that when the
tares shall be bound in bundles for burning?

The tragedy of that fruit-gathering is described with extraordinary
grimness and force in the abrupt language of verse 3. The merry songs
sung in the palace (this rendering seems more appropriate here than
'temple') will be broken off, and the singers' voices will quaver into
shrill shrieks, so suddenly will the judgment be. Then comes a picture
as abrupt in its condensed terribleness as anything in Tacitus--'Many
the corpses; everywhere they fling them; hush!' We see the ghastly
masses of dead ('corpse' is in the singular, as if a collective noun),
so numerous that no burial-places could hold them; and no ceremonial
attended them, but they were rudely flung anywhere by anybody (no
nominative is given), with no accustomed voice of mourning, but in
gloomy silence. It is like Defoe's picture of the dead-cart in the
plague of London. Such is ever the end of departing from God--songs
palsied into silence or turned into wailing when the judgment bursts;
death stalking supreme, and silence brooding over all.

The crimes that ripened men for this terrible harvest are next set
forth, in part, in verses 4 to 6. These verses partly coincide verbally
with the previous indictment in Amos ii. 6, etc., which, however, is
more comprehensive. Here only one form of sin is dealt with. And what
was the sin that deserved the bad eminence of being thus selected as the
chief sign that Israel was ripe and rotten? Precisely the one which gets
most indulgence in the Christian Church; namely, eagerness to be rich,
and sharp, unkindly dealing. These men, who were only fit to be swept
out of the land, were most punctual in their religious duties. They
would not on any account do business either on a festival or on Sabbath,
but they were very impatient till--shall we say? Monday morning
came--that they might get to their beloved work again.

Their lineal descendants are no strangers on the exchanges, or in the
churches of London or New York. They were not only outwardly scrupulous
and inwardly weary of religious observances, but when they did get to
'business,' they gave short measure and took a long price, and knew how
to turn the scales always in their own favour. It was the expedient of
rude beginners in the sacred art of getting the best of a bargain, to
put a false bottom in the _ephah_, and to stick a piece of lead below
the shekel weight, which the purchaser had to make go up in t