_THE HAMMER_
[Illustration: _The Cave among the Mountains._]
THE HAMMER
_A STORY OF THE MACCABEAN TIMES_
BY
ALFRED J. CHURCH, M.A.
_Lately Professor of Latin in University College, London_
AND
RICHMOND SEELEY
_With Illustrations by __JOHN JELLICOE_
LONDON
SEELEY AND CO. LIMITED
ESSEX STREET, STRAND
1890
PREFACE
It is not so very long since the Apocrypha was found in almost every copy
of the English Bible, but in the present day it is seldom printed with it,
and very seldom indeed read. One or two of the writings included under
this name are trivial and even absurd; but, on the whole, the Apocryphal
books deserve far more attention than they receive. Among the foremost, in
point of interest and value, must be placed the First Book of Maccabees.
Written within fifty years of the events which it records, at a time, it
must be remembered, that was singularly barren of historical literature,
it is a careful, sober, and consistent narrative. It is our principal, not
unfrequently our sole, authority for the incidents of a very important
period, a period that was in the highest degree critical in the history of
the Jewish nation and of the world which that nation has so largely
influenced. It is commonly said that the great visitation of the Captivity
finally destroyed in the Hebrew mind the tendency to idolatry. But the
denunciations of Ezekiel prove to us that the exiles carried into the land
of their captivity the evil which they had cherished in the land of their
birth, and it is no less certain that they brought it back with them on
their return. It grew to its height in the early part of the Second
Century B.C., along with the increasing influence of Greek civilization in
Western Asia. The feeble Jewish Commonwealth was more and more dominated
by the powerful kingdoms which had been established on the ruins of the
empire of Alexander, and the national religion was attacked by an enemy at
least as dangerous as the Phœnician Baal-worship had been in earlier days,
an enemy which may be briefly described by the word Hellenism. The story
of how Judas and his brothers led the movement which rescued the Jewish
faith from this peril is the story which we have endeavoured to tell in
this volume. Our plan has been to follow strictly the lines of the First
Book of Maccabees, going to the Second, a far less trustworthy document,
only for some picturesque incidents. The subsidiary characters are
fictitious, but the narrative is, we believe, apart from casual errors,
historically correct.
We have to acknowledge special obligations to Captain Conder’s “Judas
Maccabæus,” a volume of the series entitled “The New Plutarch.” We also
owe much to Canon Rawlinson’s notes in the “Speaker’s Commentary on the
Bible,” to Canon Westcott’s articles in the “Dictionary of the Bible,” and
to Dean Stanley’s “Lectures on the Jewish Church.”
If any reader should be curious as to the literary partnership announced
on the title-page—a partnership that has grown, so to speak, out of
another of many years’ standing, shared by the writers as author and
publisher—he may be informed that the plan of the story and a detailed
outline of it have been contributed by Richmond Seeley, and the story
itself written for the most part by Alfred Church.
LONDON,
_Sept. 3, 1889._
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. A NEW ORDER OF THINGS 1
II. ANTIOCHUS 19
III. MENELAÜS 37
IV. AT ANTIOCH 49
V. THE WRATH TO COME 68
VI. THE EVIL DAYS 79
VII. THE DARKNESS THICKENS 90
VIII. SHALLUM THE WINE-SELLER 101
IX. THE PERSECUTION 113
X. IN THE MOUNTAINS 124
XI. NEWS BAD AND GOOD 135
XII. THE PATRIOT ARMY 148
XIII. GUERILLA WARFARE IN THE MOUNTAINS 159
XIV. THE BURIAL OF MATTATHIAS 171
XV. THE SWORD OF APOLLONIUS 184
XVI. NEWS FROM THE BATTLE-FIELD 193
XVII. THE BATTLE OF EMMAUS 208
XVIII. THE BATTLE OF BETH-ZUR 225
XIX. IN JERUSALEM 235
XX. THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE 242
XXI. THE DEDICATION OF THE TEMPLE 254
XXII. WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS 263
XXIII. MORE VICTORIES 274
XXIV. THE SABBATICAL YEAR 284
XXV. REVERSES 294
XXVI. LIGHT OUT OF DARKNESS 304
XXVII. A PEACEFUL INTERVAL 314
XXVIII. HOPES AND FEARS 323
XXIX. CIVIL WAR 331
XXX. NICANOR 339
XXXI. THE FALLING AWAY 352
XXXII. THE LAST BATTLE 362
XXXIII. THE HOPE OF ISRAEL 368
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE CAVE AMONG THE MOUNTAINS _Frontispiece_
ANTIOCHUS IN THE TAVERN 32
THE PERSECUTION 118
THE LAST CHARGE OF MATTATHIAS 168
THE SWORD OF APOLLONIUS 192
FAREWELL TO THE MOUNTAINS 232
THE DEATH OF ELEAZAR 302
THE BOY KING 314
THE HAMMER
CHAPTER I.
