse of Elijah's vision. To the older
prophet the message came that God was not in the fire nor in the earthquake
nor in the tempest, but only in the still small voice. But to Amos the fire, the
earthquake and the tempest are all in alliance with the Voice, and execute
the doom which it utters. The difference will be appreciated by us, if we
remember the respective problems set to prophecy in those two periods. To
Elijah, prophet of the elements, wild worker by fire and water, by life and
death, the spiritual had to be asserted and enforced by itself. Ecstatic as he

was, Elijah had to learn that the Word is more Divine than all physical
violence and terror. But Amos understood that for his age the question was
very different. Not only was the God of Israel dissociated from the powers
of nature, which were assigned by the popular mind to the various Ba'alim
of the land, so that there was a divorce between His government of the
people and the influences that fed the people's life; but morality itself was
conceived as provincial. It was narrowed to the national interests; it was
summed up in mere rules of police, and these were looked upon as not so
important as the observances of the ritual. Therefore Amos was driven to
show that nature and morality are one. Morality is not a set of conventions.
"Morality is the order of things." Righteousness is on the scale of the
universe. All things tremble to the shock of sin; all things work together for
good to them that fear God.
With this sense of law, of moral necessity, in Amos we must not fail to
connect that absence of all appeal to miracle, which is also conspicuous in
his book.
We come now to the three disputed passages:—

iv. 13:—For, lo! He Who formed the hills,[374] and createth the wind,[375]
and declareth to man what His[376] mind is; Who maketh the dawn into
darkness, and marcheth on the heights of the land—Jehovah, God of Hosts,
is His Name.

v. 8, 9:—Maker of the Pleiades and Orion,[377] turning to morning the
murk, and day into night He darkeneth; Who calleth for the waters of the
sea, and poureth them forth on the face of the earth—Jehovah His Name;
Who flasheth ruin on the strong, and destruction cometh down on the
fortress.[378]
ix. 5, 6:—And the Lord Jehovah of the Hosts, Who toucheth the earth and it
rocketh, and all mourn that dwell on it, and it riseth like the Nile together,
and sinketh like the Nile of Egypt; Who hath builded in the heavens His
ascents, and founded His vault upon the earth; Who calleth to the waters of
the sea, and poureth them on the face of the earth—Jehovah[379] His Name.
These sublime passages it is natural to take as the triple climax of the
doctrine we have traced through the Book of Amos. Are they not the natural

leap of the soul to the stars? The same shepherd's eye which has marked
sequence and effect unfailing on the desert soil, does it not now sweep the
clear heavens above the desert, and find there also all things ordered and
arrayed? The same mind which traced the Divine processes down history,
which foresaw the hosts of Assyria marshalled for Israel's punishment,
which felt the overthrow of justice shock the nation to their ruin, and read
the disasters of the husbandman's year as the vindication of a law higher
than the physical—does it not now naturally rise beyond such instances of
the Divine order, round which the dust of history rolls, to the lofty,
undimmed outlines of the Universe as a whole, and, in consummation of its
message, declare that "all is Law," and Law intelligible to man?
But in the way of so attractive a conclusion the literary criticism of the book
has interposed. It is maintained[380] that, while none of these sublime verses
are indispensable to the argument of Amos, some of them actually interrupt
it, so that when they are removed it becomes consistent; that such
ejaculations in praise of Jehovah's creative power are not elsewhere met
with in Hebrew prophecy before the time of the Exile; that they sound very
like echoes of the Book of Job; and that in the Septuagint version of Hosea
we actually find a similar doxology, wedged into the middle of an authentic
verse of the prophet.[381] To these arguments against the genuineness of the
three famous passages, other critics, not less able and not less free, like
Robertson Smith and Kuenen,[382] have replied that such ejaculations at
critical points of the prophet's discourse "are not surprising under the
general conditions of prophetic oratory"; and that, while one of the
doxologies does appear to break the argument[383] of the context, they are
all of them thoroughly in the spirit and the style of Amos. To this point the
discussion has been carried; it seems to need a closer examination. .. We
may at once dismiss the argument which has been drawn from that obvious
intrusion into the Greek of Hosea xiii. 4. Not only is this verse not so suited
to the doctrine of Hosea as the doxologies are to the doctrine of Amos; but
while they are definite and sublime, it is formal and flat—"Who made firm
the heavens and founded the earth, Whose hands founded all the host of
heaven, and He did not display them that thou shouldest walk after them."
The passages in Amos are vision; this is a piece of catechism crumbling into
homily.

Again—an argument in favour of the authenticity of these passages may be
drawn from the character of their subjects. We have seen the part which the
desert played in shaping the temper and the style of Amos. But the works of
the Creator, to which these passages lift their praise, are just those most
fondly dwelt upon by all the poetry of the desert. The Arabian nomad, when
he magnifies the power of God, finds his subjects not on the bare earth
about him, but in the brilliant heavens and the heavenly processes.
Again, the critic who affirms that the passages in Amos "in every case
sensibly disturb the connection,"[384] exaggerates. In the case of the first of
them, chap. iv. 13, the disturbance is not at all "sensible"; though it must be
admitted that the oracle closes impressively enough without it. The last of
them, chap. ix. 5, 6—which repeats a clause already found in the book[385]
—is as much in sympathy with its context as most of the oracles in the
somewhat scattered discourse of that last section of the book. The real
difficulty is the second doxology, chap. v. 8, 9, which does break the
connection, and in a sudden and violent way. Remove it, and the argument
is consistent. We cannot read chap. v. without feeling that, whether Amos
wrote these verses or not, they did not originally stand where they stand at
present.
Now, taken with this dispensableness of two of the passages and this
obvious intrusion of one of them, the following additional fact becomes
ominous. Jehovah is His Name (which occurs in two of the passages),[386]
or Jehovah of Hosts is His Name (which occurs at least in one),[387] is a
construction which does not happen elsewhere in the book, except in a
verse where it is awkward and where we have already seen reason to doubt
its genuineness.[388] But still more, the phrase does not occur in any other
prophet, till we come down to the oracles which compose Isaiah xl.-lxvi.
Here it happens thrice—twice in passages dating from the Exile,[389] and
once in a passage suspected by some to be of still later date.[390] In the
Book of Jeremiah the phrase is found eight times; but either in passages
already on other grounds judged by many critics to be later than Jeremiah,
[391]
or where by itself it is probably an intrusion into the text.[392] Now is it
a mere coincidence that a phrase, which, outside the Book of Amos, occurs
only in writing of the time of the Exile and in passages considered for other

reasons to be post-exilic insertions—is it a mere coincidence that within the
Book of Amos it should again be found only in suspected verses?
There appears to be in this more than a coincidence; and the present writer
cannot but feel a very strong case against the traditional belief that these
doxologies are original and integral portions of the Book of Amos. At the
same time a case which has failed to convince critics like Robertson Smith
and Kuenen cannot be considered conclusive, and we are so ignorant of
many of the conditions of prophetic oratory at this period that dogmatism is
impossible. For instance, the use by Amos of the Divine titles is a matter
over which uncertainty still lingers; and any further argument on the subject
must include a fuller discussion than space here allows of the remarkable
distribution of those titles throughout the various sections of the book.[393]
But if it be not given to us to prove this kind of authenticity—a question
whose data are so obscure, yet whose answer fortunately is of so little
significance—let us gladly welcome that greater Authenticity whose
undeniable proofs these verses so splendidly exhibit. No one questions their
right to the place which some great spirit gave them in this book—their
suitableness to its grand and ordered theme, their pure vision and their
eternal truth. That common-sense, and that conscience, which, moving
among the events of earth and all the tangled processes of history, find
everywhere reason and righteousness at work, in these verses claim the
Universe for the same powers, and see in stars and clouds and the
procession of day and night the One Eternal God Who declareth to man
what His mind is.

HOSEA

"For leal love have I desired and not sacrifice
And the knowledge of God rather than burnt-offerings."

CHAPTER XII
THE BOOK OF HOSEA

The Book of Hosea consists of two unequal sections, chaps. i.-iii. and
chaps. iv.-xiv., which differ in the dates of their standpoints, to a large
extent also in the details of their common subjects, but still more largely in
their form and style. The First Section is in the main narrative; though the
style rises to the pitch of passionate pleading and promise, it is fluent and
equable. If one verse be omitted and three others transposed,[394] the
argument is continuous. In the Second Section, on the contrary, we have a
stream of addresses and reflections, appeals, upbraidings, sarcasms,
recollections of earlier history, denunciations and promises, which, with
little logical connection and almost no pauses or periods, start impulsively
from each other, and for a large part are expressed in elliptic and ejaculatory
phrases. In the present restlessness of Biblical Criticism it would have been
surprising if this difference of style had not prompted some minds to a
difference of authorship. Grätz[395] has distinguished two Hoseas, separated
by a period of fifty years. But if, as we shall see, the First Section reflects
the end of the reign of Jeroboam II., who died about 743, then the next few
years, with their revolutionary changes in Israel, are sufficient to account
for the altered outlook of the Second Section; while the altered style is fully
explained by difference of occasion and motive. In both sections not only
are the religious principles identical, and many of the characteristic
expressions,[396] but there breathes throughout the same urgent and jealous
temper, which renders Hosea's personality so distinctive among the
prophets. Within this unity, of course, we must not be surprised to find, as
in the Book of Amos, verses which cannot well be authentic.

First Section: Hosea's Prophetic Life.

With the removal of some of the verses the argument becomes clear and
consecutive. After the story of the wife and children (i. 2-9), who are
symbols of the land and people of Israel in their apostasy from God (2, 4, 6,

9), the Divine voice calls on the living generation to plead with their mother
lest destruction come (ii. 2-5, Eng.; ii. 4-7, Heb.[397]), but then passes
definite sentence of desolation on the land and of exile on the people (6-13,
Eng.; 8-15, Heb.), which however is not final doom, but discipline,[398] with
the ultimate promise of the return of the nation's youth, their renewed
betrothal to Jehovah and the restoration of nature (14-23). Then follows the
story of the prophet's restoration of his wife, also with discipline (chap. iii.).
Notice that, although the story of the wife's fall has preceded the declaration
of Israel's apostasy, it is Israel's restoration which precedes the wife's. The
ethical significance of this order we shall illustrate in the next chapter.
In this section the disturbing verses are i. 7 and the group of three—i. 10,
11, ii. 1 (Eng.; but ii. 1-3 Heb.). Chap. i. 7 introduces Judah as excepted
from the curse passed upon Israel; it is so obviously intrusive in a prophecy
dealing only with Israel, and it so clearly reflects the deliverance of Judah
from Sennacherib in 701, that we cannot hold it for anything but an
insertion of a date subsequent to that deliverance, and introduced by a pious
Jew to signalise Judah's fate in contrast with Israel's.[399]
The other three verses (i. 10, 11, ii. 1, Eng.; ii. 1-3, Heb.) introduce a
promise of restoration before the sentence of judgment is detailed, or any
ethical conditions of restoration are stated. That is, they break and tangle an
argument otherwise consistent and progressive from beginning to end of the
Section. Every careful reader must feel them out of place where they lie.
Their awkwardness has been so much appreciated that, while in the Hebrew
text they have been separated from chap. i., in the Greek they have been
separated from chap. ii. That is to say, some have felt they have no
connection with what precedes them, others none with what follows them;
while our English version, by distributing them between the two chapters,
only makes more sensible their superfluity. If they really belong to the
prophecy, their proper place is after the last verse of chap. ii.[400] This is
actually the order in which part of it and part of them are quoted by St.
Paul.[401] At the same time, when so arranged, they repeat somewhat
awkwardly the language of ii. 23, and scarcely form a climax to the chapter.
There is nothing in their language to lead us to doubt that they are Hosea's

own; and ver. 11 shows that they must have been written at least before the
captivity of Northern Israel.[402]
The only other suspected clause in this section is that in iii. 5, and David
their king;[403] but if it be struck out the verse is rendered awkward, if not
impossible, by the immediate repetition of the Divine name, which would
not have been required in the absence of the suspected clause.[404]
The text of the rest of the section is remarkably free from obscurities. The
Greek version offers few variants, and most of these are due to
mistranslation.[405] In iii. 1 for loved of a husband it reads loving evil.
Evidently this section was written before the death of Jeroboam II. The
house of Jehu still reigns; and as Hosea predicts its fall by war on the
classic battleground of Jezreel, the prophecy must have been written before
the actual fall, which took the form of an internal revolt against Zechariah,
the son of Jeroboam. With this agrees the tone of the section. There are the
same evils in Israel which Amos exposed in the prosperous years of the
same reign; but Hosea appears to realise the threatened exile from a nearer
standpoint. It is probable also that part of the reason of his ability to see his
way through the captivity to the people's restoration is due to a longer
familiarity with the approach of captivity than Amos experienced before he
wrote. But, of course, for Hosea's promise of restoration there were, as we
shall see, other and greater reasons of a religious kind.[406]

Second Section: Chaps. iv.-xiv.

When we pass into these chapters we feel that the times are changed. The
dynasty of Jehu has passed: kings are falling rapidly: Israel devours its
rulers:[407] there is no loyalty to the king; he is suddenly cut off;[408] all the
princes are revolters.[409] Round so despised and so unstable a throne the
nation tosses in disorder. Conspiracies are rife. It is not only, as in Amos,
the the sins of the luxurious, of them that are at ease in Zion, which are
exposed; but also literal bloodshed: highway robbery with murder, abetted
by the priests;[410] the thief breaketh in and the robber-troop maketh a raid.
[411]
Amos looked out on foreign nations across a quiet Israel; his views of
the world are wide and clear; but in the Book of Hosea the dust is up, and

into what is happening beyond the frontier we get only glimpses. There is
enough, however, to make visible another great change since the days of
Jeroboam. Israel's self-reliance is gone. She is as fluttered as a startled bird:
They call unto Egypt, they go unto Assyria.[412] Their wealth is carried as a
gift to King Jareb,[413] and they evidently engage in intrigues with Egypt.
But everything is hopeless: kings cannot save, for Ephraim is seized by the
pangs of a fatal crisis.[414]
This broken description reflects—and all the more faithfully because of its
brokenness—the ten years which followed on the death of Jeroboam II.
about 743.[415] His son Zechariah, who succeeded him, was in six months
assassinated by Shallum ben Jabesh, who within a month more was himself
cut down by Menahem ben Gadi.[416] Menahem held the throne for six or
seven years, but only by sending to the King of Assyria an enormous tribute
which he exacted from the wealthy magnates of Israel.[417] Discontent must
have followed these measures, such discontent with their rulers as Hosea
describes. Pekahiah ben Menahem kept the throne for little over a year after
his father's death, and was assassinated by his captain,[418] Pekah ben
Remaliah, with fifty Gileadites, and Pekah took the throne about 736. This
second and bloody usurpation may be one of those on which Hosea dwells;
but if so it is the last historical allusion in his book. There is no reference to
the war of Pekah and Rezin against Ahaz of Judah which Isaiah describes,
[419]
and to which Hosea must have alluded had he been still prophesying.
[420]
There is no allusion to its consequence in Tiglath-Pileser's conquest of
Gilead and Galilee in 734-733. On the contrary, these provinces are still
regarded as part of the body politic of Israel.[421] Nor is there any sign that
Israel have broken with Assyria; to the last the book represents them as
fawning on the Northern Power.[422]
In all probability, then, the Book of Hosea was closed before 734 b.c. The
Second Section dates from the years behind that and back to the death of
Jeroboam II. about 743, while the First Section, as we saw, reflects the
period immediately before the latter.
We come now to the general style of chaps. iv.-xiv. The period, as we have
seen, was one of the most broken of all the history of Israel; the political
outlook, the temper of the people, were constantly changing. Hosea, who

watched these kaleidoscopes, had himself an extraordinarily mobile and
vibrant mind. There could be no greater contrast to that fixture of
conscience which renders the Book of Amos so simple in argument, so firm
in style.[423] It was a leaden plummet which Amos saw Jehovah setting to
the structure of Israel's life.[424] But Hosea felt his own heart hanging at the
end of the line; and this was a heart that could never be still. Amos is the
prophet of law; he sees the Divine processes work themselves out,
irrespective of the moods and intrigues of the people, with which, after all,
he was little familiar. So each of his paragraphs moves steadily forward to a
climax, and every climax is Doom—the captivity of the people to Assyria.
You can divide his book by these things; it has its periods, strophes and
refrains. It marches like the hosts of the Lord of hosts. But Hosea had no
such unhampered vision of great laws. He was too familiar with the rapid
changes of his fickle people; and his affection for them was too anxious.
His style has all the restlessness and irritableness of hunger about it—the
hunger of love. Hosea's eyes are never at rest. He seeks, he welcomes, for
moments of extraordinary fondness he dwells upon every sign of his
people's repentance. But a Divine jealousy succeeds, and he questions the
motives of the change. You feel that his love has been overtaken and
surprised by his knowledge; and in fact his whole style might be described
as a race between the two—a race varying and uncertain up to almost the
end. The transitions are very swift. You come upon a passage of exquisite
tenderness: the prophet puts the people's penitence in his own words with a
sympathy and poetry that are sublime and seem final. But suddenly he
remembers how false they are, and there is another light in his eyes. The
lustre of their tears dies from his verses, like the dews of a midsummer
morning in Ephraim; and all is dry and hard again beneath the brazen sun of
his amazement. What shall I do unto thee, Ephraim? What shall I do unto
thee, Judah? Indeed, this figure of his own is insufficient to express the
suddenness with which Hosea lights up some intrigue of the statesmen of
the day, or some evil habit of the priests, or some hidden orgy of the
common people. Rather than the sun it is the lightning—the lightning in
pursuit of a serpent.
The elusiveness of the style is the greater that many passages do not seem
to have been prepared for public delivery. They are more the play of the

prophet's mind than his set speech. They are not formally addressed to an
audience, and there is no trace in them of oratorical art.
Hence the language of this Second Section of the Book of Hosea is
impulsive and abrupt beyond all comparison. There is little rhythm in it, and
almost no argument. Few metaphors are elaborated. Even the brief
parallelism of Hebrew poetry seems too long for the quick spasms of the
writer's heart. "Osee," said Jerome,[425] "commaticus est, et quasi per
sententias loquitur." He speaks in little clauses, often broken off; he is
impatient even of copulas. And withal he uses a vocabulary full of strange
words, which the paucity of parallelism makes much the more difficult.
To this original brokenness and obscurity of the language are due, first, the
great corruption of the text; second, the difficulty of dividing it; third, the
uncertainty of deciding its genuineness or authenticity.
1. The Text of Hosea is one of the most dilapidated in the Old Testament,
and in parts beyond possibility of repair. It is probable that glosses were
found necessary at an earlier period and to a larger extent than in most other
books: there are evident traces of some; yet it is not always possible to
disentangle them.[426] The value of the Greek version is curiously mixed.
The authors had before them much the same difficulties as we have, and
they made many more for themselves. Some of their mistranslations are
outrageous: they occur not only in obscure passages, where they may be
pardoned;[427] but even where there are parallel terms with which the
translators show themselves familiar.[428] Sometimes they have translated
word by word, without any attempt to give the general sense; and as a
whole their version is devoid both of beauty and compactness. Yet not
infrequently they supply us with a better reading than the Massoretic text.
Occasionally they divide words properly which the latter misdivides.[429]
They often give more correctly the easily confused pronominal suffixes;[430]
and the copula.[431] And they help us to the true readings of many other
words.[432] Here and there an additional clause in the Greek is plethoric,
perhaps copied by mistake from a similar verse in the context.[433] All of
these will be noticed separately as we reach them. But, even after these and
other aids, we shall find that the text not infrequently remains
impracticable.

