Produced by Al Haines
[Illustration: Cover art]
[Frontispiece: Moses and Zipporah at the well]
CHILD'S
Story of the Bible
BY
MARY A. LATHBURY
WITH INTRODUCTION BY
BISHOP JOHN H. VINCENT
ILLUSTRATED
WITH NUMEROUS FULL-PAGE COLORED PLATES,
AND PHOTO-ENGRAVINGS
BOSTON
DEWOLFE, & FISKE Co.
COPYRIGHT, 1898
By DEWOLFE, FISKE & CO.
PREFACE.
To Mothers.
I have been asked to prepare this little aid for your use in the
Home--that first and greatest of schools. The school was founded by
the Maker of men, and He called mothers to be its earliest and most
important teachers. He prepared a text-book for it which we call His
Word, illustrating it richly and fully from life and Nature, and
filling it with His Spirit. Wherever it is known, as the children
become the members of the Church, the citizens of the State, the people
of the World, the Book goes with them, forming the Church, the State,
the World. It is not only equal to the need, but contains infinite
riches that wait to be unveiled.
That no busy mother may say, "I cannot take time to gather from the
Bible the simple lessons that my children need," this book of little
stories--together making one--has been written. I have tried to
preserve the pure outlines of the sacred record from the vivid
description and the suggestive supposition that are sometimes
introduced to add charm to the story, and in all quoted speech I have
used the exact words of the authorized version of the Scriptures, so
that the earliest impression made upon the memory of the child might be
one that should remain.
The stories are not a substitute for the Word--only little approaches
to it through which young feet may be guided by her who holds a place
next to the great Teacher in His work with little children.
M.A.L.
INTRODUCTION.
When the children gather at mother's knee, and the tiniest finds a
place in mother's arms, and all clamor for a "story," "a story, mamma,"
how lovely is the picture--the living picture--that circle makes!
Love, longing, wisdom, expectancy, faith, shining eyes, lips that move
involuntarily, keeping time to the sweet movements of mother's lips!
Blessed group! Happy mother!
When the stories mother tells are light and meaningless, full of rhyme
and rollick, even their eyes are bright and faces radiant, and her own
sweet face and voice give charm and weight and significance to the
delicious nonsense she rehearses.
Why not give to this receptive and eager audience stories full of
deepest meaning, facts, parables, myths charged with truth? Why not
people little memories with heroes, saints, kings, prophets, apostles?
Why not give stories to story-loving youngsters that will turn into
immortal pictures and be transformed some day into living factors in
the making of character? And why not give them as comparison the babe
of Bethlehem, the boy of Nazareth, the lad of twelve years in the
schools of the Temple, the man of gentle love, the preacher of
righteousness, the worker of heavenly wonders, the Son of Man, the Son
of God, the Prince of Peace?
The Book of books is the children's Book. It is a story book. And the
stories are "true stories." And the lessons to be drawn from them are
numberless, and will come up out of the treasure-house of memory when
mother's eyes are closed and her voice silent.
It is a great thing to put mother and the Book together in Baby's
thought; in the big boy's memory; in the grown-up man's heart and life.
This book is mother's book; to aid her in doing the best and most
lasting work a mother can do to sow seed and set out vines the branches
of which shall reach into the world of spirits, and from which she and
her children may long afterwards pluck fruit together in the eternal
kingdom.
JOHN H. VINCENT.
CHAUTAUQUA, 1898.
CONTENTS.
THE OLD TESTAMENT
CHAPTER.
I. The Beginning of Things
II. The Great Flood
III. Abraham--the Father of the Faithful
IV. Isaac, the Shepherd Prince
V. Jacob, a Prince of God
VI. Joseph, the Castaway
VII. Joseph, a Servant, a Prisoner and a Saint
VIII. Joseph, the Savior of His People
IX. The Cradle that was Rocked by a River
X. Moses in Midian
XI. The Rod that Troubled Egypt
XII. Following the Cloud
XIII. In the Borders of Canaan
XIV. A Nation that was Born in a Day
XV. Samson, the Strong
XVI. Ruth
XVII. Samuel--the Child of the Temple
XVIII. The Making of a King
XIX. The Shepherd Boy of Bethlehem
XX. The Power of a Pebble
XXI. Faithful unto Death
XXII. David, the Outcast
XXIII. Every Inch a King
XXIV. David's Sin
XXV. David's Sorrow
XXVI. The Building of the Golden House
XXVII. Elijah, the Great Heart of Israel
XXVIII. The Little Chamber on the Wall
XXIX. A Little Maid of Israel
XXX. The Two Boy Kings
XXXI. The Four Captive Children
XXXII. The Master of the Magicians
XXXIII. The Story of Jonah
XXXIV. Esther, the Queen
THE NEW TESTAMENT.
CHAPTER.
I. The Angels of the Advent
II. Following the Star
III. The Flight into Egypt
IV. The Boy of Nazareth
V. The Young Carpenter
VI. The Voice in the Wilderness
VII. Jesus in the Desert
VIII. The First Disciples
IX. The First Miracle
X. In His Father's House
XI. A Talk about the Breath of God
XII. A Talk about the Water of Life
XIII. Jesus in the Synagogue
XIV. Among the Fishermen
XV. The Healing Hand of Jesus
XVI. Following Jesus
XVII. Friends of Jesus
XVIII. The Lord of Life
XIX. Mary of Magdala
XX. Stories Told by the Lake
XXI. Stilling the Storm
XXII. Called Back
XXIII. Two by Two
XXIV. Walking the Waves--The Two Kingdoms
XXV. A Journey with Jesus
XXVI. The Christian Sabbath--Peter's Confession of Faith
XXVII. "And We Beheld His Glory"--A Father's Faith
XXVIII. The Lord and the Little Ones--Leaving Galilee
XXIX. At the House of Martha--The Good Shepherd
XXX. The Lesson Stories of Jesus
XXXI. The Voice that Waked the Dead--The Children of the Kingdom
XXXII. The Young Man that Jesus Loved
XXXIII. The Last Journey to Jerusalem
XXXIV. The Prince of Peace
XXXV. The Children in the Temple
XXXVI. The Last Day in the Temple
XXXVII. The Last Words in the Temple
XXXVIII. An Evening on the Mount of Olives
XXXIX. The Holy Supper
XL. The Night of the Betrayal
XLI. Despised and Rejected of Men
XLII. The King of Heaven at the Bar of Pilate
XLIII. Love and Death
XLIV. Love and Life
XLV. The Evening of Easter
XLVI. The Lord's Last Days with His Disciples
XLVII. "He Ascended into Heaven"
XLVIII. The Promise of the Father
AN AFTERWORD
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE OLD TESTAMENT
Moses and Zipporah at the well (color plate) . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
Driven from Eden
The great flood
Dove returns to ark with an olive leaf (color plate)
The three strangers
Hagar in the desert
On Mount Moriah
Isaac blessing Jacob
Meeting of Jacob and Esau
Jacob and Rachael
Jacob sold to the Ishmaelites (color plate)
Joseph makes himself known to his brothers
Pharaoh's daughter finding Moses (color plate)
The rod that troubled Egypt
Destruction of Pharoah's army
Moses descending from the Mount
The return of the spies
Crossing the Jordan
The young Samson
The death of Samson
Ruth and Naomi
Samuel speaking to the Lord (color plate)
The young shepherd boy (color plate)
David cutting off Goliath's head (color plate)
The spear struck the wall (color plate)
The garment of Saul
The death of Absalom
David mourning for Absalom
The Queen of Sheba before Solomon
Ravens bringing food to Elijah (color plate)
Elijah and the Angel
Elijah and the chariot of fire
Elijah raises the widow's son
In the fiery furnace
The handwriting on the wall
Daniel in the den of lions (color plate)
Jonah thrown on the dry land
Haman denounced by the Queen
THE NEW TESTAMENT
The Holy Child in the manger (color plate)
Following the star
The flight into Egypt
The Boy Jesus in the temple (color plate)
John the Baptist at the Jordan
The marriage at Cana
Jesus by the well (color plate)
Jesus in the synagogue
Jesus among the fishermen (color plate)
Jesus healing the sick
Sermon on the Mount
Jesus teaching by the sea
Jesus sleeping during the storm (color plate)
Jesus curing the little maid (color plate)
Feeding the five thousand
Jesus in the wheat fields
The little ones (color plate)
The good Samaritan
Jesus in the house at Bethany
The return of the prodigal
The Pharisee and the publican
Jesus entering Jerusalem (color plate)
Showing the penny
The two mites
The Passover supper (color plate)
Gethsemane
Jesus betrayed by Judas
The sin of Peter
Jesus crowned with thorns
Jesus before Pilate (color plate)
Jesus bearing the cross
The descent from the cross
The angel of the resurrection
The walk to Emmaus
The ascension
CHILD'S STORY OF THE BIBLE
CHAPTER I.
THE BEGINNING OF THINGS.
Away back in the beginning of things God made the sky and the earth we
live upon. At first it was all dark, and the earth had no form, but
God was building a home for us, and his work went on through six long
days, until it was finished as we see it now.
On the first day God said, "Let there be light," and the black night
turned to gray, and light came. God called the light Day, and the
darkness Night, and the evening and the morning made the first day.
Then God divided the waters, so that there were clouds above and seas
below, and He called the clouds heaven. It was the second day.
Then the seas were gathered together by themselves, and the dry land
rose above them, and God saw that it was good. Then He called to the
grass, and the plants, and the trees to come out of the ground, and
they came bearing their seeds, and He called the third day good.
Then God called to the two great lights, the sun and the moon, to shine
clear in the sky, which had been first dark, and then gray, and they
rose and set to make day and night, and seasons and years, and the
stars came also, and it was the fourth day.
Then God called for all kinds of fishes that swim in the seas, and
rivers, and for all kinds of birds that fly in the air, and they came,
and it was the fifth day.
And then God called for the animals to live on the green earth, and the
cattle and the great beasts, and the creeping things came, and God
called them all good.
After this he made the first of the great family of Man. He made them
after His own likeness. He made their bodies from the earth, but their
souls He breathed into them, so that Man is a spirit, living in an
earthly body, and can understand about God and love Him. He blessed
them and told them to become many, and to rule over all the earth, with
its beasts and birds, and fishes, and it was the sixth day.
The Man's name was Adam, and the woman, who was made from a piece of
Adam's body nearest to his heart, was named Eve.
Then God's world was finished, and on the seventh day there was rest.
God was pleased with all that was made, and He made the seventh day
holy, by setting it apart from all the others. We keep the Sabbath, or
the Lord's day still, in which his children may rest and worship.
Adam and Eve were very happy, for they had never done anything wrong.
God gave them a beautiful wide garden, called Eden, full of flowers and
all kinds of fruit, and with a river flowing through it, and told Adam
to take care of the garden, and He sent all the animals and birds to
Adam to be named. God told him also that he might eat the fruit of all
the trees of the garden except one--the tree of knowledge of good and
evil--but if he ate of the fruit of that tree he should surely die, and
Adam and Eve loved God, and had no wish to disobey Him, for He was
their Father.
But there was a creeping serpent in the garden, and the evil spirit
that puts wrong thoughts in our hearts spoke to Eve through the serpent.
"You shall not die," he said, "but you shall be wise like God if you
will eat of this fruit," and Eve ate of the fruit, and gave it to her
husband. Then they knew that they had sinned, and when they heard the
voice of God in the garden calling them, they hid among the trees, for
they were unhappy and afraid. When the Lord had asked Adam if he had
eaten of the fruit that was forbidden, Adam laid the sin upon Eve, who
gave it to him, and Eve said that the serpent had tempted her to eat of
the fruit. God knew that they must suffer for their sin, so He sent
them out of the garden to make a garden for themselves, and to work,
and suffer pain, as all who came after them have done to this day; but
He gave them a great promise, that among their children's children One
should be born who would be stronger than sin, and a Savior from it.
After this two little children were sent to comfort Adam and Eve--first
Cain, and then Abel. When they grew up Cain was a farmer, but Abel was
a shepherd.
They had been taught to worship God by bringing the best of all they
had to Him, and so Cain brought fruit and grain to lay upon his altar,
but Abel brought a lamb.
[Illustration: Driven from Eden]
God looked into their hearts and saw that Abel wished to do right, but
Cain's heart was full of sin. Cain was angry because the Lord was
pleased with the worship of Abel, and while they talked in the field
Cain killed his brother. When the Lord said to Cain, "Where is thy
brother?" he answered, "I know not. Am I my brother's keeper?" And
the Lord sent him away from home, to wander from place to place over
the earth, and find no rest, but He promised that no one should hurt
Cain, or kill him as he had killed his brother, so he went away into
another land to live.
Adam lived many years after this and had other children, but at last he
died, when his children's children were beginning to spread over the
land.
CHAPTER II.
THE GREAT FLOOD.
As the people of the earth grew to be many more and spread over the
plains and hills, they also grew very wicked. They forgot God, and all
the thoughts of their hearts were evil. Only Noah still worshipped God
and tried to do right.
The people had destroyed themselves, and so God said to Noah:
"The end of all flesh is come; make thee an ark of gopher wood."
He told Noah to make it of three stories, with a window in the top, and
a door in the side. It was to be a great floating house, more than
four hundred feet long and full of rooms, and it was to be covered with
tar within and without, so that the water should not creep in.
"I bring a flood of waters upon the earth," said the Lord, "and
everything that is in the earth shall die."
This was to be the house of Noah, with his wife, and his three sons and
their wives, during the great flood.
Does the house seem large for eight people? God had told Noah to make
room for a little family of every kind of bird and beast that lived,
and to gather food of all kinds for himself and for them.
[Illustration: The great flood]
So Noah did all that the Lord had told him to do, and seven days before
the great storm he heard the Lord calling:
"Come thou and all thy house into the ark," and that very day, Noah
with his wife and his sons, Shem, Ham, and Japtheth, and their wives,
went into their great black house, and through the window in the top
came flying the little families of birds and insects, from the tiny
bees and humming birds, to the great eagles, and through the door on
the side came the families of animals, two by two, from the little mice
to the tall giraffes, and the elephants, and when all had come the Lord
shut them in.
It rained forty days and forty nights, and the waters rose higher and
higher, covering the hills, and creeping up the mountains, so that
every living thing died except Noah, and all that were with him in the
ark.
But after ten months the tops of the mountains were seen, and Noah sent
out a raven and a dove. The raven flew to and fro, but the dove came
back into the ark, because she found no place to rest her foot.
After seven days Noah sent her out again, and she returned with an
olive leaf in her bill, and then Noah knew that the waters were going
away.
[Illustration: Dove returns with an olive leaf.]
After seven days again he sent out his good little dove, and she did
not come back. So Noah was sure that the earth was getting dry, and
that God would soon tell him to go out of the ark.
And so he did. Think how glad the sheep and cows were to find fresh
grass, and the birds to fly to the green trees.
What a silent world it must have been, for there were none but Noah and
his family in all the earth. Noah did not forget how God had saved
them, and he made an altar of stone, and offered beasts and birds as a
sacrifice. When he looked up to the sky there was a beautiful rainbow.
It was God's promise that there should be no more floods upon the
earth. He still sends the rainbow to show us that He is taking care of
this world, and will always do so.
Perhaps the people who lived after this--for Noah's children's children
increased very fast--did not believe God's promise, for they began to
build a great tower, or temple, on the plain of Shinar; or perhaps they
had grown proud and wicked, and wanted a temple for the worship of
idols; but the Lord changed their speech, so that they could not
understand each other, and they were scattered over other countries;
and so each country began to have a language of its own.
CHAPTER III.
ABRAHAM--THE FATHER OF THE FAITHFUL.
The people who lived four thousand years ago were very much like
children who easily forget. They told their children about the great
flood, but nearly all forgot to tell them of the good God who is the
Father of us all, whom we should always love and obey. Yet there is
always one, if not more, who remembers God, and keeps his name alive in
the world.
Abram had tried to do right, though there was no Bible in the world
then, and no one better than himself to help him but God, and one day
He called Abram, and told him to go away from his father's house into
another country.
"A land that I will show thee," said the Lord, "and I will make of thee
a great nation."
He also made Abram a wonderful promise,--
"In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed."
He meant that sometime the Savior should be born among Abram's
children's children, and that He should be the Savior of all the
nations of the earth.
Abram did just what God told him to do. He took Sarai, his wife, and
Lot, his nephew, and some servants, and cows, and sheep, and camels,
and asses, and went into the land of Canaan. When they rested at night
Abram and Lot set some sticks in the ground, and covered them with
skins for a tent, and near by they made an altar, where Abram offered a
sacrifice, for that was the only way they could worship God when the
earth was young.
Abram went down into Egypt when there was a lack of food in Canaan, but
he came back to Bethel, where he made the altar before, and worshipped
God there.
He was very rich, for his cattle and sheep had grown into great herds
and flocks, though he had sold many in Egypt for silver, and gold, and
food. Abram and Lot moved often, for their flocks and herds soon ate
up the grass. Then they rolled up the tents, and loaded the camels and
asses, and went where the grass was thick and fresh.
They could easily live in tents, for the country was warm. But Abram's
herdsmen and Lot's herdsmen sometimes quarreled. And so Abram spoke
kindly to Lot, and told him to take his servants, and flocks, and
herds, and go where the pastures were good, and he would go the other
way. So they parted, and Lot went to the low plains of the Jordan, but
Abram went to the high plains of Mamre, in Hebron, and there he built
another altar to the Lord, who had given him all that country--to him
and to his children forever.
There were warlike people in Canaan, and once when they had carried off
Lot from Sodom, Abram took his servants and herdsmen and went out to
fight. He had more than three hundred men, and they took Lot away from
the enemy, and brought him back to Sodom. It was here that Abram met a
wonderful man, who was both a king and a priest. His name was
Melchisedek, and he brought Abram bread and wine, and blessed him there.
After this, God spoke to Abram one evening, and promised that he should
have a son, and then while Abram stood outside his tent, with the great
sky thick with stars above him, God promised him that his children's
children should grow to be as countless as the stars. That was hard to
believe, but Abram believed God always and everywhere.
Still no child came to Abram and Sarai, and Abram was almost a hundred
years old, but God spoke to him again, and told him that he should be
the father of many nations.
He told Abram that a little boy would be born to them, and his name
would be Isaac, and God changed Abram's name to Abraham, which means
"Father of many people," and Sarai's to Sarah, which means "Princess."
Abraham was sitting in his tent one hot day, when three men stood by
him. They were strangers, and Abraham asked them to rest beneath the
tree, and bathe their feet, while he brought them food. So Sarah made
cakes, and a tender calf was cooked, and these with butter, and milk,
were set before the men. But they were not men of this world; they
were angels, and they had come to tell Abraham and Sarah once more that
their little child was sure to come. Then the angels went away, but
one of them, who must have been the Lord Himself in an angel's form,
stopped to tell Abraham that He was going to destroy Sodom and
Gomorrah, because the people who lived there were so very wicked, and
Abraham prayed Him to spare them if even ten good men could be found in
them, for he remembered that Lot lived in Sodom. But the Lord never
forgets. The two angels went to Sodom and stayed with Lot until
morning, when they took him and all his family outside the city, and
then the Lord said to him, "Escape for thy life--look not behind thee,
neither stay thou in all the plain."
[Illustration: The three strangers]
And the Lord hid them in the little town of Zoar, while a great rain of
fire fell upon the wicked cities of the plain, until they became a heap
of ashes. Only Lot's wife looked back to see the burning cities, and
she became a pillar of salt.
The next morning when Abraham looked from Hebron down toward the cities
of the plain, a great smoke was rising from them like the smoke of a
furnace.
At last the Lord's promise to Abraham and Sarah came true. A little
son was born to them, and they called him Isaac. They were very happy,
for though Abraham was a hundred years old, no child had ever been sent
them.
When he was about a year old they made a great feast for him, and all
brought gifts and good wishes, yet the little lad Ishmael, the son of
Hagar, Sarah's servant, mocked at Isaac. Sarah was angry, and told her
husband that Hagar and her boy must be sent away. So he sent them out
with only a bottle of water and a loaf of bread; for God had told
Abraham to do as Sarah wished him to do, and He would take care of
little Ishmael, and make him the father of another nation.
When the water was gone, and the sun grew very hot, poor Hagar laid her
child under a bush to die, for she was very lonely and sorrowful.
While she hid her eyes and wept, saying,
"Let me not see the death of the child," she heard a voice out of
heaven telling her not to be afraid.
[Illustration: Hagar in the desert]
"Arise, lift up the lad," said the voice, "for I will make him a great
nation."
And God opened her eyes to see a well of water near. Then she filled
the empty bottle, and gave the boy a drink, and God took good care of
them ever after, though they lived in a wilderness.
Ishmael grew up to be an archer, and became the father of the Arabs,
who still live in tents as Ishmael did.
But the Lord let a strange trial come to the little lad Isaac, also.
His father loved and obeyed God, but there were heathen people around
them, who worshipped idols, and sometimes killed their own children as
a sacrifice to these idols. Abraham brought the best of his lambs and
cattle to offer to the Lord; but one day the Lord told Abraham to take
his only son Isaac and offer him upon a mountain called Moriah as a
burnt sacrifice to God. Abraham had always obeyed God, and believed
his word, and now, though he could not understand, he rose up early in
the morning and took his young son, with two servants, and an ass
loaded with wood, to the place of which God had told him.
They were three days on the journey, but at last they came to the high
place, where the city of Jerusalem was afterward built, and to the very
rock upon which the temple was built long afterward, with its great
altar and Holy of Holies.
[Illustration: On Mount Moriah]
Abraham had left the young men at the foot of the mount, and went with
Isaac to the great rock on the top of the mount.
"My father," said Isaac, "where is the lamb for a burnt offering?"
"My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering," said
his father, still obeying God, and believing His word, that Isaac
should be the father of many nations.
Abraham made an altar of stones, and bound Isaac and laid him upon it,
but when his hand was lifted to offer up the boy, the Lord called to
him from heaven. "Lay not thine hand upon the lad," said the voice,
"for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld
thine only son from me."
Then Abraham turned and saw a ram with its twisted horns caught in the
bushes, and he offered it to the Lord instead of his son. How glad and
grateful Abraham must have been that morning, when he came down the
mountain, with Isaac walking beside him, to think that he had still
obeyed God when it was hard to do so.
Abraham was an old man when Sarah died. They had lived together a long
lifetime, and he mourned for her many days. He bought a field close by
the oak-shaded plain of Mamre in Hebron, and there in a rocky cave he
buried her. He was called a Prince of God by the Canaanites because he
lived a true, faithful life.
A few years after he also went to God, and his body was laid beside
Sarah's in the cave-tomb. Ishmael came up from the south country to
mourn with Isaac at the burial of their father, the Friend of God, and
Father of the faithful.
CHAPTER IV.
ISAAC THE SHEPHERD PRINCE.
Before Abraham died, he thought much about his dear son Isaac, to whom
he was going to leave all that he had. The young man had no mother, no
sister, and soon he would have no father. So the old man called his
old and faithful servant, and told him to go on a journey into the land
of his fathers, and bring back with him a wife for his son Isaac.
