and Jezebel may have derided the prophecy of Elijah; yet the sentence,
long delayed, was fully executed. The hour of foretold vengeance
arrived. In one day, the King of Israel was dethroned and murdered, and
the race of Ahab was swept from the face of the earth. The last act of
her life was worthy of Jezebel herself,--of the Queen of Israel in the
days of her prime. She heard of the death of Jehoram and of the
insurrection of Jehu. Neither the timidity of a woman nor the yearnings
of a mother had a place in her soul. In the hour of carnage, surrounded
by all the horrors of death, the pride of her nature prevailed, and all
the daring of her character was displayed. She forgot neither the
proprieties due to her rank nor the embellishments needful for her
person. With the vanity of the woman and the pride of a queen, "she
painted her face and tired her head," and then haughtily presenting
herself before the murderer of her children, she uttered a maddening
taunt and defiance. By the hands of her servants she was cast from the
windows of the palace of Israel into the very grounds which had been the
vineyard of Naboth; and as she was dashed to the earth, the wheels of
the chariot of the destroyer of her race passed over her, and the feet
of the horses trampled upon her. "And the dogs ate Jezebel by the walls
of Jezreel." Thus her doom was accomplished!
[Illustration]
There have been many like her. Her crimes have been sometimes equalled
in atrocity. Her ruling passions were pride and ambition; and she
doubtless clung to the idols of her land from the unbounded license
their worship gave to sensuality, and the opportunities it afforded, in
its feasts and festivals, for display and gayety.
But she clung more tenaciously to her idolatry from motives of
self-interest and national aggrandizement. It was the test of loyalty
for Israel. It was in perfect consistency with such a character to turn
away from all evidence and to reject what she did not wish to believe.
In the expressive language of the Bible, she "hardened her heart;" and
doubtless, like skeptics of later days, she could ascribe what she could
not disprove to the working of natural causes, or to the arts of
priestcraft.
We can all stifle the convictions of conscience and contemn the
principles which conflict with our interest or our inclination; and
there are in every station unconscious imitators of the Queen of Israel.
[Illustration]
ATHALIAH.
[Illustration]
The pious king of Judah not only formed a political alliance with
Israel, but he even permitted, and probably encouraged, his son, and the
heir to his throne, to marry the daughter of the impious Ahab and the
idolatrous Jezebel. Jehoshaphat saw not the Queen of Israel as we see
her--as unlovely as she was unholy. Dazzled by the splendour of her
court, won by her grace and queenly bearing, he may have overlooked her
crimes. The most unprincipled have sometimes carefully and successfully
cultivated much that gives grace and attraction to social life. Some,
whose hearts have been utterly selfish and callous, and whose lives have
been one dark record of crime and cruelty, have yet shone as the centres
of splendid circles, diffusing all around them pleasure and gayety. And
men, themselves unstained, have been won by these fascinations to a
close association with those whose principles were worthy only of
reprobation, and whose association should have been shunned as in the
last degree contaminating.
The intimacies between those who love and worship God and those who
reject him are ever full of danger. And while the courtiers of Ahab and
the flatterers of Jehoshaphat may have applauded the liberal policy of
the King of Judah, and his freedom from the bigotry of the prophets who
would reform Israel, he was pursuing a course which was to involve his
family in calamity and bring corruption into his kingdom. Jerusalem and
Samaria were not very remote from each other, and the kings of Israel
and Judah seem at this period to have maintained frequent personal
intercourse: an intercourse which appears not to have elevated the moral
character of Israel, while it surely led to the deterioration of the
piety of Judah; for when godly persons mingle freely with the
impious,--especially if this intercourse originates from mere motives of
ambition or worldly expediency,--the former will be much more ready to
sink to the level of the worldling than to raise the worldling to their
own.
