Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/395

 TREA TMENT OF INFERIORS IN ISRAEL 3 8 1

Wherewith shall I come before Jehovah,

And bow myself before the most high God ?

Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings,

With calves of a year old ?

Will Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams.

Or with ten thousands of rivers of oil ?

Shall I give my first-born for my transgression,

The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ?

To these questions the prophet finds but one answer:

He hath showed thee, O man, what is good ; What doth Jehovah require of thee, But to do justly, and to love mercy, And to walk humbly with thy God ?

Mic. 6:6-8; cf. Isa. 1:11-20.

Words which are richly suggestive today must have had tre- mendous significance in those times. The ideal of conduct which they hold up was not one, it should be noticed, that sought to cast discredit upon sacrifice. The offering of the ordinary and lawful sacrifices they encouraged ; while at the same time they called for justice and insisted upon mercy in all the relations of life, among all classes ; but especially did they demand it of those comfortably circumstanced in the treatment of their inferiors.

When we pass from a consideration of what the prophets demanded to the actual life of the people, we have to confess that we find the ideal they held up was not realized; far from it. This is painfully evident to him who reads carefully the prophetic literature. Indeed, we have to confess that the ideal of most of the prophets under this head can be gathered only from their denunciations and warnings. It is the maltreatment and robbery of the poor that they are ever denouncing as they speak of them. The time was one of deceit and fraud in trade and of high-handed robbery, from all of which the poor suffered quite as much as any. This probably accounts very largely for the concern of the prophets. It was because the neediest people suffered most, because they who had least to lose must lose most, because they who could least afford to be defrauded were most likely to be defrauded, that the wrath of the prophets was aroused.