the eagles will gather. In the fifth year of Rehoboam, Shishak, King
of Egypt,[522] put an end to the shortlived glories of the age of
Solomon. Of his reason for invading Palestine we know nothing. It
was probably mere ambition and the love of plunder, stimulated by
stories which Jeroboam may have brought to him about the inexhaustible
riches of Jerusalem. He is the first Pharaoh whose individuality was
so marked as to transcend and replace the common dynastic name.[523]
He was astute enough to seize the opportunity of self-aggrandisement
which offered itself when Jeroboam took refuge at his court; but
the conjecture that former friendly relations induced Jeroboam to
invite the services of Shishak for the destruction of his rival, is
rendered impossible if Egyptologists have correctly deciphered the
splendid memorial of his achievements which he twice carved on the
great Temple of Amon at Karnak. There the most conspicuous figure is
the colossal likeness of the king. His right hand holds a sword;[524]
his left grasps by the hair a long line which passes round the necks
of a troop of thirty-eight mean and diminutive Jewish captives. The
smaller figure of the god Amon leads other strings of one hundred and
thirty-three captives, and the third king from his left hand bears a
name which Champollion deciphered _Yudeh-Malk_, which he took to mean
King of Judah.[525] If the interpretation were correct, we should
here have a picture of the son of Solomon. On the other figures are
the names of the cities of which they were kings or sheykhs. Among
these are not only the names of southern towns, like Ibleam, Gibeon,
Bethhoron, Ajalon, Mahanaim, but even of Canaanite and Levitic cities
in the Northern Kingdom, including Taanach and Megiddo.[526] Shashonq
(as the monuments call him) came with a huge and motley army of many
nationalities, among whom were Libyans, Troglodytes, and Ethiopians.
This host was composed of twelve hundred chariots, sixty thousand
horsemen, and a numberless infantry of mercenaries. Such an invasion,
though it was little more than an insulting military parade and
predatory incursion, rendered resistance impossible, especially to a
people enervated by luxury. Shishak came, saw,--and plundered. His
chief spoil was taken from the poor dishonoured Temple and the king's
palace.[527] Judah specially grieved for the loss of the shields of
gold which hung on the cedar pillars of the house of the forest of
Lebanon,[528]--apparently both those which Solomon had made, and those
which David had consecrated from the spoils of Hadadezer, King of
Zobah.[529] Perhaps a great soul would hardly have been consoled by
putting mean substitutes in their place. Rehoboam, however, made bronze
imitations of them in the guard-room,[530] and marched in pomp to the
Temple preceded by his meanly armed runners,[531] "as though everything
was the same as before." "The bitter irony with which the sacred
historian records the parade of these counterfeits," says Stanley, "may
be considered as the keynote to this whole period. They well represent
the 'brazen shields' by which fallen churches and kingdoms have
endeavoured to conceal from their own and their neighbours' eyes that
the golden shields of Solomon have passed away from them."[532] The age
of pinchbeck follows the age of gold, and a Louis XV. succeeds Le Grand
Monarque.[533]
Rehoboam had many sons, and he "wisely" (2 Chron. xi. 23) gave them,
by way of maintenance, the governorship of his fenced cities. That "he
sought for them a multitude of wives" was perhaps a stroke of worldly
policy, but an unwise and unworthy one. But their little courts and
their little harems may have helped to keep them out of mischief. They
might otherwise have destroyed each other by mutual jealousies.
Rehoboam was succeeded by his son Abijam. There is a little doubt
as to the exact name of this king. The Book of Chronicles calls him
Abijah,[534] but in 1 Kings xv. 1, 7, 8, he is called Abijam.[535]
As the curious form Abijam seems to be unmeaning, it has been
precariously conjectured that dislike to his idolatries led the Jews
to alter a name which means "Jehovah is my Father."[536] Some doubt
also rests on the name of his mother. She is here called "Maacha, the
daughter of Abishalom," but in Chronicles "Michaiah, the daughter
of Uriel of Gibeah." Maachah was perhaps the _granddaughter_ of
Absalom, whose beautiful daughter Tamar (named after his dishonoured
sister) may have been the wife of Uriel. In that case her name,
Maachah, was a name given her in reminiscence of her royal descent as
a great-granddaughter of the princess of Geshur, who was mother of
Absalom. All sorts of secrets, however, sometimes lie behind these
changes of names. She was the second, but favourite wife of Rehoboam;
and Abijam, who was not the eldest son, owed his throne to his
father's preference for her.[537]
All that we are here told of Abijam is that "his heart was not
perfect with Jehovah his God," and that "he walked in all the
sins of his father"; though "for David's sake his God gave him a
lamp in Jerusalem";[538] and that, after a brief reign of three
years--_i.e._, of one year and parts of two others--he slept with
his fathers. For "the rest of his acts and all that he did," the
historian refers us to the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah: he does
not trouble himself with military details. The chronicler, referring
to the Commentary of Iddo,[539] adds a great deal more. Jeroboam,
he says, went out against him with eight hundred thousand men.
Abijam, who had only half the number, stood on Mount Zemaraim in
the hill country of Ephraim,[540] and made a speech to Jeroboam and
his army. He reproached him with rebellion against his father when
he was "young and tender-hearted," and with his golden calves, and
his non-Levitical priests. He vaunted the superiority of the Temple
priests with their holocausts and sweet incense and shewbread and
golden candlestick, which priests were now with the army. Jeroboam
sets an ambuscade, but at the shout of the men of Judah is routed
with a loss of five hundred thousand men, after which Abijah recovers
"Bethel with the towns thereof,"[541] and Jeshanah and Ephron (or
"Ephraim"), completely humbling the northern king until "the Lord
smote him and he died." After this Abijah waxes mighty, has fourteen
wives, twenty-two sons, and sixteen daughters.
If we had read two accounts so different, and presenting such
insuperable difficulties to the harmonist, in secular historians,
we should have made no attempt to reconcile them, but merely have
endeavoured to find which record was the more trustworthy. If
the pious Levitical king of 2 Chron. xiii. be a true picture of
the idolater of 1 Kings xv. 3, it is clear that the accounts are
difficult to reconcile, unless we resort to incessant and arbitrary
hypotheses. But the earlier authority is clearly to be preferred when
the two obviously conflict with each other. As it is we can only
say that the kings of whom the chronicler approves are, as it were,
clericalised, and seen "through a cloud of incense," all their faults
being omitted. The edifying speech of Abijah, and his boast about
purity of worship, sounds most strange on the lips of a king who--if
he "walked in all the sins of his father"--suffered his people to be
guilty of a worship grossly idolatrous, including the toleration of
_Bamoth_, _Chammanim_, and _Asherim_ on every high hill and under
every green tree; and of all the abominations of the neighbouring
idolaters,[542]--a state of things infinitely worse than the symbolic
Jehovah-worship which Jeroboam had set up. Yet such was the strange
syncretism of religion in Jerusalem, of which Solomon had set the
fatal example, that (as we learn quite incidentally) Abijah seems to
have dedicated certain vessels--part of his warlike spoils--to the
service of the Temple.[543] They were perhaps intended to supply the
gaps left by the plundering raid of Shishak.
After this brief and perplexing, but apparently eventful reign,
Abijah was succeeded by his son Asa, whose long reign of forty-one
years was contemporary with the reigns of no less than seven kings of
Israel--Nadab, Baasha, Elah, Zimri, Omri, Tibni, and Ahab.
We are told that--aided perhaps by such prophets as Hanani and
Azariah, son of Oded[544] (or Iddo)--"he did that which was right
in the sight of the Lord." Of this he gave an early, decisive, and
courageous proof.
When he succeeded to the throne at an early age his grandmother
Maachah still held the high position of queen-mother.[545] This great
lady inherited the fame and popularity of Absalom, and was a princess
both of the line of David and of Tolmai, King of Geshur. She was, and
always had been, an open idolatress.[546] Asa began his reign with a
reformation. He took away the contemptible idols (_Gilloolim_) which
his fathers had made, and suppressed the odious _Kedeshim_; or he at
least made a serious, if an unsuccessful, effort to do so.[547] As to
the high places we have a direct verbal contradiction. Here we are
told that "they were not removed," whereas the chronicler says that
"he took them away out of all the cities of Judah," but afterwards
that "the high places were not taken away out of Israel," in spite of
Asa's heart being perfect all his days. The explanation would seem
to be that he made a partial attempt to anticipate the subsequent
reformation of Hezekiah, but was defeated by the inveteracy of popular
custom. He did, however, take the great step of branding with infamy
the impure idolatry of the queen-mother, and he degraded her from her
rank. She had made an idol, which is significantly called "a fright"
or "a horror" (_Miphletzeth_),[548] to serve as an emblem of the
Nature-goddess. It was probably a phallic symbol which he indignantly
cut down, and burnt it, where all pollutions were destroyed, in the
dry wady of the Kidron.[549] In the fifteenth year of his reign he
dedicated in the Temple "silver and gold and vessels," consecrated by
his father and himself for this purpose. He also restored the great
altar in the porch of the Temple, which in the course of more than
sixty years had fallen into neglect and disrepair.
For ten years the land had rest under this pious king, though war was
always smouldering between him and Baasha. In the eleventh year,
however, according to the chronicler, "Zerach the Ethiopian"[550]
attacked him with an army of _a million_ Sushim and Lubim and three
hundred chariots, and suffered an immense defeat in the valley of
Zephathah, "the watch-tower" at Mareshah.[551] It was the sole occasion
in sacred history in which an Israelite army met and defeated one of
the great world powers in open battle, and it was deemed so remarkable
a proof of Divine interposition that Asa, encouraged by the prophet
Azariah, invited his people to renew their covenant with God.
More alarming to Asa was the action of Baasha in fortifying
Ramah[552] in the thirty-sixth year of Asa's reign. This was a
veritable ἐπιτειχισμὸς of the most dangerous kind, for Ramah, in
the heart of Benjamin, was only five miles north of Jerusalem. If
Abijah's signal defeat of Jeroboam and capture of Bethel, Jeshanah,
and Ephron be historical, these towns must not only have been
speedily recovered, but Baasha had even pushed towards Jerusalem,
five miles south of Bethel. Had Ramah been left undisturbed it would
have been a thorn in the side of Judah, as Deceleia was in Attica,
and Pylos in Messenia. Asa saw that the demolition of this fortress
was a positive necessity. Since he was too weak to effect this, he
stripped both his own palace and the Temple of the treasures with
which he had himself enriched them, and sent them as a vast bribe
to Benhadad I., King of Damascus, begging him to renew the treaty
which had existed between their fathers, and to invade the kingdom of
Baasha. This step shows to what a depth of weakness Judah had fallen,
for Benhadad was a son of Tabrimmon, the son of Hezion (probably
Rezon) of Damascus;[553] so that here we have the great-grandson
of Solomon stripping Solomon's Temple of its consecrated vessels
wherewith to bribe the grandson of the petty rebel freebooter, whose
whole present kingdom had once been a part of Solomon's dominions!
The policy was successful. It is easy for us now to condemn it as
unpatriotic and short-sighted, but to Asa it seemed a matter of life
or death. Benhadad invaded Israel, and mastered its territory in the
tribe of Naphtali, from Ijon and Abel-beth-maachah on the waters
of Merom[554] down to Chinnereth or the Lake of Gennesareth.[555]
Baasha in alarm abandoned his attempt to blockade Jerusalem, and
retired to Tirzah for the protection of his own kingdom. Thereupon
Asa proclaimed a levy of all Judah to seize and dismantle Ramah, and
with the ample materials which Baasha had amassed he fortified Geba
to the north of Ramah[556] and Mizpah (probably Neby Samwyl, to the
north of the Mount of Olives), where he also sank a deep well for the
use of the garrison.[557] He thus effectually protected the frontier
of Benjamin. He built, as Bossuet says, "the fortresses of Judah out
of the ruins of those of Samaria," and thus set us the example of
making holy use of hostile and heretical materials. We should have
thought that the invitation of Benhadad was, in a worldly point of
view, brilliantly successful, and that it saved the kingdom of Judah
from utter ruin. It involved, however, a dangerous precedent, and
Hanani rebuked Asa for having done foolishly.
