_AVENGING JUSTICE._
1 KINGS ii. 13-46.
"The wrath of a king is as messengers of death."--PROV. xvi. 14.
The reign of Solomon began with a threefold deed of blood. An Eastern
king, surrounded by the many princes of a polygamous family, and
liable to endless jealousies and plots, is always in a condition of
unstable equilibrium; the _death_ of a rival is regarded as his only
safe imprisonment.[120] On the other hand, it must be remembered that
Solomon allowed his other brethren and kinsmen to live; and, in point
of fact, his younger brother Nathan became the ancestor of the Divine
Messiah of his race.[121]
It was the restless ambition of Adonijah which again brought down
an avalanche of ruin. He and his adherents were necessarily under
the cold shadow of royal disfavour, and they must have known that
they had sinned too deeply to be forgiven. They felt the position
intolerable. "In the light of the king's countenance is life, and
his favour is as a cloud of the latter rain"; but Adonijah, in the
prime of strength and the heyday of passion, beautiful and strong,
and once the favourite of his father, could not forget the banquet
at which all the princes and nobles and soldiers had shouted, "Long
live King Adonijah!" That the royalty of one delirious day should be
succeeded by the dull and suspected obscurity of dreary years was
more than he could endure, if, by any possible subtlety or force,
he could avert a doom so unlike his former golden dreams. Was not
Solomon at least ten or fifteen years younger than himself? Was not
his seat on the throne of his kingdom still insecure? Were not his
own followers powerful and numerous?
Perhaps one of those followers--the experienced Joab, or Jonathan,
son of Abiathar--whispered to him that he need not yet acquiesce in
the ruin of his hopes, and suggested a subtle method of strengthening
his cause, and keeping his claim before the eyes of the people.
Every one knew that Abishag, the fair damsel of Shunem, the ideal
of Hebrew maidenhood, was the loveliest virgin who could be found
throughout all the land of Israel. Had she been in the strict sense
David's wife or concubine, it would have been regarded as a deadly
contravention of the Mosaic law that she should be wedded to one of
her stepsons. But as she had only been David's nurse, what could be
more suitable than that so bright a maiden should be united to the
handsome prince?
It was understood in all Eastern monarchies that the harem of a
predecessor belonged to the succeeding sovereign. The first thing that
a rival or a usurper aimed at was to win the prestige of possessing the
wives of the royal house. Nathan reminds David that the Lord had given
his master's wives into his bosom.[122] Ishbosheth, weak as he was,
had been stung into indignation against his general and great-uncle
the mighty Abner, because Abner had taken Rizpah, the daughter of
Aiah, Saul's concubine, to wife, which looked like a dangerously
ambitious encroachment upon the royal prerogative. Absalom, by the
vile counsel of Ahithophel, had openly taken possession of the ten
concubines whom his father, in his flight from Jerusalem, had left in
charge of the palace. The pseudo-Smerdis, when he revolted against the
absent Cambyses, at once seized his seraglio.[123] It is noted even in
our English history that the relations between the Earl of Mortimer
and Queen Isabella involved danger to the kingdom; and when Admiral
Seymour married Queen Catharine Parr, widow of Henry VIII., he at once
entered into treasonable conspiracies. Adonijah knew well that he would
powerfully further his ulterior purpose if he could secure the hand of
the lovely Shunamite.
Yet he feared to make the request to Solomon, who had already
inspired him with wholesome awe. With pretended simplicity he
sought the intercession of the _Gebira_ Bathsheba, who, being the
queen-mother, exercised great influence as the first lady of the
land.[124] She it was who had placed the jewelled bridal crown with
her own hand on the head of her young son.[125]
Alarmed at his visit she asked, "Comest thou peaceably?" He came,
he humbly assured her, to ask a favour. Might she not think of his
case with a little pity? He was the elder son; the kingdom by right
of primogeniture was his; all Israel, so he flattered himself, had
wished for his accession. But it had all been in vain, Jehovah had
given the kingdom to his brother. Might he not be allowed some small
consolation, some little accession to his dignity? at least some
little source of happiness in his home?
