And then, without a change of phrase, without even the compliment of a heightened denunciation—
"Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Judah, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof....
"Thus saith the Lord: For three transgressions of Israel, yea for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof...."[#]
[#] Amos i, 3-ii, 6.
It would be impossible more emphatically to insist that all nations, Israel and the rest, stand on an equal footing before the Judgment Seat of God, and are to be regarded as real entities, and real moral agents; but that is not enough for the prophet.
"Are ye not as Children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel?—saith the Lord."
I have no more care for you than the Ethiopians—who then, as now, were black folk.
"Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?"[#]
[#] Amos ix, 7.
It is the God who had guided the history of Israel who has equally guided the history of the despised Philistine and the hated Syrian. And this line of thought reaches its culmination where we should expect to find it, in the works of the statesman-prophet Isaiah. His little country of Judah was likely to be destroyed by the hostilities of Assyria and Egypt, and in the middle of that peril, when these nations were at each other's throats, he looks forward and says:—
"In that day there shall be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian to Assyria; and the Egyptians shall worship with the Assyrians."