He had also devoted subjects. All Judah brought him presents, so that he

had great riches and ample means to sustain his royal power and splendour.

Moreover, as in the case of Solomon and Asa, his piety was rewarded with

freedom from war: “The fear of Jehovah fell upon all the kingdoms round

about, so that they made no war against Jehoshaphat.” Some of his weaker

neighbours were overawed by the spectacle of his great power; the

Philistines brought him presents and tribute money, and the Arabians

immense flocks of rams and he-goats, seven thousand seven hundred of each.

Great prosperity had the usual fatal effect upon Jehoshaphat’s character.

In the beginning of his reign he had strengthened himself against Israel

and had refused to walk in their ways; now power had developed ambition,

and he sought and obtained the honour of marrying his son Jehoram to

Athaliah the daughter of Ahab, the mighty and magnificent king of Israel,

possibly also the daughter of the Phœnician princess Jezebel, the devotee

of Baal. This family connection of course implied political alliance.

After a time Jehoshaphat went down to visit his new ally, and was

hospitably received.(368)

Then follows the familiar story of Micaiah the son of Imlah, the

disastrous expedition of the two kings, and the death of Ahab, almost

exactly as in the book of Kings. There is one significant alteration: both

narratives tell us how the Syrian captains attacked Jehoshaphat because

they took him for the king of Israel and gave up their pursuit when he

cried out, and they discovered their mistake; but the chronicler adds the

explanation that Jehovah helped him and God moved them to depart from him.

And so the master of more than a million soldiers was happy in being

allowed to escape on account of his insignificance, and returned in peace

to Jerusalem. Oded and Hanani had met his predecessors on their return

from victory; now Jehu the son of Hanani(369) met Jehoshaphat when he came

home defeated. Like his father, the prophet was charged with a message of

rebuke. An alliance with the northern kingdom was scarcely less

reprehensible than one with Syria: “Shouldest thou help the wicked, and

love them that hate Jehovah? Jehovah is wroth with thee.” Asa’s previous

reforms were not allowed to mitigate the severity of his condemnation, but

Jehovah was more merciful to Jehoshaphat. The prophet makes mention of his

piety and his destruction of idolatrous symbols, and no further punishment

is inflicted upon him.

The chronicler’s addition to the account of the king’s escape from the

Syrian captains reminds us that God still watches over and protects His

children even when they are in the very act of sinning against Him.

Jehovah knew that Jehoshaphat’s sinful alliance with Ahab did not imply

complete revolt and apostacy. Hence doubtless the comparative mildness of

the prophet’s reproof.

When Jehu’s father Hanani rebuked Asa, the king flew into a passion, and

cast the prophet into prison; Jehoshaphat received Jehu’s reproof in a

very different spirit(370): he repented himself, and found a new zeal in

his penitence. Learning from his own experience the proneness of the human

heart to go astray, he went out himself amongst his people to bring them

back to Jehovah; and just as Asa in his apostacy oppressed his people,

Jehoshaphat in his renewed loyalty to Jehovah showed himself anxious for

good government. He provided judges in all the walled towns of Judah, with

a court of appeal at Jerusalem; he solemnly charged them to remember their

responsibility to Jehovah, to avoid bribery, and not to truckle to the

rich and powerful. Being themselves faithful to Jehovah, they were to

inculcate a like obedience and warn the people not to sin against the God

of their fathers. Jehoshaphat’s exhortation to his new judges concludes

with a sentence whose martial resonance suggests trial by combat rather

than the peaceful proceedings of a law-court: “Deal courageously, and

Jehovah defend the right!”

The principle that good government must be a necessary consequence of

piety in the rulers has not been so uniformly observed in later times as

in the pages of Chronicles. The testimony of history on this point is not

altogether consistent. In spite of all the faults of the orthodox and

devout Greek emperors Theodosius the Great and Marcian, their

administration rendered important services to the empire. Alfred the Great

was a distinguished statesman and warrior as well as zealous for true

religion. St. Louis of France exercised a wise control over Church and

state. It is true that when a woman reproached him in open court with

being a king of friars, of priests, and of clerks, and not a true king of

France, he replied with saintly meekness, “You say true! It has pleased

the Lord to make me king; it had been well if it had pleased Him to make

some one king who had better ruled the realm.”(371) But something must be

allowed for the modesty of the saint; apart from his unfortunate crusades,

it would have been difficult for France or even Europe to have furnished a

more beneficent sovereign. On the other hand, Charlemagne’s successor, the

Emperor Louis the Pious, and our own kings Edward the Confessor and the

saintly Henry VI., were alike feeble and inefficient; the zeal of the

Spanish kings and their kinswoman Mary Tudor is chiefly remembered for its

ghastly cruelty; and in comparatively recent times the misgovernment of

the States of the Church was a byword throughout Europe. Many causes

combined to produce this mingled record. The one most clearly contrary to

the chronicler’s teaching was an immoral opinion that the Christian should

cease to be a citizen, and that the saint has no duties to society. This

view is often considered to be the special vice of monasticism, but it

reappears in one form or another in every generation. The failure of the

administration of Louis the Pious is partly explained when we read that he

was with difficulty prevented from entering a monastery. In our own day

there are those who think that a newspaper should have no interest for a

really earnest Christian. According to their ideas, Jehoshaphat should

have divided his time between a private oratory in his palace and the

public services of the Temple, and have left his kingdom to the mercy of

unjust judges at home and heathen enemies abroad, or else have abdicated

in favour of some kinsman whose heart was not so perfect with Jehovah. The

chronicler had a clearer insight into Divine methods, and this doctrine of

his is not one that has been superseded together with the Mosaic ritual.

Possibly the martial tone of the sentence that concludes the account of

Jehoshaphat as the Jewish Justinian is due to the influence upon the

chronicler’s mind of the incident(372) which he now describes.

Jehoshaphat’s next experience was parallel to that of Asa with Zerah. When

his new reforms were completed, he was menaced with a formidable invasion.

His new enemies were almost as distant and strange as the Ethiopians and

Lubim who had followed Zerah. We hear nothing about any king of Israel or

Damascus, the usual leaders of assaults upon Judah; we hear instead of a

triple alliance against Judah. Two of the allies are Moab and Ammon; but

the Jewish kings were not wont to regard these as irresistible foes, so

that the extreme dismay which takes possession of king and people must be

due to the third ally: the “Meunim.”(373) The Meunim we have already met

with in connection with the exploits of the children of Simeon in the

reign of Hezekiah; they are also mentioned in the reign of Uzziah,(374)

and nowhere else, unless indeed they are identical with the Maonites, who

are named with the Amalekites in Judges x. 12. They are thus a people

peculiar to Chronicles, and appear from this narrative to have inhabited

Mount Seir, by which term “Meunim” is replaced as the story proceeds.(375)

Since the chronicler wrote so long after the events he describes, we

cannot attribute to him any very exact knowledge of political geography.

Probably the term “Meunim” impressed his contemporaries very much as it

does a modern reader, and suggested countless hordes of Bedouin

plunderers; Josephus calls them a great army of Arabians. This host of

invaders came from Edom, and having marched round the southern end of the

Dead Sea, were now at Engedi, on its western shore. The Moabites and

Ammonites might have crossed the Jordan by the fords near Jericho; but

this route would not have been convenient for their allies the Meunim, and

would have brought them into collision with the forces of the northern

kingdom.

On this occasion Jehoshaphat does not seek any foreign alliance. He does

not appeal to Syria, like Asa, nor does he ask Ahab’s successor to repay

in kind the assistance given to Ahab at Ramoth-gilead, partly perhaps

because there was no time, but chiefly because he had learnt the truth

which Hanani had sought to teach his father, and which Hanani’s son had

taught him. He does not even trust in his own hundreds of thousands of

soldiers, all of whom cannot have perished at Ramoth-gilead; his

confidence is placed solely and absolutely in Jehovah. Jehoshaphat and his

people made no military preparations; subsequent events justified their

apparent neglect: none were necessary. Jehoshaphat sought Divine help

instead, and proclaimed a fast throughout Judah; and all Judah gathered

themselves to Jerusalem to ask help of Jehovah. This great national

assembly met “before the new court” of the Temple. The chronicler, who is

supremely interested in the Temple buildings, has told us nothing about

any new court, nor is it mentioned elsewhere; our author is probably

giving the title of a corresponding portion of the second Temple: the

place where the people assembled to meet Jehoshaphat would be the great

court built by Solomon.(376)

Here Jehoshaphat stood up as the spokesman of the nation, and prayed to

Jehovah on their behalf and on his own. He recalls the Divine omnipotence;

Jehovah is God of earth and heaven, God of Israel and Ruler of the

heathen, and therefore able to help even in this great emergency:—

“O Jehovah, God of our fathers, art Thou not God in heaven? Dost Thou not

rule all the kingdoms of the heathen? And in Thy hand is power and might,

so that none is able to withstand Thee.”

The land of Israel had been the special gift of Jehovah to His people, in

fulfilment of His ancient promise to Abraham:—

“Didst not Thou, O our God, dispossess the inhabitants of this land in

favour of Thy people Israel, and gavest it to the seed of Abraham Thy

friend for ever?”

And now long possession had given Israel a prescriptive right to the Land

of Promise; and they had, so to speak, claimed their rights in the most

formal and solemn fashion by erecting a temple to the God of Israel.

Moreover, the prayer of Solomon at the dedication of the Temple had been

accepted by Jehovah as the basis of His covenant with Israel, and

Jehoshaphat quotes a clause from that prayer or covenant which had

expressly provided for such emergencies as the present:—

“And they” (Israel) “dwelt in the land, and built Thee therein a sanctuary

for Thy name, saying, If evil come upon us, the sword, judgment,

pestilence, or famine, we will stand before this house and before Thee

(for Thy name is in this house), and cry unto Thee in our affliction; and

Thou wilt hear and save.”(377)

Moreover, the present invasion was not only an attempt to set aside

Jehovah’s disposition of Palestine and the long-established rights of

Israel: it was also gross ingratitude, a base return for the ancient

forbearance of Israel towards her present enemies:—

“And now, behold, the children of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir, whom Thou

wouldest not let Israel invade when they came out of the land of Egypt,

but they turned aside from them and destroyed them not—behold how they

reward us by coming to dispossess us of Thy possession which Thou hast

caused us to possess.”

For this nefarious purpose the enemies of Israel had come up in

overwhelming numbers, but Judah was confident in the justice of its cause

and the favour of Jehovah:—

“O our God, wilt Thou not execute judgment against them? for we have no

might against this great company that cometh against us, neither know we

what to do, but our eyes are upon Thee.”

Meanwhile the great assemblage stood in the attitude of supplication

before Jehovah, not a gathering of mighty men of valour praying for

blessing upon their strength and courage, but a mixed multitude, men and

women, children and infants, seeking sanctuary, as it were, at the Temple,

and casting themselves in their extremity upon the protecting care of

Jehovah. Possibly when the king finished his prayer the assembly broke out

into loud, wailing cries of dismay and agonised entreaty; but the silence

of the narrative rather suggests that Jehoshaphat’s strong, calm faith

communicated itself to the people, and they waited quietly for Jehovah’s

answer, for some token or promise of deliverance. Instead of the confused

cries of an excited crowd, there was a hush of expectancy, such as

sometimes falls upon an assembly when a great statesman has risen to utter

words which will be big with the fate of empires.

