[178] The worship of Tammuz and of "creeping things and abominable beasts" etc. [179] Kuenen, 208. [180] Schrader (Whitehouse's translation), ii. 207. [181] Kuenen, 206. [182] Sayce, _Higher Criticism_, etc., 80. [183] So Giesebrecht on vii. 18. Kuenen argues for the identification of the Queen of Heaven with the planet Venus. [184] Kuenen, 211. BOOK II _PROPHECIES CONCERNING FOREIGN NATIONS_ CHAPTER XVI _JEHOVAH AND THE NATIONS_ xxv. 15-38. "Jehovah hath a controversy with the nations."--JER. xxv. 31. As the son of a king only learns very gradually that his father's authority and activity extend beyond the family and the household, so Israel in its childhood thought of Jehovah as exclusively concerned with itself. Such ideas as omnipotence and universal Providence did not exist; therefore they could not be denied; and the limitations of the national faith were not essentially inconsistent with later Revelation. But when we reach the period of recorded prophecy we find that, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the prophets had begun to recognise Jehovah's dominion over surrounding peoples. There was, as yet, no deliberate and formal doctrine of omnipotence, but, as Israel became involved in the fortunes first of one foreign power and then of another, the prophets asserted that the doings of these heathen states were overruled by the God of Israel. The idea of Jehovah's Lordship of the Nations enlarged with the extension of international relations, as our conception of the God of Nature has expanded with the successive discoveries of science. Hence, for the most part, the prophets devote special attention to the concerns of Gentile peoples. Hosea, Micah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi are partial exceptions. Some of the minor prophets have for their main subject the doom of a heathen empire. Jonah and Nahum deal with Nineveh, Habbakuk with Chaldea, and Edom is specially honoured by being almost the sole object of the denunciations of Obadiah. Daniel also deals with the fate of the kingdoms of the world, but in the Apocalyptic fashion of the Pseudepigrapha. Jewish criticism rightly declined to recognise this book as prophetic, and relegated it to the latest collection of canonical scriptures.