and is transcendently to be preferred to holocausts of human sacrifice,
even when the victims are polluted and cruel idolaters. Scripture never
hides from us the imperfections of its heroes, and St. James tells us
that Elijah was but a man of like passions with ourselves. The progress
of the generations, the slow shining of the light of God, has not been
in vain, and we can see truths and read the meaning of theophanies
by the experience of three subsequent millenniums, of which two have
followed the incarnation of the Son of God.
FOOTNOTES:
[685] Deut. iv. 12, 15, (comp. v. 4, 22, 23). Of Moses, on the other
hand, it is said, "the similitude of the Lord shall he behold" (Numb.
xii. 8; Exod. xxxiii. 11; Deut. xxxiv. 10).
[686] מָקוֹם, τόπος, "place," was a sort of recognised euphemism for
God in Rabbinic and Alexandrian exegesis. Thus, in Exod. xxiv. 10,
for "they saw _the God of Israel_," the LXX. have εἷδον τὸν τόπον
οὗ εἱστήκει ὁ θεός. Philo says, "God Himself is called Place" (_De
Somn._, i. 525). Rabbi Isaac says, "God is not in Makom, but Makom
is in God." See my Bampton Lectures on _Hist. of Interpretation_, p.
120; _Early Days of Christianity_, i. 261.
[687] Psalm civ. 4; Heb. i. 7. This intermediacy of angels is
prominently alluded to in Acts vii. 53; Gal. iii. 19; Heb. ii. 2, 3;
Deut. xxxiii. 2; Psalm lxviii. 17.
[688] The anthropomorphism which the Targumists disliked vanishes in
the Chaldee: "And before Him was a host of angels of the wind rending
the mountains, and breaking the rocks, before the Lord but the
Shechinah was not in the hosts of the angels of the wind, and after
the hosts of the angels of the wind was the host of the angel of the
earthquake, etc."
[689] Job xxxviii. 1, xl. 6.
[690] Ezek. i. 4.
[691] Jer. xxiii. 19, 20, xxv. 32, xxx. 23.
[692] Psalms xviii. 10, civ. 3, 5.
[693] Nahum i. 3, 5.
[694] Psalm xviii. 7, lxxvii. 18, xcvii. 4; Judg. v. 4; 2 Sam. xxii. 8.
[695] Hab. iii. 3-16.
[696] 1 Kings xix. 12; LXX., φωνὴ αὔρας λεπτῆς; Vulg., _Sibilus auræ
tenuis_; Chaldee, "a voice of angels singing in silence."
[697] Jehu was the grandson of Nimshi, and was the son of Jehoshaphat
(2 Kings ix. 2).
[698] Isa. xi. 4, xlix. 2; comp. Jer. i. 10, xviii. 7.
[699] Comp. Rom. xii. 5. Kissing images was a sign of idolatry then
as it is now. The foot of the statue of St. Peter in Rome is worn
away with kisses. Hosea xiii. 2 tells us of the custom of kissing the
calves. Comp. Psalm ii. 12. Cicero tells us that the lovely brazen
statue of Hercules at Agrigentum had the mouth and chin partly worn
away by the kisses of the devout (in _Verr._, iv. 43).
[700] Herder, who was a devout poet, and therefore a true imaginative
interpreter of devout poetry, says: "The vision was to show the fiery
zeal of the Prophet that would amend everything by the storm, the
mild process of God, and proclaim His longsuffering tender nature as
previously the voice did to Moses: hence the scene was so beautifully
changed." Long before him the wise Theodoret had said: Διὰ δὲ τούτων
ἔδειξεν ὅτι μακροθυμία καὶ φιλανθρωπία μόνη φίλη Θεῷ. Irenæus, still
earlier (_c. Hær._, iv. 27), saw in the vision an emblem of the
difference between the law and the gospel; and Grotius, following
him, says, "Evangelii figuratio, quod non venit cum vento, terræ
motu, et fulminibus ut lex," Exod. xix. 16 (see Keil, _ad loc._,
whose illustrations are often valuable when his exegesis is false and
obsolete).
[701] Psalm xviii. 7-9; comp. 2 Sam. xxii. 8-11.
[702] Isa. xiii. 13.
[703] Isa. xxix. 6; comp. Ecclus. xxxix. 28.
[704] W. S. Landor.
CHAPTER XLIII.
_THE CALL OF ELISHA._
1 KINGS xix. 19-21.
"The one remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light alone remains, earth's shadows flee."
SHELLEY.
Whether Elijah saw or saw not all that God had meant by the
revelation at Horeb, much at any rate was abundantly clear to him,
and the path of new duties lay straight before him.
The first of those duties--the only one immediately possible--was
to anoint Elisha as prophet in his room, and so prepare for the
continuation of the task which he had been chosen to inaugurate. He
had been bidden to return across the wilderness in the direction of
Damascus. Whether he traversed the eastern side of Jordan among his
own familiar hills of Gilead, and then crossed over at Bethshean,
where there was a ford, or whether, braving an danger from Jezebel
and her emissaries, he passed through the territories of the western
tribes, it is certain that we find him next at Abel-meholah, "the
meadow of the dance," which was not far from Bethshean.[705] This, as
he knew, was the home of Elisha, his future successor.
The position of Elisha was wholly unlike his own. He himself was a
homeless Bedawy, bound to earth by no ties of family, coming like the
wind and vanishing like the lightning. Elisha, on the other hand, whose
history was to be so different and so far less stormy--Elisha, whose
work and whose residence was mainly to be in cities--was a child of
civilisation. But the civilisation was still that of a society in which
anarchic forces were by no means tamed. Dean Stanley, in his sketch of
Elisha, seems to dwell too much on his gentleness of spirit. He, too,
had to carry out the anointing of Hazael and Jehu. "He was still less
capable than Elijah," says Ewald, "of inaugurating a purely benign and
constructive mode of action, since at that time the whole spirit of the
ancient religion was still unprepared for it."
Elijah found him in the heritage of his fathers, ploughing the rich
level land with twelve yoke of oxen. Eleven were with his servants,
and he himself guided the twelfth.[706] Elijah must have felt
that the youth would have to make a great earthly sacrifice, if
he left all this--father and mother and home and lands--to become
the disciple and attendant of a wild, wandering, and persecuted
prophet. He would say nothing to him. He merely left the high road,
and "passed over unto him," as he plowed his fields.[707] Reaching
him he took off his shaggy garment of skin, which, in imitation of
him, became in after years the normal garb of prophets, and flung
it over Elisha's shoulders. This apparently was all the "anointing"
requisite, save such as came from the Spirit of God. The act had a
twofold symbolism: it meant the adoption of Elisha by Elijah to be
his "_mantelkind_," his spiritual son; and it meant a distinct call
to the prophetic office.
At first Elisha seems to have stood still--amazed, almost stupefied,
by the sudden necessity for so tremendous a decision. The thought
of resigning all the hopes and comforts of ordinary life and of
severing so many dear and lifelong ties, could not be unmixed with
anguish. Again and again we see in the call of the prophets this
natural shrinking, the human reluctance born of humility, frailty,
and misgiving. It was so that Moses at the burning bush had at first
fought to the utmost against the conviction of his destiny. It was so
that Gideon had pleaded that he was but the least of the children of
Abiezer. It was thus that, in later days, Jonah fled from the face of
the Lord to Tarshish; and Isaiah cried, "Woe is me, for I am a man of
unclean lips"; and Jeremiah wailed, "Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot
speak, for I am a child!" And if we may allude to modern instances we
know the shrinking hesitations of Luther; and how Cromwell affirmed
that he had prayed to God not to put him to his terrible work; and
how Wesley hesitated long before he "made himself vile" by preaching
in the open air to the Kingswood colliers; and how Father Matthew
shrank from his great temperance efforts, till one day, rising from
long prayer, and at last convinced of his destined task, he uttered
the homely resolve, "In the name of God here goes!"
Elisha did not hesitate long. The mysterious Prophet of Carmel--he
whose voice was believed to have shut up the heavens, he who had
confounded king and priest and people at Carmel--had spoken no word. He
had only flung over Elisha the garment of hair, and then stridden back
to the road, and gone on his way without once looking back. Soon he
would have vanished beyond recall. Elisha decided that he would obey
the call of God; that he would not make "the great refusal." He ran
after Elijah, and overtook him, and, accepting the position to which
he had been elevated, made but the one human natural request that he
might be suffered first to kiss--that is, to bid final farewell to--his
father and mother, and then he would follow Elijah.
The request has often been compared to that of the young scribe who
said to Jesus, "Lord, suffer me first to bury my father"; to whom
Jesus replied, "Let the dead bury their dead: follow thou Me." But the
two petitions are not really analogous. The scribe practically asked
that he might stay at home till his father died; and as that was an
uncertain term, and the ministry of Christ was very brief, the delay
was incompatible with such discipleship as Christ then required. There
was no such indefinite postponement in Elisha's petition. It showed in
him a tender heart, not a reluctant purpose or a wavering will.
"Go back again," answered Elijah; "for what have I done to thee?"
The words are often explained as a veiled yet severe rebuke, as
though Elijah had meant to say with scorn, "Go back; perhaps you are
not fit for the high call; you do not understand the significance of
what I have done;" or, at any rate, "Go back; yet beware of being
softly led away from the path of duty; for consider how deep is the
meaning of what I have done to thee."
The words involve no such disapprobation, nor does the context agree
with that view of them. I can detect no accent of reproof in the words.
Elijah, as is shown by several incidents in his career, had room for
tenderness and human affection in his rugged lonely heart. I understand
his reply to mean, "Go back; it is right, it is natural that thou
shouldst thus bid a last farewell before leaving thy home. Thy coming
to me must be purely voluntary; I have but cast my mantle over thee,
nothing more. Thine own conscience alone can interpret the full meaning
of the act, and God will make thy way clear before thy face."
Such, I believe, was Elijah's free permission. He was no hard Stoic,
unnaturally trampling on the sweet affections of the soul. He was no
despotic spiritual guide full of gloomy superstition, like the grim
Spaniard, Ignatius Loyola, who seemed to hold that God liked even our
needless anguish, and our voluntary self-tortures as an acceptable
sacrifice to Himself. When St. Francis Xavier, on the journey of
the first Jesuits to Rome, passed quite near the castle of his
parents and ancestors, the teachings of Loyola would not suffer the
young noble to turn aside to print one last kiss upon his mother's
cheek. Such hard exactions belong to that sphere of will-worship
and voluntary humility which St. Paul condemns. Excessive violence
needlessly inflicted on our innocent affections finds no sanction
either in ancient Judaism or genuine Christianity.
And it was thus that Elisha understood the Prophet. He went back,
and kissed his father and mother, and, like Matthew when he left his
toll-booth to follow Christ, he made a great feast to his dependents,
kinsfolk, and friends. To mark his complete severance from the happy
past he unyoked his pair of oxen, slew them, used the plough and goad
and wooden yokes as fuel, boiled the flesh of the oxen, and invited the
people to his farewell feast. Then he arose, and went after Elijah,
and ministered unto him. He was thenceforth recognised as a son of
the prophetic schools, and as their future head. For the present he
became known as "Elisha, who poured water on the hands of Elijah." His
subsequent career belongs entirely to the Second Book of Kings.