The children of Nahor, Abraham's brother, lived there still, and
Abraham wished for his son Isaac a wife of his own people, who should
be both good and beautiful, and not like the heathen women of Canaan.
So the old servant listened to Abraham and promised to do all that he
commanded.
He loaded ten camels with presents for his master's family away in
Syria, and Abraham said:
"The Lord shall send His angel before thee," and from his tent door he
saw the little caravan of camels and servants, as they set out across
the plain, toward the land beyond the river Jordan.
There was a desert to cross and many dangers to meet, but the old
servant believed in the God his master worshipped, and was not afraid.
When he came to Haran, he stopped outside the town by a well of water.
It was early evening, and the women were coming each with a water-jar
on her shoulder, to draw water.
The old man prayed that the Lord would show him which among these
daughters of the men of the city, was the one who was to be his young
master's wife.
Before his prayer was ended, Rebekah, of the family of Abraham's
brother Nahor, came bearing her pitcher on her shoulder. She looked
very kind and beautiful, and when she had filled her pitcher, the old
man asked her for a drink of water. Then she let down the pitcher upon
her hand saying:
"Drink, my lord," and asked if she should also give water to his
camels. While she was giving him a drink, the man showed her some
golden jewels that he had brought, and when he had asked her name, and
knew that God had sent her to him for his young master, he gave them to
her, and worshipped the Lord who had led him to the house of his
master's brother.
Then Rebekah ran in and told Laban, her brother, and the old servant of
Abraham had a warm welcome at the door of Nahor's house.
"Come in, thou blessed of the Lord," they said.
And after they had cared for the camels and the men, there was a
hurrying of servants to prepare a feast, but the old man would not
taste food until he had given the message of his master. Then the
father and brother of Rebekah, saw that the Lord had sent for her, and
they said:
"Let her be thy master's son's wife, as the Lord hath spoken."
And the old servant bowed his face to the ground worshipping the Lord
who had led him.
Then there was feasting and giving of costly gifts, and preparing to
take a long journey, for the old servant was in haste to get back to
his master, and Rebekah, who was willing to go, took her maid-servants
and rode away into a far country to be the wife of Isaac.
When Isaac was walking in his field at sunset, thinking and praying to
God, he looked up and saw that the camels were coming, and he hastened
to meet them. When the old servant told Rebekah that it was his young
master, she alighted from her camel, and covered herself with a long
veil as was the custom of the Syrian women. When the old servant had
told the story of his journey, he gave Rebekah to Isaac, and he took
her to the tent that had been his mother's, and she became his wife, so
that he was no longer lonely and sad.
Isaac lived to a very great age, and had two sons, Jacob and Esau. He
was a gentle, quiet man, fond of his family, his flocks, and herds, and
at the place where his father and mother were buried, he lived among
the fields and oak groves of Hebron until he died.
CHAPTER V.
JACOB, A PRINCE OF GOD.
Jacob and Esau were the twin sons of Isaac and Rebekah.
They did not look alike as twins often do, and they were very unlike in
all their ways. As they grew up, Esau loved the forests and wild
places. He made bows and arrows, and was a hunter, and brought home
wild birds and deer, for his father was very fond of such food. Jacob
helped his father with the flocks, and learned how to cook food from
his mother, who loved him more than she loved Esau.
One day Esau came home from hunting tired and hungry, and smelled the
delicious soup of red lentils that Jacob was making. He begged Jacob
to give him some, and Jacob, who wanted to be eldest, and have the
right to the blessing that fathers gave to the first-born in those
days, said:
"Sell me this day thy birthright," and Esau gave him all his rights as
the first born, for a little food which he might have had as a free
gift.
Jacob wanted to be counted in the great promise that God had given to
Abraham, but Esau despised it.
Afterward, when Isaac was old and his eyes were dim, he called Esau,
and asked him to go out into the fields and shoot a deer, and cook the
venison that he loved, so that he might eat it and bless his first born
before he died.
Rebekah heard it, and told Jacob to bring kids from the flock, which
she cooked and served as venison. Then she dressed Jacob in the
clothes of Esau, and told him to say that it was Esau who had brought
the venison. Isaac said:
"The voice is the voice of Jacob," but he put his hands on him, and
believed it was Esau, and blessed him.
When Esau came home and brought venison to his father, Isaac said:
"Who art thou?" and when Esau said, "I am thy son, thy first-born,
Esau," the old man trembled, and told Esau the blessing had been given
to another.
Poor Esau cried out with grief, "Hast thou but one blessing?" "Bless
me, even me also, O my father."
And so Isaac blessed him, but he could not call back the blessing of
the first-born. The Lord knew that Jacob would grow to be a good man,
and love the things of God best, and that Esau would always love the
things of this world best, yet it was wrong of Jacob and Rebekah to
deceive, for we may not do evil that good may come.
[Illustration: Isaac blessing Jacob]
After this Esau hated his brother, and said he would kill him.
So Isaac called Jacob, and, blessing him again, sent him away into
Syria to the house of Laban, where Rebekah had lived, and where
Abraham's servant went to find her for his master's son.
One night, when he was not far on his way, he lay down to sleep, with a
stone for his pillow, on a hillside that looked toward his home, and he
dreamed a wonderful dream. He saw a ladder reaching from earth to
heaven, and a vision of angels who were going up and down upon it.
Above it stood the Lord, who spoke to Jacob, and gave to him the
promise that He had first given to Abraham, and told him that He would
go with him, and bring him again into his own land.
Jacob was afraid when he woke, for he had seen the heavens opened, and
had heard God's voice. He made an altar of the pillow of stone, and
called it Bethel--the House of God--and then he vowed that the Lord
should be his God, and he added,--
"Of all that thou shalt give me, I will surely give a tenth unto thee."
When Jacob came to Haran, he saw the well from which his mother used to
draw water. There were three flocks of sheep lying by it, waiting for
all the flocks to gather in the cool of the day to be watered. Soon
Rachel, the daughter of Laban, came leading her father's flocks, and
one of the shepherds told Jacob whose daughter she was.
So Jacob rolled the stone from the well, and watered the flocks of
Laban, his mother's brother. Then he kissed Rachel, and told her that
he was Rebekah's son, and she ran and told her father.
There was great joy in Laban's house because Jacob had come, and after
he had stayed a month with them Laban asked him to stay and take care
of his flocks, and he would pay him for his work.
Since the day he had seen Rachel leading her father's flocks he had
chosen her in his heart to be his wife. So he said that he would work
for Laban seven years, if at the end of that time he would give him
Rachel for his wife. Laban was quite willing to do so, and the seven
years seemed to Jacob but a few days, for the love he had to Rachel.
But, according to the custom of that country, the younger daughter
could not be given in marriage before the elder, and so Laban gave his
daughter Leah also, and both Leah and Rachel became the wives of Jacob,
for Jacob lived in that far away time and country of the early world
when men were allowed to take more than one wife, and when each man was
both king and priest over his family and tribe, and worshipped God by
offering burnt sacrifices upon an altar.
After twenty years of work with Laban, in which he had earned many
flocks and herds for himself, Jacob took his wives and the little sons
God had sent him, and his flocks and herds, and started on a journey to
his old home. Isaac was still alive, and Jacob longed to see him. He
had lived long in Haran for fear of his brother Esau, and now he must
travel through Edom, Esau's country, on his way to his old home.
As he was on his way some of God's angels met him, and he was
strengthened. Still he feared Esau, and sent some of his men to tell
his brother that he was coming.
The men came back, saying that Esau, with four hundred men, was coming
to meet them.
Poor Jacob! He remembered the sin of his youth, when he had stolen the
blessing from Esau, and he was afraid, and prayed God to protect him.
He sent his servants again to meet Esau with great presents of flocks,
and herds, and camels, and after placing his wives and little ones in
the safest place, he sent all that he had over the brook Jabbok, and he
stayed on the other side to pray. It was as if he wrestled with a man
all night, and when the day began to break the man wished to go, but
Jacob said:
"I will not let thee go except thou bless me."
So the man blessed him there, and call his name Israel; "for as a
prince," he said, "hast thou power with God and with men, and hast
prevailed."
Then Jacob knew that the Lord Himself, in the form of a man, had been
with him, and he had seen Him face to face.
And as the sun rose he passed over the brook. When he looked up he saw
Esau and his men coming, and when he had told his family to follow him,
he went straight before them, for he was no longer afraid to meet his
brother.
Jacob's prayer had been answered, and Esau ran to meet his brother, and
throwing his arms around him, wept on his shoulder. Then they talked
in a loving and brotherly way, and Esau returned to his home with the
presents Jacob had given him, and Jacob went on his way into Canaan
full of joy and thankfulness. He stopped a little while in a pleasant
place to rest his flocks and cattle, but he longed to see the place
where he first saw the angels of God, and heard the voice of the Lord
blessing him, so they journeyed on to Beth-el, and there built an altar
and worshipped God.
[Illustration: Meeting of Jacob and Esau]
Again the Lord spoke to Jacob at Beth-el, and called him Israel, and
blessed him.
After they left Beth-el, they came near to Bethlehem, where many
hundred years afterward the Lord Jesus was born, and there another
little son was born to Rachel, and there too God sent for her, and took
her to Himself, and there her grave was made.
[Illustration: Jacob and Rachel]
The little boy was named Benjamin, and was the youngest of Jacob's
twelve sons, who became the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel, and
the princes of a great nation.
Jacob was almost home. His great family, with all the flocks and
herds, had been long on the way, for they often spread their tents by
the brooks in the green valleys, that the cattle might rest and find
pasture, but at last the long caravan came slowly over the fields of
Mamre to Hebron, and Isaac, whom the Lord had kept alive to see his son
once more, was there in his tent waiting for him.
But soon after this he died, an hundred and eighty years old, and Esau
came, and the two brothers laid their father in the cave that Abraham
bought when Sarah died, and where he had buried Rebekah, and Jacob
became patriarch in place of his father.
CHAPTER VI.
JOSEPH, THE CASTAWAY.
Of all the sons of Jacob, Joseph and Benjamin were the dearest to him,
because they were the sons of his beloved Rachel, who had died on the
journey from Syria into Canaan. They were also the youngest of all the
twelve sons. When Joseph was about seventeen years old, he sometimes
went with his elder brothers to keep his father's flocks in the fields.
He wore a long coat striped with bright colors, which his father had
given him, because he was a kind and obedient son, and could always be
trusted.
Once he told his father of some wicked thing his brothers had done, and
they hated him for it, and could not speak pleasantly to him.
Joseph had many strange and beautiful thoughts when he looked across
the fields to the hills, and up into the starry sky at night. He also
had some strange dreams that he told to his brothers. He said that he
dreamed that they were binding sheaves in the field, and that his sheaf
stood up, while the sheaves of his brothers bowed down to it.
Again he dreamed that the sun, and the moon, and eleven stars bowed
down to him.
His father wondered that he should have such thoughts, and reproached
him saying, "Shall I and thy brethren indeed come and bow down
ourselves to thee to the earth?" and his brothers said,
"Shalt thou indeed rule over us?" and they hated him.
When they were many miles from home with the flocks their father sent
Joseph to see if all was well with them. It was a long journey, and
when they saw the boy coming they did not go to meet him, and speak
kindly to him, but they said,
"Behold this dreamer is cometh. Let us slay him, and cast him into
some pit, and we will say some evil beast hath devoured him, and we
shall see what will become of his dreams."
But Reuben, the eldest, said,
"Let us not kill him; but cast him into this pit," hoping to take him
out secretly, and send him to his father.
So when Joseph came near, they robbed him of his coat of many colors,
and cruelly cast him into a pit. After this they sat down to eat their
bread, and looking up they saw a caravan coming. It was a company of
Ishmaelites carrying costly spices down into Egypt to sell them.
Then Judah said,
"Why should we kill our brother? Let us sell him to these Ishmaelites."
Then there passed by some Midianite merchants, and who drew Joseph out
of the pit and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver,
and he was carried down into Egypt.
[Illustration: Joseph sold to the Ishmaelites]
Reuben, when his brothers went back to their flocks, went to the pit to
try to save Joseph, but he was not there, and Reuben cried out,
"The child is not, and I, whither shall I go?"
The brothers who had been so cruel to Joseph brought his coat to their
father, all stained with blood. They had themselves dipped it in the
blood of a kid to deceive him, and he mourned long, and would not be
comforted, for the beloved child that he believed had been torn in
pieces by evil beasts.
CHAPTER VII.
JOSEPH, A SERVANT, A PRISONER, AND A SAINT.
The king of Egypt, where Joseph was taken by the Ishmaelites, was
called Pharaoh, and he had a captain of the guard named Potiphar, who
bought Joseph for a house servant. Though he was the son of a Hebrew
prince, Joseph did his work faithfully and wisely as a servant, and was
soon made steward of the house, and was trusted with all that his
master had, and the Lord made all that he did to prosper; but the wife
of Potiphar was a wicked woman, who persuaded her husband that Joseph
was a bad man, and he was sent to prison.
Even there Joseph won the hearts of all, until the keeper of the prison
set him over the other prisoners, and trusted him as Potiphar had done.
It was the Lord in Joseph who helped him to win the love and trust of
those around him.
Pharaoh sent two of his servants to prison because they had displeased
him.
One was his chief cook, and one was the chief butler, who always handed
the wine cup to the king, and Joseph had the care of them.
They each had a dream the same night, and were troubled because they
could not understand them. Joseph asked them to tell him the dreams,
for God knew what they meant.
So the chief butler told Joseph that he saw a vine having three
branches, and the branches budded and blossomed, and the blossoms
changed into ripe grapes, and he took the grapes and pressed them into
Pharaoh's cup, and handed the cup to the king.
Then Joseph said: "The three branches are three days. Within three
days the king will take you out of prison, and you shall hand the
king's cup to him as you used to do."
Joseph also asked the butler, to think of him when he was again in the
king's palace, and speak to the king to bring him out of prison,
because he had been stolen from his own land, and he had done nothing
wrong that he should be put in prison.
Then the chief cook told his dream. He said that he dreamed that he
carried three baskets on his head, one above another.
In the highest one was all kinds of cooked meats for Pharaoh, and the
birds flew down and ate from the basket.
"The three baskets are three days," said Joseph as he said to the
butler, but he told the cook that in three days he would be put to
death, and hanged on a tree, where the birds would eat his flesh.
All this came true, for Pharaoh's birthday came, and he brought out the
chief butler to serve at a birthday feast, but he hanged the chief
cook. Yet the chief butler forgot Joseph, and did not speak to the
king about him as he might have done.
At the end of two long years, Pharaoh dreamed a dream. He thought he
stood by the river of Egypt, and saw seven cows looking well kept and
fat, came up out of the river.
Behind them came seven other cows, looking thin and poorly fed, and the
thin and poorly fed cows ate up the well-kept and fat ones.
And Pharoah had a second dream. He thought he saw seven heads of wheat
growing on one stalk--and they were all full of grain. After them came
seven thin heads of wheat with no grain in them; and the seven bad
heads of wheat ate up the seven good ones.
In the morning Pharaoh was troubled about these dreams, and called for
his wise men who worked magic for him, and they could tell him nothing.
Then the chief butler standing near the king remembered Joseph, and
told Pharaoh of the young Hebrew who had told the meaning of his dream,
and that of the chief cook, and they had come to pass as he had said,
so Pharaoh sent for Joseph and said to him:
"I have heard that thou canst understand a dream to interpret it."
Joseph answered the king humbly and wisely:
"It is not in me," he said, "God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace."
When the king had told his dream Joseph said:
"The dream is one," and then he showed him that the seven fat cows, and
the seven full heads of wheat meant seven good years in the land of
Egypt, when the harvests would be great; and the seven lean cows, and
the seven empty heads of wheat, meant seven years of famine, when the
east winds should spoil the wheat, so there would be nothing to reap in
time of harvest and the people would want bread. He told the king that
he had better set a wise man over the land, who would attend to saving
the grain during the seven good years, so that the people would have
bread to eat in the seven years of famine.
The king was greatly pleased with Joseph, and told him that God had
taught him to interpret dreams, and had showed him things to come, and
there could be no wiser man found to be set over the land.
So he made Joseph a ruler over the whole land, and next to the king in
all things.
He put his own ring on his hand, and dressed him in the robes of a
prince, and gave him an Egyptian name and an Egyptian wife, so that
there was no one in all the land of Egypt so great as Joseph, except
the king.
He built storehouses in every city, and stored the grain, until it was
like the sand of the sea, and could not be measured.
In the years of plenty two sons were born to Joseph, Manasseh and
Ephraim, and then the seven years of dearth began to come. When the
people began to cry to the king for bread, he always said,--
"Go to Joseph; what he says to you do."
And Joseph and his helpers began to open the storehouses, and sell
wheat to the Egyptians, and to the people of all countries, for the
famine was in all lands.
CHAPTER VIII.
JOSEPH--THE SAVIOR OF HIS PEOPLE.
The famine reached even to the fruitful land of Canaan, and Jacob,
though rich in flocks and herds, began to need bread for his great
family. So he sent his ten sons down into Egypt to buy wheat, keeping
Benjamin, the youngest at home.
When they came before the governor they bowed down to him with their
faces to the ground. Joseph knew them, though he acted as if he did
not, and remembered his dream of his brother's sheaves bowing down to
his sheaf. At first, he spoke roughly to them, and called them
"spies." But they said that they were all one man's sons, and had come
to buy food.
Joseph still spoke roughly to them, not because he was angry, but
because he did not wish them to know him yet. His heart was full of
love for them, and he was soon going to show them great kindness; but
when they told him that they had left an old father and a young brother
at home, and one was dead, he still acted as if they did not tell the
truth.
He said that to prove themselves true men one of them should go home
and bring the youngest brother, and the others should be kept in prison
until they returned; and he put them all in prison.
After three days, he said one might stay while the others took the
wheat home to their families, but that they must surely come back and
bring the boy with them.
Then Reuben, who had tried to save Joseph from the pit long before,
told his brothers that all this trouble had come upon them for their
wickedness to their brother Joseph, and they said to each other in
their own language:
"We are verily guilty concerning our brother; when he besought us, we
would not hear, therefore is this distress come upon us."
Joseph understood everything they said though they did not know it, for
he had been talking to them through an interpreter, and they thought he
was an Egyptian. Now his heart was so full that he had to go out of
the room to weep. But he came back and chose Simeon to stay while the
others went to Canaan to bring back Benjamin.
They took the wheat that they had bought in bags, and went away; but
when they stopped at an inn to rest and feed their asses, one of the
brothers opened his bag, and found the money that he had paid for the
wheat in the top of his bag. Here was more trouble, and they were
afraid.
When they came home to their father they told him all that had
happened, and as they opened the bags, each one found his money. Jacob
was deeply troubled; for Joseph was gone, and Simeon was gone, and now
they wanted to take Benjamin.
Reuben who had two sons said: "Slay my two sons if I bring him not to
thee."
But Jacob said Benjamin should not go down to Egypt. But the wheat was
gone in a short time, and they were likely to starve so great was the
famine, and at last Jacob said they must go to Egypt again for food.
Judah said they would go if Benjamin would go with them, but Jacob
would not listen to this. He asked them why they told the man that
they had a brother, and they replied, that the Governor had asked them
if their father was yet living and if they had another brother.
"Send the lad with me," said Judah, "if I bring him not unto thee, let
me bear the blame forever."
Then Jacob told them to take him and go, and also to take presents of
honey, and spices, and balm, and nuts, and double the money, so as to
return that which was put in their bags, and he blessed them, and sent
them away.
They went down into Egypt, and stood before Joseph again. When he saw
Benjamin with them he told the steward of his house to make ready a
fine dinner for them, and bring them to him at noon, and he did so.
Then the brothers were afraid that they were all to be put in prison,
and at the door of Joseph's house began to tell the steward how they
found the money when they opened their bags, and that they had brought
it back doubled; but the steward spoke kindly to them, and said that he
had placed their money, and that they need not fear, for God had given
it back to them.
Then he brought Simeon out, and they made ready to dine with the
Governor at noon, and to give him their presents.
When he came they bowed down to him and presented their gifts, and he
asked them if they were well, and if the old man of whom they spoke was
still alive, and they replied that he was. When he saw Benjamin, and
knew that he was truly his own brother, the son of Rachel, he said:
"God be gracious unto thee my son," and he went quickly to his own
chamber, lest he should weep before them.
When he came out to them again, and they sat down to dine, he placed
the sons of Jacob by themselves, and the Egyptians of his house by
themselves, and the brothers were placed according to their
ages--Reuben at the head and Benjamin last, and they wondered among
themselves at this. Joseph also sent portions from his own table to
his brothers, but the portion of Benjamin was five times greater than
that of the others.
The next morning their wheat was measured to them, and the asses were
loaded with it, and they went on their way, but Joseph had told the
steward to put the money of each man in the top of his bag, and in
Benjamin's to put his silver cup.
When they were a little away from the city, the steward overtook them,
and charged them with stealing his lord's silver cup.
The men were so sure that no one of them had stolen the silver cup,
that they said,
"Let him die with whom the cup is found, and the rest of us will be
your slaves."
So everybody's bag was opened from the oldest to the youngest, and the
cup was found in Benjamin's bag. Then they rent their clothes for
grief, and loaded the asses and went back to the city, and when they
came to Joseph's house, they fell on their faces before him, Joseph
tried to speak sternly and said:
"What deed is this you have done?"
Judah said:
"What shall we say unto my lord, or how shall we clear ourselves? We
are my lord's servants."
Then said Joseph:
"The man in whose hand the cup is found he shall be my servant, and as
for you, get you up in peace unto your father."
Then Judah came nearer to Joseph, and all his soul came forth into his
voice as he said:
"O, my lord, let thy servant speak a word in my lord's ears!"
Then he told the story of their coming down into Egypt, and of the old
father and young brother whom he had asked them about; of the love of
this father for the little one, for his mother, and his brother now
dead. He reminded Joseph that he had told them to bring the boy to
him, and that they had said, that if the boy should leave his father,
his father would die; but the governor had said "Except your youngest
brother come down with you, ye shall see my face no more."
Then Judah told the story of the father's grief when he found that he
must let Benjamin go down into Egypt, that they might buy a little
food; how he spoke of his two sons, that were the sons of Rachel--that
one had been torn in pieces, and now if mischief should befall the
other, it would bring his gray hairs in sorrow to the grave. He asked
Joseph what he should do when he returned to his father without the
lad, seeing that his life was bound up in the lad's life, and Judah
begged him, as he had made himself surety for the lad, to take him to
be his slave, but to let Benjamin return to his father with his
brothers.
"For how shall I go up to my father," said Judah, "and the lad be not
with me?"
Then Joseph could bear it no longer. He told all the Egyptians to go
out of the room, and then weeping so that the Egyptians and the people
in the king's house heard, he made himself known to his brothers.
[Illustration: Joseph makes himself known to his brothers]
"I am Joseph, your brother," he said, "whom you sold into Egypt," and
he begged them to come near to him.
