country's enemy. "Blessed among women shall Jael, the wife of Heber be;
with the hammer she smote Sisera; at her feet he curled up, he fell."
Exulting in every circumstance of the tragedy, she adds a description of
Sisera's mother and her ladies expecting his return as a victor laden
with spoil, and listening eagerly for the wheels of that chariot which
never again should roll through the streets of Harosheth. As to the
whole of this passage, our estimate of Deborah's knowledge and spiritual
insight does not require us to regard her praise and her judgment as
absolute. She rejoices in a deed which has crowned the great victory
over the master of nine hundred chariots, the terror of Israel; she
glories in the courage of another woman, who single-handed finished that
tyrant's career; she does not make God responsible for the deed. Let the
outburst of her enthusiastic relief stand as the expression of intense
feeling, the rebound from fear and anxiety of the patriotic heart. We
need not weight ourselves with the suspicion that the prophetess
reckoned Jael's deed the outcome of a Divine thought. No: but we may
believe this of Jael, that she is on the side of Israel, her sympathy
so far repressed by the league of her people with Jabin, yet prompting
her to use every opportunity of serving the Hebrew cause. It is clear
that if the Kenite treaty had meant very much and Jael had felt herself
bound by it, her tent would have been an asylum for the fugitive. But
she is against the enemies of Israel; her heart is with the people of
Jehovah in the battle and she is watching eagerly for signs of the
victory she desires them to win. Unexpected, startling, the sign appears
in the fleeing captain of Jabin's host, alone, looking wildly for
shelter. "Turn in, my lord; turn in." Will he enter? Will he hide
himself in a woman's tent? Then to her will be committed vengeance. It
will be an omen that the hour of Sisera's fate has come. Hospitality
itself must yield; she will break even that sacred law to do stern
justice on a coward, a tyrant, and an enemy of God.
A line of thought like this is entirely in harmony with the Arab
character. The moral ideas of the desert are rigorous, and contempt
rapidly becomes cruel. A tent woman has few elements of judgment, and,
the balance turning, her conclusion will be quick, remorseless. Jael is
no blameless heroine; neither is she a demon. Deborah, who understands
her, reads clearly the rapid thoughts, the swift decision, the
unscrupulous act and sees, behind all, the purpose of serving Israel.
Her praise of Jael is therefore with knowledge; but she herself would
not have done the thing she praises. All possible explanations made, it
remains a murder, a wild savage thing for a woman to do, and we may ask
whether among the tents of Zaanannim Jael was not looked on from that
day as a woman stained and shadowed,--one who had been treacherous to a
guest.
Not here can the moral be found that the end justifies the means, or
that we may do evil with good intent; which never was a Bible doctrine
and never can be. On the contrary, we find it written clear that the end
does not justify the means. Sisera must live on and do the worst he may
rather than any soul should be soiled with treachery or any hand defiled
by murder. There are human vermin, human scorpions and vipers. Is
Christian society to regard them, to care for them? The answer is that
Providence regards them and cares for them. They are human after all,
men whom God has made, for whom there are yet hopes, who are no worse
than others would be if Divine grace did not guard and deliver. Rightly
does Christian society affirm that a human being in peril, in suffering,
in any extremity common to men is to be succoured as a man, without
inquiry whether he is good or vile. What then of justice and man's
administration of justice? This, that they demand a sacred calm,
elevation above the levels of personal feeling, mortal passion and
ignorance. Law is to be of no private, sudden, unconsidered
administration. Only in the most solemn and orderly way is the trial of
the worst malefactor to be gone about, sentence passed, justice
executed. To have reached this understanding of law with regard to all
accused and suspected persons and all evildoers is one of the great
gains of the Christian period. We need not look for anything like the
ideal of justice in the age of the judges; deeds were done then and
zealously and honestly praised which we must condemn. They were meant to
bring about good, but the sum of human violence was increased by them
and more work made for the moral reformer of after times. And going back
to Jael's deed we see that it gave Israel little more than vengeance.
In point of fact the crushing defeat of the army left Sisera powerless,
discredited, open to the displeasure of his master. He could have done
Israel no more harm.