And the answer came, not by fire from heaven or any visible sign, not by

voice of thunder accompanied by angelic trumpets, nor by angel or

archangel, but by a familiar voice hitherto unsuspected of any

supernatural gifts, by a prophetic utterance whose only credentials were

given by the influence of the Spirit upon the speaker and his audience.

The chronicler relates with evident satisfaction how, in the midst of that

great congregation, the Spirit of Jehovah came, not upon king, or priest,

or acknowledged prophet, but upon a subordinate minister of the Temple, a

Levite and member of the Temple choir like himself. He is careful to fix

the identity of this newly called prophet and to gratify the family pride

of existing Levitical families by giving the prophet’s genealogy for

several generations. He was Jahaziel the son of Zechariah, the son of

Benaiah, the son of Jeiel, the son of Mattaniah, of the sons of Asaph. The

very names were encouraging. What more suitable names could be found for a

messenger of Divine mercy than Jahaziel—“God gives prophetic vision”—the

son of Zechariah—“Jehovah remembers”?

Jahaziel’s message showed that Jehoshaphat’s prayer had been accepted;

Jehovah responded without reserve to the confidence reposed in Him: He

would vindicate His own authority by delivering Judah; Jehoshaphat should

have blessed proof of the immense superiority of simple trust in Jehovah

over an alliance with Ahab or the king of Damascus. Twice the prophet

exhorts the king and people in the very words that Jehovah had used to

encourage Joshua when the death of Moses had thrown upon him all the heavy

responsibilities of leadership: “Fear not, nor be dismayed.” They need no

longer cling like frightened suppliants to the sanctuary, but are to go

forth at once, the very next day, against the enemy. That they may lose no

time in looking for them, Jehovah announces the exact spot where the enemy

are to be found: “Behold, they are coming by the ascent of Hazziz,(378)

and ye shall find them at the end of the ravine before the wilderness of

Jeruel.” This topographical description was doubtless perfectly

intelligible to the chronicler’s contemporaries, but it is no longer

possible to fix exactly the locality of Hazziz or Jeruel. The ascent of

Hazziz has been identified with the Wady Husasa, which leads up from the

coast of the Dead Sea north of Engedi, in the direction of Tekoa; but the

identification is by no means certain.

The general situation, however, is fairly clear: the allied invaders would

come up from the coast into the highlands of Judah by one of the wadies

leading inland; they were to be met by Jehoshaphat and his people on one

of the “wildernesses,” or plateaus of pasture-land, in the neighbourhood

of Tekoa.

But the Jews went forth, not as an army, but in order to be the passive

spectators of a great manifestation of the power of Jehovah. They had no

concern with the numbers and prowess of their enemies; Jehovah Himself

would lay bare His mighty arm, and Judah should see that no foreign ally,

no millions of native warriors, were necessary for their salvation: “Ye

shall not need to fight in this battle; take up your position, stand still

and see the deliverance of Jehovah with you, O Judah and Jerusalem.”

Thus had Moses addressed Israel on the eve of the passage of the Red Sea.

Jehoshaphat and his people owned and honoured the Divine message as if

Jahaziel were another Moses; they prostrated themselves on the ground

before Jehovah. The sons of Asaph had already been privileged to provide

Jehovah with His prophet; these Asaphites represented the Levitical clan

of Gershom: but now the Kohathites, with their guild of singers, the sons

of Korah, “stood up to praise Jehovah, the God of Israel, with an

exceeding loud voice,” as the Levites sang when the foundations of the

second Temple were laid, and when Ezra and Nehemiah made the people enter

into a new covenant with their God.

Accordingly on the morrow the people rose early in the morning and went

out to the wilderness of Tekoa, ten or twelve miles south of Jerusalem. In

ancient times generals were wont to make a set speech to their armies

before they led them into battle, so Jehoshaphat addresses his subjects as

they pass out before him. He does not seek to make them confident in their

own strength and prowess; he does not inflame their passions against Moab

and Ammon, nor exhort them to be brave and remind them that they fight

this day for the ashes of their fathers and the temple of their God. Such

an address would have been entirely out of place, because the Jews were

not going to fight at all. Jehoshaphat only bids them have faith in

Jehovah and His prophets. It is a curious anticipation of Pauline

teaching. Judah is to be “saved by faith” from Moab and Ammon, as the

Christian is delivered by faith from sin and its penalty. The incident

might almost seem to have been recorded in order to illustrate the truth

that St. Paul was to teach. It is strange that there is no reference to

this chapter in the epistles of St. Paul and St. James, and that the

author of the Epistle to the Hebrews does not remind us how “by faith

Jehoshaphat was delivered from Moab and Ammon.”

There is no question of military order, no reference to the five great

divisions into which the armies of Judah and Benjamin are divided in chap.

xvii. Here, as at Jericho, the captain of Israel is chiefly concerned to

provide musicians to lead his army. When David was arranging for the

musical services before the Ark, he took counsel with his captains. In

this unique military expedition there is no mention of captains; they were

not necessary, and if they were present, there was no opportunity for them

to show their skill and prowess in battle. In an even more democratic

spirit Jehoshaphat takes counsel with the people—that is, probably makes

some proposition, which is accepted with universal acclamation.

The Levitical singers, dressed in the splendid robes(379) in which they

officiated at the Temple, were appointed to go before the people, and

offer praises unto Jehovah, and sing the anthem, “Give thanks unto

Jehovah, for His mercy endureth for ever.” These words or their equivalent

are the opening words, and the second clause the refrain, of the

post-Exilic Psalms: cvi., cvii., cxviii., and cxxxvi. As the chronicler

has already ascribed Psalm cvi. to David, he possibly ascribes all four to

David, and intends us to understand that one or all of them were sung by

the Levites on this occasion. Later Judaism was in the habit of denoting a

book or section of a book by its opening words.

And so Judah, a pilgrim caravan rather than an army, went on to its

Divinely appointed tryst with its enemies, and at its head the Levitical

choir sang the Temple hymns. It was not a campaign, but a sacred function,

on a much larger scale a procession such as may be seen winding its way,

with chants and incense, banners, images, and crucifixes, through the

streets of Catholic cities.

Meanwhile Jehovah was preparing a spectacle to gladden the eyes of His

people and reward their implicit faith and exact obedience; He was working

for those who were waiting for Him. Though Judah was still far from its

enemies, yet, like the trumpet at Jericho, the strain of praise and

thanksgiving was the signal for the Divine intervention: “When they began

to sing and praise, Jehovah set liers in wait against the children of

Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir.” Who were these liers in wait? They could not

be men of Judah: _they_ were not to fight, but to be passive spectators of

their own deliverance. Did the allies set an ambush for Judah, and was it

thus that they were afterwards led to mistake their own people for

enemies? Or does the chronicler intend us to understand that these “liers

in wait” were spirits; that the allied invaders were tricked and

bewildered like the shipwrecked sailors in the _Tempest_; or that when

they came to the wilderness of Jeruel there fell upon them a spirit of

mutual distrust, jealousy, and hatred, that had, as it were, been waiting

for them there? But, from whatever cause, a quarrel broke out amongst

them; and they were smitten. When Ammonite, Moabite, and Edomite met,

there were many private and public feuds waiting their opportunity; and

such confederates were as ready to quarrel among themselves as a group of

Highland clans engaged in a Lowland foray. “Ammon and Moab stood up

against the inhabitants of Mount Seir utterly to slay and destroy them.”

But even Ammon and Moab soon dissolved their alliance; and at last, partly

maddened by panic, partly intoxicated by a wild thirst for blood, a very

Berserker frenzy, all ties of friendship and kindred were forgotten, and

every man’s hand was against his brother. “When they had made an end of

the inhabitants of Seir, every one helped to destroy another.”

While this tragedy was enacting, and the air was rent with the cruel yells

of that death struggle, Jehoshaphat and his people moved on in tranquil

pilgrimage to the cheerful sound of the songs of Zion. At last they

reached an eminence, perhaps the long, low summit of some ridge

overlooking the plateau of Jeruel. When they had gained this watchtower of

the wilderness, the ghastly scene burst upon their gaze. Jehovah had kept

His word: they had found their enemy. They “looked upon the multitude,”

all those hordes of heathen tribes that had filled them with terror and

dismay. They were harmless enough now: the Jews saw nothing but “dead

bodies fallen to the earth”; and in that Aceldama lay all the multitude of

profane invaders who had dared to violate the sanctity of the Promised

Land: “There were none that escaped.” So had Israel looked back after

crossing the Red Sea and seen the corpses of the Egyptians washed up on

the shore.(380) So when the angel of Jehovah smote Sennacherib,—

“Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown,

That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.”

There is no touch of pity for the wretched victims of their own sins.

Greeks of every city and tribe could feel the pathos of the tragic end of

the Athenian expedition against Syracuse; but the Jews had no ruth for the

kindred tribes that dwelt along their frontier, and the age of the

chronicler had not yet learnt that Jehovah had either tenderness or

compassion for the enemies of Israel.

The spectators of this carnage—we cannot call them victors—did not neglect

to profit to the utmost by their great opportunity. They spent three days

in stripping the dead bodies; and as Orientals delight in jewelled weapons

and costly garments, and their chiefs take the field with barbaric

ostentation of wealth, the spoil was both valuable and abundant: “riches,

and raiment,(381) and precious jewels, ... more than they could carry

away.”

In collecting the spoil, the Jews had become dispersed through all the

wide area over which the fighting between the confederates must have

extended; but on the fourth day they gathered together again in a

neighbouring valley and gave solemn thanks for their deliverance: “There

they blessed Jehovah; therefore the name of that place was called the

valley of Berachah unto this day.” West of Tekoa,(382) not too far from

the scene of carnage, a ruin and a wady still bear the name “Bereikut”;

and doubtless in the chronicler’s time the valley was called Berachah, and

local tradition furnished our author with this explanation of the origin

of the name.

When the spoil was all collected, they returned to Jerusalem as they came,

in solemn procession, headed, no doubt, by the Levites, with psalteries,

and harps, and trumpets. They came back to the scene of their anxious

supplications: to the house of Jehovah. But yesterday, as it were, they

had assembled before Jehovah, terror-stricken at the report of an

irresistible host of invaders; and to-day their enemies were utterly

destroyed. They had experienced a deliverance that might rank with the

Exodus; and as at that former deliverance they had spoiled the Egyptians,

so now they had returned laden with the plunder of Moab, Ammon, and Edom.

And all their neighbours were smitten with fear when they heard of the

awful ruin which Jehovah had brought upon these enemies of Israel. No one

would dare to invade a country where Jehovah laid a ghostly ambush of

liers in wait for the enemies of His people. The realm of Jehoshaphat was

quiet, not because he was protected by powerful allies or by the swords of

his numerous and valiant soldiers, but because Judah had become another

Eden, and cherubim with flaming swords guarded the frontier on every hand,

and “his God gave him rest round about.”

Then follow the regular summary and conclusion of the history of the reign

taken from the book of Kings, with the usual alterations in the reference

to further sources of information. We are told here, in direct

contradiction to xvii. 6 and to the whole tenor of the previous chapters,

that the high places were not taken away, another illustration of the

slight importance the chronicler attached to accuracy in details. He

either overlooks the contradiction between passages borrowed from

different sources, or else does not think it worth while to harmonise his

inconsistent materials.

