character, is philologically shown to have been connected with the
planetary system, Sol-Om-On signifying "the sun." It is singular to
note how closely the sun, the moon and the stars are connected with
ancient religions, even that of the Jewish. In the Old Testament the
new moon and the Sab-bath are almost invariably mentioned together. The
full moon also possessed a religious signification to the Jews, the
agricultural feasts taking place at the full moon, which were called
Sab-baths. Even in the Old Testament we find that Sab has an
astronomical or astrological meaning, connected with the planetary
system.
The Sabeans were an occult body, especially devoted to a study of the
heavens; at their head, the wisest among them, the chief astronomer and
astrologer of the nation, the wisest person in a nation of wisdom, was
that Queen of Sheba, who visited that other planetary dignitary,
Solomon, to prove him with hard astronomical and astrological questions.
There is historic proof that the city of Saba was the royal seat of
the kings of Arabia, which country, Diodorus says, was never conquered.
Among ancient peoples it bore the names of "Araby the Happy,"
"Araby the Blest." It was a country of gold and spices whose perfume
was wafted far over the sea. All cups and utensils were of the precious
metals; all beds, chairs and stools having feet of silver; the temples
were magnificently adorned; and the porticoes of even the private
houses were of gold inlaid with ivory and precious stones.
Among the presents carried by the Queen of Sheba to Sol-Om-On were the
famous balsam trees of her country. The first attempt at plant
acclimatizing of which the world has record was made with this tree by
the magnificent Pharaoh, Queen Hatasu, of the brilliant eighteenth
Egyptian dynasty. A thousand years before she of Sheba, Queen Hatasu,
upon her return from a naval expedition to the Red Sea, carried home
with her twelve of these trees in baskets of earth, which lived and
became one of the three species of sacred trees of Egypt.
Arabia was the seat of Eastern wisdom, from which it also radiated to
the British Isles of Europe at the time of the Celtic Druids, with whom
Sabs was the day when these lords of Sabaoth rested from study and gave
instructions to the people. As previously among the Jews, this day of
instruction became known as one of rest from physical labor, Sab-bath
and rest becoming synonymous. Seven being a sacred number among
initiates, every seventh day was devoted to instruction. When a
knowledge of the mysteries became lost, the words "Sab-bath," "rest"
and "seven" began to have a very wrong meaning in the minds of people;
and much injury has been done to the world through this perversion.
But later than Druidical times, Arabian wisdom made the southwestern
portion of the European continent brilliant with learning, during the
long period of the Christian dark ages, a time when, like the Bourbons
of later date, Christians learned nothing, a time when no heresy arose
because no thought was allowed, when there was no progress because
there was no doubt.
From these countrymen of the Queen of Sheba, the Spanish Arabs,
Columbus first learned of a world beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
Architecture rose to its height in the beautiful Alhambra, with its
exquisite interlaced tracery in geometric design; medicine
had its profound schools at various points; poetry numbered women among
its most famous composers; the ballad originated there; and the modern
literature of Europe was born from a woman's pen upon the hearth of the
despised Ishmaelite, whose ancestral mother was known as Hagar, and
whose most brilliant descendant was the Queen of Sheba.
Nowhere upon the earth has there existed a race of improvisatores
equal to the daughters of that despised bondwoman, the countrywoman of
the Queen of Sheba. As storytellers the world has not their equal.
Scherezade is a name upon the lips of Jews, of Gentiles, of Mohammedans
and of Christians. A woman's "Thousand and One Nights" is famous as a
combination of wit, wisdom and occultism wherever the language of
civilization is spoken. With increasing knowledge we learn somewhat of
the mysteries of the inner, higher life contained in those tales of
genii, of rings and of lamps of wondrous and curious power. The race
descended from Hagar, of which the Queen of Sheba is the most brilliant
reminder, has given to the world the most of its profound literature,
elegant poetry, art, science and occultism. Arabia is the mother of
mathematics; from this country was borrowed our one (1) and our cipher
(0), from which all other notation is evolved.
Astronomy and astrology being among the oldest sciences, the moon
early became known as "the Measurer," her varied motions, her influence
upon the tides, her connection with the generative functions, all
giving her a high place in the secret sciences. While in a planetary
sense the Queen of Sheba has in a manner been identified with the moon,
as Sabs, she was also connected with the sun, the same as Solomon and
the serpent. When Moses lifted up the brazen serpent in the wilderness
it was specifically a part of sun worship. The golden calf of Aaron was
more closely connected with moon worship, although the serpentine path
of both these bodies in the heavens identified each with the serpent.
The occult knowledge which the Jews possessed in regard to those
planets was borrowed by them from Egypt, where for many ages the sun
and the moon had been studied in connection with their movements in
the zodiac. In that country these serpentine movements were
symbolized by the uroeus, or asp, worn upon the crown above the head of
every Pharaoh. So closely was the Jewish religion connected with
worship of the planetary bodies that Moses is said to have disappeared
upon Mount Nebo, a word which shows the mountain to have been sacred to
the moon; while Elijah ascending in a chariot of fire is a record of
sun worship. When the famous woman astronomer and astrologer, Queen of
Sheba, visited the symbolic King Solomon, it was for the purpose of
proving him with hard planetary questions and thus learning the depth
of his astronomical and his astrological knowledge, which, thanks to
the planetary worship of the Jews, she found equal to her own.
We are further told that Solomon, not content with a princess from the
royal house of Pharaoh as wife, married seven hundred wives, all
princesses, besides taking to himself three hundred concubines. It is
upon teachings of the Old Testament, and especially from this statement
in regard to Solomon, that the Mormons of Utah largely base their
polygamous doctrines, the revelations of Joseph Smith being upon the
Solomon line. Yet the Mormons have advanced in their treatment of women
from the time of Solomon. While the revelations of Joseph Smith
commended plural marriages, the system and the name of concubinage was
entirely omitted, each woman thus taken being endowed with the name of
"wife."
The polygamy of New York, of Chicago, of London, of Paris, of Vienna
and of other parts of the Christian world, like that of Solomon's three
hundred, is a system of concubinage in which the woman possesses no
legal rights, the mistress neither being recognized as wife, nor her
children as legitimate; whereas Mormon polygamy grants Mormon respect
to the second, the third, and to all subsequent wives.
The senility of old men is well illustrated in the case of Solomon,
despite Biblical reference to his great wisdom, as we learn that when
he became "old" he was led away by "strange" women, worshiping strange
gods to whom he erected temples and offered sacrifices. To those who
believe in the doctrine of re-incarnation, and who look upon the Bible
as an occult work written in symbolic language, Solomon's reputed
"wives" and "concubines" are regarded as symbolic of
his incarnations, the wives representing good incarnations and the
concubines evil ones.
M. J. G.
1 Kings xvii.
8 And the word of the Lord came unto him, saying,
9 Arise, get thee to Zarephath, and dwell there: behold, I have
commanded a widow there to sustain thee.
10 So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of
the city, behold, the widow was there gathering sticks: and he called
to her, and said, Fetch me, I pray thee, a little water and a morsel of
bread.
12 And she said, I have not a cake, but a handful of meal in a barrel,
and a little oil in a cruse; and I am gathering sticks, that I may
dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die.
13 And Elijah said unto her, Fear not; go and do as thou hast said:
but make me thereof a little cake first, and after make for thee and
for thy son.
14 For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not
waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the Lord
sendeth rain upon the earth.
15 And she went and did according to the saying of Elijah: and she,
and he, and her house, did eat many days.
16 And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail.
17 And it came to pass after these things, that the son of the woman
fell sick; and there was no breath left in him.
18 And she said unto Elijah, What have I to do with thee, O thou man
of God? art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance, and to
slay my son?
19 And he said unto her, Give me thy son. And he carried him up and
laid him upon his own bed.
20 And he cried unto the Lord and said, O Lord my God, hast thou also
brought evil upon the widow by slaying her son?
21 And be stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried unto
the Lord, and said, O Lord my God, I pray thee, let this child's soul
come into him again.
22 And the Lord heard the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child
came into him again, and he revived.
23 And Elijah took the child and delivered him unto his mother, and
said, See, thy son liveth.
24 And the woman said, Now I know that thou art a man of God.
The history of Elijah the prophet begins somewhat abruptly, without
any mention of father, of family or of country. He seems, as it were,
suddenly to drop from the clouds. He does not come with glad tidings of
joy to the people; but with prophecies of a prolonged famine, in which
there shall be neither rain nor dew to moisten the earth, until King
Ahab and his people repent of their sins. Elijah himself was fed by
ravens in a miraculous manner, and later by a poor widow who had only
just enough in her larder to furnish one meal for herself and her son.
Here are a series of complications enough to stagger the faith of the
strongest believer in the supernatural. But the poor widow meets him at
the gates of the city as directed by the Lord, improvises bread and
water, takes him to her home and for two years treats him with all the
kindness and the attention which she would naturally give to one of
her own kinsmen. "Oh! woman, great is thy faith," exclaimed the
prophet. Women are so easily deluded that most of the miracles of the
Bible are performed for their benefit; and, as in the case of the witch
of Endor, she occasionally performs some herself.
The widow believed that Elijah was "a man of God," and that she could
do whatever he ordered; that she could get water, though there had been
a drought for a long time; that although she had only a handful of meal
and a little cruse of oil, yet they would increase day by day. "Never
did corn or olives in the growing," says Bishop Hall, "increase as did
that of the widow in the using." During the two years in which she
entertained the prophet, she enjoyed peace and prosperity; but when she
supposed that her son was dead, her faith wavered; and she deplored her
kindness to the prophet, and reproved him for bringing sorrow upon her
household. However, as the prophet was able to restore him to life, her
faith was restored also.
This is the first record which we have of the restoration of the dead
to life in the Bible; and it is the first also of any one ascending
into heaven "in a chariot of fire with horses of fire." Probably Elijah
knew how to construct a balloon. Much of the ascending and the
descending of seers, of angels and of prophets which astonished the
ignorant was accomplished in balloons--a lost art for many centuries.
No doubt that the poor widow, when she saw Elijah ascend, thought that
he went straight to heaven, though in all probability he landed at
twilight in some retired corn field or olive grove, at some distance
from the point where his ascent took place.
The question is often asked where the ravens got the cooked meat and
bread for the prophet. Knowing their impelling instinct to steal, the
Creator felt safe in trusting his prophet to their care, and they
proved themselves worthy his confidence. Their rookeries were near the
cave where Elijah was sequestered. Having keen olfactories, they smelt
the cooking of dainty viands from afar. Guided by this sense, they
perched on a fence near by where they could watch the movements of the
cook, and when her back was turned they flew in and seized the little
birds and soft shell crabs and carried them to Elijah, halting by the
way only long enough to satisfy their own imperative hunger.
Jezebel was Elijah's greatest enemy; yet the Lord bade him hide in her
country by the brook Cherith, that he might have plenty of water. The
Lord hid him so that the people should not besiege him to shorten the
drought. So he was entirely alone with the ravens, and had all his time
for prayer and contemplation. When removed from the care of the ravens,
the Lord did not send him to the rich and the prosperous, but to a poor
widow, who, believing him a man of God, ministered to his necessities.