Flattered by his humility and his appeal, Bathsheba encouraged him to
proceed, and he begged that, as Solomon would refuse no request to
his mother, would she ask that Abishag might be his wife?
With extraordinary lack of insight, Bathsheba, ambitious as she was,
failed to see the subtle significance of the request, and promised to
present his petition.
She went to Solomon, who immediately rose to meet her, and seated
her with all honour on a throne at his right hand.[126] She had only
come, she said, to ask "a small petition."
"Ask on, my mother," said the king tenderly, "for I will not say thee
nay."
But no sooner had she mentioned the "small petition" than Solomon burst
into a flame of fury. "Why did she not ask for the kingdom for Adonijah
at once? He was the elder. He had the chief priest and the chief
captain with him. They must be privy to this new plot. But by the God
who had given him his father's kingdom, and established him a house,
Adonijah had made the request to his own cost, and should die that day."
The command was instantly given to Benaiah, who, as captain of the
body-guard, was also chief executioner. He slew Adonijah that same
hour, and so the third of David's splendid sons died in his youth a
death of violence.
We pause to ask whether the sudden and vehement outburst of King
Solomon's indignation was only due to political causes? If, as
seems almost certain, Abishag is indeed the fair Shulamite of the
Song of Songs, there can be little doubt that Solomon himself loved
her,[127] and that she was "the jewel of his seraglio."[128] The true
meaning of Canticles is not difficult to read, however much it may
lend itself to mystical and allegorical applications. It represents
a rustic maiden, faithful to her shepherd lover, resisting all the
allurements of a king's court, and all the blandishments of a king's
affection. It is the one book of Scripture which is exclusively
devoted to sing the glory of a pure love. The king is magnanimous;
he does not force the beautiful maiden to accept his addresses.
Exercising her freedom, and true to the dictates of her heart, she
rejoicingly leaves the perfumed atmosphere of the harem of Jerusalem
for the sweet and vernal air of her country home under the shadow
of its northern hills. Solomon's impetuous wrath would not be so
unaccountable if an unrequited affection added the sting of jealousy
to the wrath of offended power. The scene is the more interesting
because it is one of the very few personal touches in the story of
Solomon, which is chiefly composed of external details, both in
Scripture and in such fragments as have been preserved of the pagan
historian Dios, Eupolemos, Nicolas Polyhistor, and those referred to
by Josephus, Eusebius, and Clemens of Alexandria.
The fall of Adonijah involved his chief votaries in ruin. Abiathar had
been a friend and follower of David from his youthful days. When Doeg,
the treacherous Edomite, had informed Saul that the priests of Nob had
shown kindness to David in his hunger and distress, the demoniac king
had not shrunk from employing the Edomite herdsman to massacre all on
whom he could lay his hands. From this slaughter of eighty-five priests
who wore linen ephods, Abiathar had fled to David, who alone could
protect him from the king's pursuit.[129] In the days when the outlaw
lived in dens and caves, the priest had been constantly with him, and
had been afflicted in all wherein he was afflicted, and had inquired of
God for him. David had recognised how vast was his debt of gratitude to
one whose father and all his family had been sacrificed for an act of
kindness done to himself. Abiathar had been chief priest for all the
forty years of David's reign. In Absalom's rebellion he had still been
faithful to the king. His son Jonathan had been David's scout in the
