the sin of Gibeah could rouse such indignation and awaken the signal
vengeance of the united tribes. The answer is to be found partly in the
singular and dreadful device which the indignant husband used in making
the deed known. The ghastly symbols of outrage told the tale in a way
that was fitted to stir the blood of the whole country. Everywhere the
hideous thing was made vivid and a sense of utmost atrocity was kindled
as the dissevered members were borne from town to town. It is easy to
see that womanhood must have been stirred to the fieriest indignation,
and manhood was bound to follow. What woman could be safe in Gibeah
where such things were done? And was Gibeah to go unpunished? If so,
every Hebrew city might become the haunt of miscreants. Further there is
the fact that the woman so foully murdered, though a concubine, was the
concubine of a Levite. The measure of sacredness with which the Levites
were invested gave to this crime, frightful enough in any view, the
colour of sacrilege. How degenerate were the people of Gibeah when a
servant of the altar could be treated with such foul indignity and
driven to so extraordinary an appeal for justice? There could be no
blessing on the tribes if they allowed the doers or condoners of this
thing to go unpunished. Every Levite throughout the land must have taken
up the cry. From Bethel and other sanctuaries the call for vengeance
would spread and echo till the nation was roused. Thus, in part at
least, we can explain the vehemence of feeling which drew together the
whole fighting force of the tribes.
The doubt will yet remain whether there could have been so much purity
of life or respect for purity as to sustain the public indignation. Some
may say, Is there not here a sufficient reason for questioning the
veracity of the narrative? First, however, let it be remembered that
often where morals are far from reaching the level of pure monogamic
life distinctions between right and wrong are sharply drawn.
Acquaintance with phases of modern life that are most painful to the
mind sensitively pure reveals a fixed code which none may infringe
without bringing upon themselves reprobation, perhaps more vehement than
in a higher social grade visits the breach of a higher law. It is the
fact that concubinage has its unwritten acknowledgment and protecting
customs. There is marriage that is only a name; there is concubinage
that gives the woman more rights than one who is married. Against the
immorality and the gross evils of cohabitation is to be set this
unwritten law. And arguing from popular feeling in our great cities we
reach the conclusion that in ancient Israel where concubinage prevailed
there was a wide and keen feeling as to the rights of concubines and the
necessity of upholding them. Many women must have been in this relation,
below those who could count themselves legally married, and all the
more that the concubine occupied a place inferior to that of the lawful
wife would popular opinion take up her cause and demand the punishment
of those who did her wrong.
And here we are led to a point which demands clear statement and
recognition. It has been too readily supposed that polygamy is always a
result of moral decline and indicates a low state of domestic purity. It
may, in truth, be a rude step of progress. Has it been sufficiently
noted that in those countries in which the name of the mother not of the
father descended to the children the reason may be found in universal or
almost universal unchastity? In Egypt at one time the law gave to women,
especially to mothers, peculiar rights; but to praise Egyptian
civilization for this reason and hold up its treatment of women as an
example to the nineteenth century is an extraordinary venture. The
Israelites, however lax, were doubtless in advance of the society of
Thebes. Among the Canaanites the moral degradation of women, whatever
freedom may have gone with it, was so terrible that the Hebrew with his
two or three wives and concubines, but with a morality otherwise severe,
must have represented a new and holier social order as well as a new and
holier religion. It is therefore not incredible but appears simply in
accordance with the instincts and customs proper to the Hebrew people
that the sin of Gibeah should provoke overwhelming indignation. There is
no pretence of purity, no hypocritical anger. The feeling is sound and
real. Perhaps in no other matter of a moral kind would there have been
such intense and unanimous exasperation. A point of justice or of belief
would not have so moved the tribes. The better self of Israel appears
asserting its claim and power. And the miscreants of Gibeah representing
the lower self, verily an unclean spirit, are detested and denounced on
every hand.
