IX.
It is now harvest and vintage-time — the period of annual vintage festivals, as at Shechem and Shiloh, to which the neighbouring villages gathered. The corn is being reaped, the wine-press is trodden, and the vats are overflowing. But behind this bright picture there looms to the prophet’s gaze a sombre background. This and the following two Chapter s, which form a connected whole, contains another outburst of prophetic denunciation of the follies of idolatrous Israel.