FOOTNOTES:
[705] 1 Kings iv. 12. It was in the north part of the Jordan valley.
[706] 1 Kings xix. 19.
[707] The Hebrew can hardly bear the meaning that he was finishing
the twelfth furrow in his field, ploughed by his single yoke of oxen.
CHAPTER XLIV.
_AHAB AND BENHADAD._
1 KINGS xx. 1-30.
In the Septuagint and in Josephus the events narrated in the
twentieth chapter of the Book of Kings are placed after the meeting
of Elijah with Ahab at the door of Naboth's vineyard, which occupies
the twenty-first chapter in our version. This order of events seems
the more probable, but no chronological data are given us in the
long but fragmentary details of Ahab's reign. They are, in fact,
composed of different sets of records, partly historical, partly
prophetic, and partly taken from some special monograph on the career
of Elijah. Here, too, we may observe that some most important details
are altogether omitted, and that we only learn them (1) from the
inscription of King Mesha, and (2) from the clay tablets of Assyria.
1. As regards King Mesha, the monument containing his very
interesting annals is generally known as The Moabite Stone. It is a
stele of black basalt, 3 feet 10 inches high, 2 feet broad, 14-1/2
inches thick, rounded at the top and bottom almost into a semicircle.
The Phœnician inscription is of capital importance both for philology
and history. It was first discovered by Mr. Klein, the German
missionary of an English society at Dibon, east of the Dead Sea, and
it is now at the Louvre. Dibon is now Dibbân.
Mr. Klein in 1868, at Jerusalem, informed Professor Petermann of
Berlin of the existence of this ancient relic, and from a few
letters of the thirty-four lines which he had copied the Professor
at once pronounced that the language employed was Phœnician. When M.
Clermont Ganneau, the French consul at Jerusalem, endeavoured to get
possession of it, the Bedawin discovered that it was regarded with
deep interest by European scholars. They immediately began to quarrel
over its possession, and the Arab who had been sent to copy it barely
escaped with his life. In their greed and jealousy these modern
Moabites "sooner than give it up, put a fire under it, and threw cold
water on it, and so broke it, and then distributed the bits among
the different families to be placed in the granaries and to serve as
blessings upon the corn; for they said that without the stone (or
its equivalent in hard cash) a blight would fall upon their crops."
Squeezes had been previously taken from it by M. Ganneau and Captain
Warren, from which the text has been restored.[708]
It records three great events in the reign of Mesha.
(1) Lines 1-21. Wars of Mesha with Omri and his successors.
(2) Lines 21-31. Public works of Mesha after his deliverance from his
Jewish oppressors.
(3) Lines 31-34. His successful wars against the Edomites (or a
people of Horonaim), undertaken by command of his god Chemosh. The
date of the erection of the monolith is about B.C. 890.
It begins thus:--
"(1) I, Mesha, am son of Chemosh-Gad,[709] King of Moab, (2) the
Dibonite. My father reigned over Moab 30 years, and I reigned (3)
after my father. And I erected this Stone to Chemosh (a stone of
salvation),[710] (4) for he saved me from all despoilers, and let me
see my desire upon all my enemies. (5) Now Omri, King of Israel, he
oppressed Moab many days, for Chemosh was angry with his (6) land. His
son succeeded him, and he also said, I will oppress Moab. In my days he
said (Let us go) (7) and I will see my desire on him and his house, and
Israel said, I shall destroy it for ever. Now Omri took the land (8)
Medeba, and (the enemy) occupied it (in his days and in) the days of
his sons, forty years. And Chemosh (had mercy) (9) on it in my days."
He goes on to tell how he built Bael Meon and Kirjathaim; captured
Ataroth, and killed all its warriors, and devoted its spoil to
Chemosh. "And Chemosh said to me, Go take Nebo against Israel." He
took it, slew seven thousand men, devoted the women and maidens to
Ashtar-Chemosh, and offered Jehovah's vessels to Chemosh. Then he
took Jahas which the king of Israel had fortified, and annexed it to
Dibon; built Korcha, its palaces, prisons, etc., Aroer, Bethbamoth,
and other towns which he colonised with poor Moabites; and took
Horonaim by assault.
There the inscription ends, but not until it has given us some details
of a series of bloody wars about which the Scripture narrative is
almost entirely silent, though in 2 Kings iii. 4-27 it narrates Mesha's
desperate resistance of Israel, Judah, and Edom (B.C. 896).
On this inscription we may briefly remark that for Chemosh-Gad, Dr.
Neubauer reads Chemosh-melech, and makes various other changes and
suggestions.
2. From the annals of Assyria we learn the altogether unexpected fact
that _Ahabu Sirlai_, _i.e._, "Ahab of Israel," was acting as one of
the allies, or more probably as one of the vassals, of Syria in the
great battle fought at Karkar, B.C. 854, against Shalmanezer II.,
by Hittites, Hamathites, and Syrians. Whether this was before the
invasion of Benhadad, or after his defeat, is uncertain.
The twentieth chapter of the Book of Kings tells us that Benhadad,
the Aramæan king, accompanied by thirty-two feudatory princes of
Hittites, Hamathites, and others, gathered together all his host
with his horses and chariots, and proclaimed war against Israel.
Unable to meet this vast army in the field, Ahab shut himself up in
Samaria, and Benhadad went up and besieged it. We do not know which
Benhadad this was. It could not have been the grandson of Rezon,
whom, fourteen years earlier, King Asa had bribed to attack Baasha
in order to divert him from building Ramah.[711] It may have been
his son or grandson bearing the same religious dynastic name. In
any case the policy of attacking Israel was suicidal. If the kings
had possessed the prescient glance of the prophets they could not
have failed to see on the northern horizon the cloud of Assyrian
power, which menaced them all with cruel extinction at the hands of
that atrocious people. Their true policy would have been to form an
offensive and defensive league, instead of coveting one another's
dominions. Although Assyria had not yet risen to the zenith of her
empire, she was already formidable enough to convince the King of
Damascus that he would never be able single-handed to prevent Syria
from being crushed before her. Instead of inflicting ruinous losses
and humiliations on the tribes of Israel, the dynasty of Rezon, if
it had been wise in its day, would have insured their friendly aid
against the horrible common enemy of the nations.
When Benhadad had succeeded in reducing Ahab to hopeless straits,
he sent him a herald to demand the admission of ambassadors. Their
ultimatum was couched in language of the deadliest insult. Benhadad
laid insolent claim to everything which Ahab possessed--his silver, his
gold, his wives, and the fairest of his children. To save his people
from ruin, Ahab--it is strange that throughout the narrative we do not
hear one word either about Jezebel or Elijah--sent an answer of the
humblest submission. Tyre gave him no help, nor did Judah. He seems at
this time to have been entirely isolated and to have sunk to the nadir
of his degradation. "It is true," he said, "my lord, and king; I, and
all that I possess, is thine." The depth of humiliation involved in
such a concession is the measure of the utter straits to which Ahab was
reduced. When an Eastern king had to give up to his conqueror even his
seraglio--yes, even his queen--all his power must have been humbled
to the very dust. And at the head of Ahab's seraglio was Jezebel. How
frenzied must have been the thoughts of that terrible woman, when she
saw that her Baal, and the Astarte to whom her father was a priest,
in spite of the temple which she had built, and her eight hundred and
fifty priests of Baal and Asherah with all their vestments and pompous
ceremonies and blood-stained invocations, had wholly failed to save
her--a great king's daughter and a great king's wife--from drinking to
the very dregs this cup of shame!
Encouraged by this abject demeanour into yet more outrageous
insolence, Benhadad sent back his ambassadors with the further menace
that he would himself send his messengers next day into Samaria, who
should search and rifle not only the palace of Ahab, but the houses
of all his servants, from which they should take away everything that
was pleasant in their eyes.
The merciless demand kindled in the breast of the wretched king one
last spark of the courage of despair. Nothing could be worse than
such a pillage. Death itself seemed preferable. He summoned together
all the elders of the land to a great council, to which the people
also were invited, and he set the state of things before them. The
fact gives us an interesting glimpse into the constitution of the
kingdom of Israel. It greatly resembled that of the little Greek
states in the days of the _Iliad_. Under ordinary circumstances of
prosperity the king was within certain limits despotic; but he might
easily be reduced to the necessity of consulting a sort of senate
(γερουσία), composed of his greatest subjects,[712] and at these
open-air deliberations the people were present as assessors on whose
will depended the ultimate decision.
Ahab put before his council the desperate condition to which he had
been reduced by the Syrian leaguer. He recounted the cruel terms to
which he had submitted in order to save his people from destruction.
From the second embassage of Benhadad it was clear that the first
demand had only been made in the hope that its refusal would give the
Syrians an excuse for pressing on the siege, and delivering the city
to ravage and slaughter. Was it their will that the insolent foreign
tyrant should have his way, and be permitted without let or hindrance
to rifle their houses, and carry away their goodliest sons as eunuchs
and their fairest wives as concubines? He asked their advice how to
overcome this dire calamity;
"What reinforcement we may gain from hope,
If not what resolution from despair."
The elders saw that even massacre and pillage could hardly be worse
than a tame submission to such demands. They plucked up courage and
said to Ahab, "Hearken not to him, nor consent"; and the people
shouted their applause to the heroic refusal.[713] The king seems
in this instance to have been more despondent than his subjects,
perhaps because he was better able than they to gauge the immense
military superiority of his invader. Even his second message, though
it rejected Benhadad's demand, was almost pusillanimous in its
submission. With bated breath and whispering humbleness Ahab said to
the Syrian ambassadors, quite in the tone of a vassal: "Tell my lord
the king, I _will_ submit to his first demands; I _may_ not consent
to his final ones."
The ambassadors went to Benhadad, and returned with the fierce menace
that in the name of his god[714] their king would shatter Samaria
into dust, of which the handfuls would not suffice for each of his
soldiers.[715] Ahab replied firmly in a happy proverb, "Let not
him that girdeth on his armour boast himself as he that putteth it
off."[716]
The warning proverb was reported to the Aramæan king, whilst in the
insolent confidence of victory he was drinking himself drunk in
his war-booths.[717] It nettled him to fury. "Plant the engines,"
he exclaimed. The catapults and battering-rams,[718] with all the
engines which constituted the siege-train of the day, were at once
set in motion, the scaling ladders brought up, and the archers set in
position, just as we see in the Assyrian Kouyunjik sculptures of the
siege of Lachish and other cities by Sennacherib.[719]
Ahab's heart must have sunk within him, for he knew his impotence, and
he knew also the horrors which befell a city taken after desperate
resistance. But he was not left unencouraged. The characteristic of
the prophets was that dauntless confidence in Jehovah which so often
made a prophet the Tyrtæus of his native land, unless the land had sunk
into utter apostasy. In this extreme of peril a nameless prophet--the
Rabbis, who always guess at a name when they can, say it was Micaiah
ben Imlah--came to Ahab. As though to emphasise the supernatural
character of his communication, he pointed to the chariots and archers
and the Syrian host--which, if the subsequent numbers be accurate, must
have reached the astounding total of one hundred and thirty thousand
men--and said, in the name of Jehovah:--
"Hast thou seen all this great multitude?
