SERMON XIII.

PSAL. lxxviii. ver. 56-59.

Yet they tempted and provoked the most high God, and kept not his teftimonies:

But turned back, and dealt unfaithfully like their fathers: they were turned afide like a deceitful bow.

For they provoked him to anger with their high places; and moved him to jealousy with their graven images.

When God heard this, he was wroth; and greatly abhorred Ifrael.

AT influence or effect the foregoing manifeftations of divine power actually had on the minds of the Canaanites, we are not exprefly 'told. From certain circumftances

WHAT influence

VOL. II.

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cumstances it should feem, that they had indeed but very little; if, perhaps, any at all. For it is particularly remarked, that "there was not one city that made peace with the children of Ifrael, fave the Hivites the inhabitants of Gibeon: all the reft they took in battle. For it was of the Lord," says the text, "to harden their hearts, that they fhould come against Ifrael in battle, that he might destroy them utterly h: that is, in other words as they were a vile and obstinately wicked race, that would not accept of the terms propofed, God therefore judicially permitted their obftinacy to operate and run its courfe; to imbolden and urge them forwards, notwithstanding the miraculous warnings they had received, "to fight his people" to their own deftruction.

But how fmall fo ever the effect might be, which these mighty wonders produced on the Canaanites; yet certain it is, that they wrought most powerfully on the children of Ifrael and, as appears from their conduct h Josh. xi. 19, 20.

on the fuppofed defection of fome of their brethren, changed that propenfity, which they had formerly fhewn towards idolatry, into an utter dread and deteftation of it.

"

Happy would it have been, had they always continued in this difpofition; which the law and its fanctions had a peculiar tendency to cultivate and maintain. But their zeal gradually abated; and expired at length (at about twenty years from the 'death of Joshua) in a fhameful, and almost universal apoftafy. The fource of their apostasy was derived from hence that they not only fpared the idolatrous nations, whom they were commanded to deftroy; but, converfing with, and mingling among them, served "their idols, and learned their works!"

The first palpable defection broke out, it feems, in the tribe of Ephraim, and the houfe of Micah"; who erected for his own

ufe a kind of oratory or tabernacle; placed in it two images and teraphim; and, having made an ephod and other habiliments, confecrated one of his fons (till he procured a Levite) to officiate as pricft in this heterogeneous fervice. I call it heterogeneous, because it evidently consisted of the worship of God and the worship of idols, united and blended together".

In a short time after, this fpecies of idolatry was fully adopted, as the whole furniture of the oratory was carried off, by the northern branch of the tribe of Dan. For "they took away the graven image, and the ephod, and the teraphim, and the molten image, which Micah had made, and fet them up in their own city; where the Levite and his fons were priests, until the day of the captivity of the Land" or, as it is commonly understood, and might originally have been written, "till the day of the сар

a Vide SELDEN, De Diis Syris. Syntag. I. cap. 2

Judg. xviii. 14-30.

tivity of the Ark" till the time that God, as the Pfalmift speaks, forfook," in his anger, "the tabernacle of Shiloh; and delivered his ftrength," his ark, "into capti vity; his glory into the enemy's hand ."

Nor were the other tribes less faulty in this refpect, than those we have already mentioned. For they also forfook the Lord God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods; the gods of the people that were round about them. They ferved Baalim and Afhtaroth;" that is, the heavenly hoft; and particularly the fun and moon; whom they publicly adored with all the formalities of heathenith rites.

This bafe, idolatrous worship naturally corrupted their moral principles; and led

An ancient Tranfcriber might eafily mistake N for

, and so produce the present Reading; which yet agrees neither with the following verse, viz. ver. 31-nor with the truth of history. See the Commentators.

警

9 Pf. lxxviii. 60, 61.

Judg. ii. 12, 13.

them

B 3