At other times they were good friends, merry, and frolicksome, playing at bo-peep among the rocks (Exodus xxxiii., 22), the god showing his "back parts" only, for "no man could see his face and live"; yet on other occasions he talked "face to face" with his intimate friends. He forfeited all pretensions to the attributes of omniscience and omnipresence, when he confessed that he must "_go down now and see_" what the men of Sodom had been doing (Gen. xviii., 21). Nor could he, from his villa beyond the clouds, discover the Tower of Babel, but was under the necessity of coming "down to see" (Gen. xi.). That from his Egyptian greatness he was reduced, by Moses and his priests, to be merely a provincial deity, appears in various texts, as in Deuteronomy iv., 7, where it is said he was located near or living "nigh to them" (the Jews). A district god of this kind was fashionable all over Syria at that time, each petty state or tribe having one of its own; such as Astartê, _with the cross_, of the Phoenicians; Moloch, of the Ammonites; Astoroth and Dagon, of the Philistines; Tammuz, or Adonis, of the Sidonians; Chemosh,* of the Moabites, etc., etc.; and why should not the Jews be armed with a god as well as their neighbors? Well might Jahouh exclaim, "_save me from my friends_;" for his historians have represented him as a passionate, blustering, vengeful changeling, extremely "jealous" of all the other petty gods around him, and exciting nothing but fear and dislike in his followers; hence the Theocrat and his priesthood were continually struggling to keep the grist at their own mill, by preventing the people from "whoring after" the more amiable rites of Astartê and Adonis. In the seventeenth chapter of 1 Chronicles this deity gives intimation that, owing to a change of habits, he was not particularly desirous of living in a house;** that ever since he left Egypt, he had accustomed himself to go about "_from tent to tent, and from one tabernacle to another_" There is something exceedingly ludicrous in this; yet we trust that the "long-ear'd rout," the _true believers_, will have no difficulty in preserving their gravity. In short, of all the personified deities of antiquity, Moses has caricatured his the most egregiously. All these local or provincial gods were immeasurably inferior to the Jupiter of the Greeks, who, although he "liked the lasses," always sustained an awful dignity of character. * See Judges xi., 24. ** The deity set up by priests stands in no want of a house whilst among wandering tribes, who build none for themselves; but while he is amongst the stationary cultivators of the soil he requires one, in which his _immaterial presence_ is requested on stated days to hear his own praise sung: men are fond of praise, therefore it undoubtedly follows that the deity must be fond of it likewise.