Debtors were indeed allowed to be sold into bondage, that they might work out their debt, but they had to be freed at the year of Jubilee; and the Israelites, forgetting the law, were evidently making a cruel traffic of the persons of their brethren. There was great temptation to them, for the Zidonians, or Phoenicians, their neighbours, and too often their allies, were the great slave-dealers of the old world. The poems sung in Greece at this very time mention honoured and trusted slaves of noble birth, who had been stolen from their homes in infancy by the Phoenicians; and Joel, while calling the nations to judgment, says to the Tyrians (ch. iii. 6—8):

The children also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians, that ye might remove them far from their border.

Behold, I will raise them out of the place whither ye have sold them, and will return your recompence upon your own head:

And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off: for the LORD hath spoken it.

There can be little question that the Israelites helped in this stealing of men. Sandals or shoes were often richly adorned, and might be the price of a slave in those days; but the other words, "the righteous for silver," recall the sale of Joseph, and look on in prophecy to Him who should be sold for thirty pieces of silver. Further, whereas the Law had mercifully provided that the long garment, cloak by day, blanket by night, should never be kept by a creditor (Ex. xxii. 26, 27)—

If thou at all take thy neighbour's raiment to pledge, thou shalt deliver it unto him by that the sun goeth down :

For that is his covering only, it is his raiment for his skin: wherein shall he sleep? and it shall come to pass, when he crieth unto me, that I will hear; for I am gracious.

-these extortioners lay down on whole heaps of these robes at their feasts, round their many unhallowed altars, and drank wine obtained by exactions from the unjustly condemned.

And yet, the Lord reminds them of their ingratitude, of the terrible Amorites, tall as cedars, whom He had destroyed before them, and how He had not left then to forget Him, but had raised up prophets to teach them-Nazarites, like Samuel, and probably Elijah-to win them by the strict example of holiness. But they

would not bear with rebuke. They tried to make the Nazarites like themselves, and silenced the prophets. They were absolutely set upon their own way, and therefore there is only before them the punishment they deserve. Joel had said, "Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is come." Now, by Amos, God actually speaks of Himself as a cart, groaning and labouring under the oppression of the sheaves that are to be trampled in the threshing-floor of His fury. And in sad lines the prophet shows how not one of all the mighty men of Jeroboam would find his strength avail him under the judgment that they had brought on themselves.

LESSON LV.*

AMOS' WARNING.

ABOUT B.C. 800.--AMOS iv. and v.

Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel.

For, lo, he that formeth the mountains, and createth the wind, and declareth unto man what is his thought, that maketh the morning darkness, and treadeth upon the high places of the earth; the LORD, the God of Hosts, is his name.

Hear ye this word which I take up against you,

Even a lamentation, O house of Israel.

The virgin of Israel is fallen; she shall no more rise :

She is forsaken upon her land; there is none to raise her up.

For thus saith the Lord GOD;

The city that went out by a thousand shall leave an hundred,

And that which went forth by an hundred shall leave ten,

To the house of Israel.

For thus saith the LORD unto the house of Israel,

Seek ye me, and ye shall live :

But seek not Beth-el, nor enter into Gilgal, and pass not to Beersheba :

For Gilgal shall surely go into captivity,

And Beth-el shall come to nought.

Seek the LORD, and ye shall live;

Lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and devour it,

And there be none to quench it in Beth-el.

Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, †

And leave off righteousness in the earth,

Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion,

*Not for the little ones.

The bitterest of plants.

VOL. III.

M

And turneth the shadow of death into the morning,
And maketh the day dark with night :

That calleth for the waters of the sea,

And poureth them out upon the face of the earth :
The LORD is his name :

That strengtheneth the spoiled against the strong,
So that the spoiled shall come against the fortress.

*

I hate, I despise your feast days,

And I will not smell in your solemn assemblies.

Though ye offer me burnt-offerings and your meat-offerings, I will not accept them :

Neither will I regard the peace-offerings of your fat beasts.

Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs;

For I will not hear the melody of thy viols.*

But let judgment run down as waters,

And righteousness as a mighty stream.

Have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?

But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch

And Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made to
yourselves.

Therefore will I cause you to go into captivity beyond Damascus,
Saith the LORD, whose name is The God of Hosts.

