Selected quad for the lemma: land_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
land_n	egypt_n	famine_n	pharaoh_n	1,741	5	10.4102	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A63923	Two sermons the first preached upon January the 29, 1687/8, upon occasion of Her Majesties happy conception : the second, June the 17th, 1688, upon the birth of the prince / by John Turner ...	Turner, John, b. 1649 or 50.	1688 (1688)	Wing T3320; ESTC R10476	14,023	38

die both the Man that lay with the Woman and the Woman so shalt thou put away Evil from Israel And this was still a more criminal sort of Adultery because it was a Levites Wife a Person dedicated and set apart to the Service of God and to the Ministry of that Temple in which he had placed his Name and whether all the Tribes of Israel were to repair for Sacrifice and Worship It was much the more hainous Offence in both of the Delinquent Parties upon this account and therefore the Obligation to punish it was so much the stronger but this not being to be done without a formal Process in which the Criminals were to be first convict and then adjudged to undergo the legal Sentence in cases of that nature at a time when there was no Judge in Israel no Supreme nor by consequence any subordinate Magistrate to hear and determine Causes there could be no Process no Sentence no Execution And so it came to pass not long after either by a Return of Affection on the Husbands Part or by some advantagious Overtures of Reconciliation on that of the Wife and her Relations that the Business as foul as it was was made up and they associated together again but this continued but for a very little while when leaving Bethlehem Judah where the Father of the Woman dwelt and going homewards through Gibeah of Benjamin and lodging there in the House of an hospitable Ephraimite the Man was first demanded by the lewd and lawless Inhabitants of the Place to be used as the Sodomites would have served the Guests of Lot and at last the least thing that would appease their Belluine and Brutal Lust was the abusing his Wife to such a degree that she died upon the Place and being divided by her Husband into twelve Pieces which were sent severally to so many several Tribes to be an horrid Spectacle and Monument of what had happened and to incite them the more effectually to a just Revenge of so flagitious and villanous an Action upon the execrable Authors of it this occasioned that dreadful Civil War which followed betwixt the Tribe of Benjamin and the rest of the Tribes who being under no legal Tye of Obligation to one another and being now destitute of a common Head that might command and influence them all yet met together by common Consent at Mizpeh and from thence demanded satisfaction of the Benjamites for the horrid Wickedness committed by the Gibeathites their Brethren and for the Scandal that was brought by it upon the Name and Nation of Israel which nothing could wipe off but the Death of those Miscreants that were guilty of it but the Benjamites were so far from delivering up their Brethren to be punish'd as they deserv'd that they appeared in their Defence and were resolved as bad as they were to stand up in the Protection of their Lives with the Hazard of their own upon which immediately ensued that bloody War in which forty thousand of the Israelites and of the Benjamites the whole Tribe without sparing either Age or Sex bateing only six hundred were destroyed nay their very Cattle and their Cities were not exempted but a deadly Infection ran through all they possest and overwhelm'd every thing in the common Ruine So that in this one Story though we go no farther we have a promiscuous Lust a brutal Concupiscence and a destructive War Crimes not to be named without confusion and blushing and Judgments not to be mentioned without trembling and all for want of a Judge and a King in Israel whose Authority might prevent the Perpetration of such Villany or at leastwise punish the beginnings of it before it proceeded to such a bloody Consequence and tragical Conclusion But this is not all neither for if I am not very much mistaken there was a Famine likewise happened upon this occasion for in the Book of Ruth we read that in the Days when the Judges rul'd there was a Famine in the Land upon which Elimelech and his Wife Naomi and his two Sons Mahlon and Chilion went and sojourned in the Country of Moab where Elimelech and his two Sons died and Naomi after having dwelt there ten years arose with her Daughters in Law that she might return from the Country of Moab for she had heard in the Country of Moab how that the Lord had visited his People in giving them Bread. Now though it be said that this happened in the Days when the Judges rul'd all that is meant by it is no more than this that the inspired Writer who wrote this Book wrote it a considerable time afterwards in the time of the Kings and by the Days of the Judges or when the Judges rull'd all that Period or Interval of time is understood which passed between Joshua or rather between Moses the first Judge and Saul the first King of Israel and the Age of Ruth falls just upon the Close of this Account for her Son was Obed who was the Father of Jesse the Father of David so that the Times of Obed and Jesse must be coincident with those of Eli and Samuel the last Judges of Israel and the beginning of the Reign of Saul the first King and since we have no mention of any Judge of Israel after Sampson before Eli it must needs appear very likely that this Famine hapned after the Death of Sampson when there was no King or Judge in Israel when the want of Laws made Industry to cease and Husbandry to fall to Ruine and Decay and when the Animosities and Contentions that hapned in those days were a Discouragement to the Husband-man from setting his Hand to the Plow or scattering the Seeds upon the Earth in their Season when he had so little security that he should reap the Encrease And otherwise than this it will seem utterly impossible without a perpetual Miracle all that while that in Moab a neighbouring Country there should be so