Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/147

 hill and asked, Where are Shemûêl and Dâvîd?' Men said, 'Yonder in Nâyôth at the high place.' So he went thither to the high place at Nâyôth; and even on him came the spirit of God, and, as he walked on, he acted the Nâbî till he reached the high place at Nâyôth. Then he stripped off his garments himself, and himself acted the Nâbî, and fell down naked before Shemûêl all that day and all that night. Wherefore they say, 'Is Shâûl also among the Nâbis?" (1 Sam. xix. 22 sqq.). But such violent dancing was not altogether decorous for a king. David "whirls about" (mekarkér," whirling in a circle," a word with which the Homeric expression applied to the two "tumblers," should be compared) "with all his might before Yahveh," but in the eyes of Michal he has "uncovered himself as one of the vain fellows shamelessly uncovers himself;" and, though the incident is made to reflect honour on the king's devotion to Yahveh, we may be sure that the orgiastic dance-song was softened down into stately processions in the civilised and centralised worship of Yahveh. Perhaps the latest survival of the violent gesticulation with which the Nâbîs name and worship had been associated among the early "sons of Israel" is to be seen in the symbolical action of later Nâbîs, as when Ezekiel takes a tile and portrays upon it the beleaguered city of Jerusalem. But these men were rather lyrical preachers than leaders of communal song; and if the gesticulations of the Nâbîs ever contained the germs of a drama, the progress of social life among the Hebrews was clearly fatal to any such form of literary expression. The strength of clan life among the Hebrews (as that of family life among the early Romans) prevented the distinctness of personal character and the