2. As great as the difficulty of reaching a true text in this Second Section of
the book is the difficulty of Dividing it. Here and there, it is true, the Greek
helps us to improve upon the division into chapters and verses of the
Hebrew text, which is that of our own English version. Chap. vi. 1-4 ought
to follow immediately on to the end of chap. v., with the connecting word
saying. The last few words of chap. vi. go with the first two of chap. vii.,
but perhaps both are gloss. The openings of chaps. xi. and xii. are better
arranged in the Hebrew than in the Greek. As regards verses we shall have
to make several rearrangements.[434] But beyond this more or less
conventional division into chapters and verses our confidence ceases. It is
impossible to separate the section, long as it is, into subsections, or into
oracles, strophes or periods. The reason of this we have already seen, in the
turbulence of the period reflected, in the divided interests and abrupt and
emotional style of the author, and in the probability that part at least of the
book was not prepared for public speaking. The periods and climaxes, the
refrains, the catchwords by which we are helped to divide even the
confused Second Section of the Book of Amos, are not found in Hosea.
Only twice does the exordium of a spoken address occur: at the beginning
of the section (chap. iv. 1), and at what is now the opening of the next
chapter (v. 1). The phrase 'tis the oracle of Jehovah, which occurs so
periodically in Amos, and thrice in the second chapter of Hosea, is found
only once in chaps. iv.-xiv. Again, the obvious climaxes or perorations, of
which we found so many in Amos, are very few,[435] and even when they
occur the next verses start impulsively from them, without a pause.
In spite of these difficulties, since the section is so long, attempts at division
have been made. Ewald distinguished three parts in three different tempers:
First, iv.-vi. 11 a, God's Plaint against His people; Second, vi. 11 b-ix. 9,
Their Punishment; Third, ix. 10-xiv. 10, Retrospect of the earlier history—
warning and consolation. Driver also divides into three subsections, but
differently: First, iv.-viii., in which Israel's Guilt predominates; Second, ix.-
xi. 11, in which the prevailing thought is their Punishment; Third, xi. 12-
xiv. 10, in which both lines of thought are continued, but followed by a
glance at the brighter future.[436] What is common to both these
arrangements is the recognition of a certain progress from feelings about
Israel's guilt which prevail in the earlier chapters, to a clear vision of the
political destruction awaiting them; and finally more hope of repentance in

the people, with a vision of the blessed future that must follow upon it. It is,
however, more accurate to say that the emphasis of Hosea's prophesying,
instead of changing from the Guilt to the Punishment of Israel, changes
about the middle of chap. vii. from their Moral Decay to their Political
Decay, and that the description of the latter is modified or interrupted by
Two Visions of better things: one of Jehovah's early guidance of the people,
with a great outbreak of His Love upon them, in chap. xi.; and one of their
future Return to Jehovah and restoration in chap. xiv. It is on these features
that the division of the following Exposition is arranged.
3. It will be obvious that with a text so corrupt, with a style so broken and
incapable of logical division, questions of Authenticity are raised to a pitch
of the greatest difficulty. Allusion has been made to the number of glosses
which must have been found necessary from even an early period, and of
some of which we can discern the proofs.[437] We will deal with these as
they occur. But we may here discuss, as a whole, another class of suspected
passages—suspected for the same reason that we saw a number in Amos to
be, because of their reference to Judah. In the Book of Hosea (chaps. iv.-
xiv.) they are twelve in number. Only one of them is favourable (iv. 15):
Though Israel play the harlot, let not Judah sin. Kuenen[438] argues that this
is genuine, on the ground that the peculiar verb to sin or take guilt to oneself
is used several other times in the book,[439] and that the wish expressed is in
consonance with what he understands to be Hosea's favourable feeling
towards Judah. Yet Hosea nowhere else makes any distinction between
Ephraim and Judah in the matter of sin, but condemns both equally; and as
iv. 15 f. are to be suspected on other grounds as well, I cannot hold this
reference to Judah to be beyond doubt. Nor is the reference in viii. 14
genuine: And Israel forgat her Maker and built temples, and Judah
multiplied fenced cities, but I will send fire on his cities and it shall devour
her palaces. Kuenen[440] refuses to reject the reference to Judah, on the
ground that without it the rhythm of the verse is spoiled; but the fact is the
whole verse must go. Chap. v. 13 forms a climax, which v. 14 only
weakens; the style is not like Hosea's own, and indeed is but an echo of
verses of Amos.[441] Nor can we be quite sure about v. 5: Israel and
Ephraim shall stumble by their iniquities, and (LXX.) stumble also shall
Judah with them; or vi. 10, 11: In Bethel I have seen horrors: there playest
thou the harlot, Ephraim; there Israel defiles himself; also Judah ... (the

rest of the text is impracticable). In both these passages Judah is the
awkward third of a parallelism, and is introduced by an also, as if an
afterthought. Yet the afterthought may be the prophet's own; for in other
passages, to which no doubt attaches, he fully includes Judah in the
sinfulness of Israel. Cornill rejects x. 11, Judah must plough, but I cannot
see on what grounds; as Kuenen says, it has no appearance of being an
intrusion.[442] In xii. 3 Wellhausen reads Israel for Judah, but the latter is
justified if not rendered necessary by the reference to Judah in ver. 1, which
Wellhausen admits. Against the other references—v. 10, The princes of
Judah are as removers of boundaries; v. 12, I shall be as the moth to
Ephraim, and a worm to the house of Judah; v. 13, And Ephraim saw his
disease, and Judah his sore; v. 14, For I am as a roaring lion to Ephraim,
and as a young lion to the house of Judah; vi. 4, What shall I do to thee,
Ephraim? what shall I do to thee, Judah?—there are no apparent
objections; and they are generally admitted by critics. As Kuenen says, it
would have been surprising if Hosea had made no reference to the sister
kingdom. His judgment of her is amply justified by that of her own citizens,
Isaiah and Micah.
Other short passages of doubtful authenticity will be treated as we come to
them; but again it may be emphasised that, in a book of such a style as this,
certainty on the subject is impossible.
Finally, there may be given here the only notable addition which the
Septuagint makes to the Book of Hosea. It occurs in xiii. 4, after I am
Jehovah thy God: "That made fast the heavens and founded the earth,
whose hands founded all the host of the heaven, and I did not show them to
thee that thou shouldest follow after them, and I led thee up"—from the
land of Egypt.
At first this recalls those apostrophes to Jehovah's power which break forth
in the Book of Amos; and the resemblance has been taken to prove that they
also are late intrusions. But this both obtrudes itself as they do not, and is
manifestly of much lower poetical value. See page 203.

We have now our material clearly before us, and may proceed to the more
welcome task of tracing our prophet's life, and expounding his teaching.

CHAPTER XIII
THE PROBLEM THAT AMOS LEFT

Amos was a preacher of righteousness almost wholly in its judicial and
punitive offices. Exposing the moral conditions of society in his day,
emphasising on the one hand its obduracy and on the other the
intolerableness of it, he asserted that nothing could avert the inevitable
doom—neither Israel's devotion to Jehovah nor Jehovah's interest in Israel.
You alone have I known of all the families of the ground: therefore will I
visit upon you all your iniquities. The visitation was to take place in war
and in the captivity of the people. This is practically the whole message of
the prophet Amos.
That he added to it the promise of restoration which now closes his book,
we have seen to be extremely improbable.[443] Yet even if that promise is
his own, Amos does not tell us how the restoration is to be brought about.
With wonderful insight and patience he has traced the captivity of Israel to
moral causes. But he does not show what moral change in the exiles is to
justify their restoration, or by what means such a moral change is to be
effected. We are left to infer the conditions and the means of redemption
from the principles which Amos enforced while there yet seemed time to
pray for the doomed people: Seek the Lord and ye shall live.[444] According
to this, the moral renewal of Israel must precede their restoration; but the
prophet seems to make no great effort to effect the renewal. In short Amos
illustrates the easily-forgotten truth that a preacher to the conscience is not
necessarily a preacher of repentance.
Of the great antitheses between which religion moves, Law and Love,
Amos had therefore been the prophet of Law. But we must not imagine that
the association of Love with the Deity was strange to him. This could not be
to any Israelite who remembered the past of his people—the romance of
their origins and early struggles for freedom. Israel had always felt the
grace of their God; and, unless we be wrong about the date of the great

poem in the end of Deuteronomy, they had lately celebrated that grace in
lines of exquisite beauty and tenderness:—

He found him in a desert land,
In a waste and a howling wilderness.
He compassed him about, cared for him,
Kept him as the apple of His eye.
As an eagle stirreth up his nest,
Fluttereth over his young,
Spreadeth his wings, taketh them,
Beareth them up on his pinions—
So Jehovah alone led him.[445]

The patience of the Lord with their waywardness and their stubbornness
had been the ethical influence on Israel's life at a time when they had
probably neither code of law nor system of doctrine. Thy gentleness, as an
early Psalmist says for his people, Thy gentleness hath made me great.[446]
Amos is not unaware of this ancient grace of Jehovah. But he speaks of it in
a fashion which shows that he feels it to be exhausted and without hope for
his generation. I brought you up out of the land of Egypt, and led you forty
years in the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorites. And I raised up
of your sons for prophets and of your young men for Nazirites.[447] But this
can now only fill the cup of the nation's sin. You alone have I known of all
the families of the earth: therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities.
[448]
Jehovah's ancient Love but strengthens now the justice and the impetus
of His Law.
We perceive, then, the problem which Amos left to prophecy. It was not to
discover Love in the Deity whom he had so absolutely identified with Law.
The Love of God needed no discovery among a people with the
Deliverance, the Exodus, the Wilderness and the Gift of the Land in their
memories. But the problem was to prove in God so great and new a mercy
as was capable of matching that Law, which the abuse of His millennial
gentleness now only the more fully justified. There was needed a prophet to
arise with as keen a conscience of Law as Amos himself, and yet affirm that
Love was greater still; to admit that Israel were doomed, and yet promise
their redemption by processes as reasonable and as ethical as those by
which the doom had been rendered inevitable. The prophet of Conscience
had to be followed by the prophet of Repentance.

Such an one was found in Hosea, the son of Be'eri, a citizen and probably a
priest of Northern Israel, whose very name, Salvation, the synonym of
Joshua and of Jesus, breathed the larger hope, which it was his glory to bear
to his people. Before we see how for this task Hosea was equipped with the
love and sympathy which Amos lacked, let us do two things. Let us
appreciate the magnitude of the task itself, set to him first of prophets; and
let us remind ourselves that, greatly as he achieved it, the task was not one
which could be achieved even by him once for all, but that it presents itself
to religion again and again in the course of her development.
For the first of these duties, it is enough to recall how much all subsequent
prophecy derives from Hosea. We shall not exaggerate if we say that there
is no truth uttered by later prophets about the Divine Grace, which we do
not find in germ in him. Isaiah of Jerusalem was a greater statesman and a
more powerful writer, but he had not Hosea's tenderness and insight into
motive and character. Hosea's marvellous sympathy both with the people
and with God is sufficient to foreshadow every grief, every hope, every
gospel, which make the books of Jeremiah and the great Prophet of the
Exile exhaustless in their spiritual value for mankind. Those others explored
the kingdom of God: it was Hosea who took it by storm.[449] He is the first
prophet of Grace, Israel's earliest Evangelist; yet with as keen a sense of
law, and of the inevitableness of ethical discipline, as Amos himself.
But the task which Hosea accomplished was not one that could be
accomplished once for all. The interest of his book is not merely historical.
For so often as a generation is shocked out of its old religious ideals, as
Amos shocked Israel, by a realism and a discovery of law, which have no
respect for ideals, however ancient and however dear to the human heart,
but work their own pitiless way to doom inevitable; so often must the Book
of Hosea have a practical value for living men. At such a crisis we stand to-
day. The older Evangelical assurance, the older Evangelical ideals have to
some extent been rendered impossible by the realism to which the sciences,
both physical and historical, have most healthily recalled us, and by their
wonderful revelation of Law working through nature and society without
respect to our creeds and pious hopes. The question presses: Is it still
possible to believe in repentance and conversion, still possible to preach the
power of God to save, whether the individual or society, from the forces of
heredity and of habit? We can at least learn how Hosea mastered the very

similar problem which Amos left to him, and how, with a moral realism no
less stern than his predecessor and a moral standard every whit as high, he
proclaimed Love to be the ultimate element in religion; not only because it
moves man to a repentance and God to a redemption more sovereign than
any law; but because if neglected or abused, whether as love of man or love
of God, it enforces a doom still more inexorable than that required by
violated truth or by outraged justice. Love our Saviour, Love our almighty
and unfailing Father, but, just because of this, Love our most awful Judge—
we turn to the life and the message in which this eternal theme was first
unfolded.

CHAPTER XIV
THE STORY OF THE PRODIGAL WIFE
Hosea i.-iii.

It has often been remarked that, unlike the first Doomster of Israel, Israel's
first Evangelist was one of themselves, a native and citizen, perhaps even a
priest, of the land to which he was sent. This appears even in his treatment
of the stage and soil of his ministry. Contrast him in this respect with Amos.
In the Book of Amos we have few glimpses of the scenery of Israel, and
these always by flashes of the lightnings of judgment: the towns in drought
or earthquake or siege; the vineyards and orchards under locusts or mildew;
Carmel itself desolate, or as a hiding-place from God's wrath.
But Hosea's love steals across his whole land like the dew, provoking every
separate scent and colour, till all Galilee lies before us, lustrous and fragrant
as nowhere else outside the parables of Jesus. The Book of Amos, when it
would praise God's works, looks to the stars. But the poetry of Hosea clings
about his native soil like its trailing vines. If he appeals to the heavens, it is
only that they may speak to the earth, and the earth to the corn and the
wine, and the corn and the wine to Jezreel.[450] Even the wild beasts—and
Hosea tells us of their cruelty almost as much as Amos—he cannot shut out
of the hope of his love: I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of
the field, and with the fowls of heaven, and with the creeping things of the
ground.[451] God's love-gifts to His people are corn and wool, flax and oil;
while spiritual blessings are figured in the joys of them who sow and reap.
With Hosea we feel all the seasons of the Syrian year: early rain and latter
rain, the first flush of the young corn, the scent of the vine blossom, the first
ripe fig of the fig-tree in her first season, the bursting of the lily; the wild
vine trailing on the hedge, the field of tares, the beauty of the full olive in
sunshine and breeze; the mists and heavy dews of a summer morning in
Ephraim, the night winds laden with the air of the mountains, the scent of
Lebanon.[452] Or it is the dearer human sights in valley and field: the smoke

from the chimney, the chaff from the threshing-floor, the doves startled to
their towers, the fowler and his net; the breaking up of the fallow ground,
the harrowing of the clods, the reapers, the heifer that treadeth out the corn;
the team of draught oxen surmounting the steep road, and at the top the
kindly driver setting in food to their jaws.[453]
Where, I say, do we find anything like this save in the parables of Jesus?
For the love of Hosea was as the love of that greater Galilean: however
high, however lonely it soared, it was yet rooted in the common life below,
and fed with the unfailing grace of a thousand homely sources.
But just as the Love which first showed itself in the sunny Parables of
Galilee passed onward to Gethsemane and the Cross, so the love of Hosea,
that had wakened with the spring lilies and dewy summer mornings of the
North, had also, ere his youth was spent, to meet its agony and shame.
These came upon the prophet in his home, and in her in whom so loyal and
tender a heart had hoped to find his chiefest sanctuary next to God. There
are, it is true, some of the ugliest facts of human life about this prophet's
experience; but the message is one very suited to our own hearts and times.
Let us read this story of the Prodigal Wife as we do that other Galilean tale
of the Prodigal Son. There as well as here are harlots; but here as well as
there is the clear mirror of the Divine Love. For the Bible never shuns
realism when it would expose the exceeding hatefulness of sin or magnify
the power of God's love to redeem. To an age which is always treating
conjugal infidelity either as a matter of comedy or as a problem of despair,
the tale of Hosea and his wife may still become, what it proved to his own
generation, a gospel full of love and hope.
The story, and how it led Hosea to understand God's relations to sinful men,
is told in the first three chapters of his book. It opens with the very startling
sentence: The beginning of the word of Jehovah to Hosea:—And Jehovah
said to Hosea, Go, take thee a wife of harlotry and children of harlotry: for
the Land hath committed great harlotry in departing from Jehovah.[454]
The command was obeyed. And he went and took Gomer, daughter of
Diblaim;[455] and she conceived, and bare to him a son. And Jehovah said
unto him, Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little and I shall visit the blood of
Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will bring to an end the kingdom of the

house of Israel; and it shall be on that day that I shall break the bow of
Israel in the Vale of Jezreel—the classic battle-field of Israel.[456] And she
conceived again, and bare a daughter; and He said to him, Call her name
Un-Loved, or That-never-knew-a-Father's-Pity;[457] for I will not again
have pity—such pity as a Father hath—on the house of Israel, that I should
fully forgive them.[458] And she weaned Un-Pitied, and conceived, and bare
a son. And He said, Call his name Not-My-People; for ye are not My
people, and I—I am not yours.[459]
It is not surprising that divers interpretations have been put upon this
troubled tale. The words which introduce it are so startling that very many
have held it to be an allegory, or parable, invented by the prophet to
illustrate, by familiar human figures, what was at that period the still
difficult conception of the Love of God for sinful men. But to this well-
intended argument there are insuperable objections. It implies that Hosea
had first awakened to the relations of Jehovah and Israel—He faithful and
full of affection, she unfaithful and thankless—and that then, in order to
illustrate the relations, he had invented the story. To that we have an
adequate reply. In the first place, though it were possible, it is extremely
improbable, that such a man should have invented such a tale about his
wife, or, if he was unmarried, about himself. But, in the second place, he
says expressly that his domestic experience was the beginning of Jehovah's
word to him. That is, he passed through it first, and only afterwards, with
the sympathy and insight thus acquired, he came to appreciate Jehovah's
relation to Israel. Finally, the style betrays narrative rather than parable. The
simple facts are told; there is an absence of elaboration; there is no effort to
make every detail symbolic; the names Gomer and Diblaim are apparently
those of real persons; every attempt to attach a symbolic value to them has
failed.
She was, therefore, no dream, this woman, but flesh and blood: the sorrow,
the despair, the sphinx of the prophet's life; yet a sphinx who in the end
yielded her riddle to love.
Accordingly a large number of other interpreters have taken the story
throughout as the literal account of actual facts. This is the theory of many
of the Latin and Greek Fathers,[460] of many of the Puritans and of Dr.
Pusey—by one of those agreements into which, from such opposite schools,