But after the narrative of the reign is thus formally closed the

chronicler inserts a postscript, perhaps by a kind of after-thought. The

book of Kings narrates(383) how Jehoshaphat made ships to go to Ophir for

gold, but they were broken at Ezion-geber; then Ahaziah the son of Ahab

proposed to enter into partnership with Jehoshaphat, and the latter

rejected his proposal. As we have seen, the chronicler’s theory of

retribution required some reason why so pious a king experienced

misfortune. What sin had Jehoshaphat committed to deserve to have his

ships broken? The chronicler has a new version of the story, which

provides an answer to this question. Jehoshaphat did not build any ships

by himself; his unfortunate navy was constructed in partnership with

Ahaziah; and accordingly the prophet Eliezer rebuked him for allying

himself a second time with a wicked king of Israel, and announced the

coming wreck of the ships. And so it came about that the ships were

broken, and the shadow of Divine displeasure rested on the last days of

Jehoshaphat.

We have next to notice the chronicler’s most important omissions. The book

of Kings narrates another alliance of Jehoshaphat with Jehoram, king of

Israel, like his alliances with Ahab and Ahaziah. The narrative of this

incident closely resembles that of the earlier joint expedition to

Ramoth-gilead. As then Jehoshaphat marched out with Ahab, so now he

accompanies Ahab’s son Jehoram, taking with him his subject ally the king

of Edom. Here also a prophet appears upon the scene; but on this occasion

Elisha addresses no rebuke to Jehoshaphat for his alliance with Israel,

but treats him with marked respect: and the allied army wins a great

victory. If this narrative had been included in Chronicles, the reign of

Jehoshaphat would not have afforded an altogether satisfactory

illustration of the main lesson which the chronicler intended it to teach.

This main lesson was that the chosen people should not look for protection

against their enemies either to foreign alliances or to their own military

strength, but solely to the grace and omnipotence of Jehovah. One negative

aspect of this principle has been enforced by the condemnation of Asa’s

alliance with Syria and Jehoshaphat’s with Ahab and Ahaziah. Later on the

uselessness of an army apart from Jehovah is shown in the defeat of “the

great host” of Joash by “a small company” of Syrians.(384) The positive

aspect has been partially illustrated by the signal victories of Abijah

and Asa against overwhelming odds and without the help of any foreign

allies. But these were partial and unsatisfactory illustrations: Jehovah

vouchsafed to share the glory of these victories with great armies that

were numbered by the hundred thousand. And after all, the odds were not so

very overwhelming. Scores of parallels may be found in which the odds were

much greater. In the case of vast Oriental hosts a superiority of two to

one might easily be counterbalanced by discipline and valour in the

smaller army.

The peculiar value to the chronicler of the deliverance from Moab, Ammon,

and the Meunim lay in the fact that no human arm divided the glory with

Jehovah. It was shown conclusively not merely that Judah could safely be

contented with an army smaller than those of its neighbours, but that

Judah would be equally safe with no army at all. We feel that this lesson

is taught with added force when we remember that Jehoshaphat had a larger

army than is ascribed to any Israelite or Jewish king after David. Yet he

places no confidence in his eleven hundred and sixty thousand warriors,

and he is not allowed to make any use of them. In the case of a king with

small military resources, to trust in Jehovah might be merely making a

virtue of necessity; but if Jehoshaphat, with his immense army, felt that

his only real help was in his God, the example furnished an _à fortiori_

argument which would conclusively show that it was always the duty and

privilege of the Jews to say with the Psalmist, “Some trust in chariots,

and some in horses; but we will remember the name of Jehovah our

God.”(385) The ancient literature of Israel furnished other illustrations

of the principle: at the Red Sea the Israelites had been delivered without

any exercise of their own warlike prowess; at Jericho, as at Jeruel, the

enemy had been completely overthrown by Jehovah before His people rushed

upon the spoil; and the same direct Divine intervention saved Jerusalem

from Sennacherib. But the later history of the Jews had been a series of

illustrations of enforced dependence upon Jehovah. A little

semi-ecclesiastical community inhabiting a small province that passed from

one great power to another like a counter in the game of international

politics had no choice but to trust in Jehovah, if it were in any way to

maintain its self-respect. For this community of the second Temple to have

had confidence in its sword and bow would have seemed equally absurd to

the Jews and to their Persian and Greek masters.

When they were thus helpless, Jehovah wrought for Israel, as He had

destroyed the enemies of Jehoshaphat in the wilderness of Jeruel. The Jews

stood still and saw the working out of their deliverance; great empires

wrestled together like Moab, Ammon, and Edom, in the agony of the death

struggle: and over all the tumult of battle Israel heard the voice of

Jehovah, “The battle is not yours, but God’s; ... set yourselves, stand ye

still, and see the deliverance of Jehovah with you, O Judah and

Jerusalem.” Before their eyes there passed the scenes of that great drama

which for a time gave Western Asia Aryan instead of Semitic masters. For

them the whole action had but one meaning: without calling Israel into the

field, Jehovah was devoting to destruction the enemies of His people and

opening up a way for His redeemed to return, like Jehoshaphat’s

procession, to the Holy City and the Temple. The long series of wars

became a wager of battle, in which Israel, herself a passive spectator,

appeared by her Divine Champion; and the assured issue was her triumphant

vindication and restoration to her ancient throne in Zion.

After the Restoration God’s protecting providence asked no armed

assistance from Judah. The mandates of a distant court authorised the

rebuilding of the Temple and the fortifying of the city. The Jews solaced

their national pride and found consolation for their weakness and

subjection in the thought that their ostensible masters were in reality

only the instruments which Jehovah used to provide for the security and

prosperity of His children.

We have already noticed that this philosophy of history is not peculiar to

Israel. Every nation has a similar system, and regards its own interests

as the supreme care of Providence. We have seen, too, that moral

influences have controlled and checkmated material forces; God has fought

against the biggest battalions. Similarly the Jews are not the only people

for whom deliverances have been worked out almost without any co-operation

on their own part. It was not a negro revolt, for instance, that set free

the slaves of our colonies or of the Southern States. Italy regained her

Eternal City as an incidental effect of a great war in which she herself

took no part. Important political movements and great struggles involve

consequences equally unforeseen and unintended by the chief actors in

these dramas, consequences which would seem to them insignificant compared

with more obvious results. Some obscure nation almost ready to perish is

given a respite, a breathing space, in which it gathers strength; instead

of losing its separate existence, it endures till time and opportunity

make it one of the ruling influences in the world’s history: some Geneva

or Wittenberg becomes, just at the right time, a secure refuge and

vantage-ground for one of the Lord’s prophets. Our understanding of what

God is doing in our time and our hopes for what He may yet do will indeed

be small, if we think that God can do nothing for our cause unless our

banner flies in the forefront of the battle, and the war-cry is “The sword

of Gideon!” as well as “The sword of Jehovah!” There will be many battles

fought in which we shall strike no blow and yet be privileged to divide

the spoil. We sometimes “stand still and see the salvation of Jehovah.”

The chronicler has found disciples in these latter days of a kindlier

spirit and more catholic sympathies. He and they have reached their common

doctrines by different paths, but the chronicler teaches non-resistance as

clearly as the Society of Friends. “When you have fully yielded yourself

to the Divine teaching,” he says, “you will neither fight yourself nor ask

others to fight for you; you will simply stand still and watch a Divine

providence protecting you and destroying your enemies.” The Friends could

almost echo this teaching, not perhaps laying quite so much stress on the

destruction of the enemy, though among the visions of the earlier Friends

there were many that revealed the coming judgments of the Lord; and the

modern enthusiast is still apt to consider that his enemies, are the

Lord’s enemies and to call the gratification of his own revengeful spirit

a vindicating of the honour of the Lord and a satisfaction of outraged

justice.

If the chronicler had lived to-day, the history of the Society of Friends

might have furnished him with illustrations almost as apt as the

destruction of the allied invaders of Judah. He would have rejoiced to

tell us how a people that repudiated any resort to violence succeeded in

conciliating savage tribes and founding the flourishing colony of

Pennsylvania, and would have seen the hand of the Lord in the wealth and

honour that have been accorded to a once despised and persecuted sect.

We should be passing to matters that were still beyond the chronicler’s

horizon, if we were to connect his teaching with our Lord’s injunction,

“Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other

also.” Such a sentiment scarcely harmonises with the three days’ stripping

of dead bodies in the wilderness of Jeruel. But though the chronicler’s

motives for non-resistance were not touched and softened with the Divine

gentleness of Jesus of Nazareth, and his object was not to persuade his

hearers to patient endurance of wrong, yet he had conceived the

possibility of a mighty faith that could put its fortunes unreservedly

into the hands of God and trust Him with the issues. If we are ever to be

worthy citizens of the kingdom of our Lord, it can only be by the

sustaining power and inspiring influence of a like faith.

When we come to ask how far the people for whom he wrote responded to his

teaching and carried it into practical life, we are met with one of the

many instances of the grim irony of history. Probably the chronicler’s

glowing vision of peaceful security, guarded on every hand by legions of

angels, was partly inspired by the comparative prosperity of the time at

which he wrote. Other considerations combine with this to suggest that the

composition of his work beguiled the happy leisure of one of the brighter

intervals between Ezra and the Maccabees.

Circumstances were soon to test the readiness of the Jews, in times of

national danger, to observe the attitude of passive spectators and wait

for a Divine deliverance. It was not altogether in this spirit that the

priests met the savage persecutions of Antiochus. They made no vain

attempts to exorcise this evil spirit with hymns, and psalteries, and

harps, and trumpets; but the priest Mattathias and his sons slew the

king’s commissioner and raised the standard of armed revolt. We do indeed

find indications of something like obedience to the chronicler’s

principles. A body of the revolted Jews were attacked on the Sabbath Day;

they made no attempt to defend themselves: “When they gave them battle

with all speed, they answered them not, neither cast they a stone at them,

nor stopped the places where they lay hid, ... and their enemies rose up

against them on the sabbath, and slew them, with their wives, and their

children, and their cattle, to the number of a thousand people.”(386) No

Divine intervention rewarded this devoted faith, nor apparently did the

Jews expect it, for they had said, “Let us die all in our innocency;

heaven and earth shall testify for us that ye put us to death wrongfully.”

This is, after all, a higher note than that of Chronicles: obedience may

not bring invariable reward; nevertheless the faithful will not swerve

from their loyalty. But the priestly leaders of the people looked with no

favourable eye upon this offering up of human hecatombs in honour of the

sanctity of the Sabbath. They were not prepared to die passively; and, as

representatives of Jehovah and of the nation for the time being, they

decreed that henceforth they would fight against those who attacked them,

even on the Sabbath Day. Warfare on these more secular principles was

crowned with that visible success which the chronicler regarded as the

manifest sign of Divine approval; and a dynasty of royal priests filled

the throne and led the armies of Israel, and assured and strengthened

their authority by intrigues and alliances with every heathen sovereign

within their reach.

Chapter V. Jehoram, Ahaziah, and Athaliah: The Consequences of a Foreign

Marriage. 2 Chron. xxi.-xxiii.

