Divine judgment on persecutors.
"Thou hast laid thy body as the ground, and as the street, to them that went over." This is a figure for the last humiliation of an Eastern conquest. Joshua called his captains, and even his soldiers, to put their feet upon the necks of the conquered kings (Joshua 10:24). Matthew Arnold's note on this verse is as follows: "A trait of the humiliation of the conquered and the insolence of the conqueror in Eastern kingdoms. So it is related that when Sapor, King of Persia, got on horseback, the Roman Emperor Valerian had to kneel down, and make his back a step for him." Henderson, quoting from Ibn Batuta, says that "when the negroes who appeared before the black sultan at Mall, in Nigritia, fell down, they laid bare their backs, and covered their heads with dust, as tokens of the most profound submission." Further illustration may be found in the Eastern custom called the doseh, which is still prevalent, or only very recently extinct. Dervishes lay themselves down side by side on the ground, backs upward, legs extended, and their arms placed together beneath their foreheads. Over these the sheikh on horseback rides. The assurance made is that the enemies and persecutors of Israel, and notably Babylon, should be made to drink of the same bitter cup that they had made Israel drink so deeply. And Babylon had to taste the bitterness of captivity. Very striking facts are narrated concerning the Divine retributions which persecutors have suffered, and though some may be but imaginative creations under impressions of what ought to be, there are sufficient cases that are strictly historical to convince us that, in this sphere, "though hand join in hand, the wicked do not go unpunished;" and not infrequently what is known as "poetical justice ' is meted out to them even in this life. If the persecutor should escape the retribution, the judgment comes upon his fame. After-generations say worse things of persecutors than of any of the ancestors. They live in the execration of the ages. Yet the persecutor can never permanently harm the Church. Its conquest is,well assured, and that conquest involves the judgment, humiliation, and degradation of the persecutors, who shall have measured to them what they meted out to others; for "our God is known by the judgments which he executeth."—R.T.
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