FAREWELL SONG OF MOSES. 41 If
I
whet
My
97
glittering sword,
And Mine hand
take hold on judgement render vengeance to Mine adversaries, And will recompense them that hate Me. 42 I will make Mine arrows drunk with blood, 1
;
will
My sword shall devour flesh With the blood of the slain and the captives. From the head of the leaders of the enemy.
And
For the Lord shall judge, or rather, shall sift His people; and this is the aim of all His varied retributive dealings w^ith them and when His judgments have taken effect, His repentings and relentings will be kindled together, and will operate alongside of, and in conjunction with, His more ;
awful visitations.
When He
sees their land desolate, the
people scattered, and hardly a remnant as
if
tions
left,
He
will say,
representing and interpreting the nation's reflec-
on the cause of
all
their woes,
whom we
—Where
are our
which did eat the fat of our sacrifices, and drank the wine of our drink ofl"erings ? Should they not be convinced of the infinite disparity between the absolute sovereign Lord of all, their own God, and the miserable crowd of petty deities to whom they had so long and so often paid unlawful and disastrous homage ? And was it not the case that during the seventy years of the dispersion and captivity, the Jewish people learned, as they had never learned before, to hate idolatry and all polytheism ? When scattered among the heathen they had been driven in upon themselves, and were forced, so gods, the rock in
to speak, to
become
trusted,
missionaries of their monotheistic
and testifiers against the flagrant enormities of impure or idolatrous worship. Zeal for the exclusive honour of Jehovah, the one living and true God, became at last with them a fixed and irrevocable principle, and aversion to all idolatrous and pagan practices
faith,
G