Lo! I will deliver it into thine hand to-day:
And thou shalt know that I am the Lord."
"By whom?" was the astonished and half-despairing question of the
king; and the strange answer was:--
"By the young servants[720] of the provincial governors."
It was to be made clear that this was a victory due to the intervention
of God, and not won by the power nor the might of man, lest the
warriors of Israel should be able to boast of the arm of flesh.
"Who shall lead the assault?" asked the king.
"Thou!" answered the prophet.
Nothing could be wiser than this counsel, now that the nation was
brought to the extreme edge of hazard. The veterans, perhaps, were
intimidated. They would see more clearly the hopelessness of attempting
to cope with that colossal host under its five-and-thirty kings.
But now the nation, whose veterans had been driven back, evoked the
battle-brunt of its youths. The two hundred and thirty-two pages of the
district governors were ready to obey orders, ready, like an army of
Decii to devote their lives to the cause of their country. They were
put in the forefront of the battle, and so pitiable was the depression
of the capital that Ahab could only number a paltry army of seven
thousand soldiers to stand behind their desperate undertaking.[721]
Their plan was well laid. They went out at noon. At that burning
hour, under the intolerable glare and heat of the Syrian sun--and
campaigns were only undertaken in spring and summer--it is almost
impossible to bear the weight of armour, or to sit on horseback, or
to endure the fierce heat of iron chariots. The first little army
which issued from the gates of Samaria might rely on the effects
of a surprise. Thousands of the Syrian soldiers expecting nothing
less than a battle would be unarmed, and taking their siesta. Their
chariots and war steeds would be unharnessed and unprepared.
Benhadad was still continuing his heavy drinking bout with his vassal
princes, and not one of them was in a condition to give coherent
commands. A messenger announced to the band of royal drunkards that
"men" were come out of Samaria. They were too few to call them "an
army," and the notion of an attack from that poor handful seemed
ridiculous. Benhadad thought they were coming to sue for peace, but
whether peace or war were their object he gave the contemptuous order
to "take them alive."
It was easier said than done. Led by the king at the head of his
valorous youths the little host clashed into the midst of the
unwieldly, unprepared, ill-handled Syrian host, and by their first
slaughter created one of those fearful panics which have often been
the destruction of Eastern hosts. The Syrians, whose army was
made up of heterogeneous forces, and which could not be managed by
thirty-four half-intoxicated feudatories of differing interests and
insecure allegiance, was doubtless afraid that internal treachery
must have been at work. Like the Midianites, like Zerah's Ethiopian
host, like the Edomites in the Valley of Salt, like the Ammonites and
Moabites in the wilderness of Tekoa, like the army of Sennacherib,
like the enormous and motley hosts of Persia at Marathon, at Platæa,
and at Arbela, they were instantly flung into irremediable confusion
which tended every moment to be more fatal to itself. The little band
of the youths and horses of Israel had nothing to do but to slay,
and slay, and slay.[722] No effective resistance was even attempted.
Long before evening the hundred and thirty thousand Syrians, with
the entangled mass of their chariots and horsemen, were in headlong
flight, while Ahab and the people of Israel slaughtered their flying
rear. The defeat became an absolute rout. Benhadad himself had a most
narrow escape. He could not even wait for his war chariot. He had
to fly with a few of his horsemen, and apparently, so the words may
imply, on an inferior horse.[723]
What effect was produced on the national mind and on the social
religion by this immense deliverance we are not told. Never, certainly,
had any nation deeper cause for gratitude to its religious teachers,
who alone had not despaired of the commonwealth when everything seemed
lost. We would fain know where was Elijah at this crisis, and whether
he took any part in it. We cannot tell, but we know that as a rule
the sons of the prophets acted together under their chiefs, and that
individual impulses were rarely encouraged. The very meaning of the
"Schools of the Prophets" was that they were all trained to adopt the
same principles and to move together as one body.
The service rendered by this prophet, whose very name has been buried
in undeserved oblivion, did not end here. Perhaps he saw signs of
carelessness and undue exultation. He went again to the king, and
warned him that his victory, immense as it had been, was not final.
It was no time for him to settle on his lees. The Syrians would
assuredly return the following year,[724] probably with increased
resources, and with the burning determination to avenge their defeat.
Let Ahab look well to his army and his fortresses, and prepare
himself for the coming shock!
FOOTNOTES:
[708] For these particulars, and the following translations, see Dr.
Ginsburg in _Records of the Past_, xi. 163; and Dr. Neubauer, _id._,
New Series, ii. 194; _The Moabite Stone_, Second Edition (Reeves
& Turner), 1871; Dr. Schlottmann, _Die Sieggessaüle Mesas_, 1870;
Nöldeke, _Die Inschrift der König Mesa_, 1870; Stade, i. 534; Kittel,
ii. 198, etc.
[709] Chemosh-Gad perhaps came to the throne in the fourth year of
Omri, about B.C. 926, and reigned till the close of Ahaziah's reign
(B.C. 896).
[710] Comp. 1 Sam. vii. 12.
[711] For it is indirectly mentioned that "_his father_" had taken
cities from Omri.
[712] LXX., Exod. iii. 16.
[713] Comp. Josh. ix. 18; Judg. xi. 11.
[714] 1 Kings xx. 10. Elohim here, doubtless, means the false gods of
Benhadad. Vat. LXX., ὁ θεός; but Chaldee, "the terrors."
[715] "Fanfaronnade, qui veut dire; je réduirai cette bicoque
en poussière; j'ai avee moi plus de monde qu'il ne faudra pour
l'emporter tout entière" (Reuss). Comp. Herod., viii. 226, where
Dieneces answers the braggart vaunt of the Medes.
[716] Reuss renders it, "Ceignant n'est pas encore gaignant." The
proverb resembles in different aspects the precept of Solon, τέρμα
ὁρᾶν βιότοιο, and "Praise a fair day at night"; and the Italian,
"Capo ha cosa fatta"; and the Latin, "Ne triumphum canas ante
victoriam"; and the French, "Il ne faut pas vendre le peau de l'ours
avant de l'avoir tué."
[717] A.V., "pavilions"; but the word (_sukkoth_) implies that they
were temporary booths rather than tents. They resembled the birchwood
pavilions made for the Turkish pachas in campaigns (Keil).
[718] A.V., "Set yourselves in array." LXX., οἰκοδομήσατε χάρακα;
Vulg., _circumdate civitatem_.
[719] Now in the British Museum.
[720] 1 Kings xx. 14 (נַעָרִים).
[721] Jarchi--_more Rabbinico_--says that these were the seven
thousand who had not bowed the knee to Baal.
[722] 1 Kings xx. 20, LXX., καὶ ἐδευτέρωσεν ἒκαστος τὸν παῤ αὐτοῦ.
[723] Or, "pell-mell." The Hebrew in 1 Kings xx. 20 is, וּפָרָשִׁים
עַל־סוּס, "on a horse with (some) horsemen." Klostermann would supply
הוּא. Jonathan takes וּפָרָשִׁים as a dual--"and two riders with
him"; LXX., ἐφ' ἵππων ἱππέων; Vulg., _in equo cum equitibus suis_;
Luther, "_sammt Rossen und Reitern_."
[724] See 2 Sam. xi. 1. The custom of all countries in the ancient
world was to devote the summer months only to campaigns. There were
few or no standing armies, and the citizen-conscripts had to look
after their farms, or the nation would have starved. The Assyrians,
Babylonians, and Persians introduced a gradual revolution in these
respects.
CHAPTER XLV.
_AHAB'S INFATUATION._
1 KINGS xx. 31-43.
"Quem vult Deus perire dementat prius."
The courtiers of Benhadad found it easy to flatter his pride by
furnishing reasons to account for such an alarming overthrow. They
had attacked the Israelites on their hills, and the gods of Israel
were hill-gods. Next time they would take Israel at a disadvantage
by fighting only on the plain. Further, the vassal kings were only
an element of dissension and weakness. They prevented the handling
of the army as one strong machine worked by a single supreme will.
Let Benhadad depose from command these incapable weaklings, and put
in their place dependent civil officers (_pachoth_) who would have
no thought but to obey orders.[725] And so, with good heart, let the
king collect a fresh army with horses and chariots as powerful as the
last. The issue would be certain conquest and dear revenge.
Benhadad followed this advice. The next year he went with his new
host and encamped near Aphek. There is an Aphek (now Fîk) which lay
on the road between Damascus on the east of Jordan on a little plain
south-east of the Sea of Galilee. This may have been the town of
Issachar, in the valley of Jezreel, where Saul was defeated by the
Philistines (1 Sam. xxix. 1). Israel went out to meet them duly
provisioned.[726] The Syrian host spread over the whole country; the
Israelite army looked only like two little flocks of kids.[727]
To strengthen the misgivings of the anxious king of Israel, another
nameless prophet--probably, like Elijah, a Gileadite--came to
promise him the victory. Jehovah would convince the Syrians that He
was something more than a mere local god of the hills as they had
blasphemously said, and Israel would once more be shown that He was
indeed the Lord.
For seven days the vast army and the little band of patriots gazed at
each other, as the Israelites and Philistines had done in the days
of Saul and Goliath. On the seventh day they joined battle. In what
special way the aid of Jehovah seconded the desperate valour of His
people who were fighting for their all we do not know, but the result
was, once more, their stupendous victory. The army of the Syrians
was not only defeated, but practically annihilated. In round numbers
100,000 Syrians fell in the slaughter of that day, and when the
remnant took refuge in Aphek, which they had captured, they perished
in a sudden crash--perhaps of earthquake--which buried them in the
ruins of its fortifications.[728] Rescued, we know not how, from
this disaster, Benhadad fled from chamber to chamber[729] to hide
himself from the victors in some innermost recess.
But it was impossible that he should not be discovered, and therefore
his servants persuaded him to throw himself on the mercy of his
conqueror. "The kings of Israel," they said, "are, as we have heard,
compassionate kings; let us go before the king with sackcloth on our
loins, and ropes round our necks, and ask if he will save thy life."
So they went, as the burghers of Calais went before Edward I.;
and then Ahab heard from the ambassadors of the king who had once
dictated terms to him with such infinite contempt, the message: "Thy
slave Benhadad saith, I pray thee, let me live."
The incident that followed is eminently characteristic of Eastern
customs. In _rencontres_ between Orientals everything depends on
the first words which are exchanged. It is believed that superior
powers wield the utterances of the tongue amid the chances which
are really destiny, so that the most casual expression is caught up
superstitiously as a sort of Bath Kol, or "the daughter of a voice,"
which not only indicates but even helps to bring about the purposes
of Heaven. A chance friendly greeting may become the termination of a
blood feud, because something more than chance is supposed to be behind
it![730] Once when a group of doomed gladiators gathered themselves
under the Imperial _podium_ of the amphitheatre with their sublimely
monotonous chant, "_Ave Cæsar, morituri te salutamus_," the half-dazed
emperor inadvertently answered, "_Avete vos!_" "He has bidden us,
'Hail!'" shouted the gladiators: "the contest is remitted; we are
free!" Had the Romans been Orientals the twenty thousand assembled
spectators would have felt the force of the appeal. Even as it was the
significance of the omen was felt to be so great that the gladiators
threw down their arms, and it was only by whips and violence that they
were finally driven to the combat in which they perished.[731]
So with intense eagerness the ambassadors, in their sackcloth and
their halters, awaited the Bath Kol. It came far more favourably than
they had dared to hope. Surprised, and perhaps half-touched with pity
for so immense a reverse of misfortune, "Is he yet alive?" exclaimed
the careless king: "he is my brother!"
