the fact that he was called by the unseen God to deliver Israel went on
step by step to the great victory which made the tribes free. His
responsibility to his fellow-Israelites became clear along with his
sense of the demand made upon him by God. He felt himself like the wind,
like the lightning, like the dew, an agent or instrument of the Most
High, bound to do His part in the course of things. His will was
enlisted in the Divine purpose. This work, this deliverance of Israel
was to be effected by him and no other. He had the elemental powers with
him, in him. The immense armies of Midian could not stand in his way. He
was, as it were, a storm that must hurl them back into the wilderness
defeated and broken.
Now this is the very conception of life which we in our far wider
knowledge are apt to miss, which nevertheless it is our chief business
to grasp and carry into practice. You stand there, a man instructed in a
thousand things of which Gideon was ignorant, instructed especially in
the nature and will of God Whom Christ has revealed. It is your
privilege to take a broad survey of human life, of duty, to look beyond
the present to the eternal future with its infinite possibilities of
gain and loss. But the danger is that year after year all thought and
effort shall be on your own account, that with each changing wind of
circumstance you change your purpose, that you never understand God's
demand nor find the true use of knowledge, will and life in fulfilling
that. Have you a Divine task to effect? You doubt it. Where is anything
that can be called a commission of God? You look this way and that for a
little, then give up the quest. This year finds you without enthusiasm,
without devotion even as you have been in other years. So life ebbs away
and is lost in the wide flat sands of the secular and trivial, and the
soul never becomes part of the strong ocean current of Divine purpose.
We pity or deride some who, with little knowledge and in many errors
alike of heart and head, were yet men as many of us may not claim to be,
alive to the fact of God and their own share in Him. But they were so
limited, those Hebrews, you say, a mere horde of shepherds and
husbandmen; their story is too poor, too chaotic to have any lesson for
us. And in sheer incapacity to read the meaning of the tale you turn
from this Book of Judges, as from a barbarian myth, less interesting
than Homer, of no more application to yourself than the legends of the
Round Table. Yet, all the while, the one supreme lesson for a man to
read and take home to himself is written throughout the book in bold and
living characters--that only when life is realized as a vocation is it
worth living. God may be faintly known, His will but rudely interpreted;
yet the mere understanding that He gives life and rewards effort is an
inspiration. And when His life-giving call ceases to stir and guide,
there can be for the man, the nation, only irresolution and weakness.
A century ago Englishmen were as little devout as they are to-day; they
were even less spiritual, less moved to fine issues. They had their
scepticisms too, their rough ignorant prejudices, their giant errors and
perversities. "We have gained vastly," as Professor Seeley says, "in
breadth of view, intelligence and refinement. Probably what we threw
aside could not be retained; what we adopted was forced upon us by the
age. Nevertheless, we had formerly what I may call a national
discipline, which formed a firm, strongly-marked national character. We
have now only materials, which may be of the first quality, but have not
been worked up. We have everything except decided views and steadfast
purpose--everything in short except character." Yes: the sense of the
nation's calling has decayed, and with it the nation's strength. In
leaders and followers alike purpose fades as faith evaporates, and we
are faithless because we attempt nothing noble under the eye and sceptre
of the King.
You live, let us say, among those who doubt God, doubt whether there is
any redemption, whether the whole Christian gospel and hope are not in
the air, dreams, possibilities, rather than facts of the Eternal Will.
The storm-wind blows and you hear its roaring: that is palpable fact,
divine or cosmic. Its errand will be accomplished. Great rivers flow,
great currents sweep through the ocean. Their mighty urgency who can
doubt? But the spiritual who can believe? You do not feel in the sphere
of the moral, of the spiritual the wind that makes no sound, the current
that rolls silently charged with sublime energies, effecting a vast and
wonderful purpose. Yet here are the great facts; and we must find our
part in that spiritual urgency, do our duty there, or lose all. We must
launch out on the mighty stream of redemption or never reach eternal
light, for all else moves down to death. Christ Himself is to be
victorious in us. The glory of our life is that we can be irresistible
in the region of our duty, irresistible in conflict with the evil, the
selfishness, the falsehood given us to overthrow. To realize that is to
live. The rest is all mere experiment, getting ready for the task of
existence, making armour, preparing food, otherwise, at the worst, a
winter's morning before inglorious death.