"Be not grieved nor angry with yourselves," he said, for he saw that
they were terrified, "for God sent me before you to save your lives by
a great deliverance. It was not you that sent me hither, but God, and
he hath made me a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt."
Then he told them to hasten and go to his father and tell him this, and
ask him to come down at once, with all his flocks and herds, and dwell
in Goshen, the best part of Egypt, for years of famine were yet to come.
Then Joseph took little Benjamin in his arms and wept over him, and
kissed him, and kissed all his brothers, and after that his brothers
talked with him. The king heard the story of Joseph's brothers and was
pleased. He told Joseph to send wagons for the wives and little ones
of his brothers, and to tell them to bring their father, and all their
cattle and sheep, and come to live in Goshen where they should have the
best of the land for their flocks and herds.
Joseph did as the king commanded, and also gave them food for the
journey, and a suit of clothing to each brother, but to little Benjamin
he gave five suits, and three hundred pieces of silver. He also loaded
twenty asses with the good things of Egypt as presents to his father,
so he sent them all on their journey saying:
"See that ye fall not out by the way."
When they came to Jacob in Hebron, they told him the wonderful story of
the finding of Joseph, and his heart was faint, for he did not believe
them; but when he had heard all Joseph's messages, and had seen the
gifts, and the wagons, he said:
"It is enough: Joseph my son is yet alive: I will go and see him before
I die."
So they began the long journey to Egypt, for it took a long time to
travel with a great family, and with thousands of cattle and sheep. At
Beersheba Jacob stopped and worshiped God, where his father had built
an altar years before; and God told him in the night that he need not
fear to go down into Egypt, for He would there make him a great nation,
and that He would bring him back again to his own land.
So Jacob with all his children and their little ones, and all his
flocks and herds came into Egypt. There were sixty-seven souls, and
when they had counted Joseph and his two sons, there were seventy.
Jacob sent Judah on before to see Joseph and ask the way to Goshen, so
that they might go directly there with the cattle and sheep. And when
Joseph knew that his father was coming, he went to meet him in Goshen,
and there he wept on his father's neck a long time, and Jacob said:
"Now let me die, since I have seen thy face, because thou art yet
alive."
After this Joseph presented five of his brothers to Pharaoh, and the
king spoke very kindly to them, and gave them the best of the land for
their flocks, and hired some of them to oversee his own shepherds.
Joseph brought his father in also and Jacob blessed Pharaoh.
So the family of Jacob lived in peace, and were cared for by Joseph,
just as the Lord had promised Jacob, when in a dream he saw the angels
of God at Bethel, and heard above them the voice of the Lord blessing
him, and saying:
"Thou shalt spread abroad to the West, and to the East, and to the
North, and to the South, and in thee shall all the families of the
earth be blessed."
Joseph carried all Egypt through the years of famine, and saved seed
for the people to sow their fields in the seventh year so that they
said:
"Thou hast saved our lives."
He afterwards visited his father, and Jacob made him promise that he
would bury him when he died in the tomb of Abraham and Isaac, his
father, in his own land.
When Jacob was near his end, Joseph brought his two little sons,
Ephraim and Manasseh, to his bedside, and the old man gave them his
blessing, laying his right hand upon the head of Ephraim, the youngest,
and his left hand on that of Manasseh the first born, even as Isaac had
given the birthright blessing to him instead of to Esau, and he said:
"The angel which redeemed me from all evil bless the lads."
Then he called all his sons together and told them what should befall
them in the last days. To each one he spoke as a prophet speaks who
has a vision of things to come, and he blessed them there. When he
spoke to Judah, he told him that kings and lawgivers should arise from
among his children until the Saviour of the world should come.
Jacob was an hundred and forty-seven years old when he died, and there
was great mourning for him.
Joseph had the body of his father embalmed, as the Egyptians had the
custom of doing, and after a long mourning in Egypt, Joseph and his
brothers and many Egyptians who were Joseph's friends, carried the body
of Jacob to Canaan, in a great procession, and buried him in the cave
of Machpelah, where his fathers were buried.
After they had returned to Egypt, the brothers of Joseph said:
"Perhaps now he will hate us, and bring upon us all the evil we did to
him."
So they sent to him to ask his forgiveness for all that was past. Then
Joseph wept, for he had nothing but love in his heart toward his
brothers, and he wished them to trust him. He comforted them and spoke
kindly to them, saying:
"Fear not: ye meant evil unto me, but God meant it unto good. I will
nourish you and your little ones."
And so through all Joseph's life, and he lived one hundred and ten
years, he was a tender father to all his family, and a wise ruler of
the people, and he died after making his family promise to carry his
body back into Canaan to be buried with his fathers when they
themselves should go.
"For God will surely visit you," he said, "and bring you out of this
land into the land which he promised to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob."
CHAPTER IX.
THE CRADLE THAT WAS ROCKED BY A RIVER.
After Joseph and all the sons of Jacob had grown old and had passed
away, their children's children grew in numbers until they became a
great multitude.
The Pharaoh whom Joseph had served also died, and the king who followed
him did not like the Hebrews. He feared them because they had grown to
be strong, so he set overseers to watch them, and make them work like
slaves.
He treated them cruelly, and made them lift the great stones with which
they built the tombs of the kings and temples of the gods. He also
tried to kill all the little boys as soon as they were born, but the
Lord took care of them. Also, the king told his servants, that
wherever they found a baby boy among the Hebrews, to throw him into the
river Nile, but the little girls, they should save alive.
There was a man named Amrom, who, with his wife Jochebed, had a
beautiful little boy whom they tenderly loved. They hid him as long as
they could, and then when he was three months old and she could hide
him no longer, she made up her mind to give him into the care of God.
She made a little boat, or ark of stout rushes, that grew by the river.
She wove it closer than a basket, and then covered it with pitch that
the water might not enter, just as Noah covered the great ark before
the flood.
Then she wrapped her baby carefully and laid him in the little boat,
and set it among the reeds at the edge of the river Nile. God and His
angels watched the cradle of the child, and the river gently rocked it.
Jochebed told the baby's sister to wait near by and see what might
happen to him, and this is what happened, or rather what God prepared
for the baby in the boat of rushes.
The king's daughter came down to bathe in the river, and as her maidens
walked up and down by the riverside, she called one of them to bring to
her the little ark that she saw rocking on the river among the reeds.
When she had opened it she saw a beautiful little child, and when it
cried her heart was touched, and she longed to keep it for her own.
[Illustration: Pharaoh's daughter finding Moses]
"This is one of the Hebrew's children," she said, and as the baby's
sister came near she asked the princess if she should go and get a
nurse from among the Hebrew women to bring it up for her, and the
princess said to her, "Go," and the maid went and called the child's
mother. The princess said: "Take this child away and nurse it for me,
and I will give thee thy wages."
And the mother took her baby joyfully though she hid her joy in her
heart, and carried him home to nurse and bring up for Pharoah's
daughter.
And the child grew, and when he was old enough his mother took him to
the king's palace, and he became the son of the princess. She called
his name Moses, which means "drawn out," because she drew him out of
the water.
CHAPTER X.
MOSES IN MIDIAN.
Moses had teachers, and was taught all the learning of the Egyptians,
but his heart was with his own people. He was grieved when he saw
their burdens, and heard their cries when their taskmasters struck them.
Once, when he was a grown man, he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, and
he struck the Egyptian and killed him, for he thought he ought to
defend his people: and when he saw that the man was dead, he buried him
in the sand. In a day or two Moses tried to make peace between two
Hebrews who were fighting, and they answered him roughly, and one of
them said:
"Who made thee a ruler over us? wilt thou kill me, as thou didst the
Egyptian yesterday?"
Then Moses was afraid, and when the king heard of it, and tried to take
his life, Moses fled away out of Egypt, through a desert into Midian.
There he found a well and sat down by it to rest. While he sat there
the seven daughters of the priest of Midian came to draw water for
their father's flocks, and some rough shepherds came and drove them
away, but Moses stood up and helped them, and watered their flocks.
When their father knew that a noble stranger had been kind to his
daughters, he asked him to come into his house, and eat bread with him,
and stay as long as he would. So Moses stayed and Zipporah, one of the
seven sisters, became his wife.
But Moses did not forget his people. God was preparing him to lead
them out of bondage, and he learned many things, during the years that
he kept the sheep of his father-in-law in the wilderness.
One day he led his flocks across the desert to Mount Horeb or Sinai.
There he saw a bush all bright within as if it burned. He drew nearer
to see why the bush was not consumed, and heard the voice of the Lord
calling him. The Lord told him to come no nearer, and to put off his
shoes, for he stood on holy ground. Then the Lord told him that He was
the God of his fathers, and that He had heard the cry of his oppressed
people in Egypt.
"I know their sorrows," said the voice from the midst of the fire, "And
I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to
bring them up out of that land into a good land, and a large--unto a
land flowing with milk and honey."
Then the Lord said that Moses must go to the new Pharaoh, for the old
king was dead, and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt. Moses
was a very humble man, and he could not believe that Pharaoh would
listen to him or that the Hebrews would follow him, but the Lord said,
"Certainly I will be with thee."
And as a sign that it should be so, He said that after Moses had
brought his people out of Egypt, they should serve God in this mountain.
But Moses had many fears. He knew that he had been brought up as an
Egyptian, and he feared that his people would not listen to his words.
Then the Lord showed signs to Moses to help his faith.
He turned the rod in Moses' hand into a serpent, and then when he was
afraid of it, the Lord told him to take it in his hand and it became a
rod again.
He also turned his hand white with leprosy, and then changed it again
to natural flesh, and told Moses, that these, and other signs he should
show in Egypt--to prove that he was sent of God.
But Moses felt himself to be so weak and faithless as a leader of his
people, that he still cried out that he was "slow of speech, and of a
slow tongue," and when the Lord said, "I will teach thee what thou
shalt say," he did not believe, but begged the Lord to send by whom he
would, only not by him.
Then the Lord said that Aaron, the brother of Moses could speak well,
and that he should go with him to Pharoah and to his people, and should
speak for him, but that the wisdom and power of God should be with
Moses, and that he should do wonders with the rod in his hand.
CHAPTER XI.
THE ROD THAT TROUBLED EGYPT.
So Moses took his wife and his sons and returned to Egypt, and the rod
of God was in his hand; and Aaron, sent of God, came to meet him in the
wilderness, and there Moses told him all that was in his heart, and all
that God had sent him to do.
When they came into Egypt they gathered the Israelites together, and
Aaron spoke to them, and they believed his words, and the signs that
Moses showed them.
Afterward, they went to Pharoah and gave him the message of the Lord,
and Pharoah said:
"I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go."
And he began to oppress the Israelites more than he had ever done
before. They made bricks of clay mixed with straw, that hardened in
the sun, and were as lasting as stone, but he forced them to find the
straw wherever they could, and make as many bricks as before. This
they did until no more straw could be found, and their Egyptian masters
beat them cruelly because they failed to make the full number of
bricks. Then they turned upon Moses and Aaron and said, that they had
put a sword in the king's hand to slay them.
Where could Moses turn except to the Lord who had sent him? The Lord
heard him and made to him again the great promise, as he did at the
burning bush, and Moses told the people, but they could not believe it,
for they were crushed under their cruel burdens.
And now the Lord sent Moses and Aaron again to Pharoah, to show by sign
and miracle, that their message was from Him. They took the rod that
Moses brought from Mount Horeb, and Moses told Aaron to cast it down
before the king, and it became a serpent. Pharoah called his wise men
and wizards, and they did the same, only Aaron's rod swallowed up their
rods, and Pharoah would not listen to their words.
[Illustration: The rod that troubled Egypt]
But in the morning when Pharoah walked by the river the two men stood
by him and said again:
The Lord God of the Hebrews hath sent me unto thee saying:
"Let my people go that they may serve me in the wilderness," and then
Aaron struck the waters of the river Nile with his rod, and the waters
turned to blood.
In all the land, in every stream and pond there was blood, so that the
fishes died and no one could drink the water.
But because the wizards could turn water to blood also, Pharoah's heart
was hardened toward Moses and Aaron.
While the people were digging wells for water, Aaron stretched forth
his rod over the river again, and frogs came up from it, and spread
over all the land and filled the houses of the people. This also the
magicians did, but so great was the plague that the king said:
"I will let the people go."
"When shall I entreat for thee and for thy people to destroy the frogs
from thee and thy houses?" said Moses; and Pharoah told him to do so
the next day.
So on the next day Moses prayed to the Lord that the frogs might go out
of the land, and the Lord answered his prayer; but when Pharoah saw
that the frogs had been destroyed his heart grew hard, and he would not
listen to Moses and Aaron.
Then another plague was brought upon the Egyptians. The dust of the
land was changed to lice that covered man and beast, and this was
followed by swarms of flies that settled upon all the land except
Goshen where the Israelites lived.
Then Pharoah said:
"Go, sacrifice to your God in this land," but they would not worship in
Egypt, and Pharoah at last told them that they could go into the
wilderness, but they must not go very far away. So Moses prayed, and
the swarms of flies were swept out of Egypt, but Pharoah did not keep
his word.
Then a great sickness fell upon the cattle and sheep of the country,
though the flocks and herds of the Israelites were free from it; and
this was followed by a breaking out of boils upon men and beasts
everywhere, even upon the magicians, but Pharaoh's heart was still too
wicked to yield to God.
Then came a great storm of hail over Egypt, such as had never been
known in that sunny land. It killed the cattle in the fields, and
destroyed the grain that was grown, and broke the trees and herbs. The
lightnings fell also and ran upon the ground, and when it was over the
heart of Pharaoh was still hard against God.
Then Moses told Pharaoh that the face of the earth would be covered
with clouds of locusts that would eat every green thing left by the
storm, if he did not let God's people go. This frightened Pharaoh's
servants and they begged him to send them away, and though he would not
let their wives and little ones go, he said:
"Go now, ye that are men, for that ye did desire," and he drove them
out of his presence.
Then at the Lord's word, Moses arose and stretched forth his rod over
Egypt, and the plague of locusts came, driven by the East wind, and
covered the land until there was no green thing left in Egypt.
Then Pharaoh sent for Moses and Aaron in great haste, and confessing
his sin, begged to be forgiven and to be saved from, "this death only,"
and, at Moses' prayer, a mighty west wind drove the army of locusts
into the Red Sea.
But again the heart of Pharaoh turned against God, and the Lord brought
thick darkness over the land for three days, only in the homes of the
Hebrews there was light. Then Pharaoh was willing to let them take
their wives and their little ones, but not their flocks and herds, and
because they would not leave them behind, Pharaoh drove Moses and Aaron
from him in anger, saying:
"See my face no more."
But the Lord proposed to break the hard heart of Pharaoh. He told
Moses to see that every Israelite should take a lamb from the flock and
keep it four days. Then, at evening, he was to kill it, and dip a
branch of hyssop in its blood, and strike it against the sides of his
door, also over it, leaving three marks of blood there. Then he was to
close his door and no one was to go out of it until morning.
They were to roast the lamb and eat of it, and be ready for the journey
they were to make, and it should be to them forever the feast called
the Passover. They were to eat it with unleavened bread, and the feast
should be kept forever from the first to the seventh day of the month,
a holy feast to the Lord.
And this is why it was called the feast of the Passover. At midnight,
after the lamb was killed in each house of the Israelites, and the
doors were shut, the Lord passed through the land, and wherever he saw
the blood on the side posts and the top of the door, he passed over
that house, and it was safe, but in every Egyptian house the first born
died, from the child of Pharaoh who sat on the throne, to the child of
the captive in the cell, and all the first born of cattle.
The next morning a great cry went up from the land of Egypt, for there
was not a house where there was not one dead.
Then Pharaoh was quite ready to let the Israelites go.
"Take all you have and be gone," he said.
They were all ready, and rose up very gladly to join the great
procession, led by Moses and Aaron, that gathered in Goshen, and
started on its long journey toward the east.
They had heard of the land of their fathers, and now they were going
home to be slaves no more. They were a family of seventy souls when
they came into Egypt, four hundred and thirty years before, and now
they went out a great nation, as the Lord had promised when he blessed
their fathers.
The feast of the Passover has been the chief one held by the
Israelites, from the time of their coming out of Egypt until now, and
since Jesus held the Passover feast with his disciples on the night
that he went forth to death, it has become to all Christians the
Sacrament of the Lord's Supper.
CHAPTER XII.
FOLLOWING THE CLOUD.
"God led the people," says the Word, as they came up out of Egypt. He
gave them the two leaders by whom He had broken the power of Pharaoh,
and set His people free, and He also set a great cloud in the air, just
above and before them, to lead them in the right way. It was to them
the presence of the Lord. By day it rose white and beautiful against
the blue sky, and moved slowly before them. At night it stood still
while they rested, and shed light over all the camp, for there seemed
to be a fire within the cloud at night. How safe and happy they must
have felt away from the cruel taskmasters of Egypt, and the Lord's
presence, spreading a wing of cloud over them. They were not led by a
straight way to Canaan, for a warlike people lived in the land which
they must pass through, but they were led at first through a country
without cities or armies, where they would not trouble many people or
be troubled by them. They bore with them the embalmed body of Joseph,
for they had promised to bury him with his fathers in the cave of
Machpelah; and they also had much wealth in herds, and flocks, and
gold, and silver. Pharaoh thought of this after they had gone, and his
wicked heart grew harder than before, so he ordered his chariots and
horsemen to follow them, and they found the Israelites camped by the
Red Sea.
Then there was great fear and mourning in the camp when they saw the
army of Pharaoh coming, but Moses cried:
"Fear ye not, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. The Lord
shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace."
Then the Lord told Moses to speak to the people that they go forward.
He also told him to lift up his rod and stretch his hand over the sea
and divide it, and the children of Israel should go on dry ground
through the midst of the sea. Night was falling, and the waters lay
dark before them, but the angel of God, the pillar of cloud and fire,
moved from its place before them and went behind them, while Moses and
Aaron led them on. Then the presence of the Lord was a cloud and
darkness to the Egyptians, but it gave a light by night to the
Israelites. A strong east wind drove the waters apart all night, so
that there was a way through the sea, and the waters were a wall upon
their right hand and on their left. Pharaoh's army saw the broad path
through the sea, and followed fast after the Israelites, but as morning
dawned the Lord looked from the cloud and troubled the Egyptians.
Their chariot wheels came off, and all went wrong with them.
At last the Lord told Moses to stretch his hand forth over the sea,
that the waters might come back upon the Egyptians, and he did so; and
as the sun rose, the sea swallowed up the Egyptian host, and their
bodies were cast upon the shore. There on the other side stood the
great host of Israel, and saw the salvation of God, and they believed
in Him, and in Moses His servant.
[Illustration: Destruction of Pharaoh's army]
Then a great shout went up from the host of Israel. Moses led them in
a song of praise, and Miriam, the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine,
and the women followed her in dances as they answered in a chorus of
praise:--
"Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and
the rider hath he thrown into the sea."
Soon they took up their journey, the cloudy pillar going before. There
was but little water by the way, and after three days of thirst, they
came to the waters of Marah, but they were bitter, and the people cried
to Moses,
"What shall we drink?"
Then the Lord showed him a tree which he cast into the waters, and they
were made pure and sweet. Soon after they came to Elim, where there
were twelve wells of water, and seventy palm trees, and there they
rested.
Again they took up their journey and passed through a desert land,
where they could get no food, and again they complained to Moses
because he had brought them into the wilderness to die. They did not
yet believe that God could supply all their need.
"I will rain bread from heaven for you," said the Lord to Moses. He
was ready to provide, if they would only believe in Him and obey Him.
Moses called them to come near before the Lord while Aaron should speak
his word to them. As they came near and looked toward the wilderness
where the cloud stood, the glory of the Lord shone out of it. The Lord
had heard them speak harshly to Moses for bringing them into a desert
to die, but he said,
"At even ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with
bread."
And his word came true. Great flocks of quails came up and covered the
camp at sunset, so that they caught them for food; and in the morning
the dew lay around them, and when it had risen, there lay on the ground
a small, round, white thing, something like frost, or a little seed,
and it tasted like wafers made with honey. The Lord told Moses that
the people must gather just enough to eat through the day, and no more.
The morning before the Sabbath they must gather enough for two days,
for none would fall on the Sabbath. This was the bread that the
heavenly Father provided for his children through all the years of
their journey from Egypt to Canaan, and they called it "Manna."
There were hard things to bear in the wilderness. Often when they
wanted water for their little ones and their cattle, and could not find
it, they were like fretful children when they were tired and thirsty.
Once, at Horeb, Moses struck a rock with his wonderful rod, and water
sprung out in a stream.
There were enemies also in the way. The Amelikites came out to fight
with the Israelites. The strong men went to meet the enemy, but Moses
stood on a hill with the rod of God in his hand, and Aaron and Hur were
with him. While Moses held up the rod, Israel prevailed; but when he
let down his hand Amalek prevailed.
But Moses grew tired and they placed a stone for him to sit upon, and
Aaron and Hur held up his hands on either side until the going down of
the sun, when Amalek was conquered. Moses built an altar there, and
called it "The Lord my Banner."
They were now drawing near the Mount, where Moses saw the burning bush,
and heard the Lord calling him to be the leader of his people.
They were far out of their way to Canaan, but it was in the Lord's
purpose to bring them into obedience and faith before he brought them
into the promised land. They had lived long among the Egyptians, and
were very far from being like Jacob and Joseph, but there were good and
true men like Aaron, and Joshua, and Hur, who helped Moses. It was
about three months after the children of Israel left Egypt, that they
came into the wilderness of Sinai. There the "Mount of God" still
lifts its great granite cliffs toward the sky. There are high valleys
midway where it is cooler than below, and there the people encamped and
waited to hear what God would say to them, for God talked with Moses on
the Mount.
He said He had chosen them, if they would obey his voice, to be a holy
nation. He told Moses to tell the people to be ready, and on the third
day He would come down in the sight of all the people on Mount Sinai.
And so it was, as the people looked there was a thick cloud upon the
Mount, from which came thunder and lightning, and the sound of a great
trumpet, while the mountain trembled as with an earthquake. Only Moses
and Aaron could approach the holy Mount, and from it God gave to Moses
the laws that the people were to live by, and Moses wrote them all down
that he might read them to the people. A company of the Elders of
Israel went up and saw the glory of God afar off, but God called Moses
up into the Mount, and the cloud closed him round, while the Lord gave
him the laws for a great nation, and the pattern of the tabernacle
which He wished him to make for a church in the wilderness.
Forty days and forty nights Moses was on the Mount with God, and then
God gave him the ten great commandments written with his own hands on
tablets of stone, that he might give them to the people. They were to
be kept as the rules of life for all people in all times.
Forty days and nights seemed a long time to the people camped around
the Mount. Perhaps they thought Moses would never come back to lead
them, for they began to think of the gods of Egypt, and asked Aaron to
make one for them. So to please them he told them to bring him their
gold ornaments, and he melted them and made a golden calf such as the
Egyptians worshiped, and before it they made an altar, and they
worshiped the calf.
