Another striking example occurs in the prophet Amos. “Behold, the days are coming, saith the Lord God, and I will send forth a famine into the land: not a famine of bread, nor a thirst of water, but of hearing the word of the Lord. And they shall wander from sea to sea and from the north to the east; they shall go about seeking the word of the Lord, and shall not find it. In that _day_ (יוֺם, _yom_) shall the fair virgins and the young men faint for thirst.”[143] Every one will see at a glance that the word Day in the latter part of this passage does not mean a day of twenty-four hours. It evidently refers to the whole period during which the calamities here foretold were to be inflicted on the Jewish people. What that period was may be a question of dispute. By some it is taken for the time of the Babylonian captivity; by others, for the present age of the world, in which the Jews are wanderers on the face of the earth, without a prophet and without a pastor, thirsting for the word of God, and seeking it in vain. But, in any case, it is clear from the opening words: “Behold, the days are coming,” that it was a period not of one day only, but of many. Then we have those well known words addressed by God the Father to His Eternal Son: “Thou art my Son, this _day_ (יוֺם, _yom_) have I begotten thee.”[144] The Son of God was begotten of the Father before all ages; and the _day_, therefore, on which he was begotten, cannot be a common day of twenty-four hours, but must rather be the long day of Eternity, without beginning and without end. This text, we know, is sometimes applied to the day of our Lord’s Resurrection; and sometimes, too, to the day of His Incarnation: nor do we want to deny that it may be thus rightly explained in a secondary and mystical sense. But in its literal sense we think it plainly refers to the Eternal Generation of the Son. This meaning is sufficiently implied by the word _begotten_, which cannot be understood with propriety, except of that Generation by virtue of which our Divine Lord was from Eternity the natural Son of God. Moreover, this is the sense in which the passage is adopted by Saint Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrews. Wishing to show that Our Lord has received by inheritance a name more excellent than any given to the Angels, he argues thus: “For to which of the Angels hath he said at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee?”[145] Now it seems to us that, unless we understand these words of the Eternal Generation, the point of the Apostle’s argument is completely lost. The Angels are sometimes called in Scripture the sons of God; but they were only the _adopted sons_, whereas Our Lord was the _natural Son_ in virtue of His Eternal Generation. Consequently it was no other than the Eternal Generation which made the name of Son more excellent when applied to Christ than the same name when applied to the angels.