Page:Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne.djvu/70

56 Again, still more notably, at the triumph of David with Saul, "the women came out of all the cities of Israel singing and dancing, to meet King Saul with tabrets, with joy, and with instruments of music." And you have this joyful song and dance of the virgins of Israel not only incidentally alluded to in the most solemn passages of Hebrew religious poetry (as in Psalm lxviii. 24, 25, and Psalm cxlix. 2, 3), but approved, and the restoration of it promised as a sign of God's perfect blessing, most earnestly by the saddest of the Hebrew prophets, and in one of the most beautiful of all his sayings.

"The Lord hath appeared of old unto me saying, 'Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love. Therefore, with loving kindness have I drawn thee.—I will build thee, and thou shalt be built, O Virgin of Israel; thou shalt again be adorned with thy tabrets, and thou shalt go forth in dances with them that make merry,'" (Jer. xxxi. 3, 4; and compare v. 13). And finally, you have in two of quite the most important passages in the whole series of Scripture