nds
and death and sorrow to many homes, they also kept all the people poor
and increased the deadliness of the other great historic curses of
humanity, such as famine. The money and labor spent on war might have
been used in terracing hillsides and fertilizing fields, so that in
times of drought the crops would not wholly fail and starvation and
death might thus have been pushed back a little further from the
cottages of the poor.

Wars also bring disease. In those days, epidemics of disease were
frightfully common at best. They knew nothing about sanitation. Even
in the most important cities, sewage and garbage were dumped in the
streets. Leprosy was an everyday sight. Rats and other vermin swarmed
everywhere except in the palaces of the rich; and when the soldiers
came home from war, bringing with them typhus fever or cholera or the
plague, the people died like flies.

=The dynasty of Omri.=--Among the best of the successors of David and
Solomon were Omri and his son Ahab, in the north. They made peace with
the southern Hebrews in Judah and renewed the old alliance with Tyre.
They built as their capital the beautiful city of Samaria. Ahab
especially was greatly admired as a brave warrior and as a king who on
the whole tried to serve his country well. Yet even Ahab was a despot.
His own glory and wealth were to him of chief importance, and his
people's needs and sufferings secondary.

BACK TO THE DESERT

Under these conditions it was natural that many people should look
back with longing to the olden times, especially to the time of Moses,
before the people had left the desert and settled in Canaan. All these
newfangled ways, they said, are evil. They have brought us only
trouble. Especially bad is the worship of these Baals instead of
Jehovah, the God of our fathers. No doubt Jehovah is jealous and angry
and has brought war and famine and pestilence upon us for just this
reason. Many, indeed, who did not altogether object to the civilized
customs of Canaan were uneasy in their minds because of the worship of
the Baals. When Ahab made his alliance with the king of Tyre he had
built, in Samaria, shrines to the Baal of Tyre. This was in accordance
with the religious ideas of those days. When two countries made an
alliance there was supposed to be an alliance between their gods. But
the Hebrews had made a special covenant to worship no other gods but
only Jehovah. So there were many who were opposed to the worship