all these commentators are not infrequently drawn by their common
captivity to the letter of Scripture.[461] When you ask them, How then do
you justify that first strange word of God to Hosea,[462] if you take it
literally and believe that Hosea was charged to marry a woman of public
shame? they answer either that such an evil may be justified by the bare
word of God, or that it was well worth the end, the salvation of a lost soul.
[463]
And indeed this tragedy would be invested with an even greater pathos
if it were true that the human hero had passed through a self-sacrifice so
unusual, had incurred such a shame for such an end. The interpretation,
however, seems forbidden by the essence of the story. Had not Hosea's wife
been pure when he married her she could not have served as a type of the
Israel whose earliest relations to Jehovah he describes as innocent. And this
is confirmed by other features of the book: by the high ideal which Hosea
has of marriage, and by that sense of early goodness and early beauty
passing away like morning mist, which is so often and so pathetically
expressed that we cannot but catch in it the echo of his own experience. As
one has said to whom we owe, more than to any other, the exposition of the
gospel in Hosea,[464] "The struggle of Hosea's shame and grief when he
found his wife unfaithful is altogether inconceivable unless his first love
had been pure and full of trust in the purity of its object."
How then are we to reconcile with this the statement of that command to
take a wife of the character so frankly described? In this way—and we owe
the interpretation to the same lamented scholar.[465] When, some years after
his marriage, Hosea at last began to be aware of the character of her whom
he had taken to his home, and while he still brooded upon it, God revealed
to him why He who knoweth all things from the beginning had suffered His
servant to marry such a woman; and Hosea, by a very natural anticipation,
in which he is imitated by other prophets,[466] pushed back his own
knowledge of God's purpose to the date when that purpose began actually to
be fulfilled, the day of his betrothal. This, though he was all unconscious of
its fatal future, had been to Hosea the beginning of the word of the Lord. On
that uncertain voyage he had sailed with sealed orders.
Now this is true to nature, and may be matched from our own experience.
"The beginning of God's word" to any of us—where does it lie? Does it lie
in the first time the meaning of our life became articulate, and we were able

to utter it to others? Ah no; it always lies far behind that, in facts and in
relationships, of the Divine meaning of which we are at the time
unconscious, though now we know. How familiar this is in respect to the
sorrows and adversities of life: dumb, deadening things that fall on us at the
time with no more voice than clods falling on coffins of dead men, we have
been able to read them afterwards as the clear call of God to our souls. But
what we thus so readily admit about the sorrows of life may be equally true
of any of those relations which we enter with light and unawed hearts,
conscious only of the novelty and the joy of them. It is most true of the love
which meets a man as it met Hosea in his opening manhood.
How long Hosea took to discover his shame he indicates by a few hints
which he suffers to break from the delicate reserve of his story. He calls the
first child his own; and the boy's name, though ominous of the nation's fate,
has no trace of shame upon it. Hosea's Jezreel was as Isaiah's Shear-Jashub
or Maher-shalal-hash-baz. But Hosea does not claim the second child; and
in the name of this little lass, Lo-Ruhamah, she-that-never-knew-a-father's-
love, orphan not by death but by her mother's sin, we find proof of the
prophet's awakening to the tragedy of his home. Nor does he own the third
child, named Not-my-people, that could also mean No-kin-of-mine. The
three births must have taken at least six years;[467] and once at least, but
probably oftener, Hosea had forgiven the woman, and till the sixth year she
stayed in his house. Then either he put her from him, or she went her own
way. She sold herself for money, and finally drifted, like all of her class,
into slavery.[468]
Such were the facts of Hosea's grief, and we have now to attempt to
understand how that grief became his gospel. We may regard the stages of
the process as two: first, when he was led to feel that his sorrow was the
sorrow of the whole nation; and, second, when he comprehended that it was
of similar kind to the sorrow of God Himself.
While Hosea brooded upon his pain one of the first things he would
remember would be the fact, which he so frequently illustrates, that the case
of his home was not singular, but common and characteristic of his day.
Take the evidence of his book, and there must have been in Israel many
such wives as his own. He describes their sin as the besetting sin of the
nation, and the plague of Israel's life. But to lose your own sorrow in the

vaster sense of national trouble—that is the first consciousness of a duty
and a mission. In the analogous vice of intemperance among ourselves we
have seen the same experience operate again and again. How many a man
has joined the public warfare against that sin, because he was aroused to its
national consequences by the ruin it had brought to his own home! And one
remembers from recent years a more illustrious instance, where a domestic
grief—it is true of a very different kind—became not dissimilarly the
opening of a great career of service to the people:—

"I was in Leamington, and Mr. Cobden called on me. I was then in the
depths of grief—I may almost say of despair, for the light and sunshine
of my house had been extinguished. All that was left on earth of my
young wife, except the memory of a sainted life and a too brief
happiness, was lying still and cold in the chamber above us. Mr.
Cobden called on me as his friend, and addressed me, as you may
suppose, with words of condolence. After a time he looked up and
said: 'There are thousands and thousands of homes in England at this
moment where wives and mothers and children are dying of hunger.
Now, when the first paroxysm of your grief is passed, I would advise
you to come with me, and we will never rest until the Corn Laws are
repealed.'"[469]

Not dissimilarly was Hosea's pain overwhelmed by the pain of his people.
He remembered that there were in Israel thousands of homes like his own.
Anguish gave way to sympathy. The mystery became the stimulus to a
mission.
But, again, Hosea traces this sin of his day to the worship of strange gods.
He tells the fathers of Israel, for instance, that they need not be surprised at
the corruption of their wives and daughters when they themselves bring
home from the heathen rites the infection of light views of love.[470] That is
to say, the many sins against human love in Israel, the wrong done to his
own heart in his own home, Hosea connects with the wrong done to the
Love of God, by His people's desertion of Him for foreign and impure rites.
Hosea's own sorrow thus became a key to the sorrow of God. Had he loved
this woman, cherished and honoured her, borne with and forgiven her, only
to find at the last his love spurned and hers turned to sinful men: so also had

the Love of God been treated by His chosen people, and they had fallen to
the loose worship of idols.
Hosea was the more naturally led to compare his relations to his wife with
Jehovah's to Israel, by certain religious beliefs current among the Semitic
peoples. It was common to nearly all Semitic religions to express the union
of a god with his land or with his people by the figure of marriage. The title
which Hosea so often applies to the heathen deities, Ba'al, meant originally
not "lord" of his worshippers, but "possessor" and endower of his land, its
husband and fertiliser. A fertile land was "a land of Ba'al," or "Be'ulah," that
is, "possessed" or "blessed by a Ba'al."[471] Under the fertility was counted
not only the increase of field and flock, but the human increase as well; and
thus a nation could speak of themselves as the children of the Land, their
mother, and of her Ba'al, their father.[472] When Hosea, then, called Jehovah
the husband of Israel, it was not an entirely new symbol which he invented.
Up to his time, however, the marriage of Heaven and Earth, of a god and his
people, seems to have been conceived in a physical form which ever tended
to become more gross; and was expressed, as Hosea points out, by rites of a
sensual and debasing nature, with the most disastrous effects on the
domestic morals of the people. By an inspiration, whose ethical character is
very conspicuous, Hosea breaks the physical connection altogether.
Jehovah's Bride is not the Land, but the People, and His marriage with her
is conceived wholly as a moral relation. Not that He has no connection with
the physical fruits of the land: corn, wine, oil, wool and flax. But these are
represented only as the signs and ornaments of the marriage, love-gifts from
the husband to the wife.[473] The marriage itself is purely moral: I will
betroth her to Me in righteousness and justice, in leal love and tender
mercies.[474] From her in return are demanded faithfulness and growing
knowledge of her Lord.
It is the re-creation of an Idea. Slain and made carrion by the heathen
religions, the figure is restored to life by Hosea. And this is a life
everlasting. Prophet and apostle, the Israel of Jehovah, the Church of Christ,
have alike found in Hosea's figure an unfailing significance and charm.
Here we cannot trace the history of the figure; but at least we ought to
emphasise the creative power which its recovery to life proves to have been

inherent in prophecy. This is one of those triumphs of which the God of
Israel said: Behold, I make all things new.[475]
Having dug his figure from the mire and set it upon the rock, Hosea sends it
on its way with all boldness. If Jehovah be thus the husband of Israel, her
first husband, the husband of her youth, then all her pursuit of the Ba'alim is
unfaithfulness to her marriage vows. But she is worse than an adulteress;
she is a harlot. She has fallen for gifts. Here the historical facts wonderfully
assisted the prophet's metaphor. It was a fact that Israel and Jehovah were
first wedded in the wilderness upon conditions, which by the very
circumstances of desert life could have little or no reference to the fertility
of the earth, but were purely personal and moral. And it was also a fact that
Israel's declension from Jehovah came after her settlement in Canaan, and
was due to her discovery of other deities, in possession of the soil, and
adored by the natives as the dispensers of its fertility. Israel fell under these
superstitions, and, although she still formally acknowledged her bond to
Jehovah, yet in order to get her fields blessed and her flocks made fertile,
her orchards protected from blight and her fleeces from scab, she went after
the local Ba'alim.[476] With bitter scorn Hosea points out that there was no
true love in this: it was the mercenariness of a harlot, selling herself for
gifts.[477] And it had the usual results. The children whom Israel bore were
not her husband's.[478] The new generation in Israel grew up in ignorance of
Jehovah, with characters and lives strange to His Spirit. They were Lo-
Ruhamah: He could not feel towards them such pity as a father hath.[479]
They were Lo-Ammi: not at all His people. All was in exact parallel to
Hosea's own experience with his wife; and only the real pain of that
experience could have made the man brave enough to use it as a figure of
his God's treatment by Israel.
Following out the human analogy, the next step should have been for
Jehovah to divorce His erring spouse. But Jehovah reveals to the prophet
that this is not His way. For He is God and not man, the Holy One in the
midst of thee. How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? How shall I surrender
thee, O Israel? My heart is turned within Me, My compassions are kindled
together!
Jehovah will seek, find and bring back the wanderer. Yet the process shall
not be easy. The gospel which Hosea here preaches is matched in its great

tenderness by its full recognition of the ethical requirements of the case.
Israel may not be restored without repentance, and cannot repent without
disillusion and chastisement. God will therefore show her that her lovers,
the Ba'alim, are unable to assure to her the gifts for which she followed
them. These are His corn, His wine, His wool and His flax, and He will take
them away for a time. Nay more, as if mere drought and blight might still
be regarded as some Ba'al's work, He who has always manifested Himself
by great historic deeds will do so again. He will remove herself from the
land, and leave it a waste and a desolation. The whole passage runs as
follows, introduced by the initial Therefore of judgment:—

Therefore, behold, I am going to hedge[480] up her[481] way with thorns, and
build her[482] a wall, so that she find not her paths. And she shall pursue her
paramours and shall not come upon them, seek them and shall not find
them; and she shall say, Let me go and return to my first husband, for it was
better for me then than now. She knew not, then, that it was I who gave her
the corn and the wine and the oil; yea, silver I heaped upon her and gold—
they worked it up for the Ba'al![483] Israel had deserted the religion that was
historical and moral for the religion that was physical. But the historical
religion was the physical one. Jehovah who had brought Israel to the land
was also the God of the Land. He would prove this by taking away its
blessings. Therefore I will turn and take away My corn in its time and My
wine in its season, and I will withdraw My wool and My flax that should
have covered her nakedness. And now—the other initial of judgment—I will
lay bare her shame to the eyes of her lovers, and no man shall rescue her
from My hand. And I will make an end of all her joyaunce, her pilgrimages,
her New-Moons and her Sabbaths, with every festival; and I will destroy
her vines and her figs of which she said, "They are a gift, mine own, which
my lovers gave me," and I will turn them to jungle and the wild beast shall
devour them. So shall I visit upon her the days of the Ba'alim, when she
used to offer incense to them, and decked herself with her rings and her
jewels and went after her paramours, but Me she forgat—'tis the oracle of
Jehovah. All this implies something more than such natural disasters as
those in which Amos saw the first chastisements of the Lord. Each of the
verses suggests, not only a devastation of the land by war,[484] but the
removal of the people into captivity. Evidently, therefore, Hosea, writing

about 745, had in view a speedy invasion by Assyria, an invasion which
was always followed up by the exile of the people subdued.
This is next described, with all plainness, under the figure of Israel's early
wanderings in the wilderness, but is emphasised as happening only for the
end of the people's penitence and restoration. The new hope is so melodious
that it carries the language into metre.

Therefore, lo! I am to woo her, and I will bring her to the
wilderness,
And I will speak home to her heart.
And from there I will give to her her vineyards,
And the Valley of Achor for a doorway of hope.
And there she shall answer Me as in the days of her youth,
And as the day when she came up from the land of Miṣraim.

To us the terms of this passage may seem formal and theological. But to
every Israelite some of these terms must have brought back the days of his
own wooing. I will speak home to her heart is a forcible expression, like the
German "an das Herz" or the sweet Scottish "it cam' up roond my heart,"
and was used in Israel as from man to woman when he won her.[485] But the
other terms have an equal charm. The prophet, of course, does not mean
that Israel shall be literally taken back to the desert. But he describes her
coming Exile under that ancient figure, in order to surround her penitence
with the associations of her innocency and her youth. By the grace of God,
everything shall begin again as at first. The old terms wilderness, the giving
of vineyards, Valley of Achor, are, as it were, the wedding ring restored.

As a result of all this (whether the words be by Hosea or another),[486]

It shall be in that day—'tis Jehovah's oracle—that thou shalt
call Me, My husband,
And thou shalt not again call Me, My Ba'al:
For I will take away the names of the Ba'alim from her
mouth,
And they shall no more be remembered by their names.

There follows a picture of the ideal future, in which—how unlike the vision
that now closes the Book of Amos!—moral and spiritual beauty, the peace
of the land and the redemption of the people, are wonderfully mingled
together, in a style so characteristic of Hosea's heart. It is hard to tell where
the rhythmical prose passes into actual metre.
And I will make for them a covenant in that day with the wild beasts, and
with the birds of the heavens, and with the creeping things of the ground;
and the bow and the sword and battle will I break from the land, and I will
make you to dwell in safety. And I will betroth thee to Me for ever, and I will
betroth thee to Me in righteousness and in justice, in leal love and in tender
mercies; and I will betroth thee to Me in faithfulness, and thou shalt know
Jehovah.
And it shall be on that day I will speak—'tis the oracle of Jehovah—I will
speak to the heavens, and they shall speak to the earth; and the earth shall
speak to the corn and the wine and the oil, and they shall speak to Jezreel,
the scattered like seed across many lands; but I will sow him[487] for Myself
in the land: and I will have a father's pity upon Un-Pitied; and to Not-My-
People I will say. My people thou art! and he shall say, My God![488]
The circle is thus completed on the terms from which we started. The three
names which Hosea gave to the children, evil omens of Israel's fate, are
reversed, and the people restored to the favour and love of their God.
We might expect this glory to form the culmination of the prophecy. What
fuller prospect could be imagined than that we see in the close of the second
chapter? With a wonderful grace, however, the prophecy turns back from
this sure vision of the restoration of the people as a whole, to pick up again
the individual from whom it had started, and whose unclean rag of a life
had fluttered out of sight before the national fortunes sweeping in upon the
scene. This was needed to crown the story—this return to the individual.
And Jehovah said unto me, Once more go, love a wife that is loved of a
paramour and is an adulteress,[489] as Jehovah loveth the children of Israel,
the while they are turning to other gods, and love raisin-cakes—probably
some element in the feasts of the gods of the land, the givers of the grape.
Then I bought her to me for fifteen pieces of silver and a homer of barley

and a lethech of wine.[490] And I said to her, For many days shall thou abide
for me alone; thou shall not play the harlot, thou shall not be for any
husband; and I for my part also shall be so towards thee. For the days are
many that the children of Israel shall abide without a king and without a
prince, without sacrifice and without maççebah, and without ephod and
teraphim.[491] Afterwards the children of Israel shall turn and seek Jehovah
their God and David their king, and shall be in awe of Jehovah and towards
His goodness in the end of the days.[492]
Do not let us miss the fact that the story of the wife's restoration follows
that of Israel's, although the story of the wife's unfaithfulness had come
before that of Israel's apostasy. For this order means that, while the
prophet's private pain preceded his sympathy with God's pain, it was not he
who set God, but God who set him, the example of forgiveness. The man
learned the God's sorrow out of his own sorrow; but conversely he was
taught to forgive and redeem his wife only by seeing God forgive and
redeem the people. In other words, the Divine was suggested by the human
pain; yet the Divine Grace was not started by any previous human grace,
but, on the contrary, was itself the precedent and origin of the latter. This is
in harmony with all Hosea's teaching. God forgives because He is God and
not man.[493] Our pain with those we love helps us to understand God's
pain; but it is not our love that leads us to believe in His love. On the
contrary, all human grace is but the reflex of the Divine. So St. Paul: Even
as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. So St. John: We love Him, and one
another, because He first loved us.
But this return from the nation to the individual has another interest.
Gomer's redemption is not the mere formal completion of the parallel
between her and her people. It is, as the story says, an impulse of the Divine
Love, recognised even then in Israel as seeking the individual. He who
followed Hagar into the wilderness, who met Jacob at Bethel and forgat not
the slave Joseph in prison,[494] remembers also Hosea's wife. His love is not
satisfied with His Nation-Bride: He remembers this single outcast. It is the
Shepherd leaving the ninety-and-nine in the fold to seek the one lost sheep.

For Hosea himself his home could never be the same as it was at the first.
And I said to her, For many days shalt thou abide, as far as I am concerned,
alone. Thou shalt not play the harlot. Thou shalt not be for a husband: and
I on my side also shall be so towards thee. Discipline was needed there; and
abroad the nation's troubles called the prophet to an anguish and a toil
which left no room for the sweet love or hope of his youth. He steps at once
to his hard warfare for his people; and through the rest of his book we never
again hear him speak of home, or of children, or of wife. So Arthur passed
from Guinevere to his last battle for his land:—

"Lo! I forgive thee, as Eternal God
Forgives: do thou for thine own soul the rest.
But how to take last leave of all I loved?