One other thing observe, that underlying Gideon's desire to fill the
office of priest there was a dull perception of the highest function of
one man in relation to others. It appears to the common mind a great
thing to rule, to direct secular affairs, to have the command of armies
and the power of filling offices and conferring dignities; and no doubt
to one who desires to serve his generation well, royalty, political
power, even municipal office offer many excellent opportunities. But set
kingship on this side, kingship concerned with the temporal and earthly,
or at best humane aspects of life, and on the other side priesthood of
the true kind which has to do with the spiritual, by which God is
revealed to man and the holy ardour and divine aspirations of the human
will are sustained--and there can be no question which is the more
important. A clever strong man may be a ruler. It needs a good man, a
pious man, a man of heavenly power and insight to be in any right sense
a priest. I speak not of the kind of priest Gideon turned out, nor of a
Jewish priest, nor of any one who in modern times professes to be in
that succession, but of one who really stands between God and men,
bearing the sorrows of his kind, their trials, doubts, cries and prayers
on his heart and presenting them to God, interpreting to the weary and
sad and troubled the messages of heaven. In this sense Christ is the one
True Priest, the eternal and only sufficient High Priest. And in this
sense it is possible for every Christian to hold towards those less
enlightened and less decided in their faith the priestly part.
Now in a dim way the priestly function presented itself to Gideon and
allured him. Sufficient for it he was not, and his ephod became a snare.
Neither could he grasp the wisdom of heaven nor understand the needs of
men. In his hands the sacred art did not prosper, he became content with
the appearance and the gain. It is so with many who take the name of
priests. In truth on one side the term and all it stands for must be
confessed full of danger to him set apart and those who separate him.
Here as pointedly as anywhere must it be affirmed, "Whatsoever is not of
faith is sin." There must be a mastering sense of God's calling on the
side of him who ministers, and on the side of the people recognition of
a message, an example coming to them through this brother of theirs who
speaks what he has received of the Holy Spirit, who offers a personal
living word, a personal testimony. Here, be it called what it may, is
priesthood after the pattern of Christ's, true and beneficent; and apart
from this, priesthood may too easily become, as many have affirmed, a
horrible imposture and baleful lie. Christianity brings the whole to a
point in every life. God's calling, spiritual, complete, comes to each
soul in its place, and the holy oil is for every head. The father,
mother, the employer and the workman, the surgeon, writer,
lawyer--everywhere and in all posts, just as men and women are living
out God's demand upon them--these are His priests, ministrants of the
hearth and the shop, the factory and the office, by the cradle and the
sick-bed, wherever the multitudinous epic of life goes forward. Here is
the common and withal the holiest calling and office. That one dwelling
with God in righteousness and love introduce others into the sanctuary,
declare as a thing he knows the will of the Eternal, uplift the
feebleness of faith and revive the heart of love--this is the highest
task on earth, the grandest of heaven. Of such it may be said, "Ye are a
chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people
that ye should show forth the praises of Him Who hath called you out of
darkness into His marvellous light."
XV.
_ABIMELECH AND JOTHAM._
JUDGES viii. 29-ix. 57.
The history we are tracing moves from man to man; the personal influence
of the hero is everything while it lasts and confusion follows on his
death. Gideon appears as one of the most successful Hebrew judges in
maintaining order. While he was there in Ophrah religion and government
had a centre "and the country was in quietness forty years." A man far
from perfect but capable of mastery held the reins and gave forth
judgment with an authority none could challenge. His burial in the
family sepulchre in Ophrah is specially recorded as if it had been a
great national tribute to his heroic power and skilful administration.
The funeral over, discord began. A rightful ruler there was not. Among
the claimants of power there was no man of power. Gideon left many sons,
but not one of them could take his place. The confederation of cities
half Hebrew, half Canaanite with Shechem at their head, of which we have
already heard, held in check while Gideon lived, now began to control
the politics of the tribes. By using the influence of this league a
usurper who had no title whatever to the confidence of the people
succeeded in exalting himself.