After a powerful and useful reign Asa was attacked with gout in his
feet two years before his death. The chronicler reproaches him for
seeking "not to Jehovah but to the physicians" in his "exceeding
great disease." If this was a sin, it is one of which we are unable
to estimate the sinfulness from this meagre notice. It has been
conjectured that it may have some reference to the name Asa, which,
if written Asjah, might mean "whom Jehovah heals."[558] It belongs,
however, to the theocratic standpoint of the chronicler, who condemns
everything which bears the aspect of a worldly policy. He slept with
his fathers in a tomb which he had built for himself, and was buried
with unusual magnificence, amid the burning of many spices.
We are not surprised that the historian should not mention the
invasion of Zerah, since he refers us for the wars f Asa to the Judæan
annals. It is much more remarkable that he wholly omits all reference
to the prophetic activity of which the chronicler speaks as exercised
in this reign. He had evidently formed a very high estimate of Asa,
with none of the shadows and drawbacks which in the later annalist
seemed to point to a marked degeneracy of character in his later days.
On the favourable side the historian does not mention the high and
eulogistic encouragement which the king received from Azariah, the
son of Oded; nor the multitude which joined him out of Israel; nor
the cities which he took from the hill country of Ephraim; nor his
restoration of the altar. He even passes over the solemn league and
covenant which he made with Judah and Benjamin and many members of the
Ten Tribes in his fifteenth year, at a festival celebrated with an
immense sacrifice, and with shouting and trumpets and cornets and a
great exultant oath.[559] On the unfavourable side he does not tell us
that Hanani the Seer rebuked him for summoning the help of the Syrians
instead of relying on Jehovah; and that Asa "was in a rage because
of this thing, and shut up Hanani in the House of the Stocks," and
"oppressed some of the people at the same time," apparently because
they took part with the prophet.[560] For none of these events does the
chronicler refer us to any ancient authority. They came from separate
records, perhaps written in prophetic commentaries and unknown to the
compiler of the Kings. But whatever may have been the failings or
shortcomings of Asa it is clear that he must be ranked among the more
eminent and righteous sovereigns of Judah.
FOOTNOTES:
[515] According to the LXX. she was a daughter of Hanun, son of
Naash, King of Ammon (2 Sam. x. 1).
[516] Canon Rawlinson, _Kings of Israel and Judah_.
[517] 1 Kings xiv. 21. "A boy and faint-hearted" (2 Chron. xiii. 7).
The additions to the LXX. say that he was sixteen, and reigned twelve
years.
[518] In the LXX. additions it was a little before this occasion
(after the revolt) that "Shemaiah the Enlamite" tore his new cloak
and gave ten parts to Jeroboam.
[519] The _Chammanim_ were, according to some, pillars to
Baal-Hammon. For the _Asherim_, see Deut. xvi. 21; 2 Kings xxi. 3.
They were wooden pillars to Asherah, and were called _Asherim_ just
as statues of the Virgin are called "Virgins." _Asheroth_ seem to
be various forms of the Nature-goddess herself (2 Chron. xxxiii.
3). Asherah = Ὀρθία. Like the other kings of Judah, Rehoboam had an
exaggerated harem, and provided for the young princes by settling
them in separate cities as governors.
[520] Jerome compares them to the horrible _Galli_ of the Syrian
goddess. LXX., τετελεσμένοι ("initiated"); Aquila, ἐνηλλαγμένοι
("changed"); Theodotion, κεχωρισμένοι ("set apart"); Symmachus,
ἑταιρίδες. They were also called "dogs" (comp. Deut. xxiii. 18).
[521] According to the chronicler Rehoboam's defection only began in
the fourth year of his reign.
[522] He was the first king of the twenty-second dynasty of Bubastis
or Pibeseth, and succeeded about B.C. 988 in the fourteenth year of
Solomon. The Egyptians (Manetho) called him Shesonk (Sesonsochosis)
Sasychis, Herod., ii. 136; LXX., Σουσακίμ; Vulg., _Sesac_.
[523] He was of alien, perhaps of Assyrian, race. His family had
settled at Bubastis, and his grandfather had married the daughter of
the Pharaoh. His son Osorkhon also married the Princess Keramat, a
daughter of the last Tanite king. Imitating the example of Hir-hor,
he combined many offices, and then quietly seized the crown.
[524] Brugsch, _Geogr. Inschriften altägyptischer Denkmäler_, ii.
58; Lepsius, _Denkmäler_, iii. 252; _Story of the Nations: Egypt_,
pp. 228-307; Stade, i. 354 (who reproduces the sculptures). They
are carved on the wall of a Temple of Amon on the southern side of
a smaller temple (built by Rameses III.). Shishak is smiting with
his club a number of captive Jews, whom he grasps by the hair. The
names of the towns and districts are paraded in two long rows, each
name being enclosed in a shield. Amon is delivering them all to his
beloved son "Shashonq." These smitten people are described as "the
_Am_ of a distant land, and the Fenekh" (Phœnicians).
[525] _Lit._, "Judah-king." Brugsch thinks it is the name of a town.
It cannot mean, as Champollion thought, "King of Judah."
[526] See Shishak in _Bibl. Dict._ It is extremely difficult to
believe that these cities were taken by the Egyptian army in order to
help Jeroboam.
[527] Josephus says that Shishak did all this ἀμαχητὶ (_Antt._, VIII.
x. 2, 3), but he confuses Shishak with Sesostris (Herod., ii. 102,
106).
[528] 1 Kings x. 17.
[529] LXX., 2 Sam. viii. 7; 1 Kings x. 17. A timely humiliation saved
Rehoboam from extinction, but he practically became a vassal of Egypt
(2 Chron. xii. 5).
[530] תָּא (Ezek. xl. 7).
[531] Ratzim; comp. "_Celeres_," Liv., i. 14. We hear no more of
Cherethites and Pelethites. The later kings could not afford to keep
up these mercenaries.
[532] _Jewish Church_, ii. 385.
[533] Renan.
[534] 2 Chron. xii. 16; comp. Abiel (1 Sam. ix. 1).
[535] Abijam seems to mean "father of the sea"; _vir maritimus_,
Gesenius.
[536] So perhaps, for the same reason, Jehoahaz was shortened into
Ahaz. See Canon Rawlinson on 2 Kings xv. 38 (_Speaker's Commentary_).
But Simonis, _Onomasticon_, regards the final _m_ as intensive.
[537] 2 Chron. xi. 18-23. Rehoboam had eighteen wives, sixty
concubines, twenty-eight sons, and sixty daughters. A fragment of the
_Stemma Davidis_ may make things clearer to the reader:--
Jesse.
|
+----------+------------+
Eliab. David.
| |
| +------+--------+
Abihial. Solomon. Absalom.
| |
+--+ |
| |
Abihail = Rehoboam = Maachah. Tamar = Uriel.
| |
Abijah. Maachah.
Thus on both sides, as a great-grandson and great-great-grandson,
Abijah was descended from David.
[538] The lamp (LXX., κατάλειμμα; in xi. 36, θέσις) is the sign
of home (1 Kings xi. 36; 2 Kings viii. 19. Comp. Psalm xviii. 28,
cxxxii. 17). There was, as the chronicler boldly expressed it, "a
covenant of salt" between God and the House of David (2 Chron. xiii.
5; comp. Numb. xviii. 19).
[539] Chron. xiii. 22.
[540] Zemaraim was in Benjamin near Bethel (Josh. xviii. 22),
apparently Kirbet _el-Szomer_ in the Jordan valley, four miles north
of Jericho.
[541] 2 Chron. xiii. 3-19. So that the golden calf and its chapel and
its priests must, if the account be true, have fallen into his power.
But it does not seem to have made the least difference. It is certain
that "the calf" remained undisturbed till the days of the Assyrian
invasion.
[542] How atrocious these "abominations were" may be seen from the
Pentateuch (Lev. xviii. 3-25, xx. 1-23; Deut. xviii. 6-12).
[543] 1 Kings xv. 15.
[544] Ewald, iv. 49.
[545] Comp. the _Madame Mère_ in the French court.
[546] The LXX. (Vat.) calls her Ana.
[547] That it was not perfectly successful we see from 1 Kings xxii.
46.
[548] The word is an ἅπαξ λεγόμενον. It is only applied to this
grotesque and obscene figure (1 Kings xv. 13; 2 Chron. xv. 16).
[549] 2 Kings xi. 16, xxiii. 4, 6, 12; 2 Chron. xxix. 16, xxx. 14.
Vulg., _in Sacris Priapi_. Jerome (_ad Hos._, i. 4) calls Maachah's
"horror" a _Simulacrum Priapi_ (see Selden, _De Dis Syris Syntagma_,
ii. 5).
[550] 2 Chron. xvi. 8. Zarkh, perhaps Osorkhon I. (O-_serek_-on,
"Ammon's darling"), was the feebler successor of Shesonk, Maspero,
p. 362; Ewald, iii. 470. Shishak's army also consisted of Sushim and
Lubim (2 Chron. xii. 3).
[551] The defeat had important consequences. Egypt did not again
attack Palestine till three centuries later, under Pharaoh Nechoh
(B.C. 609). The defeat weakened the Bubastite dynasty (Rawlinson, p.
36), though it continued to reign for two centuries. The "invasion"
may have been a mere raid. The Pharaohs always seem to have
degenerated from the founders of their dynasty, both in personal
beauty and intellectual force.
[552] Josh. xviii. 25, now Er-Ram. No great importance can be
attached to the dates, which are often self-contradictory.
[553] Ben-Hadad, "son of Hadad," the Sun-god (Macrob., _Saturn_,
i. 24). Tabrimmon, "Rimmon is good." According to Sayce (_Hibbert
Lectures_, p. 42), Rimmon--an Accadian name, which became, in
Semitic, Rammânu, "the exalted"--was identified by the Syrians with
the Sun-god Hadad, whom Shahmanaser called _Dada_. In Assyrian _Dadu_
("dear child") is akin to David and to Dido.
[554] Ijon is probably Merj Ayion, "the meadow of the House of
Maachah"; called also, Abel-maim, "the meadow of the waters"; "a city
and a mother in Israel" (2 Sam. xx. 19); now Abil in the Ard-el-Huleh.
[555] See Numb. xxxiv. 11; Josh. xiii. 27.
[556] Josh. xxi. 17; 2 Kings xxiii. 8.
[557] LXX., ἡ σκοπία. Jer. xli. 5-9. Into this well Ishmael flung the
corpses of the murdered adherents of Gedaliah.
[558] Renan, _Hist. du Peuple Israel_, ii. 248. Comp. Rephaiah.
[559] 2 Chron. xv. 1-15.
[560] 2 Chron. xvi. 9, 10.
CHAPTER XXXI.
_JEHOSHAPHAT._
1 KINGS xxii. 41-50.
Before we leave the House of David we must speak of Jehoshaphat,
the last king of Judah whose reign is narrated in the First Book of
Kings. He was abler, more powerful, and more faithful to Jehovah than
any of his predecessors, and was alone counted worthy in later ages
to rank with Hezekiah and Josiah among the most pious rulers of the
Davidic line. The annals of his reign are found chiefly in the Second
Book of Chronicles, where his story occupies four long chapters. The
First Book of Kings compresses all record of him into nine verses,
except so far as his fortunes are commingled with the history of
Ahab. But both accounts show us a reign which contributed as greatly
to the prosperity of Judah as that of Jeroboam II. contributed to the
prosperity of Israel.