She did not suggest that he was a stranger to her and that water cost
money, but hastened to do whatever he ordered. She had her recompense
in the restoration of her son to life. In the prophet's struggle with
God for this blessing to the widow, the man appears to greater
advantage than does the Master.
It appears from the reports in our metropolitan journals that a
railroad is now about to be built from Tor to the summit of Mount
Sinai. The mountain is only accessible on one side. A depot, it is
said, will be erected near the spot where a stone cross was placed by
the Russian Empress Helena, and where, according to tradition, Moses
stood when receiving the commandments. The railroad will also pass the
cave in which the prophet Elijah remained in hiding while fleeing from
the priest of Baal.
1 Kings xxi.
And it came to pass after these things, that Naboth the Jezreelite had
a vineyard, hard by the palace of Ahab king of Samaria.
2 And Ahab spake unto Naboth, saying, Give me thy vineyard, because it
is near unto my house: and I will give thee the worth of it.
3 And Naboth said to Ahab, The Lord forbid that I should give the
inheritance of my fathers unto thee.
4 And Ahab came into his house heavy and displeased because of the
word which Naboth had spoken to him. And he laid him down upon his bed,
and turned away his face, and would eat no bread.
5 But Jezebel his wife came to him, and said unto him, Why is thy
spirit so sad?
6 And he said unto her, Because I spake unto Naboth, and said unto
him, Give me thy vineyard for money; and he answered, I will not.
7 And Jezebel his wife said unto him, Dost thou now govern the kingdom
of Israel? arise, and let thine heart be merry: I will give thee the
vineyard of Naboth.
8 So she wrote letters in Ahab's name, and sealed them with his seal,
and sent the letters unto the elders and to the nobles that were in his
city.
9 And she wrote in the letters, saying,
Proclaim a fast, and set Naboth on high among the people:
10 And set two men, sons of Belial, before him, to bear witness
against him, saying, Thou didst blaspheme God and the king. And then
carry him out, and stone him, that he may die.
11 And the men of his city did as Jezebel had sent unto them.
12 They proclaimed a fast, and set Naboth on high among the people.
13 And there came in two men and sat before him: and the men witnessed
against him, saying, Naboth did blaspheme God and the king. Then they
carried him forth and stoned him with stones, that he died.
14 Then they sent to Jezebel, saying, Naboth is dead.
15 And it came to pass, when Jezebel beard that Naboth was dead, she
said to Ahab, Arise, take possession of the vineyard.
Jezebel, the daughter of the king of the Zidonians and the wife of
Ahab, is generally referred to as the most wicked and cruel woman on
record; and her name is the synonym of all that is evil. She came
honestly by these characteristics, if it is true "that evil
communications corrupt good manners," as her husband Ahab was the most
wicked of all the kings of Israel. And yet he does not seem to have
been a man of much fortitude; for in a slight disappointment in the
purchase of land he comes home in a hopeless mood, throws himself on
his bed and turns his face to the wall. According to the text, Jezebel
was equal to the occasion. She not only infused new life into Ahab, but
got possession of the desired land, though in a most infamous manner.
The false prophetess spoken of in Rev. ii., 20, is called Jezebel. She
was a devout adherent and worshiper of Baal and influenced Ahab to
follow strange gods. He reigned twenty-two years without one worthy
action to gild his memory. Jezebel's death, like her life, was a
tragedy of evil.
E. C. S.
All we know about Jezebel is told us by a rival religionist, who hated
her as the Pope of Rome hated Martin Luther, or as an American A. P. A.
now hates a Roman Catholic. Nevertheless, even the Jewish historian,
evidently biassed against Jezebel by his theological prejudices as he
is, does not give any facts whatever which warrant the assertion that
Jezebel was any more satanic than the ancient Israelitish gentleman, to
whom her theological views were opposed. Of course we, at this stage of
scientific thought, know that Jezebel's religion was not an admirable
one. Strangely enough, for a religion, it actually made her intolerant!
But to Jezebel it was a truth, for which she battled as bravely as
Elijah did for what he imagined to be eternal verity. The facts,
admitted even by the historian who hated her, prove that,
notwithstanding her unfortunate and childish conception of theology,
Jezebel was a brave, fearless, generous woman, so wholly devoted to her
own husband that even wrong seemed justifiable to her, if she could
thereby make him happy. (In that respect she seems to have entirely
fulfilled the Southern Methodist's ideal of the pattern wife absorbed
in her husband.) Four hundred of the preachers of her own faith were
fed at her table (what a pity we have not their opinion of their
benefactor!). Elijah was the preacher of a new and rival religion,
which Jezebel, naturally, regarded with that same abhorrence which the
established always feel for the innovating. To her, Elijahism doubtless
appeared as did Christianity to the Jews, Lutheranism to the Pope, or
John Wesleyism to the Church of England; but in the days of the
Israelites the world had not developed that sweet patience with heresy
which animates the Andover theologians of our time, and Jezebel had as
little forbearance with Elijah as had Torquemada with the Jews or
Elizabeth with the Puritans.
Yet, to do Jezebel justice, we must ask ourselves, how did the
assumedly good Elijah proceed in order to persuade her of the
superiority of his truth? It is painful to have to relate that that
much overestimated "man of God" invited four hundred and fifty of
Jezebel's preachers to an open air exhibition of miracles, but, not
satisfied with gaining a victory over them in this display, he pursued
his defeated rivals in religion, shouting, "Let not one of them
escape!" and thus roused the thoughtless mob of lookers-on to slaughter
the whole four hundred and fifty in cold blood! Jezebel had signalized
her advent as queen by slaying Israelitish preachers in order to put
her own preachers in office. Elijah promptly retaliated at his earliest
opportunity.
It seems to me that it would puzzle a disinterested person to decide
which of those savage deeds was more "satanic" than the other, and to
imagine why Jezebel is now dragged forth to "shake her gory locks" as a
frightful example to the American women who ask for recognized right to
self-government. I submit, that if Jezebel is a disgrace to womankind,
our dear brethren at any rate have not much cause to be proud of
Elijah, so, possibly, we might strike a truce over the character of
these two long-buried worthies. It may be well, though, to note here
that the now most offensive epithet which the English translators
attached to Jezebel's name, originally signified nothing more than that
she was consecrated to the worship of a religion, rival to that which
ancient Israel assumed to be "the only true one."
E. B. D.
CHAPTER III.
2 Kings iv.
1 Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the
prophets unto Elisha, saying, Thy servant my husband is dead; and thou
knowest that thy servant did fear the Lord: and the creditor is come to
take unto him my two sons to be bondmen.
2 And Elisha said unto her, What shall I do for thee? tell me, what
hast thou in the house? And she said, Thine handmaid hath not anything
save a pot of oil.
3 Then he said, Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbors,
4 And when thou art come in, thou shalt shut the door and shalt pour
out into all those vessels, and thou shalt set aside that which is full.
5 So she shut the door and poured out.
6 And it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said unto
her son, Bring me yet a vessel. And he said unto her, There is not a
vessel more. And the oil stayed.
7 Then she came and told the man of God. And he said, Go, sell the
oil, and pay thy debt, and live thou and thy children of the rest.
The first Book of Kings had an illustrious beginning in the glories of
the kingdom of Israel when it was entirely under King David and in the
beginning of the reign of Solomon; but the second book has a melancholy
outlook in the desolation and division of the kingdom of Israel and of
Judea. Then Elijah and Elisha, their prophets, instructed the princes
and the people in all that would come to pass, the captivity of the ten
tribes, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the good reigns of Josiah and
of Hezekiah.
This book contains the mention of four women, but only in a
perfunctory manner, more to exhibit the accomplishments of the prophet
Elisha than his beneficiaries. He raises the dead, surpasses our
Standard Oil Company in the production of that valuable article of
commerce, cures one man of leprosy and cruelly fastens the disease on
his servant for being guilty of a pardonable prevarication. Only one of
the women mentioned has a name. One is the widow of a prophet, whom
Elisha helps to pay off all her debts; for another he intercedes with
the Lord to give her a son; another, is the little captive maid of the
tribe of Israel; and the last a wicked queen, Athaliah, who sought to
kill the heir apparent. She rivalled Jezebel in her evil propensities
and suffered the same tragic death.
As the historian proceeds from book to book less is said of the
mothers of the various tribes, unless some deed of darkness is called
for, that the men would fain avoid, then some Jezebel is resurrected
for that purpose. They are seldom required to rise to a higher moral
altitude than the men of the tribe, and are sometimes permitted to fall
below it.
2 Kings iv.
8 And it fell on a day, that Elisha passed to Shunem, where was a
great woman; and she constrained him to eat bread.
9 And she said unto her husband, Behold now, I perceive that this is a
holy man of God.
10 Let us make a little chamber on the wall.
11 And it fell on a day that, he came thither; and he turned into the
chamber, and lay there.
12 And he said to Gehazi his servant, Call this Shunammite. And she
came and stood before him. And he said, Thou shalt embrace a son. And
she said, Nay, thou man of God, do not lie unto thine handmaid.
17 And the woman bare a son.
18 And when the child was grown, he went out to his father to the
reapers.
19 And said, My head, my head! And he said to a lad, Carry him to his
mother.
20 And when he had brought him to his mother, he sat on her knees till
noon, and then died.
21 And she went up, and laid him on the bed of the man of God, and
shut the door upon him, and went out.
24 And she saddled an ass, and said to her servant, Drive; slack not
thy riding, except I bid thee.
25 So she went unto the man of God to Mount Carmel.
32 And when Elisha was come into the house, behold the child was dead.
33 He went in and shut the door and prayed unto the Lord.
34 And lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his
eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his bands; and he stretched
himself upon the child; and the flesh of the child waxed warm.
35 Then he walked to and fro; and went up, and stretched upon him; and
the child sneezed seven times, and opened his eyes,
36 And he called Gehazi, and said, Call this Shunammite. So he called
her. And when she was come in unto him, he said, Take up thy son.
37 Then she fell at his feet, and bowed herself to the ground, and
took up her son.
Elisha seems to have had the same power of working miracles which
Elijah possessed. In his travels about the country he often passed the
city of Shunem, where he heard of a great woman who was very hospitable
and had a rich husband. She had often noticed the prophet passing by;
and knowing that he was a godly man, and that he could be better
entertained at her house than elsewhere, she proposed to her husband to
invite him there. So they arranged an apartment for him in a quiet part
of the house that he might have opportunities for worship and
contemplation.
After spending much time under her roof, he naturally desired to make
some recompense. So he asked her if there was anything that he could do
for her at court, any favor which she desired of the king. But
she said "no," as she had all the blessings which she desired, except,
as they had great wealth and no children to inherit it, she would like
a son. She had probably heard of all that the Lord had done in that
line for Sarah and Rebecca and the wives of Manoah and Elkanah; so she
was not much surprised when the prophet suggested such a contingency;
and she bare a son.
In due time, when the son was grown, he was taken suddenly ill and
died. The mother supposed that, as by a miracle he was brought into
life, the prophet might raise him from the dead. Accordingly, she
harnessed her mule and hastened to the prophet, who promptly returned
with her and restored him to life. She was a very discreet and
judicious woman and her husband had always entrusted everything to her
management. She was devout and conscientious and greatly enjoyed the
godly conversation of the prophet. She was known in the city as a great
and good woman. Though we find here and there among the women of the
Bible some exceptionally evil minded, yet the wise and virtuous
predominate, and, fortunately for the race, this is the case in the
American Republic to-day.