I cannot touch thy lips, they are not mine;...
I cannot take thy hand; that too is flesh,
And in the flesh thou hast sinned; and mine own flesh,
Here looking down on thine polluted, cries
'I loathe thee'; yet not less, O Guinevere,
For I was ever virgin save for thee,
My love thro' flesh hath wrought into my life
So far, that my doom is, I love thee still.
Let no man dream but that I love thee still.
Perchance, and so thou purify thy soul,
And so thou lean on our fair father Christ,
Hereafter in that world where all are pure
We two may meet before high God, and thou
Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine, and know
I am thine husband, not a smaller soul....
Leave me that,
I charge thee, my last hope. Now must I hence,
Thro' the thick night I hear the trumpet blow."

CHAPTER XV
THE THICK NIGHT OF ISRAEL
Hosea iv.-xiv.

It was indeed "thick night" into which this Arthur of Israel stepped from his
shattered home. The mists drive across Hosea's long agony with his people,
and what we see, we see blurred and broken. There is stumbling and
clashing; crowds in drift; confused rallies; gangs of assassins breaking
across the highways; doors opening upon lurid interiors full of drunken riot.
Voices, which other voices mock, cry for a dawn that never comes. God
Himself is Laughter, Lightning, a Lion, a Gnawing Worm. Only one clear
note breaks over the confusion—the trumpet summoning to war.
Take courage, O great heart! Not thus shall it always be! There wait thee,
before the end, of open Visions at least two—one of Memory and one of
Hope, one of Childhood and one of Spring. Past this night, past the swamp
and jungle of these fetid years, thou shalt see thy land in her beauty, and
God shall look on the face of His Bride.

Chaps, iv.-xiv. are almost indivisible. The two Visions just mentioned,
chaps. xi. and xiv. 3-9, may be detached by virtue of contributing the only
strains of gospel which rise victorious above the Lord's controversy with
His people and the troubled story of their sins. All the rest is the noise of a
nation falling to pieces, the crumbling of a splendid past. And as decay has
no climax and ruin no rhythm, so we may understand why it is impossible
to divide with any certainty Hosea's record of Israel's fall. Some
arrangement we must attempt, but it is more or less artificial, and to be
undertaken for the sake of our own minds, that cannot grasp so great a

collapse all at once. Chap. iv. has a certain unity, and is followed by a new
exordium, but as it forms only the theme of which the subsequent chapters
are variations, we may take it with them as far as chap. vii., ver. 7; after
which there is a slight transition from the moral signs of Israel's dissolution
to the political—although Hosea still combines the religious offence of
idolatry with the anarchy of the land. These form the chief interest to the
end of chap. x. Then breaks the bright Vision of the Past, chap. xi., the
temporary victory of the Gospel of the Prophet over his Curse. In chaps.
xii.-xiv. 2 we are plunged into the latter once more, and reach in xiv. 3 ff.
the second bright Vision, the Vision of the Future. To each of these phases
of Israel's Thick Night—we can hardly call them Sections—we may devote
a chapter of simple exposition, adding three chapters more of detailed
examination of the main doctrines we shall have encountered on our way—
the Knowledge of God, Repentance, and the Sin against Love.

CHAPTER XVI
A PEOPLE IN DECAY: 1. MORALLY
Hosea iv.-vii 7.

Pursuing the plan laid down in the last chapter, we now take the section of
Hosea's discourse which lies between chap. iv. 1 and chap. vii. 7. Chap. iv.
is the only really separable bit of it; but there are also slight breaks at v. 15
and vii. 2. So we may attempt a division into four periods: 1. Chap. iv.,
which states God's general charge against the people; 2. Chap. v. 1-14,
which discusses the priests and princes; 3. Chaps. v. 15-vii. 2, which abjures
the people's attempts at repentance; and 4. Chap. vii. 3-7, which is a lurid
spectacle of the drunken and profligate court. All these give symptoms of
the moral decay of the people,—the family destroyed by impurity, and
society by theft and murder; the corruption of the spiritual guides of the
people; the debauchery of the nobles; the sympathy of the throne with evil,
—with the despairing judgment that such a people are incapable even of
repentance. The keynotes are these: No troth, leal love, nor knowledge of
God in the land. Priest and Prophet stumble. Ephraim and Judah stumble. I
am as the moth to Ephraim. What can I make of thee, Ephraim? When I
would heal them, their guilt is only the more exposed. Morally, Israel is
rotten. The prophet, of course, cannot help adding signs of their political
incoherence. But these he deals with more especially in the part of his
discourse which follows chap. vii. 7.

1. The Lord's Quarrel with Israel.

Hosea iv.

Hear the word of Jehovah, sons of Israel![495] Jehovah hath a quarrel with
the inhabitants of the land, for there is no troth nor leal love nor knowledge
of God in the land. Perjury[496] and murder and theft and adultery![497]
They break out, and blood strikes upon blood.

That stable and well-furnished life, across which, while it was still noon,
Amos hurled his alarms—how quickly it has broken up! If there be still
ease in Zion, there is no more security in Samaria.[498] The great Jeroboam
is dead, and society, which in the East depends so much on the individual, is
loose and falling to pieces. The sins which are exposed by Amos were those
that lurked beneath a still strong government, but Hosea adds outbreaks
which set all order at defiance. Later we shall find him describing
housebreaking, highway robbery and assassination. Therefore doth the land
wither, and every one of her denizens languisheth, even to the beast of the
field and the fowl of the heaven; yea, even the fish of the sea are swept up in
the universal sickness of man and nature: for Hosea feels, like Amos, the
liability of nature to the curse upon sin.
Yet the guilt is not that of the whole people, but of their religious guides.
Let none find fault and none upbraid, for My people are but as their
priestlings.[499] O Priest, thou hast stumbled to-day: and stumble to-night
shall the prophet with thee. One order of the nation's ministers goes
staggering after the other! And I will destroy thy Mother, presumably the
Nation herself. Perished are My people for lack of knowledge. But how? By
the sin of their teachers. Because thou, O Priest, hast rejected knowledge, I
reject thee from being priest to Me; and as thou hast forgotten the Torah of
thy God, I forget thy children[500]—I on My side. As many as they be, so
many have sinned against Me. Every jack-priest of them is culpable. They
have turned[501] their glory into shame. They feed on the sin of My people,
and to the guilt of these lift up their appetite! The more the people sin, the
more merrily thrive the priests by fines and sin-offerings. They live upon
the vice of the day, and have a vested interest in its crimes. English
Langland said the same thing of the friars of his time. The contention is
obvious. The priests have given themselves wholly to the ritual; they have
forgotten that their office is an intellectual and moral one. We shall return to
this when treating of Hosea's doctrine of knowledge and its responsibilities.
Priesthood, let us only remember, priesthood is an intellectual trust.
Thus it comes to be—like people like priest: they also have fallen under the
ritual, doing from lust what the priests do from greed. But I will visit upon
them their ways, and their deeds will I requite to them. For they—those
shall eat and not be satisfied, these shall play the harlot and have no

increase, because they have left off heeding Jehovah. This absorption in
ritual at the expense of the moral and intellectual elements of religion has
insensibly led them over into idolatry, with all its unchaste and drunken
services. Harlotry, wine and new wine take away the brains![502] The result
is seen in the stupidity with which they consult their stocks for guidance.
My people! of its bit of wood it asketh counsel, and its staff telleth to it the
oracle! For a spirit of harlotry hath led them astray, and they have played
the harlot from their God. Upon the headlands of the hills they sacrifice,
and on the heights offer incense, under oak or poplar or terebinth, for the
shade of them is pleasant. On headlands, not summits, for here no trees
grow; and the altar was generally built under a tree and near water on some
promontory, from which the flight of birds or of clouds might be watched.
Wherefore—because of this your frequenting of the heathen shrines—your
daughters play the harlot and your daughters-in-law commit adultery. I will
not come with punishment upon your daughters because they play the
harlot, nor upon your daughters-in-law because they commit adultery.
Why? For they themselves, the fathers of Israel—or does he still mean the
priests?—go aside with the harlots and sacrifice with the common women
of the shrines! It is vain for the men of a nation to practise impurity, and
fancy that nevertheless they can keep their womankind chaste. So the stupid
people fall to ruin!
(Though thou play the harlot, Israel, let not Judah bring guilt on herself.
And come not to Gilgal, and go not up to Beth-Aven, and take not your oath
at the Well-of-the-Oath, Beer-Sheba,[503] By the life of Jehovah! This
obvious parenthesis may be either by Hosea or a later writer; the latter is
more probable.[504])
Yea, like a wild heifer Israel has gone wild. How now can Jehovah feed
them like a lamb in a broad meadow? To treat this clause interrogatively is
the only way to get sense out of it.[505] Wedded to idols is Ephraim: leave
him alone. The participle means mated or leagued. The corresponding noun
is used of a wife as the mate of her husband[506] and of an idolater as the
mate of his idols.[507] The expression is doubly appropriate here, since
Hosea used marriage as the figure of the relation of a deity to his
worshippers. Leave him alone—he must go from bad to worse. Their
drunkenness over, they take to harlotry: her rulers have fallen in love with

shame, or they love shame more than their pride.[508] But in spite of all their
servile worship the Assyrian tempest shall sweep them away in its trail. A
wind hath wrapt them up in her skirts; and they shall be put to shame by
their sacrifices.
This brings the passage to such a climax as Amos loved to crown his
periods. And the opening of the next chapter offers a new exordium.

2. Priests and Princes Fail.

Hosea v. 1-14.

The line followed in this paragraph is almost parallel to that of chap. iv.,
running out to a prospect of invasion. But the charge is directed solely
against the chiefs of the people, and the strictures of chap. vii. 7 ff. upon the
political folly of the rulers are anticipated.
Hear this, O Priests, and hearken, House of Israel, and, House of the King,
give ear. For on you is the sentence! You, who have hitherto been the
judges, this time shall be judged.
A snare have ye become at Mizpeh, and a net spread out upon Tabor, and a
pit have they made deep upon Shittim;[509] but I shall be the scourge of them
all. I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hid from Me—for now hast thou
played the harlot, Ephraim, Israel is defiled. The worship on the high
places, whether nominally of Jehovah or not, was sheer service of Ba'alim.
It was in the interest both of the priesthood and of the rulers to multiply
these sanctuaries, but they were only traps for the people. Their deeds will
not let them return to their God; for a harlot spirit is in their midst, and
Jehovah, for all their oaths by Him, they have not known. But the pride of
Israel shall testify to his face; and Israel and Ephraim shall stumble by
their guilt—stumble also shall Judah with them. By Israel's pride many
understand God. But the term is used too opprobriously by Amos to allow
us to agree to this. The phrase must mean that Israel's arrogance, or her
proud prosperity, by the wounds which it feels in this time of national
decay, shall itself testify against the people—a profound ethical symptom to
which we shall return when treating of Repentance.[510] Yet the verse may
be rendered in harmony with the context: the pride of Israel shall be

humbled to his face. With their sheep and their cattle they go about to seek
Jehovah, and shall not find Him; He hath drawn off from them. They have
been unfaithful to Jehovah, for they have begotten strange children. A
generation has grown up who are not His. Now may a month devour them
with their portions! Any month may bring the swift invader. Hark! the
alarum of war! How it reaches to the back of the land!

Blow the trumpet in Gibeah, the clarion in Ramah;
Raise the slogan, Beth-Aven: "After thee, Benjamin!"[511]

Ephraim shall become desolation in the day of rebuke! Among the tribes of
Israel I have made known what is certain!
At this point, ver. 10, the discourse swerves from the religious to the
political leaders of Israel; but as the princes were included with the priests
in the exordium (ver. 1), we can hardly count this a new oracle.[512]
The princes of Judah are like landmark-removers—commonest of cheats in
Israel—upon them will I pour out My wrath like water. Ephraim is
oppressed, crushed is his right, for he wilfully went after vanity.[513] And I
am as the moth to Ephraim, and as rottenness to the house of Judah. Both
kingdoms have begun to fall to pieces, for by this time Uzziah of Judah also
is dead, and the weak politicians are in charge whom Isaiah satirised. And
Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah his sore; and Ephraim went to Asshur
and[514] sent to King Jareb—King Combative, King Pick-Quarrel,[515] a
nickname for the Assyrian monarch. The verse probably refers to the tribute
which Menahem sent to Assyria in 738. If so, then Israel has drifted full
five years into her "thick night." But He cannot heal you, nor dry up your
sore. For I, Myself, am like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the
house of Judah. I, I rend and go My way; I carry off and there is none to
deliver. It is the same truth which Isaiah expressed with even greater
grimness.[516] God Himself is His people's sore; and not all their statecraft
nor alliances may heal what He inflicts. Priests and Princes, then, have alike
failed. A greater failure is to follow.

3. Repentance Fails.

Hosea v. 15-vii. 2.

Seeing that their leaders are so helpless, and feeling their wounds, the
people may themselves turn to God for healing, but that will be with a
repentance so shallow as also to be futile. They have no conviction of sin,
nor appreciation of how deeply their evils have eaten.
This too facile repentance is expressed in a prayer which the Christian
Church has paraphrased into one of its most beautiful hymns of conversion.
Yet the introduction to this prayer, and its own easy assurance of how soon
God will heal the wounds He has made, as well as the impatience with
which God receives it, oblige us to take the prayer in another sense than the
hymn which has been derived from it.[517] It offers but one more symptom
of the optimism of this light-hearted people, whom no discipline and no
judgment can impress with the reality of their incurable decay. They said of
themselves, The bricks are fallen, let us build with stones,[518] and now they
say just as easily and airily of their God, He hath torn only that He may
heal: we are fallen, but He will raise us up again in a day or two. At first it
is still God who speaks.

I am going My way, I am returning to My own place,[519] until they feel
their guilt and seek My face. When trouble comes upon them, they will soon
enough seek Me, saying:[520]—

"Come and let us return to Jehovah:
For He hath rent, that He may heal us,
And hath wounded,[521] that He may bind us up.
He will bring us to life in a couple of days;
On the third day He will raise us up again,
That we may live in His presence.
Let us know, let us follow up[522] to know, Jehovah;
As soon as we seek Him, we shall find Him.[523]
And He shall come to us like the winter-rain,
Like the spring-rain, pouring on the land!"

But how is this fair prayer received by God? With incredulity, with
impatience. What can I make of thee, Ephraim? what can I make of thee,

Judah? since your love is like the morning cloud and like the dew so early
gone. Their shallow hearts need deepening. Have they not been deepened
enough? Wherefore I have hewn them by the prophets, I have slain them by
the words of My mouth, and My judgment goeth forth like the lightning.[524]
For leal love have I desired, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God
more than burnt-offerings.
That the discourse comes back to the ritual is very intelligible. For what
could make repentance seem so easy as the belief that forgiveness can be
won by simply offering sacrifices? Then the prophet leaps upon what each
new year of that anarchy revealed afresh—the profound sinfulness of the
people.

But they in human fashion[525] have transgressed the covenant! There—he
will now point out the very spots—have they betrayed[526] Me! Gilead is a
city of evildoers: stamped with bloody footprints; assassins[527] in troops; a
gang of priests murder on the way to Shechem. Yea, crime[528] have they
done. In the house of Israel I have seen horrors: there Ephraim hath played
the harlot: Israel is defiled—Judah as well.[529]
Truly the sinfulness of Israel is endless. Every effort to redeem them only
discovers more of it. When I would turn, when I would heal Israel, then the
guilt of Ephraim displays itself and the evils of Samaria, these namely: that
they work fraud, and the thief cometh in—evidently a technical term for
housebreaking[530]—while abroad a crew of highwaymen foray. And they
never think in their hearts that all their evil is recorded by Me. Now have
their deeds encompassed them: they are constantly before Me.
Evidently real repentance on the part of such a people is impossible. As
Hosea said before, Their deeds will not let them return.[531]

4. Wickedness in High Places.

Hosea vii. 3-7.

There follows now a very difficult passage. The text is corrupt, and we have
no means of determining what precise events are intended. The drift of

meaning, however, is evident. The disorder and licentiousness of the people
are favoured in high places; the throne itself is guilty.
With their evil they make a king glad, and princes with their falsehoods: all
of them are adulterers, like an oven heated by the baker,...[532]
On the day of our king—some coronation or king's birthday—the princes
were sick with fever from wine. He stretched forth his hand with loose
fellows,[533] presumably made them his associates. Like an oven have they
made[534] their hearts with their intriguing.[535] All night their anger
sleepeth:[536] in the morning it blazes like a flame of fire. All of them glow
like an oven, and devour their rulers: all their kings have fallen, without
one of them calling on Me.
An obscure passage upon obscure events; yet so lurid with the passion of
that fevered people in the flagrant years 743-735 that we can make out the
kind of crimes described. A king surrounded by loose and unscrupulous
nobles: adultery, drunkenness, conspiracies, assassinations: every man
striking for himself; none appealing to God.
From the court, then, downwards, by princes, priests and prophets, to the
common fathers of Israel and their households, immorality prevails. There
is no redeeming feature, and no hope of better things. For repentance itself
the capacity is gone.

In making so thorough an indictment of the moral condition of Israel, it
would have been impossible for Hosea not to speak also of the political
stupidity and restlessness which resulted from it. But he has largely
reserved these for that part of his discourse which now follows, and which
we will take in the next chapter.

CHAPTER XVII
A PEOPLE IN DECAY: II. POLITICALLY
Hosea vii. 8-x.

Moral decay means political decay. Sins like these are the gangrene of
nations. It is part of Hosea's greatness to have traced this, a proof of that
versatility which distinguishes him above other prophets. The most spiritual
of them all, he is at the same time the most political. We owe him an
analysis of repentance to which the New Testament has little to add;[537] but
he has also left us a criticism of society and of politics in Israel, unrivalled
except by Isaiah. We owe him an intellectual conception of God,[538] which
for the first time in Israel exploded idolatry; yet he also is the first to define
Israel's position in the politics of Western Asia. With the simple courage of
conscience Amos had said to the people: You are bad, therefore you must
perish. But Hosea's is the insight to follow the processes by which sin
brings forth death—to trace, for instance, the effects of impurity upon a
nation's powers of reproduction, as well as upon its intellectual vigour.
So intimate are these two faculties of Hosea, that in chapters devoted
chiefly to the sins of Israel we have already seen him expose the political
disasters that follow. But from the point we have now reached—chap. vii. 8
—the proportion of his prophesying is reversed: he gives us less of the sin
and more of the social decay and political folly of his age.

I. The Confusion of the Nation.

Hosea vii. 8-viii. 3.