city. Abiathar had helped Zadok to carry the Ark to the last house by
the ascent to the Mount of Olives, and there he had stood under the
olive tree by the wilderness[130] till all the people had passed by. If
his loyalty had been less ardent than that of his brother-priest Zadok,
who had evidently taken the lead in the matter, he had given no ground
for suspicion. But, perhaps secretly jealous of the growing influence
of his younger rival, the old man, after some fifty years of unswerving
allegiance, had joined his lifelong friend Joab in supporting the
conspiracy of Adonijah, and had not even now heartily accepted the rule
of Solomon. Assuming his complicity in Adonijah's request, Solomon
sent for him, and sternly told him that he was "a man of death,"
_i.e._, that death was his desert. But it would have been outrageous
to slay an aged priest, the sole survivor of a family slaughtered for
David's sake, and one who had so long stood at the head of the whole
religious organisation, wearing the Urim and carrying the Ark. He was
therefore summarily deposed from his functions, and dismissed to his
paternal fields at Anathoth, a priestly town about six miles from
Jerusalem.[131] We hear no more of him; but Solomon's warning, "I will
not _at this time_ put thee to death," was sufficient to show him that,
if he mixed himself with court intrigues again, he would ultimately pay
the forfeit with his life. Solomon, like Saul, paid very little regard
to "benefit of the clergy."[132]
The doom fell next on the arch-offender Joab, the white-haired
hero of a hundred fights, "the Douglas of the House of David." He
had, if the reading of the ancient versions be correct, "turned
after Adonijah, and _had not turned after Solomon_." Solomon could
hardly have felt at ease when a general so powerful and so popular
was disaffected to his rule, and Joab read his own sentence in the
execution of Adonijah. On hearing the news the old hero fled up Mount
Zion, and clung to the horns of the altar. But Abiathar, who might
have asserted the sacredness of the asylum, was in disgrace, and Joab
was not to escape. "What has happened to thee that thou hast fled to
the altar?" was the message sent to him by the king. "Because," he
answered, "I was afraid of thee, and fled unto the Lord."[133] It was
Solomon's habit to give his autocratic orders with laconic brevity.
"Go, fall upon him," he said to Benaiah.
The scene which ensued was very tragic.
The two rivals were face to face. On the one side the aged general,
who had placed on David's head the crown of Rabbah, who had saved
him from the rebellions of Absalom and of Sheba, and had been the
pillar of his military glory and dominion for so many years; on the
other the brave soldier-priest, who had won a chief place among
the _Gibborim_ by slaying a lion in a pit on a snowy day, and "two
lion-like men of Moab,"[134] and a gigantic Egyptian whom he had
attacked with only a staff, and out of whose hand he had plucked a
spear like a weaver's beam and killed him with his own spear. As
David lost confidence in Joab he had reposed more and more confidence
in this hero. He had placed him over the body-guards, whom he
trusted more than the native militia.
The Levite-soldier had no hesitation about acting as executioner, but
he did not like to slay any man, and above all such a man, in a place
so sacred,[135]--in a place where his blood would be mingled with that
of the sacrifices with which the horns of the altar were besmeared.
"The king bids thee come forth," he said.
"Nay," said Joab, "but I will die here."
Perhaps he thought that he might be protected by the asylum, as
Adonijah had been; perhaps he hoped that in any case his blood might
cry to God for vengeance, if he was slain in the sanctuary of Mount
Zion, and on the very altar of burnt offering.