The Lord who sees all things told Moses to go down to the people for
they were worshiping an idol. So Moses went down a little way and met
Joshua, and they both went down and saw the people feasting, and
singing, and dancing, and Moses cast the tablets of stone upon the
ground and they were broken. The heart of Moses, too, was almost
broken, but he destroyed the golden calf, and punished the people for
their great sin, and then went up to the Mount to plead for the life of
his people.
"O this people have sinned a great sin," he cried, "and have made them
gods of gold, yet now if thou wilt forgive their sin, and if not, blot
me, I pray thee, out of the book which thou has written," so great was
the love of Moses for his people.
There was a time of repentance among the people after this, and Moses
and his servant Joshua reared a tent outside the camp and called it the
Tabernacle of the congregation. It was for worship until the true
Tabernacle should be built according to the pattern given in the Mount.
All who sought the Lord went to worship there, and the pillar of cloud
came and stood at the Tabernacle door while Moses talked with God, and
all the people saw it and worshiped.
Moses prayed again for the people, and the Lord said:
"My presences shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest."
The Lord called Moses again into the mount, and told him to bring with
him two tablets of stone and He would again write the ten commandments
upon them.
So Moses hewed them from the rock and took them up into Mount Sinai.
Then the Lord came down again in a thick cloud and talked with Moses,
and wrote upon the tablets of stone.
After forty days Moses came down to the people bringing the
commandments with him, but his face shone with a strange light that the
people never saw before, and they were afraid of him. It was something
above the light of the sun, for Moses had seen the Glory of the Lord.
[Illustration: Moses descending from the Mount]
While they still camped around the mount they began to build the
Tabernacle. Moses told the people to bring gold, and silver, and
brass, and wood. They also brought precious stones, and oil for the
lamp, and fine linen, and they gave so willingly that at last Moses
told them that there was more than enough.
These were put in the hands of two wise men whom the Lord had chosen
and taught to do the work, and they had willing helpers among the
people, for wise hearted women did spin with their own hands, and bring
what they had spun, of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen to
make the hangings of the Tabernacle.
If you would know all the beautiful and costly and curious things that
were made for this church in the wilderness, you will find them
described in the last chapters of Exodus.
The Israelites camped a long time in the high valleys around the Mount
of God, and at last set up the Tabernacle. It was so made that it
could be taken down and carried with them when they journeyed, for it
was a beautiful tent. Over it the pillar of cloud stood. Whenever it
moved the people followed, and when it stood still, they rested.
Within the Tabernacle they placed a beautiful chest of wood overlaid
with gold, which ever after held their most precious things, the
tablets of stone written upon by the Lord himself.
This "Ark of Testimony," as it was called, had rings at the sides
through which men laid strong rods by which to carry it, and so had the
golden table for bread, and the golden altar of incense. There was a
beautiful seven-branched candlestick of pure gold in which olive oil
was burned for a sacred sign, and there was a brazen altar for burnt
offerings, and a great brazen bowl for washing, and other things to be
used in the worship of the Sanctuary.
There were beautiful garments, also, for the priests, Aaron and his
sons, and for Aaron there was a wonderful breast-plate of gold set with
twelve precious stones, bearing the names of the twelve tribes of
Israel.
When all was finished, and the Tabernacle was set up, the cloud that
veiled the presence of the Lord came and covered it, and the glory of
the Lord filled it, so that Moses could not enter; but the Lord spoke
to him from the cloud, and told him how the priests should order the
worship of the Lord there.
Afterward, Aaron and his sons offered burnt offerings for their sins,
and the sins of the people, in the way the Lord had commanded, and fire
from the Lord came down and consumed the offering.
When the people saw the answer of the Lord they fell on their faces
before him.
In the second month of the second year the cloud rose from over the
Tabernacle, and then the people knew it was time to go on their
Journey. So they took down the tent of the Tabernacle and put all
things in order for the journey. Each of the twelve tribes descended
from the twelve sons of Jacob marched by themselves, carrying banners,
and having captains. In the midst of them all marched the Levites
carrying the Ark and the different parts of the Tabernacle, and when
the cloud stood still, they stopped and set up the Tabernacle, while
the people formed their camp all around it in the order of their tribes.
Still the manna fell with the dew at night, and the people gathered it
in the morning, and when they tired of it, the Lord sent them quails
again.
Over and over the people complained and rebelled, but the Angel of the
Lord's Presence still hovered over them, and led them toward the
promised land. Forty years they were on the journey that was so easily
made by the sons of Jacob when they went back and forth to buy wheat in
the time of famine; and forty-two times did they encamp on the way, yet
the mercy of the Lord never failed them, and they were brought into
their own land at last. Then the cloud was no longer needed to go
before them, but long after, when they built a beautiful temple at
Jerusalem in which to put the sacred Ark of Testimony, the cloud came
again and filled the temple with the glory of the Lord.
CHAPTER XIII.
IN THE BORDERS OF CANAAN.
While the host of Israel was in camp at Paran, the Lord told Moses to
send men before them into Canaan to spy out the land.
So he sent twelve men who walked through the land and saw the people,
and the cities and the fields and the fruits. They were forty days
searching the land and they brought from the brook Eschol a cluster of
grapes so large that two of them bore it on a staff between them. They
also brought some pomegranates and figs.
[Illustration: The return of the spies]
When they came into the camp they said that the country where they had
been was good, and flowing with milk and honey, but the people were
strong, and the cities had very high walls. They said they saw giants
there.
Caleb, who was one of the twelve, and a good and true man, said:
"Let us go up at once and possess it, for we are well able to overcome
it," but the men who were with him were afraid of the giants, and said
they felt like grasshoppers before them. Then there was great weeping
among the people all that night, and they said,
"Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt." Moses and Aaron
were greatly troubled, but the two good men, Caleb and Joshua, stood up
and encouraged the people, saying that they need not fear, for the Lord
had given them the land, yet they were ready to stone Caleb and Joshua.
Then the Lord spake to Moses from the Tabernacle, and the people saw
his glory. He said the people were unbelieving and disobedient, and
for this reason they could not enter the promised land. He said, that
all who were twenty years old and upward would die in the wilderness,
except Caleb and Joshua, who had followed the Lord wholly. He also
said that the people would be forty years in the wilderness, and only
the youth and the children would live to enter Canaan.
There was mourning and repentance then because of the word of the Lord,
and the people promised again to believe and obey, but over and over
they lost faith and rebelled, and great storms of trouble fell upon
them.
Once the earth opened and many were swallowed up; a sudden sickness
destroyed thousands. Near Mount Hor, where Aaron died, fiery serpents
ran among the people, and all who were bitten by them died; but there
was full forgiveness and cure for those who turned to the Lord. When
the fiery serpents entered the camp Moses lifted a brazen image of a
serpent up on a pole so high that it could be seen all over the camp,
and whoever looked upon it lived. It was a sign of the coming Saviour.
Between the marches and the battles with heathen tribes, some of whom
were giants, Moses wrote in a book the laws that God gave him for the
government of the people. They were wise laws, the keeping of which
would bring health, peace and blessedness to the people. He gave the
book to the Levites who carried the Ark, and they were to keep it
always beside the Ark, and often read it aloud to the people.
Moses said many things to the people, and as Jacob blessed his twelve
sons, so Moses blessed each of the twelve tribes that descended from
them, for he was near the end of his long life. The Lord had told him
that He should take him to Himself before the people entered Canaan,
and that Joshua must lead the people into the promised land. So when
they had reached the borders of Canaan, and were encamped near the
Jordan, the Lord called his tried servant up into Mount Nebo, that he
might see the land beyond the Jordan, where the twelve tribes were to
find their promised home. Then the Lord gave him a view of the land,
and there he died, as Aaron died on Mount Hor.
No one saw Moses die, and no one knows where he was buried, for the
Lord buried him. He was one hundred and twenty years old, and yet as
strong as a young man. After his death Joshua became the leader of
Israel.
CHAPTER XIV.
A NATION THAT WAS BORN IN A DAY.
The time had come for the people to cross the river Jordan, and enter
their own land, and the Lord told Joshua to prepare the people for
their last journey before going over Jordan. Joshua first sent two men
over the river to see the land.
They went to the walled city of Jericho, and to the house of a woman
named Rahab. The king heard that they were there and sent for them,
but the woman hid them under the flax that she was drying on the roof
of her house. Afterward she let them down by a rope through a window
(for her house was built on the town wall), and they escaped. They
promised Rahab before they went, that if she would hang a long line of
scarlet thread from the window on the wall, that when they came to take
the city she should be saved and all her family because of her kindness
to them.
After they had returned to the camp they told Joshua that the Lord
would surely give them the land, for the people were afraid of them.
Then they rose up and marched to the banks of the Jordan and waited for
Joshua to lead them over. Some of them remembered how they had passed
through the Red Sea, and others had heard it from their parents, and
they now waited to see the salvation of God. Joshua told them to
follow the priests, and the Levites who would bear the Ark of the
Covenant, so when Joshua said:
"Behold the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord of all the earth passeth
over before you into Jordan," the people followed.
The Jordan lay spread before them like a lake, for it was the time of
year when it overflowed all its banks, but when the feet of the priests
who bore the Ark were dipped in the edge of the water, the waters from
above stopped and rose like a wall, while the waters below flowed away
into the Dead Sea, and left a wide path for the people to walk in, and
the Ark stood still in Jordan until every one had passed over. Then
twelve men, one out of every tribe, took a stone from the bed of the
river and carried it over for a memorial altar, so that when any should
ask in years to come, "What do these stones mean?" someone might tell
them how the Lord led Israel through Jordan into their own land.
[Illustration: Crossing the Jordan]
After the Ark had come up from the bed of Jordan, and there was not one
of all the thousands of Israel left behind, the waters came down from
the place where they had stayed, and flowed down into the Dead Sea, and
overflowed the banks of Jordan as before.
The stones were heaped in Gilgal where they camped, and directly before
them rose the walls of Jericho, and here they kept the passover. For
forty years they had been fed with manna from heaven as they camped or
journeyed in the wilderness, but now they began to eat the grain and
the fruits of the land, and the manna fell no more.
Nearly five hundred years before the family of Jacob left this land to
go down into Egypt where Joseph was. They grew to be a great people,
but they were slaves. Then the Lord sent Moses to make them free, and
they began the long journey, which at last brought them to their own
land.
Forty years they were on the journey, and all this time they were
pilgrims, but on the day that the Jordan ceased to flow, and parted
while they passed over into the land promised to their fathers, they
became a nation.
The land was before them, and they had only to obey the Lord and his
servant Joshua to conquer and possess it.
As they filled the valley of the Jordan before Jericho, the hearts of
the heathen fainted for fear, for they knew that only the Lord could
divide a river to let his people pass.
Joshua went out of the camp to look at Jericho, the walled city. It
was shut up for fear of the Israelites, and there was no one to be seen.
Suddenly Joshua saw a warrior standing with a drawn sword in his hand.
"Art thou for us," said Joshua, "or for our adversaries?" and the
warrior angel answered,
"Nay! but as Captain of the host of the Lord, am I now come," and
Joshua fell on his face before him.
He knew then that it was the Lord who would conquer Jericho, and he was
told how the people were to help him.
So Joshua called the priests, and told them to take up the Ark, and he
told seven priests to go before it bearing trumpets of rams' horns.
Then the army of Israel, ready for war, followed, half of them marching
before the Ark, and half of them coming after, and as the trumpets gave
a great sound, they marched once around the city, and then went to
camp. This they did once every day for seven days, but on the seventh
day they marched around the city seven times, and as the priests blew
the trumpets for the last time, Joshua cried with a mighty voice,
"Shout! for the Lord hath given you the city."
Then as a great shout went up from the people, the walls of the city
fell down flat, so that the soldiers of Israel went up, every man
straight before him, and took Jericho.
And Rahab was not forgotten. The Lord cared for her little house on
the wall, and she, with all her family, were brought into the Camp of
Israel.
And so by the conquest of Jericho the new nation of Israel began to
possess its land.
CHAPTER XV.
SAMSON THE STRONG.
All the days of Joshua--and he lived to be an hundred and ten years
old--the Israelites were conquering the people who lived in Canaan, and
dividing it among the tribes. Joshua was a father to them, as Moses
had been, and when at last they were at rest, each tribe within its own
borders, and they had begun to build their houses, and plant their
fields, Joshua spoke words of loving counsel to the people, and they
set up a stone under an oak tree, as a sign that they would always
serve the Lord and keep the law, and then he went to be with God.
After his death Israel was ruled by wise men called judges, who helped
them to conquer the land little by little. Some of them were good men
and brave warriors as Othniel and Gideon and Jephthah and one was a
prophetess named Deborah, a noble mother in Israel, and one was a
mighty man of strength, Samson, the son of Manoah.
The people of Israel had turned away from the Lord, and could no longer
conquer their enemies, but the Philistines had conquered them, and had
been their masters for forty years, when the Lord sent Samson to
deliver them. He was not a wise man like Moses or Joshua, but he had
great strength, and the Lord used him against the Philistines.
Once a young lion came roaring against him, and he caught it and rent
it in two, as if it had been a kid. When he passed the same way
afterward he saw that the bees had built a nest in the body of the
lion, and it was full of honey. At his marriage feast--for he married
a Philistine woman--he made a riddle for the young men to guess:
"Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong, come forth
sweetness."
[Illustration: The young Samson]
They tried for seven days to guess the riddle, but they could not, and
then they told Samson's wife to find it out for them, or they would
burn her house. She begged him with tears to tell her, and at last he
told her of the honey comb in the body of the lion, and she told the
young men, so that at the end of the seventh day they said to Samson,
"What is sweeter than honey?" and "what is stronger than a lion?"
He saw that he had been betrayed, so he paid his debt, a suit of
clothes to each guest, and went home to his father's house. Afterwards
when he found that his wife had been given to another he tied
firebrands to the tails of three hundred foxes, and sent them among the
wheat fields of the Philistines so that the fields were set on fire.
Once the men of Gaza tried to kill him when he was within their city,
but he rose at midnight and took the city gates, with its posts and
bar, and carried them away on his shoulders to the top of the hill.
Again the Philistine lords had promised a great deal of money to a
woman, if she would get Samson to tell her what made him so strong, so
she begged him to tell her. Three times she thought she knew the
secret, and told the Philistines, but they could not bind him. At last
he was tired of her questions, and said to her plainly--that from a
child no razor had ever touched his hair. If it should be cut he would
be as weak as other men. Then she watched and cut his hair while he
slept, and the Philistines bound him and carried him to Gaza, where
they made him blind, and forced him to grind in the mills of a prison
house. The Philistines were glad because Samson was their prisoner at
last, and so they came together in a great feast to sacrifice to their
god Dagon, for they said,
"Our god has delivered Samson into our hands." While they were merry
they said:
"Let us send for Samson to make sport for us," and he was brought out
of the prison. It was very sad to see the strong judge of Israel, weak
and blind, led by a little lad, and making sport for the people in
front of their temple. All the lords of the Philistines were there,
and upon the broad roof of the temple were about three thousand people
watching Samson while he showed his strength, for his hair had grown
and his strength was returning. At last as he was standing between two
great pillars that held up the roof, he prayed, lifting his sightless
eyes to God:
"O Lord God, remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me only this
once."
Then he clasped his arms around the pillars on either side of him, and
bowing himself with all his might, saying,
"Let me die with the Philistines," he drew the great pillars with him,
and the house fell with all that were upon it, on all that were within
it. So died Samson who judged Israel twenty years, yet a woman,
Deborah, who was also one of the judges in Israel, was stronger than
he, for the Lord looketh on the heart.
[Illustration: The death of Samson]
CHAPTER XVI.
RUTH.
In the days when the judges ruled in Israel, there was a famine in the
land, and an Israelite, who lived in Bethlehem, took his wife and his
two sons into Moab where there was food. After a while the Israelite
died, and the two sons married women of Moab.
After two years the sons died also, and their mother, Naomi, longed for
her home in Bethlehem, for there was no longer a famine there. So she
took Ruth and Orpah, her sons' wives, and started on the journey into
the land of Israel.
But before they had gone far Naomi said:
"Go! return each to her mother's house; the Lord deal kindly with you,
as ye have dealt with the dead, and with me."
She kissed them, and they wept and would not leave her.
"Turn again, my daughters," she said, "why will ye go with me?"
And Orpah kissed Naomi, and went back to her own mothers' house, but
Ruth, whose heart was with Naomi, would not go back.
"Entreat me not to leave thee," she said, "or to return from following
after thee, for where thou goest I will go; and where thou lodgest I
will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where
thou diest I will die, and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to
me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me."
And so they came to Bethlehem, and the old friends of Naomi greeted her
tenderly, and welcomed her back. It was about the beginning of the
barley harvest.
There was a good and great man in Bethlehem named Boaz, and he was of
the family of Naomi's husband. He had a field of barley where the
reapers were at work, and Ruth asked Naomi if she should not go and
glean after the reapers, to get grain, for they were poor.
Naomi said, "Go, my daughter," and she went.
When Boaz came out of the town into his field and greeted his reapers,
he said to his servant having charge of the reapers,
"What maiden is this?" and he told him that she was the Moabitish girl
who had come back with her mother-in-law Naomi.
Then Boaz spoke very kindly to Ruth, and told her to stay with his
maidens, and freely drink of the water drawn for them, and Ruth bowed
before him and asked why he should be so kind to a stranger. He told
her that he knew all her kindness to her mother-in-law since the death
of her husband, and how she had left her own family and country to come
among strangers, and he blessed her, saying,
"A full reward be given thee of the Lord God of Israel, under whose
wings thou art come to trust."
Then he told her to sit down and eat bread with them, and he helped her
to the parched corn with his own hands, and when they returned to work
he told his young men to let her glean among the sheaves and reprove
her not, and to let some handfuls fall purposely for her to glean.
When Ruth went home Naomi said,
"Where hast thou gleaned to-day?" and Ruth told her. Then Naomi
blessed Boaz, and told Ruth that he was one of their near relatives.
And so Ruth gleaned in the fields of Boaz through all the barley and
the wheat harvest. When all the reaping was done, the grain was
threshed on a piece of ground made very smooth and level. The sheaves
were beaten, and then the straw was taken away, and the grain and chaff
below it was winnowed. By this the chaff was blown away and only the
grain was left.
When Boaz winnowed his barley Naomi told Ruth to go down to his
threshing floor and see him for he had a feast for his friends.
So after the feast Ruth came near to him and said,
"Thou art our near kinsman," and Boaz said,
"May the Lord bless thee my daughter," and with many kind words he gave
her six measures of barley to take to Naomi.
[Illustration: Ruth and Naomi]
Boaz remembered that it was the custom in Israel for the nearest
relative of a man who had died, to take care of the wife who was left,
and so he went to the gate of Bethlehem where the rulers met to hold
their court, and spoke to the elders and chief men about Ruth. He also
wished them to be witnesses that he was going to take Ruth to be his
wife. Then the rulers all said,
"We are witnesses," and they prayed that God would bless Ruth and make
Boaz still richer and greater.
So Ruth became the honored and beloved wife of Boaz, and they had a son
named Obed.
Obed grew up and had a son named Jesse; and Jesse was the father of
David, King of Israel, who was first a shepherd lad of Bethlehem.
More than a thousand years after Ruth lived there was born in
Bethlehem, of the family of Boaz and Ruth, a little Child, who came, to
be the Saviour of the world, and the shepherds in the fields, where,
perhaps, Ruth gleaned, and David kept his sheep, heard the angels tell
the good news and sing
"Peace on earth, good will to men."
CHAPTER XVII.
SAMUEL--THE CHILD OF THE TEMPLE.
The Tabernacle that was built in the wilderness, and was brought into
Canaan by the priests was set up at Shiloh in the very centre of the
land of Canaan, and once every year the tribes came to it to worship
and offer sacrifices. After it had come to Shiloh to stay it was
called the temple.
When Eli was high priest a man named Elkanah came up from Ramah to
worship, and Hannah his wife went with him. She was a good woman, and
very sorrowful, because she saw other wives with sons and daughters
around them, and she had none. Her husband was loving and kind and
said:
"Am I not better to thee than ten sons?" but she prayed to God for a
son. While she was at Shiloh she prayed in the temple, and Eli saw her
lips move, though he heard no voice. At first he spoke harshly to her,
thinking she had been drinking wine, but she told him that she had not
taken wine, but was praying.
"I am a woman of sorrowful spirit," she said, "and have poured out my
soul before the Lord." Then Eli blessed her and said:
"Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant thee the prayer that thou
hast asked of him." Then Hannah was no longer sad.
Her prayer was answered, and the Lord sent her a little son, and when
he was old enough, she took him to the temple, for she had promised the
Lord that the child should be His. So Elkanah came bringing
sacrifices, and the young child was with them. Hannah told Eli that
she was the woman whom he saw praying in the temple.
[Illustration: Samuel speaking to the Lord]
"For the child I prayed," she said, "and the Lord has answered my
prayer. Therefore I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he lives he
shall be lent to the Lord." Eli was very glad and gave thanks to the
Lord, and took the little boy to help him in the service of the temple.
Every year his father and mother came to bring offerings to the Lord,
and his mother always brought him a little coat which she had made.
Over it was a linen garment called an ephod, such as the priests wore.
Eli was an old man, and his sons, though they were priests, were not
good men, and he believed the Lord had sent him one who would be good,
so he loved little Samuel as if he were his own.
One night when Eli was laid down to sleep, and Samuel also, while the
light was still burning in the golden candlestick before the Ark,
Samuel heard a voice calling him, and he answered, "Here am I," and ran
to see what Eli wanted. But Eli said that he had not called, and
Samuel lay down again. When the voice called again, Samuel went again
to Eli's bed, but Eli told him to lie down again, for he had not called
him. When the voice called the third time, Samuel said: "Here am I,
for thou _didst_ call me."
Then Eli told the boy to lie down once more, but if he heard the voice
again to say,
"Speak Lord, for thy servant heareth."
And when the voice called again, "Samuel, Samuel," the boy answered,
"Speak Lord, for thy servant heareth."
Then the Lord told Samuel that the sons of Eli had become very wicked,
and their father had not kept them from the evil, and therefore He
could not accept their offerings.
When Eli asked Samuel what the Lord had said to him, the boy told him
all and hid nothing from him, and Eli bowed his spirit before the Lord,
and said:
"It is the Lord, let Him do what seemeth Him good."
After this all the people of Israel knew that the Lord had called
Samuel to be a prophet. And as he grew up the Lord was with him, and
he was a judge over his people all his life.
As for Eli and his sons, the word of the Lord soon came true. When the
Philistines came against the Israelites in battle, the Elders of Israel
said:
"Let us bring the Ark of the Lord out of Shiloh to us, that it may save
us out of the hand of our enemies." And so they took it from the holy
place to the camp of Israel. Then the Philistines fell upon the camp
and scattered the men of Israel. They also took the Ark of God, and
the two sons of Eli were among the thousands slain.
Eli, who trembled for the Ark of God, sat outside the city gate, by the
wayside watching. He was nearly a hundred years old, and his eyes were
dim, but when a messenger came with the bad news, he fell backward in
his seat and died. His heart was broken.