great Plenty for ten years together and yet so great Scarcity in the Land of Israel the Land of Canaan that flowed with Milk and Honey and was naturally so rich and plentiful a Spot of Ground for it is not without a miraculous Interposition of Divine Providence that Countries naturally fruitful and being of the same Soil and Climate and very nearly bordering upon each other should the one be afflicted with a ten years Famine while the other all that while was not only able to sustain it self but to supply the Necessities of its Neighbours and we are certainly informed that when the seaven years Famine was in Aegypt there was the same Scarcity in the Land of Canaan and other neighbouring Countries in that Part of the World only the Wisdom and prophetic Fore-sight of Joseph who was then the chief Minister in Pharaoh's Court had made a better Provision by Good-husbandry in the Time of Plenty for the Necessities of Aegypt than any of the neighbour Nations had made for themselves so that it

appears very reasonable to think that a Famine was one of those dismal Consequences that attended the Anarchy or want of Government among the Jews after the Death of Sampson and the Expression of Naomi is remarkable That the Lord had visited his People in giving them Bread he visited them by giving them Bread and he gave them Bread by visiting them that is by setting a Visitor or Inspector over them a Judge that might retrench the Exorbitances and redress the Abuses under which they groaned for as Phacad in Hebrew signifies to visit so does Phakid derived from it signifie a Visitor or Inspector a Governour a Judge a King or any one that is invested with a Legislative and Coercive Power and as Mercy and Justice do equally belong to the Notion and Character of such a Person so God himself who is the great Sovereign and Potentate of the World as well when he inflicts his Judgments as bestows his Mercy is said to visit Mankind I shall conclude these Observations upon the Text and Context with observing how careful the inspired Pen man of this Book of Judges is to let us know that all these Enormities and Calamities which he recounts were the Effects and Issues of there being no King in Israel though indeed he does not say so in so many Words but he does as plainly imply it as any thing can be For when he tells us the Story of Micah and his Ephod and Priest he tells us also at the same time In those days there was no King in Israel but every Man did that which was right in his own Eyes And the same Words are again repeated in the next Chapter where the Danites of their own Heads without any Order or Commission to that purpose make War upon the Men of Laish and of the easie Conquest they obtained the reason is express assigned because the Men of Laish dwelt careless after the manner of the Zidonians and because there was no Magistrate in the Land that might put them to shame in any thing so that they were a loose and a divided People and immediately before the Story of the Levite and his Concubine which drew such dismal Consequences after it it is again inculcated and repeated And it came to pass in those days when there was no King Israel that there was a certain Levite c. And Lastly In the Conclusion of the whole Book where the Children of Israel after the War with Benjamin disband and fall in pieces again going every Man to his own Tent and after his own Imagination he ends as he began with the same remarkable Words In those days there was no King in Israel every Man did that which was right in his own Eyes and then in probability that Famine followed which I have now newly described But it is in vain to pursue this Argument any farther the Miseries of Anarchy are so many and so great that there is no Tongue sufficient to express them nor any Conception large enough to comprehend them they are as variable as the Passions and Designs of Men or the Occasions upon which they happen and as Bloody as Cruelty Ambition Injustice and Revenge can make them and if the Reins of Discipline were let loose upon our Necks or the Bridle of Obedience perfectly taken off and every Man let alone to abound in his own Sense and pursue his own Imaginations as far as he thought fit it would soon come to pass that the World by the interfering Passions and incompossible Desires and Appetites of unreasonable Men would be turned into a Wilderness of Thorns and Briars a Den of Thieves a Forest of wild Beasts a Chaos of Confusion a miserable Spectacle of Destruction and of Death displaying and brandishing its frightful Terrors in a thousand several ghastly and lamentable Forms a Theatre fill'd with desperate Gladiators perpetually goring and stabbing one another a Slaughter-house for Innocence an inextricable Snare for Weakness a Temple but not a Sanctuary for Oppression a Region of Devils in the Shape of Men so that the old War betwixt the Giants and the Gods which the Poets have represented as much the most terrible and outragious thing that even Fancy and Fable would stretch themselves to conceive would of a suddain cease to be Romantic any longer and instead of being Fabulous as it now appears it would pass for a cold and an imperfect Truth not worthy the Name of a Poetical Contrivance nor fit to be compared with the real Animosities that would intoxicate and embroil Mankind It is but fit therefore in the midst of such horrid and dismal Apparitions as the Consideration of Anarchy presents us with before we enter upon the blessed and the glorious Scene of Establishment and Order to let down softly the Curtain of Confusion that our Thoughts may be composed and quiet as the serene beautiful and peaceful Subject about which they are to be employ'd and that we may relish the better the Happiness of Government and pray the more heartily for the Continuance of it and for the Birth of a Prince that may render Empire in an everlasting Succession Hereditary to himself and his Descendents and entail Peace Righteousness Charity and Plenty upon all the Subjects of this Imperial Crown as long as the Sun continues to be constant or the Moon to change FINIS