_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.
FOOTNOTES:
[55] He died in 798 or 797.
[56] 2 Kings x. 32, xiii. 20, 22.
[57] 2 Kings xiii. 14.
[58] vi. 12 ff., etc.
[59] viii., etc.
[60] xiii. 17 ff.
[61] 2 Kings xiii. 22-25.
[62] xiv. 28, if not Damascus itself.
[63] 2 Kings xv.: cf. 2 Chron. xxvi.
[64] xii. 7 (Heb. ver. 8). Trans., _As for Canaan, the balances, etc._
[65] Amos, _passim_. Hosea viii. 14, etc.; Micah iii. 12; Isa. ix. 10.
[66] ארמון, a word not found in the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, or
Samuel, is used in 1 Kings xvi. 18, 2 Kings xv. 25, for a citadel
within the palace of the king. Similarly in Isa. xxv. 2; Pro. xviii.
19. But in Amos generally of any large or grand house. That the name
first appears in the time of Omri's alliance with Tyre, points to a
Phœnician origin. Probably from root ארם, _to be high_.
[67] Isa. ix. 10.
[68] 1 Kings xii. 25 ff., and Amos and Hosea _passim_.
[69] Hosea v. 1.
[70] 1 Kings xviii. 30 ff.
[71] 1 Kings xii. 25.
[72] Originally so called from their elevation (though oftener on the
flank than on the summit of a hill); but like the name High Street or
the Scottish High Kirk, the term came to be dissociated from physical
height and was applied to any sanctuary, even in a hollow, like so
many of the sacred wells.
[73] The sanctuary itself was probably on the present site of the Burj
Beitin (with the ruins of an early Christian Church), some few minutes
to the south-east of the present village of Beitin, which probably
represents the city of Bethel that was called Luz at the first.
[74] 1 Kings xii. 25 ff.; Amos vii.
[75] Amos iv. 4.
[76] Amos vii. 13.
[77] 1 Kings xii. 25 ff.
[78] Curiously enough conceived by many of the early Christian
Fathers as containing the second of the calves. Cyril, _Comm. in
Hoseam_, 5; Epiph., _De Vitis Proph._, 237; _Chron. Pasc._, 161.
[79] Josh. iv. 20 ff., v. 2 ff.; 1 Sam. xi. 14, 15, etc.; 2 Sam.
xix. 15, 40. This Gilgal by Jericho fell to N. Israel after the
Disruption; but there is nothing in Amos or Hosea to tell us,
whether it or the Gilgal near Shiloh, which seems to have absorbed
the sanctity of the latter, is the shrine which they couple with
Bethel--except that they never talk of "going up" to it. The passage
from Epiphanius in previous note speaks of the Gilgal with the calf
as the "Gilgal which is in Shiloh."
[80] Site uncertain. See _Hist. Geog._, pp. 579, 586.
[81] Amos ix. 3. But cf. i. 2.
[82] 2 Kings xii. 28.
[83] See above, p. 37, _n._ 1.
[84] The Ephod, _the plated thing_; presumably a wooden image covered
either with a skin of metal or a cloak of metal. The Teraphim were
images in human shape.
[85] The _menhir_ of modern Palestine--not a hewn pillar, but oblong
natural stone narrowing a little towards the top (cf. W. R. Smith,
_Religion of the Semites_, 183-188). From Hosea x. 1, 2, it would
appear that the maççeboth of the eighth century were artificial.
_They make good_ maççeboth (A.V. wrongly _images_).
[86] So indeed Hosea iii. 4 implies. The Asherah, the pole or
symbolic tree of Canaanite worship, does not appear to have been used
as a part of the ritual of Jehovah's worship. But, that there was
constantly a temptation so to use it, is clear from Deut. xvi. 21,
22. See Driver on that passage.
[87] See below, p. 99.
[88] Amos iv. 4 ff.
[89] Amos vii. 4: cf. 2 Kings v. 23.
[90] Amos iv. 4 f.
[91] See below, p. 185.
[92] But whether these be by Amos see Chap. XI.
[93] Isa ix. 10.