Hosea begins by summing up the public aspect of Israel in two epigrams,
short but of marvellous adequacy (vii. 8):—

Ephraim—among the nations he mixeth himself:

Ephraim has become a cake not turned.
It is a great crisis for any nation to pass from the seclusion of its youth and
become a factor in the main history of the world. But for Israel the crisis
was trebly great. Their difference from all other tribes about them had
struck the Canaanites on their first entry to the land:[539] their own earliest
writers had emphasised their seclusion as their strength;[540] and their first
prophets consistently deprecated every overture made by them either to
Egypt or to Assyria. We feel the force of the prophets' policy when we
remember what happened to the Philistines. These were a people as strong
and as distinctive as Israel, with whom at one time they disputed possession
of the whole land. But their position as traders in the main line of traffic
between Asia and Africa rendered the Philistines peculiarly open to foreign
influence. They were now Egyptian vassals, now Assyrian victims; and
after the invasion of Alexander the Great their cities became centres of
Hellenism, while the Jews upon their secluded hills still stubbornly held
unmixed their race and their religion. This contrast, so remarkably
developed in later centuries, has justified the prophets of the eighth in their
anxiety that Israel should not annul the advantages of her geographical
seclusion by trade or treaties with the Gentiles. But it was easier for Judæa
to take heed to the warning than for Ephraim. The latter lies as open and
fertile as her sister-province is barren and aloof. She has many gates into the
world, and they open upon many markets. Nobler opportunities there could
not be for a nation in the maturity of its genius and loyal to its vocation:—

Rejoice, O Zebulun, in thine outgoings:
They shall call the nations to the mountain;
They shall suck of the abundance of the seas,
And of the treasure that is stored in the sands.[541]

But in the time of his outgoings Ephraim was not sure of himself nor true to
his God, the one secret and strength of the national distinctiveness. So he
met the world weak and unformed, and, instead of impressing it, was by it
dissipated and confused. The tides of a lavish commerce scattered abroad
the faculties of the people, and swept back upon their life alien fashions and
tempers, to subdue which there was neither native strength nor definiteness
of national purpose. All this is what Hosea means by the first of his

epigrams: Ephraim—among the nations he lets himself be poured out, or
mixed up. The form of the verb does not elsewhere occur; but it is reflexive,
and the meaning of the root is certain. Balal is to pour out, or mingle, as of
oil in the sacrificial flour. Yet it is sometimes used of a mixing which is not
sacred, but profane and hopeless. It is applied to the first great confusion of
mankind, to which a popular etymology has traced the name Babel, as if for
Balbel. Derivatives of the stem bear the additional ideas of staining and
impurity. The alternative renderings which have been proposed, lets himself
be soaked and scatters himself abroad like wheat among tares, are not so
probable, yet hardly change the meaning.[542] Ephraim wastes and confuses
himself among the Gentiles. The nation's character is so disguised that
Hosea afterwards nicknames him Canaan;[543] their religion so filled with
foreign influences that he calls the people the harlot of the Ba'alim.
If the first of Hosea's epigrams satirises Israel's foreign relations, the
second, with equal brevity and wit, hits off the temper and constitution of
society at home. For the metaphor of which this epigram is composed
Hosea has gone to the baker. Among all classes in the East, especially under
conditions requiring haste, there is in demand a round flat scone, which is
baked by being laid on hot stones or attached to the wall of a heated oven.
The whole art of baking consists in turning the scone over at the proper
moment. If this be mismanaged, it does not need a baker to tell us that one
side may be burnt to a cinder, while the other remains raw. Ephraim, says
Hosea, is an unturned cake.
By this he may mean one of several things, or all of them together, for they
are infectious of each other. There was, for instance, the social condition of
the people. What can better be described as an unturned scone than a
community one half of whose number are too rich, and the other too poor?
Or Hosea may refer to that unequal distribution of religion through life with
which in other parts of his prophecy he reproaches Israel. They keep their
religion, as Amos more fully tells us, for their temples, and neglect to carry
its spirit into their daily business. Or he may refer to Israel's politics, which
were equally in want of thoroughness. They rushed hotly at an enterprise,
but having expended so much fire in the beginning of it, they let the end
drop cold and dead. Or he may wish to satirise, like Amos, Israel's
imperfect culture—the pretentious and overdone arts, stuck excrescence-
wise upon the unrefined bulk of the nation, just as in many German

principalities last century society took on a few French fashions in rough
and exaggerated forms, while at heart still brutal and coarse. Hosea may
mean any one of these things, for the figure suits all, and all spring from the
same defect. Want of thoroughness and equable effort was Israel's besetting
sin, and it told on all sides of his life. How better describe a half-fed people,
a half-cultured society, a half-lived religion, a half-hearted policy, than by a
half-baked scone?
We who are so proud of our political bakers, we who scorn the rapid
revolutions of our neighbours and complacently dwell upon our equable
ovens, those slow and cautious centuries of political development which lie
behind us—have we anything better than our neighbours, anything better
than Israel, to show in our civilisation? Hosea's epigram fits us to the letter.
After all those ages of baking, society is still with us an unturned scone:
one end of the nation with the strength burnt out of it by too much
enjoyment of life, the other with not enough of warmth to be quickened into
anything like adequate vitality. No man can deny that this is so; we are able
to live only by shutting our hearts to the fact. Or is religion equably
distributed through the lives of the religious portion of our nation? Of late
years religion has spread, and spread wonderfully, but of how many
Christians is it still true that they are but half-baked—living a life one side
of which is reeking with the smoke of sacrifice, while the other is never
warmed by one religious thought. We may have too much religion if we
confine it to one day or one department of life: our worship overdone, with
the sap and the freshness burnt out of it, cindery, dusty, unattractive, fit only
for crumbling; our conduct cold, damp and heavy, like dough the fire has
never reached.
Upon the theme of these two epigrams the other verses of this chapter are
variations. Has Ephraim mixed himself among the peoples? Strangers have
devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not, senselessly congratulating
himself upon the increase of his trade and wealth, while he does not feel
that these have sucked from him all his distinctive virtue. Yea, grey hairs
are sprinkled upon him, and he knoweth it not. He makes his energy the
measure of his life, as Isaiah also marked,[544] but sees not that it all means
waste and decay. The pride of Israel testifieth to his face, yet—even when
the pride of the nation is touched to the quick by such humiliating overtures

as they make to both Assyria and Egypt[545]—they do not return to Jehovah
their God, nor seek Him for all this.
With virtue and single-hearted faith have disappeared intellect and the
capacity for affairs. Ephraim is become like a silly dove—a dove without
heart, to the Hebrews the organ of the wits of a man—they cry to Egypt,
they go off to Assyria. Poor pigeon of a people, fluttering from one refuge to
another! But as they go I will throw over them My net, like a bird of the air I
will bring them down. I will punish them as their congregation have heard
—this text as it stands[546] can only mean "in the manner I have publicly
proclaimed in Israel." Woe to them that they have strayed from Me!
Damnation to them that they have rebelled against Me! While I would have
redeemed them, they spoke lies about Me. And they have never cried unto
Me with their heart, but they keep howling on their beds for corn and new
wine. No real repentance theirs, but some fear of drought and miscarriage of
the harvests, a sensual and servile sorrow in which they wallow. They seek
God with no heart, no true appreciation of what He is, but use the senseless
means by which the heathen invoke their gods: they cut themselves,[547] and
so apostatise from Me! And yet it was I who disciplined them, I
strengthened their arm, but with regard to Me they kept thinking only evil!
So fickle and sensitive to fear, they turn indeed, but not upwards; no
Godward conversion theirs. In their repentance they are like a bow which
swerves—off upon some impulse of their ill-balanced natures. Their princes
must fall by the sword because of the bitterness—we should have expected
"falseness"—of their tongue: this is their scorn in the land of Egypt! To the
allusion we have no key.
With so false a people nothing can be done. Their doom is inevitable. So

"Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war."

To thy mouth with the trumpet! The Eagle is down upon the house of
Jehovah![548] Where the carcase is, there are the eagles gathered together.
For—to sum up the whole crisis—they have transgressed My covenant, and
against My law have they rebelled. To Me they cry, My God, we know Thee,
we Israel! What does it matter? Israel hath spurned the good:[549] the Foe
must pursue him.

It is the same climax of inevitable war to which Amos led up his periods;
and a new subject is now introduced.

2. Artificial Kings and Artificial Gods.

Hosea viii. 4-13.

The curse of such a state of dissipation as that to which Israel had fallen is
that it produces no men. Had the people had in them "the root of the
matter," had there been the stalk and the fibre of a national consciousness
and purpose, it would have blossomed to a man. In the similar time of her
outgoings upon the world Prussia had her Frederick the Great, and Israel,
too, would have produced a leader, a heaven-sent king, if the national spirit
had not been squandered on foreign trade and fashions. But after the death
of Jeroboam every man who rose to eminence in Israel, rose, not on the
nation, but only on the fevered and transient impulse of some faction; and
through the broken years one party monarch was lifted after another to the
brief tenancy of a blood-stained throne. They were not from God, these
monarchs; but man-made, and sooner or later man-murdered. With his
sharp insight Hosea likens these artificial kings to the artificial gods, also
the work of men's hands; and till near the close of his book the idols of the
sanctuary and the puppets of the throne form the twin targets of his scorn.
They have made kings, but not from Me; they have made princes, but I knew
not. With their silver and their gold they have manufactured themselves
idols, only that they[550] may be cut off—king after king, idol upon idol. He
loathes thy Calf, O Samaria, the thing of wood and gold which thou callest
Jehovah. And God confirms this. Kindled is Mine anger against them! How
long will they be incapable of innocence?—unable to clear themselves of
guilt! The idol is still in his mind. For from Israel is it also—as much as the
puppet-kings; a workman made it, and no god is it. Yea, splinters shall the
Calf of Samaria become.[551] Splinters shall everything in Israel become.
For they sow the wind, and the whirlwind shall they reap. Indeed like a
storm Hosea's own language now sweeps along; and his metaphors are torn
into shreds upon it. Stalk it hath none: the sprout brings forth no grain: if it
were to bring forth, strangers would swallow it.[552] Nay, Israel hath let
herself be swallowed up! Already are they become among the nations like a

vessel there is no more use for. Heathen empires have sucked them dry.
They have gone up to Assyria like a runaway wild-ass. Ephraim hath hired
lovers.[553] It is again the note of their mad dissipation among the
foreigners. But if they thus give themselves away among the nations, I must
gather them in, and then shall they have to cease a little from the anointing
of a king and princes.[554] This wilful roaming of theirs among the
foreigners shall be followed by compulsory exile, and all their unholy
artificial politics shall cease. The discourse turns to the other target. For
Ephraim hath multiplied altars—to sin; altars are his own—to sin. Were I to
write for him by myriads My laws,[555] as those of a stranger would they be
accounted. They slay burnt-offerings for Me and eat flesh.[556] Jehovah hath
no delight in them. Now must He remember their guilt and make visitation
upon their sin. They—to Egypt—shall return....[557] Back to their ancient
servitude must they go, as formerly He said He would withdraw them to the
wilderness.[558]

3. The Effects of Exile.

Hosea ix. 1-9.

Hosea now turns to describe the effects of exile upon the social and
religious habits of the people. It must break up at once the joy and the
sacredness of their lives. Every pleasure will be removed, every taste
offended. Indeed, even now, with their conscience of having deserted
Jehovah, they cannot pretend to enjoy the feasts of the Ba'alim in the same
hearty way as the heathen with whom they mix. But, whether or no, the
time is near when nature-feasts and all other religious ceremonies—all that
makes life glad and regular and solemn—shall be impossible.
Rejoice not, O Israel, to the pitch of rapture like the heathen, for thou hast
played the harlot from thy God; a harlot's hire hast thou loved on all
threshing-floors.[559] Threshing-floor and wine-vat shall ignore[560] them,
and the new wine shall play them false. They shall not abide in the land of
Jehovah, but Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and in Assyria they shall eat
what is unclean. They shall not pour libations to Jehovah, nor prepare[561]
for Him their sacrifices. Like the bread of sorrows shall their bread[562] be;

all that eat of it shall be defiled: yea, their bread shall be only for their
appetite; they shall not bring it[563] to the temple of Jehovah. He cannot be
worshipped off His own land. They will have to live like animals, divorced
from religion, unable to hold communion with their God. What shall ye do
for days[564] of festival, or for a day of pilgrimage to Jehovah? For lo, they
shall be gone forth from destruction,[565] the shock and invasion of their
land, only that Egypt may gather them in, Memphis give them sepulture,
nettles inherit their jewels of silver, thorns come up in their tents. The threat
of exile still wavers between Assyria and Egypt. And in Egypt Memphis is
chosen as the destined grave of Israel; for even then her Pyramids and
mausoleums were ancient and renowned, her vaults and sepulchres were
countless and spacious.
But what need is there to seek the future for Israel's doom, when already
this is being fulfilled by the corruption of her spiritual leaders?
The days of visitation have come, have come the days of requital. Israel
already experiences[566] them! A fool is the prophet, raving mad the man of
the spirit. The old ecstasy of Saul's day has become delirium and
fanaticism.[567] Why? For the mass of thy guilt and the multiplied
treachery! Ephraim acts the spy with my God. There is probably a play on
the name, for with the meaning a watchman for God it is elsewhere used as
an honourable title of the prophets. The prophet is a fowler's snare upon all
his ways. Treachery—they have made it profound in the very house of their
God.[568] They have done corruptly, as in the days of Gibeah. Their iniquity
is remembered; visitation is made on their sin.

These then were the symptoms of the profound political decay which
followed on Israel's immorality. The national spirit and unity of the people
had disappeared. Society—half of it was raw, half of it was baked to a
cinder. The nation, broken into factions, produced no man to lead, no king
with the stamp of God upon him. Anarchy prevailed; monarchs were made
and murdered. There was no prestige abroad, nothing but contempt among

the Gentiles for a people whom they had exhausted. Judgment was
inevitable by exile—nay, it had come already in the corruption of the
spiritual leaders of the nation.
Hosea now turns to probe a deeper corruption still.

4. "The Corruption that is through Lust."

Hosea ix. 10-17: cf. iv. 11-14.

Those who at the present time are enforcing among us the revival of a
Paganism—without the Pagan conscience—and exalting licentiousness to
the level of an art, forget how frequently the human race has attempted their
experiment, with far more sincerity than they themselves can put into it, and
how invariably the result has been recorded by history to be weariness,
decay and death. On this occasion we have the story told to us by one who
to the experience of the statesman adds the vision of the poet.
The generation to which Hosea belonged practised a periodical unchastity
under the alleged sanctions of nature and religion. And, although their
prophet told them that—like our own apostates from Christianity—they
could never do so with the abandon of the Pagans, for they carried within
them the conscience and the memory of a higher faith, it appears that even
the fathers of Israel resorted openly and without shame to the licentious
rites of the sanctuaries. In an earlier passage of his book Hosea insists that
all this must impair the people's intellect. Harlotry takes away the brains.
[569]
He has shown also how it confuses the family, and has exposed the old
delusion that men may be impure and keep their womankind chaste.[570]
But now he diagnoses another of the inevitable results of this sin. After
tracing the sin, and the theory of life which permitted it, to their historical
beginnings at the entry of the people into Canaan, he describes how the
long practice of it, no matter how pretentious its sanctions, inevitably leads
not only to exterminating strifes, but to the decay of the vigour of the
nation, to barrenness and a diminishing population.
Like grapes in the wilderness I found Israel, like the first fruit on a fig-tree
in her first season I saw your fathers. So had the lusty nation appeared to
God in its youth; in that dry wilderness all the sap and promise of spring

were in its eyes, because it was still pure. But they—they came to Ba'al-
Peor—the first of the shrines of Canaan which they touched—and
dedicated themselves to the Shame, and became as abominable as the
object of their love. Ephraim—the Fruitful name is emphasised—their
glory is flown away like a bird. No more birth, no more motherhood, no
more conception![571] Blasted is Ephraim, withered the root of them, fruit
they produce not: yea, even when they beget children I slay the darlings of
their womb. Yea, though they bring up their sons I bereave them, till they
are poor in men. Yea, woe upon themselves also, when I look away from
them! Ephraim—again the Fruitful name is dragged to the front—for prey,
as I have seen, are his sons destined.[572] Ephraim—he must lead his sons
to the slaughter.
And the prophet interrupts with his chorus: Give them, O LORD—what wilt
Thou give them? Give them a miscarrying womb and breasts that are dry!
All their mischief is in Gilgal—again the Divine voice strikes the
connection between the national worship and the national sin—yea, there
do I hate them: for the evil of their doings from My house I will drive them.
I will love them no more: all their nobles are rebels.[573]
And again the prophet responds: My God will cast them away, for they have
not hearkened to Him, and they shall be vagabonds among the nations.
Some of the warnings which Hosea enforces with regard to this sin have
been instinctively felt by mankind since the beginnings of civilisation, and
are found expressed among the proverbs of nearly all the languages.[574]
But I am unaware of any earlier moralist in any literature who traced the
effects of national licentiousness in a diminishing population, or who
exposed the persistent delusion of libertine men that they themselves may
resort to vice, yet keep their womankind chaste. Hosea, so far as we know,
was the first to do this. History in many periods has confirmed the justice of
his observations, and by one strong voice after another enforced his terrible
warnings. The experience of ancient Persia and Egypt; the languor of the
Greek cities; the "deep weariness and sated lust" which in Imperial Rome
"made human life a hell"; the decay which overtook Italy after the
renascence of Paganism without the Pagan virtues; the strife and anarchy
that have rent every court where, as in the case of Henri Quatre, the king set

the example of libertinage; the incompetence, the poltroonery, the treachery,
that have corrupted every camp where, as in French Metz in 1870, soldiers
and officers gave way so openly to vice; the checks suffered by modern
civilisation in face of barbarism because its pioneers mingled in vice with
the savage races they were subduing; the number of great statesmen falling
by their passion, and in their fall frustrating the hopes of nations; the great
families worn out by indulgence; the homes broken up by infidelities; the
tainting of the blood of a new generation by the poisonous practices of the
old,—have not all these things been in every age, and do they not still
happen near enough to ourselves to give us a great fear of the sin which
causes them all? Alas! how slow men are to listen and to lay to heart! Is it
possible that we can gild by the names of frivolity and piquancy habits the
wages of which are death? Is it possible that we can enjoy comedies which
make such things their jest? We have among us many who find their
business in the theatre, or in some of the periodical literature of our time, in
writing and speaking and exhibiting as closely as they dare to limits of
public decency. When will they learn that it is not upon the easy edge of
mere conventions that they are capering, but upon the brink of those eternal
laws whose further side is death and hell—that it is not the tolerance of
their fellow-men they are testing, but the patience of God Himself? As for
those loud few who claim licence in the name of art and literature, let us not
shrink from them as if they were strong or their high words true. They are
not strong, they are only reckless; their claims are lies. All history, the poets
and the prophets, whether Christian or Pagan, are against them. They are
traitors alike to art, to love, and to every other high interest of mankind.
It may be said that a large part of the art of the day, which takes great
licence in dealing with these subjects, is exercised only by the ambition to
expose that ruin and decay which Hosea himself affirms. This is true. Some
of the ablest and most popular writers of our time have pictured the facts,
which Hosea describes, with so vivid a realism that we cannot but judge
them to be inspired to confirm his ancient warnings, and to excite a disgust
of vice in a generation which otherwise treats vice so lightly. But if so, their
ministry is exceeding narrow, and it is by their side that we best estimate the
greatness of the ancient prophet. Their transcript of human life may be true
to the facts it selects, but we find in it no trace of facts which are greater
and more essential to humanity. They have nothing to tell us of forgiveness

and repentance, and yet these are as real as the things they describe. Their
pessimism is unrelieved. They see the corruption that is in the world
through lust; they forget that there is an escape from it.[575] It is Hosea's
greatness that, while he felt the vices of his day with all needed
thoroughness and realism, he yet never allowed them to be inevitable or
ultimate, but preached repentance and pardon, with the possibility of
holiness even for his depraved generation. It is the littleness of the Art of
our day that these great facts are forgotten by her, though once she was their
interpreter to men. When she remembers them the greatness of her past will
return.

