But the superstition of the Israelites had as little
real religious significance as had that poetical view of nature
which the Hebrews doubtless shared in greater or less degree with
all the other nations of antiquity.
6. THE FALL OF SAMARIA.
Under King Jeroboam II., two years before a great earthquake that
served ever after for a date to all who had experienced it, there
occurred at Bethel, the greatest and most conspicuous sanctuary
of Jehovah in Israel, a scene full of significance. The multitude
were assembled there with gifts and offerings for the observance
of a festival, when there stepped forward a man whose grim
seriousness interrupted the joy of the feast. It was a Judaean,
Amos of Tekoa, a shepherd from the wilderness bordering on the
Dead Sea. Into the midst of the joyful tones of the songs which
with harp and tabor were being sung at the sacred banquet he
brought the discordant note of the mourner's wail. For over all
the joyous stir of busy life his ear caught the sounds of death:
"the virgin of Israel is fallen, never more to rise;
lies prostrate in her own land with no one to lift her up.
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