2 Kings v.
1 Now Naaman, captain of the hosts of the king of Syria, was a great
man with his master, and honorable, because by him the Lord had given
deliverance unto Syria: he was also a mighty man of valor, but he was a
leper.
2 And the Syrians had brought away captive out of the land of Israel a
little maid, and she waited on Naaman's wife.
3 And she said unto her mistress, Would my lord were with the prophet
that is in Samaria! for he would recover him of his leprosy.
4 And one went in and told his lord, saying, Thus and thus said the
maid that is of the land of Israel.
Naaman, a Syrian general and prime minister, was a great man in a
great place. He was happy, too, in that he had been serviceable to his
country and honored by his prince. But alas! he was a leper. It was
generally supposed that this was an affliction for evil doing, but
Naaman was an exceptionally perfect man.
A little maid from Israel had been carried captive into Syria and
fortunately was taken into the family of the great general, as an
attendant on his wife. While making the wife's toilet they no doubt
chatted quite freely of what was going on in the outside world. So the
little maid, sympathizing with her master in his affliction, told the
wife there was a prophet in Israel who could cure him of his leprosy.
Her earnestness roused him and his wife to make the experiment. But
after loading his white mules with many valuable gifts, and taking a
great retinue of soldiers to dazzle the prophet with Syrian
magnificence, the prophet did not deign to meet him, but sent word to
him to bathe in the river Jordan. Even a letter from the king did not
ensure a personal interview. So the general, with all his pomp, went
off in great wrath. "Are not," said he, "the rivers of Damascus, Abana
and Pharpar, greater than the Jordan? Cannot all the skill in Syria
accomplish as much as the prophet in Israel?" However, the little maid
urged him to try the river Jordan, as he was near that point, so he did
and was healed.
2 Kings viii.
Then spake Elisha unto the woman, whose son he had restored to life,
saying, sojourn wheresoever thou canst for a famine shall come upon the
land seven years.
2 And the woman arose, and did after the saying of the man of God:
3 And it came to pass at the seven years' end, that the woman returned
out of the land of the Philistines: and she went forth to cry unto the
king for her house and land.
4 And the king talked with Gehazi saying, Tell me, I pray thee, all
the great things that Elisha bath done.
5 And it came to pass, as he was telling the king how he had restored
a dead body to life, that, behold, the woman cried to the king for her
house and land. And Gehazi said, My lord, O king, this is the woman,
and this is her son, whom Elisha restored to life.
6 And when the king asked the woman, she told him. So the king
appointed unto her a certain officer, saying, Restore all that was
hers, and all the fruits of the field since the day that she left the
land, even until now.
In due time her husband died; and there was a famine; and she went for
a season to the land of the Philistines; and when she returned she
could not recover her possessions. Then Elisha befriended her and
appealed to the king; and she was reinstated in her own home.
Elisha was very democratic. He had his servant sleep in his own
chamber and consulted him in regard to many important matters. Gehazi
never forgot his place but once, when he ran after the great Syrian
general to ask for the valuable presents which the prophet had
declined. Both Elijah and Elisha preferred to do their missionary work
among the common people, finding them more teachable and superstitious.
Especially is this true of woman at all periods. In great revival
seasons in our own day, one will always see a dozen women on the
anxious seat to one man, and the same at the
communion table.
2 Kings xi.
And when Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she
arose and destroyed all the seed royal.
2 But Jehosheba, sister of Ahaziah, took Joash the son of Ahaziah, and
stole him from among the king's sons which were slain; and they hid him
and his nurse.
3 And he was with her hid in the house of the Lord six years. And
Athaliah did reign over the land.
12 And Jehoiada, the priest brought forth the king's son, and put the
crown upon him; and they made him king, and anointed him; and they
clapped their hands, and said, God save the king.
13 And when Athaliah heard the noise of the guard and of the people,
she came into the temple of the Lord.
14 And hen she looked, behold, the king stood by a pillar; and she
rent her clothes and cried, Treason, treason.
20 And they slew Athaliah with the sword beside the king's house.
21 Seven years old was Jehoash when he began to reign.
Never was royal blood more profusely shed, and never a meaner ambition
than to destroy a reigning family in order to be the last occupant on
the throne. The daughter of a king, the wife of a king, and the mother
of a king, should have had some mercy on her family descendants.
Personal ambition can never compensate for the loss of the love and
companionship of kindred. Such characters as Athaliah are abnormal,
their lives not worth recording.
2 Kings xxii.
11 And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the book
of the law, that he rent his clothes.
12 And the king commanded Hilkiah the priest,
13 Go ye, inquire of the Lord for me, and for the people, and for all
Judah, concerning the words of this book that is found: for great is
the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us, because our fathers
have not hearkened unto the words of this book, to do according unto
all that which is written concerning us.
14 So Hilkiah the priest, and the wise men went unto Huldah the
prophetess, the wife of Shallum keeper of the wardrobe; (now she dwelt
in Jerusalem in the college); and they communed with her.
15 And she said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Tell the
man that sent you to me.
16 Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, and
upon the inhabitants thereof, even all the words of the book which the
king of Judah hath read:
17 Because they have forsaken me, and have burned incense unto other
gods.
18 But to the king of Judah which sent you to inquire of the Lord,
thus shall ye say to him,
19 Because thine heart was tender, and thou hast humbled thyself
before the Lord, when thou heardest what I spake against this place,
20 Behold therefore, I will gather thee unto thy fathers, and thou
shalt be gathered into thy grave in peace; and thine eyes shall not see
all the evil which I will bring upon this place. And they brought the
king word again.
The greatest character among the women thus far mentioned is Huldah
the prophetess, residing in the college in Jerusalem. She was a
statesman as well as a prophetess, understanding the true policy
of government and the Jewish system of jurisprudence, able not only to
advise the common people of their duties to Jehovah and their country,
but to teach kings the sound basis for a kingdom. Her wisdom and
insight were well known to Josiah the king; and when the wise men came
to him with the "Book of the Law," to learn what was written therein,
Josiah ordered them to take it to Huldah, as neither the wise men nor
Josiah himself could interpret its contents. It is fair to suppose that
there was not a man at court who could read the book; hence the honor
devolved upon Huldah. Even Shallum her husband was not consulted, as he
occupied the humble office of keeper of the robes.
While Huldah was pondering great questions of State and Ecclesiastical
Law, her husband was probably arranging the royal buttons and buckles
of the household. This is the first mention of a woman in a college.
She was doubtless a professor of jurisprudence, or of the languages.
She evidently had other gifts besides that of prophecy.
We should not have had such a struggle in our day to open the college
doors had the clergy read of the dignity accorded to Huldah. People who
talk the most of what the Bible teaches often know the least about its
contents. Some years ago, when we were trying to establish a woman's
college, we asked a rich widow, worth millions, to contribute. She said
that she would ask her pastor what she ought to do about it. He
referred her to the Bible, saying that this book makes no mention of
colleges for women. To her great surprise, I referred her to 2 Kings
xxii. Both she and her pastor felt rather ashamed that they did not
know what their Bible did teach. The widow gave $30,000 soon after to a
Theological Seminary, being more interested in the education of boys
and in the promulgation of church dogmas, creeds and superstitions,
than in the education of the Mothers of the Race in the natural
sciences.
Now, women had performed great deeds in Bible times. Miriam had helped
to lead Israel out of Egypt. Deborah judged them, and led the army
against the enemy, and Huldah instructed them in their duties to the
nation. Although Jeremiah and Zephaniah were prophets at this time, yet
the king chose Huldah as the oracle. She was one of the ladies of the
court, and resided in the second rank of buildings from the royal
palace. Marriage, in her case, does not appear to have been any obstacle
in the way of individual freedom and dignity. She had evidently outgrown
the curse of subjection pronounced in the Garden of Eden, as had many
other of the Jewish women.
There is a great discrepancy between the character and the conduct of
many of the women, and the designs of God as set forth in the
Scriptures and enforced by the discipline of the Church to-day. Imagine
the moral hardihood of the reverend gentlemen who should dare to reject
such women as Deborah, Huldah and Vashti as delegates to a Methodist
conference, and claim the approval of God for such an indignity.
In the four following books, from Kings to Esther, there is no mention
of women. During that long, eventful period the men must have sprung,
Minerva-like, from the brains of their fathers, fully armed and
equipped for the battle of life. Having no infancy, there was no need
of mothers. As two remarkable women flourished at the close of one
period and at the dawn of the other, we shall make no record of the
masculine dynasty which intervened, satisfied that Huldah and Vashti
added new glory to their day and generation--one by her learning and
the other by her disobedience; for "Resistance to tyrants is obedience
to God."
E. C. S.
THE BOOK OF ESTHER.
Esther i.
2 In those days when King Ahasuerus sat upon the throne in the palace
at Shushan,
3 In the third year of his reign, he made a feast unto all his princes
and his servants; the power of Persia and Media, the nobles and princes
of the provinces being before him:
4 When he shewed the riches of his glorious kingdom and the honor of
his excellent majesty many days.
5 And when these days were expired, the king made a feast unto all the
people that were present in Shushan the palace, both unto great and
small, seven days, in the court of the garden;
6 Where were white, green and blue hangings, fastened with cords of
fine linen and purple to silver rings and pillars of marble: the beds
were of gold and silver, upon a pavement of red, and blue, and white,
and black marble.
7 And they gave them drink in vessels of gold, and royal wine in
abundance.
9 Also Vashti the queen made a feast for the women in the royal house.
10 On the seventh day, when the heart of the king was merry with wine,
he commanded:
11 To bring Vashti the queen with the crown royal, to shew the people
and the princes her beauty: for she was fair to look on.
12 But the queen Vashti refused to come: therefore was the king very
wroth.
13 Then the king said to the wise men,
15 What shall we do unto the queen Vashti according to the law?
16 And Memucan answered, Vashti the queen hath not done wrong to the
king only, but also to all the people that are in the provinces of the
king.
17 For this deed shall come abroad unto all women, so that they shall
despise their husbands. The king Ahasuerus commanded Vashti the queen
to be brought in before him, but she came not.
18 Likewise shall the ladies of Persia and Media say this day unto all
the king's princes, which have beard of the deed of the queen.
19 If it please the king, let there go a royal command from him, and
let it be written among the laws of the Persians and the Medes, That
Vashti come no more before king Ahasuerus; and let the king give her
royal estate unto another that is better than she.
20 And when the king's decree shall be published throughout his
empire, all the wives shall give to their husband's honor, both to
great and small.
21 And the saying pleased the king and the princes; and the king did
accordingly to the word of Memucan:
22 For he sent letters into all the provinces, that every man should
bear rule in his own house.
The kingdom of Ahasuerus extended from India to Ethiopia, consisting
of one hundred and twenty-seven provinces, an overgrown kingdom which
in time sunk by its own weight. The king was fond of display and
invited subjects from all his provinces to come by turns to behold his
magnificent palaces and sumptuous
entertainments.