5. Once More: Puppet-Kings and Puppet-Gods.

Hosea x.

For another section, the tenth chapter, the prophet returns to the twin targets
of his scorn: the idols and the puppet-kings. But few notes are needed.
Observe the reiterated connection between the fertility of the land and the
idolatry of the people.

A wanton vine is Israel; he lavishes his fruit:[576] the more his fruit, the
more he made his altars; the goodlier his land, the more goodly he made his
maççeboth, or sacred pillars. False is the heart of them: now must they
atone for it. He shall break the neck of their altars; He shall ruin their
pillars. For already they are saying, No king have we, for we have not
feared Jehovah, and the king—what could he do for us? Speaking[577] of
words, swearing of false oaths, making of bargains—till law[578] breaks out
like weeds in the furrows of the field.

For the Calf of Beth-Aven the inhabitants[579] of Samaria shall be anxious:
yea, mourn for him shall his people, and his priestlings shall writhe for him
—for his glory that it is banished from him. In these days of heavy tribute
shall the gold of the golden calf be safe? Yea, himself shall they pack[580] to
Assyria; he shall be offered as tribute to King Pick-Quarrel.[581] Ephraim
shall take disgrace, and Israel be ashamed because of his counsel.[582]
Undone Samaria! Her king like a chip[583] on the face of the waters! This
may refer to one of the revolutions in which the king was murdered. But it

seems more appropriate to the final catastrophe of 724-1: the fall of the
kingdom, and the king's banishment to Assyria. If the latter, the verse has
been inserted; but the following verse would lead us to take these disasters
as still future. And the high places of idolatry shall be destroyed, the sin of
Israel; thorn and thistle shall come up on their altars. And they shall say to
the mountains, Cover us, and to the hills, Fall on us. It cannot be too often
repeated: these handmade gods, these chips of kings, shall be swept away
together.
Once more the prophet returns to the ancient origins of Israel's present sins,
and once more to their shirking of the discipline necessary for spiritual
results, but only that he may lead up as before to the inevitable doom.
From[584] the days of Gibeah thou hast sinned, O Israel. There have they
remained—never progressed beyond their position there—and this without
war overtaking them in Gibeah against the dastards.[585] As soon as I
please, I can chastise them, and peoples shall be gathered against them in
chastisement for their double sin. This can scarcely be, as some suggest, the
two calves at Bethel and Dan. More probably it is still the idols and the
man-made kings. Now he returns to the ambition of the people for spiritual
results without a spiritual discipline.

And Ephraim is a broken-in heifer, that loveth to thresh.[586] But I have
come on her fair neck. I will yoke Ephraim; Judah must plough; Jacob must
harrow for himself. It is all very well for the unmuzzled beast[587] to love
the threshing, but harder and unrewarded labours of ploughing and
harrowing have to come before the floor be heaped with sheaves. Israel
must not expect religious festival without religious discipline. Sow for
yourselves righteousness; then shall ye reap the fruit of God's leal love.[588]
Break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek Jehovah, till He come
and shower salvation[589] upon you.[590] Ye have ploughed wickedness;
disaster have ye reaped: ye have eaten the fruit of falsehood; for thou didst
trust in thy chariots,[591] in the multitude of thy warriors. For the tumult of
war shall arise among thy tribes,[592] and all thy fenced cities shall be
ruined, as Salman beat to ruin Beth-Arbel[593] in the day of war: the mother
shall be broken on the children—presumably the land shall fall with the
falling of her cities. Thus shall I do to you, O house of Israel,[594] because
of the evil of your evil: soon shall the king of Israel be undone—undone.

The political decay of Israel, then, so deeply figured in all these chapters,
must end in utter collapse. Let us sum up the gradual features of this decay:
the substance of the people scattered abroad; the national spirit dissipated;
the national prestige humbled; the kings mere puppets; the prophets
corrupted; the national vigour sapped by impurity; the idolatry conscious of
its impotence.

CHAPTER XVIII
THE FATHERHOOD AND HUMANITY OF GOD
Hosea xi.

From the thick jungle of Hosea's travail, the eleventh chapter breaks like a
high and open mound. The prophet enjoys the first of his two clear visions
—that of the Past.[595] Judgment continues to descend. Israel's Sun is near
his setting, but before he sinks—

"A lingering light he fondly throws
On the dear hills, whence first he rose."

Across these confused and vicious years, through which he has painfully
made his way, Hosea sees the tenderness and the romance of the early
history of his people. And although he must strike the old despairing note—
that, by the insincerity of the present generation, all the ancient guidance of
their God must end in this!—yet for some moments the blessed memory
shines by itself, and God's mercy appears to triumph over Israel's
ingratitude. Surely their sun will not set; Love must prevail. To which
assurance a later voice from the Exile has added, in verses 10 and 11, a
confirmation suitable to its own circumstances.

When Israel was a child, then I loved him,
And from Egypt I called him to be My son.

The early history of Israel was a romance. Think of it historically. Before
the Most High there spread an array of kingdoms and peoples. At their head
were three strong princes—sons indeed of God, if all the heritage of the
past, the power of the present and the promise of the future be tokens.
Egypt, wrapt in the rich and jewelled web of centuries, basked by Nile and
Pyramid, all the wonder of the world's art in his dreamy eyes. Opposite him
Assyria, with barer but more massive limbs, stood erect upon his highlands,
grasping in his sword the promise of the world's power. Between the two,

and using both of them, yet with his eyes westward on an empire of which
neither dreamed, the Phœnician on his sea-coast built his storehouses and
sped his navies, the promise of the world's wealth. It must ever remain the
supreme romance of history, that the true son of God, bearer of His love and
righteousness to all mankind, should be found, not only outside this
powerful trinity, but in the puny and despised captive of one of them—in a
people that was not a state, that had not a country, that was without a
history, and, if appearances be true, was as yet devoid of even the rudiments
of civilisation—a child people and a slave.
That was the Romance, and Hosea gives us the Grace which made it. When
Israel was a child, then I loved him. The verb is a distinct impulse: I began,
I learned, to love him. God's eyes, that passed unheeding the adult princes
of the world, fell upon this little slave boy, and He loved him and gave him
a career: from Egypt I called him to be My son.
Now, historically, it was the persuasion of this which made Israel. All their
distinctiveness and character, their progress from a level with other nomadic
tribes to the rank of the greatest religious teachers of humanity, started from
the memory of these two facts—that God loved them, and that God called
them. This was an unfailing conscience—the obligation that they were not
their own, the irresistible motive to repentance even in their utmost
backsliding, the unquenchable hope of a destiny in their direst days of
defeat and scattering.
Some, of course, may cavil at the narrow, national scale on which such a
belief was held, but let them remember that it was held in trust for all
mankind. To snarl that Israel felt this sonship to God only for themselves, is
to forget that it is they who have persuaded humanity that this is the only
kind of sonship worth claiming. Almost every other nation of antiquity
imagined a filial relation to the deity, but it was either through some
fabulous physical descent, and then often confined only to kings and heroes,
or by some mystical mingling of the Divine with the human, which was just
as gross and sensuous. Israel alone defined the connection as a historical
and a moral one. The sons of God are begotten not of blood, nor of the will
of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.[596] Sonship to God is
something not physical, but moral and historical, into which men are carried
by a supreme awakening to the Divine love and authority. Israel, it is true,

felt this only in a general way for the nation as a whole;[597] but their
conception of it embraced just those moral contents which form the glory of
Christ's doctrine of the Divine sonship of the individual. The belief that God
is our Father does not come to us with our carnal birth—except in
possibility: the persuasion of it is not conferred by our baptism except in so
far as that is Christ's own seal to the fact that God Almighty loves us and
has marked us for His own. To us sonship is a becoming, not a being—the
awakening of our adult minds into the surprise of a Father's undeserved
mercy, into the constraint of His authority and the assurance of the destiny
He has laid up for us. It is conferred by love, and confirmed by duty.
Neither has power brought it, nor wisdom, nor wealth, but it has come
solely with the wonder of the knowledge that God loves us, and has always
loved us, as well as in the sense, immediately following, of a true vocation
to serve Him. Sonship which is less than this is no sonship at all. But so
much as this is possible to every man through Jesus Christ. His constant
message is that the Father loves every one of us, and that if we know[598]
that love, we are God's sons indeed. To them who feel it, adoption into the
number and privileges of the sons of God comes with the amazement and
the romance which glorified God's choice of the child-slave Israel. Behold,
they cry, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we
should be called the sons of God.[599]
But we cannot be loved by God and left where we are. Beyond the grace
there lies the long discipline and destiny. We are called from servitude to
freedom, from the world to God—each of us to run a course, and do a work,
which can be done by no one else. That Israel did not perceive this was
God's sore sorrow with them.

The more I[600] called to them, the farther they went from Me.[601] They to
the Ba'alim kept sacrificing, and to images offering incense. But God
persevered with grace, and the story is at first continued in the figure of
Fatherhood with which it commenced; then it changes to the metaphor of a
humane man's goodness to his beasts. Yet I taught Ephraim to walk, holding
them on Mine arms,[602] but they knew not that I healed them—presumably
when they fell and hurt themselves. With the cords of a man I would draw
them, with bands of love; and I was to them as those who lift up the yoke on
their jaws, and gently would I give them to eat.[603] It is the picture of a

team of bullocks, in charge of a kind driver. Israel are no longer the wanton
young cattle of the previous chapter, which need the yoke firmly fastened
on their neck,[604] but a team of toiling oxen mounting some steep road.
There is no use now for the rough ropes, by which frisky animals are kept
to their work; but the driver, coming to his beasts' heads, by the gentle touch
of his hand at their mouths and by words of sympathy draws them after
him. I drew them with cords of a man, and with bands of love. Yet there is
the yoke, and it would seem that certain forms of this, when beasts were
working upwards, as we should say against the collar, pressed and rubbed
upon them, so that the humane driver, when he came to their heads, eased
the yoke with his hands. I was as they that take the yoke off their jaws;[605]
and then, when they got to the top of the hill, he would rest and feed them.
That is the picture, and however uncertain we may feel as to some of its
details, it is obviously a passage—Ewald says "the earliest of all
passages"—in which "human means precisely the same as love." It ought to
be taken along with that other passage in the great Prophecy of the Exile,
where God is described as He that led them through the deep, as an horse in
the wilderness, that they should not stumble: as a beast goeth down into the
valley, the Spirit of the Lord gave him rest.[606]
Thus then the figure of the fatherliness of God changes into that of His
gentleness or humanity. Do not let us think that there is here either any
descent of the poetry or want of connection between the two figures. The
change is true, not only to Israel's, but to our own experience. Men are all
either the eager children of happy, irresponsible days, or the bounden,
plodding draught-cattle of life's serious burdens and charges. Hosea's
double figure reflects human life in its whole range. Which of us has not
known this fatherliness of the Most High, exercised upon us, as upon Israel,
throughout our years of carelessness and disregard? It was God Himself
who taught and trained us then;—

"When through the slippery paths of youth
With heedless steps I ran,
Thine arm unseen conveyed me safe,
And led me up to man."

Those speedy recoveries from the blunders of early wilfulness, those
redemptions from the sins of youth—happy were we if we knew that it was
He who healed us. But there comes a time when men pass from leading-
strings to harness—when we feel faith less and duty more—when our work
touches us more closely than our God. Death must be a strange transformer
of the spirit, yet surely not more strange than life, which out of the eager
buoyant child makes in time the slow automaton of duty. It is such a stage
which the fourth of these verses suits, when we look up, not so much for the
fatherliness as for the gentleness and humanity of our God. A man has a
mystic power of a very wonderful kind upon the animals over whom he is
placed. On any of these wintry roads of ours we may see it, when a kind
carter gets down at a hill, and, throwing the reins on his beast's back, will
come to its head and touch it with his bare hands, and speak to it as if it
were his fellow; till the deep eyes fill with light, and out of these things, so
much weaker than itself, a touch, a glance, a word, there will come to it new
strength to pull the stranded waggon onward. The man is as a god to the
beast, coming down to help it, and it almost makes the beast human that he
does so. Not otherwise does Hosea feel the help which God gives His own
on the weary hills of life. We need not discipline, for our work is discipline
enough, and the cares we carry of themselves keep us straight and steady.
But we need sympathy and gentleness—this very humanity which the
prophet attributes to our God. God comes and takes us by the head; through
the mystic power which is above us, but which makes us like itself, we are
lifted to our task. Let no one judge this incredible. The incredible would be
that our God should prove any less to us than the merciful man is to his
beast. But we are saved from argument by experience. When we remember
how, as life has become steep and our strength exhausted, there has visited
us a thought which has sharpened to a word, a word which has warmed to a
touch, and we have drawn ourselves together and leapt up new men, can we
feel that God was any less in these things, than in the voice of conscience or
the message of forgiveness, or the restraints of His discipline? Nay, though
the reins be no longer felt, God is at our head, that we should not stumble
nor stand still.
Upon this gracious passage there follows one of those swift revulsions of
feeling, which we have learned almost to expect in Hosea. His insight again
overtakes his love. The people will not respond to the goodness of their

God; it is impossible to work upon minds so fickle and insincere. Discipline
is what they need. He shall return to the land of Egypt, or Asshur shall be
his king (it is still an alternative), for they have refused to return to Me....
[607]
'Tis but one more instance of the age-long apostasy of the people. My
people have a bias[608] to turn from Me; and though they (the prophets) call
them upwards, none of them can lift them.[609]
Yet God is God, and though prophecy fail He will attempt His Love once
more. There follows the greatest passage in Hosea—deepest if not highest
of his book—the breaking forth of that exhaustless mercy of the Most High
which no sin of man can bar back nor wear out.

How am I to give thee up, O Ephraim?
How am I to let thee go, O Israel?
How am I to give thee up?
Am I to make an Admah of thee—a Ṣeboim?
My heart is turned upon Me,
My compassions begin to boil:
I will not perform the fierceness of Mine anger,
I will not turn to destroy Ephraim;
For God am I and not man,
The Holy One in the midst of thee, yet I come not to
consume![610]

Such a love has been the secret of Hosea's persistence through so many
years with so faithless a people, and now, when he has failed, it takes voice
to itself and in its irresistible fulness makes this last appeal. Once more
before the end let Israel hear God in the utterness of His Love!
The verses are a climax, and obviously to be succeeded by a pause. On the
brink of his doom, will Israel turn to such a God, at such a call? The next
verse, though dependent for its promise on this same exhaustless Love, is
from an entirely different circumstance, and cannot have been put by Hosea
here.[611]

CHAPTER XIX
THE FINAL ARGUMENT
Hosea xii.-xiv. 1.

The impassioned call with which last chapter closed was by no means an
assurance of salvation: How am I to give thee up, Ephraim? how am I to let
thee go, Israel? On the contrary, it was the anguish of Love, when it hovers
over its own on the brink of the destruction to which their wilfulness has led
them, and before relinquishing them would seek, if possible, some last way
to redeem. Surely that fatal morrow and the people's mad leap into it are not
inevitable! At least, before they take the leap, let the prophet go back once
more upon the moral situation of to-day, go back once more upon the past
of the people, and see if he can find anything else to explain that bias to
apostasy[612] which has brought them to this fatal brink—anything else
which may move them to repentance even there. So in chaps. xii. and xiii.
Hosea turns upon the now familiar trail of his argument, full of the Divine
jealousy, determined to give the people one other chance to turn; but if they
will not, he at least will justify God's relinquishment of them. The chapters
throw even a brighter light upon the temper and habits of that generation.
They again explore Israel's ancient history for causes of the present decline;
and, in especial, they cite the spiritual experience of the Father of the
nation, as if to show that what of repentance was possible for him is
possible for his posterity also. But once more all hope is seen to be vain;
and Hosea's last travail with his obstinate people closes in a doom even
more awful than its predecessors.
The division into chapters is probably correct; but while chap. xiii. is well-
ordered and clear, the arrangement, and in parts the meaning, of chap. xii.
are very obscure.

1. The People and Their Father Jacob.

Hosea xii.

In no part even of the difficult Book of Hosea does the sacred text bristle
with more problems. It may well be doubted whether the verses lie in their
proper order, or, if they do, whether we have them entire as they came from
the prophet, for the connection is not always perceptible.[613] We cannot
believe, however, that the chapter is a bundle of isolated oracles, for the
analogy between Jacob and his living posterity runs through the whole of it,
[614]
and the refrain that God must requite upon the nation their deeds is
found both near the beginning and at the end of the chapter.[615] One is
tempted to take the two fragments about the Patriarch (vv. 4, 5, and 13 f.)
by themselves, and the more so that ver. 8 would follow so suitably on
either ver. 2 or ver. 3. But this clue is not sufficient; and till one more
evident is discovered, it is perhaps best to keep to the extant arrangement.
[616]

As before, the argument starts from the falseness of Israel, which is
illustrated in the faithlessness of their foreign relations. Ephraim hath
compassed Me with lies, and the house of Israel with deceit, and Judah ...
[617]
Ephraim herds the wind[618] and hunts the sirocco. All day long they
heap up falsehood and fraud:[619] they strike a bargain with Assyria, and
carry oil to Egypt, as Isaiah also complained.[620]

Jehovah hath a quarrel with Israel[621] and is about to visit upon Jacob his
ways; according to his deeds will He requite him. In the womb he
supplanted his brother, and in his man's strength he wrestled with God.[622]
Yea, he wrestled with the Angel and prevailed; he wept and besought of Him
mercy. At Bethel he met with Him, and there He spake with him[623] (or with
us—that is, in the person of our father)....[624] So thou by thy God—by His
help,[625] for no other way is possible except, like thy father, through
wrestling with Him—shouldest return: keep leal love and justice, and wait
on thy God without ceasing.[626] To this passage we shall return in dealing
with Hosea's doctrine of Repentance.
In characteristic fashion the discourse now swerves from the ideal to the
real state of the people.

Canaan! So the prophet nicknames his mercenary generation.[627] With
false balances in his hand, he loves to defraud. For Ephraim said, Ah but I
have grown rich, I have won myself wealth.[628] None of my gains can touch
me with guilt which is sin.[629] But I, Jehovah thy God from the land of
Egypt—I could make thee dwell in tents again, as in the days of the
Assembly in Horeb—I could destroy all this commercial civilisation of
thine, and reduce thee to thine ancient level of nomadic life—and I spake to
the prophets: it was I who multiplied vision, and by the hand of the prophets
gave parables. If Gilead be for idolatry, then shall it become vanity! If in
Gilgal—Stone-Circle—they sacrifice bullocks,[630] stone-heaps shall their
altars become among the furrows of the field. One does not see the
connection of these verses with the preceding. But now the discourse
oscillates once more to the national father, and the parallel between his own
and his people's experience.