The old town of Shechem situated in the beautiful valley between Ebal
and Gerizim had long been a centre of Baal worship and of Canaanite
intrigue, though nominally one of the cities of refuge and therefore
specially sacred. Very likely the mixed population of this important
town, jealous of the position gained by the hill-village of Ophrah, were
ready to receive with favour any proposals that seemed to offer them
distinction. And when Abimelech, son of Gideon by a slave woman of their
town, went among them with ambitious and crafty suggestions they were
easily persuaded to help him. The desire for a king which Gideon had
promptly set aside lingered in the minds of the people, and by means of
it Abimelech was able to compass his personal ends. First, however, he
had to discredit others who stood in his way. There at Ophrah were the
sons and grandsons of Gideon, threescore and ten of them according to
the tradition, who were supposed to be bent on lording it over the
tribes. Was it a thing to be thought of that the land should have
seventy kings? Surely one would be better, less of an incubus at least,
more likely to do the ruling well. Men of Shechem too would not be
governed from Ophrah if they had any spirit. He, Abimelech, was their
townsman, their bone and flesh. He confidently looked for their support.
We cannot tell how far there was reason for saying that the family of
Gideon were aiming at an aristocracy. They may have had some vague
purpose of the kind. The suggestion, at all events, was cunning and had
its effect. The people of Shechem had stored considerable treasure in
the sanctuary of Baal, and by public vote seventy pieces of silver were
paid out of it to Abimelech. The money was at once used by him in hiring
a band of men like himself, unscrupulous, ready for any desperate or
bloody deed. With these he marched on Ophrah and surprising his brothers
in the house or palace of Jerubbaal speedily put out of his way their
dangerous rivalry. With the exception of Jotham, who had observed the
band approaching and concealed himself, the whole house of Gideon was
dragged to execution. On one stone, perhaps the very rock on which the
altar of Baal once stood, the threescore and nine were barbarously
slain.
A villainous _coup d'etat_ this. From Gideon overthrowing Baal and
proclaiming Jehovah to Abimelech bringing up Baal again with hideous
fratricide--it is a wretched turn of things. Gideon had to some extent
prepared the way for a man far inferior to himself, as all do who are
not utterly faithful to their light and calling; but he never imagined
there could be so quick and shocking a revival of barbarism. Yet the
ephod-dealing, the polygamy, the immorality into which he lapsed were
bound to come to fruit. The man who once was a pure Hebrew patriot begat
a half-heathen son to undo his own work. As for the Shechemites, they
knew quite well to what end they had voted those seventy pieces of
silver; and the general opinion seems to have been that the town had its
money's worth, a life for each piece and, to boot, a king reeking with
blood and shame. Surely it was a well-spent grant. Their confederation,
their god had triumphed. They made Abimelech king by the oak of the
pillar that was in Shechem.
It is the success of the adventurer we have here, that common event.
Abimelech is the oriental adventurer and uses the methods of another age
than ours; yet we have our examples, and if they are less scandalous in
some ways, if they are apart from bloodshed and savagery, they are still
sufficiently trying to those who cherish the faith of divine justice and
providence. How many have to see with amazement the adventurer triumph
by means of seventy pieces of silver from the house of Baal or even from
a holier treasury. He in a selfish and cruel game seems to have speedy
and complete success denied to the best and purest cause. Fighting for
his own hand in wicked or contemptuous hardness and arrogant conceit, he
finds support, applause, an open way. Being no prophet he has honour in
his own town. He knows the art of the stealthy insinuation, the lying
promise and the flattering murmur; he has skill to make the favour of
one leading person a step to securing another. When a few important
people have been hoodwinked, he too becomes important and "success" is
assured.