Benaiah naturally scrupled under such circumstances to carry out
Solomon's order, and went back to him for instruction. Solomon had no
such scruples, and perhaps held that this act was meritorious.[136]
"Slay him," he said, "where he stands! He is a twofold murderer; let
his blood be on his head." Then Benaiah went back and killed him, and
was promoted to his vacant office. Such was the dismal end of so much
valour and so much glory! He had taken the sword, and he perished by
the sword. And the Jews believed that the curse of David clung to his
house for ever, and that among his descendants there never lacked one
that was a leper, or a lame man, or a suicide, or a pauper.[137]
Shimei's turn came next. A watchful eye was fixed implacably on this
last indignant representative of the ruined House of Saul. Solomon
had sent and ordered him to leave his estate at Bahurim, and build
a house at Jerusalem, forbidding him to go "any whither,"[138] and
telling him that if on any pretence he passed the wady of Kidron he
should be put to death. As he could not visit Bahurim, or any of
his Benjamite connexions, without passing the Kidron, all danger
of further intrigues seemed to be obviated.[139] To these terms
the dangerous man had sworn, and for three years he kept them
faithfully. At the end of that time two of his slaves fled from him
to Achish, son of Maachah, King of Gath.[140] When informed of their
whereabouts, Shimei, apparently with no thought of evil, saddled his
mule and went to demand their restoration. As he had not crossed the
Kidron, and had merely gone to Gath on private business, he thought
that Solomon would never hear of it, or would at any rate treat the
matter as harmless. Solomon, however, regarded his conduct as a proof
of retributive dementation. He sent for him, bitterly upbraided him,
and ordered Benaiah to slay him. So perished the last of Solomon's
enemies; but Shimei had two illustrious descendants in the persons of
Mordecai and Queen Esther.[141]
Solomon perhaps conceived himself to be only acting up to the
true kingly ideal. "A king that sitteth on the throne of judgment
scattereth away all evil with his eyes." "A wise king scattereth the
wicked, and bringeth the wheel over them." "An evil man seeketh only
rebellion; therefore a cruel messenger shall be sent against him."
"The fear of a king is as the roaring of a lion, whoso provoketh
him to anger endangereth his own soul."[142] On the other hand,
he continued hereditary kindness to Chimham, son of the old chief
Barzillai the Gileadite, who became the founder of the Khan at
Bethlehem in which a thousand years later Christ was born.[143]
The elevation of Zadok to the high priesthood vacated by the disgrace
of Abiathar restored the priestly succession to the elder line of the
House of Aaron. Aaron had been the father of four sons: Nadab, Abihu,
Eleazar, and Ithamar. The two eldest had perished childless in the
wilderness, apparently for the profanation of serving the tabernacle
while in a state of intoxication and offering "strange fire" upon
the altar.[144] The son of Eleazar was the fierce priestly avenger
Phinehas. The order of succession was as follows:--
AARON.
|
+---------+------+
| |
Eleazar. Ithamar.
Phinehas. (gap.)
Abishua. Eli.
Bukki. Phinehas.
Uzzi. Ahitub.
Zerahiah. Ahiah (1 Sam. xiv. 3).
Meraioth. Ahimelech.
Amariah. Abiathar (1 Sam. xxii. 20).
Ahitub.
Zadok.[145]
The question naturally arises how the line of succession came to be
disturbed, since to Eleazar, and his seed after him, had been promised
"the covenant of an everlasting priesthood."[146] As the elder line
continued unbroken, how was it that, for five generations at least,
from Eli to Abiathar, we find the _younger_ line of Ithamar in secure
and lineal possession of the high priesthood? The answer belongs to the
many strange reserves of Jewish history. It is clear from the silence
of the Book of Chronicles that the intrusion, however caused, was an
unpleasant recollection. Jewish tradition has perhaps revealed the
secret, and a very curious one it is. We are told that Phinehas was
high priest when Jephthah made his rash vow, and that his was the hand
which carried out the human sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter. But the
inborn feelings of humanity in the hearts of the people were stronger
than the terrors of superstition, and arising in indignation against
the high priest who could thus imbrue his hands in an innocent maiden's
blood, they drove him from his office and appointed a son of Ithamar
in his place. The story then offers a curious analogy to that told of
the Homeric hero Idomeneus, King of Crete. Caught in a terrible storm
on his return from Troy, he too vowed that if his life were saved he
would offer up in sacrifice the first living thing that met him. His
eldest son came forth with gladness to meet him. Idomeneus fulfilled
his vow, but the Cretans rose in revolt against the ruthless father,
and a civil war ensued, in which a hundred cities were destroyed and
the king was driven into exile. The Jewish tradition is one which could
hardly have been invented. It is certain that Jephthah's daughter _was_
offered up in sacrifice, in accordance with his rash vow. This could
hardly have been done by any but a priest, and the ferocious zeal of
Phinehas would not perhaps have shrunk from the horrible consummation.