And Jacob fled to the land[631] of Aram, and Israel served for a wife, and
for a wife he herded sheep. And by a prophet Jehovah brought Israel up
from Egypt, and by a prophet he was shepherded. And Ephraim hath given
bitter provocation; but his blood-guiltiness shall be upon him, and his Lord
shall return it to him.
I cannot trace the argument here.

2. The Last Judgment.

Hosea xiii.-xiv. 1.

The crisis draws on. On the one hand Israel's sin, accumulating, bulks ripe
for judgment. On the other the times grow more fatal, or the prophet more
than ever feels them so. He will gather once again the old truths on the old
lines—the great past when Jehovah was God alone, the descent to the idols
and the mushroom monarchs of to-day, the people, who once had been
strong, sapped by luxury, forgetful, stupid, not to be roused. The discourse
has every mark of being Hosea's latest. There is clearness and definiteness
beyond anything since chap. iv. There are ease and lightness of treatment, a
playful sarcasm, as if the themes were now familiar both to the prophet and
his audience. But, chiefly, there is the passion—so suitable to last words—

of how different it all might have been, if to this crisis Israel had come with
store of strength instead of guilt. How these years, with their opening into
the great history of the world, might have meant a birth for the nation,
which instead was lying upon them like a miscarried child in the mouth of
the womb! It was a fatality God Himself could not help in. Only death and
hell remained. Let them, then, have their way! Samaria must expiate her
guilt in the worst horrors of war.
Instead of with one definite historical event, this last effort of Hosea opens
more naturally with a summary of all Ephraim's previous history. The tribe
had been the first in Israel till they took to idols.

Whenever Ephraim spake there was trembling.[632] Prince[633] was he in
Israel; but he fell into guilt through the Ba'al, and so—died. Even now they
continue to sin and make them a smelting of their silver, idols after their
own model,[634] smith's work all of it. To them—to such things—they speak!
Sacrificing men kiss calves! In such unreason have they sunk. They cannot
endure. Therefore shall they be like the morning cloud and like the dew that
early vanisheth, like chaff which whirleth up from the floor and like smoke
from the window. And I was thy God[635] from the land of Egypt; and god
besides Me thou knowest not, nor saviour has there been any but Myself. I
shepherded[636] thee in the wilderness, in the land of droughts—long before
they came among the gods of fertile Canaan. But once they came hither, the
more pasture they had, the more they ate themselves full, and the more they
ate themselves full, the more was their heart uplifted, so they forgat Me. So
that I must be[637] to them like a lion, like a leopard on the way I must leap.
[638]
I will fall on them like a bear robbed of its young, and will tear the caul
of their hearts, and will devour them like a lion—wild beasts shall rend
them.[639]

When He hath destroyed thee, O Israel—who then may help thee?[640]
Where is thy king now? that he may save thee, or all thy princes? that they
may rule thee;[641] those of whom thou hast said, Give me a king and
princes. Aye, I give thee a king in Mine anger, and I take him away in My
wrath! Fit summary of the short and bloody reigns of these last years.

Gathered is Ephraim's guilt, stored up is his sin. The nation is pregnant—
but with guilt! Birth pangs seize him, but—the figure changes, with Hosea's
own swiftness, from mother to child—he is an impracticable son;[642] for
this is no time to stand in the mouth of the womb. The years that might have
been the nation's birth are by their own folly to prove their death. Israel lies
in the way of its own redemption—how truly this has been forced home
upon them in one chapter after another! Shall God then step in and work a
deliverance on the brink of death? From the hand of Sheol shall I deliver
them? from death shall I redeem them? Nay, let death and Sheol have their
way. Where are thy plagues, O death? where thy destruction, Sheol? Here
with them. Compassion is hid from Mine eyes.
This great verse has been very variously rendered. Some have taken it as a
promise: I will deliver ... I will redeem.... So the Septuagint translated, and
St. Paul borrowed, not the whole Greek verse, but its spirit and one or two
of its terms, for his triumphant challenge to death in the power of the
Resurrection of Christ.[643] As it stands in Hosea, however, the verse must
be a threat. The last clause unambiguously abjures mercy, and the statement
that His people will not be saved, for God cannot save them, is one in
thorough harmony with all Hosea's teaching.[644]
An appendix follows with the illustration of the exact form which doom
shall take. As so frequently with Hosea, it opens with a play upon the
people's name, which at the same time faintly echoes the opening of the
chapter.

Although he among his brethren[645] is the fruit-bearer—yaphri', he
Ephraim—there shall come an east wind, a wind of Jehovah rising from the
wilderness, so that his fountain dry up and his spring be parched. He—
himself, not the Assyrian, but Menahem, who had to send gold to the
Assyrian—shall strip the treasury of all its precious jewels. Samaria must
bear her guilt: for she hath rebelled against her God. To this simple issue
has the impenitence of the people finally reduced the many possibilities of
those momentous years; and their last prophet leaves them looking forward
to the crash which came some dozen years later in the invasion and
captivity of the land. They shall fall by the sword; their infants shall be
dashed in pieces, and their women with child ripped up. Horrible details,
but at that period certain to follow every defeat in war.

CHAPTER XX
"I WILL BE AS THE DEW"
Hosea xiv. 2-10.

Like the Book of Amos, the Book of Hosea, after proclaiming the people's
inevitable doom, turns to a blessed prospect of their restoration to favour
with God. It will be remembered that we decided against the authenticity of
such an epilogue in the Book of Amos; and it may now be asked, how can
we come to any other conclusion with regard to the similar peroration in the
Book of Hosea? For the following reasons.
We decided against the genuineness of the closing verses of Amos, because
their sanguine temper is opposed to the temper of the whole of the rest of
the book, and because they neither propose any ethical conditions for the
attainment of the blessed future, nor in their picture of the latter do they
emphasise one single trace of the justice, or the purity, or the social
kindliness, on which Amos has so exclusively insisted as the ideal relations
of Israel to Jehovah. It seemed impossible to us that Amos could imagine
the perfect restoration of his people in the terms only of requickened nature,
and say nothing about righteousness, truth and mercy towards the poor. The
prospect which now closes his book is psychologically alien to him, and,
being painted in the terms of later prophecy, may be judged to have been
added by some prophet of the Exile, speaking from the standpoint, and with
the legitimate desires, of his own day.
But the case is very different for this epilogue in Hosea. In the first place,
Hosea has not only continually preached repentance, and been, from his
whole affectionate temper of mind, unable to believe repentance
impossible; but he has actually predicted the restoration of his people upon
certain well-defined and ethical conditions. In chap. ii. he has drawn for us
in detail the whole prospect of God's successful treatment of his erring
spouse. Israel should be weaned from their sensuousness and its
accompanying trust in idols by a severe discipline, which the prophet

describes in terms of their ancient wanderings in the wilderness. They
should be reduced, as at the beginning of their history, to moral converse
with their God; and abjuring the Ba'alim (later chapters imply also their
foreign allies and foolish kings and princes) should return to Jehovah, when
He, having proved that these could not give them the fruits of the land they
sought after, should Himself quicken the whole course of nature to bless
them with the fertility of the soil and the friendliness even of the wild
beasts.
Now in the epilogue and its prospect of Israel's repentance we find no
feature, physical or moral, which has not already been furnished by these
previous promises of the book. All their ethical conditions are provided;
nothing but what they have conceived of blessing is again conceived. Israel
is to abjure senseless sacrifice and come to Jehovah with rational and
contrite confession.[646] She is to abjure her foreign alliances.[647] She is to
trust in the fatherly love of her God.[648] He is to heal her,[649] and His anger
is to turn away.[650] He is to restore nature, just as described in chap. ii., and
the scenery of the restoration is borrowed from Hosea's own Galilee. There
is, in short, no phrase or allusion of which we can say that it is alien to the
prophet's style or environment, while the very keynotes of his book—
return, backsliding, idols the work of our hands, such pity as a father hath,
and perhaps even the answer or converse of verse 9—are all struck once
more.
The epilogue then is absolutely different from the epilogue to the Book of
Amos, nor can the present expositor conceive of the possibility of a stronger
case for the genuineness of any passage of Scripture. The sole difficulty
seems to be the place in which we find it—a place where its contradiction
to the immediately preceding sentence of doom is brought out into relief.
We need not suppose, however, that it was uttered by Hosea in immediate
proximity to the latter, nor even that it formed his last word to Israel. But
granting only (as the above evidence obliges us to do) that it is the prophet's
own, this fourteenth chapter may have been a discourse addressed by him at
one of those many points when, as we know, he had some hope of the
people's return. Personally, I should think it extremely likely that Hosea's
ministry closed with that final, hopeless proclamation in chap. xiii.: no
other conclusion was possible so near the fall of Samaria, and the absolute

destruction of the Northern Kingdom. But Hosea had already in chap. ii.
painted the very opposite issue as a possible ideal for his people; and during
some break in those years when their insincerity was less obtrusive, and the
final doom still uncertain, the prophet's heart swung to its natural pole in the
exhaustless and steadfast love of God, and he uttered his unmingled gospel.
That either himself or the unknown editor of his prophecies should have
placed it at the very end of his book is not less than what we might have
expected. For if the book were to have validity beyond the circumstances of
its origin, beyond the judgment which was so near and so inevitable, was it
not right to let something else than the proclamation of this latter be its last
word to men? was it not right to put as the conclusion of the whole matter
the ideal eternally valid for Israel—the gospel which is ever God's last word
to His people?[651]
At some point or other, then, in the course of his ministry, there was granted
to Hosea an open vision like to the vision which he has recounted in the
second chapter. He called on the people to repent. For once, and in the
power of that Love to which he had already said all things are possible, it
seemed to him as if repentance came. The tangle and intrigue of his
generation fell away; fell away the reeking sacrifices and the vain show of
worship. The people turned from their idols and puppet-kings, from Assyria
and from Egypt, and with contrite hearts came to God Himself, who,
healing and loving, opened to them wide the gates of the future. It is not
strange that down this spiritual vista the prophet should see the same
scenery as daily filled his bodily vision. Throughout Galilee Lebanon[652]
dominates the landscape. You cannot lift your eyes from any spot of
Northern Israel without resting them upon the vast mountain. From the
unhealthy jungles of the Upper Jordan, the pilgrim lifts his heart to the cool
hill air above, to the ever-green cedars and firs, to the streams and
waterfalls that drop like silver chains off the great breastplate of snow.
From Esdraelon and every plain the peasants look to Lebanon to store the
clouds and scatter the rain; it is not from heaven but from Hermon that they
expect the dew, their only hope in the long drought of summer. Across
Galilee and in Northern Ephraim, across Bashan and in Northern Gilead,
across Hauran and on the borders of the desert, the mountain casts its spell
of power, its lavish promise of life.[653] Lebanon is everywhere the summit
of the land, and there are points from which it is as dominant as heaven.

No wonder then that our northern prophet painted the blessed future in the
poetry of the Mountain—its air, its dew and its trees. Other seers were to
behold, in the same latter days, the mountain of the Lord above the tops of
the mountains; the ordered city, her steadfast walls salvation, and her open
gates praise; the wealth of the Gentiles flowing into her, profusion of flocks
for sacrifice, profusion of pilgrims; the great Temple and its solemn
services; and the glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, fir-tree and pine
and box-tree together, to beautify the place of My Sanctuary.[654] But, with
his home in the north, and weary of sacrifice and ritual, weary of everything
artificial whether it were idols or puppet-kings, Hosea turns to the glory of
Lebanon as it lies, untouched by human tool or art, fresh and full of peace
from God's own hand. Like that other seer of Galilee, Hosea in his vision of
the future saw no temple therein.[655] His sacraments are the open air, the
mountain breeze, the dew, the vine, the lilies, the pines; and what God asks
of men are not rites nor sacrifices, but life and health, fragrance and
fruitfulness, beneath the shadow and the Dew of His Presence.
Return, O Israel, to Jehovah thy God, for thou hast stumbled by thine
iniquity. Take with you words[656] and return unto Jehovah. Say unto Him,
Remove iniquity altogether, and take good, so will we render the calves[657]
of our lips; confessions, vows, these are the sacrificial offerings God
delights in. Which vows are now registered:—

Asshur shall not save us;
We will not ride upon horses (from Egypt);
And we will say no more, "O our God," to the work of our
hands:
For in Thee the fatherless findeth a father's pity.

Alien help, whether in the protection of Assyria or the cavalry which
Pharaoh sends in return for Israel's homage; alien gods, whose idols we
have ourselves made,—we abjure them all, for we remember how Thou
didst promise to show a father's love to the people whom Thou didst name,
for their mother's sins, Lo-Ruhamah, the Unfathered. Then God replies:—

I will heal their backsliding,
I will love them freely:

For Mine anger is turned away from them.
I will be as the dew unto Israel:
He shall blossom as the lily,
And strike his roots deep as Lebanon;
His branches shall spread,
And his beauty shall be as the olive-tree,
And his smell as Lebanon—
smell of clear mountain air with the scent of the pines upon it. The figure in
the end of ver. 6 seems forced to some critics, who have proposed various
emendations, such as "like the fast-rooted trees of Lebanon,"[658] but any
one who has seen how the mountain himself rises from great roots, cast out
across the land like those of some giant oak, will not feel it necessary to
mitigate the metaphor.
The prophet now speaks:—

They shall return and dwell in His shadow.
They shall live well-watered as a garden,
Till they flourish like the vine,
And be fragrant like the wine of Lebanon.[659]

God speaks:—

Ephraim, what has he[660] to do any more with idols!
I have spoken for him, and I will look after him.
I am like an ever-green fir;
From Me is thy fruit found.

This version is not without its difficulties; but the alternative that God is
addressed and Ephraim is the speaker—Ephraim says, What have I to do
any more with idols? I answer and look to Him: I am like a green fir-tree;
from me is Thy fruit found—has even greater difficulties,[661] although it
avoids the unusual comparison of the Deity with a tree. The difficulties of
both interpretations may be overcome by dividing the verse between God
and the people:—

Ephraim! what has he to do any more with idols:

I have spoken for him, and will look after him.
In this case the speaking would be intended in the same sense as the
speaking in chap. ii. to the heavens and earth, that they might speak to the
corn and wine.[662] Then Ephraim replies:—

I am like an ever-green fir-tree;
From me is Thy fruit found.

But the division appears artificial, and the text does not suggest that the two
I's belong to different speakers. The first version therefore is the preferable.

Some one has added a summons to later generations to lay this book to
heart in face of their own problems and sins. May we do so for ourselves!

Who is wise, that he understands these things?
Intelligent, that he knows them?
Yea, straight are the ways of Jehovah,
And the righteous shall walk therein, but sinners shall
stumble upon them.

CHAPTER XXI
THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD
Hosea passim.

We have now finished the translation and detailed exposition of Hosea's
prophecies. We have followed his minute examination of his people's
character; his criticism of his fickle generation's attempts to repent; and his
presentation of true religion in contrast to their shallow optimism and
sensual superstitions. We have seen an inwardness and spirituality of the
highest kind—a love not only warm and mobile, but nobly jealous, and in
its jealousy assisted by an extraordinary insight and expertness in character.
Why Hosea should be distinguished above all prophets for inwardness and
spirituality must by this time be obvious to us. From his remote
watchfulness, Amos had seen the nations move across the world as the stars
across heaven; had seen, within Israel, class distinct from class, and given
types of all: rich and poor; priest, merchant and judge; the panic-stricken,
the bully; the fraudulent and the unclean. The observatory of Amos was the
world, and the nation. But Hosea's was the home; and there he had watched
a human soul decay through every stage from innocence to corruption. It
was a husband's study of a wife which made Hosea the most inward of all
the prophets. This was the beginning of God's word by him.[663]
Among the subjects in the subtle treatment of which Hosea's service to
religion is most original and conspicuous, there are especially three that
deserve a more detailed treatment than we have been able to give them.
These are the Knowledge of God, Repentance and the Sin against Love. We
may devote a chapter to each of them, beginning in this with the most
characteristic and fundamental truth Hosea gave to religion—the
Knowledge of God.