He ascended the throne at the age of thirty-five. He was apparently
the only son of Asa, by Azubah, the daughter of Shilhi; for Asa,
greatly to his credit, seems to have been the first king of Judah who
set his face against the monstrous polygamy of his predecessors, and,
so far as we know, contented himself with a single wife. He received
the high eulogy that "he turned not aside from doing that which was
right in the eyes of the Lord," with the customary qualification
that, nevertheless, the people still burnt incense and offerings
at the _Bamoth_, which were not taken away. The chronicler says
that he _did_ take them away. This stock contradiction between the
two authorities must be accounted for either by a contrast between
the effort and its failure, or by a distinction between idolatrous
_Bamoth_ and those dedicated to the worship of Jehovah to which the
people clung with the deep affection which local sanctuaries inspire.
To the historians of the Book of Kings the central fact of
Jehoshaphat's history is that "he made peace with the King of
Israel." As a piece of ordinary statesmanship no step could have been
more praiseworthy. The sixty-eight years or more which had elapsed
since the divinely-suggested choice of Jeroboam by the Northern
Kingdom had tended to soften old exasperations. The kingdom of Israel
was now an established fact, and nothing had become more obvious
than that the past could not be undone. Meanwhile the threatening
spectre of Syria, under the dynasty of Benhadad, was beginning to
throw a dark shadow over both kingdoms. It had become certain that,
if they continued to destroy each other by internecine warfare, both
would succumb to the foreign invader. Wisely, therefore, and kindly
Jehoshaphat determined to make peace with Ahab, in about the eighth
year after his accession; and this policy he consistently maintained
to the close of his twenty-five years' reign.
No one surely could blame him for putting an end to an exhaustive
civil war between brethren. Indeed, in so doing he was but carrying
out the policy which had been dictated to Rehoboam by the prophet
Shemaiah, when he forbade him to attempt the immense expedition
which he had prepared to annihilate Jeroboam. Peace was necessary to
the development and happiness of both kingdoms, but even more so to
the smaller and weaker, threatened as it was not only by the more
distant menace of Syria, but by the might of Egypt on the south and
the dangerous predatory warfare of Edom and Moab on the east.
But Jehoshaphat went further than this. He cemented the new peace by
an alliance between his young son Jehoram and Athaliah, daughter of
Ahab and Jezebel, who was then perhaps under fifteen years of age.
Later chroniclers formed their moral estimates by a standard which
did not exist so many centuries before the date at which they wrote.
If we are to judge the conduct of these kings truthfully we must
take an unbiassed view of their conduct. We adopt this principle
when we try to understand the characters of saints and patriarchs
like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or judges and prophets like Gideon,
Deborah, and Samuel; and in general we must not sweepingly condemn
the holy men of old because they lacked the full illumination of the
gospel. We must be guided by a spirit of fairness if we desire to
form a true conception of the kings who lived in the ninth century
before Christ. It is probable that the religious gulf between the
kings of Judah and Israel was not so immense as on a superficial view
it might appear to be; indeed, the balance seems to be in favour of
Jeroboam as against Abijam, Rehoboam, or even Solomon. The worship
of the golden symbols at Dan and Bethel did not appear half so
heinous to the people of Judah as it does to us. Even in the Temple
they had cherubim and oxen. The _Bamoth_ to Chemosh, Milcom, and
Astarte glittered before them undisturbed on the summit of Olivet,
and abominations which they either tolerated or could not remove
sheltered themselves in the very precincts of the Temple, under
the shadows of its desecrated trees. To the pious Jehoshaphat the
tolerance of Baal-worship by Ahab could hardly appear more deadly
than the tolerance of Chemosh-worship by his great-great-grandfather,
and the permission of _Asherim_ and _Chammanim_ by his grandfather,
to say nothing of the phallic horror openly patronised by the
queen-mother who was a granddaughter of David. That Ahab himself
was a worshipper of Jehovah is sufficiently proved by the fact that
he had given the name of Athaliah to the young princess whose hand
Jehoshaphat sought for his son, and the name of Ahaziah ("Jehovah
taketh hold") to the prince who was to be his heir. Jehoshaphat acted
from policy; but so has every king done who has ever reigned. He
could neither be expected to see these things with the illumination
of a prophet, nor to read--as later writers could do in the light of
history--the awful issues involved in an alliance which looked to him
so necessary and so advantageous.
At the time of the proposed alliance there seems to have been no
protest--at any rate, none of which we read. Micaiah alone among the
prophets uttered his stern warning when the expedition to Ramoth
Gilead was actually on foot, and Jehu, son of Hanani, went out to
rebuke Jehoshaphat at the close of that disastrous enterprise. It is
to the history attributed to this seer and embodied in the annals of
Israel that the chronicler refers. "Shouldst thou help the wicked,"
asked the bold prophet, "and love them that hate the Lord? For this
thing wrath is upon thee from the Lord. Nevertheless, there are good
things found in thee, in that thou hast put away the Asheroth out of
the land, and hast set thy heart to seek God."
The moral principle which Jehu, son of Hanani, here enunciated is
profoundly true. It was terribly emphasised by the subsequent events.
A just and wise forecast may have sanctioned the restoration of
peace, but Jehoshaphat might at least have learnt enough to avoid
affinity with a queen who, like Jezebel, had introduced frightful and
tyrannous iniquities into the House of Ahab. Faithful as the King of
Judah evidently intended to be to the law of Jehovah, he should have
hesitated before forming such close bonds of connexion with the cruel
daughter of the usurping Tyrian priest. His error hardly diminished the
warmth of that glowing eulogy which even the chronicler pronounces upon
him; but it brought upon his kingdom, and upon the whole family of his
grandchildren, overwhelming misery and all but total extermination.
The rules of God's moral government are written large on the story
of nations, and the consequences of our actions come upon us not
arbitrarily, but in accordance with universal laws. When we err, even
though our error be leniently judged and fully pardoned, the human
consequences of the deeds which we have done may still come flowing
over us with the resistless march of the ocean tides.
"You little fancy what rude shocks apprise us.
We sin: God's intimations rather fail
In clearness than in energy."
Jehoshaphat did not live to see the ultimate issues of massacre and
despotism which came in the train of his son Jehoram's marriage.[561]
Perhaps to him it wore the golden aspect which it wears in the
forty-fifth Psalm, which, as some have imagined, was composed on this
occasion. But he had abundant proof that close relationship for mutual
offence and defence with the kings of Israel brought no blessing in its
train. In the expedition against Ramoth Gilead when Ahab was slain, he
too very nearly lost his life. Even this did not disturb his alliance
with Ahab's son Ahaziah, with whom he joined in a maritime enterprise
which, like its predecessors, turned out to be a total failure.
Jehoshaphat in his successful wars had established the supremacy
over Edom which had been all but lost in the days of Solomon. The
Edomite Hadad and his successors had not been able to hold their own,
and the present kings of Edom were deputies or vassals under the
suzerainty of Judæa.[562] This once more opened the path to Elath and
Ezion-Geber on the gulf of Akaba. Jehoshaphat, in his prosperity,
felt a desire to revive the old costly commerce of Solomon with Ophir
for gold, sandal wood, and curious animals. For this purpose he built
"ships of Tarshish," _i.e._, merchant ships, like those used for the
Phœnician trade between Tyre and Tartessus, to go this long voyage.
The ships, however, were wrecked on the reefs of Ezion-Geber, for the
Jews were timid and inexperienced mariners. Hearing of this disaster,
according to the Book of Kings, Ahaziah made an offer to Jehoshaphat
to make the enterprise a joint one,--thinking, apparently, that the
Israelites, who, perhaps, held Joppa and some of the ports on the
coast, would bring more skill and knowledge to bear on the result.
But Jehoshaphat had had enough of an attempt which was so dangerous
and which offered no solid advantages. He declined Ahaziah's offer.
The story of these circumstances in the chronicler is different. He
speaks as if from the first it was a joint experiment of the two
kings, and says that, after the wreck of the fleet, a prophet of whom
we know nothing, "Eliezer, the son of Dodavahu of Mareshah,"[563]
prophesied against Jehoshaphat, saying, "Because thou hast joined
thyself with Ahaziah, Jehovah hath made a breach in thy works." The
passage shows that the word "prophesied" was constantly used in the
sense of "preached," and did not necessarily imply any prediction
of events yet future. The chronicler, however, apparently makes the
mistake of supposing that ships were built at Ezion-Geber on the
Red Sea to sail to Tartessus in Spain![564] The earlier and better
authority says correctly that these merchantmen were built to trade
with Ophir, in India, or Arabia. The chronicler seems to have been
unaware that "ships of Tarshish," like our "Indiamen," was a general
title for vessels of a special build.[565]
We see enough in the Book of Kings to show the greatness and goodness
of Jehoshaphat, and later on we shall hear details of his military
expeditions.[566] The chronicler, glorifying him still more, says that
he sent princes and Levites and priests to teach the Book of the Law
throughout all the cities of Judah; that he received large presents
and tribute from neighbouring peoples; that he built castles and stone
cities; and that he had a stupendous army of 160,000 troops under four
great generals. He also narrates that when an immense host of Moabites,
Ammonites, and Meunim came against him to Hazezon-Tamar or Engedi, he
took his stand before the people in the Temple in front of the new
court and prayed. Thereupon the Spirit of the Lord came upon "Jahaziel
the son of Zechariah, the son of Benaiah, the son of Jeiel, the son of
Mattaniah the Levite, of the sons of Asaph," who told them that the
next day they should go against the invader, but that they need not
strike a blow. The battle was God's, not theirs. All they had to do was
to stand still and see the salvation of Jehovah. On hearing this the
king and all his people prostrated themselves, and the Levites stood
up to praise God. Next morning Jehoshaphat told his people to believe
God and His prophets and they should prosper, and bade them chant the
verse, "Give thanks unto the Lord, for His mercy endureth for ever,"
which now forms the refrain of Psalm cxxxvi.[567] On this Jehovah
"set liers in wait against the children of Ammon, Moab, and Mount
Seir." Intestine struggles arose among the invaders. The inhabitants
of Mount Seir were first destroyed, and the rest then turned their
swords against each other until they were all "dead bodies fallen to
the earth." The soldiers of Jehoshaphat despoiled these corpses for
three days, and on the fourth assembled themselves in the valley of
Beracah ("Blessing"), which received its name from their tumultuous
rejoicings.[568] After this they returned to Jerusalem with psalteries
and harps and trumpets, and God gave Jehoshaphat rest from all his
enemies round about. Of all this the historian of the Kings tells us
nothing. Jehoshaphat died full of years and honours, leaving seven
sons, of whom the eldest was Jehoram.[569] His reign marks a decisive
triumph of the prophetic party. The prophets not only felt a fiercely
just abhorrence of the abominations of Canaanite idolatry, but wished
to establish a theocracy to the exclusion on the one hand of all local
and symbolic worship, and on the other of all reliance on worldly
policy. Up to this time, as Dean Stanley says in his usual strikingly
picturesque manner, "if there was a 'holy city,' there was also an
'unholy city' within the walls of Sion. It was like a seething caldron
of blood and froth 'whose scum is therein and whose scum has not gone
out of it.' The Temple was hemmed in by dark idolatries on every
side. Mount Olivet was covered with heathen sanctuaries, monumental
stones, and pillars of Baal. Wooden images of Astarte under the sacred
trees, huge images of Molech appeared at every turn in the walks
around Jerusalem."[570] Jehoshaphat introduced a decisive improvement
into the conditions which prevailed under Rehoboam and Abijah, but
practically the conflict between light and darkness goes on for ever.
It was in days when Jerusalem had come to be regarded by herself and by
all nations as exceptionally holy, that she, who had been for centuries
the murderess of the prophets, became under her priestly religionists
the murderess of the Christ, and--far different in God's eyes from what
she was in her own--deserved the dreadful stigma of being "the great
city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt."
FOOTNOTES:
[561] Following the precedent set by Rehoboam, he established his six
younger sons in castles and fenced cities. Athaliah must have found
it difficult to exterminate their families if she attempted this.
