_abomination_ unto the Lord thy God,
Deut. xxiii. 19), is everything which it offers and gives us in return.
Like a reward of whoredom, it will melt away; "of wages of whoredom she
has collected, and to wages of whoredom it shall return."--This
derivation from the Future has a great many analogies in its favour;
among others, the whole class of nouns with [Hebrew: t] prefixed, in
which it is quite evident (although this has been so often overlooked)
that they have arisen from the Fut. If the [Hebrew: t] in these forms
originated from the _Hiphil_, how could it be explained that they are
more frequently connected with _Kal_? Even the very common occurrence
of the formation from the Future in the case of proper names, induces
us to expect, _a priori_, that it will be more frequent in appellative
names than is commonly supposed. The occurrence of the phrase
[Hebrew: ntN atnh], in the passages quoted, is also in favour of this
derivation. By it, the interchange of the two forms [Hebrew: atnh] and
[Hebrew: atnN] is easily accounted for. In the latter of these forms,
the _Nun_ which prevails in [Hebrew: ntN], but which had been dropped
at the beginning, again reappears. A variation in the form is,
moreover, quite natural in a word which originated from common life,
which is entirely destitute of accurate analogies, and is therefore,
as it were, without a model; for the other nouns of this class
are formed from the 3d pers. of the _Fut._--As regards, now, the
substance:--Egotism, and selfishness arising out of it, are the ground
of all desire for the love of that which is not God, especially in the
case of those who have already known the true God; for where this is
not the case, there may be, even in idolatry, a better element, which
seeks for a false gratification only because it does not know the true
one. From this, however, it appears, that the idolatry of the
Israelites (and this is only a species of the idolatry of all those who
have had opportunity to know the true God, and of whom it is true that
"the last is worse than the first") was [Pg 251] much lower than that
of the Gentiles, whose poets and philosophers, in part, zealously
opposed the dispositions which are here expressed; compare the passages
in _Manger_. Egotism is here, as it always is, folly; for it trusts in
him who himself possesses only borrowed and stolen goods, which the
lawful owner may, at every moment, take away from him. And in order
that such foll