According to this book--the second law--Moses, after the giving of the law on Sinai, had once more, in the land of Moab, on the borders of Canaan, shortly before his death, proclaimed the law of Jehovah, and renewed the covenant of Jehovah with Israel. The introduction to the book is a speech of Moses, which, after the manner of the prophets, is directly addressed to the Israelites, and gathers together the kindnesses which Jehovah had shown to his people in Egypt, and after the exodus from that land. The lofty style of this description, compared with the composition of the older law, is evidence of the effect subsequently exercised by the prophetic mode of conception and expression. But not the form only, the contents also of the new law are determined in essential points by the idea of God developed in the circles of the prophets (p. 26). Jehovah, who has created earth and heaven,[420] whose is "the heaven and the heaven of all heavens," "the God of gods and Lord of lords,"[421] who alone is true being, while all besides is transitory appearance, who guides nature and men according to his word and will, "who does justice to the widow and the orphan, and regards the person of no man,"[422] remains in the new law, as in the old, a jealous God, "who dips his arrows in the blood of his enemies;" but in this law he is also, as the prophets taught, a merciful God who has no pleasure in the punishment of evil-doers, but in their amendment; who, it is true, "visits the sins of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation, but also has mercy on thousands who love him."[423] This God may not be worshipped under an image; for, as the book of the law expresses itself in an argument drawn from history: "Ye saw no manner of similitude on the day when the Lord spoke to you from Horeb, out of the midst of the fire."[424]