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And Jehovah said unto Moses, "Wherefore criest thou unto me? Lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thy hand over the sea, and divide it."

And the angel of God, who went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud IIO removed from before them, and stood behind them: and it came between the camp of Egypt and the camp of Israel; and there was the cloud and the darkness, yet gave it light by night: and the one came not near the other all the night.

And Jehovah caused the sea to go back by a strong east 115 wind all the night, and made the sea dry land. And the Egyptians pursued, and went in after them into the midst of the sea. And it came to pass in the morning watch, that Jehovah looked forth upon the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of cloud, and discomfited the host of the 120 Egyptians. And he bound their chariot wheels, and they drove them heavily; so that the Egyptians said, “Let us flee from the face of Israel; for Jehovah fighteth for them against the Egyptians."

And the Egyptians fled against it; and Jehovah overthrew 125 the Egyptians in the midst of the sea. There remained not so much as one of them. Thus Jehovah saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea-shore. And Israel saw the great work which Jehovah did upon the Egyptians, and the people 130 feared Jehovah: and they believed in Jehovah, and in his servant Moses.

This story is incomplete without the fragment of song for generations associated with it.

Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto Jehovah, and spake, saying,

"I will sing unto Jehovah, for he hath

triumphed gloriously:

The horse and his rider hath he thrown

into the sea."

A Great Task. While we have no means of identifying the work of any particular prophet in this new realm of literature we see in the whole movement that the prophets were seizing every available means with which to promote their ideals: that with unerring judgment they chose the material which would make the strongest appeal to national pride and to fidelity to Jehovah, and that in the

use of this material they freely recast the stories to suit their own purposes, rejecting that for which they had no use, or using it but to condemn, and saturating the whole with their own conceptions of Jehovah and their highest ideals of national and religious life.

To us who see the printed page issued by millions from the daily press the magnitude of the task of creating literature, and of circulating it, two thousand years before the invention of the printing press, in an age when implements were of the crudest, and in a country where the scribal class had not yet developed, is difficult to comprehend. Only the imagination can enable us to appreciate it and to understand the labor of brain and hand involved, as well as the spiritual insight manifested in the activities of the loyal and energetic prophets in the period following Elijah and Elisha. To them we owe the beginning of the literature of the Hebrew people and a large section of the Old Testament.

CHAPTER VI

ISRAEL AND HER FOREIGN RELATIONSHIPS FROM 876-722 B.C. Before taking up the specific work of another prophet it will be necessary to make a survey of the foreign relationships of Israel during a period extending over a century and a half, a part of which we have already covered, and the remainder of which we must anticipate in order to gain a background for the following chapters. The work of the prophets is so wrapped up in the circumstances attending these relationships that one must be clearly understood in order that the other may be correctly interpreted. We must not lose sight of the fact that each prophet spoke primarily to the men of his own day and his own region.

Upon the death of Ahab at Ramoth Gilead, a period of disaster set in for northern Israel. Ahab's son Joram, after a troubled reign of twelve years, was conspired against and slain by Jehu, a captain in his army. Jehu at once assumed the throne, and sought to make himself secure by a wholesale slaughter of the house of Ahab. The nation was thus robbed of the very leaders who had helped to make it great, and its interests fell into the hands of usurpers who were both murderers and traitors.

Thus weakened at home and torn by conflicting parties, Israel's misery was accentuated by attacks from external foes. Damascus, her neighbor on the north, under the aggressive leadership of King Hazael, invaded Israel again and again, and found her an easy prey during the latter part of the reign of Jehu, and all the days of his son Jehoahaz. The state of weakness to which Israel was reduced is indicated by the following statements from the Second Book of Kings: "For he left not to Jehoahaz of the people save fifty horsemen, and ten chariots, and ten thousand footmen: for the king of Syria destroyed them and made them like the dust of the threshing.

For Jehovah saw the affliction of Israel that it was very bitter: for there was none shut up or left at large, neither was there any helper for Israel."