BAR NOEMI, THE BENJAMINITE
In the days when great Tyre still stood in all her glory, and her
merchant vessels left not even the East Indies unexplored, there dwelt
in that city a rich seaman, Bar Noemi by name.
His name tells us at once that he was a native of Palestine. He was,
indeed, one of the few survivors of those Benjaminites who had been
extirpated, together with their city, by the men of the other eleven
tribes, to avenge the dishonour done to a single woman. And the
punishment was certainly deserved--the men of Benjamin had dishonoured a
woman who came to their city as a guest. It was a righteous deed to root
out such men. Bar Noemi was still a mere child when he escaped from
destruction; he had had no share, therefore, in the sins of his fathers,
and he knew besides that they had been put to the edge of the sword by
the Lord's command, the strong God, Jehova the avenger, who, midst the
thunders of Sinai, had written on the tables of stone with His own hand:
"The face of the strange woman shall be sacred to the strange man, and
whosoever trespasses against her shall die the death!"
Bar Noemi knew very well that this sentence had been rigorously executed
upon the inhabitants of a whole city, yet he never renounced the faith
of his fathers on that account; but clave strictly to the traditions of
Holy Zion even in the midst of the city of delights, and sacrificed
continually to the strong avenging God who visits indeed the sins of the
fathers upon the children even to the fourth generation, but also
rewards their virtues down to the thousandth generation.
Yet the gods of Tyre and Sidon were ever so much more agreeable. They
suffered the altar of Love to stand in their temples. Anybody was free
to offer thereon doves or goats, according as his love was chaste or
unchaste. No one was taken to task for the sins of love; on the
contrary, mortals were initiated into mysteries which taught them how to
approach, through insensible gradations of delight, the heaven of
bliss--or hopeless damnation.
Bar Noemi neither visited Astarte's temple, nor allowed himself to be
initiated into her magical mysteries. He was satisfied with observing
his own religious feasts and fasts with prayer and thanksgiving, and
every year scoured all the boards of his house at the Passover, and
raised the green booths in his garden at the Feast of Tabernacles. And
the inhabitants of Tyre let him do as he chose. A trading nation is wont
to be tolerant in matters of religion. Besides, the religion of Israel
was nothing new to the Tyrians. The two nations had often come into
contact, sometimes with iron in their hands, but much more often with
gold and silver. As Bar Noemi reached man's estate, he was reckoned
among the richest merchants in Tyre. His fifty galleys conveyed purple
stuffs, real pearls, and oriental spices from continent to continent.
He himself was the hardiest of mariners. He was frequently absent with
his ship twelve months at a time. His sailors were all of them picked
men of the tribe of Levi.
Bar Noemi was the first to discover how to sail from the Red Sea to
Carthage without being obliged to transport one's wares on camels from
one coast to the other, thus avoiding the grievous, exorbitant tolls
imposed by the Egyptians upon the Phoenician merchants. None of the older
mariners had found out the secret. The Cape of Good Hope was still an
unknown point to the trading world, and men shrank back in terror from
the hostile winds and tempests which environed it.
At Carthage, Bar Noemi had learnt to know the daughter of a merchant,
one of those Punic beauties whom the Roman ladies loved so much to
imitate. The fairest of complexions was made still more fair by
wonderful saffron locks; the large blue eyes had long black lashes; the
jet eyebrows were arched and bushy; the lips a deep purple, and the skin
as soft as velvet, and as white as alabaster.
After the first Punic war, the Roman ladies, in order to win back their
husbands and lovers from these fascinating foreign belles, did all in
their power to make their own charms correspond with the charms of the
Carthaginian beauties. They coloured their locks with saffron, tied raw
flesh to their skins at night, and heightened the colour of their lips
with red salve. But Nature had given all these things gratis to the
Carthaginian beauties. Art could not supply those long golden locks from
which they manufactured bow-strings in the hour of their country's
mortal agony; or those voluptuous supple limbs which bled beneath the
weapons of Rome in the last evil hour of Carthage.
Byssenia, Bar Noemi's bride, was one of these beauties. Her father was
satisfied with the marriage gift which Bar Noemi brought his daughter;
merchants always regard it as a great point to have the question of
dower settled before the conclusion of the match.
And Bar Noemi was much more than a mere rich man. He was a handsome man,
and valiant and haughty to boot, a man who never humbly bowed his head,
and thought it a shame to cast down his eyes before any one. He was wont
to say that no one had a keener glance than the lightning, or a more
terrible manner of speech than the raging sea, and these he had long ago
learnt to defy.
His acquaintances and all the great men of the city assembled on his
wedding-day at the house of the bride's father, while the Carthaginian
damsels led the bride into the grove of Astarte, that she might bathe
for the first time in the sacred spring whence she was to be led to the
altar of the goddess, there to be united to the bridegroom. When,
however, it came to the bridegroom's turn, according to Phoenician
custom, to offer to the gods of wood and stone the sacrifices which they
demand from all men, Bar Noemi, to every one's astonishment, answered:
"Our God is Jehovah," and refused to bring any offering to the idol.
The elders and high priests were much offended by these bold words, and
conferred together in whispers as to what they should do with the
audacious stranger.