If to the heart there be one pain more fatal than another, it is the pain of not
being understood. That prevents argument: how can you reason with one
who will not come to quarters with your real self? It paralyses influence:
how can you do your best with one who is blind to your best? It stifles
Love; for how dare she continue to speak when she is mistaken for
something else? Here as elsewhere "against stupidity the gods themselves
fight in vain."
This anguish Hosea had suffered. As closely as two souls may live on earth,
he had lived with Gomer. Yet she had never wakened to his worth. She must
have been a woman with a power of love, or such a heart had hardly wooed
her. He was a man of deep tenderness and exquisite powers of expression.
His tact, his delicacy, his enthusiasm are sensible in every chapter of his
book. Gomer must have tasted them all before Israel did. Yet she never
knew him. It was her curse that, being married, she was not awake to the
meaning of marriage, and, being married to Hosea, she never appreciated
the holy tenderness and heroic patience which were deemed by God not
unworthy of becoming a parable of His own.
Now I think we do not go far wrong if we conclude that it was partly this
long experience of a soul that loved, but had neither conscience nor ideal in
her love, which made Hosea lay such frequent and pathetic emphasis upon
Israel's ignorance of Jehovah. To have his character ignored, his purposes
baffled, his gifts unappreciated, his patience mistaken—this was what drew
Hosea into that wonderful sympathy with the heart of God towards Israel
which comes out in such passionate words as these: My people perish for
lack of knowledge.[664] There is no troth, nor leal love, nor knowledge of
God in the land.[665] They have not known the Lord.[666] She did not know
that I gave her corn and wine.[667] They knew not that I healed them.[668]
For now, because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will reject thee.[669] I will
have leal love and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God rather than
burnt-offerings.[670] Repentance consists in change of knowledge. And the
climax of the new life which follows is again knowledge: I will betroth thee
to Me, and thou shall know the Lord.[671] Israel shall cry, My God, we know
Thee.[672]

To understand what Hosea meant by knowledge we must examine the
singularly supple word which his language lent him to express it. The
Hebrew root "Yadh'a,"[673] almost exclusively rendered in the Old
Testament by the English verb to know, is employed of the many processes
of knowledge, for which richer languages have separate terms. It is by turns
to perceive, be aware of, recognise, understand or conceive, experience and
be expert in.[674] But there is besides nearly always a practical effectiveness,
and in connection with religious objects a moral consciousness.
The barest meaning is to be aware that something is present or has
happened, and perhaps the root meant simply to see.[675] But it was the
frequent duty of the prophets to mark the difference between perceiving a
thing and laying it to heart. Isaiah speaks of the people seeing, but not so as
to know;[676] and Deuteronomy renders the latter sense by adding with the
heart, which to the Hebrews was the seat, not of the feeling, but of the
practical intellect:[677] And thou knowest with thy heart that as a man
chastiseth his son, so the Lord your God chastiseth you.[678] Usually,
however, the word know suffices by itself. This practical vigour naturally
developed in such directions as intimacy, conviction, experience and
wisdom. Job calls his familiars my knowers;[679] of a strong conviction he
says, I know that my Redeemer liveth,[680] and referring to wisdom, We are
of yesterday and know not;[681] while Ecclesiastes says, Whoso keepeth the
commandment shall know—that is, experience, or suffer—no evil.[682] But
the verb rises into a practical sense—to the knowledge that leads a man to
regard or care for its object. Job uses the verb know when he would say, I
do not care for my life;[683] and in the description of the sons of Eli, that
they were sons of Belial, and did not know God, it means that they did not
have any regard for Him.[684] Finally, there is a moral use of the word in
which it approaches the meaning of conscience: Their eyes were opened,
and they knew that they were naked.[685] They were aware of this before,
but they felt it now with a new sense. Also it is the mark of the awakened
and the fullgrown to know, or to feel, the difference between good and evil.
[686]

Here, then, we have a word for knowing, the utterance of which almost
invariably starts a moral echo, whose very sound, as it were, is haunted by

sympathy and by duty. It is knowledge, not as an effort of, so much as an
effect upon, the mind. It is not to know so as to see the fact of, but to know
so as to feel the force of; knowledge, not as acquisition and mastery, but as
impression, passion. To quote Paul's distinction, it is not so much the
apprehending as the being apprehended. It leads to a vivid result—either
warm appreciation or change of mind or practical effort. It is sometimes the
talent conceived as the trust, sometimes the enlistment of all the affections.
It is knowledge that is followed by shame, or by love, or by reverence, or
by the sense of a duty. One sees that it closely approaches the meaning of
our "conscience," and understands how easily there was developed from it
the evangelical name for repentance, Metanoia—that is, change of mind
under a new impression of facts.
There are three writers who thus use knowledge as the key to the Divine life
—in the Old Testament Hosea and the author of Deuteronomy, in the New
Testament St. John. We likened Amos to St. John the Baptist: it is not only
upon his similar temperament, but far more upon his use of the word
knowledge for spiritual purposes, that we may compare Hosea to St. John
the Evangelist.
Hosea's chief charge against the people is one of stupidity. High and low
they are a people without intelligence.[687] Once he defines this as want of
political wisdom: Ephraim is a silly dove without heart, or, as we should
say, without brains;[688] and again, as insensibility to every ominous fact:
Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not; yea, grey hairs
are scattered upon him, and he knoweth it not,[689] or, as we should say, lays
it not to heart.
But Israel's most fatal ignorance is of God Himself. This is the sign and the
cause of every one of their defects. There is no troth, nor leal love, nor
knowledge of God in the land.[690] They have not known the LORD.[691]
They have not known Me.
With the causes of this ignorance the prophet has dealt most explicitly in the
fourth chapter.[692] They are two: the people's own vice and the negligence
of their priests. Habitual vice destroys a people's brains. Harlotry, wine and
new wine take away the heart of My people.[693] Lust, for instance, blinds
them to the domestic consequences of their indulgence in the heathen

worship, and so the stupid people come to their end.[694] Again, their want
of political wisdom is due to their impurity, drunkenness and greed to be
rich.[695] Let those take heed who among ourselves insist that art is
independent of moral conditions—that wit and fancy reach their best and
bravest when breaking from any law of decency. They lie: such licence
corrupts the natural intelligence of a people, and robs them of insight and
imagination.
Yet Hosea sees that all the fault does not lie with the common people. Their
teachers are to blame, priest and prophet alike, for both stumble, and it is
true that a people shall be like its priests.[696] The priests have rejected
knowledge and forgotten the Torah of their God; they think only of the
ritual of sacrifice and the fines by which they fill their mouths. It was, as we
have seen, the sin of Israel's religion in the eighth century. To the priests
religion was a mass of ceremonies which satisfied the people's superstitions
and kept themselves in bread. To the prophets it was an equally sensuous,
an equally mercenary ecstasy. But to Hosea religion is above all a thing of
the intellect and conscience: it is that knowing which is at once common-
sense, plain morality and the recognition by a pure heart of what God has
done and is doing in history. Of such a knowledge the priests and prophets
are the stewards, and it is because they have ignored their trust that the
people have been provided with no antidote to the vices that corrupt their
natural intelligence and make them incapable of seeing God.
In contrast to such ignorance Hosea describes the essential temper and
contents of a true understanding of God. Using the word knowledge, in the
passive sense characteristic of his language, not so much the acquisition as
the impression of facts, an impression which masters not only a man's
thoughts but his heart and will, Hosea describes the knowledge of God as
feeling, character and conscience. Again and again he makes it parallel to
loyalty, repentance, love and service. Again and again he emphasises that it
comes from God Himself. It is not something which men can reach by their
own endeavours, or by the mere easy turning of their fickle hearts. For it
requires God Himself to speak, and discipline to chasten. The only passage
in which the knowledge of God is described as the immediate prize of man's
own pursuit is that prayer of the people on whose facile religiousness Hosea
pours his scorn.[697] Let us know, let us follow on to know the Lord, he heard

them say, and promise themselves, As soon as we seek Him we shall find
Him. But God replies that He can make nothing of such ambitions; they will
pass away like the morning cloud and the early dew.[698] This discarded
prayer, then, is the only passage in the book in which the knowledge of God
is described as man's acquisition. Elsewhere, in strict conformity to the
temper of the Hebrew word to know, Hosea presents the knowledge of the
Most High, not as something man finds out for himself, but something
which comes down on him from above.
The means which God took to impress Himself upon the heart of His people
were, according to Hosea, the events of their history. Hosea, indeed, also
points to another means. The Torah of thy God, which in one passage[699] he
makes parallel to knowledge, is evidently the body of instruction, judicial,
ceremonial and social, which has come down by the tradition of the priests.
This was not all oral; part of it at least was already codified in the form we
now know as the Book of the Covenant.[700] But Hosea treats of the Torah
only in connection with the priests. And the far more frequent and direct
means by which God has sought to reveal Himself to the people are the
great events of their past. These Hosea never tires of recalling. More than
any other prophet, he recites the deeds done by God in the origins and
making of Israel. So numerous are his references that from them alone we
could almost rebuild the early history. Let us gather them together. The
nation's father Jacob in the womb overreached his brother, and in his
manhood strove with God; yea, he strove with the Angel and he overcame,
[701]
he wept and supplicated Him; at Bethel he found Him, and there He
spake with us—Jehovah God of Hosts, Jehovah is His name.[702] ... And
Jacob fled to the territory[703] of Aram, and he served for a wife, and for a
wife he tended sheep. And by a prophet Jehovah brought Israel up out of
Egypt, and by a prophet he was tended.[704] When Israel was young,[705]
then I came to love him, and out of Egypt I called My son.[706] As often as I
called to them, so often did they go from Me:[707] they to the Ba'alim kept
sacrificing, and to images offering incense. But I taught Ephraim to walk,
taking him upon Mine[708] arms, and they did not know that I nursed them.
[709]
... Like grapes in the wilderness I found Israel, like the firstfruits on an
early fig-tree I saw your fathers; but they went to Ba'al-Peor, and
consecrated themselves to the Shame.[710] ... But I am Jehovah thy God from

the land of Egypt, and gods besides Me thou knowest not, and Saviour there
is none but Me. I knew thee in the wilderness, in the land of burning heats.
But the more pasture they had, the more they fed themselves full; as they fed
themselves full their heart was lifted up: therefore they forgat Me.[711] ... I
Jehovah thy God from the land of Egypt.[712] And all this revelation of God
was not only in that marvellous history, but in the yearly gifts of nature and
even in the success of the people's commerce: She knew not that it was I
who have given her the corn and the wine and the oil, and silver have I
multiplied to her.[713]
This, then, is how God gave Israel knowledge of Himself. First it broke
upon the Individual, the Nation's Father. And to him it had not come by
miracle, but just in the same fashion as it has broken upon men from then
until now. He woke to find God no tradition, but an experience. Amid the
strife with others of which life for all so largely consists, Jacob became
aware that God also has to be reckoned with, and that, hard as is the
struggle for bread and love and justice with one's brethren and fellow-men,
with the Esaus and with the Labans, a more inevitable wrestle awaits the
soul when it is left alone in the darkness with the Unseen. Oh, this is our
sympathy with those early patriarchs, not that they saw the sea dry up
before them or the bush ablaze with God, but that upon some lonely battle-
field of the heart they also endured those moments of agony, which imply a
more real Foe than we ever met in flesh and blood, and which leave upon us
marks deeper than the waste of toil or the rivalry of the world can inflict. So
the Father of the Nation came to find God at Bethel, and there, adds Hosea,
where the Nation still worship, God spake with us[714] in the person of our
Father.
The second stage of the knowledge of God was when the Nation awoke to
His leading, and through a prophet, Moses, were brought up out of Egypt.
Here again no miracle is adduced by Hosea, but with full heart he appeals to
the grace and the tenderness of the whole story. To him it is a wonderful
romance. Passing by all the empires of earth, the Almighty chose for
Himself this people that was no people, this tribe that were the slaves of
Egypt. And the choice was of love only: When Israel was young I came to
love him, and out of Egypt I called My son. It was the adoption of a little
slave-boy, adoption by the heart; and the fatherly figure continues, I taught

Ephraim to walk, taking him upon Mine arms. It is just the same charm,
seen from another point of view, when Hosea hears God say that He had
found Israel like grapes in the wilderness, like the firstfruits on an early fig-
tree I saw your fathers.
Now these may seem very imperfect figures of the relation of God to this
one people, and the ideas they present may be felt to start more difficulties
than ever their poetry could soothe to rest: as, for instance, why Israel alone
was chosen—why this of all tribes was given such an opportunity to know
the Most High. With these questions prophecy does not deal, and for Israel's
sake had no need to deal. What alone Hosea is concerned with is the
Character discernible in the origin and the liberation of his people. He hears
that Character speak for itself; and it speaks of a love and of a joy, to find
figures for which it goes to childhood and to spring—to the love a man
feels for a child, to the joy a man feels at the sight of the firstfruits of the
year. As the human heart feels in those two great dawns, when nothing is
yet impossible, but all is full of hope and promise, so humanly, so tenderly,
so joyfully had God felt towards His people. Never again say that the gods
of Greece were painted more living or more fair! The God of Israel is Love
and Springtime to His people. Grace, patience, pure joy of hope and
possibility—these are the Divine elements which this spiritual man, Hosea,
sees in the early history of his people, and not the miraculous, about which,
from end to end of his book, he is utterly silent.
It is ignorance, then, of such a Character, so evident in these facts of their
history, with which Hosea charges his people—not ignorance of the facts
themselves, not want of devotion to their memory, for they are a people
who crowd the sacred scenes of the past, at Bethel, at Gilgal, at Beersheba,
but ignorance of the Character which shines through the facts. Hosea also
calls it forgetfulness, for the people once had knowledge.[715] The cause of
their losing it has been their prosperity in Canaan: As their pastures were
increased they grew satisfied; as they grew satisfied their heart was lifted
up, and therefore they forgat Me.[716]
Equally instructive is the method by which Hosea seeks to move Israel from
this oblivion and bring them to a true knowledge of God. He insists that
their recovery can only be the work of God Himself—the living God
working in their lives to-day as He did in the past of the nation. To those

past deeds it is useless for this generation to go back, and seek again the
memory of which they have disinherited themselves. Let them rather realise
that the same God still lives. The knowledge of Him may be recovered by
appreciating His deeds in the life of to-day. And these deeds must first of all
be violence and terror, if only to rouse them from their sensuous sloth. The
last verse we have quoted, about Israel's complacency and pride, is followed
by this terrible one: I shall be[717] to them like a lion, like a leopard I shall
leap[718] upon the way. I will meet them as a bear bereft of her cubs, that I
may tear the caul of their heart, that I may devour them there like a lion:
the wild beast shall rend them.[719] This means that into Israel's insensibility
to Himself God must break with facts, with wounds, with horrors they
cannot evade. Till He so acts, their own efforts, then shall we know if we
hunt up to know,[720] and their assurance, My God, we do know Thee,[721]
are very vain. Hosea did not speak for nothing. Events were about to
happen more momentous than even the Exodus and the Conquest of the
Land. By 734 the Assyrians had depopulated Gilead and Galilee; in 725 the
capital itself was invested, and by 721 the whole nation carried into
captivity. God had made Himself known.
We are already aware, however, that Hosea did not count this as God's final
revelation to His people. Doom is not doom to him, as it was to Amos, but
discipline; and God withdraws His people from their fascinating land only
that He may have them more closely to Himself. He will bring His Bride
into the wilderness again, the wilderness where they first met, and there,
when her soul is tender and her stupid heart broken, He will plant in her
again the seeds of His knowledge and His love. The passages which
describe this are among the most beautiful of the book. They tell us of no
arbitrary conquest of Israel by Jehovah, of no magic and sudden
transformation. They describe a process as natural and gentle as a human
wooing; they use, as we have seen, the very terms of this: I will woo her,
bring her into the wilderness, and speak home to her heart.... And it shall be
in that day that thou shalt call Me, My husband, ... and I will betroth thee to
Me for ever in righteousness and in justice, and in leal love and in mercies
and in faithfulness; and thou shalt know Jehovah.[722]

CHAPTER XXII
REPENTANCE
Hosea passim.

If we keep in mind what Hosea meant by knowledge—a new impression of
facts implying a change both of temper and of conduct—we shall feel how
natural it is to pass at once from his doctrine of knowledge to his doctrine of
repentance. Hosea may be accurately styled the first preacher of repentance
yet so thoroughly did he deal with this subject of eternal interest to the
human heart, that between him and ourselves almost no teacher has
increased the insight with which it has been examined, or the passion with
which it ought to be enforced.
One thing we must hold clear from the outset. To us repentance is
intelligible only in the individual. There is no motion of the heart which
more clearly derives its validity from its personal character. Repentance is
the conscience, the feeling, the resolution of a man by himself and for
himself—"I will arise and go to my Father." Yet it is not to the individual
that Hosea directs his passionate appeals. For him and his age the religious
unit was not the Israelite but Israel. God had called and covenanted with the
nation as a whole; He had revealed Himself through their historical fortunes
and institutions. His grace was shown in their succour and guidance as a
people; His last judgment was threatened in their destruction as a state. So
similarly, when by Hosea God calls to repentance, it is the whole nation
whom He addresses.
At the same time we must remember those qualifications which we adduced
with regard to Hosea's doctrine of the nation's knowledge of God.[723] They
affect also his doctrine of the national repentance. Hosea's experience of
Israel had been preceded by his experience of an Israelite. For years the
prophet had carried on his anxious heart a single human character—lived
with her, travailed for her, pardoned and redeemed her. As we felt that this
long cure of a soul must have helped Hosea to his very spiritual sense of the

knowledge of God, so now we may justly assume that the same cannot have
been without effect upon his very personal teaching about repentance. But
with his experience of Gomer, there conspired also his intense love for
Israel. A warm patriotism necessarily personifies its object. To the
passionate lover of his people, their figure rises up one and individual—his
mother, his lover, his wife. Now no man ever loved his people more
intimately or more tenderly than Hosea loved Israel. The people were not
only dear to him, because he was their son, but dear and vivid also for their
loneliness and their distinction among the peoples of the earth, and for their
long experience as the intimate of the God of grace and lovingkindness.
God had chosen this Israel as His Bride; and the remembrance of the unique
endowment and lonely destiny stimulated Hosea's imagination in the work
of personifying and individualising his people. He treats Israel with the
tenderness and particularity with which the Shepherd, leaving the ninety
and nine in the wilderness, seeks till He find it the one lost lamb. His
analysis of his fickle generation's efforts to repent, of their motives in
turning to God, and of their failures, is as inward and definite as if it were a
single heart he were dissecting. Centuries have passed; the individual has
displaced the nation; the experience of the human heart has been infinitely
increased, and prophecy and all preaching has grown more and more
personal. Yet it has scarcely ever been found either necessary to add to the
terms which Hosea used for repentance, or possible to go deeper in
analysing the processes which these denote.

Hosea's most simple definition of repentance is that of returning unto God.
For turning and re-turning the Hebrew language has only one verb—shûbh.
In the Book of Hosea there are instances in which it is employed in the
former sense;[724] but, even apart from its use for repentance, the verb
usually means to return. Thus the wandering wife in the second chapter
says, I will return to my former husband;[725] and in the threat of judgment
it is said, Ephraim will return to Egypt.[726] Similar is the sense in the
phrases His deeds will I turn back upon him[727] and I will not turn back to

destroy Ephraim.[728] The usual meaning of the verb is therefore, not merely
to turn or change, but to turn right round, to turn back and home.[729] This is
obviously the force of its employment to express repentance. For this
purpose Hosea very seldom uses it alone.[730] He generally adds either the
name by which God had always been known, Jehovah,[731] or the
designation of Him, as their own God.[732]
We must emphasise this point if we would appreciate the thoroughness of
our prophet's doctrine, and its harmony with the preaching of the New
Testament. To Hosea repentance is no mere change in the direction of one's
life. It is a turning back upon one's self, a retracing of one's footsteps, a
confession and acknowledgment of what one has abandoned. It is a coming
back and a coming home to God, exactly as Jesus Himself has described in
the Parable of the Prodigal. As Hosea again and again affirms, the Return to
God, like the New Testament Metanoia, is the effect of new knowledge; but
the new knowledge is not of new facts—it is of facts which have been
present for a long time and which ought to have been appreciated before.
Of these facts Hosea describes three kinds: the nation's misery, the
unspeakable grace of their God, and their great guilt in turning from Him.
Again it is as in the case of the prodigal: his hunger, his father, and his cry,
"I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight."
We have already felt the pathos of those passages in which Hosea describes
the misery and the decay of Israel, the unprofitableness and shame of all
their restless traffic with other gods and alien empires. The state is rotten;
[733]
anarchy prevails.[734] The national vitality is lessened: Ephraim hath
grey hairs.[735] Power of birth and begetting have gone; the universal
unchastity causes the population to diminish: their glory flieth away like a
bird.[736] The presents to Egypt,[737] the tribute to Assyria, drain the wealth
of the people: strangers devour his strength.[738] The prodigal Israel has his
far-off country where he spends his substance among strangers. It is in this
connection that we must take the repeated verse: the pride of Israel
testifieth to his face.[739] We have seen[740] the impossibility of the usual
exegesis of these words, that by the Pride of Israel Hosea means Jehovah;
the word "pride" is probably to be taken in the sense in which Amos
employs it of the exuberance and arrogance of Israel's civilisation. If we are