The influence of this association with the depraved court of Israel
doubtless had its effect upon the heart of Jehoshaphat. He was not drawn
into idolatry, but he probably was less zealous in the service of
Jehovah and in the vindication of his ways. He may have rather
sympathized with the monarchs of Israel in their attempts to establish
their own faith and maintain their own authority, than with the
persecuted people of Israel in their efforts to preserve the worship of
their fathers. While he regretted the idolatry of Jezebel, he may have
censured what would be called the uncourtly intolerance or the bigoted
zeal of the prophets, who uttered such denunciations and threatenings
against the reigning family. Perhaps he pointed out to the few faithful
Israelites whom he might meet in the train of Ahab or at the court of
Israel the propriety of a more gentle mode or a more conciliating
policy. As the friend of Ahab, he betrayed the cause of God, and upheld
his iniquities. In all the persecutions they sustained, we do not find
that the prophets of the Lord ever sought a refuge among their brethren
of Judah. Hardly could they have expected shelter and protection from
the king who was allying his own family with the house of Ahab. They
found shelter among the heathen; they were nourished by miracles; they
were hid in the coverts of the rocks, and were fed by ravens, while
Jehoshaphat and his court were rejoicing in the alliance of Jehoram with
Athaliah--the royal son of Judah with the royal daughter of Israel; and
the worshippers of Jehovah and the devotees of Ashtaroth and Baal were
mingled in their train.
There might have been heavy forebodings and low, suppressed murmurs
among those who remembered the statutes of the Lord, and who recalled
his dealings with his people; but the multitude could rejoice in the
splendour and the festivities of the occasion; the court could exult in
the pomp and display; and wise politicians could talk of the benefits to
the two countries of speaking one language, springing from a common
origin, and preserving their own national integrity, and yet presenting
one united front to the common enemy. And Jehoshaphat may have hailed
this marriage as the master-stroke of his policy, while
religiously-disposed courtiers whispered that a scion of Israel,
transplanted to Judah and nurtured by Jehoshaphat, under the influences
of Zion, must indeed prove a plant of righteousness in this garden of
the Lord.
Did Jezebel fear this? Did this strong-minded, politic, crafty woman
feel that her daughter was placed under influences which might draw her
from the idols of her mother, and make her recreant to the policy of her
father's house?
Jezebel was too strong in the consciousness of her own power, to fear
that her children would oppose her wishes or her plans. All experience
proves that the wife exerts a powerful influence upon the character of
her husband. Even where she has apparently little mental strength, she
may possess great moral power, for evil or for good. This influence
pervades her family, and is felt even while it is despised and
disavowed. When holy and pure, it is as reviving, strengthening,
invigorating as the pure breath of the morning. When it has its source
in a selfish, polluted heart, it comes like the midnight miasma or the
blast of the desert, prostrating and destroying all over which it
passes.
The character of the mother often determines the course and the destiny
of her children. She imprints her own moral lineaments upon her
offspring. She moulds their habits and she transfuses into them the
feelings, motives, and principles which actuate herself. The influence
of the mother is often so perpetuated in her daughters that the
individual seems multiplied as she is faithfully reflected by them.
Where the mental and moral characteristics are marked, they are almost
sure to descend; and the character of Jezebel was one to leave its
impress.
Thus we find Athaliah worthy of the stock from which she sprang. She was
the true, as she seems to be the only daughter of Jezebel. Though early
allied to Jehoshaphat and removed into the kingdom of Judah, she
retained all the idolatrous prepossessions of her father's house, and
she exhibited all the traits which marked her race. She possessed the
qualities which had been so prominently displayed by the course and life
of Jezebel. The same desperate will, the same determined energy, the
same daring courage and dauntless resolution, and the same proud
ambition; and she was even more devoid than her mother of all the kinder
feelings, affections, and sympathies.
Jezebel had resolutely crushed all those affections and sympathies of
her nature which would be likely to check her progress in her career of
crime and power. She had trampled upon all that would obstruct her in
the attainment of her object. Yet some of the feelings of the woman, the
tenderness of the wife, the fondness of the mother, still seem to linger
in her proud heart. Unprincipled as she was, she did not abandon herself
to utter selfishness. In her most atrocious acts she seems to have had
some regard to the aggrandizement of her family and to the gratification
of her husband. The daughter was more depraved than her mother. Athaliah
was utterly selfish, devoid even of the instinct of natural affection. A
character more revolting is not presented to us in the pages of the
historian, sacred or profane.