The accession of Jehoram is one of the instances in which a wicked son

succeeded to a conspicuously pious father, but in this case there is no

difficulty in explaining the phenomenon: the depraved character and evil

deeds of Jehoram, Ahaziah, and Athaliah are at once accounted for when we

remember that they were respectively the son-in-law, grandson, and

daughter of Ahab, and possibly of Jezebel. If, however, Jezebel were

really the mother of Athaliah, it is difficult to believe that the

chronicler understood or at any rate realised the fact. In the books of

Ezra and Nehemiah the chronicler lays great stress upon the iniquity and

inexpediency of marriage with strange wives, and he has been careful to

insert a note into the history of Jehoshaphat to call attention to the

fact that the king of Judah had joined affinity with Ahab. If he had

understood that this implied joining affinity with a Phœnician devotee of

Baal, this significant fact would not have been passed over in silence.

Moreover, the names Athaliah and Ahaziah are both compounded with the

sacred name Jehovah. A Phœnician Baal-worshipper may very well have been

sufficiently eclectic to make such use of the name sacred to the family

into which she married, but on the whole those names rather tell against

the descent of their owners from Jezebel and her Zidonian ancestors.

We have seen that, after giving the concluding formula for the reign of

Jehoshaphat, the chronicler adds a postscript narrating an incident

discreditable to the king. Similarly he prefaces the introductory formula

for the reign of Jehoram by inserting a cruel deed of the new king. Before

telling us Jehoram’s age at his accession and the length of his reign, the

chronicler relates(387) the steps taken by Jehoram to secure himself upon

his throne. Jehoshaphat, like Rehoboam, had disposed of his numerous sons

in the fenced cities of Judah, and had sought to make them quiet and

contented by providing largely for their material welfare: “Their father

gave them great gifts: silver, gold, and precious things, with fenced

cities in Judah.” The sanguine judgment of paternal affection might expect

that these gifts would make his younger sons loyal and devoted subjects of

their elder brother; but Jehoram, not without reason, feared that treasure

and cities might supply the means for a revolt, or that Judah might be

split up into a number of small principalities. Accordingly when he had

strengthened himself he slew all his brethren with the sword, and with

them those princes of Israel whom he suspected of attachment to his other

victims. He was following the precedent set by Solomon when he ordered the

execution of Adonijah; and, indeed, the slaughter by a new sovereign of

all those near relations who might possibly dispute his claim to the

throne has usually been considered in the East to be a painful but

necessary and perfectly justifiable act, being, in fact, regarded in much

the same light as the drowning of superfluous kittens in domestic circles.

Probably this episode is placed before the introductory formula for the

reign because until these possible rivals were removed Jehoram’s tenure of

the throne was altogether unsafe.

For the next few verses(388) the narrative follows the book of Kings with

scarcely any alteration, and states the evil character of the new reign,

accounting for Jehoram’s depravity by his marriage with a daughter of

Ahab. The successful revolt of Edom from Judah is next given, and the

chronicler adds a note of his own to the effect that Jehoram experienced

these reverses because he had forsaken Jehovah, the God of his fathers.

Then the chronicler proceeds(389) to describe further sins and misfortunes

of Jehoram. He mentions definitely, what is doubtless implied by the book

of Kings, that Jehoram made high places in the cities of Judah(390) and

seduced the people into taking part in a corrupt worship. The Divine

condemnation of the king’s wrong-doing came from an unexpected quarter and

in an unusual fashion. The other prophetic messages specially recorded by

the chronicler were uttered by prophets of Judah, some apparently

receiving their inspiration for one particular occasion. The prophet who

rebuked Jehoram was no less distinguished a personage than the great

Israelite Elijah, who, according to the book of Kings, had long since been

translated to heaven. In the older narrative Elijah’s work is exclusively

confined to the northern kingdom. But the chronicler entirely ignores

Elijah, except when his history becomes connected for a moment with that

of the house of David.

The other prophets of Judah delivered their messages by word of mouth, but

this communication is made by means of “a writing.” This, however, is not

without parallel: Jeremiah sent a letter to the captives in Babylon, and

also sent a written collection of his prophecies to Jehoiakim.(391) In the

latter case, however, the prophecies had been originally promulgated by

word of mouth.

Elijah writes in the name of Jehovah, the God of David, and condemns

Jehoram because he was not walking in the ways of Asa and Jehoshaphat, but

in the ways of the kings of Israel and the house of Ahab. It is pleasant

to find that, in spite of the sins which marked the latter days of Asa and

Jehoshaphat, their “ways” were as a whole such as could be held up as an

example by the prophet of Jehovah. Here and elsewhere God appeals to the

better feelings that spring from pride of birth. _Noblesse oblige._

Jehoram held his throne as representative of the house of David, and was

proud to trace his descent to the founder of the Israelite monarchy and to

inherit the glory of the great reigns of Asa and Jehoshaphat; but this

pride of race implied that to depart from their ways was dishonourable

apostacy. There is no more pitiful spectacle than an effeminate libertine

pluming himself on his noble ancestry.

Elijah further rebukes Jehoram for the massacre of his brethren, who were

better than himself. They had all grown up at their father’s court, and

till the other brethren were put in possession of their fenced cities had

been under the same influences. It is the husband of Ahab’s daughter who

is worse than all the rest; the influence of an unsuitable marriage has

already begun to show itself. Indeed, in view of Athaliah’s subsequent

history, we do her no injustice by supposing that, like Jezebel and Lady

Macbeth, she had suggested her husband’s crime. The fact that Jehoram’s

brethren were better men than himself adds to his guilt morally, but this

undesirable superiority of the other princes of the blood to the reigning

sovereign would seem to Jehoram and his advisers an additional reason for

putting them out of the way; the massacre was an urgent political

necessity.

“Truly the tender mercies of the weak,

As of the wicked, are but cruel.”

There is nothing so cruel as the terror of a selfish man. The Inquisition

is the measure not only of the inhumanity, but also of the weakness, of

the mediæval Church; and the massacre of St. Bartholomew was due to the

feebleness of Charles IX. as well as to the “revenge or the blind instinct

of self-preservation”(392) of Mary de Medici.

The chronicler’s condemnation of Jehoram’s massacre marks the superiority

of the standard of later Judaism to the current Oriental morality. For his

sins Jehoram was to be punished by sore disease and by a great “plague”

which would fall upon his people, and his wives, and his children, and all

his substance. From the following verses we see that “plague,” here as in

the case of some of the plagues of Egypt, has the sense of calamity

generally, and not the narrower meaning of pestilence. This plague took

the form of an invasion of the Philistines and of the Arabians “which are

beside the Ethiopians.” Divine inspiration prompted them to attack Judah;

Jehovah stirred up their spirit against Jehoram. Probably here, as in the

story of Zerah, the term Ethiopians is used loosely for the Egyptians, in

which case the Arabs in question would be inhabitants of the desert

between the south of Palestine and Egypt, and would thus be neighbours of

their Philistine allies.

These marauding bands succeeded where the huge hosts of Zerah had failed;

they broke into Judah, and carried off all the king’s treasure, together

with his sons and his wives, only leaving him his youngest son: Jehoahaz

or Ahaziah. They afterwards slew the princes they had taken captive.(393)

The common people would scarcely suffer less severely than their king.

Jehoram himself was reserved for special personal punishment: Jehovah

smote him with a sore disease; and, like Asa, he lingered for two years

and then died. The people were so impressed by his wickedness that “they

made no burning for him, like the burning of his fathers,” whereas they

had made a very great burning for Asa.(394)

The chronicler’s account of the reign of Ahaziah(395) does not differ

materially from that given by the book of Kings, though it is considerably

abridged, and there are other minor alterations. The chronicler sets forth

even more emphatically than the earlier history the evil influence of

Athaliah and her Israelite kinsfolk over Ahaziah’s short reign of one

year. The story of his visit to Jehoram, king of Israel, and the murder of

the two kings by Jehu, is very much abridged. The chronicler carefully

omits all reference to Elisha, according to his usual principle of

ignoring the religious life of Northern Israel; but he expressly tells us

that, like Jehoshaphat, Ahaziah suffered for consorting with the house of

Omri: “His destruction or treading down was of God in that he went unto

Jehoram.” Our English versions have carefully reproduced an ambiguity in

the original; but it seems probable that the chronicler does not mean that

visiting Jehoram in his illness was a flagrant offence which God punished

with death, but rather that, to punish Ahaziah for his imitation of the

evil-doings of the house of Omri,(396) God allowed him to visit Jehoram in

order that he might share the fate of the Israelite king.

The book of Kings had stated that Jehu slew forty-two brethren of Ahaziah.

It is, of course, perfectly allowable to take “brethren” in the general

sense of “kinsmen”; but as the chronicler had recently mentioned the

massacre of all Ahaziah’s brethren, he avoids even the appearance of a

contradiction by substituting “sons of the brethren of Ahaziah” for

brethren. This alteration introduces new difficulties, but these

difficulties simply illustrate the general confusion of numbers and ages

which characterises the narrative at this point. In connection with the

burial of Ahaziah, it may be noted that the popular recollection of

Jehoshaphat endorsed the favourable judgment contained in the “writing of

Elijah”: “They said” of Ahaziah, “He is the son of Jehoshaphat, who sought

Jehovah with all his heart.”

The chronicler next narrates Athaliah’s murder of the seed royal of Judah

and her usurpation of the throne of David, in terms almost identical with

those of the narrative in the book of Kings. But his previous additions

and modifications are hard to reconcile with the account he here borrows

from his ancient authority. According to the chronicler, Jehoram had

massacred all the other sons of Jehoshaphat, and the Arabians had slain

all Jehoram’s sons except Ahaziah, and Jehu had slain their sons; so that

Ahaziah was the only living descendant in the male line of his grandfather

Jehoshaphat; he himself apparently died at the age of twenty-three. It is

intelligible enough that he should have a son Joash and possibly other

sons; but still it is difficult to understand where Athaliah found “all

the seed royal” and “the king’s sons” whom she put to death. It is at any

rate clear that Jehoram’s slaughter of his brethren met with an

appropriate punishment: all his own sons and grandsons were similarly

slain, except the child Joash.

The chronicler’s narrative of the revolution by which Athaliah was slain,

and the throne recovered for the house of David in the person of Joash,

follows substantially the earlier history, the chief difference being, as

we have already noticed,(397) that the chronicler substitutes the

Levitical guard of the second Temple for the bodyguard of foreign

mercenaries who were the actual agents in this revolution.

A distinguished authority on European history is fond of pointing to the

evil effects of royal marriages as one of the chief drawbacks to the

monarchical system of government. A crown may at any time devolve upon a

woman, and by her marriage with a powerful reigning prince her country may

virtually be subjected to a foreign yoke. If it happens that the new

sovereign professes a different religion from that of his wife’s subjects,

the evils arising from the marriage are seriously aggravated. Some such

fate befell the Netherlands as the result of the marriage of Mary of

Burgundy with the Emperor Maximilian, and England was only saved from the

danger of transference to Catholic dominion by the caution and patriotism

of Queen Elizabeth.

Athaliah’s usurpation was a bold attempt to reverse the usual process and

transfer the husband’s dominions to the authority and faith of the wife’s

family. It is probable that Athaliah’s permanent success would have led to

the absorption of Judah in the northern kingdom. This last misfortune was

averted by the energy and courage of Jehoiada, but in the meantime the

half-heathen queen had succeeded in causing untold harm and suffering to

her adopted country. Our own history furnishes numerous illustrations of

the evil influences that come in the train of foreign queens. Edward II.

suffered grievously at the hands of his French queen; Henry VI.’s wife,

Margaret of Anjou, contributed considerably to the prolonged bitterness of

the struggle between York and Lancaster; and to Henry VIII.’s marriage

with Catherine of Aragon the country owed the miseries and persecutions

inflicted by Mary Tudor. But, on the other hand, many of the foreign

princesses who have shared the English throne have won the lasting

gratitude of the nation. A French queen of Kent, for instance, opened the

way for Augustine’s mission to England.