Where was Samuel? Perhaps he was praying in the temple for the return
of the Ark of the Covenant.
Wherever the Ark went among the Philistines, there went also trouble
and death. When they put it in the temple of their fish-god Dagon, the
great idol fell down before it and was broken. And when it was taken
to another city, the people were smitten with sickness, until at last
the Philistines said:
"Send away the Ark of the God of Israel, and let it go to its own
place."
After seven months they sent it with gifts of gold to the Israelites.
They placed it on a new cart drawn by two cows, and the cows, guided by
the Lord alone, took a straight way into the land of Israel. How glad
the people were when they looked up from their reaping in the fields,
and saw the Ark coming safely back to them. The Philistines watched it
from afar to see if it would be guided of God to its own place or not
and then they returned to their city.
Samuel gathered the people to the Lord after this, and though they had
sinned greatly, and had gone after the gods of the heathen around them,
they repented and returned to the faith of their fathers, and were
faithful all the days of Samuel. He went from year to year on a
journey to three cities of Israel, and judged the people in those
places, but his home was in Ramah, the city where he was born, and
where Hannah had brought him up for the Lord.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE MAKING OF A KING.
When Samuel was old he made his sons judges in his place, but they were
not holy men like their father.
They loved money, and would judge unjustly, if money were given to them
as a bribe. So the people came to Samuel at Ramah and said,
"Give us a king to judge us."
And Samuel prayed to the Lord, and the Lord told him to do as the
people had asked him to do, for they had not rejected him as judge, but
the Lord as their King, and now they must learn what kind of a king
would reign over them. So Samuel told them what they must be ready to
do for their King, for a king was often a hard master, and ruled his
people cruelly, taking the best of their fields, and their harvests,
and their flocks for themselves, and the finest of their sons and
daughters to be his servants; but they said,
"We will have a king over us, that we may be like other nations, and
that our king may judge us, and go out before us and fight our battles."
When Samuel told these things to the Lord he said, "Make them a king,"
and Samuel sent the people to their own cities.
Samuel did not choose a king for the people himself, but he waited for
the Lord to send him the man He had chosen, and the Lord said to him as
he went to a city called Zeph, to hold a sacrifice,
"To-morrow about this time I will send thee a man from the land of
Benjamin, and thou shalt anoint him to be captain over my people
Israel."
On the next day as Samuel came out to go up to the hill of sacrifice he
met a tall, noble looking young man, who, with his servant, was looking
for the lost asses of his father, Kish, the Benjaminite. He had come
far, and had heard that Samuel, the seer was in that place, and he
hoped he would tell him where to go for the asses that were lost.
Samuel knew from the Lord that this was the man God had chosen, so he
told him to go up with him to the sacrifice, and the next day he would
let him go.
He told him that he need not be troubled about the asses, for they were
found, but the desire of Israel was set upon him. Saul, for that was
his name, did not understand him until he was invited to feast with
thirty of the chief men, and Samuel had talked with him upon the
house-top. Early the next morning they both rose and went out of the
city, and while Saul sent his servant on before, Samuel anointed Saul
with oil, and kissed him saying, that the Lord had anointed him to be
Captain over his inheritance.
As a sign that the Lord had done it, he told Saul three things that
would happen to him on the way home, and charged him to go to Gilgal,
where he would meet him and sacrifice to the Lord for seven days. As
Saul turned to leave the prophet, God gave him another heart, and all
the signs came to pass that day.
At Mizpah Samuel called all the tribes together, that the man who was
to be their king, might be chosen in their sight, and when Saul, the
son of Kish, the Benjaminite was chosen he could not be found; he had
hidden from the people; but when they brought him out before them, he
was taller than any of the people from his shoulders up, and looked a
king indeed. For the first time in all their history they cried,
"God save the King!"
Then Saul went home, and there went with him a body of men whose hearts
God had touched, while Samuel wrote in a book the order of the kingdom
and laid it up before the Lord.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE SHEPHERD BOY OF BETHLEHEM.
After Saul had been king of Israel for a few years, Samuel was deeply
troubled about him, for he had hoped that he would be as truly a king
as he looked, but he had a strange and wilful spirit that led him to
turn away from the counsel of the Lord and follow his own way.
Samuel had been grieved again and again by Saul's rashness, until at
last he said to him when he had taken the spoil of the enemy to
sacrifice to the Lord,
"To obey is better than sacrifice; because thou hast rejected the word
of the Lord, He hath also rejected thee from being king," and he went
to his house and mourned over Saul, for he had loved him.
At last the Lord told Samuel to cease from mourning for Saul, for He
had rejected him, but to fill his horn with oil, and go to Bethlehem
where Jesse lived, for He had chosen one of the sons of Jesse to be
king in place of Saul.
Samuel went to Bethlehem leading a heifer, as the Lord had told him to
do, that he might hold a sacrifice. He told the elders of the city to
make ready for the sacrifice, and when he had found the house of Jesse,
he called him and his sons. Jesse was the grandson of Ruth and Boaz,
and owned the fields, no doubt, where Ruth gleaned. When Samuel saw
Eliab, the son of Jesse, he said:
"Surely the Lord's anointed is before Him," but the Lord said:
"Look not on his countenance or on the height of his stature, because I
have refused him, for the Lord seeth not as man seeth, for man looketh
on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart."
Then Jesse called Abinidab, but Samuel said:
"The Lord hath not chosen this." Then he made Shammah to pass before
him, but Samuel said:
"Neither hath the Lord chosen this."
Jesse made seven of his sons to pass before Samuel, but Samuel said:
"The Lord hath not chosen these."
"Are here all thy children?" said Samuel.
"There remaineth yet the youngest, and he keepeth the sheep," Jesse
replied. Then Samuel said:
"Send and fetch him, for we will not sit down till he come hither."
So Jesse sent out into the sheepfolds on the hillsides outside the city
to bring the lad David in. What did the boy think when he found his
father and his brothers waiting, with the old prophet in the midst?
What did it mean that the eye of the seer was set upon him, as were the
eyes of all in the house?
[Illustration: The young shepherd boy]
Samuel saw a noble youth, "ruddy, and of a beautiful countenance, and
goodly to look to." He had been told that he must not look on the
outward appearance "for the Lord seeth not as man seeth," and so he
waited a little until the Lord said:
"Arise, anoint him, for this is he." Then he took the horn of oil, and
anointed him in the midst of his brethren, and the spirit of the Lord
came upon David from that day forward, and Samuel went back to his
house in Ramah.
It may be that his father and his brothers did not understand that the
boy had been called to be king over Israel, but a new spirit of wisdom,
and love, and strength came upon David, and though he went back to his
father's flocks with no thought of being greater than his brothers, he
went with a new song in his heart which he sang to the little harp he
had made while watching the sheep. Long after when he was King of
Israel, he made in memory of these days the beautiful Psalm to be sung
in the temple beginning,
"The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want."
CHAPTER XX.
THE POWER OF A PEBBLE.
Saul the sullen was still king over Israel, although he had departed
from the Lord, and in His sight he was no longer a king. He was very
gloomy and dark in his mind, for he had driven the Lord's spirit away,
and his light was gone.
His servants tried to amuse him, and told him of David, the son of
Jesse, who was a skillful player on the harp, and a brave and handsome
youth. So Saul sent for David, and David, bringing presents from his
father, came to the king's house.
Saul was greatly pleased with David, and asked Jesse to let his son
stay with him, for when the evil spirit was upon him, if David played
upon his harp the darkness left him. But this did not last, and after
a while David went back to his flocks, and Saul forgot him.
Then the Philistines rose against Israel again. Their camp was on a
mountain side, and Saul gathered his warriors on the side of another
mountain and there was a valley between them.
Out of the Philistine camp a giant came one day, Goliath of Gath. He
talked loud and often in order to terrify the Israelites, asking them
to send out a man to fight with him, but he was not truly brave, for he
had carefully covered his great body with armor of brass, so that no
spear or sword could touch him. He defied Israel every morning and
evening for forty days, and no one was found who would dare to go out
alone to fight him. David's elder brothers were in camp, and Jesse,
their father, called David from the flocks to take food to them. He
found the army of Israel ready to go into battle, but Goliath came out
as he had done each day and defied the Israelites, who ran in terror at
the sight of him. The spirit of David was moved at this, and he said:
"Who is this Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living
God?" "The man who killeth him," said one, "the King will enrich him,
and, will give him his daughter and make his father's house free in
Israel."
Then Eliab, David's eldest brother, spoke sternly to David asking him
why he had left his sheep to come down and see the battle, and called
him naughty and proud, but David still talked with the men, for the
spirit of the Lord was strong within him. When Saul heard of him and
sent for him, David said:
"Let no man's heart fail because of him; thy servant will go and fight
with the Philistine."
Saul frowned at David and said:
"Thou art not able to go against this Philistine; thou art but a youth,
and he is a man of war."
Then David told the king how he had killed both a lion and a bear that
had come down upon his father's flocks, and that he could also conquer
the Philistine.
"The Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and the paw of
the bear," said David, "He will deliver me out of the hand of this
Philistine." And Saul said: "Go! and the Lord be with thee." Then
Saul armed David with his own armor, but David said:
"I can not go with these, for I have not proved them," and he put them
off.
And this was the way David armed himself to meet the giant.
He took his staff in hand, and chose five smooth stones from the brook
and put them in his shepherd's bag, and with his sling in his hand, he
drew near to the giant. Goliath came on also, his armor-bearer
carrying the shield before him, but when he saw the youth David, he
despised him, for he was without armor, or sword or spear, only his
staff.
"Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with a staff," said Goliath, and
then he told him that he would soon give his flesh to the birds and the
beasts.
"Thou comest to me with a sword, and a spear, and a shield," said
David, "but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of Hosts, the God of
the armies of Israel whom thou hast despised."
Then the Philistine came down upon little David to destroy him, and
David ran, not away from him, as the men of Israel had done, but
straight toward him, taking a pebble from his shepherd's bag as he ran.
Quickly putting it in the sling, he whirled it in the air once, twice,
and then it went swift and straight to the mark. It sunk into the
forehead of the giant, and he fell dead upon his face. Then David ran
and stood upon the dead Philistine and cut off his head with the
giant's great sword, and when the Philistines saw that their champion
was really dead, they fled, pursued by the shouting hosts of Israel.
[Illustration: David cutting off Goliath's head]
Saul had forgotten the youth who played upon the harp before him, for
when he sent for him after the battle he said,
"Whose son art thou, thou young man?" and David answered,
"I am the son of thy servant Jesse, the Bethlehemite."
And Saul took him to live with him from that day.
CHAPTER XXI.
FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH.
Saul had a son named Jonathan, and he loved David as his own soul. He
took off his princely robes, even to his sword, and his bow, and his
girdle, and made David wear them; and David acted wisely in all that
the king gave him to do. There was great joy and much feasting over
the Death of Goliath and the flight of the Philistines, and wherever
Saul went, the women came out of the cities to meet him, singing and
dancing, and the song with which they answered one another was,
"Saul hath slain his thousands,
And David his tens of thousands."
Saul did not like this, and an evil spirit of jealousy came upon him,
and he thought, "What can he have more but the kingdom."
The next day the evil spirit came upon Saul in the house, and David
played on his harp to quiet him, but Saul hurled a spear at David,
hoping to fasten him to the wall with it. This he did twice, but the
Lord guided the spear away from David, just as he guided the pebble to
Goliath, and he was unhurt. Saul was afraid of David. He was afraid
that God was preparing him to be king over Israel, so he sent him into
battle, hoping he would be killed, but the life of David was in the
Lord's hand, and no enemy could destroy it.
After a great battle, in which David had been victorious, the evil
spirit came again upon Saul, as he sat in his house with his spear in
his hand, while David played on the harp. Again he tried to kill
David, but the spear struck the wall and David slipped away.
[Illustration: The spear struck the wall]
It was clear that David could not live near the king, and so he talked
with Jonathan, his friend, who said,
"God forbid, thou shalt not die," but David said,
"Truly there is but a step between me and death."
Then they made a promise to each other before the Lord that should last
while they lived. They promised to show "the kindness of the Lord" to
each other while life should last.
Jonathan told David that he might go away for three days, and they went
out into a field together. They feared the anger of Saul when he found
that David was absent from the feast of the new moon. So Jonathan told
David to return after three days and hide behind a great rock in the
field. Then Jonathan said he would come out and shoot three arrows
from his bow, as if he were shooting at a mark, and he would send his
arrow-bearer to pick them up. If he should call to the lad, "The
arrows are on this side of thee," David would know that Saul was not
angry, and would not hurt him, but if he cried, "The arrows are beyond
thee," David would know he was in danger and must go away.
On the second day of the feast, Saul asked why David was not there, and
Jonathan told him he had asked permission to go away for three days.
Then Saul was very angry. He blamed his son for loving David, for, as
Saul's son, Jonathan should be king after his death, but he never would
be if David lived, and he commanded Jonathan to bring him that he might
put him to death. When Jonathan asked what evil David had done that he
should be put to death, Saul cast his spear at his own son. Then
Jonathan knew there was no hope for David, and left the table in sorrow.
The next day he went out to the rock in the field with his armor-bearer
and sent him on before. When he shot an arrow, he cried:
"The arrow is beyond thee; make haste! stay not!"
And David, in his hiding place heard it, and knew that he must flee for
his life.
Then Jonathan gave his bow and arrows to the lad to take to the town,
and David came out from his hiding place, and they kissed each other
and wept together. But at last Jonathan said:
"Go in peace: as we have sworn both of us in the name of the Lord,
saying, The Lord be between me and thee, and between my children and
thy children forever."
And David went away to hide from Saul, and Jonathan went back to the
king's house.
For seven years Saul hunted for David to take his life, and David,
often hiding in caves in the wilderness, could not see his friend
Jonathan, but they were faithful in their friendship, and when at last
Saul was slain in battle, and Jonathan also, David came to mourn over
his friend, saying:
"I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou
been unto me; thy love for me was wonderful, passing the love of women."
CHAPTER XXII.
DAVID THE OUTCAST.
For seven years King Saul hunted David from one end of the land of
Israel to the other. The evil spirit of jealousy and hate had full
possession of him, and David, with a few faithful men, was driven from
one stronghold to another, until he cried, "They gather themselves
together; they hide themselves; they mark my steps when they wait for
my soul. What time I am afraid I will trust in thee."
He had escaped again and again from the hand of Saul, and now he was
down in the desert country by the Dead Sea, hiding among the cliffs and
caves of Engedi. Saul heard of it and took three thousand men to hunt
for him among the rocks of the wild goats. He was very tired after
climbing the rocks, and seeing a cave, he went in to lie down for a
little sleep. He did not know that David and his men were in the cave
hiding in the dark sides of it. Then his men whispered to David:
"Behold the day of which the Lord said unto thee: 'I will deliver thine
enemy into thine hand that thou mayest do to him as it shall seem good
to thee.'" Then David arose and crept near to Saul, and--did he kill
the man who had so often tried to kill him?
No, he bent down and cut off a part of Saul's robe. Even this seemed
wrong to David.
[Illustration: The garment of Saul]
"The Lord forbid that I should do this thing unto my master," he said
"to stretch forth my hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the
Lord," and in this way he kept his servants from harming Saul, and
after Saul awoke he went out of the cave.
David also went out of the cave and cried,
"My Lord the King!"
And when Saul turned David bowed down to him and asked him why he
listened to men who said that he wished to harm the king, and then he
told him how the Lord had given him into his hand in the cave, but he
would not touch the Lord's anointed to harm him.
"See, my father," he cried "see the skirt of thy robe in my hand. I
have not sinned against thee, yet thou huntest my soul to take it."
Much more he said, and asked the Lord to judge between them, and Saul's
hard heart was moved so that he wept aloud.
"Is this thy voice, my son David," he said, "Thou art more righteous
than I, for thou hast rewarded me good, whereas I have rewarded thee
evil," and he made a covenant with David. For though he made no
promise to spare David's life, he made David promise to spare the life
of his children when he should be made king.
But a year was hardly past before the evil spirit was again upon Saul,
and he went out with three thousand men to hunt for David. Saul's camp
was on a hill, and David saw where it was. At night he took Abishai,
one of his warriors, and went down from the cliffs to Saul's camp,
where Saul lay sleeping in a trench, and the spear stuck in the ground
by his pillow, while all his men lay around him. Abishai wished to
strike him through with the spear, but David said,
"Destroy him not, for who can stretch forth his hand against the Lord's
anointed and be guiltless? The Lord shall smite him, or his day shall
come to die, or he shall fall in battle and perish; but take thou now
the spear that is at his pillow, and the cruse of water, and let us go."
And they took them and went away. A deep sleep had fallen upon the
camp of Saul from the Lord, so that no one saw them.
Then David went up to his stronghold, and from the top of the cliff he
cried to Abner, the captain of Saul's men, and asked why he had not
defended his Master, and where was the king's spear, and his cruse of
water?
Then Saul cried as before,
"Is this thy voice, my son David?"
"It is my voice, my lord, O King," said David, and again he plead his
cause with his old enemy, but who could trust to the repentance of
Saul? He cried,
"I have sinned; return, my son David, for I will no more do thee harm,
because my soul was precious in thine eyes this day. I have played the
fool, and erred exceedingly."
But David trusted him no more, and went and made friends with a
Philistine prince that he might live within their borders.
Samuel the prophet was dead, and there was no one to give counsel to
the darkened soul of the King when trouble fell upon him. The
Philistines had come with a great army, but Saul was afraid, for the
Lord's spirit was not with him. He tried to seek the Lord through the
priests, and through dreams, but the Lord answered him not. Then he
went to a witch by night, and asked her to bring up the spirit of
Samuel. The witch could not bring up Samuel, but the Lord sent him to
speak to Saul, and the woman cried out with terror when she saw the
prophet of the Lord, and knew also that it was the King who had called
for him.
"I am sore distressed," said Saul, "and God is departed from me. What
shall I do?"
Then Samuel told him plainly that the kingdom was taken from him and
given to David, and that on the next day he and his sons should fall in
battle, and the Israelites into the hands of the Philistines.
Saul, forsaken and despairing, fell to the earth fainting, but was
revived by the woman, who gave him food so that he went away through
the dark to the camp of Israel.
In the battle of the next day the Philistines conquered. The three
sons of Saul were slain, and Saul himself, when chased by the
Philistines, fell upon his own sword and died.
When a messenger brought news of the battle to David he rent his
clothes for grief, and in the chant of lamentation that he made, he
mourned for his faithful friend Jonathan, and had no word of blame for
his enemy Saul, neither did he triumph over him.
CHAPTER XXIII.
EVERY INCH A KING.
After Saul's death David came back to live with his own people, for he
was of the tribe of Judah. He went to Hebron, the old home of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, for the Lord had told him to go there, and the men of
his tribe came to Hebron and anointed him king. The other tribes did
not come, for Saul's son and the captain of his host, Abner, were still
holding the kingdom. But when both were killed by an enemy, then all
the other tribes came to Hebron and made a league with him, so seven
years after Saul's death David became king over all Israel. He was
then thirty years old and his reign lasted forty years.
Then David began to establish the kingdom. There was a rocky height
not far from Hebron with a valley all around it that was still held by
the Jebusites, one of the tribes of Canaan that the Lord said must not
be left in the land. The city was Jerusalem, and the stronghold was
Zion, and close by Zion was the mount to which Abraham had once gone to
offer up Isaac. David wanted this stronghold for the chief city of the
kingdom, and so he took it, and it became the city of David. He built
a beautiful house for himself there, and King Hiram of Tyre sent
skilled workmen, and cedar trees, and they built a house of cedar for
him. But stronger than the wish to have a house for himself was the
longing to see the Ark of God set within the curtains of the Tabernacle
in the city of David. It had been in the house of Abinadab in
Kirjath-Jearim for seventy years, ever since it was sent home by the
Philistines who captured it. Because the people had grown cold toward
God, they did not wish to hear the reading of the law, or be led by his
counsel. Now David called together the flower of all Israel, thirty
thousand men, and they went to bring the Ark to the city of David.
While on the way a man who had laid his hand upon the Ark when it was
unsteady was smitten and died, for no one but the priests and Levites
could touch the Ark of God. David feared to bring it further, and so
he placed it in the house of Obededom which was near by. It was there
three months, and great blessing came to the house because of it. When
David heard this he went joyfully down to bring the Ark to his city,
and it was with sacrifices, and shouting, and the sound of trumpet that
it was brought and set in the Tabernacle that had been made ready for
it. And so the worship of the Lord was established in Jerusalem, which
was to be the great altar for the sacrificial worship until the
sacrifice should be taken away, and the kingdom of Christ established
on the earth.
But David was not satisfied.
"See," he said to Nathan the prophet, "I dwell in a house of cedar, but
the Ark of God dwelleth within curtains."
That night the Lord spoke to Nathan and told him what to say to the
king. He promised to establish the royal house of David, and give
final peace to the people, and also to build a house for the worship of
the Lord, but he said that David's son, who should be king after him,
should build a house to his name, and of him the Lord said, "I will be
his Father, and he shall be my son."
Then King David went in to the Tabernacle and thanked the Lord for His
promise to him and to his son, and asked His blessing upon them.
Though he reigned forty years, he never forgot that his work was not to
build the temple of the Lord, but to prepare for it. So he subdued
enemies, built cities, made leagues with friendly nations, gathered
much wealth of wood, and stone, and gold, and silver and precious
stones for the house of the Lord, and trained choirs of singers for the
service. He also kept his heart open toward the Lord, so that he was
able to write some wonderful poems that were set to music and sung by
the temple choirs. We call them the Psalms of David.
Though David had grown rich and great, he did not forget his promise to
Jonathan. He called Ziba, who had been Saul's servant and said to him,
"Is there not yet any of the house of Saul that I may show the kindness
of God to him?"
Then Ziba told him of a man who was lame in both his feet, who was the
son of Jonathan. David sent for him, and gave him all the land of
Saul, and a place was made for him at the king's table among his own
sons, and it was his while he lived.
CHAPTER XXIV.
DAVID'S SIN.
The army of Israel was at war with the Ammonites, and Joab was the
chief captain. David did not go out with the army, but stayed in his
house in Jerusalem. One evening he was walking on the flat roof of his
house, as the people of that country always do, and he saw a little way
off a very beautiful woman. He sent a servant to ask who she was, and
found she was the wife of Uriah who was in the army with Joab, fighting
the Ammonites. Then a great temptation was set before David, and
instead of going to the Lord to be saved from it, he sent to Joab,
asking him to send him Uriah, the Hittite. So Uriah came, and David
talked kindly with him, and found him a good and faithful man. When he
went back to Joab he took a letter from David, who asked that he be set
in the front of the battle. So Joab placed him there, and when the two
armies met Uriah was killed, and Joab sent a messenger to tell David.
After her mourning was ended, Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, became the
wife of David, but the Lord was displeased with David. He also knew
David's heart and how to deal with him, so he sent Nathan the prophet
to him.