Revolting, even abhorrent, as is such a notion from our views of God,
and decisively as human sacrifice is condemned by all the highest
teaching of Scripture, the traces of this horrible tendency of human
guilt and human fear are evident in the history of Israel as of all
other early nations. Some thought akin to it must have lain under the
temptation of Abraham to offer up his son Isaac. Twelve centuries later
Manasseh "made his son pass through the fire," and kindled the furnaces
of Moloch at Tophet in Gehenna, the valley of the sons of Hinnom.[147]
His grandfather Ahaz had done the same before him, offering sacrifice
and burning his children in the fire.[148] Surrounded by kindred
tribes, to which this worship was familiar, the Israelites, in their
ignorance and backsliding, were not exempt from its fatal fascination.
Solomon himself "went after," and built a high place for Milcom, the
abomination of the Ammonites, on the right hand of "the hill that is
before Jerusalem," which from this desecration got the name of "The
Mount of Corruption." These high places continued, and it must be
supposed, had their votaries on "that opprobrious hill," until good
Josiah dismantled and defiled them about the year 639, some three
centuries after they had been built.
But whether this legend about Phinehas be tenable or not, it is
certain that the House of Ithamar fell into deadly disrepute and
abject misery. In this the people saw the fulfilment of an old
traditional curse, pronounced by some unknown "man of God" on the
House of Eli, that there should be no old man in his house for ever;
that his descendants should die in the flower of their age; and that
they should come cringing to the descendants of the priest whom God
would raise up in his stead, to get some humble place about the
priesthood for a piece of silver and a morsel of bread.[149]
The prolongation of the curse in the House of Joab and of Eli
furnishes an illustration of the menacing appendix to the second
commandment--"For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting
the sins of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth
generation of them that hate Me, and showing mercy unto thousands (of
generations) of them that love Me and keep My commandments."
There is in families, as in communities, a solidarity alike of blessing
and curse. No man perishes alone in his iniquity, whether he be an
offender like Achan or an offender like Joab. Families have their
inheritance of character, their prerogative examples of misdoing, their
influence of the guilty past flowing like a tide of calamity over the
present and the future! The physical consequences of transgression
remain long after the sins which caused them have ended. Three things,
however, are observable in this, as in every faithfully recorded
history. One is that mercy boasteth over justice, and the area of
beneficent consequence is more permanent and more continuous than that
of the entailed curse, as right is always more permanent than wrong.
A second is that, though man at all times is liable to troubles and
disabilities, no innocent person who suffers temporal afflictions
from the sins of his forefathers shall suffer one element of unjust
depression in the eternal interests of life. A third is that the
ultimate prosperity of the children, alike of the righteous and of
sinners, is in their own control; each soul shall perish, and shall
only perish, for its own sin. In this sense, though the fathers have
eaten sour grapes, the teeth of the children shall _not_ be set on
edge. In the long generations the line of David no less than the line
of Joab, the line of Zadok no less than that of Abiathar, was destined
to feel the Nemesis of evil-doing, and to experience that, of whatever
parentage men are born, the law remains true--"Say ye of the righteous,
that it shall be well with him: for they shall eat the fruit of their
doings. Woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with him: for the reward
of his hands shall be given him."[150]
FOOTNOTES:
[120] These events--like almost everything derogatory to David and
Solomon--are omitted by the chronicler.
[121] Luke iii. 31. Salathiel, son of Neri (Luke iii. 27), of
Nathan's house, was probably adopted by Jeconiah, who was childless;
or if he had a son Assir (captive), the son had died. 1 Chron. iii.
17; Isa. xxii. 3.
[122] 2 Sam. xii. 8. Comp. 1 Kings xx. 7; 2 Kings xxiv. 15. We only
know, however, of one wife of Saul, and one concubine.
[123] Herod., iii. 68; Justin., x. 2.