But no foreign queen of England has had the opportunities for mischief

that were enjoyed and fully utilised by Athaliah. She corrupted her

husband and her son, and she was probably at once the instigator of their

crimes and the instrument of their punishment. By corrupting the rulers of

Judah and by her own misgovernment, she exercised an evil influence over

the nation; and as the people suffered, not for their sins only, but also

for those of their kings, Athaliah brought misfortunes and calamity upon

Judah. Unfortunately such experiences are not confined to royal families;

the peace and honour, and prosperity of godly families in all ranks of

life have been disturbed and often destroyed by the marriage of one of

their members with a woman of alien spirit and temperament. Here is a very

general and practical application of the chronicler’s objection to

intercourse with the house of Omri.

Chapter VI. Joash and Amaziah. 2 Chron. xxiv.-xxv.

For Chronicles, as for the book of Kings, the main interest of the reign

of Joash is the repairing of the Temple; but the later narrative

introduces modifications which give a somewhat different complexion to the

story. Both authorities tell us that Joash did that which was right in the

eyes of Jehovah all the days of Jehoiada, but the book of Kings

immediately adds that “the high places were not taken away: the people

still sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places.”(398) Seeing that

Jehoiada exercised the royal authority during the minority of Joash, this

toleration of the high places must have had the sanction of the

high-priest. Now the chronicler and his contemporaries had been educated

in the belief that the Pentateuch was the ecclesiastical code of the

monarchy; they found it impossible to credit a statement that the

high-priest had sanctioned any other sanctuary besides the temple of Zion;

accordingly they omitted the verse in question.

In the earlier narrative of the repairing of the Temple the priests are

ordered by Joash to use certain sacred dues and offerings to repair the

breaches of the house; but after some time had elapsed it was found that

the breaches had not been repaired: and when Joash remonstrated with the

priests, they flatly refused to have anything to do with the repairs or

with receiving funds for the purpose. Their objections were, however,

overruled; and Jehoiada placed beside the altar a chest with a hole in the

lid, into which “the priests put all the money that was brought into the

house of Jehovah.”(399) When it was sufficiently full, the king’s scribe

and the high-priest counted the money, and put it up in bags.

There were several points in this earlier narrative which would have

furnished very inconvenient precedents, and were so much out of keeping

with the ideas and practices of the second Temple that, by the time the

chronicler wrote, a new and more intelligible version of the story was

current among the ministers of the Temple. To begin with, there was an

omission which would have grated very unpleasantly on the feelings of the

chronicler. In this long narrative, wholly taken up with the affairs of

the Temple, nothing is said about the Levites. The collecting and

receiving of money might well be supposed to belong to them; and

accordingly in Chronicles the Levites are first associated with the

priests in this matter, and then the priests drop out of the narrative,

and the Levites alone carry out the financial arrangements.

Again, it might be understood from the book of Kings that sacred dues and

offerings, which formed the revenue of the priests and Levites, were

diverted by the king’s orders to the repair of the fabric. The chronicler

was naturally anxious that there should be no mistake on this point; the

ambiguous phrases are omitted, and it is plainly indicated that funds were

raised for the repairs by means of a special tax ordained by Moses. Joash

“assembled the priests and the Levites, and said to them, Go out into the

cities of Judah, and gather of all Israel money to repair the house of

your God from year to year, and see that ye hasten the matter. Howbeit the

Levites hastened it not.” The remissness of the priests in the original

narrative is here very faithfully and candidly transferred to the Levites.

Then, as in the book of Kings, Joash remonstrates with Jehoiada, but the

terms of his remonstrance are altogether different: here he complains

because the Levites have not been required “to bring in out of Judah and

out of Jerusalem the tax appointed by Moses the servant of Jehovah and by

the congregation of Israel for the tent of the testimony,”_i.e._, the

Tabernacle, containing the Ark and the tables of the Law. The reference

apparently is to the law(400) that when a census was taken a poll-tax of a

half-shekel a head should be paid for the service of the Tabernacle. As

one of the main uses of a census was to facilitate the raising of taxes,

this law might not unfairly be interpreted to mean that when occasion

arose, or perhaps even every year, a census should be taken in order that

this poll-tax might be levied. Nehemiah arranged for a yearly poll-tax of

a third of a shekel for the incidental expenses of the Temple.(401) Here,

however, the half-shekel prescribed in Exodus is intended; and it should

be observed that this poll-tax was to be levied, not once only but “from

year to year.” The chronicler then inserts a note to explain why these

repairs were necessary: “The sons of Athaliah, that wicked woman, had

broken up the house of God; and also all the dedicated things of the house

of Jehovah they bestowed upon the Baals.” Here we are confronted with a

further difficulty. All Jehoram’s sons except Ahaziah were murdered by the

Arabs in their father’s life-time. Who are these “sons of Athaliah” who

broke up the Temple? Jehoram was about thirty-seven when his sons were

massacred, so that some of them may have been old enough to break up the

Temple. One would think that “the dedicated things” might have been

recovered for Jehovah when Athaliah was overthrown; but possibly, when the

people retaliated by breaking into the house of Baal, there were Achans

among them, who appropriated the plunder.

Having remonstrated with Jehoiada, the king took matters into his own

hands; and he, not Jehoiada, had a chest made and placed, not beside the

altar—such an arrangement savoured of profanity—but without at the gate of

the Temple. This little touch is very suggestive. The noise and bustle of

paying over money, receiving it, and putting it into the chest, would have

mingled distractingly with the solemn ritual of sacrifice. In modern times

the tinkle of threepenny pieces often tends to mar the effect of an

impressive appeal and to disturb the quiet influences of a communion

service. The Scotch arrangement, by which a plate covered with a fair

white cloth is placed in the porch of a church and guarded by two modern

Levites or elders, is much more in accordance with Chronicles.

Then, instead of sending out Levites to collect the tax, proclamation was

made that the people themselves should bring their offerings. Obedience

apparently was made a matter of conscience, not of solicitation. Perhaps

it was because the Levites felt that sacred dues should be given freely

that they were not forward to make yearly tax-collecting expeditions. At

any rate, the new method was signally successful. Day after day the

princes and people gladly brought their offerings, and money was gathered

in abundance. Other passages suggest that the chronicler was not always

inclined to trust to the spontaneous generosity of the people for the

support of the priests and Levites; but he plainly recognised that

free-will offerings are more excellent than the donations which are

painfully extracted by the yearly visits of official collectors. He would

probably have sympathised with the abolition of pew-rents.

As in the book of Kings, the chest was emptied at suitable intervals; but

instead of the high-priest being associated with the king’s scribe, as if

they were on a level and both of them officials of the royal court, the

chief priest’s _officer_ assists the king’s _scribe_, so that the chief

priest is placed on a level with the king himself.

The details of the repairs in the two narratives differ considerably in

form, but for the most part agree in substance; the only striking point is

that they are apparently at variance as to whether vessels of silver or

gold were or were not made for the renovated Temple.

Then follows the account(402) of the ingratitude and apostacy of Joash and

his people. As long as Jehoiada lived, the services of the Temple were

regularly performed, and Judah remained faithful to its God; but at last

he died, full of days: a hundred and thirty years old. In his life-time he

had exercised royal authority, and when he died he was buried like a king:

“They buried him in the city of David among the kings, because he had done

good in Israel and toward God and His house.”(403) Like Nero when he shook

off the control of Seneca and Burrhus, Joash changed his policy as soon as

Jehoiada was dead. Apparently he was a weak character, always following

some one’s leading. His freedom from the influence that had made his early

reign decent and honourable was not, as in Nero’s case, his own act. The

change of policy was adopted at the suggestion of the princes of Judah.

Kings, princes, and people fell back into the old wickedness; they forsook

the Temple and served idols. Yet Jehovah did not readily give them up to

their own folly, nor hastily inflict punishment; He sent, not one prophet,

but many, to bring them back to Himself, but they would not hearken. At

last Jehovah made one last effort to win Joash back; this time He chose

for His messenger a priest who had special personal claims on the

favourable attention of the king. The prophet was Zechariah the son of

Jehoiada, to whom Joash owed his life and his throne. The name was a

favourite one in Israel, and was borne by two other prophets besides the

son of Jehoiada. Its very etymology constituted an appeal to the

conscience of Joash: it is compounded of the sacred name and a root

meaning “to remember”. The Jews were adepts at extracting from such a

combination all its possible applications. The most obvious was that

Jehovah would remember the sin of Judah, but the recent prophets sent to

recall the sinners to their God showed that Jehovah also remembered their

former righteousness and desired to recall it to them and them to it; they

should remember Jehovah. Moreover, Joash should remember the teaching of

Jehoiada and his obligations to the father of the man now addressing him.

Probably Joash did remember all this when, in the striking Hebrew idiom,

“the spirit of God clothed itself with Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the

priest, and he stood above the people and said unto them, Thus saith God:

Why transgress ye the commandments of Jehovah, to your hurt? Because ye

have forsaken Jehovah, He hath also forsaken you.” This is the burden of

the prophetic utterances in Chronicles(404); the converse is stated by

Irenæus when he says that to follow the Saviour is to partake of

salvation. Though the truth of this teaching had been enforced again and

again by the misfortunes that had befallen Judah under apostate kings,

Joash paid no heed to it, nor did he remember the kindness which Jehoiada

had done him; that is to say, he showed no gratitude towards the house of

Jehoiada. Perhaps an uncomfortable sense of obligation to the father only

embittered him the more against his son. But the son of the high-priest

could not be dealt with as summarily as Asa dealt with Hanani when he put

him in prison. The king might have been indifferent to the wrath of

Jehovah, but the son of the man who had for years ruled Judah and

Jerusalem must have had a strong party at his back. Accordingly the king

and his adherents conspired against Zechariah, and they stoned him with

stones by the king’s command. This Old Testament martyr died in a very

different spirit from that of Stephen; his prayer was, not, “Lord, lay not

this sin to their charge,” but “Jehovah, look upon it and require it.” His

prayer did not long remain unanswered. Within a year the Syrians(405) came

against Joash; he had a very great host, but he was powerless against a

small company of the Divinely commissioned avengers of Zechariah. The

tempters who had seduced the king into apostacy were a special mark for

the wrath of Jehovah: the Syrians destroyed all the princes, and sent

their spoil to the king of Damascus. Like Asa and Jehoram, Joash suffered

personal punishment in the shape of “great diseases,” but his end was even

more tragic than theirs. One conspiracy avenged another: in his own

household there were adherents of the family of Jehoiada: “Two of his own

servants conspired against him for the blood of Zechariah, and slew him on

his bed; and they buried him in the city of David, and not in the

sepulchres of the kings.”

The chronicler’s biography of Joash might have been specially designed to

remind his readers that the most careful education must sometimes fail of

its purpose. Joash had been trained from his earliest years in the Temple

itself, under the care of Jehoiada and of his aunt Jehoshabeath, the

high-priest’s wife. He had no doubt been carefully instructed in the

religion and sacred history of Israel, and had been continually surrounded

by the best religious influences of his age. For Judah, in the

chronicler’s estimation, was even then the one home of the true faith.

