willing to go into greater danger to win Michal as his wife. And he
sent a messenger to tell David that he was well pleased with him, and
would like him to marry Michal; and that as he was too poor to give the
king a present, he would not ask him for one. But if he would kill one
hundred Philistines within a certain time, that would stand for a
present.
We are not told what Michal thought of this cruel bargain, for Saul
hoped and believed that David would be killed, but David himself was
well pleased. He and his young men went down the long valleys to the
land of the Philistines, where they went about killing people, until
they had slain two hundred; and before the appointed time was up David
returned to Saul once more to tell him what he had done.
This was followed by days and nights of rejoicing among the young men
of David's camp. The young women decked their hair with flowers, and
danced to the sound of the timbrels, as they praised the beauty and
goodness of Michal, the king's daughter; and the young men danced and
shouted round the camp fires, praising David, the bridegroom, as a
mighty man of valour. Saul was unwilling to give up Michal to the
young captain; but he now feared him greatly, and could not break his
promise. So David got the young princess Michal to be his wife; and
after the death of Saul and Jonathan, who were both slain in battle, he
became king of the Israelites, as Samuel, the prophet of the Lord, had
foretold.
KING DAVID'S LITTLE BOY.
Sunshine fell upon the walls of King David's palace on Mount Zion. The
trees in the royal gardens swayed in the breeze, and the doves
fluttered up to the windows; but all was hushed and still within.
Black slaves glided to and fro with naked feet, and the women took off
their tinkling armlets and talked in whispers; for in a little chamber,
with shaded window and curtained door, a dark-eyed mother sat watching
her child--the king's child--whose flushed cheeks showed that he was
very ill and near to death.
Now when he heard that his boy was so ill, the king, who was now a man
of middle age, threw himself upon the floor of his room in the
bitterness of his grief and prayed to God to spare the life of the
child.
His friends came and stood round and spoke to him, trying to comfort
him; but he would not rise, nor let them raise him up, nor would he
take any food. So he passed the dark night in praying and in sorrow,
while the mother watched the child by the light of a small lamp, and
slaves stood outside the chamber door to keep silence.
The morning came, and sunshine fluttered on the trees in the king's
gardens and on the hills round the town. Then the king asked for the
child, but the answer was that he was no better; and all the people saw
that King David's grief was very great, and they wondered. For the
monarch had fought in many cruel battles, and beaten his enemies, and
caused the death of many men and women, and even children, and he had
done many cruel things in his lifetime.
He now had riches and honour and numerous children, and was the great
king of Jerusalem, living in a palace, with servants and horses and
gardens and fountains, and he had brought the golden ark of God to be
near him in a purple tent on Mount Zion; but he had set his whole heart
on this fair-haired child, and the fear that the little one might die
took the joy out of everything.
The peacocks on the walls and the doves on the roof missed the little
child from the garden, where he used to come and feed them. For seven
long days and seven longer nights the loving mother watched him as he
lay getting slowly worse; and the king's grief was so great that he
would not rise from the floor to eat by day or night, and when his
slaves spoke to him he paid no heed and would not answer.
He refused to put on the fresh clothing they brought for him, or to
wash in the brass basins of water held out to him, or to eat the food
placed on the table at his side; but he lay on the floor of his little
room groaning, and praying to God for the little one.
After a week of suffering the little one passed away in the hushed room
of the king's palace at Jerusalem, and the weeping mother was led away
from the bedside of her dead child. Sorrowing friends went to tell the
king in his chamber; but when they came to the door of his room they
stopped and whispered, saying,--
"If he would not listen to us while the child yet lived, what will his
grief be if we say that the boy is dead?"
The king heard them talking, and looking up, saw from their faces what
had happened. Then he asked if the child was dead, and they told him,
expecting that he would break out into wild grief; but he did not.
Rising from the floor, where he had lain so long, he asked for water;
and his slaves washed him and brought clean, fresh clothing, and combed
and oiled his hair.
He spoke to no one, but went out into the sunshine and the wind; and
they watched to see what he would do, and where he would go. He did
not linger among the shady walks of the king's garden or by the ponds
where the red lilies grew and the swans shook out their white plumes in
the sun.
His friends followed him as he went slowly out of the palace gardens
and away to the great tent of purple and crimson, which he liked to
call the House of God, on Mount Zion; and they stopped outside when he
drew the rich curtains apart and went in. There in the darkness he
knelt, and with hands upraised bowed his face to the ground before God
as he poured out his soul in prayer.
