190 The Legends of the Jews
death he fell pierced between his arms, the arrow going out at his heart, for he had stretched out his arms to re- ceive usury, and had hardened his heart against compas- sion.58 In his reign only one event deserves mention, his campaign against Moab, undertaken in alliance with the kings of Judah and Edom, and ending with a splendid vic- tory won by the allied kings. Joram and his people, it need hardly be said, failed to derive the proper lesson from the war. Their disobedience to God's commands went on as before. The king of Moab, on the other hand, in his way sought to come nearer to God. He assembled his astrologers and inquired of them, why it was that the Moabites, suc- cessful in their warlike enterprises against other nations, could not measure up to the standard of the Israelites. They explained that God was gracious to Israel, because his an- cestor Abraham had been ready to sacrifice Isaac at His bid- ding. Then the Moabite king reasoned, that if God sets so high a value upon mere good intention, how much greater would be the reward for its actual execution, and he, who ordinarily was a sun worshipper, proceeded to sacrifice his son, the successor to the throne, to the God of Israel. God said : " The heathen do not know Me, and their wrong-do- ing arises from ignorance ; but you, Israelites, know Me, and yet you act rebelliously toward Me." "
As a result of the seven years' famine, conditions in Sa- maria were frightful during the greater part of Joram's reign. In the first year everything stored in the houses was eaten up. In the second, the people supported themselves with what they could scrape together in the fields. The flesh of the clean animals sufficed for the third year ; in the
