What was the iniquity of the Amorites, think you, and what kind of people were they? Anything like ourselves? or wide-mouthed and goggle-eyed,—terrifically stalking above the vineyard stakes of Eshcol? If like us, in any wise, is it possible that we also may be committing iniquity, capable of less and more fulness, through such a space as four hundred years? Questions worth pausing at; and we will at least try to be a little clear-headed as to Amorite personality.
We habitually speak of the Holy Land as the Land of ‘Canaan.’ The ‘promised’ land was indeed that of Canaan, with others. But Israel never got it. They got only the Mount of the Amorites; for the promise was only to be perfected on condition of their perfect obedience. Therefore, I asked you to learn Genesis x. 15, and Genesis x. 16, separately. For all the Canaanites were left, to prove Israel, (Judges iii. 3,) and a good many of the Amorites and Jebusites too, (Judges iii. 5–7,) but in the main Israel subdued the last two races, and held the [[152]]hill country from Lebanon to Hebron, and the capital, Jerusalem, for their own. And if instead of ‘Amorites,’ you will read generally ‘Highlanders,’ (which the word means,) and think of them, for a beginning of notion, simply as Campbells and Macgregors of the East, getting themselves into relations with the pious Israelites closely resembling those of the Highland race and mind of Scotland with its evangelical and economical Lowlanders, you will read these parts of your Bible in at least an incipiently intelligent manner. And above all, you will, or may, understand that the Amorites had a great deal of good in them: that they and the Jebusites were on the whole a generous and courteous people,—so that, when Abram dwells with the Amorite princes, Mamre and Eshcol, they are faithful allies to him; and when he buys his grave from Ephron the Hittite, and David the threshing floor from Araunah the Jebusite, both of the mountaineers behave just as the proudest and truest Highland chief would. ‘What is that between me and thee?’ “All these things did Araunah, as a King, give unto the King—and Araunah said unto the King, The Lord thy God accept thee.” Not our God, you see;—but giving sadly, as the Sidonian widow begging,—with claim of no part in Israel.
‘Mere oriental formulæ,’ says the Cockney modern expositor—‘offers made in fore-knowledge that they would not be accepted.’
No, curly-tailed bow-wow; it is only you and other [[153]]such automatic poodles who are ‘formulæ.’ Automatic, by the way, you are not; we all know how to wind you up to run with a whirr, like toy-mice.
Well, now read consecutively, but quietly, Numbers xiii. 22–29, xxi. 13–26, Deuteronomy iii. 8–13, and Joshua x. 6–14, and you will get a notion or two, which with those already obtained you may best arrange as follows.
Put the Philistines, and giants, or bulls, of Bashan, out of the way at present; they are merely elements of physical malignant force, sent against Samson, Saul, and David, as a half-human shape of lion or bear,—carrying off the ark of God in their mouths, and not knowing in the least what to do with it. You already know Tyre as the trading power, Ethiopia as the ignorant—Egypt as the wise—slave; then the Amorites, among the children of Ham, correspond to the great mountain and pastoral powers of the Shemites; and are far the noblest and purest of the race: abiding in their own fastnesses, desiring no conquest, but as Sihon, admitting no invader;—holding their crags so that nothing can be taken out of the hand of the Amorite but with the sword and bow, (Gen. xlviii. 22;) yet living chiefly by pasture and agriculture; worshipping, in their early dynasties, the one eternal God; and, in the person of their great high priest, Melchizedec, but a few years before this vision, blessing the father of the faithful, and feeding him with the everlasting sacraments of earth,—bread and wine,—in [[154]]the level valley of the Kings, under Salem, the city of peace.
Truly, ‘the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full.’
I have given you enough to think of, for this time; but you can’t work it out rightly without a clearly intelligible map of Palestine, and raised models of the districts of Hebron and Jerusalem, which I will provide as soon as possible, according to St. George’s notions of what such things should be, for the Sheffield museum: to the end that at least, in that district of the Yorkshire Amorites, singularly like the Holy Land in its level summits and cleft defiles, it may be understood what England also had once to bring forth of blessing in her own vales of peace; and how her gathering iniquity may bring upon her,—(and at this instant, as I write, early on Good Friday, the malignant hail of spring time, slaying blossom and leaf, smites rattling on the ground that should be soft with flowers,) such day of ruin as the great hail darkened in the going down to Beth-horon, and the sun, that had bronzed their corn and flushed their grape, prolonged on Ajalon, implacable.
“And it came to pass, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold, a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp which passed between those pieces.”
What a lovely vision, half of it, at any rate, to the eye of modern progress! Foretelling, doubtless, smoking furnaces, and general civilization, in this Amorite land of barbarous vines and fig-trees! Yes—my progressive [[155]]friends. That was precisely what the vision did foretell,—in the first half of it; and not very many summer mornings afterwards, Abram going out for his walk in the dew round his farm,[1] saw its fulfilment in quite literal terms, on the horizon. (Gen. xix. 28.) The smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace. But what do you make of the other part of the night-vision? Striking of oil? and sale of numerous patent lamps? But Abram never did strike any oil—except olive, which could only be had on the usual terms of laborious beating and grinding, and in moderate quantities. What do you make of the second half of the vision?