[562] The Nitzab or Præfect of Edom was allowed the barren title of
king.
[563] 2 Chron. xx. 37. His name faintly recalls that of Eleazar, son
of Dodo (2 Sam. xxiii. 9). Dodavahu means "friend of God."
[564] 2 Chron. xx. 36, 37. It would be monstrous to send ships to
circumnavigate Africa in order to reach Tartessus. The last resource of
the harmonists (_e.g._, Keil) to save the accuracy of the chronicler is
to suppose that Jehoshaphat meant to drag the whole fleet across the
Isthmus of Suez, and so to sail from one of the havens of Palestine!
[565] "Cette version," says Munk (_Palestine_, p. 314), "a probablement
pris naissance dans l'esprit de rigorisme qui animait plus tard
les écrivans Juifs." "This," says Dr. Robertson Smith, "is a mere
pragmatical inference from the story in Kings." See his further remarks
in _The Old Testament in the Jewish Church_, chap. ii., p. 146. He
regards parts of the Books of Chronicles as being, in fact, a Jewish
_Midrash_. "It is not History, but _Haggada_, moralising romance. And
the chronicler himself gives the name of _Midrash_ (R.V., 'story') to
two of the sources from which he drew (2 Chron. xiii. 22, xxiv. 27), so
that there is really no mystery as to the nature of the work when it
departs from the old canonical histories" (p. 148).
[566] We shall have further glimpses of Jehoshaphat in the reigns of
Ahab and even of Jehoram.
[567] See 1 Chron. xvi. 34; 2 Chron. v. 13, vii. 3, xx. 21; Psalms
cvi., cvii., cxviii., etc. The eighty-third Psalm may owe its origin
to this deliverance, and Hengstenberg thinks Psalms xlvii. and
xlviii. also.
[568] The title "valley of Jehoshaphat" is thought also to have
derived its origin from these events. Comp. Joel iii. 2.
[569] 2 Chron. xxi. 2, 3.
[570] There is a little exaggeration here.
CHAPTER XXXII.
_THE KINGS OF ISRAEL FROM ZIMRI TO AHAB._
B.C. 889-877.
1 KINGS xvi. 11-34.
As far as we can understand from our meagre authorities--and we
have no independent source of information--we infer that Elah, son
of the powerful Baasha, was a self-indulgent weakling. The army
of Israel was encamped against Gibbethon--originally a Levitical
town of the Kohathites, in the territory of Dan--which they hoped
to wrest from the Philistines. It was during the interminable and
intermittent siege of this town that Nadab, the son of Jeroboam,
had been murdered. Whatever may have been his sins, he was in his
proper place leading the armies of Israel. Elah was not there, but
in his beautiful palace at Tirzah. It was probably contempt for his
incapacity and the bad example of Baasha's successful revolt, that
tempted Zimri to murder him as he was drinking himself drunk in the
house of his chamberlain Arza. Zimri was a commander of half the
chariots, and probably thinking that he could secure the throne by a
_coup de main_ he slew not only Elah, but every male member of his
family. To extinguish any possibility of vengeance, he even massacred
all who were known to be friends of the royal house.
It was a consummate crime, and it was followed by swift and condign
judgment. Through that sea of blood Zimri only succeeded in wading
to one week's royalty, followed by a shameful and agonising death.
We are told that he did evil in the sight of the Lord by following
the sin of Jeroboam's calf-worship. The phrase must be here something
of a formula, for in seven days he could hardly have achieved a
religious revolution, and every other king of Israel, some of whom
have long and prosperous reigns, maintained the unauthorised worship.
But Zimri's atrocious revolt had been so ill-considered that it
furnished a proverb of the terrible fate of rebels.[571] He had not
even attempted to secure the assent of the army at Gibbethon. No
sooner did the news reach the camp than the soldiers tumultuously
refused to accept Zimri as king, and elected Omri their captain. Omri
instantly broke up the camp, and led them to besiege the new king in
Tirzah. Zimri saw that his cause was hopeless, and took refuge in the
fortress (_birah_) attached to the palace.[572] When he saw that even
there he could not maintain himself, he preferred speedy death to
slow starvation or falling into the hands of his rival. He set fire
to the palace, and, like Sardanapalus, perished in the flames.[573]
The swift suppression of his treason did not save the unhappy kingdom
from anarchy and civil war. However popular Omri might be with the
army, he was unacceptable to a large part of the people. They chose
as their king a certain Tibni, son of Ginath, who was supported by a
powerful brother named Joram. For four years the contest was continued.
At the end of that time Tibni and Joram were conquered and killed,[574]
and Omri began his sole reign, which lasted eight years longer.
He founded the most conspicuous dynasty of Israel, and so completely
identified his name with the Northern Kingdom that it was known to
the Assyrians as Beit-Khumri, or "the House of Omri."[575] They even
speak of Jehu the destroyer of Omri's dynasty, as "the son of Omri."
Incidental allusions in the annals of his son show that Omri was
engaged in incessant wars against Syria. He was unsuccessful, and
Benhadad robbed him of Ramoth Gilead and other cities, enforcing the
right of Syrians to have streets of their own even in his new capital
of Samaria.[576] On the other hand, he was greatly successful on the
south-east against the Moabites and their warrior-king Chemosh-Gad,
the father of Mesha.
Few details of either war have come down to us.[577] We learn, however,
from the famous Moabite stone that he began his assault on Moab by the
capture of Mediba, several miles south of Heshbon, overran the country,
made the king a vassal, and imposed on Moab the enormous annual tribute
of 100,000 sheep and 100,000 rams.[578] Mesha in his inscription
records that Omri "oppressed Moab many days," and attributed this to
the fact that Chemosh was angry with his chosen people.
He stamped his impress deep upon his subjects. It must have been to
him that the alliance with the Tyrians was due, which in his son's
reign produced consequences so momentous. He "did worse we are told
than all the kings that were before him."[579] Although he is only
charged with walking in the way of Jeroboam, the indignant manner in
which the prophet Micah speaks of "the statutes of Omri" as still
being kept,[580] seems to prove that his influence on religion was
condemned by the prophetic order on special grounds. It is clear that
he was a sovereign of far greater eminence and importance than we
might suppose from the meagreness of his annals as here preserved;
indeed, for thirty-four years after his accession the history of the
Southern Kingdom becomes a mere appendix to that of the Northern.
One conspicuous service he rendered to his subjects by providing
them with the city which became their permanent and famous capital.
This he did in the sixth year of his reign. The burning of the
fortress-palace of Tirzah, and the rapidity with which the town had
succumbed to its besiegers, may have led him to look out for a site,
which was central, strong, and beautiful. His choice was so prescient
that the new royal residence superseded not only Penuel and Tirzah,
but even Shechem. It was, says Dean Stanley, "as though Versailles
had taken the place of Paris, or Windsor of London." He fixed his eye
on an oblong hill, with long flat summit, which rose in the midst
of a wide valley encircled with hills, near the edge of the plain
of Sharon, and six miles north-west of Shechem. Its beauty is still
the admiration of the traveller in Palestine. It gave point to the
apostrophe of Isaiah: "Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards
of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower, which is on
the head of the fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine!...
The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be trodden under
foot: and the fading flower of his glorious adornment, which is on
the head of the fat valley, shall become as a fading flower and as an
early fig."[581] All around it the low hills and rich ravines were
clothed with fertility. They recall more nearly than any other scene
in Palestine the green fields and parks of England.
It commanded a full view of the sea and the plain of Sharon on the
one hand, and of the vale of Shechem on the other. The town sloped
down from the summit of this hill; a broad wall with a terraced
top ran round it. "In front of the gates was a wide open space or
threshing floor, where the kings of Samaria sat on great occasions.
The inferior houses were built of white brick, with rafters of
sycomore, the grandeur of hewn stones and cedar (Isa. ix. 9, 10).
Its soft, rounded, oblong platform was, as it were, a vast luxurious
couch, in which the nobles securely rested, propped and cushioned up
on both sides, as in the cherished corner of a rich divan."[582]
Far more important in the eyes of Omri than its beauty was the
natural strength of its position. It did not possess the impregnable
majesty of Jerusalem, but its height and isolation, permitting of
strong fortifications, enabled it to baffle the besieging hosts of
the Aramæans in B.C. 901 and in B.C. 892. For three long years it
held out against the mighty Assyrians under Sargon and Shalmanezer.
Its capture in B.C. 721 involved the ruin of the whole kingdom in
its fall.[583] Nebuchadnezzar took it in B.C. 554, after a siege of
thirteen years. In later centuries it partially recovered. Alexander
the Great took it, and massacred many of its inhabitants, B.C. 332.
John Hyrcanus, who took it after a year's siege, tried to demolish
it in B.C. 129. After various fortunes it was splendidly rebuilt by
Herod the Great, who called it Sebaste, in honour of Augustus. It
still exists under the name of Sebastïyeh.[584]
When Omri chose it for his residence it belonged to a certain Shemer,
who, according to Epiphanius, was a descendant of the ancient
Perizzites or Girgashites. The king paid for this hill the large
sum of two talents of silver,[585] and called it Shomeron. The name
means "a watch tower," and was appropriate both from its commanding
position and because it echoed the name of its old possessor.[586]
The new capital marked a new epoch. It superseded as completely as
Jerusalem had done the old local shrines endeared by the immemorial
sanctity of their traditions; but as its origin was purely political
it acted unfavourably on the religion of the people. It became a city
of idolatry and of luxurious wealth; a city in which Baal-worship
with its ritual pomp threw into the shade the worship of Jehovah; a
city in which corrupted nobles, lolling at wine feasts on rich divans
in their palaces inlaid with ivory, sold the righteous for silver and
the needy for a pair of shoes. Of Omri we are told no more. After a
reign of twelve years he slept with his fathers, and was buried in
the city which was to be for so many centuries a memorial of his fame.
The name of Omri marks a new epoch. He is the first Jewish king whose
name is alluded to in Assyrian inscriptions. Assyria had emerged into
importance in the twelfth century before Christ under Tiglath-Pileser
I., but during the eleventh and down to the middle of the tenth century
it had sunk into inactivity. Assurbanipal, the father of Shalmanezer
II. (884-860), enlarged his dominions to the Mediterranean westwards
and to Lebanon southwards. In 870, when Ahab was king, the Assyrian
warriors had exacted tribute from Tyre, Sidon, and Biblos.[587] It is
not impossible that Omri also had paid tribute, and it has even been
conjectured that it was to Assyrian help that he owed his throne. The
Book of Kings only alludes to the valour of this warrior-king in the
one word "his might";[588] but it is evident from other indications
that he had a stormy and chequered reign.
FOOTNOTES:
[571] 2 Kings ix. 31.
[572] R.V., "the _castle_ of the king's house."
[573] Justin, _Hist._, i. 3; cf. Herod., i. 176, vii. 107; Liv., xxi.
14. Ewald elaborates out of his own consciousness an extraordinary
romance about Zimri and the queen-mother.
[574] Josephus (_Antt._, VIII. xii. 5) says that Tibni was
assassinated, as does the Rabbinic _Seder Olam Rabba_, chap. xvii.
LXX., καὶ ἀπέθανε Θαβνὶ καὶ Ἰωρὰμ ὁ ἀδελφὸς αὐτοῦ.
[575] Athaliah is called "the daughter of Omri."
[576] The Aramæans have come to be incorrectly called Syrians because
the Greeks confused them with the Assyrians.
[577] 1 Kings xx. 34.
[578] 2 Kings iii. 4.
[579] 1 Kings xvi. 25.
[580] Micah vi. 16.
[581] Isa. xxviii. 1-4.
[582] Stanley, _Lectures_, ii. 242.
[583] 1 Kings xx. 1; 2 Kings vi. 24.
