Probably very few of the Jews who heard this man, or read his book, understood or appreciated him.  But there were enough of them who cared for him to preserve his book, so that it became a part of their sacred writings; and perhaps more than any other book in the Old Testament it prepared the way for a broadening of the dreams and plans of Abraham and Moses and the prophets to include not only Jews but all mankind—­that broadening which we call Christianity.

STUDY TOPICS

1.  Read Isaiah 19. 19-24.

2.  What do you think this writer would have thought of our American habit of calling names at foreigners?

3.  What advice would these writers have given us, in regard to our “Japanese” problem?

4.  If you have time, look into the book of Jonah.

CHAPTER XXVII

OUTDOOR TEACHERS AMONG THE JEWS[5]

All children among all races receive as they grow up some kind of an education.  Isaac learned from his father Abraham and from the other older people about him how to set up a tent, how to milk a goat, how to recognize the tracks of bears and other wild beasts, and all the other bits of knowledge so necessary to wandering shepherds.  Not till many centuries after Abraham in Hebrew history were there any special schools apart from the everyday experiences of life, or any man whose special work was that of teaching.  But in the centuries following the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians and its gradual restoration, the people came more and more to see the importance of education.  And in the course of these three or four centuries before the coming of Christ there grew up two kinds of schools and two kinds of teachers, first, an open air school where life itself was studied, and then later, in the second place, an indoor school, where the chief study was that of books.

SCHOOLS IN THE OPEN AIR

These open-air schools were most often to be seen in the “city gate.”  The Jews meant by the “gate” of the city the broad open space in front of the actual opening in the city wall.  It was like the public square in our modern towns.

=Scenes in the “Gate."=—­Suppose we visit one of the “gates.”  It is early morning.  Everything is noise and confusion.  Here are merchants peddling their wheat, or dates, or honey, their wool or their flax.  Customers are haggling over prices.  Each one is shouting with a shrill voice and with many gestures that the price asked is an outrage.  Besides the merchants there are judges.  Here sits one of the city elders with a long white beard.  Before him are two farmers disputing over a boundary line—­also witnesses and spectators.

Out in the middle of the area children are playing.  Every now and then a mangy yellow dog noses his way through the crowd looking for scraps of food.  And everywhere are the folks who came out just to see their neighbors and to hear the news.