[153] 1 Samuel, ii. 27 sqq.
[154] 2 Samuel, xxi. 1 sqq.
[155] Deuteronomy, i. 37; iii. 26; iv. 21. 2 Kings, xxiii. 26; xxiv. 3. Jeremiah, xv. 4 sqq.
[156] Exodus, xx. 5; xxiv. 7, Numbers, xiv. 18. Deuteronomy, v. 9. Cf. Leviticus, xxvi. 39.
[157] Ecclesiasticus, xli. 6. Cf. ibid. xvi. 4; xli. 5, 7 sqq.
[158] Wisdom of Solomon, iii. 16. Cf. ibid. iii. 12, 13, 17 sqq.
[159] Eicken, op. cit. p. 572.
[160] Lecky, History of Rationalism in Europe, ii. 37 n.
[161] Stewart, Sketches of the Character, &c., of the Highlanders of Scotland, p. 127.
Men originally attribute to their gods mental qualities similar to their own, and imagine them to be no less fierce and vindictive than they are themselves. Thus the retribution of a god is, in many cases, nothing but an outburst of sudden anger, or an act of private revenge, and as such particularly liable to comprise, not only the offender himself, but those connected with him. Plutarch even argued that the punishments inflicted by gods on cities for ill-deeds committed by their former inhabitants allowed of a just defence, on the ground that a city is “one continuous entity, a sort of creature that never changes from age, or becomes different by time, but is ever sympathetic with and conformable to itself,” and therefore “answerable for whatever it does or has done for the public weal, as long as the community by its union and federal bonds preserves its unity.”[162] He further observes that a bad man is not bad only when he breaks out into crime, but has the seeds of vice in his nature, and that the deity, knowing the nature and disposition of every man, prefers stifling crime in embryo to waiting till it becomes ripe.[163]