"There were two men in one city," said Nathan, "one of them rich and
the other poor. The rich man had many flocks and herds, but the poor
man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and
nourished up; and it grew together with him and with his children: it
did eat of his own meat and drink of his own cup, and lay in his bosom
and was unto him as a daughter. And there came a traveller unto the
rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock to dress for the
wayfaring man that was come to him, but took the poor man's lamb and
dressed it for the man that was come to him."
David was very angry at the man who could do such a cruel thing, and he
said to Nathan,
"The man that hath done this thing shall surely die; and he shall
restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he
had no pity."
Then Nathan said to David, "Thou art the man," and he told him how
greatly the Lord had blessed him in making him King over Israel, and in
delivering him from the hand of Saul, and how he had slain a faithful
servant and taken his wife for himself; therefore evil would befall him.
David said, "I have sinned against the Lord," and the Lord saw that his
repentance was real, and forgave the sin, but that David might never
forget and sin again, the Lord took the little child that was born to
him and to Bathsheba. While it was sick David fasted and lay all night
upon the earth, and would not rise to taste food. This he did for
seven days while the little child was sick, but when they told him that
his child was dead he arose and bathed and dressed himself and went to
the house of the Lord to worship, and returned to take his food. Then
his servants wondered at it, and replied,
"While the child was yet alive I fasted and wept, for I said, who can
tell whether God will be gracious unto me that the child may live. But
now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? Can I bring him back again?
I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me."
After this another child was born to Bathsheba, and they named him
Solomon, which means "Peaceable."
And David wrote a prayer of repentance for his sin. It is the
fifty-first Psalm, and has been the prayer of penitent souls for nearly
three thousand years.
CHAPTER XXV.
DAVID'S SORROW.
David had a very beautiful son named Absalom. From the crown of his
head to the soles of his feet there was no fault to be seen in him.
His hair was thick and long, and his beauty was much talked of through
all Israel. But the Lord who looks upon the heart saw that the heart
of Absalom was wicked and false. He killed his brother Amnon, and then
fled to another country and stayed three years. When he returned he
tried to see his father, but David would not see him for two years.
Then Absalom forced Joab to bring him to the king's house by setting
Joab's barley field on fire. He was false as well as handsome, and won
his father's heart by pretending to be humble.
After this Absalom began to live more like a king than a prince. He
had fifty men to run before his chariot when he rode, and he stood in
the city gates and talked with the men who came to see the king about
their rights. He told them that if he were ruler over the land every
man should have all that he wanted, and deceived many by a false show
of friendship.
Then he asked the king if he could go to Hebron to pay a vow to the
Lord by offering sacrifice there, and David told him to go in peace,
and he went. But he had cruelly deceived his father. He had sent
spies through all the land to persuade them to join him at Hebron and
make him king. He also took two hundred men out of Jerusalem to help
him, and one of them was David's counsellor. They had arranged to have
all the people, as soon as they heard anywhere the sound of the
trumpet, to cry,
"Absalom is king in Hebron."
Then it came to the ears of David that his people had been led away by
deceit to follow Absalom, and David, who had been fearless before
Goliath and before great armies of other nations, was afraid. His
heart was broken at the treachery of his son, and he said to his
servants,
"Arise, and let us flee; make haste and go, for fear Absalom may come
and fight against the city with the sword."
His servants were ready to fight for him, but he fled in haste over the
brook Kedron and went toward the wilderness, with all of the people of
the city with him, until there was a great multitude, and in the midst
the priests and the Levites bearing the Ark of God, but when David saw
this he said,
"Carry back the Ark of God into the city. If I shall find favor in the
eyes of the Lord He will bring me again. Let Him do to me as seemeth
good to Him."
So the priests and the Levites returned to the city with the Ark of God.
It was a sad procession that went over the Mount of Olives led by
David, weeping as he went, with his head covered and his feet bare.
Some enemies of the house of Saul came out and troubled him by the way,
but there was no anger in the heart of David toward any. He believed
the hand of the Lord was upon him, and he said,
"It may be the Lord will look on mine affliction."
Absalom came to Jerusalem, and while he was asking his chief counsellor
what to do, he was persuaded by a friend of David, who had stayed
behind, to wait until he had gathered a larger army before he followed
after David. This gave him time to send word to David to cross over
Jordan before Absalom should overtake him. The chief counsellor, when
he saw that his advice was not followed, went to his own house and
hanged himself, for he knew that the Lord was bringing his counsel to
naught.
After David had passed over into Gilead the people of that land brought
food, and dishes, and beds to the sorrowful king and his tired people,
and they were cared for in the city of Mahanaim. Then Joab, the
captain, gathered the men together to go and meet Absalom and his army,
and as they passed out of the city David stood in the gate and charged
all the captains as they passed, saying
"Deal gently, for my sake, with the young man, even with Absalom."
So they went out to battle, and it was in a wood. God had given
David's army the victory, and twenty thousand men of Absalom's army
were slain. Absalom, who rode on a mule, was caught by his long thick
hair in the branches of an oak tree, and the mule went away and left
him hanging there.
A man ran and told Joab that he had seen Absalom hanging in an oak.
"Why didst thou not smite him there?" said Joab.
The man said he would not have done it for a thousand shekels of
silver, because David had charged them all not to touch the young man
Absalom.
But Joab turned away, and when he had found Absalom in the oak, he,
with the ten young men who were with him, killed Absalom, and they
buried him in the wood.
[Illustration: The death of Absalom]
Then Joab sent two messengers to carry news of the victory to the king,
who sat between the city gates, while a watchman stood over the gates
on the city wall. When the watchmen saw the two men running, one after
the other, he cried out and told the king. The first man cried as he
came, "All is well," but when the king said, "Is the young man Absalom
safe?" he could not answer, and when the second messenger cried,
"Tidings, my lord, the king," again David asked,
"Is the young man Absalom safe?"
"The enemies of my lord the king and all that rise against thee to do
thee hurt be as that young man," said the messenger.
Then the king went up to the room over the city gate and wept, and as
he went he cried,
"O my son Absalom! my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for
thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!"
[Illustration: David mourning for Absalom]
The people who had come back joyful because the enemy had been
conquered were distressed by the grief of the king, so that Joab
persuaded David to come down to the gate and meet the people.
After this those who were left of the followers of Absalom begged the
king to come back to Jerusalem, and so he came, and thousands came to
meet him. He had only forgiving words for those who had injured him,
and for Barzillai and the men of Gilead who had fed them and shown them
great kindness in the darkest hour of the king's life, and who came a
little way on the journey with them, he had grateful words and
blessings.
And so the king came to his own again. He was now getting to be an old
man, and the love of his people made his last days blessed.
His warriors said, "Thou shalt go no more out with us to battle, that
thou quench not the light of Israel."
Once he sinned against the Lord by numbering his people. He wanted to
know how many men in his kingdom could bear arms in battle, and he
forgot that victory over the enemy was not with the many or the few,
but with the Lord, who is the strength of his people. When he saw that
he had done wrong he confessed it and begged for forgiveness, but a
pestilence spread over all the land, and came near to Jerusalem, and
the angel was stayed by the Lord's hand just over the threshing floor
of Araunah. This was the broad flat top of Mount Moriah where long
before Abraham had built an altar on which to offer Isaac.
When David saw the angel he said,
"I have done wickedly, but these sheep, what have they done? Let Thine
hand, I pray thee, be against me, and against my father's house."
Then the prophet Gad said, "Go up, rear an altar to the Lord in the
threshing-floor of Araunah," and David went as the Lord commanded.
When they reached the mount Araunah offered David the piece of ground
with the oxen for a sacrifice, but he would not take them as a gift.
"But I will surely buy it of thee at a price," said David, "neither
will I offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God of that which doth cost
me nothing."
So he bought the piece of ground and paid for it six hundred shekels of
gold. Twice had the Lord blessed this spot with a miracle of
salvation, and twice an altar had been built there, and looking upon
it, David said,
"This is the house of the Lord God, and this is the altar of burnt
offering for Israel," and he prepared to build there the temple of
Solomon,--the altar of the world.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE BUILDING OF THE GOLDEN HOUSE.
The time was near when David must leave his people and go to his God,
and his chief thought was about the house of the Lord that he had
longed to build, that the Ark of God might be at rest, and that the
people might have a place of worship for all time to come. He knew
that his son Solomon was to build the temple, but he was still young,
and David made ready as far as he could for the building of the house.
There were men at work in the quarries, cutting great stones, and there
were men in the forests of Lebanon cutting and hewing cedars, and
others gathering iron and brass, and gold, and silver for the treasury
of David. He also spent much time dividing the sons of Levi into
companies, so that they could in turn serve with the priests in the
temple, and ordering the times and manner of service, for he believed
that this temple would be a house of prayer for all nations. David had
been a man of war, for he had been called to destroy idol worship in
the land of Canaan, and to make it the land of Israel, in which the one
true God should be worshipped forever, but Solomon's reign was to be
one of peace, and the Lord chose a man of peace to build his house.
David had another son, Adonijah, who tried to make himself king as
Absalom did, but David heard of it, and had Solomon proclaimed king
before his own death, lest trouble should arise after. When Adonijah
heard the shouts of the people, and the sound of the trumpets he was
afraid, and expected Solomon would kill him, but Solomon said if he
would only show himself a good man no harm should come to him.
The last things that David did were to call his princes and chief men
together and tell them that the Lord had promised many years before,
that Solomon should build the house of the Lord during his reign; and
also that his children's children should rule over Israel, and he
begged them to keep the Lord's commandments, that they might keep the
good land that had been given them.
He also charged Solomon before them all to serve God with all his
heart, but if he failed to do so he would be cast off forever.
David gave Solomon all the plans and patterns for the house of the
Lord, as the Lord had given them to him; also the gold and silver
stored up for time of building. He also told the people, when he had
called them together, what he had stored for the work of the temple,
and asked them who were willing to give also. Then the people brought
gifts, as they did when the Tabernacle was built, and gave them to the
Lord. David led them in a great thanksgiving service, and they offered
three thousand sacrifices.
Solomon was again anointed king in the presence of all Israel, and took
the throne of David; and David died, honored and loved by his people,
and he was buried in his own city.
When Solomon went to Gibeon to sacrifice the Lord came to him in a
dream and said,
"Ask what I shall give thee."
Solomon was wiser than all the sons of David, and yet he did not feel
himself to be so. He said,
"I am but a little child; I know not how to go out or come in, and thy
servant is in the midst of a great people that cannot be numbered.
Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people,
that I may discern between good and bad, for who is able to judge this
thy so great a people."
And the Lord said,
"Because thou hast asked this thing, and hast not asked for thyself
long life, neither riches, nor the life of thine enemies, lo, I have
given thee a wise and understanding heart, and I have also given thee
that which thou hast not asked--both riches and honor; and if thou wilt
walk in my ways as thy father David did, then I will lengthen thy days."
The Lord was true to his word. Solomon had wisdom, beyond all the old
and the learned men of his kingdom, and many came to him for counsel
who were not of Israel, for he was famous among the nations. Some of
these nations wished to be ruled by him, and brought him many precious
things as gifts; they had been conquered by David, and now they wished
to be ruled by Solomon. He had thousands of servants and he knew how
to direct their work. Away up in the mountains of Lebanon they worked
with the servants of Hiram, King of Tyre, getting the cedar timbers
ready for the temple, while Hiram's artisans in gold, and silver, and
brass, and fine linen came to Jerusalem to work on the temple, and
Solomon sent Hiram wheat, and olive oil, and wine. So wise were the
workers in stone and wood that when the temple was built there was no
sound of a hammer or any tool heard on Mount Moriah. Each stone was
ready to fit into its place, and each piece of wood to fit another.
The house was not like any that we have ever seen. It was not large,
but it was very precious. The cedar boards that lined the walls were
carved in flower patterns, and covered with gold. The floor also was
covered with gold. He divided the temple in two parts, as the
Tabernacle had been, with a rich curtain of blue and purple and
crimson. The innermost room was called the most holy place, and was
for the Ark, and its walls were beautiful with cherubim, and palm
trees, and flowers, overlaid with gold, as was the floor also. Within
this most holy place stood two cherubim fifteen feet high. They were
of olive wood covered with gold, and they stood with wings spread forth
so that they touched each other, and also touched the wall on either
side, and their wings overshadowed the mercy seat where the Ark of the
Lord was to rest. All the carvings upon wood were covered with gold,
and precious stones were set among them for light and beauty.
Solomon's workmen made two great pillars of brass to stand before the
house, and a great brass altar for the burnt offerings. They also made
ten basins of brass that were set upon wheels, and one very great one
called the "sea" which stood on twelve brass oxen.
They also made many things for the use of the temple--candlesticks, and
spoons, and censers all of pure gold, and there was also a golden altar
and a golden table.
Solomon was seven years building the house of the Lord, and when it was
finished, and its outer courts made ready, he called all the elders and
chief men of Israel together to carry the Ark of God to its place. So
the Ark, borne by the priests, and holding the tables of the law, was
carried into the most holy place, and set under the wings of the
cherubim. After the priests came out a cloud filled the house of the
Lord so that the priests could not go in. It was the glory of the
presence of the Lord.
Then Solomon stood before all the people and gave thanks to God and
asked him to take the temple for his own house to dwell in, and
kneeling down, he prayed that wherever the children of Israel might be,
at home, or captives in a strange land, that the Lord would hear them
when they prayed toward his house, and that all prayer offered in it
might be heard and answered
Then fire from heaven fell upon the great altar, and the sacrifice was
consumed, and all over the great pavement of the court the people bowed
and worshipped the Lord, saying, "For He is good, and His mercy
endureth forever."
There were offerings and feasting for fourteen days, and then the
people went to their homes to think of the wonderful things they had
seen. And there were sacrifices offered morning and evening each day,
on the Sabbath, and at the three great feasts of the year--the feast of
the passover, the feast of the harvest, and the feast of tabernacles.
Solomon also built a wonderful house for himself, and another called
the "house of the forest of Lebanon," where he kept his armor. The
roof was upheld by cedars of Lebanon, standing like mighty pillars
beneath it. So famous did his work and his wisdom become that a queen
from a distant land called Sheba came to visit him. She came with a
caravan of servants and camels bringing costly presents of spices, and
gold, and precious stones. She asked him many things that she had
longed to know, and he answered all her questions, and told her strange
and wonderful things, so that after she had seen all his palace, and
his servants, and the service of his table, and the beautiful ascent by
which he went up to the temple, she said that the half had never been
told her in her own country. They exchanged costly presents, and she
went back to her own land.
[Illustration: The Queen of Sheba before Solomon]
Solomon had many ships upon the sea that brought riches from every land
He learned much of the world in this way, and as he grew older and from
his throne of gold and ivory judged his people, he dropped many wise
sayings that were written in a book by the scribes and are now called
the "Proverbs of Solomon."
But in Solomon's latter days his wives, who were daughters of heathen
kings, turned his heart from the Lord. When his father sinned he
repented at once, and his heart never turned to idols, but with all his
wisdom, Solomon was weak of will, and built temples for his wives to
worship idols in.
The Lord had made a promise to David that his sons should inherit the
throne, and He kept the promise, but he allowed the kingdom to be
divided. The two tribes who lived near to Jerusalem--Judah and
Benjamin--were left to Solomon's son Rehoboam, but the ten tribes chose
a man named Jeroboam to be their king. The men of Rehoboam, led by
their king, went out to fight with the ten tribes, but the Lord would
not let them. He spoke to them through a prophet and they went home.
So now there were two kings in Israel, and Rehoboam's kingdom was
called the kingdom of Judah, and that of Jeroboam was called the
kingdom of Israel; but after the kingdom was divided no kings ever
reigned who could be compared with David and Solomon.
CHAPTER XXVII.
ELIJAH THE GREAT HEART OF ISRAEL.
During the reign of Jehoshaphat, fourth king of Judah, and Ahab, sixth
king of Israel, after the division of the kingdom, there came out of
Gilead Elijah, a prophet of the Lord. Two of the kings of Judah, and
all of the kings of Israel had been wicked men, and the Lord sent
Elijah to Ahab, king of Israel, to tell him that there should be no
rain for years in the land of Israel, and then only as Elijah should
ask for it. Ahab was more wicked than the kings that reigned before
him, and had built a temple for the god Baal in Samaria.
Because he would seek to destroy Elijah, the Lord told His prophet to
go to the brook Cherith that ran into the Jordan, and there He would
take care of him. "Thou shalt drink of the brook, and I have commanded
the ravens to feed thee there," said the Lord.
And so it was. Morning and evening the ravens came bringing bread and
meat, and the brook brought him water out of the rock, but as there was
no rain, the brook at last dried up, and there was a great famine.
[Illustration: Ravens bringing food to Elijah]
Then Elijah was told to go to Zarephath, for a woman there had been
told to feed him, and he went at once. As he came near the city gate
he saw a woman gathering sticks, and he asked her to bring him a cup of
water and a little bread. She told him that she had but a handful of
meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse, and she was going to
bake it for herself and son, that they might eat it and die.
Then Elijah said, "Fear not; go and do as thou hast said, but make me
thereof a little cake first, and after that make for thee and thy son,
for thus saith the Lord God of Israel, 'The barrel of meal shall not
waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail until the day that the Lord
sendeth rain upon the earth.'"
She believed Elijah, and did as he commanded, and they ate for a whole
year, and the meal and the oil lasted all that time.
After this the woman's son grew very sick, so very sick that he
appeared to be dead, and the woman cried to the prophet in her distress,
"O thou man of God, art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance
and to slay my son?"
Then he said, "Give me thy son," and he took him up to his own room and
laid him upon his bed and prayed over him. Then he stretched himself
upon the child three times and cried,
"O Lord my God, I pray Thee let this child's soul come unto him again!"
And God heard Elijah, and the soul of the child came to him again, and
he revived.
Then he gave the boy to his happy and grateful mother, saying, "See,
thy son liveth."
In the third year of the famine the Lord said to Elijah,
"Go, show thyself to Ahab, and I will send rain on the earth."
As Elijah went he met a good man named Obadiah, who was governor of the
king's house. This man worshipped the Lord, and when Ahab's wicked
wife, Jezebel, tried to kill all the Lord's prophets he hid a hundred
of them in two caves and kept them alive with bread and water. He was
seeking grass and water for the king's horses, and when he saw Elijah
he fell on his face and said,
"Art thou my Lord Elijah?"
"I am," said Elijah, "go, tell thy lord, 'Behold, Elijah is here.'"
Obadiah was in distress at this command, for he knew that the king
would kill Elijah if he found him, and he could not think that Elijah
would be brave enough to meet the king, or he thought perhaps the
spirit of the Lord would carry him away, and he alone would have to
meet the anger of the king.
"As the Lord of hosts liveth," said Elijah, "I will surely show myself
unto him to-day."
So Obadiah told Ahab, and Ahab went to meet Elijah, and said to him,
"Art thou he that troubleth Israel?"
"I have not troubled Israel," he said, "but thou and thy father's
house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou
hast followed Baalim."
Then he told Ahab to call all Israel to Mount Carmel which overlooks
the sea, and to bring there also the four hundred and fifty prophets of
Baal, and the four hundred prophets of the groves.
So the king called them together, and Elijah cried to the people,
"How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow
Him; but if Baal, follow him."
And the people, afraid of the king and his wicked wife, answered not a
word.
"I, even I only, remain a prophet of the Lord," said Elijah, "but
Baal's prophets are four hundred and fifty men." And then he told the
people how it could be proven which was true--the God of Israel, or
Baal.
He told the prophets of Baal to make an altar and place wood and a
sacrifice upon it, and he also would do the same, and they should call
upon Baal, and he would call on the name of the Lord, and "the God that
answereth by fire, let him be God."
This the priests of Baal were willing to do, and they cried around
their altar from morning until night, "O Baal, hear us," but there was
no voice, and no answer by fire.
Elijah watched and waited, sometimes telling them that perhaps their
god was asleep, and could be waked; or that he had gone on a journey,
or was talking with somebody, and then they became wild and leaped upon
the altar and cut themselves with knives.
After many hours Elijah called the people to him, and he repaired a
broken altar of the Lord that stood there with twelve stones for the
twelve tribes of Israel, and made a trench all around it. Then he
placed wood on the altar and told the people to pour four barrels of
water over the sacrifice. This they did three times, and the water ran
down and filled the trench around the altar, and the people saw that
Elijah could not by any means make a fire there.
Then, as it was the hour of the evening sacrifice in the temple, Elijah
knelt by his altar with his face toward Jerusalem, and prayed to his
God that He would hear him, and show the people that they were called
from the worship of idols to the service of the living God.
What a wonderful sight was that, when fire fell from heaven and burnt
up the sacrifice, and the wood, and the altar, and even the water in
the trench around the altar!
And the people all fell on their faces at the sight, and cried,
"The Lord He is the God! The Lord He is the God!" Then Elijah told
them to take the prophets of Baal and destroy them, and they did so.
"There is a sound of abundance of rain!" said Elijah to the king, and
then he went to the very top of Carmel, and threw himself upon the
earth, hiding his face between his knees, while he sent his servant to
look toward the sea, and watch for the coming of the rain.
This the servant did seven times, each time coming to his master and
saying, "There is nothing," but the prophet told him to look seven
times more, and when he came back the seventh time he said,
"Behold, there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea like a man's hand."
Then he sent his servant to Ahab, saying,
"Prepare thy chariot and get thee down, that the rain stop thee not."
The little cloud grew to be a great one, and filled all the sky until
it was black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain. And as
Ahab rode in his chariot, Elijah, who was strong with the spirit of the
Lord and glad for His great victory over sin, ran before the chariot to
the gates of the city.
Jezebel the queen was furious when she heard that the priests had been
destroyed. She sent word to Elijah that he would be treated the same
way on the morrow, and so Elijah fled for his life, and leaving his
servant in Beer-Sheba on the southern border of Israel, he went a day's
journey into the wilderness. There he sat down under a juniper tree,
and for the first time his heart grew weak within him.
"It is enough," he said, "Now, O Lord, take away my life, for am I not
better than my fathers."
Perhaps he was discouraged because he was tired and hungry, for he fell
asleep, and when he awoke it was because an angel touched him, saying,
"Arise and eat," and he looked, and there was a cake just baked on the
hot coals, and a bottle of water close beside him. So he ate and
drank, but he was not yet rested, and he fell asleep again. The angel
waked him the second time telling him to eat and drink, for the journey
was too great for him. Then he ate and drank again, and went on the
strength of that food forty days and forty nights, till he came to
Horeb, the mount of God, where the Ten Commandments were given to
Moses, and there he lodged in a cave. He was still gloomy and
discouraged, and when the Lord said, "What doest thou here, Elijah?" he
said,
"I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts, for the children
of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and
slain thy prophets with the sword, and I, even I only am left, and they
seek my life to take it."
[Illustration: Elijah and the angel]
Then the Lord told him to go out and stand on the mount before the
Lord, and he passed by. There was a great wind that split the
mountains, and broke the great rocks, but the Lord was not in the wind,
and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the
earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in
the fire; and after the fire a still, small voice.
