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| Chapter III.
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Chapter III.
Nor should I think it needful to discuss whether
God pursues a worthy course in forbidding His own name and honour to be
given over to a lie, or does so in not consenting that such as He has
plucked from the maze of false religion should return again to Egypt,
or does so in not suffering to depart from Him them whom He has chosen
for Himself. Thus that, too, will not require to be treated by us,
whether He has wished to be kept the rule which He has chosen to
appoint, and whether He justly avenges the abandonment of the rule
which He has wished to be kept; since He would have appointed it to no
purpose if He had not wished it kept, and would have to no purpose
wished it kept if He had been unwilling to uphold it. My next
step, indeed, is to put to the test these appointments of God in
opposition to false religions, the completely vanquished as well as
also the punished, since on these will depend the entire argument for
martyrdoms. Moses was apart with God on the mountain, when the people,
not brooking his absence, which was so needful, seek to make gods for
themselves, which, for his own part, he will prefer to
destroy.8246
Aaron is
importuned, and commands that the earrings of their women be brought
together, that they may be thrown into the fire. For the people were
about to lose, as a judgment upon themselves, the true ornaments for
the ears, the words of God. The wise fire makes for them the molten
likeness of a calf, reproaching them with having the heart where they
have their treasure also,—in Egypt, to wit, which clothed with
sacredness, among the other animals, a certain ox likewise.
Therefore the slaughter of three thousand by their nearest relatives,
because they had displeased their so very near relative God, solemnly
marked both the commencement and the deserts of the trespass. Israel
having, as we are told in Numbers,8247
turned aside
at Sethim, the people go to the daughters of Moab to gratify their
lust: they are allured to the idols, so that they committed whoredom
with the spirit also: finally, they eat of their defiled
sacrifices; then they both worship the gods of the nation, and
are admitted to the rites of Beelphegor. For this lapse, too, into
idolatry, sister to adultery, it took the slaughter of twenty-three
thousand by the swords of their countrymen to appease the divine
anger. After the death of Joshua the son of Nave they forsake the
God of their fathers, and serve idols, Baalim and Ashtaroth;8248
and the Lord in anger delivered them up to
the hands of spoilers, and they continued to be spoiled by them, and to
be sold to their adversaries, and could not at all stand before their
enemies. Whithersoever they went forth, His hand was upon them
for evil, and they were greatly distressed. And after this God sets
judges (critas), the same
as our censors, over them. But not even these did they continue
steadfastly to obey. So soon as one of the judges died, they proceeded
to transgress more than their fathers had done by going after the gods
of others, and serving and worshipping them. Therefore the Lord was
angry. “Since, indeed,” He says, “this nation have
transgressed my covenant which I established with their fathers, and
have not hearkened to my voice, I also will give no heed to remove from
before them a man of the nations which Joshua left at his
death.”8249
And thus,
throughout almost all the annals of the judges and of the kings who
succeeded them, while the strength of the surrounding nations was
preserved, He meted wrath out to Israel by war and captivity and a
foreign yoke, as often as they turned aside from Him, especially to
idolatry.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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