purpose of provoking Him, but in order to gain His favour. The
language held by these men was one hitherto unheard of when they
declared that Gilgal, and Bethel, and Beersheba, Jehovah's
favourite seats, were an abomination to Him; that the gifts and
offerings with which He was honoured there kindled His wrath
instead of appeasing it; that Israel was destined to be buried
under the ruins of His temples, where protection and refuge were
sought (Amos ix.). What did they mean ? It would be to
misunderstand the prophets to suppose that they took offence at
the holy places-- which Amos still calls Bamoth (vii.9), and that
too not in scorn, but with the deepest pathos--in and by
themselves, on account of their being more than one, or not being
the right ones. Their zeal is directed, not against the places,
but against the cultus there carried on, and, in fact not merely
against its false character as containing all manner of abuses, but
almost more against itself, against the false value attached to it.
The common idea was that just as Moab showed itself to be the
people of Chemosh because it brought to Chemosh its offerings and
gifts, so Israel proved itself Jehovah's people by dedicating its
worship to Him, and was such all the more surely as its worship
was zealous and splendid; in times of danger and need, when His
help was peculiarly required, the zeal of the worshippers was
doubled and trebled. It is against this that the prophets raise
their protest while they demand quite other performances as a
living manifestation of the relation of Israel to Jehovah. This
was the reason of their so great hostility to the cultus, and the
source of their antipathy to the great sanctuaries, where
superstitious zeal outdid itself; it was this that provoked their
wrath against the multiplicity of the altars which flourished so
luxuriantly on the soil of a false confidence. That the holy