The Syrians snatched at the expression as a decisive omen.[732] It
constituted an absolute end of the feud. It became an implicit promise
of that sacred _dakheel_, that "protection" to which the slightest
and most accidental expression constitutes a recognised claim.[733]
"Thy _brother_ Benhadad," they earnestly and emphatically repeated. In
accordance with Eastern custom and augury their whole end was gained.
As far as Benhadad was concerned he was now safe; as far as Ahab was
concerned, the mischief, if mischief it were, was irreparably done.
Ahab could hardly have drawn back even if he wished to do so,
but perhaps he was swayed by a fellow feeling for a king. This
strange uxorious monarch, with his easily swayed impulses, his
fits of schoolboy sullenness and swift repentance, his want of
insight into existing conditions, his--if the expression may be
excused--happy-go-lucky way of letting questions settle themselves,
was, no doubt, a brave warrior, but he was a most incapable statesman.
His conduct was perfectly infatuated. Pity is one thing, but the
security of a nation has also to be considered. It would have been a
worse than insensate piece of pseudo-chivalry if the Congress of Vienna
had not sent Napoleon to Elba, and if England had not confined him in
St. Helena. To set free a man endowed with passionate hatred, with
immense ambitions, with boundless capacities for mischief--or only to
bind him with the packthread of insecure promises--was the conduct of
a fool.[734] If it was compassion which induced Ahab to give Benhadad
his life, it showed either gross incapacity or treachery against his
own nation not to clip his wings, and hamper him from the future
injuries which the burden of gratitude was little likely to prevent.
The sequel shows that Benhadad's resentment against his royal "brother"
only became more hopelessly implacable, and in all probability it was
largely mingled with contempt.
And Ahab's conduct, besides being foolish, was guilty. It showed a
frivolous non-recognition of his duties as a theocratic king. It
flung away the national advantages, and even the national security,
which had not been vouchsafed to any power or worth of his, but only
to Jehovah's direct interposition to save the destinies of his people
from premature extinction.
When Benhadad came out of his hiding-place, Ahab, not content with
sparing the life of this furious and merciless aggressor, took him
up into his chariot, which was the highest honour he could have paid
him, and accepted the excessively easy terms which Benhadad himself
proposed. The Syrians were not required to pay any indemnity for
the immense expenditure and unutterable misery which their wanton
invasions had inflicted upon Israel! They simply proposed to restore
the cities which Benhadad's father had taken from Omri, and to allow
the Israelites to have a protected bazaar in Damascus similar to
the one which the Syrians enjoyed in Samaria.[735] On this covenant
Benhadad was sent home scatheless, and with a supineness which was
not so much magnanimous as fatuous, Ahab neglected to take hostages
of any kind to secure the fulfilment even of these ridiculously
inadequate terms of peace.
Benhadad was not likely to throw away the chance which gave him such
an easy-going and improvident adversary. It is certain that he did
not keep the covenant. He probably never even intended to keep it. If
he condescended to any excuse for breaking it, he would probably have
affected to regard it as extorted by violence, and therefore invalid,
as Francis I. defended the forfeiture of his parole after the battle
of Pavia. The recklessness with which Ahab had reposed in Benhadad a
confidence, not only undeserved, but rendered reckless by all the
antecedents of the Syrian king, cost him very dear. He had to pay the
penalty of his dementation three years later in a new and disastrous
war, in the loss of his life, and the overthrow of his dynasty. The
fact that, after so many exertions, and so much success in war, in
commerce, and in worldly policy, he and his house fell unpitied, and
no one raised a finger in his defence, was doubtless due in part to
the alienation of his army by a carelessness which flung away in a
moment all the fruits of their hard-won victories.[736]
There was one aspect in which Ahab's conduct assumed an aspect more
supremely culpable. To whom had he owed the courage and inspiration
which had rescued him from ruin, and led to the triumphs which had
delivered him and his people from the depths of despair? Not in the
least to himself, or to Jezebel, or to Baal's priests, or to any of
his captains or counsellors. In both instances the heroism had been
inspired and the success promised by a prophet of Jehovah. What would
convince him, if this would not, that in God only was his strength? Did
not the most ordinary gratitude as well as the most ordinary wisdom
require that he should recognise the source of these unhoped-for
blessings? There is not the least trace that he did so. We read of no
word of gratitude to Jehovah, no desire to follow the guidance of the
prophets to whom he was so deeply indebted, and who had proved their
right to be regarded as interpreters of God's will. Had he done this he
would not have suffered the clannishness of royalty to plunge him into
a step which was the chief cause of his final destruction.
He might ignore guidance, but he could not escape reproof. Again an
unknown monitor from the sons of the prophets was commissioned to
bring home to him his error. He did so by an acted parable, which gave
concrete force and vividness to the lesson which he desired to convey.
Speaking "by the word of the Lord"--_i.e._, as a part of the prophetic
inspiration which dictated his acts--he went to one of his fellows in
the school of which the members are here first called "the sons of the
prophets," and bade him to wound him. His comrade, not unnaturally,
shrank from obeying so strange a command. It must be borne in mind
that the mere appeal to an inspiration from Jehovah did not always
authenticate itself. Over and over again in the prophetic books, and
in these histories which the Jews call "the earlier prophets," we find
that men could profess to act in Jehovah's name, and even perhaps to
be sincere in so doing, who were mere dupes of their own wills and
fancies. It was, in fact, possible for them to become false prophets,
without always meaning to be so; and these chances of hallucination--of
being misled by a lying spirit--led to fierce contentions in the
prophetic communities. "Since you have not obeyed Jehovah's voice,"
said the man, "the lion shall immediately slay you." "And as soon
as he was departed from him the lion found him and slew him." There
is nothing impossible in the incident, for in those days lions were
common in Palestine, and they multiplied when the country had been
depopulated by war. But we can never feel certain how far the ethical
and didactic and parabolic elements were allowed, for purposes of
edification, to play a part in these ancient yet not contemporaneous
_Acta Prophetarum_, and at any rate to dictate the interpretation of
things which may have actually occurred.
The prophet then bade another comrade to smite him, and he did so
effectually, inflicting a serious wound.[737] This was a part of
the intended scene in which the prophet meant for a moment to play
the _rôle_ of a soldier who had been wounded in the Syrian war. So
he bound up his head with a bandage,[738] and waited for the king
to pass by. An Eastern king is liable at any time to be appealed to
by the humblest of his subjects, and the prophet stopped Ahab and
stated his imaginary case. "A captain," he said, "brought me one of
his war captives,[739] and ordered me to keep him safe. If I failed
to do so, I was to pay the forfeit of my life, or to pay as a fine a
silver talent.[740] But as I was looking here and there the captive
escaped." "Be it so," answered Ahab; "you are bound by your own
bargain." Thus Ahab, like David, was led to condemn himself out of
his own mouth. Then the prophet tore the bandage from his face, and
said to Ahab: "Thou art the man! Thus saith Jehovah, I entrusted to
thee the man under my ban (_cherem_),[741] and thou hast let him
escape. Thou shalt pay the forfeit. Thy life shall go for his life,
thy people for his people."
Anger and indignation filled the heart of the king; he went to his
house "heavy and displeased." The phrase, twice applied to him and
never used of another, shows that he was liable to characteristic
moods of overwhelming sullenness, the result of an uneasy conscience,
and of a rage which was compelled to remain impotent. It is evident
that he did not dare to chastise the audacious offender, though the
Jews say that the prophet was Micaiah, the son of Imlah, and that he
was imprisoned for this offence.[742] As a rule the prophets--like
Samuel and Nathan, and Gad and Shemaiah, and Jehu the son of
Hanani--were protected by their sacrosanct position. Now and then an
Urijah, a Jeremiah, a Zechariah son of Berechiah, paid the penalty of
bold denunciation, not only by hatred and persecution, but with his
life. This, however, was the exception. As a rule the prophets felt
themselves safe under the wing of a Divine protector. Not only Elijah
in his sheepskin mantle, but even the humblest of his imitators in
the prophetic schools might fearlessly stride up to a king, seize his
steed by the bridle, as Athanasius did to Constantine, and compel him
to listen to his rebuke or his appeal.
FOOTNOTES:
[725] 1 Kings xx. 24. LXX., σατράπας.
[726] R.V., "and were victualled," not, as in A.V., "and were all
present." Alex. LXX., διοικήθησαν; Vulg., _acceptis cibariis_.
[727] Why two? No explanation is given. It has been conjectured that
Judah had sent a separate contingent to help them in their distress.
[728] Some have supposed that an earthquake occurred, and Canon
Rawlinson mentions (_Speaker's Commentary_) that the earthquake of
Lisbon is said to have destroyed sixty thousand persons in five minutes.
[729] בְּחֶדֶר חֶדֶר. Comp. for similar phrases, (Heb.) Lev. xxv. 53;
Deut. xv. 20; 1 Kings xxii. 25; 2 Chron. xxviii. 26. Klostermann,
with one of his amazing conjectures, reads "by the spring Harod in
Harod"! LXX., εἰς τὸν οἶκον τοῦ κοιτῶνος, εἰς τὸ ταμεῖον; Vulg., _in
cubiculum quod erat intra cubiculum_. Josephus makes it a cellar (εἰς
ὑπόγαιον οἶκον ἐκρύβη), "like the modern _serdaubs_ in which the
inhabitants of many Eastern cities live in the summer" (Rawlinson).
[730] The accidental sigh of the engineer was sufficient to prevent
the colossal Egyptian statue of a Pharaoh from being moved to its
destination. Even Rome shared the immemorial superstition.
[731] Suet., _Claud._
[732] xx. 33, יֲנִחֲשׁוּ, from נַחַשׁ, "an augury"; LXX., ἀνελέξαντο
τὸν λόγον (οἰωνίσαντο); Vulg., _quod acceperunt viri pro omine_.
[733] Layard, _Nineveh_, 317-19.
[734] The compact is vainly dignified with the name of a בְרִית, or
"covenant."
[735] חֻצֹות. Compare the _Lombard_ Streets, and the _Jewries_ in
London and Paris.
[736] Clericus says, rightly: "Factum Ahabi, quamvis clementiæ
speciem præ se ferret, non erat veræ clementiæ, quæ non est erga
latrones exercenda; qui si dimittantur multo magis nocebunt."
[737] The object and necessity of this for his purpose is by no means
apparent. Perhaps it was to figure the wound which Ahab had by his
conduct wilfully inflicted on himself or on Israel.
