Woman, as well as man, in this era of decay, had fallen into the habit of the most cruel covetousness, and, when occasion offered, the rich and powerful women oppressed the poor. The herdsman-prophet Amos, coming from his home in the rural districts of Judah, was shocked at the corruption into which even the women of Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel, had fallen, and so, with a rustic boldness that would not mince matters of such grave concern, he compared the women to the fat cattle of the land of Bashan, saying to the wives and mothers of the corrupt and luxury-loving city: "Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan, that are in the mountain of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say to their masters, Bring and let us drink!"
In the age of decline, it is a noteworthy fact that not a woman appears to have lifted up prophetic voice against the moral and religious decay. Prophets there were, but apparently no prophetesses, except those whom Jeremiah rebukes with scathing earnestness,--women who prophesied according to their own feelings and desires rather than in harmony with the eternal principles as applied to the then present conditions. Indeed, in the entire period of decline which preceded the fall of Samaria in B.C. 722 and of Jerusalem in B.C. 586, no prophetess appears in the record, except that Isaiah speaks of his wife as the prophetess. This involves an entire change in the meaning of the word.
But there were patriotic women, just as there were patriotic men, during the days of decline. There was no greater suffering than that of women when they saw the Babylonian soldiery laying Jerusalem in ashes. Hugging their babes to their breasts, some were hewn in pieces, while others suffered shameful indignities and were led away among the captives, to sojourn in a strange land. The prophets had foreseen the coming anguish of the women; and when Jeremiah foretold the restoration of Israel to her land, he proclaimed that the eyes of Rachel, which had wept for her children "because they were not," should at length be dried, and her mourning turned into rejoicing. Thus the picture drawn in that elegiac poem--the greatest of all Hebrew threnodies, known as the Lamentations of Jeremiah--when he saw the sacred city in ruins, was reversed:
"How doth the city sit solitary
That was full of people!
How is she become as a widow!
She that was great among the nations,
And princess among the provinces,
How is she become tributary!
"She weepeth sore in the night