He gave two great feasts in the beginning of his reign, one to the
nobles and the princes, and one to the people, which lasted over a
hundred days. The king had the feast for the men spread in the court
under the trees. Vashti entertained her guests in the great hall of the
palace. It was not the custom among the Persians for the sexes to eat
promiscuously together, especially when the king and the princes were
partaking freely of wine.
This feast ended in heaviness, not as Balshazzar's with a handwriting
on the wall, nor like that of Job's children with a wind from the
wilderness, but by the folly of the king, with an unhappy falling out
between the queen and himself, which ended the feast abruptly and sent
the guests away silent and ashamed. He sent seven different messages to
Vashti to put on her royal crown, which greatly enhanced her beauty,
and come to show his guests the majesty of his queen. But to all the
chamberlains alike she said, "Go tell the king I will not come; dignity
and modesty alike forbid."
This vanity of a drunken man illustrates the truth of an old proverb,
"When the wine is in, the wit is out." Josephus says that all the court
heard his command; hence, while he was showing the glory of his court,
he also showed that he had a wife who would do as she pleased.
Besides seven chamberlains he had seven learned counsellors whom he
consulted on all the affairs of State. The day after the feast, when
all were sober once more, they held a cabinet council to discuss a
proper punishment for the rebellious queen. Memucan, Secretary of
State, advised that she be divorced for her disobedience and ordered
"to come no more before the king," for unless she was severely
punished, he said, all the women of Medea and of Persia would despise
the commands of their husbands.
We have some grand types of women presented for our admiration in the
Bible. Deborah for her courage and military prowess; Huldah for her
learning, prophetic insight and statesmanship, seated in the college in
Jerusalem, where Josiah the king sent his cabinet ministers to consult
her as to the policy of his government; Esther, who ruled as well as
reigned, and Vashti, who scorned the Apostle's
command, "Wives, obey your husbands." She refused the king's orders to
grace with her presence his revelling court. Tennyson pays this tribute
to her virtue and dignity:
"Oh, Vashti! noble Vashti!
Summoned forth, she kept her state,
And left the drunken king to brawl
In Shushan underneath his palms."
E. C. S.
The feast, with the preliminary exhibition of the king's magnificent
palace and treasures, was not a social occasion in which the king and
the queen participated under the same roof. The equal dignity of woman
and of queen as companion of the king was not recognized. The men
feasted together purely as a physical enjoyment. If there was any
intellectual feature of the occasion it is not recorded. On the seventh
day, when appetite was satiated and the heart of the king was merry
with wine, as a further means of gratifying sensual tastes and
exhibiting his power, the king bethought him of the beauty of the queen.
The command to the chamberlains was to bring Vashti. It was such an
order as he might have sent to the jester, or to any other person whose
sole duty was to do the king's bidding, and whose presence might add to
the entertainment of his assemblage of men. It was not an invitation
which anywise recognized the queen's condescension in honoring the
company by her presence.
But Vashti refused to come at the king's command! An unprecedented act
of both wife and queen. Probably Vashti had had previous knowledge of
the condition of the king when his heart was merry with wine and when
the physical man was under the effects of seven day's conviviality. She
had a higher idea of womanly dignity than placing herself on exhibition
as one of the king's possessions, which it pleased him to present to
his assembled princes. Vashti is conspicuous as the first woman
recorded whose self-respect and courage enabled her to act contrary to
the will of her husband. She was the first "woman who dared."
This was the more marked because her husband was also king. So far as
the record proves, woman had been obedient to the commands of the
husband and the father, or, if seeking to avoid them, had sought
indirect methods and diplomacy. It was the first exhibition of the
individual sovereignty of woman on record. Excepting Deborah as judge,
no example had been given of a woman who formed her own judgment and
acted upon it. There had been no exhibition of a self-respecting
womanhood which might stand for a higher type of social life than was
customary among men.
Vashti was the prototype of the higher unfoldment of woman beyond her
time. She stands for the point in human development when womanliness
asserts itself and begins to revolt and to throw off the yoke of
sensualism and of tyranny. Her revolt was not an overt act, or a
criticism of the proceedings of the king. It was merely exercising her
own judgment as to her own proceeding. She did not choose to be brought
before the assembly of men as an exhibit. The growth of self-respect
and of individual sovereignty in woman has been slow. The sequence of
Vashti's refusal to obey the king suggests at least one of the reasons
why the law has been made, as it has down to the present day, by men
alone. Woman has not been consulted, as she is not consulted to-day
about any law, even such as bears especially upon herself, but was and
is expected to obey it.
The idea of maintaining the respect of women and of wives by
worthiness and by nobility of character and of manner, had not been
born in the man of that day. The husband was to be held an authority.
His superiority was his power to command obedience.
"And when the king's decree which he shall make shall be published
throughout all his empire, all the wives shall give to their husbands
honour, both great and small."
King Ahasuerus was but a forerunner of the more modern lawmaker, who
seeks the same end of male rulership, by making the wife and all
property the possession of the husband. That every living soul has an
inherent right to control its life and activities, and that woman
equally with man should enjoy this opportunity, had not dawned
upon the consciousness of the men of the times of Ahasuerus.
Vashti stands out a sublime representative of self-centred womanhood.
Rising to the heights of self-consciousness and of self-respect, she
takes her soul into her own keeping, and though her position both as
wife and as queen are jeopardized, she is true to the Divine
aspirations of her nature.
L. B. C.
Esther ii.
After these things, when the wrath of king Ahasuerus was appeased, he
remembered Vashti, and what she had done, and what was decreed against
her.
2 Then said his servants, Let there be fair young virgins sought for
the king:
3 And let him appoint officers in all the provinces that they may
gather together the fair young virgins unto Shushan the palace,
4 And let the maiden which pleaseth the king be queen instead of
Vashti. And the thing pleased the king; and he did so.
5 Now in Shushan the palace there was a certain Jew, whose name was
Mordecai.
7 And he brought up Hadassah, that is, Esther, his uncle's daughter;
for she had neither father nor mother, and the maid was fair and
beautiful; whom Moredcai {sic}, when her father and mother were dead,
took for his own daughter.
8 So it came to pass, when the king's commandment was heard, and when
many maidens were gathered together, that Esther was brought also unto
the king's house.
11 And Mordecai walked every day before the court of the women's
house, to know how Esther did, and what should become of her.
17 And the king loved Esther above all the women, and she obtained
grace and favour in his sight; so that be set the royal crown upon her
head, and made her queen instead of Vashti.
18 Then the king made a great feast, even Esther's feast; and he made
a release to the provinces, and gave gifts, according to the state of
the king.
Esther was a Jewess, one of the children of the captivity, an orphan
whom Mordecai adopted as his own child. She was beautiful, symmetrical
in form, fair in face, and of rare intelligence. Her wisdom and virtue
were her greatest gifts. "It is an advantage to a diamond even to be
well set." Mordecai was her cousin-german and her guardian. It was said
that he intended to marry her; but when he saw what her prospects in
life were, and what she might do as a favorite of the king for his own
promotion and the safety of his people, he held his individual
affection in abeyance for the benefit of his race and the safety of the
king; for he soon saw the dishonest, intriguing character of Haman,
whom he despised in his heart and to whom he would not bow in passing,
nor make any show of respect. As he was a keeper of the door
and sat at the king's gate, he had many opportunities to show his
disrespect.
He discovered a plot against the king's life which he revealed to
Esther, that, in due time, secured him promotion to the head of the
king's cabinet. But in the meantime Haman had the ear of the king; and
to revenge the indignities of Mordecai, he decided to slay all the Jews
throughout all the provinces of the kingdom, and procured an edict to
that effect from the king, and stamped with the king's signet ring the
letters that he sent by post into all the provinces. The day was set
for this terrible slaughter; and the Jews were fasting in sack-cloth
and ashes.
The king loved Esther above all the women and had made her his queen.
She was not known at court as a Jewess, but was supposed to be of
Persian extraction. Mordecai had told her to say nothing on that
subject. Ahasuerus placed the royal crown upon her head, and solemnized
her coronation with a great feast, which Esther graced with her
presence, at the request of the king. She profited by the example of
Vashti, and saw the good policy of at least making a show of obedience
in all things. Mordecai walked up and down past her door many times a
day; and through a faithful messenger kept her informed of all that
transpired, so she was aware of the plot Haman had laid against her
people. So she made a banquet for the king and Haman, and told the king
the effect of his royal edict and letters sent by post in all the
provinces stamped with his ring. She told him of Mordecai's
faithfulness in saving his life; that she and Mordecai were Jews, and
that it was their people who were to be slain, young and old, women and
children, without mercy; that their possessions were to be confiscated
to raise the money which Haman promised to put into the royal treasury,
and that Haman had already built a gallows thirty feet high on which
Mordecai was to be hanged.
Haman trembled in the presence of the king, who ordered him to be
hanged on the gallows which he had prepared for Mordecai; and the
latter was installed as the favorite of the king. The family and the
followers of Haman were slain by the thousands, and the Jews were
filled with gladness. The day appointed for their destruction was one
of thanksgiving. They appointed a certain day in the last
month of the year, just before the Passover, to be kept ever after as
the feast of Purim, one of thanksgiving for their deliverance from the
vengeance of Haman. Purim is a Persian word. It is not a holy day
feast, but of human appointment. It is celebrated at the present time,
and in the service the whole story is told. It is to be regretted that
this feast often ends in gluttony.
One commentator says that the Talmud states that in the feast of Purim
a man may drink until he knows not the difference between "cursed be
Haman" and "blessed be Mordecai." If the Talmud means that he may drink
the wine of good fellowship until all feelings of vengeance, hatred and
malice are banished from the human soul, the sentiment is not so
objectionable as at the first blush it appears. There is one thing in
the Jewish service worse than this, and that is for each man to stand
up in the synagogue every Sabbath morning and say: "I thank thee, O
Lord, that I was not born a woman," as if that were the depth of human
degradation. It is to be feared that the thanksgiving feast of the
Purim has degenerated in many localities into the same kind of a
gathering as the Irish wake.
In the history of Esther, those who believe in special Providence will
see that in her coming to the throne multitudes of her people were
saved from a cruel death, hence the disobedience of Vashti was
providential. A faith "that all things are working together for good,"
"that good only is positive, evil negative," is most cheerful and
sustaining to the believer. I have always regretted that the historian
allowed Vashti to drop out of sight so suddenly. Perhaps she was doomed
to some menial service, or to entire sequestration in her own
apartments.
E. C. S.
The record fails to state whether or not the king's judgment was
modified in regard to Vashti's refusal to appear on exhibition when his
wrath abated. But the decree had gone forth, and could not be altered;
and Vashti banished, no further record of her fate appears. The
king's ministers at once set about providing a successor to Vashti.
The king in those days had the advantage of the search for fair young
virgins, in that he could command the entire collection within his
dominions. The only consideration was whether or not the maiden
"pleased" him. There is no hint that the maiden was expected to signify
her acceptance or rejection of the king's choice. She was no more to be
consulted than if she had been an animal. Her position as queen was but
an added distinction of her lord and master.