The time was that of fresh feeling, unwarped by those customs which in
the guise of civilisation and refinement afterwards corrupted the
nation. And we may see the prophetic or hortatory use of the narrative
for an after age in which doings as vile as those at Gibeah were
sanctioned by the court and protected even by religious leaders. It
would be hoped by the sacred historian that this tale of the fierce
indignation of the tribes might rouse afresh the same moral feeling. He
would fain stir a careless people and their priests by the exhibition of
this tumultuous vengeance. Nor can we say that the necessity for the
impressive lesson has ceased. In the heart of our large cities vices as
vile as those of Gibeah are heard muttering in the nightfall, life as
abandoned lurks and festers creating a social gangrene.
Recognise, then, in these chapters a truth for all time boldly drawn
out--the great truth as to moral reform and national purity. Law will
not cure moral evils; a statute book the purest and noblest will not
save. Those who by the impulse of the Spirit gathered the various
traditions of Israel's life knew well that on a living conscience in men
everything depended, and they at least indicate the further truth which
many of ourselves have not grasped, that the early and rude workings of
conscience, producing stormy and terrible results, are a necessary stage
of development. As there must be energy before there can be noble
energy, so there must be moral vigour, it may be rude, violent,
ignorant, a stream rushing out of barbarian hills, sweeping with most
appalling vehemence, before there can be spiritual life patient calm and
holy. Law is a product not a cause; it is not the code we make that will
preserve us but the God-given conscience that informs the code and ever
goes before it a pillar of fire, at times flashing vivid lightning. Even
Christian law cannot save a people if it be merely a series of
injunctions. Nothing will do but the mind of Christ in every man and
woman continually inspiring and directing life. The reformer who thinks
that a statute or regulation will end some sin or evil custom is in sad
error. Say the decree he contends for is enacted; but have the
consciences of those against whom it is made been quickened? If not, the
law merely expresses a popular mood and the life of the whole community
will not be permanently raised in tone.
The church finds here a perpetual mission of influence. Her doctrine is
but half her message. From the doctrine as from an eternal fount must go
life-giving moral heat in every range, and the Spirit is ever with her
to make the word like a fire. Her duty is wide as righteousness, great
as man's destiny; it is never ended, for each generation comes in a new
hour with new needs. The church, say some, is finishing its work; it is
doomed to be one of the broken moulds of life. But the church that is
the instructor of conscience and kindles the flame of righteousness has
a mission to the ages. We are far yet from that day of the Lord when all
the people shall be prophets; and until then how can the world live
without the church? It would be a body without a soul.
Conscience the oracle of life, conscience working badly rather than held
in chains of mere rule without spontaneity and inspiration, moral energy
widespread personal and keen, however rude--here is one of the notes of
the sacred writer; and another note, no less distinct, is the assertion
of moral intolerance. It has not occurred to this prophetic annalist
that endurance of evil has any curative power. He is a Hebrew, full of
indignation against the vile and false, and he demands a heat of moral
force in his people. Foul things are done at the court and even in the
temple; there is a depraving indifference to purity, a loose notion
(very similar to the idea of our day), that all the sides of life should
have free play and that the heathen had much to teach Israel. The whole
of the narrative before us is infused with a righteous protest against
evil, a holy plea for intolerance of sin. Will men refuse instruction
and persist in making themselves one with bestiality and outrage? Then
judgment must deal with them on the ground they have chosen to occupy,
and until they repent the conscience of the race must repudiate them
together with their sin. Along with a keenly burning conscience there
goes this necessity of moral intolerance. Charity is good, but not
always in place; and brotherhood itself demands at times strong
uncompromising judgment of the evil-doer. How else among men of weak
wills and wavering hearts can righteousness vindicate and enforce itself
as the eternal reality of life? Compassion is strong only when it is
linked to unfaltering declarations; mercy is divine only when it turns a
front of mail to wickedness and flashes lightning at proud wrong. Any
other kind of charity is but a new offence--the sinner pardoning sin.
Now the people of Gibeah were not all vile. The wretches whose crime
called for judgment were but the rabble of the town. And we can see that
the tribes when they gathered in indignation were made serious by the
thought that the righteous might be punished with the wicked. We are
told that they went up to the sanctuary and asked counsel of the Lord
whether they should attack the convicted city. There was a full muster
of the fighting men, their blood at fever heat, yet they would not
advance without an oracle. It was an appeal to heavenly justice, and
demands notice as a striking feature of the whole terrible series of
events. For an hour there is silence in the camp till a higher voice
shall speak.