The Bible, most entirely honest of books, frankly sets before us this
adventurer, Abimelech, in the midst of the judges of Israel, as low a
specimen of "success" as need be looked for; and we trace the well-known
means by which such a person is promoted. "His mother's brethren spake
of him in the ears of all the men of Shechem." That there was little to
say, that he was a man of no character mattered not the least. The thing
was to create an impression so that Abimelech's scheme might be
introduced and forced. So far he could intrigue and then, the first
steps gained, he could mount. But there was in him none of the mental
power that afterwards marked Jehu, none of the charm that survives with
the name of Absalom. It was on jealousy, pride, ambition he played as
the most jealous, proud and ambitious; yet for three years the Hebrews
of the league, blinded by the desire to have their nation like others,
suffered him to bear the name of king.
And by this sovereignty the Israelites who acknowledged it were doubly
and trebly compromised. Not only did they accept a man without a record,
they believed in one who was an enemy to his country's religion, one
therefore quite ready to trample upon its liberty. This is really the
beginning of a worse oppression than that of Midian or of Jabin. It
shows on the part of Hebrews generally as well as those who tamely
submitted to Abimelech's lordship a most abject state of mind. After the
bloody work at Ophrah the tribes should have rejected the fratricide
with loathing and risen like one man to suppress him. If the
Baal-worshippers of Shechem would make him king there ought to have been
a cause of war against them in which every good man and true should have
taken the field. We look in vain for any such opposition to the usurper.
Now that he is crowned, Manasseh, Ephraim and the North regard him
complacently. It is the world all over. How can we wonder at this when
we know with what acclamations kings scarcely more reputable than he
have been greeted in modern times? Crowds gather and shout, fires of
welcome blaze; there is joy as if the millennium had come. It is a king
crowned, restored, his country's head, defender of the faith. Vain is
the hope, pathetic the joy.
There is no man of spirit to oppose Abimelech in the field. The duped
nation must drink its cup of misrule and blood. But one appears of keen
wit, apt and trenchant in speech. At least the tribes shall hear what
one sound mind thinks of this coronation. Jotham, as we saw, escaped the
slaughter at Ophrah. In the rear of the murderer he has crossed the
hills and he will now utter his warning, whether men hear or whether
they forbear. There is a crowd assembled for worship or deliberation at
the oak of the pillar. Suddenly a voice is heard ringing clearly out
between hill and hill, and the people looking up recognize Jotham who
from a spur of rock on the side of Gerizim demands their audience.
"Hearken unto me," he cries, "ye men of Shechem, that God may hearken
unto you." Then in his parable of the olive, the fig-tree, the vine and
the bramble, he pronounces judgment and prophecy. The bramble is exalted
to be king, but on these terms, that the trees come and put their trust
under its shadow; "but if not, then let fire come out of the bramble and
devour the cedars of Lebanon."
It is a piece of satire of the best order, brief, stinging, true. The
craving for a king is lashed and then the wonderful choice of a ruler.
Jotham speaks as an anarchist, one might say, but with God understood as
the centre of law and order. It is a vision of the Theocracy taking
shape from a keen and original mind. He figures men as trees growing
independently, dutifully. And do trees need a king? Are they not set in
their natural freedom each to yield fruit as best it can after its kind?
Men of Shechem, Hebrews all, if they will only attend to their proper
duties and do quiet work as God wills, appear to Jotham to need a king
no more than the trees. Under the benign course of nature, sunshine and
rain, wind and dew, the trees have all the restraint they need, all the
liberty that is good for them. So men under the providence of God,
adoring and obeying Him, have the best control, the only needful
control, and with it liberty. Are they not fools then to go about
seeking a tyrant to rule them, they who should be as cedars of Lebanon,
willows by the watercourses, they who are made for simple freedom and
spontaneous duty? It is something new in Israel this keen
intellectualizing; but the fable, pointed as it is, teaches nothing for
the occasion. Jotham is a man full of wit and of intelligence, but he
has no practicable scheme of government, nothing definite to oppose to
the mistake of the hour. He is all for the ideal, but the time and the
people are unripe for the ideal. We see the same contrast in our own
day; both in politics and the church the incisive critic discrediting
subordination altogether fails to secure his age. Men are not trees.
They are made to obey and trust. A hero or one who seems a hero is ever
welcome, and he who skilfully imitates the roar of the lion may easily
have a following, while Jotham, intensely sincere, highly gifted, a
true-sighted man, finds none to mind him.