One point remains. Emphatically are we reminded that life continually
brings us to sudden moments in which we must act without time for
careful reflection, the spirit of our past flashing out in some quick
deed or word of fate. Sisera's past drove him in panic over the hills to
Zaanannim. Jael's past came with her to the door of the tent; and the
two as they looked at each other in that tragic moment were at once,
without warning, in a crisis for which every thought and passion of
years had made a way. Here the self-pampering of a vain man had its
issue. Here the woman, undisciplined, impetuous, catching sight of the
means to do a deed, moves to the fatal stroke like one possessed. It is
the sort of thing we often call madness, and yet such insanity is but
the expression of what men and women choose to be capable of. The casual
allowance of an impulse here, a craving there, seems to mean little
until the occasion comes when their accumulated force is sharply or
terribly revealed. The laxity of the past thus declares itself; and on
the other hand there is often a gathering of good to a moment of
revelation. The soul that has for long years fortified itself in pious
courage, in patient well-doing, in high and noble thought, leaps one
day, to its own surprise, to the height of generous daring or heroic
truth. We determine the issue of crises which we cannot foresee.
VIII.
_DEBORAH'S SONG: A DIVINE VISION._
JUDGES v.
The song of Deborah and Barak is twofold, the first portion, ending with
the eleventh verse, a chant of rising hope and pious encouragement
during the time of preparation and revival, the other a song of battle
and victory throbbing with eager patriotism and the hot breath of
martial excitement. In the former part God is celebrated as the Helper
of Israel from of old and from afar; He is the spring of the movement in
which the singer rejoices, and in His praise the strophes culminate. But
human nature asserts itself after the great and decisive triumph in the
vivid touches of the latter canto. In it more is told of the doings of
men, and there is picturesque fiery exultation over the fallen. One
might almost think that Deborah, herself childless, glories over the
mother of Sisera in the utter desolation which falls on her when she
hears the tidings of her son's defeat and death. Yet this mood ceases
abruptly, and the song returns to Jehovah, Whose friends are lifted up
to joy and strength by His availing help.
The main interest of the twofold song lies in its religious colour, for
here the pious ardour of the Israel of the judges comes to finest
expression. As a whole it is more patriotic than moral, more warlike
than religious, and thus unquestionably reflects the temper of the time.
What ideas do we find in it of the relation of Israel to God and of God
to Israel, what conceptions of the Divine character? Jehovah is invoked
and praised as the God of the Hebrews alone. He seems to have no
interest in the Canaanites, nor compassion towards them. Yet the
grandeur of the Divine forthgoing is declared in bold and striking
imagery, and the high resolves of men are clearly traced to the Spirit
of the Almighty. Duty to God is linked with duty to country, and it is
at least suggested that Israel without Jehovah is nothing and has no
right to a place among the peoples. The nation exists for the glory of
its Heavenly King, to make known His power and His righteous acts. A
strain like this in a war-song belonging to the time of Israel's
semi-barbarism bears no uncertain promise. From the well-spring out of
which it flows clear and sparkling there will come other songs, with
tenderer music and holier longing,--songs of spiritual hope and generous
desire for Messianic peace.
* * * * *
1. The first religious note is struck in what may be called the opening
Hallelujah, although the ejaculation, "Bless the Lord," is not, in
Hebrew, that which afterwards became the great refrain of sacred song.
"For that leaders led in Israel,
For that the people offered themselves willingly:
Bless ye Jehovah."
Here is more than belief in Providence. It is faith in the spiritual
presence and power of God swaying the souls of men. Has Deborah seen at
last, after long efforts to rouse the careless people, one and another
responding to her appeals and seeking her tent among the hills? Has she
witnessed the vows of the chiefs of Issachar and Zebulun that they would
not be wanting in the day of battle? Not to herself but to the God of
Israel is the new temper ascribed. Jehovah, Who touched her own heart,
has now touched many another. For years she had been aware of holier
influences than came to her from the people among whom she lived. In
secret, in the silence of the heart, she had found herself mastered by
thoughts that none around her shared. She has well accounted for them.