But what is the issue? The oracle decrees an immediate attack on Gibeah
in the face of all Benjamin which has shown the temper of heathenism by
refusing to give up the criminals. Once and again there is trial of
battle which ends in defeat of the allied tribes. The wrong triumphs;
the people have to return humbled and weeping to the Sacred Presence and
sit fasting and disconsolate before the Lord.
Not without the suffering of the entire community is a great evil to be
purged from a land. It is easy to execute a murderer, to imprison a
felon. But the spirit of the murderer, of the felon, is widely diffused,
and that has to be cast out. In the great moral struggle year after year
the better have not only the openly vile but all who are tainted, all
who are weak in soul, loose in habit, secretly sympathetic with the
vile, arrayed against them. There is a sacrifice of the good before the
evil are overcome. In vicarious suffering many must pay the penalty of
crimes not their own ere the wide-reaching wickedness can be seen in its
demonic power and struck down as the cruel enemy of the people.
When an assault is made on some vile custom the sardonic laugh is heard
of those who find their profit and their pleasure in it. They feel their
power. They know the wide sympathy with them spread secretly through the
land. Once and again the feeble attempt of the good is repelled. With
sad hearts, with impoverished means, those who led the crusade retire
baffled and weary. Has their method been unintelligent? There very
possibly lies the cause of its failure. Or, perhaps, it has been, though
nominally inspired by an oracle, all too human, weak through human
pride. Not till they gain with new and deeper devotion to the glory of
God, with more humility and faith, a clearer view of the battle-ground
and a better ordering of the war shall defeat be changed into victory.
And may it not be that the assault on moral evils of our day, in which
multitudes are professedly engaged, in which also many have spent
substance and life, shall fail till there is a true humiliation of the
armies of God before Him, a new consecration to higher and more
spiritual ends? Human virtue has ever to be jealous of itself, the
reformer may so easily become a Pharisee.
The tide turned and there came another danger, that which waits on
ebullitions of popular feeling. A crowd roused to anger is hard to
control, and the tribes having once tasted vengeance did not cease till
Benjamin was almost exterminated. The slaughter extended not only to the
fighting men, but to women and children. The six hundred who fled to the
rock-fort of Rimmon appear as the only survivors of the clan. Justice
overshot its mark and for one evil made another. Those who had most
fiercely used the sword viewed the result with horror and amazement, for
a tribe was lacking in Israel. Nor was this the end of slaughter. Next
for the sake of Benjamin the sword was drawn and the men of
Jabesh-gilead were butchered. It has to be noticed that the oracle is
not made responsible for this horrible process of evil. The people came
of their own accord to the decision which annihilated Jabesh-gilead. But
they gave it a pious colour; religion and cruelty went together,
sacrifices to Jehovah and this frightful outbreak of demonism. It is one
of the dark chapters of human history. For the sake of an oath and an
idea death was dealt remorselessly. No voice suggested that the people
of Jabesh may have been more cautious than the rest, not less faithful
to the law of God. The others were resolved to appear to themselves to
have been right in almost annihilating Benjamin; and the town which had
not joined in the work of destruction must be punished.
The warning conveyed here is intensely keen. It is that men, made
doubtful by the issue of their actions whether they have done wisely,
may fly to the resolution to justify themselves and may do so even at
the expense of justice; that a nation may pass from the right way to the
wrong and then, having sunk to extraordinary baseness and malignity, may
turn writhing and self-condemned to add cruelty to cruelty in the
attempt to still the upbraidings of conscience. It is that men in the
heat of passion which began with resentment against evil may strike at
those who have not joined in their errors as well as those who truly
deserve reprobation. We stand, nations and individuals, in constant
danger of dreadful extremes, a kind of insanity hurrying us on when the
blood is heated by strong emotion. Blindly attempting to do right we do
evil, and again, having done the evil we blindly strive to remedy it by
doing more. In times of moral darkness and chaotic social conditions,
when men are guided by a few rude principles, things are done that
afterwards appal themselves, and yet may become an example for future
outbreaks. During the fury of their Revolution the French people, with
some watchwords of the true ring as liberty, fraternity, turned hither
and thither, now in terror, now panting after dimly seen justice or
hope, and it was always from blood to blood. We understand the juncture
in ancient Israel and realize the excitement and the rage of a
self-jealous people when we read the modern tales of surging ferocity in
which men appear now hounding the shouting crowd to vengeance then
shuddering on the scaffold.