When Elijah heard that, he wrapped his face in his mantle and stood at
the door of the cave, and the Lord asked again, "What doest thou here,
Elijah?" and Elijah answered him just as he did before.
Then the Lord told him to go back and anoint a new king over Syria,
also a new king over Israel, and Elisha to be prophet in his place.
Elijah went, and he found Elisha ploughing with twelve yoke of oxen.
He cast his mantle over Elisha, and Elisha followed him and became his
servant.
When Elijah came back to his own country he found there had been war
between Israel and Syria, and Ahab had grown hard of heart again. He
and his wicked wife Jezebel had taken the vineyard of Naboth away from
him because Ahab wanted it for a garden, and they had caused the death
of Naboth, so when Elijah came he found Ahab in the vineyard, and said,
"Hast thou killed and also taken possession?" and he told him that he
should die where Naboth died.
"Hast thou found me, O mine enemy!" cried the king.
"I have found thee," answered Elijah, and he spoke to him the word of
the Lord, that he should be destroyed out of Israel with his whole
family.
Then Ahab repented, and the Lord spared his life two years, but later
his wife Jezebel came to a dreadful end, with the seventy sons of Ahab.
When the time came for the Lord to take his servant to himself, Elijah
wished to be alone, but Elisha his servant would not leave him. He
followed his master from one town to another until they came to the
river Jordan. Then Elijah took off his mantle, and folding it, struck
the waters and they were divided, so that they went over on dry ground.
Then Elijah said, "Ask what I shall do for thee," and Elisha prayed
that a double portion of his Master's spirit might rest upon him.
"If thou see me when I am taken from thee it shall be so unto thee," he
said, "but if not, it shall not be so."
And as they went there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire,
parting them from each other, and Elijah went up in a whirlwind to
heaven. Now Elisha wished his master to know that he saw him, so he
cried,
"My father, my father! the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof!"
and he saw him no more.
[Illustration: Elijah and the chariot of fire]
Then he took Elijah's mantle that fell from him, and struck the waters
of Jordan again, and they parted, and he went over, and he knew that
the power of the old prophet's spirit had been given to him.
Fifty young men, sons of the prophets, saw him return, and they said,
"The spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha," and they bowed themselves
to the ground before him.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE LITTLE CHAMBER ON THE WALL.
Elisha did many wonderful things in the strength of the spirit that
Elijah's God gave him. He changed the waters of Jericho, so that they
were no longer poisonous, by casting salt in the spring.
He brought water for the thirsty armies of three kings who had gathered
to battle, by telling them to dig ditches in a valley of Edom, and
watch for the water to come, without wind or rain. When the morning
dawned the valley was full of running water.
He helped a poor widow to pay a debt and take care of her two sons by
telling her to borrow empty pots and pans of all her neighbors, and
pour into them her one little pot of oil. The oil increased until all
the pots and pans were full, and she had plenty to sell.
He saved the sons of the prophets from death by casting meal into the
pot when a poisonous nut had been mingled with the food, and he fed a
hundred people with the bread that was brought as a portion for himself.
But the most beautiful story in the life of Elisha is that of the
Shun-amite mother and her son. The mother was a noble lady of Shun-em,
who believed in God, and in the good man who passed her house so often,
and she said to her husband,
"Let us make for him a little chamber on the wall." And so they did,
and when Elisha came again he lodged there. He was grateful to these
kind people, and asked the woman what he should do for her--if she
would ask anything of the king, but she only said,
"I dwell among mine own people."
Then the prophet, knowing that she had no child, promised that she
should have a son, and though it was hard to believe, the little son
was sent to her, and she was very happy. But one day when he went out
in the field where his father and his men were reaping, he cried out,
"My head, my head!" and they carried him in to his mother. She held
him in her arms until noon, and then he died and she laid him in the
prophet's chamber. Perhaps the heat of the harvest time had been too
great for one so young. Did the mother cry out and call her husband?
No, she called for a servant and a donkey, and rode as fast as she
could to Mount Carmel where Elisha was. His servant saw her coming,
and Elisha sent him to meet her and ask if it was well with her and her
husband and her child, and she said,
"It is well," though her heart was breaking.
"Did I ask a son of my lord?" she said as she came to Elisha and fell
at his feet. Then he knew that the child was ill or dead, and he would
have sent his servant to lay his staff on the child, but the mother
cried,
"As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee,"
and he arose and followed her.
When he came to the Shun-amite's house he went into his little room
where the dead child lay upon his bed, and, shutting the door, prayed
to the Lord. Then he stretched himself upon the child, and breathed
upon him until life began to creep back into the little cold body, and
when he had done this twice the child opened his eyes Then Elisha
called the mother, and when she had fallen at his feet in grateful joy,
she took up her child and went out.
[Illustration: Elijah raises the widow's son]
CHAPTER XXIX.
A LITTLE MAID OF ISRAEL.
There was war almost all the time between Israel and Syria. A band of
Syrians from Damascus would often come into a village of Israel and
take the people away for slaves. One little girl who was carried off
by the Syrians became a slave in the house of a Syrian general called
Naaman, and was a maid to Naaman's wife.
Naaman was a great man, and beloved by all, but he had a disease that
could never be cured. It was leprosy. He could go about, but he could
not touch others without giving them the disease which turns the skin
white and dead, and finally eats the flesh away.
The little maid said to her mistress one day,
"Would God my lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria! for he
would recover him of his leprosy."
When this was told to Naaman he talked with the king, who sent him to
the king of Israel with a letter, but the king of Israel was angry.
"Am I God to kill and make alive, that this man doth send unto me to
recover a man of his leprosy?" he cried, but when Elisha heard of it he
said,
"Let him come now to me, and he shall know that there is a prophet in
Israel."
So Naaman came with his horses and chariot to Elisha's house, but the
prophet did not even come to the door, but sent his servant with this
message,
"Go wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee,
and thou shalt be clean."
But Naaman went away in a rage. He expected Elisha to come out, and
that there would be a fine scene while he called on the name of God,
waved his hand over the leprous spots, and made a cure.
"Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the
waters of Israel? May I not wash in them and be clean?" he said.
Then some of his servants came near to him and said,
"My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldst
thou not have done it? How much rather, then, when he saith to thee,
'Wash and be clean.'"
Then he went down and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, and his
flesh became like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.
After this he, with all that were with him, went humbly back to Elisha
and said,
"Now I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel." And
he urged the prophet to take gifts from him, but he would not.
But Naaman begged of Elisha two mule-loads of earth to take to his own
country. He wanted to build an altar upon it to worship the God of
Israel, and he thought it must stand on the soil of Israel.
Did Naaman ever send the little maid of Israel to her home? We do not
know, but surely he was kind to her in some way.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE TWO BOY KINGS.
There were many kings over Israel from the days of Solomon until the
time when they were carried away captives to Babylon. The kingdom was
divided soon after Solomon's death, and a king reigned in Jerusalem
over the kingdom of Judah, and another in Samaria over the kingdom of
Israel. There were a few kings who tried to follow that which was
right, but the most of them were men who were given to idolatry, and
who did not help the people to remember the true God. The Lord sent
them prophets to remind them of Him, but they were often driven away or
ill treated. There were a few good kings of Judah, such as Asa and
Jehoshaphat, and Hezekiah, and among them were two who became kings
when they were very young.
When Ahaziah, King of Judah, was killed, his mother, who was a wicked
woman, killed all his sons, that she herself might be queen. All but a
baby boy who was hidden with his nurse in the temple, and tenderly
cared for by the good high priest and his wife for six years. Then
when he was seven years old the priests and the Levites brought out
little Joash and anointed him king. They formed a guard all about him,
and when the high priest had crowned him there was a great cry around
the temple of "God save the King."
The old queen heard this and came to see what it meant. When she saw
the little Joash standing by a pillar with a crown on his head she
cried out that the people were plotting against her.
The people did by her as she had done by her grandsons--they took her
life.
Then there was great rejoicing. The house of Baal was torn down, and
the Lord's gold and silver brought back to the temple, and the good
high priest began the worship of God in the temple after the manner of
former days.
When Joash was old enough to understand he longed to make the temple
beautiful again, for it was falling into decay, so he called for money
throughout his kingdom. Everyone was asked to drop a silver piece in
the chest that was set at the temple door, and more than enough was
brought to re-build the temple, and while the high priest lived the
king worshipped there with all the princes of Judah, but as soon as he
died they went back to idol worship, and killed the new high priest in
the court of the temple because he told them that the Lord would bring
great trouble upon them. And so it came to pass in less than a year
the Syrians came and killed the princes, and took away the gold and
silver treasures of the temple. Joash himself became very sick, and
his own servants took his life as he lay helpless.
It was quite different with little Josiah. He was only eight years old
when he was crowned King of Judah, and he had no one so good as the
high priest Jehoida, who was the teacher of Joash, to help him to do
right. Even the holy writings that were given to Moses were lost, and
the people did not ask to hear them read. But the Lord had not allowed
His word to be destroyed, and when Josiah was having the temple
repaired the high priest found the rolls of parchment on which the law
was written, and sent it to the king by a servant of the king who was a
writer. Josiah was full of interest in the ancient book, and wished to
know what was in it, and his servant read it to him.
When he found that he and his people were not living as God had
commanded in the law, he sent to inquire of the Lord what He would have
them to do, and they went to Huldah, the prophetess. She told the
king's messengers that a great calamity would fall upon the kingdom
because they had turned away from the true God, but because the king's
heart was tender and full of desire to follow the Lord, it should not
come during his lifetime.
Then the king called all the chief men of Judah, and the people of the
city, both great and small, with the priests and the Levites, to the
Lord's house, and there he read in their hearing the word of the Lord.
It was like a new book to the most of them, but they were ready to
follow the king in making a solemn promise to the Lord to do His
commandments, and bring back the true worship.
So they had a great feast of the passover, to which all the people came
with offerings, and there was no passover in all the history of the
kings of Judah and Israel that was like this one that was held in the
eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah.
After he had prepared the temple for worship, and had destroyed the
altars of the idols, he went out to meet the King of Egypt in battle
and was killed, and there was a great mourning for him in all the land,
for he had been a good king--kind to his people and faithful to his
God. Jeremiah the prophet made a great lamentation for him, for he
knew that one of Josiah's sons would be the last king of Judah, and
that for their sins the people would be driven out of their own land to
be captives in Babylon for seventy years.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE FOUR CAPTIVE CHILDREN.
Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, came with his armies and besieged
Jerusalem, just as Jeremiah the prophet had foretold. He took the king
and the princes of Judah captive, and carried away their precious
things from the temple and the palaces into his own land, and put them
in the temples of his gods. Before twenty years had passed the whole
nation had been driven into captivity, and their holy house had been
burned, and the ark of the covenant lost or destroyed. As the kingdom
of Israel had also been scattered, the whole land lay desolate, and the
walls of the cities were broken down.
When the King of Babylon first besieged Jerusalem he carried away the
finest of the princely families to serve him. They were the flower of
Jerusalem--young men of noble face and form; well taught in the
learning of the Jews, and skilfull in the sciences of that time. They
were also chosen for their natural ability to learn the language and
the wisdom of the Chaldeans.
Among these were four boys named Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah.
The king gave these boys into the care of his chief officer, who set
teachers over them and treated them very kindly, while the king sent
them each day meat and wine from his own table. The Chaldeans offered
these things to idols, and then ate of them themselves; they also used
some meats for food that were unclean to an Israelite, so that the four
children of Judah determined that they would not touch the king's meat
and drink.
Daniel spoke to the chief officer about it, and though he had learned
to love Daniel very much, he was afraid to have the boys refuse the
king's food.
"I fear my lord the king," he said, "who hath appointed your meat and
your drink, for why should he see your faces sadder than the children
which are of your sort? Then shall ye make me endanger my head to the
king."
But Daniel turned to Melzar, the steward, and begged him to prove them
by giving them only vegetables to eat and water to drink for ten days,
and "Then," said he "let our countenances be looked upon before thee,
and the countenance of the children that eat of the portion of the
king's meat: and as thou seest, deal with thy servants." And he proved
them for ten days.
At the end of that time their faces were fatter and fairer than the
faces of all the others who ate portions from the King's table, and
they were allowed to eat the food they had chosen.
They also grew in wisdom and judgment. Daniel had the gift of
understanding visions and dreams, and the gift came from God, and not
from the study of magic. Among all the young men these four were most
pleasing to the king, and they were called to the palace to stand
before him.
Not long after this the king had a dream that seemed very wonderful to
him, but he could not remember it. He called all his magicians, and
astrologers, and wise men together, and told them that they must tell
him what his dream was, and the meaning of it, or he would destroy
them. There was no man wise enough to tell him, and he ordered that
all the wise men of Babylon should be killed, Daniel and his friends
among them.
Daniel asked the captain of the king's guard why the king was so hasty
with his decree, and the captain told him.
Then Daniel went to the king and told him that if he would give him a
little time he would tell him his dream and its meaning, and he went to
his three friends and together they prayed the God of Heaven to show
them the dream and its interpretation.
That night Daniel saw in a vision from God the same thing that the king
had seen and had forgotten. It was a great image standing before the
king, and shining like the sun. The head was of pure gold, the breast
and arms of silver, and the rest of the body of brass; while the legs
were of iron, and the feet were part of iron and part of clay. As he
looked a great stone cut from a mountain by unseen hands was hurled at
the image, striking its feet and breaking them. Then the image fell
and broke into pieces so fine that the winds blew them away, but the
stone grew to be a great mountain that filled the earth.
Then Daniel gave thanks to God for showing him the dream, and went to
the king.
He told the king that the God of Heaven alone had revealed the dream,
for no man could know it, and he told him what the dream had been. He
also told him that God had shown him the meaning; that the head of gold
was the king himself, who reigned over the greatest kingdom on earth,
but after him new kingdoms would rise, and the silver, the brass, the
iron and the clay stood for these; but in the days of the kingdom of
iron and clay the God of heaven would set up a kingdom which should
never be destroyed, but it would destroy all the kingdoms that had gone
before it. This kingdom--the great stone cut without hands from the
mountain--meant the Kingdom of Christ.
The king was so astonished at Daniel's wisdom--for it was the dream he
had forgotten brought back and interpreted--that he fell on his face
before Daniel and reverenced the God of heaven. He made Daniel chief
ruler in his realm and gave also great honors to his friends.
Nebuchadnezzar soon forgot God, for he set up a great golden image on
the plain of Dura, and called a feast of dedication. He had all his
princes and governors there, and his captains, and judges, and rulers.
The musicians were there also, with many kinds of instruments, and a
herald was there who cried in a loud voice the command of the king. It
was a call to worship the golden image. At the first sound of the
bands of music all were to fall down before the golden image, or
failing to do so, be thrown into a fiery furnace.
Among the rulers were the three friends of Daniel, whose names had been
changed by the king to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They did not
fall before the golden image, and some jealous Chaldeans who saw them
went and told the king. Then the king, who had a fiery temper, was
angry, and sent for the three young men. He told them the bands should
play again, and if they failed to worship the golden image they should
be cast into the furnace, "and who is that God that shall deliver you
out of my hands?" he asked.
"We are not careful to answer thee in this matter," they said, "If it
be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning
fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thy hand, O king."
Then the king in a great rage called his mighty men to bind the young
men, and after the furnace was heated seven times hotter than before,
they were thrown in. So great was the heat that the men who threw them
in were killed by it in the sight of the king. As he watched the great
door of the furnace the king rose up and said,
"Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire?"
"True, O king," said his lords and captains.
[Illustration: In the fiery furnace]
Then the king with his eyes fixed upon the glowing door of the furnace
said,
"Lo I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they
have no hurt, and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God."
Then he went near the door of the furnace and cried,
"Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, ye servants of the most high God,
come forth and come hither!"
Then they came out before the king and all the people, who saw that the
fire had no power over their bodies, for no hair of their head was
burned, and no smell of fire was upon their garments.
Then the king was very humble, and acknowledged the God of heaven,
"because there is no other God" he said "that can deliver after this
sort." And he promoted the young men to still higher places in his
kingdom.
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE MASTER OF THE MAGICIANS.
The Lord saw that the heart of Nebuchadnezzar was lifted up with pride
because he was king of a great people, and had conquered many weaker
nations. He was proud of his royal city, Babylon. The walls of
Babylon were sixty miles in length, and in them stood one hundred
brazen gates. There were wonderful palaces, and statues, and bridges,
and gardens. The river Euphrates ran through the city, and near the
king's palace was a hill covered with trees and flowering plants from
many lands, called the Hanging Gardens.
Babylon was built on a plain, but the king had these gardens made for
his wife, who had come from a country of hills.
The king was praised so much by the princes and rulers that he thought
only of his own power and riches, and became proud and cruel. So the
Lord sent him a dream. He saw a tree great and high, standing in the
midst of a wide plain. It grew until it reached the heavens, and its
branches spread to the ends of the earth. It was thick with green
leaves, and heavy with fruit; the birds lived in it, and the beasts lay
in its shadow, and all things living came to it for food. Then he saw
an angel coming down from heaven crying,
"Hew down the tree, and cut off his branches; shake off his leaves, and
scatter his fruit; let the beasts get away from under it, and the fowls
from his branches; nevertheless, leave the stump of his roots in the
earth, even with a band of iron and brass, in the tender grass of the
field; and let it be wet with the dew of heaven, and let his portion be
with the beasts of the grass of the earth; let his heart be changed
from a man's, and let a beast's heart be given unto him, and let seven
times pass over him."
This dream was given that the king might be taught that the Lord alone
is King.
Daniel, named by the king Belteshazzar, was called to interpret the
dream, and the Lord gave him power to do it.
"The tree that thou sawest," said Daniel, "it is thou, O king, that art
grown and become strong; for thy greatness is grown and reacheth unto
heaven, and thy dominion to the end of the earth."
Then Daniel told the king that he must be driven from men to dwell with
the beasts of the field; to eat grass with the oxen, and be wet with
the dews of heaven, until he had learned that the Most High rules in
the kingdom of men, and gives to whosoever He will. But as the roots
of the tree were left in the ground, so his kingdom should be preserved
for him until he had learned that the heavens do rule.
At the end of a year the king's heart had not been made humble, for as
he walked in his palace he said to himself:
"Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of the
kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honor of my majesty?"
And while he yet spoke there fell a voice from heaven, saying:
"O, King Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken; the kingdom is departed
from thee."
And within an hour the word of the Lord came true. For seven years he
was without reason, and was an outcast from his kingdom. But at the
end of that time his eyes were lifted to heaven and his reason
returned, and his kingdom was restored to him, for he had learned that
God alone is great, and "Those that walk in pride He is able to abase."
Belshazzar was the next king of Babylon. He made a great feast, and a
thousand of his lords were bidden to sit around his tables in the great
hall of the palace. While he drank the wine he thought of the holy
vessels of gold and silver that his father had brought out of the
Temple at Jerusalem, and he sent for them, and into these golden bowls
that had been consecrated to the worship of God he poured wine and gave
it to his princes and to his wives, while they praised the gods of
gold, and silver, and wood, and stone.
While they were feasting, and laughing, and singing, there came a man's
hand and wrote some strange words on the wall of the great hall where
they sat. The king saw the hand as it wrote, and he was so much afraid
that he trembled and grew very weak. He called for his wise men and
they could not read the writing, but the queen remembered that in the
time of Nebuchadnezzar there was a man whom he made master of the
magicians because he had power to interpret dreams and make all
doubtful things clear.
[Illustration: The handwriting on the wall]
So Daniel was brought before the king, and the king told him that if he
would read the writing on the wall he should be clothed royally and be
made the third ruler in the kingdom.
"Let thy gifts be to thyself," said Daniel, "and give thy rewards to
another, yet I will read the writing unto the king, and make known to
him the interpretation."
Then Daniel reminded the king of that which fell upon his father
Nebuchadnezzar, when he had grown proud and hard-hearted toward God and
men, and, though he knew all this, he also had lifted himself up
against the Lord of heaven, and had defiled the holy vessels of the
Temple by drinking from them to gods which could neither see or hear,
and because of this the message had been written on the wall. And this
was the interpretation of the strange words,--
"God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it. Thou art weighed in
the balances, and art found wanting. Thy kingdom is divided, and given
to the Medes and the Persians."
The king clothed Daniel in scarlet, and gave him a chain of gold, and
proclaimed him third ruler in the kingdom, but the same night
Belshazzar was slain, and Darius the Medean took the kingdom.
The new king set one hundred and twenty princes over the kingdom, and
over these he set three presidents, the first of which was Daniel. The
king loved Daniel for the wise and good spirit that was in him, and
this stirred up jealousy in the hearts of the Babylonian princes, and
they watched Daniel to see if they could find something against him to
tell the king, but they could not, for he was faithful in all his work.
Then they agreed to plot against him, and they went to the king and
persuaded him to make a decree that whoever should ask any petition of
any god or man for thirty days, except of the king, he should be thrown
into the den of lions, and they asked the king to sign the decree, so
that it could not be changed, and he signed it.
When Daniel heard of the decree, and knew that the king had signed it,
he went into his own house, and to his chamber. There the windows were
always open toward Jerusalem, and he kneeled down as he had done every
day since he was taken from his own land, and prayed to God with his
face toward the Temple in Jerusalem. And the men who were plotting
against him watched him.
Then they hurried to the king, saying,
"That Daniel, which is of the captivity of Judah, regardeth not thee,
O, King, nor the decree that thou hast signed, but maketh his petition
three times a day."
The king was greatly disturbed at this, and set his heart on the
deliverance of Daniel, and labored till sunset to do it. But his
princes said it could not be done, because, according to the law of the
Medes and the Persians, no decree made by the king could be changed.
So Daniel was condemned to be cast into the den of lions, but the king
said,
"Thy God, whom thou servest continually, he will deliver thee."
[Illustration: Daniel in the den of lions]
Then a stone was laid over the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it
with his own signet, and with that of his lords, that the purpose might
not be changed.
That was a long night for Darius the king. He could neither eat nor
sleep, and he would hear no music, but very early in the morning he
went to the den of the lions and with a very sorrowful voice cried:
"O Daniel, servant of the living God! is thy God whom thou servest
continually able to deliver thee from the lions?"
Then up from the pit came a strong, cheery voice saying:
"O king, live forever! My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the
lions' mouths, that they have not hurt me."
Then there was joy in the king's heart and he had Daniel brought up out
of the den, and no hurt was found upon him, because he had believed in
God, but the men who had accused Daniel were cast into the lions' den
and destroyed.
Darius acknowledged the God of Daniel before all his kingdom, and
commanded the people to honor Him, so that Daniel and his people
suffered no more from their enemies during the reign of Darius. After
the death of Darius, Cyrus was made king of Persia, and he also was
kind to Daniel. The Lord gave him a tender heart toward the captives
of Judah who had been in his land for seventy years, so that he sent
them back into their own land and helped them to rebuild their city and
their Temple.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE STORY OF JONAH.
More than eight hundred years before the birth of Christ a prophet
named Jonah lived in the land of Israel. He had given the Lord's
messages to his own people, and they had listened to them, and a part
of their country had been saved by obeying the Word of the Lord as it
was brought to them by Jonah.