These holy influences had been continued after Joash had attained to

manhood, and Jehoiada was careful to provide that the young king’s harem

should be enlisted in the cause of piety and good government. We may be

sure that the two wives whom Jehoiada selected for his pupil were

consistent worshippers of Jehovah and loyal to the Law and the Temple. No

daughter of the house of Ahab, no “strange wife” from Egypt, Ammon, or

Moab, would be allowed the opportunity of undoing the good effects of

early training. Moreover, we might have expected the character developed

by education to be strengthened by exercise. The early years of his reign

were occupied by zealous activity in the service of the Temple. The pupil

outstripped his master, and the enthusiasm of the youthful king found

occasion to rebuke the tardy zeal of the venerable high-priest.

And yet all this fair promise was blighted in a day. The piety carefully

fostered for half a life-time gave way before the first assaults of

temptation, and never even attempted to reassert itself. Possibly the

brief and fragmentary records from which the chronicler had to make his

selection unduly emphasise the contrast between the earlier and later

years of the reign of Joash; but the picture he draws of the failure of

best of tutors and governors is unfortunately only too typical. Julian the

Apostate was educated by a distinguished Christian prelate, Eusebius of

Nicomedia, and was trained in a strict routine of religious observances;

yet he repudiated Christianity at the earliest safe opportunity. His

apostacy, like that of Joash, was probably characterised by base

ingratitude. At Constantine’s death the troops in Constantinople massacred

nearly all the princes of the imperial family, and Julian, then only six

years old, is said to have been saved and concealed in a church by Mark,

Bishop of Arethusa. When Julian became emperor, he repaid this obligation

by subjecting his benefactor to cruel tortures because he had destroyed a

heathen temple and refused to make any compensation. Imagine Joash

requiring Jehoiada to make compensation for pulling down a high place!

The parallel of Julian may suggest a partial explanation of the fall of

Joash. The tutelage of Jehoiada may have been too strict, monotonous, and

prolonged; in choosing wives for the young king, the aged priest may not

have made an altogether happy selection; Jehoiada may have kept Joash

under control until he was incapable of independence and could only pass

from one dominant influence to another. When the high-priest’s death gave

the king an opportunity of changing his masters, a reaction from the too

urgent insistence upon his duty to the Temple may have inclined Joash to

listen favourably to the solicitations of the princes.

But perhaps the sins of Joash are sufficiently accounted for by his

ancestry. His mother was Zibiah of Beersheba, and therefore probably a

Jewess. Of her we know nothing further good or bad. Otherwise his

ancestors for two generations had been uniformly bad. His father and

grandfather were the wicked kings Jehoram and Ahaziah; his grandmother was

Athaliah; and he was descended from Ahab, and possibly from Jezebel. When

we recollect that his mother Zibiah was a wife of Ahaziah and had probably

been selected by Athaliah, we cannot suppose that the element she

contributed to his character would do much to counteract the evil he

inherited from his father.

The chronicler’s account of his successor Amaziah is equally

disappointing; he also began well and ended miserably. In the opening

formulæ of the history of the new reign and in the account of the

punishment of the assassins of Joash, the chronicler closely follows the

earlier narrative, omitting, as usual, the statement that this good king

did not take away the high places. Like his pious predecessors, Amaziah in

his earlier and better years was rewarded with a great army(406) and

military success; and yet the muster-roll of his forces shows how the sins

and calamities of the recent wicked reigns had told on the resources of

Judah. Jehoshaphat could command more than eleven hundred and sixty

thousand soldiers; Amaziah has only three hundred thousand.

These were not sufficient for the king’s ambition; by the Divine grace, he

had already amassed wealth, in spite of the Syrian ravages at the close of

the preceding reign: and he laid out a hundred talents of silver in

purchasing the services of as many thousand Israelites, thus falling into

the sin for which Jehoshaphat had twice been reproved and punished.

Jehovah, however, arrested Amaziah’s employment of unholy allies at the

outset. A man of God came to him and exhorted him not to let the army of

Israel go with him, because “Jehovah is not with Israel”; if he had

courage and faith to go with only his three hundred thousand Jews, all

would be well, otherwise God would cast him down, as He had done Ahaziah.

The statement that Jehovah was not with Israel might have been understood

in a sense that would seem almost blasphemous to the chronicler’s

contemporaries; he is careful therefore to explain that here “Israel”

simply means “the children of Ephraim.”

Amaziah obeyed the prophet, but was naturally distressed at the thought

that he had spent a hundred talents for nothing: “What shall we do for the

hundred talents which I have given to the army of Israel?” He did not

realise that the Divine alliance would be worth more to him than many

hundred talents of silver; or perhaps he reflected that Divine grace is

free, and that he might have saved his money. One would like to believe

that he was anxious to recover this silver in order to devote it to the

service of the sanctuary; but he was evidently one of those sordid souls

who like, as the phrase goes, “to get their religion for nothing.” No

wonder Amaziah went astray! We can scarcely be wrong in detecting a vein

of contempt in the prophet’s answer: “Jehovah can give thee much more than

this.”

This little episode carries with it a great principle. Every crusade

against an established abuse is met with the cry, “What shall we do for

the hundred talents?”—for the capital invested in slaves or in gin-shops;

for English revenues from alcohol or Indian revenues from opium? Few have

faith to believe that the Lord can provide for financial deficits, or, if

we may venture to indicate the method in which the Lord provides, that a

nation will ever be able to pay its way by honest finance. Let us note,

however, that Amaziah was asked to sacrifice his own talents, and not

other people’s.

Accordingly Amaziah sent the mercenaries home; and they returned in great

dudgeon, offended by the slight put upon them and disappointed at the loss

of prospective plunder. The king’s sin in hiring Israelite mercenaries was

to suffer a severer punishment than the loss of money. While he was away

at war, his rejected allies returned, and attacked the border cities,(407)

killed three thousand Jews, and took much plunder.

Meanwhile Amaziah and his army were reaping direct fruits of their

obedience in Edom, where they gained a great victory, and followed it up

by a massacre of ten thousand captives, whom they killed by throwing down

from the top of a precipice. Yet, after all, Amaziah’s victory over Edom

was of small profit to him, for he was thereby seduced into idolatry.

Amongst his other prisoners, he had brought away the gods of Edom; and

instead of throwing them over a precipice, as a pious king should have

done, “he set them up to be his gods, and bowed down himself before them,

and burned incense unto them.”

Then Jehovah, in His anger, sent a prophet to demand, “Why hast thou

sought after foreign gods, which have not delivered their own people out

of thine hand?” According to current ideas outside of Israel, a nation

might very reasonably seek after the gods of their conquerors. Such

conquest could only be attributed to the superior power and grace of the

gods of the victors: the gods of the defeated were vanquished along with

their worshippers, and were obviously incompetent and unworthy of further

confidence. But to act like Amaziah—to go out to battle in the name of

Jehovah, directed and encouraged by His prophet, to conquer by the grace

of the God of Israel, and then to desert Jehovah of hosts, the Giver of

victory, for the paltry and discredited idols of the conquered

Edomites—this was sheer madness. And yet as Greece enslaved her Roman

conquerors, so the victor has often been won to the faith of the

vanquished. The Church subdued the barbarians who had overwhelmed the

empire, and the heathen Saxons adopted at last the religion of the

conquered Britons. Henry IV. of France is scarcely a parallel to Amaziah:

he went to mass that he might hold his sceptre with a firmer grasp, while

the king of Judah merely adopted foreign idols in order to gratify his

superstition and love of novelty.

Apparently Amaziah was at first inclined to discuss the question: he and

the prophet talked together; but the king soon became irritated, and broke

off the interview with abrupt discourtesy: “Have we made thee of the

king’s counsel? Forbear; why shouldest thou be smitten?” Prosperity seems

to have been invariably fatal to the Jewish kings who began to reign well;

the success that rewarded, at the same time destroyed their virtue. Before

his victory Amaziah had been courteous and submissive to the messenger of

Jehovah; now he defied Him and treated His prophet roughly. The latter

disappeared, but not before he had declared the Divine condemnation of the

stubborn king.

The rest of the history of Amaziah—his presumptuous war with Joash, king

of Israel, his defeat and degradation, and his assassination—is taken

verbatim from the book of Kings, with a few modifications and editorial

notes by the chronicler to harmonise these sections with the rest of his

narrative. For instance, in the book of Kings the account of the war with

Joash begins somewhat abruptly: Amaziah sends his defiance before any

reason has been given for his action. The chronicler inserts a phrase

which connects his new paragraph very suggestively with the one that goes

before. The former concluded with the king’s taunt that the prophet was

not of his counsel, to which the prophet replied that the king should be

destroyed because he had not hearkened to the Divine counsel proffered to

him. Then Amaziah “took advice”; _i.e._, he consulted those who were of

his counsel, and the sequel showed their incompetence. The chronicler also

explains that Amaziah’s rash persistence in his challenge to Joash “was of

God, that He might deliver them into the hand of their enemies, because

they had sought after the gods of Edom.” He also tells us that the name of

the custodian of the sacred vessels of the Temple was Obed-edom. As the

chronicler mentions five Levites of the name of Obed-edom, four of whom

occur nowhere else, the name was probably common in some family still

surviving in his own time. But, in view of the fondness of the Jews for

significant etymology, it is probable that the name is recorded here

because it was exceedingly appropriate. “The servant of Edom” suits the

official who has to surrender his sacred charge to a conqueror because his

own king had worshipped the gods of Edom. Lastly, an additional note

explains that Amaziah’s apostacy had promptly deprived him of the

confidence and loyalty of his subjects; the conspiracy which led to his

assassination was formed from the time that he turned away from following

Jehovah, so that when he sent his proud challenge to Joash his authority

was already undermined, and there were traitors in the army which he led

against Israel. We are shown one of the means used by Jehovah to bring

about his defeat.

Chapter VII. Uzziah, Jotham, and Ahaz.(408) 2 Chron. xxvi.-xxviii.

After the assassination of Amaziah, all the people of Judah took his son

Uzziah, a lad of sixteen, called in the book of Kings Azariah, and made

him king. The chronicler borrows from the older narrative the statement

that “Uzziah did that which was right in the eyes of Jehovah, according to

all that his father Amaziah had done.” In the light of the sins attributed

both to Amaziah and Uzziah in Chronicles, this is a somewhat doubtful

compliment. Sarcasm, however, is not one of the chronicler’s failings; he

simply allows the older history to speak for itself, and leaves the reader

to combine its judgment with the statement of later tradition as best he

can. But yet we might modify this verse, and read that Uzziah did good and

evil, prospered and fell into misfortune, according to all that his father

Amaziah had done, or an even closer parallel might be drawn between what

Uzziah did and suffered and the chequered character and fortunes of Joash.

Though much older than the latter, at his accession Uzziah was young

enough to be very much under the control of ministers and advisers; and as

Joash was trained in loyalty to Jehovah by the high-priest Jehoiada, so

Uzziah “set himself to seek God during the life-time” of a certain

prophet, who, like the son of Jehoiada, was named Zechariah, “who had

understanding or gave instruction in the fear of Jehovah,”(409) _i.e._, a

man versed in sacred learning, rich in spiritual experience, and able to

communicate his knowledge, such a one as Ezra the scribe in later days.

