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

dan 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

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 th

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 Damas

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

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 Ph?nician 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 win

gion. 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 i

h 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 p

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

le 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

onsulted 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 Ma??ebah, 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

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 prop

eeded 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 k

wed 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 af

ctorious 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 corrupte

dgment 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 o