Again the fable is directed against Abimelech. What was this man to whom
Shechem had sworn fealty? An olive, a fig-tree, fruitful and therefore
to be sought after? Was he a vine capable of rising on popular support
to useful and honourable service? Not he. It was the bramble they had
chosen, the poor grovelling jagged thorn-bush that tears the flesh,
whose end is to feed the fire of the oven. Who ever heard of a good or
heroic deed Abimelech had done? He was simply a contemptible upstart,
without moral principle, as ready to wound as to flatter, and they who
chose him for king would too soon find their error. Now that he had done
something, what was it? There were Israelites among the crowd that
shouted in his honour. Had they already forgotten the services of Gideon
so completely as to fall down before a wretch red-handed from the murder
of their hero's sons? Such a beginning showed the character of the man
they trusted, and the same fire which had issued from the bramble at
Ophrah would flame out upon themselves. This was but the beginning; soon
there would be war to the knife between Abimelech and Shechem.
We find instruction in the parable by regarding the answers put into the
mouth of this tree and that when they are invited to wave to and fro
over the others. There are honours which are dearly purchased, high
positions which cannot be assumed without renouncing the true end and
fruition of life. One for example who is quietly and with increasing
efficiency doing his part in a sphere to which he is adapted must set
aside the gains of long discipline if he is to become a social leader.
He can do good where he is. Not so certain is it that he will be able to
serve his fellows well in public office. It is one thing to enjoy the
deference paid to a leader while the first enthusiasm on his behalf
continues, but it is quite another thing to satisfy all the demands made
as years go on and new needs arise. When any one is invited to take a
position of authority he is bound to consider carefully his own
aptitudes. He needs also to consider those who are to be subjects or
constituents and make sure that they are of the kind his rule will fit.
The olive looks at the cedar and the terebinth and the palm. Will they
admit his sovereignty by-and-by though now they vote for it? Men are
taken with the candidate who makes a good impression by emphasizing what
will please and suppressing opinions that may provoke dissent. When they
know him, how will it be? When criticism begins, will the olive not be
despised for its gnarled stem, its crooked branches and dusky foliage?
The fable does not make the refusal of olive and fig-tree and vine rest
on the comfort they enjoy in the humbler place. That would be a mean and
dishonourable reason for refusing to serve. Men who decline public
office because they love an easy life find here no countenance. It is
for the sake of its fatness, the oil it yields, grateful to God and man
in sacrifice and anointing, that the olive-tree declines. The fig-tree
has its sweetness and the vine its grapes to yield. And so men despising
self-indulgence and comfort may be justified in putting aside a call to
office. The fruit of personal character developed in humble unobtrusive
natural life is seen to be better than the more showy clusters forced by
public demands. Yet, on the other hand, if one will not leave his books,
another his scientific hobbies, a third his fireside, a fourth his
manufactory, in order to take his place among the magistrates of a city
or the legislators of a land the danger of bramble supremacy is near.
Next a wretched Abimelech will appear; and what can be done but set him
on high and put the reins in his hand? Unquestionably the claims of
church or country deserve most careful weighing, and even if there is a
risk that character may lose its tender bloom the sacrifice must be made
in obedience to an urgent call. For a time, at least, the need of
society at large must rule the loyal life.
The fable of Jotham, in so far as it flings sarcasm at the persons who
desire eminence for the sake of it and not for the good they will be
able to do, is an example of that wisdom which is as unpopular now as
ever it has been in human history, and the moral needs every day to be
kept full in view. It is desire for distinction and power, the
opportunity of waving to and fro over the trees, the right to use this
handle and that to their names that will be found to make many eager,
not the distinct wish to accomplish something which the times and the
country need. Those who solicit public office are far too often selfish,
not self-denying, and even in the church there is much vain ambition.
But people will have it so. The crowd follows him who is eager for the
suffrages of the crowd and showers flattery and promises as he goes. Men
are lifted into places they cannot fill, and after keeping their seats
unsteadily for a time they have to disappear into ignominy.