' Consider, again, his strange activity and strength, as when
he goes, forty days and forty nights, far away out of Judea, over
the waste wilderness, to Horeb the mount of God; or, as again, when
he girds up his loins, and runs before Ahab's chariot for many miles
to the entrance of Jezreel. One can fancy him from what the Bible
tells us of him, clearly enough; as a man mysterious and terrible,
not merely in the eyes of women and children, but of soldiers and of
kings.
He seems to have been especially a countryman; a mountaineer; born
and bred in Gilead, among the lofty mountains and vast forests, full
of wild beasts, lions and bears, wild bulls and deer, which stretch
for many miles along the further side of the river Jordan, with the
waste desert of rocks and sand beyond them. A wild man, bred up in
a wild country, he had learnt to fear no man, and no thing, but God
alone. We do not know what his youth was like; we do not know
whether he had wife, or children, or any human being who loved him.
Most likely not. He seems to have lived a lonely life, in sad and
bad times. He seems to have had but one thought, that his country
was going to ruin, from idolatry, tyranny, false and covetous ways;
and one determination; to say so; to speak the truth, whatever it
cost him.
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