In private life the story has an application against wild and violent
methods of self-vindication. Many a man, hurried on by a just anger
against one who has done him wrong, sees to his horror after a sharp
blow is struck that he has broken a life and thrown a brother bleeding
to the dust. One wrong thing has been done perhaps more in haste than
vileness of purpose, and retribution, hasty, ill-considered, leaves the
moral question tenfold more confused. When all is reckoned we find it
impossible to say where the right is, where the wrong.
Passing to the final expedient adopted by the chiefs of Israel to
rectify their error--the rape of the women at Shiloh--we see only to how
pitiful a pass moral blundering brings those who fall into it: other
moral teaching there is none. We might at first be disposed to say that
there was extraordinary want of reverence for religious order and
engagements when the men of Benjamin were invited to make a sacred
festival the occasion of taking what the other tribes had solemnly vowed
not to give. But the festival at Shiloh must have been far more of a
merry-making than of a sacred assembly. It needs to be recognised that
many gatherings even in honour of Jehovah were mainly, like those of
Canaanite worship, for hilarity and feasting. There was probably no
great incongruity between the occasion and the plot.
But the scenes certainly change in the course of this narrative with
extraordinary swiftness. Fierce indignation is followed by pity, weeping
for defeat by tears for too complete a victory. Horrible bloodshed
wastes the cities and in a month there is dancing in the plain of Shiloh
not ten miles from the field of battle. Chaotic indeed are the morality
and the history; but it is the disorder of social life in its early
stages, with the vehemence and tenderness, the ferocity and laughter of
a nation's youth. And, all along, the Book of Judges bears the stamp of
veracity as a series of records because these very features are to be
seen--this tumult, this undisciplined vehemence in feeling and act. Were
we told here of decorous solemn progress at slow march, every army going
forth with some stereotyped invocation of the Lord of Hosts, every
leader a man of conventional piety supported by a blameless priesthood
and orderly sacrifices, we should have had no evidence of truth. The
traditions preserved here, whoever collected them, are singularly free
from that idyllic colour which an imaginative writer would have
endeavoured to give.
At the last, accordingly, the book we have been reading stands a real
piece of history, proving itself over every kind of suspicion a true
record of a people chosen and guided to a destiny greater than any other
race of man has known. A people understanding its call and responding
with eagerness at every point? Nay. The world is in the heart of Israel
as of every other nation. The carnal attracts, and malignant cries
overbear the divine still voice; the air of Canaan breathes in every
page, and we need to recollect that we are viewing the turbulent
upper-waters of the nation and the faith. But the working of God is
plain; the divine thoughts we believed Israel to have in trust for the
world are truly with it from the first, though darkened by altars of
Baal and of Ashtoreth. The Word and Covenant of Jehovah are vital facts
of the supernatural which surrounds that poor struggling erring Hebrew
flock. Theocracy is a divine fact in a larger sense than has ever been
attached to the word. Inspiration too is no dream, for the history is
charged with intimations of the spiritual order. The light of the
unrealized end flashes on spear and altar, and in the frequent roll of
the storm the voice of the Eternal is heard declaring righteousness and
truth. No story this to praise a dynasty or magnify a conquering nation
or support a priesthood. Nothing so faithful, so true to heaven and to
human nature could be done from that motive. We have here an
imperishable chapter in the Book of God.
THE BOOK OF RUTH.
I.
_NAOMI'S BURDEN._
RUTH i. 1-13.
Leaving the Book of Judges and opening the story of Ruth we pass from
vehement out-door life, from tempest and trouble into quiet domestic
scenes. After an exhibition of the greater movements of a people we are
brought, as it were, to a cottage interior in the soft light of an
autumn evening, to obscure lives passing through the cycles of loss and
comfort, affection and sorrow. We have seen the ebb and flow of a
nation's fidelity and fortune, a few leaders appearing clearly on the
stage and behind them a multitude indefinite, indiscriminate, the
thousands who form the ranks of battle and die on the field, who sway
together from Jehovah to Baal and back to Jehovah again. What the
Hebrews were at home, how they lived in the villages of Judah or on the
slopes of Tabor the narrative has not paused to speak of with detail.
