than such a drunkard as Zachariah to stand at the helm of state. So did the dynasty of the mighty Jehu expire like a torch blown out in stench and smoke. Its close is memorable most of all because it evoked the magnificent moral and spiritual teaching of Hebrew prophecy. The ideal prophet and the ordinary priest are as necessarily opposed to each other as the saint and the formalist. The glory of prophecy lies in its recognition that right is always right, and wrong always wrong, apart from all expediency and all casuistry, apart from "all prejudices, private interests, and partial affections." "What Jehovah demands," they taught, "is righteousness--neither more nor less; what He hates is injustice. Sin or offence to the Deity is a thing of purely moral character. Morality is that for the sake of which all other things exist; it is the most essential element of all sincere religion. It is no postulate, no idea, but a necessity and a fact; the most intensely living of human powers--Jehovah, the God of hosts. In wrath, in ruin, this holy reality makes its existence known; it annihilates all that is hollow and false."[341] FOOTNOTES: [313] Amos vii. 1. Famine (iv. 6); drought (iv. 7, 8); yellow blight and locusts (iv. 9); pestilence (iv. 10); earthquake and burning (iv. 11). [314] Amos vii. 4. [315] Amos i. 1, iii. 14, iv. 11, viii 8; Zech. xiv. 5: "Ye shall flee like as ye fled before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah." Josephus says that in an earthquake a little before the birth of Christ ten thousand were buried under the ruined houses (_Antt._, XV. v. 2), and he has many Rabbinic haggadoth to tell us about the earthquake, which, he says, happened at the moment when Uzziah burnt incense in the Temple (_Antt._, IX. x. 4). [316] According to Hind, they took place on June 15th, B.C. 763, and February 9th, B.C. 784. Amos alludes to the capture of Gath by Uzziah, of Calneh (_Ktesiphon_), and of Hamath (vi. 2; 2 Chron. xxvi. 6). Gath henceforth disappears from the Philistian Pentapolis (Amos i. 7, 8; Zeph. ii. 4; Zech. ix. 5). [317] Or "dresser of sycomore-trees" (R.V.). LXX., κνίζων συκάμινα; Vulg., _vellicans sycomoros_. The sycomore-fruit (fruit of the _Ficus sycomorus_, or wild fig) is ripened by puncturing it (Theoph., _H. Plant._, iv. 2; Pliny, _H. N._, xiii. 14).