A woman rioting in blood that she might gratify her ambition! A mother
destroying her offspring that she might possess their inheritance!
Jezebel was a depraved woman, but Athaliah was a monster--a woman
destitute of all the feelings of humanity, working all evil, and only
evil, from the mere love of self. With selfish desires which absorbed
all consideration, and in their intensity prompted to unnatural crimes,
having no object in view beyond her personal gratification or
aggrandizement, there was not even the extenuation to be offered for
Athaliah which could be urged for Jezebel; for the policy of Judea was
opposed to idolatry, and in the family of Jehoshaphat she was surrounded
by influences most favourable to a virtuous course, and influences which
had never rested upon her mother. Under the very shadow of the Temple
she perpetrated her most flagrant crimes.
Although the depravity of Jezebel led her to adopt a corrupt religion,
to reject a pure and holy worship, and to cling to the dark and cruel
rites of heathenism, the voice of conscience was not silenced, the light
of the soul was not entirely extinguished. She felt the need of some
faith--she clung to the altars of her gods. But Athaliah seems to have
sunk into the brutishness of those who own "no God." She seems to have
trampled upon all faith, as she violated all obligation--insensible
alike to the calls of conscience and the aspirations of devotion. She
had no womanly sympathies. She had high mental endowments--she had a
powerful will and strong passions--but she had no affections. There have
been many Jezebels--but few Athaliahs. The affections compose so large a
part of a woman's nature that we disown one who is without them. In her
deepest guilt, in her lowest debasement, they still cling to her; and
raised to the summit of power, they do not often wholly desert her.
The princess of Israel must have been married at an early age, and she
was long restrained by the character of Jehoshaphat from the public
display of her wishes and inclinations. While he lived, Judah still
retained the outward show of reverence for the God of Israel, and
doubtless Athaliah often led her train to the temple of Jehovah; yet the
infection of the character and principles of the daughter of Ahab was at
work. A poisonous leaven spread through the royal family. The younger
princes of Judah were contaminated; and when Jehoshaphat died, this
influence of Athaliah was first manifest in the character of Jehoram. It
is written of him that "he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel,
after the house of Ahab, for the daughter of Ahab was his wife, and he
did evil in the sight of the Lord."
He commenced his reign by the murder of his brethren, the sons of his
father. Jehoshaphat had provided for all his sons, giving them wealth
and appointing them to offices of trust, while he left the kingdom to
Jehoram. And without pretext or apology, Jehoram put them all to death;
and their families were involved, as we may well believe, in their ruin.
They were probably proclaimed outlaws, and then murdered wherever found,
perhaps while dwelling in perfect security and in profound peace; and
with them fell many of the other princes of Judah not so nearly
connected with the royal family. The very commencement of his reign, the
occasion of so much joyful festivity to the court, was thus marked by
crimes which brought utter desolation to the families and terror to the
hearts of the people of his kingdom; and we may well presume that the
woman who afterwards proved herself so reckless and heaven-defying,
prompted to this first crime. She who was herself so ready to commit
deeds of blood would be quick to instigate others.
The whole reign of Jehoram was impious and disgraceful. He erected
altars on all the hills of Judea, to draw his people into the worship of
Baal and Ashtaroth; while he compelled the inhabitants of Jerusalem to
join in the corrupt festivals and the abominable rites of this Syrian
goddess.
Elijah, the prophet of Israel, was commissioned to reprove Jehoram, and
to denounce the impending doom of his house. He was not ordered to
present himself at the court of the King of Judah, but to write his
message. "There came a writing to Jehoram;" and probably the King of
Judah scoffed at the warning, and perhaps referred him to the unexecuted
judgments denounced upon the house of Ahab, and to the present
prosperity of the family, and the continued stability of the kingdom, as
a proof of the fanatical delusion of the pretended prophets of the Lord.
Yet the doom of the guilty Jehoram was accomplished even before the
woes denounced upon Jezebel were fulfilled. Tributary kingdoms revolted,
and in vain he sought to bring them back to obedience. The Philistines
and the Arabians made an incursion into Judah, and carried away all his
wealth, while they took his family captive; and Jehoram, smitten by a
most loathsome and painful disease, died. He was buried without the
usual honours paid to royalty. His memory and his person were alike
offensive.