A NEW ORDER OF THINGS.
The time is the evening of a day in the early autumn of the year 174 B.C.
There has been a great festival in Jerusalem. But it has been curiously
unlike any festival that one would have expected to be held in that famous
city. The people have not been crowding in from the country, and
journeying from their far-off places of sojourn among the heathen, to keep
one of the great feasts of the Law. Nothing could be further from the
thoughts of the crowd that is streaming out of this new building which
stands close under the walls of the Temple. What would they who built the
Temple some two and a half centuries before have thought of this strange
intruder on the sacred precincts? It is not difficult to imagine, for the
new erection is nothing more or less than a Circus, built and furnished in
the latest Greek fashion, and the spectacle which the crowd has been
enjoying, or pretending to enjoy—for it is strange to all, and distasteful
to some—is an imitation of the Olympian games. Things then, we see, have
been curiously changed. Even the city has almost lost its identity. It is
no longer the capital of the Jewish nation, but the chief town of an
insignificant province in the Greek kingdom of Syria, one of the fragments
into which the great dominion of Alexander had split some hundred and
fifty years before. We shall understand something more about this
marvellous change if we listen to a conversation that is going on in one
of the houses that adjoin the Temple.
“Well, Cleon, you will allow that our little show to-day has been fairly
successful. We are but novices, you know; barbarians, I am afraid you will
call us. But we hope to improve. You Greeks are wonderful teachers. You
can give in a very short time a quite marvellous appearance of refinement
to the merest savages. And we are not that; you would not call us savages,
my dear friend.”
“Savages! The gods forbid that such insolent folly should ever come from
my tongue! You have a most elegant taste in art, my dear Jason. Our own
Callias—he is our first _connoisseur_ at Athens; you must have heard me
mention him—would not disdain to have some of the little things which you
have about you here in his own apartment.”
And, as he spoke, Cleon looked round the room, which, indeed, was very
handsomely furnished in the latest Greek taste. The walls were covered
with tapestry, showing on a purple ground a design, worked in silver and
gold, which represented the triumphant return of the Wine-god from his
Eastern campaigns. At one end of the room stood a sumptuously-carved
bookcase, filled with volumes adorned by the most skilful binders of
Alexandria. The bookcase was flanked on either side by a pedestal statue,
one displaying the head of Hermes, the other the head of Athené. On a
sideboard were ranged twelve silver goblets, on which had been worked in
high relief the labours of Hercules. But probably the most precious object
in the room—at least in its master’s estimation—was a replica, about half
the size of life, of the statue that we know as the “Dying Gladiator.” It
was the work of a sculptor of Pergamum, a special favourite of the
art-loving dynasty of the Attali. It had been purchased for the enormous
sum of half a talent of gold;(1) and Jason had thought himself especially
fortunate in being allowed to secure it on any terms. The Pergamene artist
was bound, in consideration of the handsome payment which he received from
his royal patron, not to execute commissions for strangers, and it was
only as a special favour, and not till a heavy bribe had been paid to some
influential personage in the court, that the rule had been relaxed in
favour of Jason.
And who, it may be asked, was Jason?
Jason was the Jewish high priest, the successor of Aaron, of Eleazar, of
Jehoiada, of Hilkiah, and as unlike these worthies of the past in
appearance, in speech, in ways of thinking, as it is possible to conceive.
