212 



MISS A. M. HODGKIN ON 



prophesy of Obadiah against their land. " There shall not be 

 any remaining to the house of Esau : for the Lord hath spoken 

 it." At the present day it is impossible to identify any remnant 

 of the Edomites. Mr. Arthur Sutton, after his visit to Petra, 

 wrote as follows: — " It is a very solemn experience to stand, 

 as we stood, amidst such desolation, and witness all around us 

 the accurate fulfilment of the prophecies, foretelling God's 

 righteous judgment upon peoples who have long since passed 

 into eternity, "f 



The Witness of Moab. 



Among the numerous silent witnesses to the truth of the 

 Bible narrative, none is more remarkable than the famous 

 Moabite Stone. Almost every line of the inscription has some 

 link with the geography or history of the Bible, illustrating 

 many points which had been obscure. It records the wars of 

 Mesha, king of Moab, with Omri, king of Israel, and with the 

 Edomites. It is full of references to the national god Chemosh, 

 which the Bible repeatedly tells us was the god of Moab. The 

 name of Jehovah occurs on the monument. 



The stone answers an objection which has been made with 

 respect to the antiquity of certain portions of the Bible written 

 in acrostic form, beginning with the twenty-two letters of the 

 Hebrew alphabet in its old Phoenician characters. It was con- 

 tended that several of these letters had not been invented at the 

 date assigned to these Scriptures. But the Moabite Stone 

 presents the same twenty-two letters at a period even earlier 

 than those portions of Scripture. 



Bishop Walsh concludes his account of this stone in the fol- 

 lowing words : — 



" Mesha 's haughty chronicle on the stone of Dibon was 

 written to glorify himself, and to vaunt against the name and 

 the people of the Lord; but it survives to bear witness of 

 Jehovah's power, and it comes forth after the lapse of nearly 

 thirty centuries, as an unexpected and unintentional witness to 

 His truth."* 



The Witness of Assyria. 



The witness of an enemy is sometimes more telling than that 

 of a friend. Such an enemy the countries of Israel and Judah 

 found in the mighty Assyrian Empire, fierce, cruel and relent- 

 less. 



t " Friends' Witness," Vol. I., p. 21. 1908. 



* " Echoes of Bible History, " Dr. Walsh, Bishop of Ossory and Ferns, 

 p. 248. 



