_For out of evil unto evil they go forth_--they go from one wickedness to another, adding sin to sin. Apparently, a military metaphor. What they have and are is evil, and they go forth to secure fresh conquests of the same kind. Neither good nor evil is stationary; progress is the law of each--_and Me they know not, saith Iahvah_--they know not that I am truth itself, and therefore irreconcilably opposed to all this fraud and falsehood. _Beware ye, every one of his companion, and in no brother confide ye; for every brother will surely play the Jacob,--and every companion will go about slandering. And they deceive each his neighbour, and truth they speak not: they have trained their tongue to speak falsehood, to pervert_ (their way, iii. 21) _they toil_ (chap. xx. 9; cf. Gen. xix. 11). _Thine inhabiting is in the midst of deceit; through deceit they refuse to know Me, saith Iahvah_ (3-5).[35] As Micah had complained before him (Mic. vii. 5), and as bitter experience had taught our prophet (xi. 18 _sqq._, xii. 6), neither friend nor brother was to be trusted; and that this was not merely the melancholy characteristic of a degenerate age, is suggested by the reference to the unbrotherly intrigues of the far-off ancestor of the Jewish people, in the traditional portrait of whom the best and the worst features of the national character are reflected with wonderful truth and liveliness.[36] _Every brother will not fail to play the Jacob_ (Gen. xxv. 29 _sqq._, xxvii. 36; Hos. xii. 4), to outwit, defraud, supplant; cunning and trickery will subserve acquisitiveness. But though an inordinate love of acquisition may still seem to be specially characteristic of the Jewish race, as in ancient times it distinguished the Canaanite and Semitic nations in general, the tendency to cozen and overreach one's neighbour is so far from being confined to it, that some modern ethical speculators have not hesitated to assume this tendency to be an original and natural instinct of humanity. The fact, however, for which those who would account for human nature upon purely "natural" grounds are bound to supply some rational explanation, is not so much that aspect of it which has been well-known to resemble the instincts of the lower animals ever since observation began, but the aspect of revolt and protest against those lower impulses which we find reflected so powerfully in the documents of the higher religion, and which makes thousands of lives a perpetual warfare.