[584] Josephus, _Antt._, XV. vii. 7. One of the few instances in
Palestine where the ancient name has been superseded by a more modern
one. The early Assyrians call it Beth-Khumri, "House of Omri"; but
the name Sammerin occurs in the monument of Tiglath-Pileser II.
[585] About £800 of our money.
[586] LXX., Σκοπία; שָׁמַר, "to watch."
[587] Meyer, _Gesch. d. Alt._, 331; Kittel, ii. 221; Schrader,
_Keilinschr._, i. 165.
[588] נְבוּרָתֹו (1 Kings xvi. 27).
BOOK IV.
_AHAB AND ELIJAH._
B.C. 877-855.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
_KING AHAB AND QUEEN JEZEBEL._
"Besides what that grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said."
LYCIDAS.
1 KINGS xvi. 29-34.
Omri was succeeded by his son Ahab, whose eventful reign of upwards
of twenty years[589] occupies so large a space even in these
fragmentary records. His name means "brother-father," and has
probably some sacred reference. He is stigmatised by the historians
as a king more wicked than his father, though Omri had "done worse
than all who were before him.". That he was a brave warrior, and
showed some great qualities during a long and on the whole prosperous
career; that he built cities, and added to Israel yet another
royal residence; that he advanced the wealth and prosperity of his
subjects; that he was highly successful in some of his wars against
Syria, and died in battle against those dangerous enemies of his
country; that he maintained unbroken, and strengthened by yet closer
affinity, the recent alliance with the Southern Kingdom,--all this
goes for nothing with the prophetic annalists. They have no word of
eulogy for the king who added Baal-worship to the sin of Jeroboam.
The prominence of Ahab in their record is only due to the fact that
he came into dreadful collision with the prophetic order, and with
Elijah, the greatest prophet who had yet arisen. The glory and
the sins of the warrior-king interested the young prophets of the
schools solely because they were interwoven with the grand and sombre
traditions of their mightiest reformer.
The historian traces all his ignominy and ruin to a disastrous
alliance. The kings of Judah had followed the bad example of David
and had been polygamists. Up to this time the kings of Israel seem to
have been contented with a single wife. The wealth and power of Ahab
led him to adopt the costly luxury of a harem, and he had seventy
sons.[590] This, however, would have been regarded in those days as
a venial offence, or as no offence at all; but just as the growing
power of Solomon had been enhanced by marriage with a princess of
Egypt, so Ahab was now of sufficient importance to wed a daughter
of the King of Tyre. "As though it had been a light thing for him
to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, he took to wife
Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, King of the Zidonians."
It was an act of policy in which religious considerations went for
nothing. There is little doubt that it flattered his pride and the
pride of his people, and that Jezebel brought riches with her and
pomp and the prestige of luxurious royalty.[591] The Phœnicians were
of the old race of Canaan, with whom all affinity was so strongly
forbidden. Ethbaal--more accurately, perhaps, Itto-baal (Baal is with
him)[592]--though he ruled all Phœnicia, both Tyre and Sidon, was a
usurper, and had been the high priest of the great Temple of Ashtoreth
in Tyre. Hiram, the friend of Solomon, had now been dead for half a
century. The last king of his dynasty was the fratricide Phelles,
whom in his turn his brother Ethbaal slew. He reigned for thirty-two
years, and founded a dynasty which lasted for sixty-two years more.
He was the seventh successor to the throne of Tyre in the fifty years
which had elapsed since the death of Hiram. Menander of Ephesus, as
quoted by Josephus, shows us that in the history of this family we find
an interesting point of contact between sacred and classic history.
Jezebel was the aunt of Virgil's Belus, and great-aunt of Pygmalion,
and of Dido, the famous foundress of Carthage.[593]
A king named after Baal, and who had named his daughter after Baal--a
king whose descendants down to Maherbal and Hasdrubal and Hannibal
bore the name of the Sun-god[594]--a king who had himself been at the
head of the cult of Ashtoreth, the female deity who was worshipped
with Baal--was not likely to rest content until he had founded the
worship of his god in the realm of his son-in-law. Ahab, we are
told, "went and served Baal and worshipped him." We must discount by
recorded facts the impression which might _primâ facie_ be left by
these sweeping denunciations. It is certain that to his death Ahab
continued to recognise Jehovah. He enshrined the name of Jehovah in the
names of his children.[595] He consulted the prophets of Jehovah, and
his continuance of the calf-worship met with no recorded reproof from
the many true prophets who were active during his reign. The worship
of Baal was due to nothing more than the unwise eclecticism which had
induced Solomon to establish the _Bamoth_ to heathen deities on the
mount of offence. It is exceedingly probable that the permission of
Baal-worship had been one of the articles of the treaty between Tyre
and Israel, which, as we know from Amos, had been made at this time.
It had probably been the condition on which the fanatical Phœnician
usurper had conceded to his far less powerful neighbour the hand of his
daughter. It was, as we see, alike in sacred and secular history a time
of treaties. The menacing spectre of Assyria was beginning to terrify
the nations. Hamath, Syria, and the Hittites had formed a league of
defence against the northern power, and similar motives induced the
kings of Israel to seek alliance with Phœnicia. Perhaps neither Omri
nor Ahab grasped all the consequences of their concession to the
Sidonian princess.[596] But such compacts were against the very essence
of the religion of Israel, which was "Yahveh Israel's God, and Israel
Yahveh's people."
The new queen inherited the fanaticism as she inherited the ferocity
of her father. She acquired from the first a paramount sway over
the weak and uxorious mind of her husband. Under her influence Ahab
built in Samaria a splendid temple and altar to Baal, in which no
less than four hundred orgiastic priests served the Phœnician idol
in splendid vestments, and with the same pompous ritual as in the
shrines at Tyre. In front of this temple, to the disgust and horror
of all faithful worshippers of Jehovah, stood an _Asherah_ in honour
of the Nature-goddess, and _Matstseboth_ pillars or obelisks which
represented either sunbeams or the reproductive powers of nature.
In these ways Ahab "did more to provoke the Lord God to anger than
all the kings of Israel that were before him."[597] When we learn
what Baal was, and how he was worshipped, we are not surprised at
so stern a condemnation. Half Sun-god, half Bacchus, half Hercules,
Baal was worshipped under the image of a bull, "the symbol of the
male power of generation." In the wantonness of his rites he was
akin to Peor; in their cruel atrocity to the kindred Moloch; in the
demand for victims to be sacrificed to the horrible consecration
of lust and blood he resembled the Minotaur, the wallowing "infamy
of Crete," with its yearly tribute of youths and maidens. What
the combined worship of Baal and Asherah was like--and by Jezebel
with Ahab's connivance they were now countenanced in Samaria--we
may learn from the description of their temple at Apheka.[598] It
confirms what we are incidentally told of Jezebel's devotions. It
abounded in wealthy gifts, and its multitude of priests, women, and
mutilated ministers--of whom Lucian counted three hundred at one
sacrifice--were clad in splendid vestments. Children were sacrificed
by being put in a leathern bag and flung down from the top of the
temple, with the shocking expression that "they were calves, not
children." In the forecourt stood two gigantic phalli. The _Galli_
were maddened into a tumult of excitement by the uproar of drums,
shrill pipes, and clanging cymbals, gashed themselves with knives and
potsherds, and often ran through the city in women's dress.[599]
Such was the new worship with which the dark murderess insulted the
faith in Jehovah. Could any condemnation be too stern for the folly
and faithlessness of the king who sanctioned it?
A consequence of this tolerance of polluted forms of worship seems
to have shown itself in defiant contempt for sacred traditions. At
any rate, it is in this connexion that we are told how Hiel of Bethel
set at naught an ancient curse. After the fall of Jericho Joshua had
pronounced a curse upon the site of the city. It was never to be
rebuilt, but to remain under the ban of God. The site, indeed, had
not been absolutely uninhabited, for its importance near the fords
of Jordan necessitated the existence of some sort of caravanserai
in or near the spot.[600] At this time it belonged to the kingdom
of Israel, though it was in the district of Benjamin and afterwards
reverted to Judah.[601] Hiel, struck by the opportunities afforded by
its position, laughed the old _cherem_ to scorn, and determined to
rebuild Jericho into a fortified and important city. But men remarked
with a shudder that the curse had not been uttered in vain. The laying
of the foundation was marked by the death of his firstborn Abiram, the
completion of the gates by the death of Segub, his youngest son.[602]
* * * * *
The shadow of Queen Jezebel falls dark for many years over the
history of Israel and Judah. She was one of those masterful,
indomitable, implacable women who, when fate places them in exalted
power, leave a terrible mark on the annals of nations. What the
Empress Irene was in the history of Constantinople, or the "She-wolf
of France" in that of England, or Catherine de Medicis in that of
France, that Jezebel was in the history of Palestine. The unhappy
Juana of Spain left a physical trace upon her descendants in the
perpetuation of the huge jaw which had gained her the soubriquet of
_Maultasch_; but the trace left by Jezebel was marked in blood in
the fortunes of the children born to her. Already three of the six
kings of Israel had been murdered, or had come to evil ends; but the
fate of Ahab and his house was most disastrous of all, and it became
so through the "whoredoms and witchcrafts" of his Sidonian wife. A
thousand years later the name of Jezebel was still ominous as that
of one who seduced others into fornication and idolatry.[603] If no
king so completely "sold himself to work wickedness" as Ahab, it was
because "Jezebel his wife stirred him up."[604]
Yet, however guilty may have been the uxorious apostasies of Ahab,
he can hardly be held to be responsible for the marriage itself. The
dates and ages recorded for us show decisively that the alliance
must have been negotiated by Omri, for it took place in his reign
and when Ahab was too young to have much voice in the administration
of the kingdom. He is only responsible for abdicating his proper
authority over Jezebel, and for permitting her a free hand in the
corruption of worship, while he gave himself up to his schemes of
worldly aggrandisement. Absorbed in the strengthening of his cities
and the embellishment of his ivory palaces, he became neglectful of
the worship of Jehovah, and careless of the more solemn and sacred
duties of a theocratic king.
The temple to Baal at Samaria was built; the hateful Asherah in
front of it offended the eyes of all whose hearts abhorred an impure
idolatry. Its priests and the priests of Astarte were the favourites
of the court. Eight hundred and fifty of them fed in splendour at
Jezebel's table, and the pomp of their sensuous cult threw wholly
into the shade the worship of the God of Israel. Hitherto there had
been no protest against, no interference with the course of evil. It
had been suffered to reach its meridian unchecked, and it seemed only
a question of time that the service of Jehovah would yield to that of
Baal, to whose favour the queen probably believed that her priestly
father had owed his throne. There are indications that Jezebel had
gone further still, and that Ahab, however much he may secretly have
disapproved, had not interfered to prevent her. For although we do
not know the exact period at which Jezebel began to exercise violence
against the worshippers of Jehovah, it is certain that she did so.
This crime took place before the great famine which was appointed
for its punishment, and which roused from cowardly torpor the supine
conscience of the king and of the nation. Jezebel stands out on
the page of sacred history as the first supporter of _religious
persecution_. We learn from incidental notices that, not content with
insulting the religion of the nation by the burdensome magnificence
of her idolatrous establishments, she made an attempt to crush
Jehovah-worship altogether. Such fanaticism is a frequent concomitant
of guilt. She is the authentic authoress of priestly inquisitions.
The Borgian monster, Pope Alexander VI., who founded the Spanish
Inquisition, is the lineal inheritor of the traditions of Jezebel.
Had Ahab done no more than Solomon had done in Judah, the followers
of the true faith in Israel would have been as deeply offended as
those of the Southern Kingdom. They would have hated a toleration
which they regarded as wicked, because it involved moral corruption
as well as the danger of national apostasy. Their feelings would have
been even more wrathful than were stirred in the hearts of English
Puritans when they heard of the Masses in the chapel of Henrietta
Maria, or saw Father Petre gliding about the corridors of Whitehall.
