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 places should be abolished, but the cultus itself remain as before the main concern of religion, only limited to a single locality was by no means their wish; but at the same time, in point of fact, it came about as an incidental result of their teaching that the high place in Jerusalem ultimately abolished all the other Bamoth.  External circumstances, it must be added, contributed most essentially towards the result.

As long as the northern kingdom stood, it was there that the main current of lsraelite life manifested itself; a glance into the Books of Kings or into that of Amos is enough to make this clear.  In Jerusalem, indeed, the days of David and of Solomon remained unforgotten; yearning memories went back to them, and great pretensions were based upon them, but with these the actual state of matters only faintly corresponded.  When Samaria fell, Israel shrivelled up to the narrow dimensions of Judah, which alone survived as the people of Jehovah.  Thereby the field was left clear for Jerusalem.  The royal city had always had a weighty preponderance over the little kingdom, and within it, again, the town had yielded in importance to the temple.  From the few narratives we have relating to Judah one almost gathers an impression as if it had no other concern besides those of the temple; the kings in particular appear to have regarded the charge of their palace sanctuary as the chief of all their cares./1/