Upon the accession of Ahaziah, the next king, the influence of Athaliah
is soon recognised. He was the youngest and the only son not carried
into captivity. It is said that "his mother's name was Athaliah, the
daughter of Omri. He also walked in the way of the house of Ahab, for
his mother was his counsellor to do wickedly,"--as wife and mother,
alike unholy. "Wherefore he did evil in the sight of the Lord, like the
house of Ahab, for they were his counsellors, after the death of his
father, to his destruction."
The second son of Ahab had succeeded to the kingdom of Israel, and
Jezebel was surrounded by all the splendours of royalty. Peace and
prosperity still attended her family. The death of Naboth and his sons,
and the denunciations of the prophet, were probably forgotten, or
remembered only to be despised. The royal houses, so closely allied,
maintained a familiar intercourse, and the King of Judah was on a visit
of sympathy to the King of Israel, who was sick and wounded, when the
rebellion of Jehu broke out. It came upon the house of Ahab like a
hurricane: in the midst of security and of apparently profound peace,
the storm swept over and destroyed them.
While the kings were in the palace of Israel, the rapid approach of a
messenger awoke the curiosity rather than the apprehension of the King
of Israel. With the rashness of a doomed man, he rushed upon his own
destruction. As the messengers, whom he had sent to meet the approaching
foes, returned not, the two kings hastened to meet the advancing troop.
And they met Jehu by the vineyard of Naboth, and there the King of
Israel was slain, while the King of Judah fled, mortally wounded, to
Megiddo, where he died. All that belonged to the house of Ahab in Israel
perished in this hour of vengeance and righteous retribution. Jehu
murdered those of the descendants of Jehoram who fell in his way; and
Athaliah hastened to complete the fulfilment of the prophetic doom of
her house by herself instigating the murder of all who remained of the
royal family of Judah, although they were her own descendants! In her
ruthless ambition she destroyed her grandchildren, that she might
herself ascend the throne of Judah. She seems to have exulted in the
blood and carnage which opened her way to royal power. Unmoved by the
fate of her mother, with her sons and her brothers scarce cold in their
untimely graves, by her cruel treachery she consummated the destruction
of her family; and, stained with blood and polluted by crimes, she
seated herself upon the throne of David, and usurped the inheritance of
her children!
For eight years Athaliah held this usurped position. No compunctious
visitings of conscience seem to have haunted her. She felt neither pity
nor remorse. She may have well sustained her ill-gotten power while she
resided amidst the pomp and pageantry of royalty. Her resolute despotism
seems to have held her subjects in awe, and to have quelled them all
into subjection. She had herself wrought the fulfilment of the doom of
her race. As the last of Ahab's children, the sword of divine vengeance
was suspended over her head, and in the time appointed it fell. She was
to die the death of her house--a death of blood.
When the kings of Judah apostatized, while the individuals were
punished, the race was spared. God still remembered his covenant with
David; and, amid all the sin and desolation of Judah, the line of
hereditary descent was unbroken. The root remained, and some scion
worthy of the stock sprang from it.
When Athaliah was ingrafted on the stock of royal Judah, she so debased
it, that it seemed needful to purify it by cutting off all the branches
to the very root. Yet one was saved. And, as if to display his own power
and grace, God is at times pleased to select from the families the most
apostate and unholy, the instrument of his work and the trophy of his
grace. So he made the daughter of Athaliah the nurse and the
instructress of him who was to reform the kingdom of Judah.
Jehoshabeath, wife of the high-priest of the Lord, seems to have escaped
the character and the doom of her family. Her's was a task most
difficult. She was called to oppose the depravity of her mother and to
thwart her bloody policy, and yet not to appear as her accuser and as
hastening the execution of the Divine vengeance. Hard is it to the
virtuous child to reprobate the character and course of the unholy
parent, and yet preserve the reverence due to the relation. Jehoshabeath
appears before us in a light which leaves a most favourable impression.