[738] Verse 38. This, and not "with ashes upon his face," is the
meaning of the Hebrew אֲפֵר. LXX., τελαμών, "a headband"; Vulg.,
_aspersione pulveris_; and so, too, Peshito, Aquila, and Symmachus.
[739] 1 Kings xx. 39. שַׂר in the sense of סַר, according to Ewald's
reading.
[740] About £350. Evidently, therefore, the captive is supposed to be
a very important person.
[741] חֵרְמִי אִישׁ.
[742] וְזָעֵף סַר; Vulg., _indignans, et frendens_, a phrase only
used of Ahab (xxi. 4-5). Josephus (_Antt._, XIII. xv. 5) says that
Ahab imprisoned and punished the prophet, whom, with the Rabbis, he
identifies with Micaiah.
CHAPTER XLVI.
_NABOTH'S VINEYARD._
1 KINGS xxi. 1-29.
"The triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the
godless is but for a moment."--JOB xx. 5.
"If weakness may excuse,
What murderer, what traitor, parricide,
Incestuous, sacrilegious, but may plead it?
All wickedness is weakness."
_Samson Agonistes._
The chief glory of the institution of prophecy was that it rightly
estimated the supremacy of the moral law. The prophets saw that
the enforcement of one precept of righteousness involved more
true religion than hundreds of pages of Levitic ritual. It is the
temptation of priests and Pharisees to sink into formalism; to warp
the conceptions of the Almighty into that of a Deity who is jealous
about inconceivable pettinesses of ceremonial; to think that the
Eternal cares about niceties of rubric, rules of ablutions, varieties
of nomenclature or organisation. In their solicitude about these
nullities they often forget, as they did in the days of Christ,
the weightier matters of the law, mercy, judgment, and truth. When
religion has been dwarfed into these inanities the men who deem
themselves its only orthodox votaries, and scorn all others as "lax"
and "latitudinarian," are not only ready to persecute every genuine
teacher of righteousness, but even to murder the Christ Himself. They
come to think that falsehood and cruelty cease to be criminal when
practised in the cause of religious intolerance.
Against all such dwarfing perversion of the conceptions of the
essential service which man owes to God the prophets were called forth
to be in age after age the energetic remonstrants. It is true that
they also had their own special temptations; they, too, might become
the slaves of shibboleths; they might sink into a sort of automatic or
mechanical form of prophecy which contented itself with the wearing
of garbs and the repetition of formulæ long after they had become
evacuated of their meaning.[743] They might distort the message "Thus
saith Jehovah" to serve their own ends.[744] They might yield to
the temptations both of individual and of corporate ambition. They
might assume the hairy garb and rough locks of Elijah for the sake of
the awe they inspired while their heart "was not but for their own
covetousness."[745] They might abuse their prestige to promote their
own party or their own interests. They were assailed by the same perils
to which in after days so many monks, hermits, and religious societies
succumbed. Many a man became a nominal prophet, as many a man became a
monk, because the office secured to him a maintenance--
"'Twas not for nothing the good belly-ful,
The warm serge and the rope that goes all round,
And day long blessed idleness besides;"
and also because it surrounded him with a halo of imaginary
sanctity. The monks, we know, by their turbulence and partisanship,
became the terror of the fourth century after Christ, and no men
more emphatically denounce their mendicancy and their impostures
than the very fathers who, like St. Jerome and St. Augustine, were
most enamoured of their ideal.[746] As for the hermits, if one of
them securely established a reputation for abnormal austerities he
became in his way as powerful as a king. In the stories even of such
a man as St. Martin of Tours[747] we detect now and then a gleam of
hauteur, of which traces are not lacking in the stories of these
nameless or famous prophets in the Book of Kings.
No human institution, even if it be avowedly religious, is safe from
the perilous seductions of the world, the flesh, and the devil.
Perpetually
"The old order changeth, giving place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world."
Mendicant brotherhoods and ascetic communities were soon able, by
legal fictions, to revel in opulence, to steep themselves in luxury,
and yet to wield a religious authority which princes envied. When
we read what the Benedictines and the Minorites and the Carthusians
often became, we are the less surprised to find that even the Schools
of the Prophets, while Elijah and Elisha yet lived, could abdicate
as a body their best functions, and, deceiving and deceived, could
learn to answer erring kings according to their idols.
But the greatest and truest prophets rose superior to the influences
which tended to debase the vulgar herd of their followers, in days
when prophecy grew into an institution and the world became content
to side with a church which gave it no trouble and mainly spoke in
its own tones. True prophecy cannot be made a matter of education,
or "tamed out of its splendid passion." The greatest prophets, like
Amos and Isaiah, did not come out of the Schools of the Prophets.
Inspiration cannot be cultivated, or trained to grow up a wall.
"Much learning," says Heraclitus very profoundly, "does not teach;
but the Sibyl with maddening lips, uttering things unbeautified,
unperfumed, and unadorned, reaches through myriads of years because
of God." The man whom God has summoned forth to speak the true word
or do the heroic deed, at the cost of all hatred, or of death itself,
has normally to protest not only against priests, but against his
fellow-prophets also when they immorally acquiesced in oppression
and wrong which custom sanctioned.[748] It was by such true prophets
that the Hebrews and through them the world were taught the ideal of
righteousness. Their greatest service was to uphold against idolatry,
formalism, and worldliness, the simple standard of the moral law.
It was owing to such teaching that the Israelites formed a true
judgment of Ahab's culpability. The act which was held to have
outweighed all his other crimes, and to have precipitated his final
doom, was an isolated act of high-handed injustice to an ordinary
citizen.
Ahab was a builder. He had built cities and palaces, and was
specially attached to his palace at Jezreel, which he wished to
make the most delightful of summer residences. It was unique in its
splendour as the first palace inlaid with ivory. The nation had
heard of Solomon's ivory throne, but never till this time of an
"ivory palace." But a palace is nothing without pleasant gardens.
The neighbourhood of Jezreel, as is still shown by the ancient
winepresses cut out of the rock in the neighbourhood of its ruins,
was enriched by vineyards, and one of these vineyards adjoining the
palace belonged to a citizen named Naboth.[749] It happened that no
other ground would so well have served the purpose of Ahab to make a
garden near his palace, and he made Naboth a fair offer for it. "I
will give you," he said, "a better vineyard for it, or I will pay you
its full value in ingots of silver."[750]
Naboth, however, was perfectly within his rights[751] in rejecting
the offer. It was the inheritance of his fathers, and considerations
nothing short of sacred--considerations which then or afterwards
found a place in the written statutes of the nation--made it
wrong in his judgment to sell it. He sturdily refused the offer of
the king. His case was different from that of the Jebusite prince
Araunah, who had sold his threshing floor to David, and that of
Shemer, who sold the Hill of Samaria to Omri.[752]
A sensible man would have accepted the inevitable, and done the best
he could to find a garden elsewhere. But Ahab, who could not bear
to be thwarted, came into his house "heavy and displeased." Like an
overgrown, sullen boy he flung himself on his divan, turned his face
to the wall, and would not eat.
News came to Jezebel in her seraglio of her lord's ill-humour, and
she came to ask him, "What mutiny in his spirit made him decline to
take food?"[753]
He told her the sturdy refusal of Naboth, and she broke into a
scornful laugh. "Are you King of Israel?" she asked. "Why this is
playing at kinghood![754] It is not the way we do things in Tyre.
Arise, eat bread, be merry. _I_ will give thee the vineyard of Naboth
the Jezreelite."
Did he admire the mannish spirit of the Syrian princess, or did he
secretly shrink from it? At any rate he let Jezebel take her own
course. With intrepid insolence she at once wrote a letter in Ahab's
name from Samaria, and sent it sealed with his signet to the elders
of Jezreel.[755] She ordered them to proclaim a fast as though to
avert some public calamity, and--with a touch of dreadful malice
as though to aggravate the horror of his ruin--to exalt Naboth to
a conspicuous position in the assembly.[756] They were to get hold
of two "sons of worthlessness," professional perjurers, and to
accuse Naboth of blasphemy against God and the king.[757] His mode
of refusing the vineyard might give some colourable pretext to the
charge. On the testimony of those two false witnesses Naboth must be
condemned, and then they must drag him outside the city to the pool
or tank with his sons and stone them all.
Everything was done by the subservient elders of Jezreel exactly as she
had directed. Their fawning readiness to carry out her vile commands is
the deadliest incidental proof of the corruption which she and her crew
of alien idolaters had wrought in Israel. On that very evening Jezebel
received the message, "Naboth is stoned and is dead." By the savage law
of those days his innocent sons were involved in his overthrow,[758]
and his property, left without heirs, reverted by confiscation to
the crown.[759] "Arise," said the triumphant sorceress, "and take
possession of the vineyard you wished for. I have given it to you as I
promised. Its owner and his sons have died the deaths of blasphemers,
and he crushed under the stones outside Jezreel."
Caring only for the gratification of his wish, heedless of the means
employed, hastily and joyously at early dawn the king arose to seize
the coveted vineyard. The dark deed had been done at night, the king
was alert with the morning light.[760] He rode in his chariot from
Samaria to Jezreel, which is but seven miles distant, and he rode in
something of military state, for in separate chariots, or else riding
in the same chariot, behind him were two war-like youths, Jehu and
Bidkar, who were destined to remember the events of that day, and to
refer to them four years afterwards, when one had become king and the
other his chief commander.[761]
But the king's joy was shortlived!
News of the black crime had come to Elijah, probably in his lonely
retreat in some cave at Carmel. He was a man who, though he flamed
out on great occasions like a meteor portending ruin to the guilty,
yet lived in general a hidden life. Six years had elapsed since
the calling of Elisha, and we have not once been reminded of his
existence. But now he was instantly inspired to protest against the
atrocious act of robbery and oppression, and to denounce upon it an
awful retribution which not even Baal-worship had called forth.
Ahab was at the summit of his hopes. He was about to complete his
summer palace and to grasp the fruits of the crime which he had
allowed the ἀνδρόβουλον κεὰρ of his wife to commit. But at the gate
of Naboth's vineyard stood the swart figure of the Prophet in his
hairy garb. We can imagine the revulsion of feeling which drove the
blood to the king's heart as he instantly felt that he had sinned in
vain. The advantage of his crime was snatched from him at the instant
of fruition. Half in anger, half in anguish, he cried, "Hast thou
found me, O mine enemy?"
"I have found thee," said the Prophet, speaking in Jehovah's name.
"Thou hast sold thyself to work evil before me, and I will requite it
and extinguish thee before me. Surely the Lord saw yesternight the
blood of Naboth and the blood of his sons.[762] Thy dynasty shall be
cut off to the last man, like that of Jeroboam, like that of Baasha.
Where the dogs licked the blood of Naboth, the dogs shall lick thine.
The harlots shall wash themselves in the water which thy blood has
stained. Him that dieth of thee in the city the dogs shall eat, and
him that dieth in the field shall the vultures rend, and the dogs
shall eat Jezebel also in the moat of Jezreel."[763]
It is the duty of prophets to stand before kings and not be ashamed.