Esther, the orphaned and adopted daughter of Mordecai the Jew, was the
favored maiden. She was "fair and beautiful." The truth of the historic
record of the men of those days is indisputable. Down to the present
the average man sums up his estimate of woman by her "looks." Is she
fair to look upon is the criterion. Esther was destined to play an
important part in the salvation of her people from the destructive
purposes of Haman, who had been "set above all the princes who were
with him." This young woman, who had been crowned by her royal master
because she "pleased" him, was called upon by the peril of her people,
whom Haman was seeking to destroy, to place her own life in jeopardy,
by venturing to obtain audience with the king, without having been
summoned into his presence.
When Esther received from Mordecai the assurance, "Think not with
thyself that thou shalt escape in the king's house more than all the
Jews," he asked, "Who knoweth, whether thou art come to the kingdom for
such a time as this?" then this young woman rose to the extremity of
the situation. She exercised a high degree of wisdom and courage, and
bade them return Mordecai this answer:
Go gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast
ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day; I also
and my maidens will fast likewise; and so will I go in unto the king,
which is not according to the law; and if I perish, I perish.--Vs. 15,
16.
She prepared herself thus by fasting to receive and to exercise the
power of spirit. Her high purpose was only equalled by her unfaltering
courage and entire self-abnegation. Vashti had exercised
heroic courage in asserting womanly dignity and the inherent human
right never recognized by kingship, to choose whether to please and to
obey the king. Esther, so as to save her people from destruction,
risked her life.
This King Ahasuerus, who, according to the record, was only a man of
selfish purposes, delighting in power and given to the enjoyment of his
passions, was the legal lord and master of two women, each
distinguished by a nobility of character well worthy of the distinction
of queen. Their royalty was of a higher order than that of sceptres and
of crowns. While we rejoice in the higher manhood which the centuries
have evolved, we are in this hour reminded of the dominating
disposition of King Ahasuerus and the habits of those times. A
distinguished man and a scholar in this closing nineteenth century
claims that "the family is necessarily a despotism," and that man is
the "ruler of the household."
Women as queenly, as noble and as self-sacrificing as was Esther, as
self-respecting and as brave as was Vashti, are hampered in their
creative office by the unjust statutes of men; but God is marching on;
and it is the seed of woman which is to bruise the head of the serpent.
It is not man's boasted superiority of intellect through which the
eternally working Divine power will perfect the race, but the
receptiveness and the love of woman.
L. B. C.
THE BOOK OF JOB.
Job i.
There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man
was perfect and upright, and one that feared God.
2 And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters.
3 His substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand
camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and
a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all the
men of the east.
4 And his sons feasted in their houses; and sent and called for their
three sisters to eat with them.
6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves
before the Lord, and Satan came also.
7 And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Satan answered,
From going to and fro in the earth.
8 And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job,
that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man.
9 Then Satan answered, Doth Job fear God for nought?
10 Hast not thou made a hedge about him, and about his house, and
about all that he hath on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his
hands.
11 But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he
will curse thee to thy face.
12 And the Lord said unto Satan, all that he hath is in thy power:
only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from
the presence of the Lord.
14 And there came a messenger unto Job, and said, The oxen were
ploughing, and the asses feeding beside them:
15 And the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away; yea, they have
stain the servants.
16 There came another, and said, fire is fallen from heaven, and hath
burned up the sheep.
17 There came also another, and said, The Chaldeans fell upon the
camels, and have carried them away.
18 There came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were
eating and drinking.
19 And, behold there came a great wind and smote the four corners of
the house, and it fell upon, the young men, and they are dead.
20 Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell
down upon the ground, and worshiped.
Job ii.
9 Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity?
curse God and die.
10 But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women
speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we
not receive evil?
Job xlii.
11 Then came there unto him his brethren, and his sisters, and they
that had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with him in
his house: and they comforted him over all the evil that the Lord had
brought upon him: every man also gave him a piece of money, and every
one an earring of gold.
12 So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning;
for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a
thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses.
13 He had also seven sons and three daughters.
15 And in all the land were no women found so fair as the daughters of
Job; and their father gave them inheritance among their brethren.
16 After this lived Job a hundred and forty years.
17 So Job died, being old and full of days.
The Book of Job opens with an imaginary discussion between the Lord
and Satan as to the true character of Job. Satan hates him because he
is good, and envies him because he is a favorite of the Lord, who
expresses unbounded faith in his steadfastness to
religious principles. Satan replies that Job is all right in
prosperity, when surrounded with every comfort; but stripped of his
blessings, his faith in a superintending Providence would vanish like
dew before the rising sun. The Lord said, "You may test Job. I give you
permission to do your worst and to see if he will not remain as true in
adversity as he is in prosperity."
The Book of Job is an epic poem, an allegory, to show the grand
elements in human nature, enabling mortals to rise superior to all
trials and temptations, to the humiliations of the spirit, and to
prolonged suffering in the flesh. Though illustrated in the personality
of a man, yet the principle applies equally to the wisdom and the
virtue of woman. The elements of Job's goodness and greatness must have
existed in his mother. But little is said of women in this book; and
that little is by no means complimentary. Job's wife's name was Dinah;
some commentators say that she was the daughter of Jacob. Satan uses
her as the last and most subtle influence for the downfall of his
victim. Between the two forces of good and of evil, the triumph of the
spiritual nature over the temptations of the flesh, the god-like in the
human, was thoroughly proven. Job is represented as a great man. He has
wealth, inflexible integrity and a charming family life, seven sons and
three daughters, immense herds of oxen, sheep, asses, camels, and
servants without number.
The spirit of evil, to test his faithfulness, strips him of all his
possessions. In one day Job's houses were destroyed, his lands made
desolate, his cattle stolen and his children carried off in a
whirlwind. Job was stunned by these calamities. He put on sackcloth,
shaved his head, as was the custom, and calmly accepted the situation;
and his faith in the goodness of God remained. Then the spirit of evil,
to test him still further, afflicted him with a terrible disease,
loathsome to endure and pitiful to behold. His three friends, Eliphaz,
Bildad and Zophar, mocked him in his misery.
His last affliction was the disgust of his wife. She ridiculed his
faith in God, and scoffed at his piety, as Michal did at David. She was
spared to be his last tempter when all his comforts were taken away.
She bantered him for his constancy, "Dost thou still maintain thy
confidence in the God who has punished thee? Why dost thou be so
obstinate in thy religion, which serves no good to thee? Why truckle to
a God who, so far from rewarding thy services with marks of his favor,
seems to take pleasure in making thee miserable and scourges thee
without any provocation? Is this a God to be still loved and served?
'Curse God and die.'" She urges him to commit suicide. Better to die at
once than to endure his life of lingering misery.
Deserted by wife, by friends, and, seemingly by God, too, Job's faith
wavered not. The spirit of evil had done its worst. Man had proven his
Divine origin, himself the incarnation of the great Spirit of Good; and
now that Job had proved himself superior to all human calamities, he is
restored to health; and all his earthly possessions are returned
fourfold.
Nothing more is said of his first wife, but his ten children are
restored. The names of his three daughters are significant, though not
euphonious: Jemima, the day, because of Job's prosperity; Kezia, a
spice, because he was healed, and Karen-Happuch, plenty restored. God
adorned them with great beauty, no women being so fair as were the
daughters of Job. In the Old Testament we often find women praised for
their beauty; but in the New Testament we find no notice of physical
charms, not even in the Virgin Mary herself. Job gave to his daughters
an equal inheritance with his sons. It is pleasant to see that the
brothers paid them marked attention, and always invited them to their
dinners, and that his ten children were reproduced just as his flocks
and his herds had been.
Much more sympathy has been expressed by women for the wife, than for
Job. Poor woman, she had scraped lint, nursed him and waited on him to
the point of nervous exhaustion--no wonder that she was resigned to see
him pass to Abraham's bosom. Job lived one hundred and forty years.
Some conjecture that he was seventy years old when his calamities came
upon him, so that his age was doubled with his other blessings. Whether
Dinah lived to cheer Job's declining years, or whether she was lured by
Satan to his kingdom, does not appear; but he is supposed to have had a
second wife, by the name of Sitis--the probable mother of the second
brood.
E. C. S.
BOOKS OF PSALMS, PROVERBS, ECCLESIASTES
AND
THE SONG OF SOLOMON.
PSALMS.
Psalms xlv.
9 Kings' daughters were among thy honourable women: upon thy right
hand did stand the queen in gold of Ophir.
10 Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget
also thine own people, and thy father's house;
11 So shall the King greatly desire thy beauty: for he is thy Lord;
and worship thou him.
12 And the daughter of Tyre shall be there with a gift: even the rich
among the people shall entreat thy favour.
13 The King's daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is of
wrought gold.
14 She shall be brought unto the King in raiment of needlework: the
virgins her companions that follow her shall be brought unto thee.
15 With gladness and rejoicing shall they be brought: they shall enter
into the King's palace.
This book is supposed to have been written by David, the son of Jesse,
called the sweet psalmist of Israel. He had a taste for the arts, a
real genius for poetry and song. Many of the poems are beautiful in
sentiment and celebrated as specimens of literature, as are some
passages in Job; but the general tone is pessimistic. David's old age
was full of repinings over the follies of his youth and of his middle
age. The declining years of a well-spent life should be the most
peaceful and happy. Then the lessons of experience are understood, and
one knows how to bear its joys and sorrows with equal philosophy. Yet
David in the twilight of his days seemed to dwell in the shadows of
despair, in sackcloth and ashes, repenting for his own sins and
bemoaning the evil tendency of men in general. There is a passing
mention of the existence of women as imaginary beings in the Psalms,
the Proverbs, and The Song of Solomon, but not illustrated by any
grand personalities or individual characters.
Psalms ii.
To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came
unto him, after he had gone in to Bath-sheba.
1 Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving-kindness:
according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my
transgressions.
2 Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
3 For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.
David's treatment of Uriah was the darkest passage in his life; and to
those who love justice it is a satisfaction to know that his conscience
troubled him for this act to the end of his days. We are not told
whether Bath-sheba ever dropped a tear over the sad fate of Uriah, or
suffered any upbraidings of conscience.
PROVERBS
ix., 13 A foolish woman is clamorous: she is simple, and knoweth
nothing.
xi., 16 A gracious woman retaineth honour: and strong men retain riches.
xiv. Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it
down with her hands.
xvii., 25 A foolish son is a grief to his father and bitterness to her
that bare him.
xix., 14 House and riches are the inheritance of fathers: and a
prudent wife is from the Lord.
xxi., 9 It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than with a
brawling woman in a wide house.
xxi., 19 It is better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a
contentious and an angry woman.
xxvii., 15 A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious
woman are alike.
xxx., 21 For three things the earth is disquieted, and for four which
it cannot bear:
22 For a servant when he reigneth; and a fool when he is filled with
meat;
23 For an odious woman when she is married; and a handmaid that is
heir to her mistress.
xxxi., 10 Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above
rubies.
11 The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her.
12 She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.
13 She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.
16 She considereth a field, and buyeth it: with the fruit of her hands
she planteth a vineyard.
20 She stretcheth out her hand to the poor.
21 She is not afraid of the snow; for all her household are clothed
with scarlet.
22 She maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is silk and
purple.
23 Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders
of the land.
