market places

• fetishes stood guard over early

69:4.3A fe­tish was used to stand guard over the de­posits of goods for silent barter. Such mar­ket places were se­cure against theft; noth­ing would be re­moved ex­cept by barter or pur­chase; with a fe­tish on guard the goods were al­ways safe. The early traders were scrupu­lously hon­est within their own tribes but re­garded it as all right to cheat dis­tant strangers. Even the early He­brews rec­og­nized a sep­a­rate code of ethics in their deal­ings with the gen­tiles.

• first cities of refuge

69:4.4For ages silent barter con­tin­ued be­fore men would meet, un­armed, on the sa­cred mar­ket place. These same mar­ket squares be­came the first places of sanc­tu­ary and in some coun­tries were later known as “cities of refuge.” Any fugi­tive reach­ing the mar­ket place was safe and se­cure against at­tack.

• children playing in

144:8.7On this af­ter­noon Je­sus con­tin­ued to teach, say­ing: “But to what shall I liken this gen­er­a­tion? Many of you will re­ceive nei­ther John’s mes­sage nor my teach­ing. You are like the chil­dren play­ing in the mar­ket place who call to their fel­lows and say: ‘We piped for you and you did not dance; we wailed and you did not mourn.’ And so with some of you. John came nei­ther eat­ing nor drink­ing, and they said he had a devil. The Son of Man comes eat­ing and drink­ing, and these same peo­ple say: ‘Be­hold, a glut­tonous man and a winebib­ber, a friend of pub­li­cans and sin­ners!’ Truly, wis­dom is jus­ti­fied by her chil­dren.

• Pharisees craved flattering salutations in

166:1.4When the Mas­ter had thus spo­ken, they cast their eyes upon the ta­ble and re­mained silent. And since no one spoke, Je­sus con­tin­ued: “Many of you Phar­isees are here with me as friends, some are even my dis­ci­ples, but the ma­jor­ity of the Phar­isees are per­sis­tent in their re­fusal to see the light and ac­knowl­edge the truth, even when the work of the gospel is brought be­fore them in great power. How care­fully you cleanse the out­side of the cups and the plat­ters while the spir­i­tual-food ves­sels are filthy and pol­luted! You make sure to pre­sent a pi­ous and holy ap­pear­ance to the peo­ple, but your in­ner souls are filled with self-righ­teous­ness, cov­etous­ness, ex­tor­tion, and all man­ner of spir­i­tual wicked­ness. Your lead­ers even dare to plot and plan the mur­der of the Son of Man. Do not you fool­ish men un­der­stand that the God of heaven looks at the in­ner mo­tives of the soul as well as on your outer pre­tenses and your pi­ous pro­fes­sions? Think not that the giv­ing of alms and the pay­ing of tithes will cleanse you from un­righ­teous­ness and en­able you to stand clean in the pres­ence of the Judge of all men. Woe upon you Phar­isees who have per­sisted in re­ject­ing the light of life! You are metic­u­lous in tithing and os­ten­ta­tious in alms­giv­ing, but you know­ingly spurn the vis­i­ta­tion of God and re­ject the rev­e­la­tion of his love. Though it is all right for you to give at­ten­tion to these mi­nor du­ties, you should not have left these weight­ier re­quire­ments un­done. Woe upon all who shun jus­tice, spurn mercy, and re­ject truth! Woe upon all those who de­spise the rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther while they seek the chief seats in the syn­a­gogue and crave flat­ter­ing salu­ta­tions in the mar­ket places!”