THE HEBREW LANGUAGE
A QUIVER full of steel arrows, a cable with strong coils, a trumpet of brass crashing through the air with two or three sharp notes—such is the Hebrew language. The letters of its books are not to be many, but they are to be letters of fire. A language of this sort is not destined to say much, but what it does is beaten out upon an anvil. It is to pour floods of anger and utter cries of rage against the abuses of the world, calling the four winds of heaven to the assault of the citadels of evil. Like the jubilee horn of the sanctuary it will be put to no profane use; but it will sound the notes of the holy war against injustice and the call of the great assemblies; it will have accents of rejoicing, and accents of terror; it will become the trumpet of judgement.
ERNEST RENAN, 1887.
REBECCA’S HYMN
WHEN Israel, of the Lord beloved,
Out from the land of bondage came,
Her fathers’ God before her moved,
An awful guide in smoke and flame.
By day, along the astonished lands,