His costume, in the first place, was that of a Greek exquisite. He wore a
purple tunic, showing at the neck a crimson under-shirt, and gathered up
at the waist with a belt of the finest leather, clasped with a design in
silver, which showed a dog laying hold of a fawn. His knees were bare, but
the shins were covered with silk leggings of the same colour as the tunic,
against which the gold fastenings of the sandals showed in gay relief. His
hair was elaborately curled, and almost dripping with the richest of
Syrian perfumes. The forefinger of the left hand showed the head of Zeus
finely carved on an amethyst, that of the right was circled by a sapphire
ring with the likeness of Apollo.
His speech was Greek. Hebrew of course he knew, both in its classical and
its conversational forms; but he was as careful to conceal his knowledge
as an old-fashioned Roman of his time would have been careful to hide the
fact, if he had happened to know any language besides his own. His very
name, it will have been observed, had been changed to suit the new fashion
which he was endeavouring to set to his countrymen. Really it was
Joshua—no dishonourable appellation, one would think, seeing that it had
been borne by the conqueror of Canaan, and by the most distinguished of
the later high priests. But it did not please him, and he had changed it
to Jason.
As for his ways of thinking, these will become evident enough if we listen
to a little more of his conversation.
“And you think, Cleon,” he went on—Cleon was a Greek adventurer who gave
himself out as an Athenian, but who was shrewdly suspected of coming from
one of the smaller islands of the Ægean—“you think that our games went
pretty well?”
“Admirably, my dear Jason,” answered the Greek, who really had thought
them a deplorable failure, but who valued too much his free quarters in
the high priest’s sumptuous palace to give a candid expression of his
opinion.
“You see we had great difficulties to contend with. You can hardly
imagine, for instance, how hard I found it to persuade our young men to
run and wrestle naked. They quoted some ridiculous nonsense from the Law,
as if we could be bound nowadays by some obsolete old rules that no
sensible person would think for a moment of observing.(2) You saw, I dare
say, to-day that I was obliged to allow some of them to wear a loin-cloth.
They positively refused to come into the arena without it. Well, we shall
educate them in time. They _must_ learn to admire the beauty of the human
form, unspoilt by any of the trappings with which, for convenience sake,
we are accustomed to conceal it. I don’t despair of our having a school of
art here some day—not rivals, my dear Lysias, of your glorious Phidias and
Praxiteles, but imitators, humble imitators, whom yet you won’t disdain to
acknowledge.”
“But, my dear sir, you forget the Commandment, ‘Thou shalt not make to
thyself any graven image.’”
The speaker was a young man who had hitherto taken no part in the
conversation. He also had a Hebrew name and a Greek. His father, a rich
priest who claimed descent from no less a person than the prophet Ezekiel,
had called him Micah; but he had followed the fashion, and dubbed himself
Menander. Still, Greek ways and habits did not sit over-easily upon him.
Fashion has often a singular power over the young; but it could not quite
drive out the obstinate patriotism of the Jew. He could still sometimes be
scandalized at the thorough-going Hellenism of the high priest; and he was
so scandalized now. The Commandment was one of the things which he had
learnt at his mother’s knee, and which he had solemnly repeated when, at
the age of twelve, he had been regularly admitted to the privileges of a
“son of the Law.”
“My dear Menander,” broke in the high priest, “what can you be thinking
about? I had hoped better things of you. You do discourage me most
terribly. ‘No graven image or likeness of anything that is in heaven or
earth!’ Was there ever anything so hopelessly tasteless? Why, this is the
one thing that has checked all growth of art among us? And without art
where is the beauty of life? Now tell me, Menander, did you ever see
anything so hideous as the Temple? There is a certain splendour about
it—or was, till I had to strip off most of the gold for purposes of
state—but of beauty or taste not a scrap. You, Cleon, have never seen the
inside of it. Well, you have lost nothing. It would simply shock you after
your lovely Parthenon. Bells and pomegranates—things that any moulder
could make—and sham columns, and everything as bad as it can be. And then
the dresses! You should see—though I should really be ashamed if you did
see it—the absurd costume that some of them would make me wear as high
priest. Anything more cumbrous and clumsy could not be. A man can hardly
move in it; and as for showing any of the proportions of the figure—and I
take it that dress is meant to reveal while it seems to hide them—one
might as well be wrapped up in swaddling clothes.”