But when the Lord wished to send Jonah to warn a great city in Assyria
to repent of their sins, he did not wish to go. Nineveh was a very old
and a very great city. It was built soon after the flood, but was
still at a high point of glory and wealth in the time of Jonah.
It was a heathen city, but God is the Father of all who live, and cares
for all His children, though they may not know or care for Him.
Perhaps Jonah was afraid, for the people were strong and warlike, and
they would not wish to hear about their wickedness. So Jonah ran away
to the sea shore and took a ship from Joppa to go to Tarshish. He had
not gone far from shore when a storm of wind rose, and the wind tossed
the ship on the great angry waves until it was very nearly wrecked.
The men were afraid, and each prayed to his God, and threw out the
goods they were carrying in order to make the ship lighter.
Where was Jonah? He was below the decks asleep. When the captain
found him he cried out,
"What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise, call upon thy God, if so be that
God will think upon us, that we perish not."
Then they began to wonder if the storm had not been sent upon them for
the wickedness of some one in the ship, and they cast lots to see who
it could be. The lot fell upon Jonah. Then they asked Jonah his name
and country, and of his journey. He told them all about it. Then the
men were more afraid, for they knew that he had tried to run away from
the Lord, and they said,
"What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us?"
"Take me up and cast me forth into the sea," he said, "so shall the sea
be calm unto you, for I know that for my sake this great tempest is
upon you."
It was not easy for the men, who were kind-hearted, to throw into the
sea a man so honest and so willing to die, so they rowed very hard, and
tried their best to reach the shore, but they could not. So they
prayed to Jonah's God to forgive them, and then threw Jonah into the
sea.
But the Lord meant not only to teach Jonah a lesson, but to teach,
through Jonah, a lesson to His children who should live in the ages to
come. He was to make him also a sign of the coming Christ.
When Jonah believed he was sinking down into the green depths of the
sea to die, a great fish, prepared by the Lord, opened his mouth and
took him in. We cannot understand all the ways of God, but we know
that "nothing is impossible with God," and that he was able to keep his
servant alive even in such a strange place as this.
For three days and three nights he was kept in his living prison, and
was able to pray to God, and to know where he was.
"The waters compassed me about," he said, "even to the soul; the depth
closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head. I went
down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about
me forever."
Then he praised and thanked God, for he knew that he meant to save him.
And when the Lord spoke to the fish, it threw Jonah out upon the dry
land.
[Illustration: Jonah thrown on the dry land]
The second time Jonah heard the voice of the Lord telling him to go to
Nineveh and preach the words that should be given him to say, and this
time he obeyed.
It was a long journey to Nineveh, and when Jonah reached it he found
that the city was so great that it would take three days to walk around
the walls.
The walls were a hundred feet high. And so broad that three chariots
could be driven on them side by side. The walls had fifteen hundred
towers, each two hundred feet high. Inside the walls lived hundreds of
thousands of people, many of them rich merchants or princes and nobles
who lived in palaces, and thought only of their own pleasure and glory.
They had grown very selfish and wicked.
When Jonah had walked a day's journey into the city, he began to cry in
the streets the message God had given him,
"Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!"
The people began to tremble and be afraid of the strange voice that
went up and down the long streets crying out these terrible words.
They began to believe in Jonah's God, and to repent.
They repented in the eastern way, by putting on a garment of coarse
sack-cloth, and sitting in ashes. All did this, even to the king, who
took off his beautiful robes and sat down in ashes before the Lord. He
also proclaimed a fast to all the people, and urged them to "turn every
one from their evil way."
When the Lord saw that they turned away from their sins, for He could
look into their hearts, and read all their thoughts, He was satisfied,
and said he would not destroy Nineveh.
But Jonah, who could not read the hearts of men, was not satisfied. He
was very angry. He wanted to have the Ninevites see that he was a true
prophet, for if no destruction came upon them he feared that they might
call him a false prophet. So he complained to God, and said,
"Now, O Lord, take, I beseech Thee, my life from me, for it is better
to die than to live!"
The Lord's gentle word to Jonah was,
"Doest thou well to be angry?"
Jonah went outside the city walls, and made for himself a little house
of the branches of trees and waited to see if the city would be
destroyed. It was very hot and Jonah was deeply troubled, and the
Lord, who is full of love and pity for His children, caused a gourd
vine with large leaves to spring up and grow over the dried branches of
the little house that sheltered Jonah, and he was very glad and
grateful. But the Lord, who always looks upon the heart, saw that the
heart of Jonah was not yet wholly right, and the next morning he
allowed a worm to eat the gourd until it withered. Then the sun beat
down upon Jonah's head until he fainted and wished to die, saying, as
he had said before,
"It is better for me to die than live!"
But the Lord was patient with him, and said,
"Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd?"
And Jonah replied ungraciously,
"I do well to be angry, even unto death."
Then the Lord in his love and pity answered,
"Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not labored,
neither madest it grow; which came up in a night and perished in a
night; and should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are
more than six-score thousand persons that cannot discern between their
right hand and then left hand, and also much cattle?"
Jonah did not know all that was in the mind of the Lord, though he was
a prophet. He did not know that he was one of the signs of the Lord's
first coming, for Jesus spoke of Jonah as a "sign," that as he was
three days and three nights within the great fish "so shall the Son of
man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth."
CHAPTER XXXIV.
ESTHER, THE QUEEN.
About five hundred years before Christ King Ahasuerus (Xerxes) reigned
over Persia. In the third year of his reign he gave a royal feast to
all the princes and nobles of Persia and Medea, in Shushan, the royal
city. It lasted one hundred and eighty days, and was very costly, for
the king wished to show the great men from all his provinces the riches
and glory of his kingdom and of his palace.
At the end of these days he made another feast to all who were in
Shushan, a feast of seven days, and which included great and small.
The palace garden was hung with awnings of white and green and violet,
fastened with cords and silver rings to pillars of marble.
Wine was given to the guests in golden cups as they sat on couches of
gold and silver, and the pavement of the court was of many colored
marbles.
In another part of the palace Vashti, the queen, also made a feast for
the women.
On the seventh day the king sent his seven chamberlains to bring Queen
Vashti before him, wearing her royal crown. He wished to show to his
people and princes the beauty of the queen, for she was very fair to
look upon.
But the queen refused to obey the king's command, and he was angry. He
asked the seven princes who stood next to him in the kingdom what he
should do, and what the laws of the Medes and Persians (which could not
be broken) would say in such a case.
The princes did not speak of any law, but one of them told the king
that the conduct of Vashti would do them great harm through all the
kingdom, for women hearing of the act of the queen, would despise and
disobey their husbands. They advised, therefore, that a commandment
should go forth from the king and be written among the laws of the
Medes and Persians, that Vashti should no more come before the king,
and that her royal estate should be given to another better than she.
This pleased the king, and he did as Memucan, the prince, had advised,
and he sent letters into all parts of his empire to people of various
languages, that every man should rule in his own house.
Then the king's servants, the nobles, advised the king to send officers
to every part of his kingdom to find some one worthy to take the place
of Queen Vashti, and the plan pleased the king, and he did so.
There was in Shushan a Jew named Mordecai, who had been brought away
from Jerusalem with the captives when Nebuchadnezzar conquered the
city. He had an adopted daughter named Hadassah. This was her true
name, although the Persians called her Esther. She was the daughter of
Mordecai's uncle, and when her father and mother died, Mordecai took
her for his own. She was very beautiful, and as good as she was
beautiful, for Mordecai had taught her to be faithful to the true God,
though living among a strange people.
When Mordecai heard that the king was seeking for a maiden worthy to be
a queen through all his provinces, he brought Esther and placed her in
care of Hegai, who had the care of that part of the king's house where
the women lived. Hegai was very kind to her, and gave her seven maids
to serve her, and the best place in the house for her own.
Mordecai had told Esther not to speak of her Jewish family, but every
day he walked before the court of the women's house to ask how she did
and what had become of her.
Out of all the maidens brought from the city and the kingdom Esther was
chosen by the king to be queen in the place of Vashti, and he placed
the royal crown upon her head, and proclaimed a great feast that he
called Esther's feast, when he gave gifts and made a holiday for all
the people to rest and be happy in all his provinces.
Mordecai sat daily at the king's gate, and once while there he heard of
a plot to kill the king by two of his chamberlains, and he sent word
secretly to Esther, and she told the king in Mordecai's name, so that
these two men were hanged, and the account of it was written in the
king's book of records.
About this time the king gave great honors to a man named Haman. He
set him above all his princes, and when the king's servants who were at
his gate knew it they all bowed down and gave great honor to Haman,
whenever he passed, for the king had so commanded them; but Mordecai
would not bow to Haman. When Haman saw this he was full of anger
toward Mordecai the Jew, and he made a wicked plan to destroy not only
Mordecai, but all his people.
So he came with wily ways and cunning speech to the king, saying,
"There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the
people in all the provinces of thy kingdom, and their laws are diverse
from all people, neither keep they the king's laws, therefore it is not
for the king's profit to suffer them. If it please the king let it be
written that they be destroyed, and I will pay ten thousand talents of
silver to the hands of those that have the charge of the business, to
bring it into the king's treasuries."
Then the king gave his ring to Haman as a sign that he would pledge his
word to do what he asked, and said,
"The silver is given to thee, the people also, to do with them as it
seemeth good to thee."
Then Haman had letters written and sealed with the king's seal ring,
saying to the rulers of every province in the kingdom that all Jews,
both young and old, throughout the kingdom, must be destroyed in one
day, and their goods, and money, and lands be taken for a prey, and the
thirteenth day of the twelfth month was set in which to destroy them.
After the messengers were sent out the king and Haman sat down to drink
wine, but the city was troubled.
Then Mordecai rent his clothes in sign of mourning, and went out into
the streets of the city clothed in sack-cloth uttering a loud and
bitter cry. He cried even before the king's gate.
All through the kingdom there was great mourning among the Jews, and
they fasted and wept in sack-cloth and ashes.
When Esther heard that Mordecai was clothed in sack-cloth she was
deeply grieved, and sent some garments to clothe him, but he would not
receive them. Then she sent for the king's chamberlain Hatach, and
gave him a command to Mordecai to tell what caused his grief.
Hatach found him at the king's gate, and Mordecai told him all that had
happened to him, and of the great sum of money that Haman had promised
to pay into the king's treasuries for the Jews to destroy them. He
also gave him a copy of the decree to show Esther, and told Hatach to
charge her that she go before the king and make request for her people.
Hatach took these words to Esther, and Esther sent a reply by Hatach,
saying that it was known in all the king's palace that no man or woman
could come into the king's presence in the inner court who had not been
called, and for any who so entered there was but one law, and that was
that they be put to death, unless the king hold out to them the golden
sceptre. She had not been called to see the king, she said, in thirty
days.
Hatach gave this message to Mordecai, and he again sent word to Esther
that she could not hope to escape the decree, as she too was of the
Jews. He told her that deliverance must come to the Jews in some other
way, but she and her family would be destroyed, and then he added,
"Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as
this?"
Then Esther made her resolve, and sent word to Mordecai to gather all
the Jews in Shushan together to fast night and day, while she and her
maidens fasted also.
"And so I will go in unto the king," she said, "which is not according
to the law, and if I perish, I perish."
And Mordecai went his way and did as Esther had commanded.
It was the third day when Esther arose from her fast before the Lord
and put on her beautiful royal robes and stood in the inner court of
the king's house in sight of the royal throne.
When the king saw Esther standing in the inner court he was not
displeased, but his heart was turned toward her, and he held out to her
the golden sceptre that was in his hand.
"What wilt thou, Queen Esther?" he said, "and what is thy request? it
shall be even given thee to the half of the kingdom."
"If it seem good unto the king," said Esther, "let the king and Haman
come this day unto the banquet that I have prepared for him."
So the king commanded Haman, and they came to the queen's banquet. The
king knew that Esther had a favor to ask of him, so he said again:
"What is thy petition? and it shall be granted thee; and what is thy
request? even to the half of the kingdom it shall be performed."
But Esther was wise. She begged as her petition and request that the
king and Haman would come to the banquet she should prepare the next
day also, and she would then do as the king had said.
Haman went home very happy and proud that he had been so honored by the
queen, and told his wife and his friends of all the glory and honor
that had come to him.
"Yet all this availeth me nothing," he said, "so long as I see Mordecai
the Jew sitting at the king's gate."
Then his wife and his friends urged him to build a high gallows and ask
the king on the next day to hang Mordecai upon it. "Then go thou
merrily with the king unto the banquet," they added.
This pleased Haman, and he ordered the gallows to be made.
That night the king was restless, and he could not sleep, and he
commanded that the book of records be brought and read aloud to him.
Then he found that it was written that Mordecai had saved the king's
life when it was threatened by his two chamberlains.
"What honor and dignity hath been done to Mordecai for this?" he asked,
and his servants replied:
"There is nothing done for him."
"Who is in the court?" cried the king. Now Haman had come in to speak
to the king to have Mordecai hanged.
"Haman standeth in the court," said the king's servants, and the king
said,
"Let him come in."
As Haman came in the king said,
"What shall be done to the man that the king delighteth to honor?"
Haman thought in his heart, "To whom would the king delight to do honor
more than to myself," and then he replied, thinking all the time of
himself.
"For the man whom the king delighteth to honor let the royal apparel be
brought which the king useth to wear, and the horse that the king
rideth upon, and the crown royal which is set upon his head, and let
this apparel and horse be delivered to the hand of one of the king's
most noble princes, that they may array the men withal whom the king
delighteth to honor, and bring him on horseback through the street of
the city, and proclaim before him, 'Thus shall it be done to the man
whom the king delighteth to honor.'"
Then the king said, "Make haste, and take the apparel and the horse as
thou hast said, and do even so to Mordecai, the Jew, that sitteth at
the king's gate; let nothing fail of all that thou hast spoken."
Haman did as he was commanded, for he could do nothing else, and after
it was all over Mordecai took his place again at the king's gate, but
Haman hastened home mourning, and with his head covered.
The next day he came to the queen's banquet with the king, and again
the king said,
"What is thy petition, Queen Esther? and it shall be granted thee; and
what is thy request? and it shall be performed, even to the half of my
kingdom."
Then the queen made her request, saying,
"If I have found favor in thy sight, O king, and if it please the king,
let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request;
for we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to
perish. But if we had been sold for bondmen and bondwomen I had held
my tongue, although the enemy could not countervail the king's damage."
"Who is he, and where is he," cried the king, "That durst presume in
his heart to do so?"
Then Esther said, "The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman."
[Illustration: Haman denounced by the queen]
Haman was overcome with fear at this, and the king was so angry that he
rose up and went out into the palace garden. Haman stood up to make a
plea for his life, and when the king came in he found Haman fallen at
the queen's feet.
One of the king's chamberlains who knew what the king wished told him
of the gallows at Haman's house that had been made for Mordecai, and
the king said, "Hang him thereon," and they did so, and the king's
anger was pacified.
That day the king gave Haman's house to the queen. Mordecai came
before the king that day also, for Esther had told him how he was
related to her, and the King gave to Mordecai the ring that he had once
given to Haman. Esther's petition was not yet finished, so she fell
down at the king's feet and asked for the life of her people, and that
the decree might be changed.
Then the king held out his golden sceptre to Esther, and she arose.
She spoke noble words of petition for her people, and the king told
Mordecai to write in the king's name and seal with the king's seal
letters that should make the decree void.
So the scribes were called in and the letters were written and sealed
with the king's ring, and sent out to every province in the kingdom.
Mordecai went out of the palace that day clothed in royal garments of
violet and white, fine linen and purple, and a great crown of gold upon
his head, and there was joy in Shushan, and there was joy among the
Jews all over the land. They hanged the ten sons of Haman, and
destroyed their enemies by the king's permission, so that they had rest
from persecution. They also set apart two days for a feast of
thanksgiving through all time, and the feast of Purim is kept by all
Jews to this day, as it was first confirmed by the decree of Esther.
And Mordecai was next to the king and honored by his brethren the Jews
as long as he lived, for he always sought their peace, and was as a
father to them.
CHILD'S STORY OF THE BIBLE.
THE NEW TESTAMENT.
CHAPTER I.
THE ANGELS OF THE ADVENT.
There was an old priest named Zacharias, who lived in the hill country
of Hebron, where Abraham the father of the Jewish people used to live.
He went to Jerusalem when it was his turn to serve in the temple, and
once while he was offering the incense of sweet spices on the golden
altar, he saw through the rising smoke an angel standing on the right
side of the altar. The good priest was frightened, but the angel said,
"Fear not, Zacharias, for thy prayer is heard," and he promised that to
him and his wife Elizabeth should be born a little son, whose name
should be John. He was coming to prepare the way for the Messiah, and
must not drink wine or strong drink, for he was to be filled with the
Holy Spirit.
It was too wonderful for Zacharias to believe, and when he went out of
the temple he was dumb, and all the people who waited for him knew that
he had seen a vision. He did not speak while he stayed to minister in
the temple, and when his time of service was ended he went to his home
in Hebron.
A few months later the angel Gabriel went to the little town of
Nazareth, high up among the hills of Galilee, and spoke to a young girl
named Mary. She had never seen an angel, and she also was afraid when
he said to her,
"Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee; blessed art
thou among women. Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God."
And then he told her that she should become the mother of a Holy Child,
who should also be the Son of the Highest, and a King whose kingdom
should have no end, and His name should be Jesus. He also told her of
her cousin Elizabeth away in Hebron, to whom a little son was promised.
Then Mary said these beautiful words to the angel:
"Behold the hand-maid of the Lord; be it unto me according to Thy
word," and the angel went away into heaven.
Mary was so full of wonder at the angel's words that she set out on a
journey to see Elizabeth. It was eighty miles to Hebron, but it was
early summer, and as Mary went through the green valleys and fruitful
plains, and along by the flowing Jordan, she thought about the angel's
words, and prayed to God to make her good and wise. She was not
afraid, though the journey was four days long, for she knew God was
with her.
On the fourth day she passed Jerusalem, the Holy City, and went on and
up into the Hebron Hills to the house of Elizabeth. When they told to
each other the wonderful words of the angel Gabriel they were full of
joy, for they knew that the coming of the Christ was near, and that the
Lord had trusted them with the heavenly secret. They were filled with
the Holy Spirit, and Mary broke out into a beautiful song of praise.
Mary stayed three months with her cousin Elizabeth, and learned many
things, for the old priest and his wife were wise and good. When she
went back to Nazareth she told no one of her vision, not even her
mother or Joseph, the good carpenter, whose promised wife she was. But
the angel came one night to Joseph and spoke to him through a dream of
the Holy Child that was to be born.
Now Joseph and Mary were of the family of King David, and they knew
that the prophets had long ago talked of a King who was to come and
restore the kingdom, and reign on the throne of David. They even told
where he was to be born, in Bethlehem, the "City of David." And though
the Jews had become the servants of the Romans, yet it was time,
according to the promise, that the new King should come and set them
free, and many were looking for His coming.
Perhaps Joseph and Mary thought of these things when the time came for
them to go to Bethlehem, for the Emperor of Rome had made a decree that
all Jews should be enrolled, that he might know how many were in his
empire. So all Jews, who had gone to live in other parts, returned to
their own tribe and city to be enrolled among their own people.
When Joseph and Mary came to Bethlehem they found it full of people who
had also come home to write their names for the Emperor, and there was
no room for them in the inn. It was winter, and while Joseph wondered
what he should do the keeper of the inn showed them the stable where
the gentle oxen and asses were kept, and where it was much quieter than
in the noisy yard and crowded rooms of the inn.
It was here in a humble stable that the Lord of Heaven was born upon
earth, and cradled in a manger. He chose the stable instead of a
palace, and a bed of straw instead of a bed of down, for He had come to
be the Brother of the poor and the Saviour of the world.
Out in the fields near by were some shepherds watching their flocks.
It has been said that the flocks kept in the Bethlehem fields were for
the sacrifices in the temple, and were watched night and day the year
long, while other flocks were kept in their folds in winter.
While they sat on the rocks, wrapped in their cloaks and sheepskin
jackets, with a fire of brushwood to keep the beasts away, perhaps they
thought of young David, who once kept his sheep there, and killed a
lion and a bear to defend his flock; or they watched the stars and
wondered at their beauty.
But suddenly an angel stood by them, and a great light shone round
about them, and they were terrified. But the angel spoke kindly to
them saying:--
"Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, which
shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day, in the city of
David, a Saviour which is Christ the Lord." And the angel told them
how they would know it to be the Holy Child--because it lay in a
manger. Then, in a moment the air was full of angel faces, and
heavenly voices sang this song of praise to God and promise to all
people:--
"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward
men!" And they went away into heaven.
The shepherds looked at one another and then one said; "Let us go to
Bethlehem." And they went in great haste. There they found Mary and
Joseph with the Holy Child lying in a manger, just as the angel had
said. They told the people of Bethlehem about the angels they had seen
and the words they had heard, and they were very much astonished. But
Mary was silent, and kept all these things in her heart to think about
and to pray about.
[Illustration: The Holy Child in the manger]
As for the shepherds they went back to their flocks praising God.
When the Holy Child was eight days old his parents called His name
Jesus, as the angel had commanded, and they dedicated him to the Lord.
Later they took him up to the Temple at Jerusalem to make the offering
that all Jewish mothers made, some money, if it was the first
boy-child, and a lamb, or a pair of doves. Joseph bought for Mary a
pair of doves, and they went up the white steps of the beautiful porch
of the Temple, and passed the long rows of marble pillars into the
court of the Gentiles where they could look up and see the Temple
itself with its white marble pillars and golden roof shining in the sun.
Mary gave her doves to the Priest at the gate of the Court of the
Women, and he took them away to be offered on the altar, while Joseph
took the Holy Child into the Men's Court for the Priest to bless as he
dedicated Him to the Lord. When all was done and they were going away,
an old man named Simeon saw them, and begged to hold the child. He was
a good man who had longed to see the Christ who was to come, and now
the Spirit of God told him that this was He. He thanked God, and said:
"Lord, now lettest Thou thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy
word, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation."
He also spoke as a prophet of the days to come, and just then a very
old woman who lived in the Temple, Anna, the prophetess, came and gave
thanks to God, and told the people that the Redeemer had come to
Israel. All these things Mary kept in her heart, as she had kept the
words of the angel, and wondered why she had been chosen to be the
mother of the Holy Child.
Seven months before this time a little son had been born to Zacharias
and Elizabeth. The neighbors wished to name him for his father, but
Elizabeth said, "Not so; but he shall be called John." When they asked
his father what it should be, he wrote an answer (for he had been dumb
ever since he talked with the angel in the Temple) and they read, "His
name shall be called John." Then his mouth was opened, and he began to
speak and to praise God, and his friends wondered what the child would
be when he grew to manhood. His father became a prophet for a time,
and said some strange things about him that were written down. He said
that John should be called a prophet of the Highest, and go before the
Lord to prepare His ways.
John grew, and he also grew strong in spirit, and while he was yet
young he went to live in the deserts where he was taught of God to be a
prophet and a preacher.