THE FALSE PEACE OF RITUAL
Amo 4:4-6

THE next four groups of oracles- Amo 4:4-13; Amo 5:1-27; Amo 5:6.-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 Amo 5:26, 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 practice 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. {Amo 5:25} 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 mart 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 fellowmen or one’s own character were deemed mere misdemeanors. 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 paralyzing weight. With offers of help it flatters religions the most spiritual in theory and intention. The Pharisees, them whom few parties had at first purer ideals of morality, tithed mint, anise, and cumin, 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 recognized the place of ritual in worship, who said, "Thus it behoveth us to fulfill 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, 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 Amo 4:4-13, and the second in chapter 5; while in chapter 6 he assaults once more the false political peace which the ceremonialism engenders.

1. FOR WORSHIP, CHASTISEMENT
Amo 4:4-13

In chapter 2 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. To offer leavened bread was a departure from the older fashion of unleavened. To publish their liberality was like the later Pharisees, who were not dissimilarly mocked by our Lord: "When then doest alms, cause not a trumpet to be sounded before thee, as t, he hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men." {Mat 6:2} 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 savor 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, 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: I slew with the sword your youths-be-sides 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 proved that thise pestilences were for pure synne, And the southwest wynde in saterday et evene Was pertliche for pure pride and for no poynt elles. Piries and plomtrees were puffed to the erthe, In ensample ze segges ze shulden do the bettere. Beehes and brode okes were blowen to the grounde. Torned upward her tailles in tokenynge of drede That dedly synne at domesday shal fordon 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. 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."

2. FOR WORSHIP, JUSTICE
Amos 5

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 a hundred left; and she that goeth forth a 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!" 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. "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. He that made the Seven Stars and Orion, that turneth the murk, 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 on strength, and bringeth down 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 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 ehyde."

"Wherefore, because ye trample on the weak and take from him a present of corn, ye have built houses of ashlar, 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 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 recognizes 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. That is very true. But it does not meet this further difficulty, that the verses (Amo 5:14-15) plainly make interruption between the end of Amo 5:13 and the beginning of Amo 5:16; 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 Amo 5:13. For all these reasons, then, I take Amo 5:14-15 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.

Amo 5:13 had said the time was so evil that the prudent man kept silence. All the more must the Lord Himself speak, as Amo 5:16 now proclaims. "Therefore thus saith Jehovah, God of Hosts, Lord: On all open ways. lamentation, and in all streets they shall be saying, Ah woe! Ah woe! And in all vineyards lamentation, and they shall call the ploughman to wailing and to lamentation them that are skillful 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, 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 savor 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. {Eph 5:2 etc.} "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 meat offerings that ye brought Me in the wilderness, forty years, O house of Israel. 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; and I will carry you away into exile far beyond Damascus, saith Jehovah-God of Hosts is His Name!" So this chapter closes like the previous, with the marshaling 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 6

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"-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! Ye that put off the day of calamity and draw near the sessions of injustice"-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"-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; who drink wine by ewerfuls-waterpot-fuls-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. 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 Amo 6:4, 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 the pride of Jacob, and his palaces do I hate, and I will pack up a city and its fullness. 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-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 Karnaim." So Gratz 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 naught"; Karnaim, "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. 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. 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 preoccupation 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-a Nation, and they shall oppress you from the Entrance of Hamath to the Torrent of the ‘Arabah." Everyone 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.

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, Amo 6:9-10, 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 fullness" to (perhaps "siege" or "pestilence"?). "And it shall come to pass, if there be left ten men in one house, and. they die, that his cousin and the man to burn him shall lift him to bring the body t out of the house, and they shall say to one who is in the recesses of the house. 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-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. 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 fullness," 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 fullness" 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." The latter alternative is the more probable, and this may be one of the passages, already alluded to, in which the want of connection with the preceding verses is to be explained, not upon the favorite 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 he use: 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 traveler 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.