After a time the king came out of the great tent again, and his friends
and servants followed him as he returned to his palace. He had not yet
spoken, and they could not understand why he did not weep and mourn for
the child. He asked for food, and they wondered yet more as he ate
from the dishes which the slaves brought him.
"What is this that thou doest?" asked one of his friends. "While the
child lived thou didst weep for him, and wouldst take no food; and now
that he is dead thou dost rise and eat."
They thought he had been only mourning as he lay for days on the floor;
but he had been praying, and now he answered them,--
"While he was yet alive I fasted and wept; for I thought, 'Who knoweth
whether God may not be merciful to me, and the child may live?' But
now he is dead, and why should I fast? I cannot bring him back to life
again. Some day I shall die and go to him, but he will not return to
me."
Whether such thoughts as these comforted the mother's heart, we are not
told; but the king himself tried to comfort her. After a time she had
another little boy, and she called him Solomon, "the peaceful one," for
mothers chose the names in those days. And as his nurse carried him
about the garden, clad in a little blue robe with white tassels, the
people said that he too was a beautiful child; and he grew up to be
good and wise and handsome, and loved his mother dearly. And years
afterwards this child became the great King Solomon, whom all men
thought so wise.
ELIJAH AND THE WIDOW'S SON.
Ahab, the wicked King of Israel, was sitting in his house at Samaria,
when suddenly there appeared before him a wild-looking man, with long
hair and a cape of woolly sheepskin on his shoulders, his rough tunic
girdled with a broad belt of leather, and thick sandals on his feet.
Elijah, the Prophet of God, was his name. Born and bred in the wild
desert country, he now dwelt amid the hills and valleys of Gilead,
across the river Jordan, and he had come to warn the king that trouble
was in store for his kingdom.
"As God lives, before whom I stand," he said, with upraised hand,
"there shall not be dew or rain for years, but according to my word."
And he said more, for this king was married to Jezebel, a wicked
princess of another nation, who had got her husband to set up images
and altars to Baal, a wooden idol, although he knew it was wrong.
Also, to please his wife, Ahab had killed the priests of God, and set
up priests of Baal in their stead; and so when King Ahab heard the
words of the wild prophet he was both angry and afraid.
Elijah did not wait for an answer, but fled out of the king's house and
out of the city; for he knew that when King Ahab told his terrible wife
of what he had said, she would send out men to capture him, dead or
alive. She had tried to kill every prophet of God in the land, and
thought indeed that she had done so; but Obadiah, the king's officer,
had hidden one hundred in caves by the riverside, and kept them alive
with bread and water.
So the wild prophet Elijah, with his sheepskin cape or mantle on his
shoulders, fled away to the lonely country of rocks and bushes, wild
beasts and robbers. But he had no fear, for he had no riches to lose,
and he always carried a stout staff in his hand; and no one ever
refused him shelter, for he was known everywhere as "the Man of God."
He fled eastwards, having received a message from God to go and hide in
the deep valley of the Cherith, a small stream running between high
banks down to the river Jordan--a place of caves where many ravens had
their nests; and he had been told also that the black ravens would feed
him there with the food they brought. There he hid himself from King
Ahab's men, who were searching the country for him; and the ravens
brought him food morning and evening, and he drank of the water of the
brook until it dried up, for there was no rain.
When he could no longer live there he had another message from God,
bidding him leave his hiding-place. Climbing the wooded hills of
Galilee, he started to go down the other side to the town of Zarephath,
by the seashore, where he would be out of King Ahab's country. With
his thick staff in his hand and his woolly mantle on his shoulders, his
head shaded by a shawl hanging down each side of his face, he crossed
the plains, and going up a cleft in the hills, passed between them
towards the coast--a journey of about seventy miles, that would take
him at least four days, for he would have to keep out of sight of the
king's men.
Sleeping now in a cave, now in a friendly tent, avoiding villages and
bands of men, the wild prophet came to the fields outside Zarephath and
waited; for the place was a walled town with a low stone archway, and
gatekeepers to question all who came in.
Now as he loitered among the trees a poor woman came out to gather
broken branches to kindle her fire, and the prophet called to her,--
"Bring me, I pray thee, a little water in a dish, that I may drink."
She looked at the man's strange figure, with the long black hair
falling over his sheepskin mantle, and turned away with her bundle of
sticks, intending to bring a drink of water to him; and when he saw
that she was going home, he called again,--
"Bring me also a morsel of bread in thine hand."
The woman, who was dressed in the rough blue and red clothing of the
country, with a few brass coins in her hair, and glass beads round her
neck, came nearer, and he saw from her face that she was plainly in
deep distress.