COMMENT. It is not possible in these "Readings" to go through the whole of the prophets. It is only possible to take the most noted passages-the easier ones, and those that are referred to in the New Testament, or which relate especially to our Blessed LORD. So we have here passed over some verses in which God speaks of past chastisements, such as the great drought of Elijah's time, famine, pestilence, and attacks from their enemies, the very punishments denounced both at Mount Sinai and Mount Nebo. For none of these have the Israelites repented, therefore they must "Prepare to meet their God in judgment," as we must do, if all the trials of our lives have done nothing for us—the God who formeth the mountains, and createth that wondrous thing the wind, yea, and can declare to man his own thought, as He did to Sarah, and again so many times, when manifest in the flesh, to the Apostles and the Jews. Or He can make the blessed morning darkness, and trample down all that is high and great.

And here Amos begins mourning over Israel. For the first time the whole nation is personified as a virgin, a figure very often Supposed to be a sort of harp.

employed afterwards by these great Hcbrew poets; or indeed the idea may be carried on from Hosea's Song of Israel as the unfaithful wife. Once she was the virgin; now she is fallen. And seeing beforehand the misery that should come immediately on Jeroboam's death, the prophet goes on to say how the city that once could send forth a thousand fighting-men should have only a hundred, and that which once counted a hundred should be reduced to ten. Then, in the tenderest words, God calls His people back after their punishment. Seek Him, but not at the calf-altar at Bethel, for Bethel should come to nought; not at the old gathering-place at Gilgal, "the rolling-place," where Joshua had rolled away the reproach of uncircumcision, for that had become idolatrous, and should be rolled away into captivity; not at Beersheba, Abraham's altar, for that too was misused (2 Kings xxiii. 8). No; seek the Lord, lest He break like an avenging fire on the tribes of Joseph. Let there be no worship of the Bethel calf. Look up higher, says the herdsman who has watched the stars on the hill of Tekoa. Seek Him who made the seven stars—the Pleiades, namely, the little golden cluster-and Orion, the mighty hunter (Job xxxviii. 31; Book I. Less. LXXII.). Seek Him who, if He can make the morning darkness, can also turn the darkness into day. He poured the sea on the earth at the Flood, but in mercy too He daily draws up its waters into clouds, and then discharges them in rain and dew on the earth. JEHOVAH is His Name. Seek Him, and the danger is over.

As to their self-appointed festivals, which Jeroboam I. had devised when he made Israel to sin, they were hateful and detestable to God. He whose favour had been expressed by saying He smelt a sweet savour at Noah's sacrifice, loathed that of the Israelites. Let us take care, then, how we love such worship as He has not appointed. It was justice and mercy He called for, not sacrifice, especially such as theirs. Had it not been thus with them from the very first, even in the wilderness, when, in spite of the sacrifices and burnt-offerings, there were some who even carried about the tent of their chosen king-god (the meaning of Moloch, "horrid king besmeared with blood"), to whom Moses forbade them to sacrifice their children in the fire? The star must have been some gilded star, in honour of the "host of heaven;" and Chiun is thought to mean a shrine or pedestal. Never, then, had

the ten tribes been heart-whole; they had run after idols from the first, and therefore they should be carried into captivity, not to their old enemy Damascus, but beyond, into an unknown land. They sought their golden star, "figures that they made to worship them," instead of Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion.

Long after, before a furious assembly of Jews, who fancied themselves full of zeal for the true worship, St. Stephen, in reviewing the history of their perverseness, brought up this same reproach (Acts vii. 42, 43) :—

Then God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven; as it is written in the book of the prophets, O ye house of Israel, have ye offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the wilderness?

Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them: and I will carry you away beyond Babylon.

He was a Greek-speaking Jew, and " Remphan" was the Greek translation of the word "Chiun," which seems to have been as great a difficulty to the Greek translators as to ourselves. And he also, following the spirit rather than the words, says "beyond Babylon,” instead of "beyond Damascus," as was truly the fate of the ten obstinate tribes, whom nothing would cure of worshipping God in their own way instead of His, and who thus fell away from the laws of mercy and purity, when they lost their piety.

LESSON LVI.

AMOS AND THE PRIEST OF BETHEL.

ABOUT B.C. 800.-AMOS vii. 7-17; ix. 8—15.

Thus he shewed me: and, behold, the Lord stood upon a wall made by a plumb-line, with a plumb-line in his hand.

And the LORD said unto me, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A plumb-line. Then said the LORD, Behold, I will set a plumb-line in the midst of my people Israel :

I will not again pass by them any more:

And the high places of Isaac shall be desolate,

And the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste;

And I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.