“Did you ever wear it?” asked Cleon.
“Once, and once only,” answered Jason. “That was on the day when I was
admitted to the office. You see it had to be done. Some of my enemies—and
I am afraid that I have enemies after all that I have done for this
ungrateful people—might have said that things were not regular without it,
and when one has paid twenty talents of gold for the office, it would be
rank folly to risk it for a trifle. But I have never worn it since, and
never mean to again. I did design something much lighter and neater,
worthy the Greek fashion, but with just a tinge—it would be well to have a
tinge—of our own in it; but it did not please the elders when I showed it
to them, a bigoted set of fools!”
“But your worship is very fine, I am told,” said the Greek.
“Very tasteless, very tasteless,” answered the high-priest, “the singing
and music as rude as possible. I tried to improve them when I first came
into office. When I was at Antioch I saw some very pretty performances in
the groves of Daphne, and I wanted to remodel our ceremonies on something
of the same lines. Of course I could not transplant them just as they
were: you will guess that there were one or two things that would hardly
do here. I am not strait-laced, as you know, but there are limits.
However, it all came to nothing. Our people are so clumsy and obstinate.
So the only thing will be to let these antiquated ceremonies die out by
degrees.”
Micah broke in at this point. Disposed as he was to follow Jason’s lead,
this was going too far. “Surely, my dear sir, if you take away from us all
that is distinctive, where will be our reason for existence? After all is
said, we are not Greeks and never can be Greeks; and if we cease to be
Jews, what are we?”
“_Jews!_ my dear fellow,” cried the high-priest, “why do you use the
odious word? We are not Jews, we are Antiochenes. Do you know that I paid
five talents to the treasurer of Antiochus for license to use the name?
For Heaven’s sake, let us have our money’s worth. By the way,” he went on,
turning to Cleon, “when does your Olympian festival next take place?”
“In two years’ time,” said the Greek.
“I propose to send an embassy with a handsome present for your great
temple. I should like to establish friendly relations with your people at
the head-quarters of your race. Do you think it is possible that our
Menon—you saw him in the stadium just now—might be allowed to run? It
would take all that your athletes know to beat him.”
“Quite impossible. He could hardly make out a Greek pedigree, I suppose?”
“No; he could not do that. But would not money smooth the way?”
“It could not be. Money will do most things with us, as it will elsewhere,
but not that. A man must show a pure Greek descent.”
“But the embassy can go?”
“Certainly,” replied the Greek, with a smile; “we are ready to take gifts
from any one. But—excuse my obtruding the suggestion—is it quite wise to
run counter to your people’s prejudices in this way? Couldn’t they get up
an agitation against you?”
“My dear Cleon, I feel quite easy on that score. I made the highest bid
for the place, and it is mine, just as much as this ring is mine.”
“But might not some one outbid you? I have heard of such things being
done.”
“Outbid me? Hardly. I have squeezed the uttermost farthing out of the
people to pay the purchase-money and the tribute, and I defy my rivals,
with all the best will in the world, to beat me. Why, my fellows, the
tax-gatherers, are the most ingenious rascals in the world for putting on
the screw. I make them bid against each other when I put the taxes up to
auction, and they really go to figures that I should not have thought
possible. And then, after all, they manage somehow or other to get a
handsome margin of profit for themselves. I know the scoundrels always
seem to have a great deal more money than I have.”
Menander, somewhat revolted at his friend’s levity, rose to take leave.
“Stop a moment,” said Jason, “I have a little commission for you, which
will give you a pleasant outing and a score or two of shekels to put in
your pocket.”
“Well, the shekels will be welcome. Those are very charming fellows, those
Greek friends of yours,” he went on, addressing Cleon, “but they have the
most confounded luck with the dice that I ever knew. But what is it, sir,
that you want me to do?”
“I want to do a civil thing to our friends at Tyre. You know that we do a
very brisk trade with them, and a little bit of politeness is never thrown
away. Well, next month they have the great games of Hercules, and I want
you to take a present to the Governor, and, as you will be there, just a
trifle—a silver tripod, or something of the kind—for Hercules himself. The
Tyrian people would take it amiss, I fancy, if you went quite
empty-handed.”