"As thy God liveth," she said earnestly, "I have not one cake left, but
only a handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse. I am
only gathering a few sticks, that I may go home and bake one more cake
for my son and myself, that we may eat it and then die."
"Fear not," replied the wild man in a gentle tone; "go and do as thou
hast said: but make me a little cake first, and bring it to me, and
afterwards make a cake for thyself and thy son. For thus saith the God
of Israel, 'Thy barrel of meal shall not waste, nor thy cruse of oil
fail, until the day that He sendeth rain upon the earth.'"
The woman wondered at his strange words, but she believed the man, and
went away to her poor home; there she soon kindled a fire, and baked a
little cake, and took it out to the hungry prophet sitting outside the
city gate. Then she returned and baked another cake for herself and
her son. And we are told that after that her barrel never lacked meal,
neither did the oil in her cruse fail, according as the prophet had
said; and Elijah stayed with the woman at her humble home.
Now it happened some time later that this widow's son fell sick and
died, and his mother came to Elijah in great distress. Then the
prophet took the boy and carried him up into the loft where he slept,
and stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried to the
Lord,--
"O Lord my God, I pray Thee, let this child's soul come into him again."
And the Lord heard the voice of Elijah, and the soul of the child came
into him again, and he revived. Then Elijah took him and brought him
down out of the loft, and placed him in his wondering mother's arms,
and said, "See, thy son liveth."
And the woman said, "Now by this I know that thou art a man of God, and
that the word of the Lord in thy mouth is truth."
THE SHUNAMMITE'S BOY.
After the work of Elijah was over and God had taken him up to heaven,
there was another prophet in Israel whose name was Elisha. Now it
happened that one day the prophet Elisha, sitting upon his ass, with
his rough cloak cast about him, came riding towards a little village
named Shunem. He rode steadily onward up the steep and stony path in
the afternoon heat, with his servant walking behind him.
He had come all the way from his home on the wooded hill of Carmel. He
was tired and hungry, and, as was his custom, he stopped at the house
of a certain Shunammite woman. Then alighting from his ass, he went up
the outside stair to a little chamber on the wall, which was always
ready to receive him, and there he and his servant Gehazi lay down to
rest.
When morning came the prophet and his servant rose and breakfasted on
bread and goat's milk, and were about to go on their way; but before
leaving, Elisha told Gehazi to bring up the Shunammite woman, and the
man called to her from the wall. Coming up the stone stair, she stood
at the door of the little chamber, hiding her face, her dark hair
covered by a white kerchief that fell over a tunic of bright colours
which reached down to her slippered feet.
"Thou hast been careful for us with all this care," the prophet said.
"What is to be done for thee? Shall I ask a favour of the king for
thee, or from the captain of his fighting-men?"
Elisha wished to make her some return for her kindness, and thought
that she might like to see her husband raised from the life of a
village farmer to be an officer in the king's army.
"I wish to dwell among mine own people," she replied simply, meaning
that she would rather live where her tribe lived; and she turned away
and left them.
When she was gone Elisha asked his servant if there was nothing he
could do for her; and the man answered that she had no son. Gehazi
knew it was the dearest wish of every Syrian woman to have a son, and
that the Shunammite's heart longed for one.
"Call her," said Elisha again; and the woman in her bright tunic, bound
about her waist with a silken scarf, again stood outside the door
hiding her face. And Elisha told her that the time would surely come
when she would hold a little son in her arms. The woman replied in a
low voice,--
"Nay, my lord, thou man of God, do not mock me."
But Elisha said it would be so; and saddling his ass he rode away, with
Gehazi following after him.
But the prophet's word came true, and the Shunammite's heart leaped
with joy as she nursed her little babe. Years passed, and the
courtyard echoed with the shouts of the merry child, whose bare feet
pattered all day about the sunny square, scaring the gray doves up to
the housetop. Holding by his mother's hand, he went up the stairs to
the little chamber on the wall, where the vine spread its broad leaves;
and there he saw the table and the little bed, the red jar of water and
the cakes of bread waiting for the prophet of God. And when he was
five years old, with ruddy cheeks and soft hair, he was beautiful as an
angel of God.
Now one day, in the hot harvest weather, the little fellow ran away
from the house down to the field where his father and the reapers were
at work; and he ran to and fro in the hot morning sun, sometimes
chasing the bright butterflies, sometimes following the men as they cut
down the grain with their sharp sickles.