So had Abraham stood before Nimrod, and Moses before Pharaoh,
and Samuel before Saul, and Nathan before David, and Iddo before
Jeroboam. So was Isaiah to stand hereafter before Ahaz, and Jeremiah
before Jehoiachin, and John the Baptist before Herod, and Paul
before Nero. Nor has it been at all otherwise in modern days. So
did St. Ignatius confront Trajan, and St. Ambrose brave the Empress
Justina, and St. Martin the Usurper Maximus, and St. Chrysostom the
fierce Eudoxia, and St. Basil the heretic Valens, and St. Columban
the savage Thierry, and St. Dunstan our half-barbarous Edgar. So,
too, in later days, Savonarola could speak the bare bold truth to
Lorenzo the Magnificent, and Knox to Mary Queen of Scots, and Bishop
Ken to Charles II. But never was any king confronted by so awful a
denunciation of doom. Probably the moment that Elijah had uttered
it he disappeared; but could not a swift arrow have reached him
from Jehu's or Bidkar's bow? We know how they remembered two reigns
later the thunder of those awful words, but they would hardly have
disobeyed the mandate of their king had he bidden them to seize or
slay the Prophet. Nothing was further from their thoughts. Elijah
had become to Ahab the incarnation of his own awakened conscience,
and it spoke to him in the thunders of Sinai. He quailed before the
tremendous imprecation. We may well doubt whether he even so much
as entered again the vineyard of Naboth; never certainly could he
have enjoyed it. He had indeed sold himself to do evil, and, as
always happens to such colossal criminals, he had sold himself for
naught--as Achan did for a buried robe and a useless ingot, and Judas
for the thirty pieces of silver which he could only dash down on the
Temple floor. Ahab turned away from the vineyard, which might well
seem to him haunted by the ghosts of his murdered victims and its
clusters full of blood. He rent his clothes, and clad himself in
sackcloth, and slept in sackcloth, and went about barefooted with
slow steps[764] and bent brow, a stricken man. Thenceforward as long
as he lived he kept in penitence and humiliation the anniversary of
Naboth's death,[765] as James IV. of Scotland kept the anniversary of
the death of the father against whom he had rebelled.
This penitence, though it does not seem to have been lasting, was not
wholly in vain. Elijah received a Divine intimation that, because
the king troubled himself, the threatened evil should in part be
postponed to the days of his sons. The sun of the unfortunate and
miserable dynasty set in blood. But though it is recorded that,
incited by his Tyrian wife, he did very abominably in worshipping
"idol-blocks," and following the ways of the old Canaanite
inhabitants of the land, none of his crimes left a deeper brand upon
his memory than the judicial seizure of the vineyard which he had
coveted and the judicial murder of Naboth and his sons.
How adamantine, how irreversible is the law of retribution! With
what normal and natural development, apart from every arbitrary
infliction, is the irrevocable prophecy fulfilled: "Be sure your sin
will find you out."
"Yea, he loved cursing, and it came unto him;
Yea, he delighted not in blessing, and it is far from him;
Yea, he clothed himself with cursing like as with his
garment,
And it came into his bowels like water, like oil into his
bones."[766]
Ahab had to be taught by adversity since he refused the lesson of
prosperity.
"Daughter of Jove, relentless power,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge and torturing hour
The bad affright, afflict the best,
Bound in thine adamantine chain
The proud are taught to taste of pain,
And purple tyrants vainly groan
With woes unfelt before, unpitied and alone."
But as for Elijah himself, he once more vanished into the solitude of
his own life, and we do not hear of him again till four years later,
when he sent to Ahaziah, the son of Ahab, the message of his doom.
FOOTNOTES:
[743] Zech. xiii. 4.
[744] On this defection and imposture of prophets, see Jer. xxiii.
21-40. Isa. xxx. 9, 10; Ezek. xiii. 7-9; Micah ii. 11; Deut. xviii. 20.
[745] Jer. xxii. 17.
[746] _De Gubernat. Dei._, viii.; Ambrose, _Ep._, xli.; Cassian, _De
Instit. Monastic. passim_. See chap. xvi. of my _Lives of the Fathers_
(St. Jerome), and Zöckler, _Gesch. der Askese_, for many authorities.
[747] See my _Lives of the Fathers_, vol. i. (St. Martin of Tours).
[748] See Jer. xxiii. 20-40.
[749] The Alex. LXX. throughout calls Naboth "an Israelite," not "a
Jezreelite."
[750] Both the Hebrew text of 1 Kings xxi. 1 and Josephus (_Antt._,
XIII. xv. 6) locate the vineyard of Naboth at Jezreel. The LXX.,
however, place it apparently near the threshing-floor of Ahab in
Samaria (παρὰ τῇ ἅλῳ Ἀχαὰβ βασίλεως Σαμαρείας), which is the same as
the "void place" of 1 Kings xxii. 10. At both cities Ahab's palace
was on the city wall, and on either supposition Naboth's vineyard was
close by the palace.
[751] Lev. xxv. 23, "The land shall not be sold for ever, for the
land is Mine." Numb. xxxvi. 7; Ezek. xlvi. 18.
[752] 2 Sam. xxiv. 24; 1 Kings xvi. 24.
[753] The word rendered "sad" is rendered "mutinous" by Thenius.
[754] LXX., 1 Kings xxi. 7, Σὺ νῦν οὓτως ποιεῖς βασιλέα ἐπὶ Ισραήλ;
[755] The signet was carved with the king's name. Rawlinson aptly
compares Lady Macbeth's "Infirm of purpose give me the daggers!"
[756] Josephus calls it an ἐκκλησία. "Set Naboth on high" (Heb.) "at
the head of the people"; LXX., ἐν ἀρχῇ τοῦ λαοῦ; Vulg., _inter primos
populi_.
[757] The charge was that "he cursed God and the king." LXX. (by
euphemism), εὐλόγησε; Vulg., _Benedixit_. The Hebrew word has both
meanings (comp. Exod. xxii. 28, where some would render _Elohim_
not "God," but "the judges." See marg. of R.V.). Stoning was the
punishment of blasphemy (Lev. xxiv. 16), and took place outside the
city (Acts vii. 58).
[758] 2 Kings ix. 26.
[759] 2 Sam. xvi. 4.
[760] In 1 Kings xxi. 16 the LXX. curiously says, that "when Ahab
heard that Naboth was dead he rent his garments, and clothed himself
in sackcloth; and after this he also arose," etc. This mourning for
the _means_ but acceptance of the _fact_ would not be in disaccord
with Ahab's moral weakness.
[761] 2 Kings ix. 25, 36.
[762] LXX.
[763] 2 Kings ix. 36. LXX., ἐν τῷ προτειχίσματι. The חֵל of an
Eastern city is the desert space outside the walls where the "pariah
dogs prowl on the mounds."
[764] אַט, LXX., κλαίων; Josephus, Chaldee, and Peshito, "shoeless."
[765] 1 Kings xxi. 27. καὶ περιεβάλετο σάκκον ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ᾗ ἐπάταξε
Ναβουθαί.
[766] Psalm cix. 17, 18.
CHAPTER XLVII.
_ALONE AGAINST THE WORLD._
1 KINGS xxii. 1-40.
"I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran: I have not spoken
to them, yet they prophesied.... I have heard what the prophets
said who prophesied lies in My name."--JER. xxiii. 21-25.
"Μάντι κακῶν οὒ πώποτέ μοι τὸ κρήγυον εἶπας
Αἰεί τοι τὰ κάκ' ἐστὶ φίλα φρεσὶ μαντεύεσθαι
Ἐσθλὸν δ' οὔδε τί πω εἶπας ἒπος οὒδ' ἐτέλεσσας."
HOM., _Iliad_, i. 106.
We now come to the last scene of Ahab's troubled and eventful life.
His two immense victories over the Syrians had secured for his
harassed kingdom three years of peace, but at the end of that time he
began to be convinced that the insecure conditions upon which he had
weakly set Benhadad free would never be ratified. The town of Ramoth
in Gilead, which was one of great importance as a frontier town of
Israel, had, in express defiance of the covenant, been retained
by the Syrians, who still refused to give it up. A favourable
opportunity, he thought, had now occurred to demand its cession.
This was the friendly visit of Jehoshaphat, King of Judah. It was
the first time that a king of Judah had visited the capital of the
kings who had revolted from the dynasty of David. It was the first
acknowledged close of the old blood-feuds, and the beginning of a
friendship and affinity which policy seemed to dictate. After all
Ephraim and Judah were brothers, though Ephraim had vexed Judah, and
Judah hated Ephraim. Jehoshaphat was rich, prosperous, successful
in war. No king since Solomon had attained to anything like his
greatness--the reward, it was believed, of his piety and faithfulness.
Ahab, too, had proved himself a successful warrior, and the valour
of Israel's hosts had, with Jehovah's blessing, extricated their
afflicted land from the terrible aggressions of Syria. But how could
the little kingdom of Israel hope to hold out against Syria, and
to keep Moab in subjection? How could the still smaller and weaker
kingdom of Judah keep itself from vassalage to Egypt and from the
encroachments of Philistines on the west and Moabites on the east?
Could anything but ruin be imminent, if these two nations of Israel and
Judah--one in land, one in blood, one in language, in tradition, and
in interests--were perpetually to destroy each other with internecine
strife? The kings determined to make a league with one another, and to
bind it by mutual affinity. It was proposed that Athaliah, daughter of
Ahab and Jezebel, should marry Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat.
The dates are uncertain, but it was probably in connexion with the
marriage contract that Jehoshaphat now paid a ceremonial visit to
Ahab. The King of Israel received him with splendid entertainments to
all the people.[767] Ahab had already broached to his captains the
subject of recovering Ramoth Gilead, and he now took occasion of the
King of Judah's visit to invite his co-operation. What advantages and
compensations he offered are not stated. It may have been enough to
point out that, if Syria once succeeded in crushing Israel, the fate of
Judah would not be long postponed. Jehoshaphat, who seems to have been
too ready to yield to pressure, answered in a sort of set phrase: "I am
as thou art; my people as thy people; my horses as thy horses."[768]
But it is probable that his heart misgave him. He was a truly pious
king. He had swept the Asherahs out of Judah, and endeavoured to
train his people in the principles of righteousness and the worship
of Jehovah. In joining Ahab there must have been in his conscience
some unformulated murmur of the reproof which on his return to
Jerusalem was addressed to him by Jehu, the son of Hanani, "Shouldst
thou help the ungodly, and love them that hate the Lord? Therefore
is wrath upon thee from the Lord." But at the beginning of a
momentous undertaking he would not be likely to imitate the godless
indifference which had led Ahab to take the most fatal steps without
seeking the guidance of God. He therefore said to Ahab, "Inquire, I
pray thee, of the word of the Lord to-day."
Ahab could not refuse, and apparently the professional prophets of
the schools had been pretty well cajoled or drilled into accordance
with his wishes. A great and solemn assembly was summoned. The kings
had clothed themselves in their royal robes striped with laticlaves
of Tyrian purple,[769] and sat on thrones in an open space before the
gate of Samaria. No less than four hundred prophets of Jehovah were
summoned to prophesy before them. Ahab propounded for their decision
the formal and important question, "Shall I go up to Ramoth Gilead to
battle, or shall I forbear?"