Micah—for at the moment he felt much more like a Micah than a
Menander—flushed all over. “I take a present to the idol at Tyre! You must
be joking; but, with all respect, sir, it is a joke which I do not
appreciate.”
“Come, my dear Menander,” said the high priest, with a laugh, “why all
this fuss? You must excuse me for saying so, but you are really a little
stupid this morning. What nonsense to talk about idols! The Greek heroes
are really the same as our own. Hercules is nothing more or less than
Samson under another name. You will find in every country the legend of
some strong man who goes about killing wild beasts and slaying his
enemies, and doing all kinds of wonders; and it does not become an
enlightened man like yourself to fancy that our hero is anything better
than another nation’s hero. However, think the matter over. If you don’t
choose to go there are plenty who will, and Tyre, I am told, is still
worth seeing, though, of course, it is nothing like what it was.”
At this moment a servant burst somewhat unceremoniously into the room.
“How now, fellow?” cried the high priest, “Where are your manners? Don’t
you know that I have company and am not to be interrupted?”
“Pardon, my lord,” said the man, in a breathless, agitated voice, “but the
matter is urgent. Your nephew Asaph is dying, and has sent begging you to
come to him.”
“Asaph dying!” cried the high priest, turning pale. “How is that?”
Asaph had been one of the performers in the exhibition of the day. A light
weight, but an exceedingly active and skilful wrestler, he had entered the
lists with a competitor much stronger and heavier than himself. The
struggle between the two athletes had been protracted and fierce and had
ended in a draw. There had been two bouts, but in neither had this or that
antagonist been able to claim a decided success. In each, both wrestlers
had fallen, Asaph being uppermost in the first, but underneath in the
second. On rising from the ground he had complained of severe internal
pains; but these had seemed to pass away, and he had been conveyed in a
litter to his mother’s house. After a brief interval the pains had
returned with increased severity; vomiting of blood had followed, and the
physician had declared that the resources of his art were useless. The
poor lad—he was but a few months over twenty—sent, in his agony, for his
uncle the high priest. It was a forlorn hope—for how could such a man give
comfort?—but it was the only one that occurred to him.
No one was more conscious of the incongruity of the task thus imposed upon
him, the task of administering consolation and comfort to the dying, than
Jason himself. His first impulse was to refuse to go. But to do so would
not only cause a scandal, but would also be the beginning of a family
feud. And Jason, though selfish and hardened by base ambitions, was not
wholly without a heart. He had some affection for his sister, a widow of
large means, whose purse was always open to him when he wanted help, and
Asaph—or Asius, as he preferred to call him—was his favourite nephew,
possibly his successor in his office. He felt that he must go, but it was
with a miserable sinking of heart that he felt it.
“Lead on,” he said to the slave, “I will follow. You, my friends, must
excuse me.”
The worldly priest might well have dreaded to enter the house of woe to
which he had been called.
The unhappy mother met him at the door. “Oh, Joshua!” she cried, the
foolish affectation of the Greek name being forgotten in the hour of
trouble. “Can you help us? My dear Asaph is dying, and he is terribly
distressed about his sins. You are high-priest. Have you not some power to
do him good?”
“Take me to him,” said Jason, “I will do all that I can for him.”
The unhappy lad was lying on a couch, the deathly pallor of his face
showing with a terrible contrast against the rich purple of the coverlet.
His eyes were wide open, and there was a terror-stricken look in them that
was inexpressibly painful to witness. As soon as he saw his uncle, he
burst forth in tones of agonized entreaty. “I have sinned; I have sinned;
I have followed in the ways of the heathen, and, see, my God hath called
me into judgment. Help me! help me! Save me from the fire of Gehenna!”
The high priest strove to say something; but his faltering lips seemed to
refuse to do their office.
“Speak! speak!” cried the young man. “It was you who told me to go into
the arena. You said there was no harm in it; you encouraged me, and now
you desert me. O help me!” and his voice, which had been raised to a loud,
angry cry, sank again to low tones of entreaty. “You are high priest; you
surely can do something with the Lord. Pray for me to Him. Quick! quick!
the evil ones are clutching at me!” and, as he spoke, he turned his eyes
with a fearful glance as if he saw some terrible presence which was
invisible to the rest.