But their opposition was crushed with a hand of iron. Jezebel,
strong in her _entourage_ of no less than eight hundred and fifty
priests, to say nothing of her other attendants, audaciously broke
down the altars of Jehovah--even the lonely one on Mount Carmel--and
endeavoured so completely to extirpate all the prophets of Jehovah
that Elijah regarded himself as the sole prophet that was left. Those
who escaped her fury had to wander about in destitution, and to hide
in dens and caves of the earth.
The apostasy of Churches always creeps on apace, when priests and
prophets, afraid of malediction, and afraid of imperilling their
worldly interests become cowards, opportunists, and time-servers, and
not daring to speak out the truth that is in them, suffer the cause of
spirituality and righteousness to go by default. But "when Iniquity
hath played her part, Vengeance, leaps upon the stage. The comedy is
short, but the tragedy is long. The black guard shall attend upon you:
you shall eat at the table of sorrow, and the crown of death shall be
upon your heads, many glittering faces looking upon you."[605]
FOOTNOTES:
[589] It is needless in each separate case to enter into the
chronological minutiæ about which the historian is little solicitous.
A table of the chronology so far as it can be ascertained is
furnished, _infra_.
[590] 1 Kings xx. 5; 2 Kings x. 7.
[591] Hitzig thinks that Psalm xlv. was an epithalamium on this
occasion, from the mention of "ivory palaces" and "the daughter of
Tyre." Had it been composed for the marriage of Solomon, or Jehoram
and Athaliah, or any king of Judah, there would surely have been an
allusion to Jerusalem. Moreover, the queen is called שֵׁנָל, which is
a Chaldee (Dan. v. 2), or perhaps a North Palestine word. The word in
Judah was Gebira.
[592] Ἰθόβαλος, Josephus, _Antt._, VIII. xiii. 1; _c. Ap._, I.
18 (quoting the heathen historian Menander of Ephesus). It may,
however, be "Man of Baal," like Saul's son Ishbaal (Ishbosheth). In
Tyre the high priest was only second to the king in power (Justin,
_Hist._, xviii. 4), and Ethbaal united both dignities. He died aged
sixty-eight. Another Ethbaal was on the throne during the siege of
Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar (Josephus, _Antt._, X. xi. I).
[593] Josephus, _c. Ap._, I. 18. The genealogy is:--
+-----------------------+
| |
Phelles Ethbaal.
(a usurper, whom his |
brother Ethbaal slew). |
|
+----------+------+
| |
Badezon. Jezebel.
|
Matger (_Belus_).
|
+---------------+
| |
Pygmalion. Dido.
See Canon Rawlinson, _Speaker's Commentary, ad loc._
[594] Plaut., _Pænul._, V. ii. 6, 7. Phœnician names abound in the
element "Baal."
[595] Ahaziah ("Jehovah supports"), Jehoram ("Jehovah is exalted"),
Athaliah (?). The word Baal merely meant "Lord"; and perhaps the fact
that at one time it had been freely applied to Jehovah Himself may
have helped to confuse the religious perceptions of the people. Saul,
certainly no idolater, called his son Eshbaal ("the man of Baal");
and it was only the hatred of the name Baal in later times which led
the Jews to alter Baal into Bosheth ("shame"), as in Ishbosheth,
Mephibosheth. David himself had a son named Beeliada ("known to
Baal"), which was altered into Eliada (1 Chron. xiv. 7, iii. 8; 2
Sam. v. 16; comp. 2 Chron. xvii. 17). We even find the name Bealiah
("Baal is Jah") as one of David's men (1 Chron. xii. 5). Hoshea too
records that Baali ("my Lord") was used of Jehovah, but changed into
Ishi ("my husband") (Hosea ii. 16, 17). It is used simply for owner
("the baal of an ox") in "the Book of the Covenant" (Exod. xxi. 28).
See Robertson Smith, _Rel. of the Semites_, 92.
[596] Ethbaal is called King of Sidon (1 Kings xvi. 31), and was also
King of Tyre (Menander _ap._ Josephus, _Antt._, VIII. xiii. 1).
[597] 1 Kings xvi. 23; 2 Kings iii. 2, x. 27.
[598] _Asherim_ seem to be upright wooden stocks of trees in honour
of the Nature-goddess Asheroth. The Temple of Baal at Tyre had no
image, only two _Matstseboth_, one of gold given by Hiram, one of
"emerald" (Dius and Menander _ap._ Josephus, _Antt._, VIII. v. 3; _c.
Ap._, I. 18; Herod., ii. 66).
[599] Döllinger, _Judenth. u. Heidenthum_ (E. T.), i. 425-29.
[600] 2 Sam. x. 5; Judg. iii. 28.
[601] 2 Chron. xxviii. 15.
[602] Comp. Josh. vi. 26; 2 Sam. x. 5.
[603] Rev. ii. 20.
[604] 1 Kings xxi. 25, 26.
[605] Henry Smith, _The Trumpet of the Lord sounding to Judgment_.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
_ELIJAH._
1 KINGS xvii. 1-7.
"And Elias the prophet stood up as fire, and his word was burning
as a torch."--ECCLUS. xlviii. 1.
"But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more."
_Lycidas._
Many chapters are now occupied with narratives of the deeds of
two great prophets, Elijah and Elisha, remarkable for the blaze
and profusion of miracles and for similarity in many details.
For thirty-four years we hear but little of Judah, and the kings
of Israel are overshadowed by the "men of God." Both narratives,
of which the later in sequence seems to be the earlier in date,
originated in the Schools of the Prophets. Both are evidently drawn
from documentary sources apart from the ordinary annals of the Kings.
Doubtless something of their fragmentariness is due to the
abbreviation of the prophetic annals by the historians.
Suddenly, with abrupt impetuosity, the mighty figure of Elijah
the Prophet bursts upon the scene like lightning on the midnight.
So far as the sacred page is concerned, he, like Melchizedek, is
"without father, without mother, without descent." He appears
before us unannounced as "Elijah the Tishbite of the inhabitants of
Gilead." Such a phenomenon as Jezebel explains and necessitates such
a phenomenon as Elijah. "The loftiest and sternest spirit of the
true faith is raised up," says Dean Stanley, "face to face with the
proudest and fiercest spirit of the old Asiatic Paganism."
The name Elijah, or, in its fuller and more sonorous Hebrew form,
Elijahu, means "Jehovah is my God." Who he was is entirely unknown.
So completely is all previous trace of him lost in mystery that
Talmudic legends confounded him with Phinehas, the son of Aaron, the
avenging and fiercely zealous priest; and even identified him with
the angel or messenger of Jehovah who appeared to Gideon and ascended
in the altar flame.
The name "Tishbite" tells us nothing. No town of Tishbi occurs in
Scripture, and though a Thisbe in the tribe of Naphtali is mentioned
as the birthplace of Tobit,[606] the existence of such a place is
as doubtful as that of "Thesbon of the Gileadite district" to which
Josephus assigns his birth.[607] The Hebrew may mean "the Tishbite
from Tishbi of Gilead," or "_The sojourner from the sojourners of
Gilead_"; and we know no more. Elijah's grandeur is in himself alone.
Perhaps he was by birth an Ishmaelite. When the wild Highlander
in Rob Roy says of himself "I am a man," "A man!" repeated Frank
Osbaldistone; "that is a very brief description." "It will serve,"
answered the outlaw, "for one who has no other to give. He who is
without name, without friends, without coin, without country, is
still at least a man: and he that has all these is no more." So
Elijah stands alone in the towering height of his fearless manhood.
Some clue to the swift mysterious movements, the rough asceticism,
the sheepskin robe, the unbending sternness of the Prophet may lie
in the notice that he was a Gileadite, or at any rate among the
sojourners of Gilead, and therefore akin to them. It might even be
conjectured that he was of Kenite origin, like Jonadab, the son of
Rechab, in the days of Jehu.[608] The Gileadites were the Highlanders
of Palestine, and the name of their land implies its barren
ruggedness.[609] They, like the modern Druses, were
"Fierce, hardy, proud, in conscious freedom bold."
We catch a glimpse of these characteristics in the notice of the
four hundred Gadites who swam the Jordan in Palestine to join the
freebooters of David in the cave of Adullam, "whose faces were like
the faces of lions, and who were as swift as the roes upon the
mountains." Though of Israelitish origin they were closely akin to
the Bedawin, swift, strong, temperate, fond of the great solitudes of
nature, haters of cities, scorners of the softnesses of civilisation.
Elijah shared these characteristics. Like the forerunner of Christ,
in whom his spirit reappeared nine centuries later, he had lived
alone with God in the glowing deserts and the mountain fastnesses. He
found Jehovah's presence, not in the
"Gay religions, full of pomp and gold,"
which he misdoubted and despised, but in the barren hills and wild
ravines and bleak uplands where only here and there roamed a shepherd
with his flock. In such hallowed loneliness he had learnt to fear man
little, because he feared God much, and to dwell familiarly on the
sterner aspects of religion and morality. The one conscious fact of his
mission, the sufficient authentication of his most imperious mandates,
was that "he stood before Jehovah." So unexpected were his appearances
and disappearances, that in the popular view he only seemed to flash
to and fro, or to be swept hither and thither, by the Spirit of the
Lord. We may say of him as was said of John the Baptist, that "in his
manifestation and agency he was like a burning torch; his public life
was quite an earthquake; the whole man was a sermon, the voice of one
crying in the wilderness." And, like the Baptist, he had been "in the
deserts, till the day of his showing unto Israel."
Somewhere--perhaps at Samaria, perhaps in the lovely summer palace at
Jezreel--he suddenly strode into the presence of Ahab. Coming to him
as the messenger of the King of kings he does not deign to approach
him with the genuflexions and sounding titles which Nathan used to
the aged David. With scanted courtesy to one whom he does not respect
or dread--knowing that he is in God's hands, and has no time to waste
over courtly periphrases or personal fears--he comes before Ahab
unknown, unintroduced. What manner of man was it by whom the king
in his crown and Tyrian purple was thus rudely confronted? He was,
tradition tells us, a man of short stature, of rugged countenance.
He was "a lord of hair"--the thick black locks of the Nazarite (for
such he probably was) streamed over his shoulders like a lion's mane,
giving him a fierce and unkempt aspect. They that wear soft clothing
are in king's houses, and doubtless under a queen who, even in old
age, painted her face and tired her head, and was given to Sidonian
luxuries, Ahab was accustomed to see men about him in bright apparel.
But Elijah had not stooped to alter his ordinary dress, which was the
dress of the desert by which he was always known. His brown limbs,
otherwise bare, were covered with a heavy mantle, the skin of a camel
or a sheep worn with the rough wool outside, and tightened round his
loins by a leathern girdle. So unusual was his aspect in the cities
east of Jordan, accustomed since the days of Solomon to all the
refinements of Egyptian and Phœnician culture, that it impressed and
haunted the imagination of his own and of subsequent ages. The dress
of Elijah became so normally the dress of prophets who would fain
have assumed his authority without one spark of his inspiration, that
the later Zechariah has to warn his people against sham prophets who
appeared with hairy garments, and who wounded their own hands for no
other purpose than to deceive.[610] The robe of skin, after the long
interspace of centuries, was still the natural garb of "the glorious
eremite," who in his spirit and power made straight in the deserts a
highway for our God.
Such was the man who delivered to Ahab in one sentence his tremendous
message: "As Jehovah, God of Israel, liveth, before whom I stand"--such
was the introductory formula, which became proverbial, and which
authenticated the prophecy--"There shall not be dew[611] nor rain
these years but according to my word." The phrase "to stand before
Jehovah" was used of priests: it was applicable to a prophet in a far
deeper and less external sense.[612] Drought was one of the recognised
Divine punishments for idolatrous apostasy. If Israel should fall
into disobedience, we read in Deuteronomy, "the Lord shall make the
rain of thy land powder and dust; from heaven shall it come down upon
thee--until thou be destroyed"; and in Leviticus we read, "If ye will
not hearken, I will make your heaven as iron and your earth as brass."