24 She maketh fine linen, and selleth it.
26 She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of
kindness.
28 Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and
he praiseth her.
29 Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.
30 Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain; but a woman that feareth
the Lord, shall be praised.
With these pen pictures of the foolish, contentious wife contrasted
with the more gracious woman, surely every reader of common sense will
try to follow the example of the latter. A complaining woman is worse
than a leaky house, because with paint and putty you can stop the
dropping; but how can one find the source of constant complaints?
Heretofore Biblical writers have given to us battles, laws, histories,
songs; now we have in Solomon's writings a new style in short,
epigrammatic sentences. The proverb was the most ancient way of
teaching among the Greeks. The seven wise men of Greece each had his
own motto on which he made himself famous. These were engraved on stone
in public places. Thus the gist of an argument or a long discussion may
be thrown into a proverb, in which the whole point will be easily seen
and remembered.
Solomon's idea of a wise woman, a good mother, a prudent wife, a
saving housekeeper and a successful merchant, will be found in the
foregoing texts, which every woman who reads should have printed,
framed and hung up at her family altar. As Solomon had a thousand women
in his household, he had great opportunity for the study of the
characteristics of the sex, though one would naturally suppose that
wise women, even in his day, preferred a larger sphere of action than
within his palace walls. Solomon's opinion of the sex in general is
plainly expressed in the foregoing texts.
Solomon is supposed to have written his Song when he was young,
Proverbs in middle life, and Ecclesiastes when he was old. He gave
admirable rules for wisdom and virtue to all classes, to men, to women
and to children, but failed to practise the lessons which he taught.
ECCLESIASTES.
This book, written in Solomon's old age, is by no means comforting or
inspiring. Everything in life seems to have been disappointing to him.
Wealth, position, learning, all earthly possessions and acquirements
he declares alike to be "vanity of vanities and
vexation of spirit." To one whose life has been useful to others and
sweet to himself, it is quite impossible to accept these pessimistic
pictures of human destiny.
Eccles. ii.
I said in mine heart, I will prove thee with mirth; therefore enjoy
pleasure: and, behold, this also is vanity.
4 I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards:
5 I made me gardens and orchards.
7 I had great possessions above all that were in Jerusalem before me:
8 I gathered me also silver and gold and particular treasures: I gat
me men singers and women singers, and musical instruments.
10 And whatsover mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld
not my heart from any joy.
13 Then I saw that wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth
darkness.
14 The wise man's eyes are in his head; but the fool walketh in
darkness: and I myself perceived also that one event happeneth to them
all.
This constant depreciation of human dignity and power is very
demoralizing in its influence on character. When we consider the
struggles of the race from savagism to civilization, all the wonderful
achievements, discoveries and inventions of man, we must feel more like
bowing down to him as an incarnation of his Creator than deploring his
follies like "a poor worm of the dust." The Episcopal service is most
demoralizing in this view. Whole congregations of educated men and
women, day after day, year after year, confessing themselves "miserable
sinners," with no evident improvement from generation to generation.
And this confession is made in a perfunctory manner, as if no disgrace
attended that mental condition, and without hope or promise of a change
from that unworthy attitude.
Eccles. vii.
26 And I find more bitter than death the woman, whose heart is snares
and nets, and her hands as bands: whoso pleaseth God shall escape from
her; but the sinner shall be taken by her.
28 One wise man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all
those have I not found.
29 Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but
they have sought out many inventions.
Solomon must have had a sad experience in his relations with women. Such
an opinion is a grave reflection on his own mother, who was so devoted
to his success in the world. But for her ambition he would never have
been crowned King of Israel. The commentators vouchsafe the opinion that
there are more good women than men. It is very kind in some of the
commentators to give us a word of praise now and then; but from the
general tone of the learned fabulists, one would think that the Jezebels
and the Jaels predominated. In fact, Solomon says that he has not found
one wise woman in a thousand.
THE SONG OF SOLOMON.
The name of God does not appear in this Song, neither is the latter
ever mentioned in the New Testament. This book has no special religious
significance, being merely a love poem, an epithalamium, sung on
nuptial occasions in praise of the bride and the groom. The proper
place for this book is before either Proverbs or Ecclesiastes, as it
was written in Solomon's youth, and is a more pardonable outburst for
his early days than for his declining years. The Jewish doctors advised
their young people not to read this book until they were thirty years
old, when they were supposed to be more susceptible to spiritual
beauties and virtues than to the mere attractions of face and of form.
The Church, as an excuse for retaining this book as a part of "Holy
Scriptures," interprets the Song as expressive of Christ's love for the
Church; but that is rather far-fetched, and unworthy the character of
the ideal Jesus. The most rational view to take of the Song is, it was
that of a luxurious king to the women of his seraglio.
E. C. S.
BOOKS OF ISAIAH AND DANIEL, MICAH AND MALACHI.
ISAIAH.
The closing books, of the Old Testament make but little mention of
women as illustrating individual characteristics. The ideal woman is
used more as a standard of comparison for good and for evil, the good
woman representing the elements of success in building up the family,
the tribe, the nation, as a devout worshiper of the God of Israel; the
wicked woman, the elements of destruction in the downfall of great
cities and nations. As woman is chosen to represent the extremes of
human conditions she has no special reason to complain.
The Prophets sum up the graces of the "daughters of men" in the
following texts:
Isaiah iii.
16 Moreover the Lord saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty,
and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and
mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet:
19 In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling
ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like
the moon,
19 The chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers,
20 The bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and
the tablets, and the earrings,
21 The rings, and nose jewels,
22 The changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples,
and the crisping pins,
23 The glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods, and the vails.
Before the sacred canon of the Old Testament was written there were
Prophets who took the place of Bibles to the Church. It is said that
God himself spake to the children of Israel from the top of Mount
Sinai, but that it was so terrible they entreated the Lord ever after
to speak to them through men. So ever after he did communicate with
them through Prophets and Angels. Isaiah was of the royal family;
he was nephew to King Uzziah. The Prophet in the above texts reproves
and warns the daughters of Zion and tells them of their faults. He does
not like their style of walking, which from the description must have
been much like the mincing gait of some women to-day.
The Prophet expressly vouches God's authority for what he said
concerning their manners and elaborate ornamentation, lest they should
be offended with his criticisms. If the Prophets could visit our stores
and see all the fashions there are to tempt the daughters of to-day,
they would declaim against our frivolities on the very doorsteps, and
in view of the Easter bonnets, at the entrance to our churches. The
badges which our young women wear as members of societies, pinned in
rows on broad ribbons, the earrings, the bangles, the big sleeves, the
bonnets trimmed with osprey feathers, answer to the crisping pins, the
wimples, the nose jewels, the tablets, the chains, the bracelets, the
mufflers, the veils, the glasses and the girdles of the daughters of
Zion. If the Prophets, instead of the French milliners and dressmakers,
could supervise the toilets of our women, they would dress in far
better taste.
DANIEL.
The name of this Prophet in Hebrew was "Da##il,"[FN#5] which
signifies "the judgment of God." His Chaldean name was Bethshazzai. He
was of the tribe of Judah of the royal family. Josephus calls him one
of the greatest of the Prophets.
[FN#5] Redactor's note. Text was illegible.
Daniel v.
Belshazzar the king made a great feast and commanded to bring the
golden and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out
of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the king and his princes,
his wives and his concubines, might drink therein.
3 Then they brought the golden vessels, . . . and praised the gods of
gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone.
5 In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over
against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall: and the king saw
the part of the hand that wrote.
6 Then the king's countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled
him, so that his knees smote one against another.
7 The king cried aloud to bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and
the soothsayers. And the king spoke, and said to the wise men of
Babylon, Whosoever shall read this writing, and shew
me the interpretation thereof, shall be clothed with scarlet, and have
a chain of gold about his neck, and shall be the third ruler in the
kingdom.
8 Then came in all the king's wise men: but they could not read the
writing, nor make known the interpretation thereof.
10 Now the queen came into the banquet house, and said, O king, live
forever: let not thy thoughts trouble thee.
11 There is a man in thy kingdom in whom is the spirit of the holy
gods; and in the days of thy father light and understanding and wisdom,
like the wisdom of the gods, was found in him; whom Nebuchadnezzar thy
father made master of the magicians, astrologers, Chaldeans and
soothsayers; . . . now let Daniel be called, and he will shew the
interpretation.
13 Then was Daniel brought in; and he said, I will read the writing
unto the king.
25 And this is the writing that was written, Mene, Mene, Tekel,
Upharsin.
26 This Is The Interpretation Of The Thing: Mene; God Hath Numbered
Thy Kingdom, And Finished It.
27 Tekel; Thou Are Weighed In The Balance, And Art Found Wanting.
28 Peres; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.
29 Then commanded Belshazzar, and they clothed Daniel with scarlet,
and put a chain of gold about his neck, and made a proclamation
concerning him, that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom.
20 In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain.
Historians say that Cyrus was at this time besieging the city and knew
of this feast, and took this opportunity to make his attack and to slay
the king.
In the midst of the consternation at the feast the queen entered to
advise Belshazzar. It is supposed that this queen was the widow of the
evil Merodach, and was that famous Nitocris whom Herodotus mentions as
a woman of extraordinary prudence and wisdom. She was not present at
the feast, as were the king's wives and concubines. It was not
agreeable to her age and gravity to dissipate at night; but tidings of
the consternation in the banquet hall were brought to her, so that she
came and entreated him not to be discouraged by the incapacity of the
wise men to solve the riddle; for there was a man in his kingdom who
had more than once helped his father in emergencies and would no doubt
advise him. She could not read the writing herself; but she said, let
the Prophet Daniel be called. The account she gives of the respect
Nebuchadnezzar had for him, for his insight into the deepest mysteries,
and of his goodness and wisdom, moved the king to summon Daniel into
his presence.
Daniel was now near ninety years of age, and for a long time had not
been in court circles; but the queen dowager remembered him in the
court of the king's father. She reminded her son of the high esteem in
which he was held by his father. The interpretation which
Daniel gave of these mystic characters was far from easing the king of
his fears. Daniel being in years, and Belshazzar still young, he took
greater liberty in dealing plainly with him than he had with his
father. He read the warning as written on the wall:
"Thou hast been weighed in the balance and found wanting, and thy
kingdom is divided and rent from thee."
Although the exposition of the handwriting was most discouraging, yet
the king kept his promise, and put on Daniel the scarlet gown and the
gold chain.
MICAH.
Micah ii.
9 The women of my people have ye cast out from their pleasant houses;
from their children have ye taken away my glory forever.
Micah vii.
6 For the son dishonoureth the father, the daughter riseth up against
her mother, the daughter in law against her mother in law.
Here the Israelites are rebuked for their cruel treatment of their own
people, robbing widows and selling children into slavery. Family life
as well as public affairs seems to have become unsettled. The contempt
and the violation of the laws of domestic duties are a sad symptom of
universal corruption.
MALACHI.
Malachi ii.
11 Judah hath profaned the holiness of the Lord which he loved, and
hath married the daughter of a strange god.
14 Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because the Lord hath been witness between
thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt
treacherously: yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant.
15 That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your
spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.