His uncle, more unhappy than he had ever been before in his life, stood in
dumb despair. It seemed impossible to mock this wretched creature with
words in which he did not himself believe. And, indeed, the words
themselves seemed to have fled altogether from his memory. At last, with a
tremendous effort, he summoned up some of the words, once familiar to his
lips, but which had not issued from them for years. It was what we know as
the fifty-first Psalm in our psalter that he began—“_Have mercy upon me, O
God, after Thy great goodness, according to the multitude of Thy mercies
do away mine offences._” He began with a faltering and uncertain voice,
which gathered strength as he went on. The dying man listened with an
eagerly-strained attention, and the words seemed to have some soothing
effect upon him. When the speaker came to the words, “Cast me not away
from Thy presence,” he clasped his hands together. At the very moment of
the act a strong convulsion shook his frame: a stream of blood gushed from
his mouth; in another moment Asaph was dead.
His unhappy mother had been carried fainting to her apartments, where her
maids were endeavouring to restore her to consciousness. The high priest
was almost glad that she was in such a state that there could be no
question of attempting to administer to her any consolation. No one,
indeed, could have felt less like a comforter than he did at that moment.
As he walked slowly back to his palace he felt less satisfied with the
Greek fashions, for which he had sacrificed the faith of his fathers, than
he had done for many years.
The news that he found awaiting him at home changed the current of his
thoughts. A letter, carried, in Eastern fashion, by a succession of
runners, had arrived from Joppa. It was as follows:—
“_Josedech, Chief of the Council of Joppa, to Joshua, Governor of
Jerusalem._
“Know that a swift pinnace has arrived, bringing news that the fleet
of Antiochus the King is on its way hither. It will arrive, unless it
be hindered by weather or any other unforeseen cause, on the second
day. Let us know so soon as shall be possible how the heathen should
be received, whether we shall admit him into the city, and to whom we
shall assign the task of entertaining him. Farewell.”
Jason’s face flushed as he read this curt and not very courteous epistle.
“Governor of Jerusalem, indeed!” he muttered to himself. “So the old bigot
won’t acknowledge me to be high priest. I shall have to give him a lesson,
and teach him who he is and who I am. ‘How the heathen is to be received.’
What is the fool thinking of? As if he could be shut out of the city if he
chooses to come in! Well, I see plainly enough that there will be mischief
here, if I don’t take care. It won’t be enough to write. I must send some
of my own people to receive the king.”
He pressed a hand-bell that stood on the table. “Send the letter-carrier
here,” he said to the servant who answered the summons. In a few minutes
the man appeared.
“When can you start back with my answer?” asked the high priest.
“This instant, my lord, if it should so please you.”
“And the other posts are ready?”
“Each at his place, my lord.”
“And when will the letter be delivered in Joppa?”
“Let me think,” said the messenger. “The distance should be about two
hundred and eighty furlongs, and the way descends. ’Tis now scarcely the
first hour of the night. I should say that the letter should be there an
hour before midnight.”
Jason at once sat down and wrote his answer:—
“_Jason, the High Priest, to Josedech, Chief of the Council of Joppa,
greeting._
“I charge you that you do all honour to the most mighty and glorious
lord Antiochus. Let him have of the best, both in lodging and
entertainment, that your city affords. I doubt not your zeal and
goodwill, but that you may not fail for want of knowledge, I will send
certain of my own people, who will welcome the most august King in
such manner as shall be worthy both of his majesty and of our dignity.
Farewell.”
The messenger, who had been standing by while this letter was being
written, received the document with a salute, and placed it in his girdle.
A few minutes afterwards he was on his way.
“And now for the deputation to meet his Highness,” said Jason to himself.
“I cannot expect them to get off quite so quickly as this good fellow. But
they must not start later than noon to-morrow. And now, whom am I to send?
Cleon, of course, and Menander——”
He stopped short and reflected. “It’s really very hard to find a
respectable person who is quite free from bigotry—if, indeed, it is
bigotry.” For some minutes he seemed lost in thought. “Send the secretary
to me,” he said, when the servant came. This official soon made his
appearance, and we will leave him and his master to settle the details of
the deputation.