With one voice the prophets "philippised." They answered the king
according to his idols. Had the gold of Ahab or of Jezebel been at
work among them? Had they been in king's houses, and succumbed to
courtly influences? Or were they carried away by the interested
enthusiasm of one or two of their leaders who saw their own account
in the matter? Certain it is that on this occasion they became false
prophets. They used their formula "Thus saith Jehovah" without
authority, and promised Jehovah's aid in vain.[770] Conspicuous in
his evil ardour was one of them named Zedekiah, son of Chenaanah.
To illustrate and emphasise his jubilant prophecies he had made and
affixed to his head a pair of iron horns; and as though to symbolise
the bull of the House of Ephraim, he said to Ahab, "Thus saith
Jehovah. With these shalt thou push the Assyrians until thou have
consumed them."[771] And all the prophets prophesied so.
What could be more encouraging? Here was a patriot-king, the
hero-victor in great battles, bound by fresh ties of kinship and
league with the pious descendant of David, meditating a just
raid against a dangerous enemy to recover a frontier-fortress
which was his by right; and here were four hundred prophets--not
Asherah-prophets or Baal-prophets, but genuine prophets of
Jehovah--unanimous, and even enthusiastic, in approving his design
and promising him the victory! The Church and the world were--as
they so often have been--delightfully at one.
"One with God" is the better majority. These loud-voiced majorities
and unanimities are rarely to be trusted. Truth and righteousness
are far more often to be found in the causes which they denounce
and at which they sneer. They silence opposition, but they produce
no conviction. They can torture, but they cannot refute. There
is something unmistakable in the accent of sincerity, and it was
lacking in the voice of these prophets on the popular side. If Ahab
was deceived and even carried away by the unwonted approval of so
many messengers of Jehovah, Jehoshaphat was not. These four hundred
prophets who seemed superfluously sufficient to Ahab by no means
satisfied the King of Judah.
"Is there not," he asked, with uneasy misgiving, "one prophet of the
Lord besides, that we might inquire of him?"
One prophet of the Lord besides?[772] Were not, then, _four hundred_
prophets of the Lord enough? They must have felt themselves cruelly
slighted when they heard the pious king's inquiry, and doubtless a
murmur of disapproval arose amongst them.
And the King of Israel said, "There is yet one man." Had Jehoshaphat
been secretly thinking of Elijah? Where was Elijah? He was living,
certainly, for he survived even into the reign (apparently) of
Jehoram. But where was Elijah? If Jehoshaphat had thought of him,
Ahab at any rate did not care to mention him. Perhaps he was
inaccessible, in some lonely unknown retreat of Carmel or of Gilead.
Since his fearful message to Ahab he had not been heard of; but why
did he not appear at a national crisis so tremendous as this?
"There is yet one man," said Ahab. "Micaiah, the son of Imlah,
by whom we may inquire of the Lord; but"--such was the king's
most singular comment--"I hate him; for he doth not prophesy good
concerning me, but evil."[773]
It was a weak confession that he was aware of one man who was
indisputably a true prophet of Jehovah, but whom he had purposely
excluded from this gathering because he knew that his was an
undaunted spirit which would not consent to shout with the many in
favour of the king. Indeed, it seems probable that he was, at this
moment, in prison. Jewish legend says that he had been put there
because he was the prophet who had reproved Ahab for his folly in
suffering Benhadad to escape with the mere breath of a general
promise. Till then he had been unknown. He was not like Elijah, and
might safely be suppressed. And Ahab, as was universally the case in
ancient days, thought that the prophet could practically prophesy
as he liked, and not merely prophesy, but bring about his own
vaticinations. Hence, if a prophet said anything which he disliked,
he regarded him as a personal enemy, and, if he dared, he punished
him--just as Agamemnon punished Calchas.
Jehoshaphat, however, was still dissatisfied; he wanted further
confirmation. "Let not the king say so," he said. If he is a genuine
prophet, the king should not hate him, or fancy that he prophesies
evil out of malice prepense. Would it not be more satisfactory to
hear what he might have to say?
However reluctantly, Ahab saw that he should have to send for
Micaiah, and he despatched a eunuch to hurry him to the scene with
all speed.[774]
The mention of a eunuch as the messenger is significant. Ahab had
become the first polygamist among the kings of Israel, and a seraglio
so large as his[775] could never be maintained without the presence
of these degraded and odious officials, who here first appear in the
hardier annals of the Northern Kingdom.
This eunuch, however, seems to have had a kindly disposition. He was
good-naturedly anxious that Micaiah should not get into trouble. He
advised him, with prudential regard for his own interest, to swim
with the stream. "See now," he said, "all the prophets with one mouth
are prophesying good to the king. Pray agree with them. Do not spoil
everything."
How often has the same base advice been given! How often has it been
followed! How certain is its rejection to lead to bitter animosity!
One of the most difficult lessons of life is to learn to stand alone
when all the prophets are prophesying falsely to please the rulers
of the world. Micaiah rose superior to the eunuch's temptation. "By
Jehovah," he said, "I will speak only what He bids me speak."
He stood before the kings, the eager multitude, the unanimous and
passionate prophets; and there was deep silence when Ahab put to
him the question to which the four hundred had already shouted an
affirmative.
His answer was precisely the same as theirs: "Go up to Ramoth Gilead
and prosper, for the Lord shall deliver it into the hand of the
king!" Every one must have been astonished. But Ahab detected the
tone of scorn which rang through the assenting words, and angrily
adjured Micaiah to give a true answer in Jehovah's name. "How many
times," he cried, "shall I adjure thee that thou tell me nothing but
that which is true in Jehovah's name." The "how many times" shows how
faithfully Micaiah must have fulfilled his duty of speaking messages
of God to his erring king.
So adjured, Micaiah could not be silent, however much the answer
might cost him, or however useless it might be.
"I saw all Israel,"[776] he said, "scattered on the mountain like
sheep without a shepherd. And Jehovah said, These have no master, let
every man return to his house in peace."
The vision seemed to hint at the death of the king, and Ahab turned
triumphantly to his ally, "Did I not tell you that he would prophesy
evil?"
Micaiah justified himself by a daringly anthropomorphic apologue
which startles us, but would not at all have startled those who
regarded everything as coming from the immediate action of God, and
who could ask, "Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not
done it?"[777] The prophets were self-deceived, but this would be
expressed by saying that Jehovah deceived them. Pharaoh hardens his
heart, and God is said to have done it.
He had seen Jehovah on His throne, he said, surrounded by the host
of heaven, and asking who would entice Ahab to his fall at Ramoth
Gilead. After various answers the spirit[778] said, "I will go and
be a lying spirit in the mouths of all his prophets, and will entice
him." Then Jehovah sent him, so that they all spoke good to the king
though Jehovah had spoken evil. God had sent to them all--king,
people, prophets--strong delusion that they should believe a lie.
This stern reproof to all the prophets was more than their coryphæus
Zedekiah could endure. Having recourse to "the syllogism of violence"
he strode up to Micaiah and smote the defenceless, isolated, hated
man on the cheek,[779] with the contemptuous question, "Which way
went the spirit of the Lord from me, to speak unto thee?"
"Behold thou shalt know," was the answer, "on the day when thou shalt
flee from chamber to chamber to hide thyself." If the hands of the
prophet were bound as he came from the prison, there would have been
an infinite dignity in that calm rebuke.
But as though the case was self-evident, and Micaiah's opposition to
the four hundred prophets proved his guilt, Ahab sent him back to
prison. "Issue orders," he said, "to Amon, governor of the city, and
Joash, the king's son, to feed him scantily on bread and water till
the king's return in peace."
"If thou return at all in peace," said Micaiah, "Jehovah hath not
spoken by me."[780]
It is a sign of the extreme fragmentariness of the narrative that
of Micaiah and Zedekiah we hear nothing further, though the sequel
respecting them must have been told in the original record. But
the prophecy of Micaiah came true, and the unanimous four hundred
had prophesied lies. There are times when "the Catholic Church"
dwindles down to the one man and the small handful of those who
speak the truth. The expedition was altogether disastrous. Ahab,
perhaps knowing by spies how bitterly the Syrians were incensed
against him, told Jehoshaphat that he would disguise himself and go
into the battle, but begged his ally to wear his robes as was usual
with kings.[781] Benhadad, with the implacable hatred of one who
had received a benefit, was so eager to be avenged on Ahab that he
had told his thirty-two captains to make his capture their special
aim.[782] Seeing a king in his robes they made a fierce onset on
Jehoshaphat and surrounded his chariot. His cries for rescue showed
them that he was not Ahab, and they turned away.[783] But Ahab's
disguise did not save him. A Syrian--the Jews say that it was
Naaman[784]--drew a bow with no particular aim,[785] and the arrow
smote Ahab in the place between the upper and lower armour.[786]
Feeling that the wound was deadly he ordered his charioteer to turn
his hands and drive him out of the increasing roar of the _mêlée_.
But he would not wholly leave the fight, and with heroic fortitude
remained standing in his chariot in spite of agony. All day the
blood kept flowing down into the hollow of the chariot. At evening
the Syrians had to retire in defeat, but Ahab died. The news of the
king's death was proclaimed at sunset by the herald, and the cry was
raised which bade the host disband and return home.[787]
They carried the king's body back to Samaria, and they buried it. They
washed the blood-stained chariot in the pool outside the city, and
there the dogs licked the king's blood, and the harlot-votaries of
Asherah bathed in the blood-dyed waters, as Elijah had prophesied.[788]
So ended the reign of a king who built cities and ivory palaces,[789]
and fought like a hero against the foes of his country, but who
had never known how to rule his own house. He had winked at the
atrocities committed in his name by his Tyrian queen, had connived at
her idolatrous innovations, and put no obstacle in the way of her
persecutions. The people who might have forgotten or condoned all
else never forgot the stoning and spoliation of Naboth and his sons,
and his death was regarded as a retribution on this crime.
FOOTNOTES:
[767] 2 Chron. xviii. 2.
[768] 2 Kings iii. 7.
[769] 1 Kings xxii. 10 (Peshito).
[770] The LXX. has, "The Lord shall deliver into thy hands _even the
king of Syria_." At first they all said, "_Adonai_ shall deliver
it"; but afterwards, perhaps stung by the doubts of Jehoshaphat, or
encouraged by the audacity of Zedekiah, they said, "_Jehovah_ shall
deliver it."
[771] Deut. xxxiii. 17. "His glory is like the firstling of his
bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorns: with them he
shall push the people altogether to the ends of the earth."
[772] The LXX., omitting "besides," implies Jehoshaphat's opinion
that these were not true prophets of Jehovah. So, too, the Vulg.,
"Non est hic _propheta Domini quispiam_?"
[773] Compare Agamemnon's bitter complaint of Calchas.
[774] 1 Kings xxii. 9. LXX., εὐνοῦχον ἔνα. And this is probably the
meaning of סָרִיס, not "officer," as in A.V.