These Israelites were always violating the national law which forbade
them to marry strange women. The corruption of the nation began, say
the historians, with the intermarriage of the "sons of God"
with the "daughters of men," meaning, I suppose, those of the tribes
who had a different religion, "He that marries a heathen woman is as if
he made himself son-in-law to an idol." They put away the wives of
their own nation, and, as was the fashion at one time, married those of
other nations. This spoiled the lives of the daughters of Israel. They
were uncertain as to their social relations, family, right to their
children, and support in their old age, as a paper of divorce could be
given to them at any time. The denunciations of the Prophets had no
great weight in matters where strong feeling and sound judgment
conflicted.
Charming women, of the Hittites and of the Midianites, with their
novel dress, manners and conversation, attracted the men of Israel.
They could not resist the temptation. When the strongest man and the
wisest one are alike led captive, there is no significance in calling
woman--"the weaker sex."
Though few women appear in the closing tragedies of the Old Testament,
yet the idiosyncrasies of the sex are constantly used to point a moral
or to condemn a sin.
E. C. S.
THE KABBALAH.
The Bible is an occult book, and a remarkable one. About all creeds
and faiths this side of Pagandom go to it for their authority. Read in
the light of occult teachings, it becomes something more than the old
battle ground of controversy for warring religions. Occultism alone
furnishes the key to this ancient treasury of wisdom. But to turn now
to another point, it may be well to call the attention of the readers
of The Woman's Bible to a few quotations from MacGregor Mathers'
"Kabbalah Unveiled," which has been pronounced by competent authorities
the work of a master hand. This work is a translation of Knorr Von
Rosenroth's "Kabbalah Denudata."
The Kabbalah--the Hebrew esoteric doctrines--is a system of teachings
with which only the very learned attempt to wrestle. It is claimed to
have been handed down by oral tradition from angelic sources, through
Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, the Seventy Elders, to David and to
Solomon. No attempt was made to commit this sacred knowledge to
writing, till, in the early centuries of the Christian era (authorities
differ widely as to the date) the pupils of Rabbi Simeon ben Joachi put
his teachings into writing; and this in later ages became known as the
"Zohar," or "Book of Splendor." Around the name of this Rabbi Simeon
ben Joachi, as one scholarly writer puts it, "cluster the mystery and
the poetry of the religion of the Kabbalah as a gift of the Deity to
mankind." The Zohar, which is only a part of the Kabbalah, is the great
store-house of the esoteric teaching of the ancient Hebrews.
Returning to the quotations referred to above, MacGregor Mathers in
his preface says: "I wish particularly to direct the reader's attention
to the stress laid by the Kabbalah on the feminine aspects of the
Deity, and to the shameful way in which any allusion to these has been
suppressed in the ordinary translations of the Bible, also to the
Kabbalistical equality of male and female."
Referring to the Sephiroth (the ten Kabbalistical attributes of God),
Mr. Mathers says:
"Among these Sephiroth, jointly and severally, we find the development
of the persons and the attributes of God. Of these, some are male and
some are female. Now, for some reason or other, best known to
themselves, the translators of the Bible have carefully crowded out of
existence and smothered up every reference to the fact that the Deity
is both masculine and feminine. They have translated a feminine plural
by a masculine singular in the case of the word Elohim. They have,
however, left an inadvertent admission of their knowledge that it was
plural in Genesis iv., 26: 'And Elohim said: Let US make man.'
"Again (v., 27), how could Adam be made in the image of the Elohim,
male and female, unless the Elohim were male and female also? The word
Elohim is a plural formed from the feminine singular ALH, Eloh, by
adding IM to the word. But inasmuch as IM is usually the termination of
the masculine plural, and is here added to a feminine noun, it gives to
the word Elohim the sense of a female potency united to a masculine
idea, and thereby capable of producing an offspring. Now we hear much
of the Father and the Son, but we hear nothing of the Mother in the
ordinary religions of the day. But in the Kabbalah we find that the
Ancient of Days conforms himself simultaneously into the Father and the
Mother, and thus begets the Son. Now this Mother is Elohim."
The writer then goes on to show that the Holy Spirit, usually
represented as masculine, is in fact feminine. The first Sephira
contained the other nine, and produced them in succession. The second
is Chokmah (Wisdom), and is the active and evident Father to whom the
Mother is united. The third is a feminine passive potency called Binah
(Understanding), and is co-equal with Chokmah. Chokmah is powerless
till the number three forms the triangle.
"Thus this Sephira completes and makes evident the supernal Trinity.
It is also called AMA, Mother, the great productive Mother, who is
eternally conjoined with the Father for the maintenance of the
universe in order. Therefore is she the most evident form in whom we
can know the Father, and therefore is she worthy of all honor. She is
the supernal Mother, co-equal with Chokmah, and the great feminine form
of God, the Elohim, in whose image man and woman were created,
according to the teaching of the Kabbalah, equal before God. Woman is
equal with man, not inferior to him, as it has been the persistent
endeavor of so-called Christians to make her. Aima is the woman
described in the Apocalypse (ch. 12)."
"This third Sephira is also sometimes called the Great Sea. To her are
attributed the Divine names, Alaim, Elohim, and Iahveh Alhim; and the
angelic order, Arhlim, the Thrones. She is the supernal Mother as
distinguished from Malkuth, the inferior Mother, Bride and Queen. . . .
In each of the three trinities or triads of the Sephiroth is a dual of
opposite sexes, and a uniting intelligence which is the result. In
this, the masculine and feminine potencies are regarded as the two
scales of the balance, and the uniting Sephira as the beam which joins
them."
In chapter viii. we read: "Chokmah is the Father, and Binah is the
Mother, and therein are Chokmah (Wisdom) and Binah (Understanding),
counterbalanced together in most perfect equality of Male and Female.
And therefore are all things established in the equality of Male and
Female; if it were not so, how could they subsist? . . . In their
conformations are They found to be the perfections of all things--
Father and Mother, Son and Daughter. These things have not been
revealed save unto the Holy Superiors who have entered therein and
departed therefrom, and have known the paths of the Most Holy God, so
that they have not erred in them, either on the right hand or on the
left."
In a note in regard to Chokmah and Binah the author says: "Chokmah is
the second and Binah is the third of the Sephiroth. This section is a
sufficient condemnation of all those who wish to make out that woman is
inferior to man."
The Kabbalah also speaks of the separation of the sexes as the cause
of evil, or as the author puts it in a note: "Where there is unbalanced
force, there is the origin of evil." Further on it is written: "And
therefore is Aima (the Mother) known to be the consummation of
all things; and She is signified to be the beginning and the end. . . .
And hence that which is not both Male and Female together is called
half a body. Now, no blessing can rest upon a mutilated and defective
being, but only upon a perfect place and upon a perfect being, and not
at all in an incomplete being. And a semi-complete being cannot live
forever, neither can it receive blessing forever."
The following is the author's comment upon the above: "This section is
another all-sufficient proof of the teachings maintained throughout the
Kabbalah, namely, that man and woman are from the creation co-equal and
co-existent, perfectly equal, one with the other. This fact the
translators of the Bible have been at great pains to conceal by
carefully suppressing every reference to the feminine portion of the
Deity, and by constantly translating feminine nouns by masculine. And
this is the work of so-called religious men!"
A learned Jewish Rabbi, with whom the writer is acquainted, says:
"Those who write on the Bible must be very careful when they come to
speak of the position of woman to make a clear distinction between the
Old and the New Testaments. In the Old Testament, except in the second
chapter of Genesis, woman occupies a true and a dignified position in
society and in the family. For example, take the position of Sarah, of
the Prophetess Miriam, the sister of Moses, and Deborah the Prophetess.
They all exemplify the true position of woman in the Old Testament.
While Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, and the chief writer in the
New Testament, condemned woman to silence in the Church and to strict
obedience to her husband, making her thereby inferior to the man, the
Old Testament gave free scope to the development of the Holy Spirit in
woman. To intensify this teaching upon the position of woman, we find
even the voice of the Deity telling Abraham: 'Whatever Sarah tells
thee, thou shalt hearken unto her voice,' showing that woman in her own
home was the guiding power." In regard to another point this Rabbi
says: "The learned Jewish Rabbis of modern times do not take the rib
story literally. And this may be said of many of the olden times."
The Kabbalah and its learned expositors may be said to be "the
throbbing heart" of the Jewish religion, as was graphically said of the
mystic teachings of another occult fraternity. And in view of the
Kabbalah's antiquity, and the fact that it is the fountain head of the
body of the Old Testament teachings, these quotations as to the real
Kabbalistic teachings in regard to woman, or to the feminine aspects of
the Deity, are of first-class importance in such a book as "The Woman's
Bible." In Kabbalistic teachings "there is one Trinity which comprises
all the Sephiroth, and it consists of the crown, the king and the
queen. . . . It is the Trinity which created the world, or, in
Kabbalistic language, the universe was born from the union of the
crowned king and queen."
The rib story is veiled in the mystic language of symbolism. According
to occult teachings, there was a time before man was differentiated
into sexes--that is, when he was androgynous. Then the time came,
millions of years ago, when the differentiation into sexes took place.
And to this the rib story refers. There has been much ignorance and
confusion in regard to the real nature of woman, indicating that she is
possessed of a mystic nature and a power which will gradually be
developed and better understood as the world becomes more enlightened.
Woman has been branded as the author of evil in the world; and at the
same time she has been exalted to the position of mother of the Saviour
of the world. These two positions are as conflicting as the general
ideas which have prevailed in regard to woman--the great enigma of the
world.
Theological odium has laid its hand heavily upon her. "This odium," as
a Rev. D. D. once said to the writer, "is a thing with more horns, more
thorns, more quills and more snarls than almost any other sort of thing
you have ever heard of. It has kindled as many fires of martyrdom; it
has slipnoosed as many ropes for the necks of well-meaning men; it has
built as many racks for the dislocation of human bones; it has forged
as many thumbscrews; it has built as many dungeons; it has ostracised
as many scholars and philosophers; it has set itself against light and
pushed as hard to make the earth revolve the other way on its axis, as
any other force of mischief of whatever name or kind."
And that is the fearful thing with which woman has had to contend.
When she is free from it we may be assured that the dawn of a new day
is not far off. And among the indications pointing that way is the fact
that the Bible itself has been "under treatment" for some time. What is
known as the "Higher Criticism" has done much to clear away the clouds
of superstition which have enveloped it.
One of the latest works on this line is "The Polychrome Bible"--the
word meaning the different colors in which the texts, the notes, the
dates, the translations, etc., are printed for the sake of simplifying
matters. Prof. Paul Haupt, of Johns Hopkins University, is at the head
of this great work, ably assisted by a large corps of the best Biblical
scholars in the world. It is not to be a revision of the accepted
version, but a new translation in modern English. The translation is
not to be literal except in the highest sense of the word, viz., "to
render the sense of the original as faithfully as possible." There are
to be explanatory notes, historical and archaelogical illustrations of
the text, paraphrases of difficult passages, etc. In short, everything
possible is to be done to simplify and to make plain this ancient book.
The contributors have instructions not to hesitate to state what they
consider to be the truth, but with as little offence to the general
reader as possible. This work has been pronounced the greatest literary
undertaking of the century--a work which will prepare the way for the
coming generation to give an entirely new consideration to the
religious problem. It was begun in 1890, and will probably not be
completed before 1900.