The threat was too significant to need any explanation. The conscience
of Ahab could interpret only too readily that prophetic menace.
The message of Elijah marked the beginning of a three, or three
and a half years' famine. This historic drought is also mentioned
by Menander of Tyre, who says that after a year, at the prayer of
Ethbaal, the priest and king, there came abundant thunder showers.
St. James represents the famine as well as its termination as having
been caused by Elijah's prayer.[613] But the expression of the
historian is general. Elijah might pray for rain, but no prophet
could, _proprio motu_, have offered up a prayer for so awful a
curse upon an entire country as a famine, in which thousands of
the innocent would suffer no less severely than the guilty. Three
years' famine was a recognised penalty for apostasy. It was one of
the sore plagues of God. It had befallen Judah "because of Saul and
his bloody house,"[614] and had been offered to guilty David as an
alternative for three days' pestilence, or three years' flight
before his enemies.[615] We are not here told that Elijah prayed for
it, but that he announced its commencement, and declared that only in
accordance with his announcement should it close.
He delivered his message, and what followed we do not know.
Ahab's tolerance was great; and, however fierce may have been his
displeasure, he seems in most cases to have personally respected
the sacredness and dignity of the prophets. The king's wrath might
provoke an outburst of sullenness, but he contented himself with
menacing and reproachful words. It was otherwise with Jezebel. A
genuine idolatress, she hated the servants of Jehovah with implacable
hatred, and did her utmost to suppress them by violence. It was
probably to save Elijah from her fury that he was bidden to fly into
safe hiding, while her foiled rage expended itself in the endeavour
to extirpate the whole body of the prophets of the Lord. But, just
as the child Christ was saved when Herod massacred the infants of
Bethlehem, so Elijah, at whom Jezebel's blow was chiefly aimed, had
escaped beyond her reach. A hundred other imperilled prophets were
hidden in a cave by the faithfulness of Obadiah, the king's vizier.
The word of the Lord bade Elijah to fly eastward and hide himself
"in the brook Cherith,[616] that is before Jordan." The site of this
ravine--which Josephus only calls "a certain torrent bed"--has not
been identified. It was doubtless one of the many wadies which run
into the deep Ghôr or cleft of the Jordan on its eastern side. If
it belonged to his native Gilead, Elijah would be in little fear of
being discovered by the emissaries whom Ahab sent in every direction
to seek for him. Whether it was the Wady Kelt,[617] or the Wady el
Jabis,[618] or the Ain Fusail,[619] we know the exact characteristics
of the scene. On either side, deep, winding and precipitous, rise
the steep walls of rock, full of tropic foliage, among which are
conspicuous the small dark green leaves and stiff thorns of the nubk.
Far below the summit of the ravine, marking its almost imperceptible
thread of water by the brighter green of the herbage, and protected
by masses of dewy leaves from the fierce power of evaporation, the
hidden torrent preserves its life in all but the most long-continued
periods of drought. In such a scene Elijah was absolutely safe.
Whenever danger approached he could hide himself in some fissure or
cavern of the beetling crags where the wild birds have their nest,
or sit motionless under the dense screen of interlacing boughs. The
wildness and almost terror of his surroundings harmonised with his
stern and fearless spirit. A spirit like his would rejoice in the
unapproachable solitude, communing with God alike when the sun flamed
in the zenith and when the midnight hung over him with all its stars.
The needs of an Oriental--particularly of an ascetic Bedawy
prophet--are small as those of the simplest hermit. Water and a few
dates often suffice him for days together. Elijah drank of the brook,
and God "had commanded the ravens to feed him there." The shy, wild,
unclean birds[620] "brought him"--so the old prophetic narrative
tells us--"bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in
the evening." We may remark in passing, that flesh twice a day or
even once a day, if with Josephus we read "bread in the morning and
flesh in the evening," is no part of an Arab's ordinary food. It is
regarded by him as wholly needless, and indeed as an exceptional
indulgence. The double meal of flesh does not resemble the simple
diet of bread and water on which the Prophet lived afterwards at
Sarepta. Are we or are we not to take this as a literal fact? Here
we are face to face with a plain question to which I should deem it
infamous to give a false or a prevaricating answer.
Before giving it, let us clear the ground. First of all, it is a
question which can only be answered by serious criticism. Assertion
can add nothing to it, and is not worth the breath with which it is
uttered. The anathemas of obsolete and _a priori_ dogmatism against
those who cannot take the statement as simple fact do not weigh so
much as a dead autumn leaf in the minds of any thoughtful men.
Some holy but uninstructed soul may say, "It stands on the sacred
page: why should you not understand it literally?" It might be
sufficient to answer, Because there are many utterances on the sacred
page which are purely poetic or metaphorical. "The eye that mocketh
at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the
brook shall pick it out, and the young vultures shall eat it."[621]
The statement looks prosaic and positive enough, but what human
being ever took it literally? "Curse not the king--for a bird of
the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell
the matter." Who does not see at once that the words are poetic and
metaphorical? "Where their worm dieth not, and their fire is not
quenched." How many educated Christians can assert that they believe
that the unredeemed will be eaten for ever by literal worms in
endless flames? The man who pretends that he is obliged to understand
literally the countless Scriptural metaphors involved in an Eastern
language of which nearly every word is a pictorial metaphor, only
shows himself incompetent to pronounce an opinion on subjects
connected with history, literature, or religious criticism.
Is it then out of dislike to the supernatural, or disbelief in its
occurrence, that the best critics decline to take the statement
literally?
Not at all. Most Christians have not the smallest difficulty in
accepting the supernatural. If they believe in the stupendous
miracles of the Incarnation and the Resurrection, what possible
difficulty could they have in accepting any other event merely on
the ground that it is miraculous? To many Christians all life seems
to be one incessant miracle. Disbelieving that any force less than
the fiat of God could have thrilled into inorganic matter the germs
of vegetable and still more of animal life; believing that their
own life is supernatural, and that they are preserved as they were
created by endless cycles of ever-recurrent miracles; believing that
the whole spiritual life is supernatural in its every characteristic;
they have not the slightest unwillingness to believe a miracle when
any real evidence can be adduced for it. They accept, without the
smallest misgiving, the miracles of Jesus Christ our Lord, radiating
as ordinary works from His Divine nature, performed in the full blaze
of history, attested by hundredfold contemporary evidence, leading
to results of world-wide and eternal significance--miracles which
were, so to speak, natural, normal, and necessary, and of which each
revealed some deep moral or spiritual truth. But if miracles can only
rest on evidence, the dullest and least instructed mind can see that
the evidence for this and for some other miracles in this narrative
stands on a wholly different footing. Taken apart from dogmatic
assertions which are themselves unproven or disproved, the evidence
that ravens daily fed Elijah is wholly inadequate to sustain the
burden laid upon it.
In the first place, the story occurs in a book compiled some
centuries after the event which it attests; in a book solemn indeed
and sacred, but composite, and in some of its details not exempt from
the accidents which have always affected all human literature.
And this incident is unattested by any other evidence. It is, so to
speak, isolated. It is quite separable from the historic features of
the narrative, and is out of accordance with what is truly called the
Divine economy of miracles. No miracle was wrought to supply Elijah
with water; and if a miracle was needed to supply him with bread
and flesh, it is easy to imagine hundreds of forms of such direct
interposition which would be more normal and more in accordance
with all other Scripture miracles than the continuous overruling of
the natural instincts of ravenous birds. It has been said that this
particular form of miracle was needed for its evidential value; but
there is nothing in the narrative to imply that it had the smallest
evidential value for any one of Elijah's contemporaries, or even that
they knew of it at all.
Further, we find it, not in a plain prose narrative, but in a
narrative differing entirely from the prosaic setting in which it
occurs--a narrative which rises in many parts to the height of poetic
and imaginative splendour. There is nothing to show that it was not
intended to be a touch of imaginative poetry and nothing more. Part
of the greatness of Hebrew literature lies in its power of conveying
eternal truth, as, for instance, in the Book of Job and in many
passages of the prophets, in the form of imaginative narration. The
stories of Elijah and Elisha come from the Schools of the Prophets.
If room was left in them for the touch of poetic fiction, or for the
embellishment of history with moral truth, conveyed in the form of
parable or apologue, we can at once account for the sudden multitude
of miracles. They were founded no doubt in many instances on actual
events, but in the form into which the narrative is thrown they were
recorded to enhance the greatness of the heroic chiefs of the Schools
of the Prophets. It is therefore uncertain whether the original
narrator believed, or meant his readers literally to believe, such
a statement as that Elijah was fed morning and evening by actual
ravens. It cannot be proved that he intended more than a touch of
poetry, by which he could convey the lesson that the prophet was
maintained by marked interventions of that providence of God which
is itself in all its workings supernatural. God's feeding of the
ravens in their nest was often alluded to in Hebrew poetry; and if
the marvellous support of the Prophet in his lonely hiding-place was
to be represented in an imaginative form, this way of representing
it would naturally occur to the writer's thoughts. Similarly, when
Jerome wrote the purely fictitious life of Paul the Hermit, which was
taken for fact even by his contemporaries, he thinks it quite natural
to say that Paul and Antony saw a raven sitting on a tree, who flew
gently down to them and placed a loaf on the table before them.
Ravens haunt the lonely, inaccessible cliffs among which Elijah found
his place of refuge. It needed but a touch of metaphor to transform
them into ministers of Heaven's beneficence.
But besides all this, the word rendered ravens (_Orebim_, עֹרְבִים)
only has that meaning if it be written with the vowel points. But
the vowel points are confessedly not "inspired" in any sense, but
are a late Massoretic invention. Without the change of a letter the
word may equally well mean people of the city Orbo,[622] or of the
rock Oreb (as was suggested even in the Bereshith Rabba by Rabbi
Judah); or "merchants," as in Ezek. xxvii. 27; or Arabians. No doubt
difficulties might be suggested about any of these interpretations;
but which would be most reasonable, the acceptance of such small
difficulties, or the literal acceptance of a stupendous miracle,
unlike any other in the Bible, by which we are to believe on the
isolated authority of a nameless and long subsequent writer, that,
for months or weeks together, voracious and unclean birds brought
bread and flesh to the Prophet twice a day? The old naturalistic
attempts to explain the miracle are on the face of them absurd;
but it is as perfectly open to any one who chooses to say that
"Arabians," or "Orbites," or "merchants," or "people of the rock
Oreb" fed Elijah, as to say that the "ravens" did so. The explanation
now universally accepted by the Higher Criticism is different. It is
to accept the meaning "ravens," but not with wooden literalness to
interpret didactic and poetic symbolism as though it were bald and
matter-of-fact prose. The imagery of a grand religious _Haggada_ is
not to be understood, nor was it ever meant to be understood, like
the page of a dull annalist. Analogous stories are found abundantly
alike in early pagan and early Christian literature and in mediæval
hagiology. They are true in essence though not in fact, and the
intention of them is often analogous to this; but no story is found
so noble as this in its pure and quiet simplicity.
Let this then suffice and render it needless to recur to similar
discussions. If any think themselves bound to interpret this and all
the other facts in these narratives in their most literal sense; if
they hold that the mere mention of such things by unknown writers in
unknown time--possibly centuries afterwards, when the event may have
become magnified by the refraction of tradition--is sufficient to
substantiate them, let them hold their own opinion as long as it can
satisfy them. But _proof_ of such an opinion they neither have nor
can have; and let them beware of priding themselves on the vaunt of
their "faith," when such "faith" may haply prove to be no more than a
distortion of the truer faith which proves all things and only holds
fast that which will stand the test. A belief based on some _a priori_
opinion about "verbal dictation" is not necessarily meritorious. It
may be quite the reverse. Such a dogma has never been laid down by the
Church in general. It has very rarely been insisted upon by any branch
of the Church in any age. A belief which prides itself on ignorance
of the vast horizon opened to us by the study of many forms of
literature, by the advance of criticism, by the science of comparative
religion--so far from being religious or spiritual may only be a sign
of ignorance, or of a defective love of truth. A dogmatism which heaps
upon intelligent faith burdens at once needless and intolerable may
spring from sources which should tend to self-humiliation rather than
to spiritual pride.[623] _Abundet quisque in sensu suo._ But such
beliefs have not the smallest connexion with true faith or sincere
Christianity. God is a God of truth, and he who tries to force himself
into a view which history and literature, no less than the faithful
following of the Divine light within him, convince him to be untenable,
does not rise into faith, but sins and does mischief by feebleness and
_lack_ of faith.[624]
FOOTNOTES:
[606] Tobit i. 2.