Jehovah has spoken to her, Jehovah caring still for His people, waiting
to redeem them from bondage. And now, when her prophetic cry finds echo
in other souls, when men who were asleep rise up and declare their
purpose, especially when from this side and that companies of brave
youths and resolute elders come to her--from the slopes of Carmel, from
the hills of Gilead--the fire of hope in their eyes, how otherwise
explain the upspringing of energy and devotion than as the work of the
Spirit that has moved her own soul? To Jehovah is all the praise.
Common enough in our day is a profession of belief in God as the source
of every good desire and right effort, as inspiring the charity of the
generous, the affection of the loving, the fidelity of the true. But if
our faith is deep and real it brings us much nearer than we usually feel
ourselves to be to Him Who is the Life indeed. The existence and energy
of God are assured to those who have this insight. Every kindness done
by man to man is a testimony against which denial of the Divine life has
no power. Though the intellect searching far afield makes out only as
it were some few dim and indistinct footprints of a Mighty Being Who has
passed by, seen at intervals on the plains of history, then lost in the
morasses or on the rocky ground, there ought to be found in every human
life daily evidence of Divine grace and wisdom. The good, the true, the
noble constantly appeal to men, find men; and through these God finds
them. When a magnanimous word is spoken, God is heard. When a deed is
done in love, in purity, in courage or pity, God is seen. When out of
languor and corruption and self-indulgence men arise and set their faces
to the steep of duty, God is revealed. He in Whom we trust for the
redemption of the world never leaves Himself without a witness, whether
faith perceives or unbelief denies. The human story unfolds a Divine
urgency by which the progress, the evolution of all that is good proceed
from age to age. Man has never been left to nature alone nor to himself
alone. The supernatural has always mingled with his life. He has
resisted often, he has rebelled; yet conscience has not ceased, God has
not withdrawn. This living energy of Jehovah, not only as belonging to
the past but discovered in the new zeal of Israel, Deborah saw, and in
virtue of the revelation she was far before her time. For the fresh life
of the people, for the willing self-devotion of so many to the great
cause, she lifted her voice in praise to Israel's Eternal Friend.
2. The next passage may be called a prologue in the heavens. Partly
historical, it is chiefly a vision of Jehovah's age-long work for His
people. In words that flash and roll the song describes the glorious
advent of the Most High, nature astir with His presence, the mountains
shaking under His tread.
The seat of the Divine Majesty appears to the prophetess to be in Seir.
She looks across the hills of the south and passes beyond the desert to
that place of mystery where God spoke in thunder and proclaimed Himself
in the Law. The imagery points to the phenomena of earthquake and a
fearful lightning storm accompanied with heavy rain. These, the most
striking natural symbols of the supernatural, form the materials of the
strophe. Perhaps even as the song is chanted the thunders of Sinai are
echoed in a great storm that shakes the sky and rolls among the hills.
The outward signs represent the new impressions of Divine power and
authority which are startling and rousing the tribes. They have heard no
voices, seen no tokens of God for many a year. He Who led their fathers
out of bondage, He Who marched with them through the desert, has been
forgotten; but He returns, He is with them again. The office of the
prophetess is to celebrate God's presence and excite in the dull souls
of men some feeling of His majesty. Sinai once trembled and was dismayed
before God. The great peak beside which Tabor is but a mound flowed down
in volcanic glow and rush. It is He Whose coming Deborah hears in the
beating storm, He Whose victorious feet shake the hills of Ephraim. Have
the people forsaken their King? Let them seek Him, trust Him now. Under
the shadow of His wings there is refuge; before His arrows and the
fierce floods He pours from heaven who can stand?