Under the guidance of this otherwise unknown prophet, the young king was

led to conform his private life and public administration to the will of

God. In “seeking God,” Uzziah would be careful to maintain and attend the

Temple services, to honour the priests of Jehovah and make due provision

for their wants; and “as long as he sought Jehovah God gave him

prosperity.”

Uzziah received all the rewards usually bestowed upon pious kings: he was

victorious in war, and exacted tribute from neighbouring states; he built

fortresses, and had abundance of cattle and slaves, a large and

well-equipped army, and well-supplied arsenals. Like other powerful kings

of Judah, he asserted his supremacy over the tribes along the southern

frontier of his kingdom. God helped him against the Philistines, the

Arabians of Gur-baal, and the Meunim. He destroyed the fortifications of

Gath, Jabne, and Ashdod, and built forts of his own in the country of the

Philistines. Nothing is known about Gur-baal; but the Arabian allies of

the Philistines would be, like Jehoram’s enemies “the Arabians who dwelt

near the Ethiopians,” nomads of the deserts south of Judah. These

Philistines and Arabians had brought tribute to Jehoshaphat without

waiting to be subdued by his armies; so now the Ammonites gave gifts to

Uzziah, and his name spread abroad “even to the entering in of Egypt,”

possibly a hundred or even a hundred and fifty miles from Jerusalem. It is

evident that the chronicler’s ideas of international politics were of very

modest dimensions.

Moreover, Uzziah added to the fortifications of Jerusalem; and because he

loved husbandry and had cattle, and husbandmen, and vine-dressers in the

open country and outlying districts of Judah, he built towers for their

protection. His army was of about the same strength as that of Amaziah,

three hundred thousand men, so that in this, as in his character and

exploits, he did according to all that his father had done, except that he

was content with his own Jewish warriors and did not waste his talents in

purchasing worse than useless reinforcements from Israel. Uzziah’s army

was well disciplined, carefully organised, and constantly employed; they

were men of mighty power, and went out to war by bands, to collect the

king’s tribute and enlarge his dominions and revenue by new conquests. The

war material in his arsenals is described at greater length than that of

any previous king: shields, spears, helmets, coats of mail, bows and

stones for slings. The great advance of military science in Uzziah’s reign

was marked by the invention of engines of war for the defence of

Jerusalem; some, like the Roman _catapulta_, were for arrows, and others,

like the _ballista_, to hurl huge stones. Though the Assyrian sculptures

show us that battering-rams were freely employed by them against the walls

of Jewish cities,(410) and the _ballista_ is said by Pliny to have been

invented in Syria,(411) no other Hebrew king is credited with the

possession of this primitive artillery. The chronicler or his authority

seems profoundly impressed by the great skill displayed in this invention;

in describing it, he uses the root ḥāshabh, to devise, three times in

three consecutive words. The engines were “_ḥishshebhōnôth maḥăshebheth

ḥôshēbh_”—“engines engineered by the ingenious.” Jehovah not only provided

Uzziah with ample military resources of every kind, but also blessed the

means which He Himself had furnished; Uzziah “was marvellously helped,

till he was strong, and his name spread far abroad.” The neighbouring

states heard with admiration of his military resources.

The student of Chronicles will by this time be prepared for the invariable

sequel to God-given prosperity. Like David, Rehoboam, Asa, and Amaziah,

when Uzziah “was strong, his heart was lifted up to his destruction.” The

most powerful of the kings of Judah died a leper. An attack of leprosy

admitted of only one explanation: it was a plague inflicted by Jehovah

Himself as the punishment of sin; and so the book of Kings tells us that

“Jehovah smote the king,” but says nothing about the sin thus punished.

The chronicler was able to supply the omission: Uzziah had dared to go

into the Temple and with irregular zeal to burn incense on the altar of

incense. In so doing, he was violating the Law, which made the priestly

office and all priestly functions the exclusive prerogative of the house

of Aaron and denounced the penalty of death against any one who usurped

priestly functions.(412) But Uzziah was not allowed to carry out his

unholy design; the high-priest Azariah went in after him with eighty

stalwart colleagues, rebuked his presumption, and bade him leave the

sanctuary. Uzziah was no more tractable to the admonitions of the priest

than Asa and Amaziah had been to those of the prophets. The kings of Judah

were accustomed, even in Chronicles, to exercise an unchallenged control

over the Temple and to regard the high-priests very much in the light of

private chaplains. Uzziah was wroth; he was at the zenith of his power and

glory; his heart was lifted up. Who were these priests, that they should

stand between him and Jehovah and dare to publicly check and rebuke him in

his own temple? Henry II.’s feelings towards Becket must have been mild

compared to those of Uzziah towards Azariah, who, if the king could have

had his way, would doubtless have shared the fate of Zechariah the son of

Jehoiada. But a direct intervention of Jehovah protected the priests, and

preserved Uzziah from further sacrilege. While his features were convulsed

with anger, leprosy brake forth in his forehead. The contest between king

and priest was at once ended; the priests thrust him out, and he himself

hasted to go, recognising that Jehovah had smitten him. Henceforth he

lived apart, cut off from fellowship alike with man and God, and his son

Jotham governed in his stead. The book of Kings simply makes the general

statement that Uzziah was buried with his fathers in the city of David;

but the chronicler is anxious that his readers should not suppose that the

tombs of the sacred house of David were polluted by the presence of a

leprous corpse: he explains that the leper was buried, not in the royal

sepulchre, but in the field attached to it.

The moral of this incident is obvious. In attempting to understand its

significance, we need not trouble ourselves about the relative authority

of kings and priests; the principle vindicated by the punishment of Uzziah

was the simple duty of obedience to an express command of Jehovah. However

trivial the burning of incense may be in itself, it formed part of an

elaborate and complicated system of ritual. To interfere with the Divine

ordinances in one detail would mar the significance and impressiveness of

the whole Temple service. One arbitrary innovation would be a precedent

for others, and would constitute a serious danger for a system whose value

lay in continuous uniformity. Moreover, Uzziah was stubborn in

disobedience. His attempt to burn incense might have been sufficiently

punished by the public and humiliating reproof of the high-priest. His

leprosy came upon him because when thwarted in an unholy purpose he gave

way to ungoverned passion.

In its consequences we see a practical application of the lessons of the

incident. How often is the sinner only provoked to greater wickedness by

the obstacles which Divine grace opposes to his wrongdoing! How few men

will tolerate the suggestion that their intentions are cruel, selfish, or

dishonourable! Remonstrance is an insult, an offence against their

personal dignity; they feel that their self-respect demands that they

should persevere in their purpose, and that they should resent and punish

any one who has tried to thwart them. Uzziah’s wrath was perfectly

natural; few men have been so uniformly patient of reproof as not

sometimes to have turned in anger upon those who warned them against sin.

The most dramatic feature of this episode, the sudden frost of leprosy in

the king’s forehead, is not without its spiritual antitype. Men’s anger at

well-merited reproof has often blighted their lives once for all with

ineradicable moral leprosy. In the madness of passion they have broken

bonds which have hitherto restrained them and committed themselves beyond

recall to evil pursuits and fatal friendships. Let us take the most

lenient view of Uzziah’s conduct, and suppose that he believed himself

entitled to offer incense; he could not doubt that the priests were

equally confident that Jehovah had enjoined the duty on them, and them

alone. Such a question was not to be decided by violence, in the heat of

personal bitterness. Azariah himself had been unwisely zealous in bringing

in his eighty priests; Jehovah showed him that they were quite

unnecessary, because at the last Uzziah “himself hasted to go out.” When

personal passion and jealousy are eliminated from Christian polemics, the

Church will be able to write the epitaph of the _odium theologicum_.

Uzziah was succeeded by Jotham, who had already governed for some time as

regent. In recording the favourable judgment of the book of Kings, “He did

that which was right in the eyes of Jehovah, according to all that his

father Uzziah had done,” the chronicler is careful to add, “Howbeit he

entered not into the temple of Jehovah”; the exclusive privilege of the

house of Aaron had been established once for all. The story of Jotham’s

reign comes like a quiet and pleasant oasis in the chronicler’s dreary

narrative of wicked rulers, interspersed with pious kings whose piety

failed them in their latter days. Jotham shares with Solomon the

distinguished honour of being a king of whom no evil is recorded either in

Kings or Chronicles, and who died in prosperity, at peace with Jehovah. At

the same time it is probable that Jotham owes the blameless character he

bears in Chronicles to the fact that the earlier narrative does not

mention any misfortunes of his, especially any misfortune towards the

close of his life. Otherwise the theological school from whom the

chronicler derived his later traditions would have been anxious to

discover or deduce some sin to account for such misfortune. At the end of

the short notice of his reign, between two parts of the usual closing

formula, an editor of the book of Kings has inserted the statement that

“in those days Jehovah began to send against Judah Rezin the king of Syria

and Pekah the son of Remaliah.” This verse the chronicler has omitted;

neither the date(413) nor the nature of this trouble was clear enough to

cast any slur upon the character of Jotham.

Jotham, again, had the rewards of a pious king: he added a gate to the

Temple, and strengthened the wall of Ophel(414), and built cities and

castles in Judah; he made successful war upon Ammon, and received from

them an immense tribute—a hundred talents of silver, ten thousand measures

of wheat, and as much barley—for three successive years. What happened

afterwards we are not told. It has been suggested that the amounts

mentioned were paid in three yearly instalments, or that the three years

were at the end of the reign, and the tribute came to an end when Jotham

died or when the troubles with Pekah and Rezin began.

We have had repeated occasion to notice that in his accounts of the good

kings the chronicler almost always omits the qualifying clause to the

effect that they did not take away the high places. He does so here; but,

contrary to his usual practice, he inserts a qualifying clause of his own:

“The people did yet corruptly.” He probably had in view the unmitigated

wickedness of the following reign, and was glad to retain the evidence

that Ahaz found encouragement and support in his idolatry; he is careful,

however, to state the fact so that no shadow of blame falls upon Jotham.

The life of Ahaz has been dealt with elsewhere. Here we need merely repeat

that for the sixteen years of his reign Judah was to all appearance

utterly given over to every form of idolatry, and was oppressed and

brought low by Israel, Syria, and Assyria.

Chapter VIII. Hezekiah: The Religious Value Of Music. 2 Chron.

xxix.-xxxii.

The bent of the chroniclers mind is well illustrated by the proportion of

space assigned to ritual by him and by the book of Kings respectively. In

the latter a few lines only are devoted to ritual, and the bulk of the

space is given to the invasion of Sennacherib, the embassy from Babylon,

etc., while in Chronicles ritual occupies about three times as many verses

as personal and public affairs.

Hezekiah, though not blameless, was all but perfect in his loyalty to

Jehovah. The chronicler reproduces the customary formula for a good king:

“He did that which was right in the eyes of Jehovah, according to all that

David his father had done”; but his cautious judgment rejects the somewhat

rhetorical statement in Kings that “after him was none like him among all

the kings of Judah, nor any that were before him.”

Hezekiah’s policy was made clear immediately after his accession. His zeal

for reformation could tolerate no delay; the first month(415) of the first

year of his reign saw him actively engaged in the good work.(416) It was

no light task that lay before him. Not only were there altars in every

corner of Jerusalem and idolatrous high places in every city of Judah, but

the Temple services had ceased, the lamps were put out, the sacred vessels

cut in pieces, the Temple had been polluted and then closed, and the

priests and Levites were scattered. Sixteen years of licensed idolatry

must have fostered all that was vile in the country, have put wicked men

in authority, and created numerous vested interests connected by close

ties with idolatry, notably the priests of all the altars and high places.