[124] Comp. 1 Kings xv. 13; 2 Kings xi. 1. The queen-mother, like the
Sultana Walidé, is always more powerful than even the favourite wife.
[125] Cant. iii. 11.
[126] Psalm xlv. 9. Some little mystery evidently hangs over the name
of Bathsheba. In 2 Sam. xi. 3 she is called "Bathsheba, the daughter
of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite"; but in 1 Chron. iii. 5 she
is called "_Bathshua_, the daughter of _Ammiel_." Now Shua was a
Canaanite name (Gen. xxxviii. 12; 1 Chron. ii. 3), and it is at least
remarkable that Bathsheba should be married to a Hittite. Further,
the chronicler disguises "Ahithophel the Gilonite (the father of
Eliam) into Ahijah the Pelonite," who is one of David's Gibborim
in 1 Chron. xi. 36. Pelonite means _nescio qius_; in Spanish, Don
Fulano,--Signor So-and-so. And how are we to account for the strange
name Ahithophel ("brother of foolishness?")?
[127] Comp. Cant. vii. 1. It has been assumed that Solomon had
already married Naamah the Ammonitess, and that Rehoboam was already
born (see 1 Kings xiv. 21), but this is uncertain. Rehoboam, if he
had reached the age of forty-one, could hardly have been called
"young and tender-hearted" (2 Chron. xiii. 7).
[128] Shunem (Sulem, Euseb., _Jer._) is now _Solam_ (Robinson,
_Researches_, iii. 402).
[129] 1 Sam. xxii. 23.
[130] 2 Sam. xv. 18 (LXX.).
[131] _Anata_, Robinson, _Researches_, ii, 319; Josh. xxi. 18; 1
Chron. vi. 60. It was the native town of Jeremiah (Jer. i. 1).
[132] It should be remembered that, as Ewald points out, imprisonment
for life was a thing unknown.
[133] This interesting addition is found in the Septuagint version.
[134] 2 Sam. xxiii. 20. Ewald, Thenius, and most other critics,
followed by the R.V., adopt the LXX. reading, "Slew the two sons of
Ariel of Moab."
[135] Comp. 2 Kings xi. 15.
[136] See Deut. xix. 13.
[137] 2 Sam. iii. 28, 29.
[138] וָאָנָה אָנֶה (1 Kings ii. 36).
[139] It should be remembered that when Shimei came to meet David
on his return, he managed to muster one thousand of his Benjamite
kinsmen. Such local influence might prove troublesome.
[140] Achish seems to have been the dynastic name of the kings of
Gath (1 Sam. xxi. 10, xxvii. 2). If this was the Achish, son of
Maoch, with whom David had taken refuge fifty years before, he must
now have been a very old man.
[141] Esth. ii. 5.
[142] Prov. xix. 11, xx. 2, 8, 26.
[143] 1 Kings ii. 7; Jer. xli. 17.
[144] Lev. x. 1-20; Num. iii. 4, xxvi. 61. This has been not
unnaturally inferred from the prohibition to the priests to drink
wine while serving the tabernacle lest they die, which occurs
immediately after the catastrophe of the two priests (Lev. x. 9-11).
[145] 1 Chron. vii. 4-15. In David's time there were only eight
descendants of Ithamar, but sixteen of Eleazar (1 Chron. xxiv. 4).
For full discussion of these priestly genealogies, see Lord A.
Hervey, _On the Genealogies_, pp. 277-306. It is true that they are
not free from elements of difficulty, but I am unable to find any
valid ground for the suspicion of some critics that Zadok was not
even a priest, or of the priestly house at all. All the evidence we
have points in the opposite direction.
[146] Num. xxv. 13.
[147] 2 Chron. xxxiii. 6; 2 Kings xxi. 6. "His children."
[148] 2 Chron. xxviii. 3; 2 Kings xvi. 3. "His son."
[149] 1 Sam. ii. 27-36. For eight centuries there was no other
instance of a high priest's deposition.
[150] Isa. iii. 10.