Now there is leisure after the strife and the historian can describe old
customs and family events, can show us the toiling flockmaster, the busy
reapers, the women with their cares and uncertainties, the love and
labour of simple life. Thunderclouds of sin and judgment have rolled
over the scene; but they have cleared away and we see human nature in
examples that become familiar to us, no longer in weird shadow or vivid
lightning flash, but as we commonly know it, homely, erring, enduring,
imperfect, not unblest.
Bethlehem is the scene, quiet and lonely on its high ridge overlooking
the Judaean wilderness. The little city never had much part in the eager
life of the Hebrew people, yet age after age some event notable in
history, some death or birth or some prophetic word drew the eyes of
Israel to it in affection or in hope; and to us the Saviour's birth
there has so distinguished it as one of the most sacred spots on earth
that each incident in the fields or at the gate appears charged with
predictive meaning, each reference in psalm or prophecy has tender
significance. We see the company of Jacob on a journey through Canaan
halt by the way near Ephrath, which is Bethlehem, and from the tents
there comes a sound of wailing. The beloved Rachel is dead. Yet she
lives in a child new-born, the mother's Son of Sorrow, who becomes to
the father Benjamin, Son of the Right Hand. The sword pierces a loving
heart, but hope springs out of pain and life out of death. Generations
pass and in these fields of Bethlehem we see Ruth gleaning, Ruth the
Moabitess, a stranger and foreigner who has sought refuge under the
shadow of Jehovah's wings; and at yonder gate she is saved from want and
widowhood, finding in Boaz her _goel_ and _menuchah_, her redeemer and
rest. Later, another birth, this time within the walls, the birth of one
long despised by his brethren, gives to Israel a poet and a king, the
sweet singer of divine psalms, the hero of a hundred fights. And here
again we see the three mighty men of David's troop breaking through the
Philistine host to fetch for their chief a draught from the cool spring
by the gate. Prophecy, too, leaves Israel looking to the city on the
hill. Micah seems to grasp the secret of the ages when he exclaims, "But
thou, Bethlehem Ephrathah, which art little to be among the thousands of
Judah, out of thee shall one come forth unto Me that is to be the ruler
in Israel; whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting." For
centuries there is suspense, and then over the quiet plain below the
hill is heard the evangel: "Be not afraid: for, behold, I bring you good
tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people: for there is born
to you this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the
Lord." Remembering this glory of Bethlehem we turn to the story of
humble life there in the days when the judges ruled, with deep interest
in the people of the ancient city, the race from which David sprang, of
which Mary was born.
* * * * *
Jephthah had scattered Ammon behind the hills and the Hebrews dwelt in
comparative peace and security. The sanctuary at Shiloh was at length
recognised as the centre of religious influence; Eli was in the
beginning of his priesthood, and orderly worship was maintained before
the ark. People could live quietly about Bethlehem, although Samson,
fitfully acting the part of champion on the Philistine border, had his
work in restraining the enemy from an advance. Yet all was not well in
the homesteads of Judah, for drought is as terrible a foe to the
flockmaster as the Arab hordes, and all the south lands were parched and
unfruitful.
We are to follow the story of Elimelech, his wife Naomi and their sons
Mahlon and Chilion whose home at Bethlehem is about to be broken up. The
sheep are dying in the bare glens, the cattle in the fields. From the
soil usually so fertile little corn has been reaped. Elimelech, seeing
his possessions melt away, has decided to leave Judah for a time so as
to save what remains to him till the famine is over, and he chooses the
nearest refuge, the watered Field of Moab beyond the Salt Sea. It was
not far; he could imagine himself returning soon to resume the
accustomed life in the old home. True Hebrews, these Ephrathites were
not seeking an opportunity to cast off pious duty and break with Jehovah
in leaving His land. Doubtless they hoped that God would bless their
going, prosper them in Moab and bring them back in good time. It was a
trial to go, but what else could they do, life itself, as they believed,
being at hazard?