On the other hand, the reign of Ahaz had been an unbroken series of

disasters; the people had repeatedly endured the horrors of invasion. His

government as time went on must have become more and more unpopular, for

when he died he was not buried in the sepulchres of the kings. As idolatry

was a prominent feature of his policy, there would be a reaction in favour

of the worship of Jehovah, and there would not be wanting true believers

to tell the people that their sufferings were a consequence of idolatry.

To a large party in Judah Hezekiah’s reversal of his father’s religious

policy would be as welcome as Elizabeth’s declaration against Rome was to

most Englishmen.

Hezekiah began by opening and repairing the doors of the Temple. Its

closed doors had been a symbol of the national repudiation of Jehovah; to

reopen them was necessarily the first step in the reconciliation of Judah

to its God, but only the first step. The doors were open as a sign that

Jehovah was invited to return to His people and again to manifest His

presence in the Holy of holies, so that through those open doors Israel

might have access to Him by means of the priests. But the Temple was as

yet no fit place for the presence of Jehovah. With its lamps extinguished,

its sacred vessels destroyed, its floors and walls thick with dust and

full of all filthiness, it was rather a symbol of the apostacy of Judah.

Accordingly Hezekiah sought the help of the Levites. It is true that he is

first said to have collected together priests and Levites, but from that

point onward the priests are almost entirely ignored.

Hezekiah reminded the Levites of the misdoings of Ahaz and his adherents

and the wrath which they had brought upon Judah and Jerusalem; he told

them it was his purpose to conciliate Jehovah by making a covenant with

Him; he appealed to them as the chosen ministers of Jehovah and His temple

to co-operate heartily in this good work.

The Levites responded to his appeal apparently rather in acts than words.

No spokesman replies to the king’s speech, but with prompt obedience they

set about their work forthwith; they arose, Kohathites, sons of Merari,

Gershonites, sons of Elizaphan, Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun—the chronicler

has a Homeric fondness for catalogues of high-sounding names—the leaders

of all these divisions are duly mentioned. Kohath, Gershon, and Merari are

well known as the three great clans of the house of Levi; and here we find

the three guilds of singers—Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun—placed on a level

with the older clans. Elizaphan was apparently a division of the clan

Kohath,(417) which, like the guilds of singers, had obtained an

independent status. The result is to recognise seven divisions of the

tribe.

The chiefs of the Levites gathered their brethren together, and having

performed the necessary rites of ceremonial cleansing for themselves, went

in to cleanse the Temple; that is to say, the priests went into the holy

place and the Holy of holies and brought out “all the uncleanness” into

the court, and the Levites carried it away to the brook Kidron: but before

the building itself could be reached eight days were spent in cleansing

the courts, and then the priests went into the Temple itself and spent

eight days in cleansing it, in the manner described above. Then they

reported to the king that the cleansing was finished, and especially that

“all the vessels which King Ahaz cast away” had been recovered and

reconsecrated with due ceremony. We were told in the previous chapter that

Ahaz had cut to pieces the vessels of the Temple, but these may have been

other vessels.

Then Hezekiah celebrated a great dedication feast; seven bullocks, seven

rams, seven lambs, and seven he-goats were offered as a sin-offering for

the dynasty,(418) for the Temple, for Judah, and (by special command of

the king) for all Israel, _i.e._ for the northern tribes as well as for

Judah and Benjamin. Apparently this sin-offering was made in silence, but

afterwards the king set the Levites and priests in their places with their

musical instruments, and when the burnt offering began “the song of

Jehovah began with the trumpets together with the instruments of David

king of Israel. And all the congregation worshipped, and the singers sang,

and the trumpeters sounded,” and all this continued till the burnt

offering was finished.

When the people had been formally reconciled to Jehovah by this

representative national sacrifice, and thus purified from the uncleanness

of idolatry and consecrated afresh to their God, they were permitted and

invited to make individual sacrifices, thank-offerings and burnt

offerings. Each man might enjoy for himself the renewed privilege of

access to Jehovah, and obtain the assurance of pardon for his sins, and

offer thanksgiving for his own special blessings. And they brought

offerings in abundance: seventy bullocks, a hundred rams, and two hundred

lambs for a burnt offering; and six hundred oxen and three thousand sheep

for thank-offerings. Thus were the Temple services restored and

reinaugurated; and Hezekiah and the people rejoiced because they felt that

this unpremeditated outburst of enthusiasm was due to the gracious

influence of the Spirit of Jehovah.

The chronicler’s narrative is somewhat marred by a touch of professional

jealousy. According to the ordinary ritual,(419) the offerer flayed the

burnt offerings; but for some special reason, perhaps because of the

exceptional solemnity of the occasion, this duty now devolved upon the

priests. But the burnt offerings were abundant beyond all precedent; the

priests were too few for the work, and the Levites were called in to help

them, “for the Levites were more upright in heart to purify themselves

than the priests.” Apparently even in the second Temple brethren did not

always dwell together in unity.

Hezekiah had now provided for the regular services of the Temple, and had

given the inhabitants of Jerusalem a full opportunity of returning to

Jehovah; but the people of the provinces were chiefly acquainted with the

Temple through the great annual festivals. These, too, had long been in

abeyance; and special steps had to be taken to secure their future

observance. In order to do this, it was necessary to recall the

provincials to their allegiance to Jehovah. Under ordinary circumstances

the great festival of the Passover would have been observed in the first

month, but at the time appointed for the paschal feast the Temple was

still unclean, and the priests and Levites were occupied in its

purification. But Hezekiah could not endure that the first year of his

reign should be marked by the omission of this great feast. He took

counsel with the princes and public assembly—nothing is said about the

priests—and they decided to hold the Passover in the second month instead

of the first. We gather from casual allusions in vv. 6-8 that the kingdom

of Samaria had already come to an end; the people had been carried into

captivity, and only a remnant were left in the land.(420) From this point

the kings of Judah act as religious heads of the whole nation and

territory of Israel. Hezekiah sent invitations to all Israel from Dan to

Beersheba. He made special efforts to secure a favourable response from

the northern tribes, sending letters to Ephraim and Manasseh, _i.e._, to

the ten tribes under their leadership. He reminded them that their

brethren had gone into captivity because the northern tribes had deserted

the Temple; and held out to them the hope that, if they worshipped at the

Temple and served Jehovah, they should themselves escape further calamity,

and their brethren and children who had gone into captivity should return

to their own land.

“So the posts passed from city to city through the country of Ephraim and

Manasseh, even unto Zebulun.” Either Zebulun is used in a broad sense for

all the Galilean tribes, or the phrase “from Beersheba to Dan” is merely

rhetorical, for to the north, between Zebulun and Dan, lay the territories

of Asher and Naphtali. It is to be noticed that the tribes beyond Jordan

are nowhere referred to; they had already fallen out of the history of

Israel, and were scarcely remembered in the time of the chronicler.

Hezekiah’s appeal to the surviving communities of the northern kingdom

failed: they laughed his messengers to scorn, and mocked them; but

individuals responded to his invitation in such numbers that they are

spoken of as “a multitude of the people, even many of Ephraim and

Manasseh, Issachar and Zebulun.” There were also men of Asher among the

northern pilgrims.(421)

The pious enthusiasm of Judah stood out in vivid contrast to the stubborn

impenitence of the majority of the ten tribes. By the grace of God, Judah

was of one heart to observe the feast appointed by Jehovah through the

king and princes, so that there was gathered in Jerusalem a very great

assembly of worshippers, surpassing even the great gatherings which the

chronicler had witnessed at the annual feasts.

But though the Temple had been cleansed, the Holy City was not yet free

from the taint of idolatry. The character of the Passover demanded that

not only the Temple, but the whole city, should be pure. The paschal lamb

was eaten at home, and the doorposts of the house were sprinkled with its

blood. But Ahaz had set up altars at every corner of the city; no devout

Israelite could tolerate the symbols of idolatrous worship close to the

house in which he celebrated the solemn rites of the Passover. Accordingly

before the Passover was killed these altars were removed.(422)

Then the great feast began; but after long years of idolatry neither the

people nor the priests and Levites were sufficiently familiar with the

rites of the festival to be able to perform them without some difficulty

and confusion. As a rule each head of a household killed his own lamb; but

many of the worshippers, especially those from the north, were not

ceremonially clean: and this task devolved upon the Levites. The immense

concourse of worshippers and the additional work thrown upon the Temple

ministry must have made extraordinary demands on their zeal and

energy.(423) At first apparently they hesitated, and were inclined to

abstain from discharging their usual duties. A passover in a month not

appointed by Moses, but decided on by the civil authorities without

consulting the priesthood, might seem a doubtful and dangerous innovation.

Recollecting Azariah’s successful assertion of hierarchical prerogative

against Uzziah, they might be inclined to attempt a similar resistance to

Hezekiah. But the pious enthusiasm of the people clearly showed that the

Spirit of Jehovah inspired their somewhat irregular zeal; so that the

ecclesiastical officials were shamed out of their unsympathetic attitude,

and came forward to take their full share and even more than their full

share in this glorious rededication of Israel to Jehovah.

But a further difficulty remained: uncleanness not only disqualified from

killing the paschal lambs, but from taking any part in the Passover; and a

multitude of the people were unclean. Yet it would have been ungracious

and even dangerous to discourage their newborn zeal by excluding them from

the festival; moreover, many of them were worshippers from among the ten

tribes, who had come in response to a special invitation, which most of

their fellow-countrymen had rejected with scorn and contempt. If they had

been sent back because they had failed to cleanse themselves according to

a ritual of which they were ignorant, and of which Hezekiah might have

known they would be ignorant, both the king and his guests would have

incurred measureless ridicule from the impious northerners. Accordingly

they were allowed to take part in the Passover despite their uncleanness.

But this permission could only be granted with serious apprehensions as to

its consequences. The Law threatened with death any one who attended the

services of the sanctuary in a state of uncleanness.(424) Possibly there

were already signs of an outbreak of pestilence; at any rate, the dread of

Divine punishment for sacrilegious presumption would distress the whole

assembly and mar their enjoyment of Divine fellowship. Again it is no

priest or prophet, but the king, the Messiah, who comes forward as the

mediator between God and man. Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, “Jehovah,

in His grace and mercy,(425) pardon every one that setteth his heart to

seek Elohim Jehovah, the God of his fathers, though he be not cleansed

according to the ritual of the Temple. And Jehovah hearkened to Hezekiah,

and healed the people,” _i.e._, either healed them from actual disease or

relieved them from the fear of pestilence.

And so the feast went on happily and prosperously, and was prolonged by

acclamation for an additional seven days. During fourteen days king and

princes, priests and Levites, Jews and Israelites, rejoiced before

Jehovah; thousands of bullocks and sheep smoked upon the altar; and now

the priests were not backward: great numbers purified themselves to serve

the popular devotion. The priests and Levites sang and made melody to

Jehovah, so that the Levites earned the king’s special commendation. The

great festival ended with a solemn benediction: “The priests(426) arose

and blessed the people, and their voice was heard, and their prayer came

to His holy habitation, even unto heaven.” The priests, and through them

the people, received the assurance that their solemn and prolonged worship

had met with gracious acceptance.