First they led him into the halls of Astarte, whom the people adored in
the shape of a beautiful woman in white marble. They showed him the
mysteries of the ritual devoted to the Goddess of Love, the sweet,
seductive secrets which confound the human soul, the sense-bereaving,
voluptuous shapes which, under various names, have found worshippers in
all ages down to the latest times.
Bar Noemi hastily turned away his eyes from the captivating sight, and
stammered: "Jehovah is our God."
Shaking their heads, the elders and high priests proceeded further, and
led Bar Noemi into the temple of the great and glistening god Dagon,
resplendent with gold and silver, where the molten image of the God of
Riches sits in a ship of mother-o'-pearl, laden with pearls and precious
stones, and swimming in a basin of quicksilver instead of water. Then
they represented to Bar Noemi that even if he would not bow before the
magic of Love, he might well bend the knee before the terrible symbol of
Riches, for the mighty Dagon grants wealth and dominion to them who
honour him.
Bar Noemi looked contemptuously at the treasures lying at his feet, and
answered boldly: "Our God is Jehovah."
The elders and high priests exchanged angry glances, and led him next to
the temple of the war god Remphan, which rested on copper columns. The
idol itself was of dark, molten bronze; at its feet lay heaps and heaps
of broken weapons and armour, the trophies of battles won by the
Carthaginians, as well as the prows of those ships which had been
captured in naval victories.
"Since thou wilt bow down to neither Love nor Riches, at least do
obeisance to the god in whose gift is Fame, the highest gift known to a
true man."
But Bar Noemi gazed boldly into the hollow eyes of the molten idol, and
cried defiantly: "There is but one God--Jehovah, the Almighty."
Last of all they brought him into the subterranean temple of Baal, the
god of the strong hell, who has dominion over eternal fire, and
distributes pains and torments both here and in the nether world. There
they showed the stranger the red-hot body of the huge, shapeless idol
which demanded a human victim every day, and they forced him to stay to
see the sacrifice. Then they hurled a great, strong man into the idol's
jaws, and the same instant a thick smoke gushed forth from Baal's eyes
and nostrils, whilst the yells of the dying victim roared forth from the
cavernous stomach like the laugh of a demon of hell, gradually growing
fainter and fainter, as when a wild beast has satisfied his hunger, and
settles quietly down to digest his food.
"Bar Noemi," cried the elders, "the gates of death are open before thee.
Speak!"
Full of unshakable faith, the young man raised his eyes towards the
invisible bright blue sky, the one thing pure enough to be imagined the
dwelling-place of the eternal God, and spake unmoved: "Jehovah alone is
God, the Ruler of earth and of the starry heavens, the Lord of life and
death. All else is but dust and ashes."
The idol roared forth the death-agonies of a second victim, while the
officiating priests sought to drown the sickening shrieks with the din
of kettledrums and cymbals. In the midst of this hellish spectacle, Bar
Noemi folded his hands across his breast and prayed in silence. He had
quite made up his mind to breathe his last in the belly of the idol.
Again the elders and high priests whispered together, then, with smiling
countenances, they spoke thus to Bar Noemi--
"Thou hast remained steadfast in thy faith. Cleave thereto henceforward
also, and never forswear thyself. Wed thee with thy betrothed after the
manner of thy nation, and take her with thee to thy distant dwelling;
live as long as thy God wills it."
Bar Noemi obeyed their words, and secretly blessed Jehovah, who helps
His true servants to victory, and strengthens the hearts of those who
praise His Name. So he was married in the sight of all the people to the
beautiful Byssenia, gave to the father of the bride the marriage gift he
had brought with him in exchange for her, himself taking charge of his
wife's paraphernalia, settled various outstanding matters of business,
and embarking in his ship with his gallant crew, sailed out of the bay
amid the cheers of the people assembled in the harbour, and the blare of
the trumpets and clarions. An escort of four warships accompanied him
into the open sea. The decks of the splendid Carthaginian vessels were
hung with painted carpets, their prows were adorned with far-projecting
golden monsters, behind were the movable bridges used in battle to
grapple the enemy, amidships the high tower, whence stones and other
missiles were wont to be hurled.
When the ocean was reached and land was no longer visible anywhere, the
Carthaginians suddenly let down their bridges upon the bridal ship and
held it fast.
The elders spake yet again to Bar Noemi.
"Bar Noemi, son of a strange land, below thee is the waste of waters,
above thee is the waste of sky, answer now, who is the God that can help
thee in this wilderness?"
"Jehovah!" answered Bar Noemi.
"Then Jehovah stand thee by," said the elders; whereupon they stripped
Bar Noemi's ship of sails, helm, and every instrument which enables the
mariner to find or make his way on the ocean. Then they bade the bride
return to her father at Carthage. But, clinging to her husband's breast,
Byssenia said she would liefer remain in the stormy sea, and would not
forsake in the hour of danger him to whom she had plighted her troth.
"Then may Jehovah help thee," answered the elders; and with that they
quitted Bar Noemi's vessel, and, drawing back the bridges, left the
bridal ship there in the open sea, without sails or helm, devoted to the
tempest, abandoned to the waves.