It has been well said that for the Israel of ancient times all natural
phenomena--a storm, a hurricane or a flood--had more than ordinary
import. "Forbidden to recognise and, as it were, grasp the God of heaven
in any material form, or to adore even in the heavens themselves any
constant symbols of His being and His power, yet yearning more in
spirit for manifestations of His invisible existence, Israel's mind was
ever on the stretch for any hint in nature of the unseen Celestial
Being, for any glimpse of His mysterious ways, and its courage rose to a
far higher pitch when Divine encouragement and impulse seemed to come
from the material world."[5] From the images of Baal and the Ashtaroth
Israel had turned; but where was their Heavenly King? The answer came
with marvellous power when Deborah in the midst of the rolling thunder
could say, "Lord, when Thou wentest forth out of Seir, when Thou
marchedst out of the field of Edom, the earth trembled, the heavens also
dropped. The mountains flowed down at the presence of Jehovah." If the
people bethought themselves of the clear demonstration of Divine majesty
made to their fathers, they would realize God once more as the Ruler in
heaven and earth. Then would courage revive, and in the faith of the
Almighty they would go forth to victory.
[5] Ewald.
Now was there in this faith an element of reason, a correspondence with
fact? Is it fancy and nothing else, the poetic flight of an ardent soul
eager to rouse a nation? Have we here an arbitrary connection made
between striking natural events and a Divine Person throned in the
heavens Whose existence the prophetess assumes, Whose supposed claim to
obedience haunts her mind? In such a question our age utters its
scepticism.
An age it is of science, of positive science. Toiling for centuries at
the task of understanding the phenomenal, research has at length assumed
the right to tell us what we must believe concerning the world--what we
are to _believe_, observe, for it is a new creed and nothing else that
confronts us here. "The government of the world," says one, "must not be
considered as determined by an extramundane intelligence, but by one
immanent in the cosmical forces and their relations." Another says: "The
world or matter with its properties which we term forces must have
existed from eternity and must last for ever--in one word, the world
cannot have been created.... The ever-changing action of the natural
forces is the fundamental cause of all that arises and perishes." Or
again, not most recent in time but entirely modern in temper, we have
the following: "Science has gradually taken all the positions of the
childish belief of the peoples; it has snatched thunder and lightning
from the hands of the gods. The stupendous powers of the Titans of the
olden time have been grasped by the fingers of man. That which appeared
inexplicable, miraculous and the work of a supernatural power has by the
touch of science proved to be the effect of hitherto unknown natural
forces. Everything that happens does so in a natural way, _i.e._, in a
mode determined only by accidental or necessary coalition of existing
materials and their immanent natural forces." Here is dogma forced on
faith with fine energy; and what more is to be said when judgment is
given--"I have searched the heavens, but have nowhere found the traces
of a God"?
We hear the boast that no song of Hebrew seer can withstand this modern
wisdom, that the superstition of Bible faith shall vanish like starlight
before the rising sun. To science every opinion shall submit. But wait.
It is dogmatism against belief after all, authority against authority,
and the one in a lower region than the other, with vastly inferior
sanctions. Natural science declares the present result of its
observation of the universe, investigation brief, superficial, and
limited to one small corner of the whole. Yet these deliverances are to
be set above the science which deals with existence on the highest
plane, the spiritual, solving deepest problems of life and conscience,
finding perpetual support in the experience of men. The claim is
somewhat large; it lacks the proof of service; it lacks verification.
Science boasts greatly, as is natural to its adolescence. But at what
point can it dare to say, Here is final truth, here is certainty? We do
not repel our debt to the discoverer when we maintain that natural
science is only watching the surface of a stream for a few miles along
its course, while the springs far away among the eternal hills and the
outflow into the infinite ocean are never viewed. Are we taunted with
believing? Those who taunt us must supply for their part something more
than inference ere we trust all to their wisdom. The "Force" that is so
much invoked, what is it so far as the definitions of science go?
Effects we see; Force never. All statements as to the nature of force
are pure dogma. It is declared that there are necessary and eternal laws
of matter. What makes them necessary, and who can prove their
everlastingness? Using such words men pass infinitely beyond material
research--they infer--they assert. In the region of natural science we
can affirm nothing to be eternal, and even _necessity_ is a word that
has no warrant. It is only in the soul, in the region of moral ideas, we
come on that which endures, which is necessary, which has constant
reality. And it is here that our belief in God as universal Creator, the
Source of power and life, the One Agent, the King eternal, immortal and
invisible, finds root and strength.
