482 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880- 



Serpent. With this it agrees that in the temple at 

 Jerusalem a brazen serpent was worshipped up to the 

 time of Hezekiah by burning incense before it, just as was 

 done according to Ezekiel in the gentile worship of his day 

 (2 Kings xviii. 4). The temple was the court chapel of 

 David s dynasty and was not likely to contain the animal 

 deity of another stock. David himself was beyond such 

 worship ; but there were teraphim in his house (i Sam. 

 xix. 13), and many of his descendants were gross idolaters. 

 Finally, Adonijah chose the serpent-stone as the place of 

 his coronation (i Kings i. 9). Now it has always been 

 a puzzle that David was on such friendly terms with 

 N al?ash, king of the Ammonites, who was a great enemy of 

 Israel, and especially of Israel beyond the Jordan, with 

 which district David from an early period cultivated 

 friendly relations. And the curious thing is that the 

 friendship between the two houses was not broken even 

 by the great and bitter war that destroyed Ammonite 

 independence, for a son of the Ammonite serpent was 

 among the foremost to help David in his flight from 

 Absalom (2 Sam. xvii. 27). It would seem that the true 

 solution lies in the common serpent-stock, which was a 

 stronger bond than all motives of national hostility. As 

 the Ammonites were presumably less advanced in culture 

 than Israel, it is quite possible that by their law Hanun 

 was not of his father s stock at all. 



In closing this paper I shall advert in a single word to 

 the bearings of the subject on the great problem of the 

 Old Testament religion. It is a favourite speculation that 

 the Hebrews or the Semites in general have a natural 

 capacity for spiritual religion. They are either repre 

 sented as constitutionally monotheistic, or at least we are 

 told that their worship had in it from the first, and apart 

 from revelation, a lofty character from which spiritual 

 ideas were easily developed. That was not the opinion 

 of the prophets, who always deal with their nation as one 

 peculiarly inaccessible to spiritual truths and possessing 