[775] For he had seventy sons, besides daughters (2 Kings x. 7)
[776] The words implied that the king would fall, though the army
would escape (1 Kings xxii. 17, בְּשָׁלוֹם). Comp. Numb. xxvii. 16,
17 "Let the Lord ... set a man over the congregation, ... who may
lead them out and in; that the _congregation of the Lord be not as
sheep which have no shepherd_."
[777] Theodoret explains it as anthropomorphism, and condescension to
human modes of speech (προσωποπΐοι α τίς ἐστι διδάσκουσα τὴν θείαν
συγχώρησιν).
[778] 1 Kings xxii. 21. It is "the," not "a" spirit, _i.e._, the
unclean spirit of deception (τὸ πνεῦμα τῆς πλάνης, 1 John iv. 6). Comp.
Zech. xiii. 2, "Also I will cause _the prophets and the unclean spirit_
to pass out of the land." St. Paul says in 2 Thess. ii. 11: "God shall
send them strong delusion that they should believe the lie."
[779] The worst of insults (Job xvi. 10; Lam. iii. 30).
[780] The words (verse 28) "And he said, Hearken, O people, every one
of you," are believed by Nöldeke, Klostermann, and others to be an
interpolation from Micah i. 2, by some one who confused Micaiah with
Micah. They are omitted in the LXX.
[781] We have no reason to accuse Ahab of any bad or selfish motives
here. No doubt Micaiah's prophecy of his approaching death had made
him anxious. If the LXX. reading, "but put thou on _my_ robes," were
right, the case would be different.
[782] We see in this order a trace of the single combats which mark
the Homeric battles.
[783] 2 Chron. xviii. 31: "And the Lord helped him, and God moved
them from him."
[784] So Jarchi. Josephus calls him Aman.
[785] 1 Kings xxii. 34. "At a venture"; marg., "in his simplicity";
comp. 2 Sam. xv. 11.
[786] What the French call _le défaut de la cuirasse_ (Keil). Luther
has, _zwischen den Panzer und Hengel_.
[787] Josephus, _Antt._, VIII. xv. 6.
[788] Köster thinks that there may be reference to the fact that the
name "dog" was given to the unchaste.
[789] Amos iii. 15; Psalm xlv. 8; Hom., _Od._, iv. 72.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
_CONCLUSION._
It will have been seen that there are two main heroes of the
First Book of Kings--Solomon and Elijah. How vast is the gulf
which separates those two ideals! In Solomon we see man in all
the adventitious splendour which he can derive from magnificent
surroundings and from exaltation to a dizzy height above his fellows.
Everything that the earth can give him he possesses from earliest
youth, yet all turns to dust and ashes under his touch. Wealth, rank,
power, splendour cannot ever, or under any circumstances, satisfy the
soul. The soul can only be sustained by heavenly food, by the manna
which God sends it from heaven in the wilderness. Its divineness can
only be maintained by feeding on the Divine. If we think of Solomon,
even in his most dazzling hour, we see no element of happiness or of
reality in his lonely splendour or loveless home. It is nothing but a
miserable pageant. The Book of Ecclesiastes, though written centuries
after he had passed away, yet shows sufficiently, as the Eastern
legends also show, that mankind was not misled by the glamour which
surrounded him into the supposition that he was to be envied. It was
felt, whether he uttered it or not, that "Vanity of vanities, vanity
of vanities, all is vanity," is the real echo of his weariness. In
the famous fiction the Khaliph sees him with the other giant shades
on his golden throne at the banquet; but each and all have on their
faces an expression of solemn agony, and under the folds of their
purple a little flame is ever burning at their hearts.
How different is the rough Prophet of Gilead, the ascetic, in his
sheepskin mantle and leathern girdle, who can live for months on a
little water and meal baked with oil![790] In him we see the grandeur
of manhood reduced to its simplest elements; we see the dignity of
man as simply man towering over all the adventitious circumstance
of royalty. One who, like Elijah, has no earthly desires, has no
real fears. If he flies from Jezebel to save his life, it is only
because he is not justified in flinging it away; otherwise he is as
dauntless before the _vultus instantis tyranni_ as before the _civium
ardor prava jubentium_. Hence, Elijah in his absolute poverty, in
his despised isolation--Elijah, hunted and persecuted, and living in
dens and caves of the earth--is immeasurably greater than Solomon,
because he is the messenger of the living God before whom he stands.
And his work is immeasurably more permanent and more valuable for
humanity than that of all the kings and great men among whom he
moved. He believed in God, he fought for righteousness, and therefore
he left behind him an unperishable memorial, showing that he who
would live for eternity rather than for time is he who best achieves
the high ends of his destiny. He may err as Elijah erred, but with
the blessing of the Lord he shall not miscarry. Though he go forth
weeping, he shall come again with joy, bringing his sheaves with
him. Solomon, after his death, almost vanished from the history of
Israel into the legends of Arabia. In the New Testament he is but
barely mentioned. But Elijah still lives in, and haunts, the memory
of his nation. A chair is placed for his invisible presence at every
circumcision. A cup is set aside for him at sacred banquets, and all
dubious questions are postponed for solution "until the day when
Elijah comes." He shone with Moses on the Mount of Transfiguration;
and St. James, the Lord's brother, appeals to him as the most
striking example of the power of that prayer which
"Moves the arm of Him who moves the world."
FOOTNOTE:
[790] It is supposed that Mohammed alludes to Elijah in the Qur'an,
_Sura_ xxi. 85: "And Ishmael, and Idris, and _Dhu'l Kifl_ ("he of the
portion")--all these were of the patient; and we made them enter into
our mercy; verily they were among the righteous" (Palmer's Qur'an,
ii. 53).
NOTE ON THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE
FIRST BOOK OF KINGS.
I have not thought it worth while to trouble the reader with
conjectures or corrections of the text, intended to remove the
numerous and obvious discrepancies which the redactor of the Book
of Kings leaves uncorrected in his references to the synchronism of
the reigns.[791] Many of them are removed or modified when we bear
in mind that, _e.g._, Nadab and Elah and Ahaziah are described as
reigning "two years" each (xv. 25, xvi. 8, xxii. 51), whereas the
reign of each may not have exceeded a year, or even a few months,
if these months came at the end of one year and the beginning of
another. Periods of anarchic interregnum, or of association of a son
with his father on the throne, may account for other confusions and
contradictions; but they are purely conjectural, and in some cases
far from probable. Jerome, as is well known, gave up all attempts to
harmonise the chronologic data as a hopeless problem. "Relege," he
says, "omnes et veteris et novi Testamenti libros, et tantam annorum
reperies dissonantiam _ut hujuscemodi hærere quæstionibus non tam
studiosi quam otiosi hominis esse videatur_."
The Assyrians were, for the most part (though, as Schrader shows, not
_always_), as scrupulously exact in their chronological details as
the Jews were careless in theirs. The cuneiform inscriptions give us
the following data, which may be regarded as _points de repère_, and
which are not reconcilable with the received dates:--
B.C.
Battle of Karkar, in which Ahab and Benhadad
were defeated 854
Jehu pays tribute to Shalmanezer II. 842
Menahem tributary to Assyria 738
Fall of Samaria 722
Sennacherib's Invasion 701
These dates do not accord with those which we should derive from the
Book of Kings in the ordinary system of chronology, which seem to fix
the Fall of Samaria in 737.
The dates of the later Kings of Assyria seem to be as follows:--
B.C.
Rimmon-Nirari III. 810
Shalmanezer III. 781
Assur-dân IV. 771
Tiglath-Pileser III. (Pul, a usurper) 745
Shalmanezer IV. 727
Sargon 722
Sennacherib 705
Esar-haddon I. 681
Assur-bani-pal 668
* * * * *
Destruction of Nineveh 606
Adding up the separate data of this book for the kings of Israel we
have from Jeroboam to the death of Joram ninety-eight years seven
days; and for the same period of the kings of Judah from Rehoboam to
Ahaziah we have ninety-five years. Supposing that some such errors
as we have indicated have crept into the computation, the dates of
the reigns may be, as reckoned by Kittel:--
B.C.
Saul 1037-1017
David 1017-977
Solomon 977-937
Jeroboam I. 937-915
Nadab 915-914
Baasha 914-890
Elah 890-889
Zimri 889
Omri 889-877
Ahab 877-855
Ahaziah 855-854
Jehoram 854-842
* * * * *
Rehoboam 937-920
Abijah 920-917
Asa 917-876
Jehoshaphat 876-851
Joram 851-843
Ahaziah 843-842
From Phœnician inscriptions (recorded in the _Corpus Inscriptionum
Semiticarum_) little of _historical_ importance has hitherto been
reaped.
In the Egyptian monuments there is nothing which illustrates the
period of the Kings except the inscription of Sheshonk recording his
invasion in the days of Rehoboam, of which I have given some account
(p. 315).
The Assyrian inscriptions, to which allusion is made in their place,
are of extreme importance and interest, and from the lists of kings
we have good details of chronology. The best book on their bearing
upon Hebrew history is that of Schrader, _Die Keilinschriften und d.
Alte Testament_, 1883.
On the datum of four hundred and eighty years from the Exodus to the
building of the Temple, I have already touched. It does not agree
with Acts xiii. 20, nor with the Book of Judges. The LXX. reads "four
hundred and forty." It is almost certainly a late and erroneous
chronological gloss derived in very simple fashion, thus:--The
wanderings forty years, Joshua forty years, Othniel forty years, Ehud
eighty years, Jabin twenty years, Barak forty years, Gideon forty
years, the Philistines forty years, Samson twenty years, Samuel forty
years, Saul forty years, David forty years = four hundred and eighty,
or twelve generations of forty years.
But the same result was arrived at with equal empiricism by omitting
the episodes of heathen dominations (Jabin and the Philistines),
and only adding up the years assigned to the Judges, and the four
years of Solomon's reign before he began to build the Temple,
thus:--Othniel forty years, Ehud eighty years, Barak forty years,
Gideon forty years, Tola twenty-three years, Jair twenty-two years,
Jephthah six years, Ibzan seven years, Elom ten years, Abdon eight
years, Samson twenty years = two hundred and ninety-six.
Eli forty years, Samuel twenty years (1 Sam. vii. 15), David forty
years, Solomon four = one hundred and four. Add to the four hundred
the two generations of the wanderings and Joshua, and we again have
four hundred and eighty; but quite as arbitrarily, for the period of
Saul is omitted.[792]
The problems of early Hebrew chronology cannot yet be regarded as
even approximately solved.
FOOTNOTES:
[791] See W. Robertson Smith, _Journ. of Philology_, x. 20.
[792] See Reuss, _Hist. d'Israel_, i. 101-103.
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation and spelling errors have been fixed throughout.
Inconsistent hyphenation left as in the original text.
Page 27: The reign of Josiah was listed as A.D. 621, this was
actually B.C. 621, corrected.
Page 27: The sentence beginning "Thus from the Exodus..." originally
said "Thus from the Exile...". The sentence was changed to be
historically accurate.
Footnote 13: There was a missing verse reference for 2 Kings xvi.
Corrected to be 2 Kings xvi. 2.
Footnote 29: There was no anchor for this footnote. Left as in the
original text.