Much is in play regarding the #middleeast #palestine and the #jewish people. This perspective, with five hundred engravings, will be presented in two #posts. The #text is too large to post in its entirety.

Published in 1844 - this should give some perspective - regarding what we think we know, with reference to history of the time and region. To this day #palestine is on the lips of the #worldwide #media

Book Five - The Remnant
BEFORE we enter upon the historical details of the period which now opens, it is proper to take a rapid survey of the principles developed in the history through which we have passed,\ and to indicate the consequences which are exhibited in the portion that lies before us.
In the second chapter of the first book, we have stated, in general terms, the leading design of the selection of the Hebrew race, and of their settlement in the land of Canaan as a distinct and peculiar people, and separated from all other nations by the peculiar institutions which were given to them. That they were appointed to be " stewards of the mysteries of God" is the substance of the considerations stated there and enforced in subsequent passages. The history itself shows under what forms and obligations the stewardship was imposed, and how unfaithfully its duties were discharged; and we are come to the punishments which that unfaithfulness incurred.
And did that unfaithfulness render the promises and designs of God of no effect? Nay, much otherwise; but rather tended to illustrate the more strongly his Almightiness, by the accomplishment of all his designs, in spite of, and even through, the reluctance, the improbity, and the treachery of the instruments he employed. They might have worked His high will with great happiness and honour to themselves, but since they did not choose this, they were compelled to work that will even by their misery and dishonour. It was not in the power of the instruments to frustrate the intentions of JEHOVAH; they only had power to determine whether that will should be accomplished with happiness or with misery to themselves, and, in consequence, somewhat to vary the mode in which those designs were exhibited and fulfilled.
The main cause of the personal and national failure of the Israelites, as instruments of a design which was accomplished notwithstanding their misdoings, is by no means of difficult detection. Politically considered, it may be resolved into what has been in all ages and countries the leading cause of calamity and miscarriage-a reliance upon men and upon individual character, which at best is but temporary and fluctuating, rather than upon institutions which are permanent and unchanging. In these, every needful amelioration is an abiding good; whereas the existence of a good king, or judge, or priest, is at the most but " a fortunate accident," contingent on that most feeble thing, the breath of man. Nothing had been wanting
to fortify their peculiar position by institutions admirably suited to their destined object, and made more impregnable by numerous sanctions and obligations than any other institutions ever were, or ever can, indeed, with any propriety, be made, by any authority short of that Infinite Wisdom by which the Hebrew institutions were established. Thus the nation was placed in the peculiarly advantageous position-which many enlightened nations have struggled for and sought after in vain that their happiness, their prosperity, their liberties, were not dependent on the will of any men or set of men, but rested on firm institutions which were as obligatory upon the chiefs of the land as upon the meanest of the people .
But this was a new thing on the earth, and the Hebrew nation seemed utterly incapable of appreciating its value ; and, indeed, what Oriental nation is there, at this advanced day, by which the value of so precious a gift would be duly appreciated ? They rested always on men; they always wanted leaders . And as they were led they followed : if their leaders were
good and just men, they did well ; if evil men, not well. They turned their back upon institutions, and threw themselves upon the accidents of human character :-and they fared accordingly.
This preference occurs everywhere in the history of this people, and is with peculiar prominence evinced in their determination to have " a king to rule them like the nations;" in the ease with which Jeroboam was enabled to establish a schismatical worship in ten of the\ tribes ; and in the facility with which, even in Judah, the people followed the examples offered
by their kings.
With reference to this point, the character so frequently given to Jeroboam when the sacred writers have occasion to mention his name , as "Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who sinned , and made Israel to sin," has always seemed to us frightfully emphatic and significant . Had the ancient Hebrews adhered to their institutions, it was impossible for them, as a political body, not to have fulfilled their special vocation in the world. But having, by the
neglect of those institutions (which, among other benefits, secured the absence of idolatry and its concomitant vices), done all that in them lay to frustrate the very objects for the promotion of which existence had been given to them, they made it necessary that God should accomplish his own objects, not, as desired, by their welfare and by the confusion of their enemies, but by their misery and destitution. It was left Him to demonstrate his Almightiness-his supreme power over all the " gods " which swarmed the world, not by overthrowing with his strong hand all the enemies who rose against them, and by maintaining them in the land he had given them, against the old conquerors by whom great empires were thrown down, but by making these very nations the instruments of his punishments upon the chosen people. And this was accomplished under such peculiar circumstances of manifest intention and instrumentality that the conquerors themselves were brought to acknowledge the supremacy of
Jehovah, and that they had been but the blind agents of his will. The strong and marked interference to prevent " the great kings " from engrossing to themselves the merit or glory of their victories, and from despising the God of the people who, for their sins, had been based at their footstool, even extorted from these proud monarchs the avowal that they had received
all their crowns and all their kingdoms from " the Most High God," whom the Hebrews worshipped. Now this and other results of the destitution of the Hebrews as strongly, and perhaps more strikingly, subserved the great object of keeping alive in the world the knowledge of a Supreme and Universal Governor and Creator, as by maintaining the Hebrews in
Palestine.
Indeed, that this great truth was diffused among, and impressed upon, the conquering nations by the captivity of the Hebrews,-that " the Lord's song was not sung utterly in vain in a strange land, by the captives who wept when they remembered Zion under the willows and beside the waters of Babylon,-in short, that they received some salt which kept them from utter putrefaction, some leaven which wrought vitally in them and prepared
them for the revelations which the " fulness of times " produced-is evinced by the history of Daniel, by the edicts of Nebuchadnezzar, of Darius, and, above all, of Cyrus, and may even be traced in the tradition which ascribes the doctrines and important reforms of Zoroaster to his intercourse with the Jewish captives and prophets at Babylon.

Thus, although they had forfeited the high destiny of preserving and propagating certain truths as an independent and sovereign people, the forfeiture extended only to their own position, for the truths intrusted to them were still preserved and diffused through the instrumentality of their bondage and punishment. This was true even in the times posterior to
their restoration to their own land. We have been anxious to make these remarks, lest the facts of the history should seem to intimate that the Divine intention in the establishment of the Hebrew commonwealth was frustrated
by the perversity of the people, which rendered the subversion of that commonwealth necessary. Having, as we trust, shown that there is no room for this conclusion, it may seem better to reserve such further remarks as may tend to develop the spirit of the ensuing history, for the natural connection with the record of the circumstances in which they are involved.