The battle between materialism and religious faith is not a battle in
which facts are arrayed on one side and inferences and dreams on the
other. The array is of facts against facts, as we have said, and with an
immense difference of value. Is it an established sequence that when the
electricity in the clouds is not in equipoise with that of the earth,
under certain conditions there is a thunderstorm? It is surely a
sequence of higher moment that when the sense of righteousness seizes
the minds of men they rise against iniquity and there is a revolution.
There natural forces operate, here spiritual. But on which side is the
indication of eternity? Which of these sequences can better claim to
give a key to the order of the universe? Surely if the evolution of the
ages, so far, has culminated in man with his capability of knowing and
serving the true, the just, the good, these facts of his mind and life
are the highest of which we can take cognizance, and in them, if
anywhere, we must find the key to all knowledge, the reason of all
phenomena. Evolutionary science itself must agree to this. In the
movements of nature we find no advance to fixity and finality. Nature
labours, men labour with or against nature; but the flux of things is
perpetual; there is no escape from change. In the efforts of the
spiritual life it is not so. When we strive for equalness, for verity,
for purity, we have glimpses then of the changeless order which we must
needs call Divine. Here is the indication of eternity; and as we
investigate, as we experience, we come to certitude, we reach larger
vision, larger faith. That which endures rises clear above that which
appears and passes.
Returning to Deborah's song and her vision of the coming of God in the
impetuous storm, we see the practical value of Theism. One great idea,
comprehensive and majestic, leads thought beyond symbol and change to
the All-righteous Lord. To attribute phenomena to "Nature" is a sterile
mode of thought; nothing is done for life. To attribute phenomena to a
variety of superhuman persons limits and weakens the religious idea
sought after; still one is lost in the changeable. Theism delivers the
soul from both evils and sets it on a free upward path, stern yet
alluring. By this path the Hebrew prophet rose to the high and fruitful
conceptions which draw men together in responsibility and worship. The
eternal governs all, rules every change; and that eternal is the holy
will of God. The omnipotence nature obeys is the omnipotence of right.
Israel returning to God will find Him coming to the help of His people
in the awful or kindly movements of the natural world. Our view in one
sense extends beyond that of the Hebrew seer. We find the purpose
disclosed in natural phenomena to be somewhat different. Not the
protection of a favoured race, but the discipline of humanity is what we
perceive. Ours is an expansion of the Hebrew faith, revealing the same
Divine goodness engaged in a redeeming work of wider scope and longer
duration.
The point is still in doubt among us whether the good, the true, the
right, are invincible. Those who go forth in the service of God are
often borne down by the graceless multitude. From age to age the problem
of God's supremacy seems to remain in suspense, and men are not afraid,
in the name of foulest iniquity, to try issues with the best. Be it so.
The Divine work is slow. Even the best need discipline that they may
have strength, and God is in no haste to carry His argument against
atheism. There is abundance of time. Those bent on evil or misled by
falsehood, those who are on the wrong side though they consider
themselves soldiers of a good cause may gain on many a field, yet their
gain will turn out in the long run to be loss, and they who lose and
fall are really the victors. There is defeat that is better than
success. Other ages than belong to this world's history are yet to dawn,
and the discovery will come to every intelligence that he alone triumphs
whose life is spent for righteousness and love, in fidelity to God and
man.
3. Let it be allowed that we find the latter canto of Deborah's song
expressive of faith rather than of clear morality, pointing to a
spiritual future rather than exhibiting actual knowledge of the Divine
character. We hear of the righteous acts of the Lord, and the note is
welcome, yet most likely the thought is of retributive justice and
punishment that overtakes the enemies of Israel. When the remnant of the
nobles and the people come down--that remnant of brave and faithful men
never wanting to Israel--the Lord comes down with them, their Guide and
Strength. Meroz is cursed because the inhabitants do not go forth to the
help of Jehovah. And finally there is glorying over Sisera because he is
an enemy of Israel's Unseen King. There is trust, there is devotion, but
no largeness of spiritual view.