[607] Josephus, _Antt._, VIII. xiii. 2; Vat. (LXX.), Θεσβίτης ὁ ἐκ
θεσβῶν. The Alex. LXX. omits Θεσβίτης. An immense amount has been
written about Elijah. Among others, see Knobel, _Der Prophetismus_,
ii. 73; Köster, _Der Thesbiter_; Stanley, ii., lect. xxx.; Maurice,
_Prophets and Kings_, serm. viii.; F. W. Robertson, ii., serm. vi.;
Milligan, _Elijah_ (Men of the Bible).
[608] See 1 Chron. ii. 55.
[609] See Cheyne, _The Hallowing of Criticism_, p. 9.
[610] Zech. xiii. 4.
[611] The word also means "sea-mist" (Cheyne, p. 15).
[612] Lev. xxvi. 19; Psalm cxxxiv. 1; Heb. x. 11.
[613] So too Ecclus. xlviii. 2, "He _brought_ a sore famine upon
them, and by his zeal he diminished their number"; but the writer
adds, "_By the word of the Lord he shut up the heavens._" Deut.
xxviii. 12; Amos iv. 7.
[614] 2 Sam. xxi. 1.
[615] 2 Sam. xxiv. 13. "Three," not "seven," is probably here the
true reading.
[616] Not "by," as in the A.V. Cherith means "cut off" (1 Kings xvii.
3). "The Lord hid him" (Jer. xxxvi. 26). "In famine he shall redeem
thee from death.... At famine and destruction thou shalt laugh" (Job
v. 20-22).
[617] Robinson.
[618] Benjamin of Tudela.
[619] Marinus Sanutus (1321).
[620] The ravens were unclean birds (Deut. xiv. 14), and this
naturally startled and offended the Rabbis.
[621] Prov. xxx. 17.
[622] Orbo was a small town near the Jordan and Bethshan.
[623] On the other side, Bunsen (_Bibelwerk_, v. 2, 540) speaks
too strongly when he says that "nothing but boundless ignorance,
or, where historical criticism has not died out, an hierarchical
dilettanti reaction, foolhardy hypocrisy, and weak-hearted fanaticism
would wish to demand the faith of a Christian community in the
historic truths of these miracles as if they had actually taken
place." He regards the whole narrative as a "popular epic--the fruit
of an inspiration, which he, as it were some superhuman being,
awakened in his disciples."
[624] I append the remarks of Professor Milligan, a theologian of
unimpeachable orthodoxy. "The miracle," he says, "is so remarkable,
so much out of keeping with most of the other miracles of Scripture,
that even pious and devout minds may well be perplexed by it, and
we can feel no surprise at the attempts made to explain it. Such
attempts are not inconsistent with the most devout reverence for
the word of God. They are rather, not unfrequently, the result of
a just persuasion that the Eastern mind did not express itself in
forms similar to those of the West" (_Elijah_, p. 22). He proceeds
to protest against the harsh condemnation of those who thus only try
to interpret the real ideas present in the mind of the writer. He
regards it as perhaps a highly poetic and figurative representation
of the truth that the God of Nature was with Elijah. "The value of
the Prophet's experience is neither heightened by a literal, nor
diminished by a figurative, interpretation of what passed" (p. 24).
CHAPTER XXXV.
_ELIJAH AT SAREPTA._
1 KINGS xvii. 7, xviii. 19.
"The rain is God's compassion."--MOHAMMED.
The fierce drought continued, and "at the end of days"[625] even the
thin trickling of the stream in the clefts of Cherith was dried up. In
the language of Job it felt the glare and vanished.[626] No miracle was
wrought to supply the Prophet with water, but once more the providence
of God intervened to save his life for the mighty work which still
awaited him. He was sent to the region where, nearly a millennium
later, the feet of his Lord followed him on a mission of mercy to those
other sheep of His flock who were not of the Judæan fold.
The word of the Lord bade him make his way to the Sidonian city of
Zarephath. Zarephath, the Sarepta of St. Luke, the modern Surafend,
lay between Tyre and Sidon, and there the waters would not be wholly
dried up, for the fountains of Lebanon were not yet exhausted. The
drought had extended to Phœnicia,[627] but Elijah was told that
there a widow woman would sustain him. The Baal-worshipping queen who
had hunted for his life would be least of all likely to search for
him in a city of Baal-worshippers in the midst of her own people. He
is sent among these Baal-worshippers to do them kindness, to receive
kindness from them--perhaps to learn a wider tolerance, and to find
that idolaters also are human beings, children, like the orthodox,
of the same heavenly Father. He had been taught the lesson of
"dependence upon God": he was now to learn the lesson of "fellowship
with man." Travelling probably by night both for coolness and for
safety, Elijah went that long journey to the heathen district. He
arrived there faint with hunger and thirst. Seeing a woman gathering
sticks near the city gate he asked her for some water, and as she was
going to fetch it he called to her and asked her also to bring him a
morsel of bread. The answer revealed the condition of extreme want
to which she was reduced. Recognising that Elijah was an Israelite,
and therefore a worshipper of Jehovah, she said, "As Jehovah thy
God liveth, I have not a cake, but (only) a handful of meal in the
barrel, and a little oil in the cruse." She was gathering a couple of
sticks to make one last meal for herself and her son, and then to lie
down and die.[628] For drought did not only mean universal anguish,
but much actual starvation. It meant, as Joel says, speaking of the
desolation caused by locusts, that the cattle groan and perish, and
the corn withers, and the seeds rot under their clods.
Strong in faith Elijah told her not to fear, but first to supply his
own more urgent needs, and then to make a meal for herself and her
son. Till Jehovah sent rain, the barrel of meal should not waste, nor
the cruse of oil fail. She believed the promise, and for many days,
perhaps for two whole years, the Prophet continued to be her guest.
But after a time her boy fell grievously sick, and at last died, or
seemed to die.[629] So dread a calamity--the smiting of the stay
of her home, and the son of her widowhood--filled the woman with
terror. She longed to get rid of the presence of this terrible "man
of God."[630] He must have come, she thought, to bring her sin to
remembrance before God, and so to cause Him to slay her son. The
Prophet was touched by the pathos of her appeal, and could not bear
that she should look upon him as the cause of her bereavement. "Give
me thy son," he said. Taking the dead boy from her arms, he carried
him to the chamber which she had set apart for him, and laid him on
his own bed. Then, after an earnest cry to God, he stretched himself
three times over the body of the youth, as though to breathe into
his lungs and restore his vital warmth, at the same time praying
intensely that "his soul might come into him again."[631] His prayer
was heard; the boy revived. Carrying him down from the chamber,
Elijah had the happiness of restoring him to his widowed mother
with the words, "See, thy son liveth." So remarkable an event not
only convinced the woman that Elijah was indeed what she had called
him, "a man of God," but also that Jehovah was the true God. It was
not unnatural that tradition should interest itself in the boy thus
strangely snatched from the jaws of death. The Jews fancied that he
grew up to be servant of Elijah, and afterwards to be the prophet
Jonah. The tradition at least shows an insight into the fact that
Elijah was the first missionary sent from among the Jews to the
heathen, and that Jonah became the second.
We are not to suppose that during his stay at Zarephath Elijah
remained immured in his chamber. Safe and unsuspected, he might, at
least by night, make his way to other places, and it is reasonable
to believe that he then began to haunt the glades and heights of
beautiful and deserted Carmel, which was at no great distance, and
where he could mourn over the ruined altar of Jehovah and take refuge
in any of its "more than two thousand tortuous caves." But what
was the object of his being sent to Zarephath? That it was not for
his own sake alone, that it had in it a purpose of conversion, is
distinctly implied by our Lord when He says that in those days there
were many widows in Israel, yet Elijah was not sent to them, but
to this Sidonian idolatress. The prophets and saints of God do not
always understand the meaning of Providence or the lessons of their
Divine training. Francis of Assisi at first entirely misunderstood
the real drift and meaning of the Divine intimations that he was to
rebuild the ruined Church of God, which he afterwards so gloriously
fulfilled. The thoughts of God are not as man's thoughts, nor His
ways as man's ways, nor does He make all His servants as it were
"fusile apostles," as He made St. Paul. The education of Elijah
was far from complete even long afterwards. To the very last, if
we are to accept the records of him as historically literal, amid
the revelations vouchsafed to him he had not grasped the truth that
the Elijah-spirit, however needful it may seem to be, differs very
widely from the Spirit of the Lord of Life. Yet may it not have
been that Elijah was sent to learn from the kind ministrations of a
Sidonian widow, to whose care his life was due, some inkling of those
truths which Christ revealed so many centuries afterwards, when He
visited the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, and extended His mercy to the
great faith of the Syro-Phœnician woman? May not Elijah have been
meant to learn what had to be taught by experience to the two great
Apostles of the Circumcision and the Uncircumcision, that not every
Baal-worshipper was necessarily corrupt or wholly insincere? St.
Peter was thus taught that God is no respecter of persons, and that
whether their religious belief be false or true, in every nation he
that feareth Him and doeth righteousness is accepted of Him. St. Paul
learnt at Damascus and taught at Athens that God made of one every
nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth, that they should
seek God if haply they might feel after Him and find Him, though He
be not far from every one of us.
FOOTNOTES:
[625] 1 Kings xvii. 7. Perhaps years (Lev. xxv. 29; 1 Sam. xxvii. 7).
[626] Job vi. 17.
[627] Menander, quoted by Josephus, _Antt._, VIII. xiii. 2. He says
it lasted for a year.
[628] LXX., "My sons"--perhaps with reference to "her house" in verse
15.
[629] Perhaps the language of the Hebrew is not actually decisive.
Josephus says, τὴν ψυχὴν ἀφεῖναι καὶ δόξαι νεκρόν. In any case his
recovery was due to Elijah's prayer.
[630] The phrase "man of God" is characteristic of the Book of Kings,
in which it occurs fifty-three times. It became a normal description
of Elijah and Elisha. "What have I to do with thee?" Comp. 2 Sam.
xvi. 10; Luke v. 8. It was a common superstition that death always
followed the appearance of superhuman beings.
[631] Compare the similar revivals of life wrought by Elisha (2 Kings
iv. 34), and by St. Paul (Acts xx. 10).
CHAPTER XXXVI.
_ELIJAH AND AHAB._
1 KINGS, xviii. 1-19.
"Return, oh backsliding children, and I will heal your
backslidings. Behold, we come unto thee; for Thou art Jehovah our
God. Truly in vain is salvation hoped for from the tumult (of
votaries) upon the mountains. Truly in Jehovah our God is the
salvation of Israel. And the Shame (_i.e._, Baal) hath devoured
the labour of our fathers."--JER. iii. 22-24.
Elijah stayed long with the Sidonian widow, safe in that obscure
concealment, and with his simple wants supplied. But at last the
word of the Lord came to him with the conviction that the drought
had accomplished its appointed end in impressing the souls of king
and people, and that the time was come for some immense and decisive
demonstration against the prevalent apostasy. All his sudden movements,
all his stern incisive utterances were swayed by his allegiance to
Jehovah before whom he stood, and he now received the command, "Go,
show thyself unto Ahab; and I will send rain upon the earth."