The saviour of the infant heir of Judah, the son of her brother, she
cherished, instructed and guarded him. At the proper time the
high-priest communicated the secret of the existence of the child to the
princes of the land, and the son of Ahaziah was proclaimed king. No
assault was made upon Athaliah. She rushed, like others of her family,
upon her doom, as if she were infatuated. The tumult of the people, the
triumphant strains of sacred and martial music, the clashing of the
shields of the soldiers as they bore their king aloft, brought the first
tidings of the existence of the last of her race to Athaliah.
The daughter of Jezebel was not easily daunted. Her courage rose in the
hour of danger. She had purchased the throne at a price too great
readily to relinquish the possession of it. She forced her way through
the crowds who surrounded the Temple, and through the bands of soldiers
who guarded the young king, until she confronted the child whose brow
already bore the crown of Judah--a heavy weight for the infant king. In
vain she rent her royal robes, and in vain she cried, "Treason!
Treason!" None adhered to her--none followed her--none perished with
her. She died by the sword,
"And left a name to other times
Link'd with no virtue, but a thousand crimes."
The history of modern nations is not without examples of similar evils
entailed upon those who, professing themselves the heads of a purified
church and a reformed faith, choose (from motives of pride or policy) to
seek an alliance with the adherents of a dark, cruel, and persecuting
superstition. Such a marriage precipitated the Stuarts from the throne
of England, cost one king his life, and the family a kingdom; and the
marriages of policy among princes, contravening the rules of God's word,
are often followed by most disastrous results, and hasten the evils they
are contracted to prevent.
In private life, also, the marriage of those who have renounced this
world for a higher portion, with the worldly and the ungodly, is
generally a source of sin or of sorrow. There can be little congenial
feeling between the spiritual and the earthly; and the servant of God
who chooses a wife from the daughters of sin and the devotees of
pleasure, places himself in a position of peculiar trial.
The spirit of the wife pervades the household. The husband may rule, but
the wife influences. His voice is obeyed, but the wishes of the wife are
consulted. Her friends are the welcome guests. His associates gather
around his board and claim his leisure hour, but her voice whispers to
him in his retirement. She comes between God and his soul. The strongest
of men was shorn of his might by the companion of his bosom; the wisest
was led into foolishness and idolatry by the influence of a corrupt
woman.
We are prone to think of the period to which we have been referring as
one of barbarism, and of the nations of Israel and Judah as ignorant and
uncivilized. Does it not seem as if the very heavens must have been
shrouded and the course of nature changed during the perpetration of
such bloody crimes? Does it not seem as if a natural darkness must have
overspread the land? And yet it was not so. The sun shone in his
brightness, the skies were as serene, the rain and the dew descended,
the vine and the olive ripened, and the flowers shed forth their
sweetness, and all the bustle and show of life went on, as at other
times. The people were oppressed, but the courts of Israel and Judah
were splendid and luxurious; and they doubtless boasted of their
advancing refinement, even when they were sinking into corruption and
depravity. It has ever been the policy of the monarchs who are guilty of
the most atrocious crimes, who shrink from no acts of cruelty, to
promote that despotism which may banish the remembrance of their
enormities, and to dazzle and blind the eyes of their people by the
glare and splendour which surrounds their court. And thus these guilty
monarchs, by the patronage of the licentious festivals of heathen
worship and the alluring rites of a corrupt religion, compelled their
people to sin. They drowned the voice of conscience and prevented all
reflection.
All history has shown us that, as nations have been verging to their
ruin, they have yielded themselves to criminal excess and sensual
indulgence; and the boasted periods of splendour and high refinement
have been but the preludes to long seasons of national calamity or
entire overthrow. Thus we may suppose it to have been with the ancient
descendants of Israel. The courts were splendid and all the arts were
patronized, while the thin veil of refinement was thrown over deeply
corrupt manners. The people, departing from a holy faith, were sinking
into a sullen debasement, or giving themselves to sensual indulgence
and brutal ferocity.
Modern nations have followed in the footsteps of the ancient world. The
same idols are still worshipped under other names--the same passions
rule the unholy heart.
[Illustration]
ESTHER.
[Illustration]