United States or Israel ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The sun had now so far changed his position, that, although he still shone into the cave, the preacher stood in the shadow, out of which gleamed his wasted countenance, pallid and sombre and solemn, as first he poured forth an abject prayer for mercy, conceived in the spirit of a slave supplicating the indulgence of a hard master, and couched in words and tones that bore not a trace of the filial; then read the chapter containing the curses of Mount Ebal, and gave the congregation one of Duncan's favourite psalms to sing; and at length began a sermon on what he called the divine justice.
He lifts his eyes, and away up yonder, in the far north, he sees the rolling uplands of Gilead, and across the deep gash where the Jordan runs, he catches a glimpse of the blue hills of Naphtali or of Galilee, and the central mountain masses of Ephraim and Manasseh, where Ebal and Gerizim lift their heads; and then, further south, the stony summits of the Judaean hills, where Jerusalem and Bethlehem lie, and, through some gap in the mountains, a gleam as of sunshine upon armour tells where the ocean is.
When the name was changed to Abraham, it was a sign that the Babylonian emigrant had become a native of the West. It was under the terebinth of Moreh before Shechem that Abraham first pitched his tent and erected his first altar to the Lord. Above him towered Ebal and Gerizim, where the curses and blessings of the Law were afterwards to be pronounced.
And then while he listened, and looked as I directed, I said: "That towering height far to the north is Mount Hermon; the sheet of water some miles on this side is the Sea of Galilee; to the west of the Sea of Galilee is Hattin, the Mount of Beatitudes; that white spot southwest of Hattin is Nazareth; that great plain south of Nazareth is Esdraelon, the 'battle-field of Palestine'; these rounded mountains here in the eastern part of the Valley of Esdraelon are Tabor, Little Hermon, and Gilboa; on the north is Tabor, at whose base Napoleon fought; the next is Little Hermon, where lived the witch of Endor; and the one south of Little Hermon is Gilboa, where Saul and his sons were slain; that range of mountains forming the southern wall of Esdraelon is Carmel, where Elijah held his trial with the priests of Baal; here below us, winding in its serpentine course, is the Jordan in its great trough or Ghor; in the center of the picture are the mountains of Samaria, with Ebal and Gerizim; to the south are the mountains of Judea, where lies Jerusalem; and that broad expanse of water beyond all these is the Mediterranean, the 'great sea toward the going down of the sun."
Thus having heard from Gerizzim, I shall Next come to Ebal, and you thither call, Not there to curse you, but to let you hear How God doth curse that soul that shall appear An unbelieving man, a graceless wretch; Because he doth continue in the breach Of Moses' law, and also doth neglect To close with Jesus; him will God reject And cast behind him; for of right his due Is that from whence all miseries ensue.
These broad mountain-shoulders, falling steeply away to the west, clad in the emerald robe of early spring; this immense gulf at our feet, four thousand feet below us, a huge trough of gray and yellow, through which the dark-green ribbon of the Jordan jungle, touched with a few silvery gleams of water, winds to the blue basin of the Dead Sea; those scarred and wrinkled hills rising on the other side, the knotted brow of Quarantana, the sharp cone of Sartoba, the distant peak of Mizpeh, the long line of Judean, Samarian, and Galilean summits, Olivet, and Ebal, and Gerizim, and Gilboa, and Tabor, rolling away to the northward, growing ever fairer with the promise of fertile valleys between them and rich plains beyond them, and fading at last into the azure vagueness of the highlands round the Lake of Galilee.
Neglect the opportunities of good with which He strews your path in early life, let some sin strike its roots in your heart and take possession of it, and the curse of God for that neglect or that sin will overtake you, no doubt of it; coming not perhaps as the Israelite on Mount Ebal expected it to come for any sin of his, but coming, you hardly know how, as the change for the worse, the sinking to lower levels of thought, and taste, and aim, and practice, the reversion to lower types, which is the end of neglect, coming as the creeping and insidious growth of the power of sin working ever stronger in us as the natural fruit of indulgence.
As the tribes of ancient Israel stood arrayed, the one half on Mount Ebal, the other on Mount Gerizim, the one to pronounce the blessing, the other to utter the curse, so Emerson is like an embodied promise and Carlyle a perpetual warning. In Emerson we see the hero triumphant and serene. Carlyle shows him at close grips with the devil.
Then Joshua built an altar unto the LORD God of Israel in mount Ebal, As Moses the servant of the LORD commanded the children of Israel, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses, an altar of whole stones, over which no man hath lift up any iron: and they offered thereon burnt offerings unto the LORD, and sacrificed peace offerings.
Here rise, on either side of the valley, two mountains Ebal and Gerazim. From the one were thundered the curses, from the other broke the benediction of the blessings; the one is barren, the other is verdant 'which thing is an allegory. The Religion of Fear does nothing, the Religion of Love does all.
Word Of The Day