To induce the people to regard as idolatrous and heretical
centres of iniquity the Bamoth, with which from ancestral times
the holiest memories were associated, and some of which, like
Hebron and Beersheba, had been set up by Abraham and Isaac in
person, required a complete breaking-off of the natural tradition
of life, a total severance of all connection with inherited
conditions. This was accomplished by means of the Babylonian
exile, which violently tore the nation away from its native soil,
and kept it apart for half a century,--a breach of historical
continuity than which it is almost impossible to conceive a
greater. The new generation had no natural, but only an
artificial relation to the times of old; the firmly rooted
growths of the old soil, regarded as thorns by the pious, were
extirpated, and the freshly ploughed fallows ready for a new
sowing. It is, of course, far from being the case that the whole
people at that time underwent a general conversion in the sense of
the prophets. Perhaps the majority totally gave up the past, but
just on that account became lost among the heathen, and never
subsequently came into notice.
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