Another important work, small in actual size but big with
significance, has just been issued in England under the title of "The
Bible and the Child." It is not, as its name might imply, a book for
children, but it is for the purpose of "showing the right way of
presenting the Bible to the young in the light of the Higher
Criticism." Its eight contributors are headed by Canon F. W. Farrar, of
England, and includes a number of noted English divines. An English
writer outside of the orthodox pale says: "It is one of the most
extraordinary books published in the English language. It is small; but
it is just the turning-scale to the side of common sense in matters
religious. The Church has at last taken a step in the right direction.
We cannot expect it to set off at a gallop; but it is fairly ambling
along on its comfortable palfrey."
The advance is all along the line; and we need not fear any retrograde
movement to the past. Canon Farrar says that the manner in which the
Higher Criticism has progressed "is exactly analogous to the way in
which the truths of astronomy and of geology have triumphed over
universal opposition. They were once anathematized as 'Infidel;' they
are now accepted as axiomatic." When an official of the Church of
England of the high standing of Canon Farrar comes out so boldly in the
interest of free thought and free criticism on lines hitherto held to
be too sacred for human reason to cross, it is one of the "signs of the
times," and a most hopeful one of the future.
And now that we are coming to understand the Bible better than to
worship it as an idol, it will gradually be lifted from the shadows and
the superstitions of an age when, as a fetich, it was exalted above
reason, and placed where a spiritually enlightened people can see it in
its true light-a book in which many a bright jewel has been buried
under some rubbish, perhaps, as well as under many symbolisms and
mystic language--a book which is not above the application of reason
and of common sense. And with these new lights on the Bible, it is
gratifying to know at the same time that the stately Hebrew Kabbalah,
hoary with antiquity, and the fountain source of the Old Testament,
places woman on a perfect equality in the Godhead. For better authority
than that one can hardly ask.
We are nearing the close of a remarkable century, the last half of
which, and especially the last quarter, has been crowded with
discoveries, some of them startling in their approximation to the
inner, or occult world--a world in which woman has potent sway. The
close of this century has long been pointed to by scholars, by writers
and by Prophets, within the Church and out of it, as the close of the
old dispensation and the opening of the new one. And in view of the
rapid steps which we are taking in these latter years, we can almost
feel the breath of the new cycle fan our cheeks as we watch the
deepening hues of the breaking dawn.
F. E. B.
THE NEW TESTAMENT.
"Great is Truth, and mighty above all things."--1 Esdras, iv., 41.
Does the New Testament bring promises of new dignity and of larger
liberties for woman? When thinking women make any criticisms on their
degraded position in the Bible, Christians point to her exaltation in
the New Testament, as if, under their religion, woman really does
occupy a higher position than under the Jewish dispensation. While
there are grand types of women presented under both religions, there is
no difference in the general estimate of the sex. In fact, her inferior
position is more clearly and emphatically set forth by the Apostles
than by the Prophets and the Patriarchs. There are no such specific
directions for woman's subordination in the Pentateuch as in the
Epistles.
We are told that the whole sex was highly honored in Mary being the
mother of Jesus. Surely a wise and virtuous son is more indebted to his
mother than she is to him, and is honored only by reflecting her
superior characteristics. Why the founders of the Christian religion
did not improvise an earthly Father as well as an earthly Mother does
not clearly appear. The questionable position of Joseph is
unsatisfactory. As Mary belonged to the Jewish aristocracy, she should
have had a husband of the same rank. If a Heavenly Father was
necessary, why not a Heavenly Mother? If an earthly Mother was
admirable, why not not {sic} an earthly Father? The Jewish idea that
Jesus was born according to natural law is more rational than is the
Christian record of the immaculate conception by the Holy Ghost, the
third person of the Trinity. These Biblical mysteries and
inconsistencies are a great strain on the credulity of the ordinary
mind.
E. C. S.
Jesus was the great leading Radical of his age. Everything that he was
and said and did alienated and angered the Conservatives, those that
represented and stood for the established order of what they believed
to be the fixed and final revelation of God. Is it any wonder that they
procured his death? They had no power to put him to death themselves,
and so they stirred the suspicions of the Roman authorities.
We owe the conquest of Christianity to two things. First, to Paul.
Christianity never would have been anything but a little Jewish sect if
it had not been for Paul. And the other thing is--what? The conquest
over death. It was the abounding belief of the disciples that Jesus was
alive, their leader still, though in the invisible, which made them
laugh in the face of death, which made them fearless in the presence of
the lions in the arena, which made them seek for the honor and glory of
martyrdom, and which gave them such conquest over all fear, all sorrow,
all toil, as can come only to those who believe that this life is
merely a training school, that death is nothing but a doorway and that
it leads out into the eternal glories and grandeurs beyond.
I think that the doctrine of the Virgin birth as something higher,
sweeter, nobler than ordinary motherhood, is a slue on all the natural
motherhood of the world. I believe that millions of children have been
as immaculately conceived, as purely born, as was the Nazarene. Why
not? Out of this doctrine, and that which is akin to it, have sprung
all the monasteries and the nunneries of the world, which have
disgraced and distorted and demoralized manhood and womanhood for a
thousand years. I place beside the false, monkish, unnatural claim of
the Immaculate Conception my mother, who was as holy in her motherhood
as was Mary herself.
Another suggestion. This thought of Jesus as the second person of an
inconceivable trinity, a being neither of heaven nor earth, but between
the two; a being having two natures and one will; a being who was
ignorant as a man, and who suffered as a man, while he knew everything
as God and could not suffer as God--this conception is part of a scheme
of the universe which represents humanity as ruined and lost and
hopeless, God as unjust, and man as looking only to a fearful judgment
in the ages that are to be. I believe that thousands of people have
lived since the time of Jesus as good, as tender, as loving, as true, as
faithful, as he. There is no more mystery in the one case than in the
other, for it is all mystery. Old Father Taylor, the famous Methodist
Bethel preacher in Boston, was a Perfectionist, and when he was asked if
he thought anybody had since lived who was as good as Jesus, he said:
"Yes; millions of them." This is Methodist authority.
What made Jesus the power he was of his time? In the first place,
there was an inexplicable charm about his personality which drew all
the common people to him, as iron filings are drawn by a magnet. He
loved the people, who instinctively felt it, and loved him. Then there
was his intellectual power of speech. Most of the sayings of Jesus are
not original in the sense that nobody else ever uttered any similar
truths before. Confucius, six thousand years before Jesus, gave
utterance to the Golden Rule. And then there was the pity, the
sympathy, the tenderness of the man. And then he had trust in God--
trust in the simple Fatherhood of God, that never could be shaken.
Jesus taught us, as no one else has ever done it, the humanness of God
and the divineness of man, so that, standing there eighteen hundred
years ago, he has naturally and infallibly attracted the eyes, the
thought, the love, the reverence of the world.
When it is dark in the morning, and before the sun rises, there are
high peaks that catch the far-off rays and begin to glow, while the
rest of the world still lies in shadow. So there are mountainous men,
not supernatural, but as natural as the mountains and the sun--
mountainous men who catch the light before our common eyes on the
plains and in the valleys can see it, who see and proclaim from their
lofty heights far-off visions of truth and beauty that we as yet cannot
discern.
ANON.
THE BOOK OF MATTHEW.
CHAPTER I.
Matthew i.
16 And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus,
who is called Christ.
17 So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen
generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are
fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto
Christ are fourteen generations.
Saint Matthew is supposed to be distinguished from the other Apostles
by the frequency of his references to the Old Testament. He records
more particulars of Jesus than the others do, far more of his birth,
his sayings and his miracles.
There has been much difference of opinion among writers of both sacred
and profane history as to the paternity of Jesus, and whether he was a
real or an ideal character. If, as the Scriptures claim, he descended
from heaven, begotten by the Holy Ghost, the incarnation of God
himself, then there was nothing remarkable in his career, nor
miraculous in the seeming wonders which he performed, being the soul
and the centre of all the forces of the universe of matter and of mind.
If he was an ideal character, like the gifted hero of some novel or
tragedy, his great deeds and his wise sayings the result of the
imagination of some skilful artist, then we may admire the sketch as a
beautiful picture. But if Jesus was a man who was born, lived and died
as do other men, a worthy example for imitation, he is deserving of our
love and reverence, and by showing us the possibilities of human nature
he is a constant inspiration, our hope and salvation; for the path,
however rough, in which one man has walked, others may follow. As a God
with infinite power he could have been no example to us; but with human
limitations we may emulate his virtues and walk in his footsteps.
Some writers think that his mother was a wise, great and beautiful
Jewish maiden, and his father a learned rabbi, who devoted much time
and thought to his son's education. At a period when learning was
confined to the few, it was a matter of surprise that as a mere boy he
could read and write, and discuss the vital questions of the hour with
doctors in the sacred temples. His great physical beauty, the wisdom of
his replies to the puzzling questions of the Pharisees and the
Sadducces, his sympathy with the poor and the needy, his ambition for
all that is best in human development, and his indifference to worldly
aggrandizement, altogether made him a marked man in his day and
generation. For these reasons he was hated, reviled, persecuted, like
the long line of martyrs who followed his teachings. He commands far
more love and reverence as a true man with only human possibilities,
than as a God, superior to all human frailties and temptations.
What were years of persecution, the solitude on the mountain, the
agonies on the cross, with the power of a God to sustain him? But
unaided and alone to triumph over all human weakness, trials and
temptation, was victory not only for Jesus but for every human being
made in his image.
Matthew ii.
1 Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod
the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem,
2 Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen
his star in the cast, and are come to worship him.
3 When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all
Jerusalem with him.
4 And when he had gathered all the chief priests together, he demanded
of them where Christ should be born.
5 And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judea:
8 And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search diligently
for the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word.
9 And they departed; and lo, the star, which they saw in the east,
went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was.
11 And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child
with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshiped him: and when they
had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and
frankincense, and myrrh.
12 And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to
Herod, they departed into their own country another way.
13 And the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying,
Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt;
for Herod will seek to destroy him.
14 And he arose, and departed into Egypt;
19 But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeareth in
a dream to Joseph
20 Saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into
the land of Israel.
These sages were supposed to be men of great learning belonging to a
sect called Magians, who came from Arabia. There was a general
feeling that the king of the Jews was yet to be born, and that they
were soon to see the long expected and promised Messiah. Herod was
greatly troubled by the tidings that a child had been born under
remarkable circumstances. The star spoken of was supposed to be a
luminous meteor the wise men had seen in their own country before they
set out on their journey for Bethlehem, and which now guided them to
the house where the young child was. Notwithstanding the common
surroundings, the wise men recognizing something more than human in the
child, fell down and worshiped him and presented unto him the most
precious gifts which their country yielded. Some have supposed that the
frankincense and the myrrh were intended as an acknowledgment of his
deity, as the gold was of his royalty.
To defeat the subtle malice of Herod, who was determined to take the
child's life, Joseph was warned in a dream to flee into Egypt with the
child and his mother. The wise men did not return to Herod as
commanded, but went at once to their own country.
Matthew ix.