But after a while he came to his father, calling, "O my head, my head!"
for he had got sunstroke with the great heat. At once the old farmer
bade one of his men carry the boy to his mother; and he lay on her knee
in a darkened room, crying out in an agony of pain and thirst, while
she tried as best she could to relieve his suffering. But by noon all
was still, and the stricken mother carried his body up to the little
chamber and laid it on the prophet's bed, and going out gently closed
the door. Her heart was like lead as she went down the steps to her
own room, for all the light seemed to have gone out of her world, and
now what was she to do?
Calling her husband up from the fields, the Shunammite woman asked him
to send a servant to her with an ass, that she might ride to Elisha at
Carmel and return again. The father did not know what had happened to
his boy, and asked why she wished to go that day, as it was neither new
moon nor Sabbath, her usual times for taking such a journey.
"It is well!" was all her reply, for her heart was crushed, and she had
no words to utter. So the ass was saddled, and she said to her
servant,--
"Go forward; and do not slacken the riding unless I tell thee."
Then they went out of the village at a quick pace, and along the plain,
among yellow harvest-fields, and through the little streams, and over
the Kishon River, and up into the wooded gorge leading to the prophet's
home on the green mount of Carmel.
"Yonder is the Shunammite woman; run and meet her," exclaimed Elisha to
his servant, shading his eyes from the sun with his hand, as he looked
and saw her yet afar off, riding in haste. Gehazi ran as he was told,
and when they met he asked her in an anxious voice,--
"Is it well with thee? Is it well with thy husband? Is it well with
the child?"
"It is well," she answered, for a mother's heart is strange at such a
time; and she rode forward in silence until she came to Elisha standing
at his house door. Getting off the ass, she threw herself down before
the prophet, and holding his feet, lay there with her face to the
ground, saying nothing.
Gehazi came forward to raise her.
"Let her alone," Elisha said, looking at the grief-stricken figure at
his feet. "Her soul is vexed within her, and God hath hid the matter
from me, and hath not told me."
When she heard these words she found her voice, and murmured, with her
face to the ground,--
"Did I ask a son of my lord? and did I not say, 'Do not deceive me'?"
Then her tears fell fast. Elisha understood her at once.
"Gird up thy tunic with thy belt," he said, speaking to Gehazi, "and
take my staff, and go. Greet no man by the way, and answer no man's
greeting; but lay it on the face of the child," handing him his staff
as he spoke. And the man started at once to run down the path from the
village.
"As God liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee," the
mother murmured at the prophet's feet.
She would not be content with a servant; she must have the prophet
himself. And when she rode away Elisha was with her, going back again
on the long ride of sixteen miles which she had scarcely noticed, so
loving was her mother's heart.
When they drew near the village of Shunem, Gehazi came out to meet them.
"The child is not awake," he said; but he got no answer.
Elisha went up alone to the little chamber, and there lay the beautiful
child, still and quiet upon the bed. And the old man shut the door and
prayed to God for him, and stretched himself upon the child, hand to
hand, eye to eye, mouth to mouth, until the child grew warm, and
showing signs of life, opened his eyes. Then the prophet called to his
servant to bring the Shunammite woman. She needed no calling. Her
foot was on the stair while he yet spoke, so quick is a mother's heart,
and she stood at the door of the little room, as she had often stood
before, gazing, but afraid to enter.
"Take up thy son," the prophet said.
A glance was enough. One step and she fell half fainting at Elisha's
feet, pouring out her soul in thanks to God and to the man of God.
Turning to her boy, she gathered him up tenderly in her arms and bore
him down the stairs to her own room in the house below. And thus was
her boy restored to her alive.
A LITTLE JEWISH MAID.
Ben-hadad, the dark-eyed King of Syria, could no longer leap into his
chariot and drive his swift horses through the fields as he used to do.
He could not draw the bow of steel or fling the heavy spear as far or
as straight as the young men of his tribe, for he was getting old; and
he had given up going with his warriors on their fighting across the
Jordan, leaving it to his younger chieftains.
His home was in the beautiful town of Damascus, set in a land so rich
and green with tapering trees, vineyards, and fields of grass, and
watered with such delightful streams, that the Arabs, coming on their
camels from the yellow sands of the hot desert, cried out, when they
saw its white walls hung with green creepers, that it shone "like a
handful of pearls in a green cup."
He ruled the tribes of Syria from that walled city, and in the
spring-time of the year his chiefs gathered the young warriors to make
up their minds where they should go to fight and plunder. Among the
chiefs was Naaman the Syrian, a young man who led them out to battle
when the king could not go, and had several times beaten their foes.
Sitting among his chiefs, with his royal spear in his hand, a band of
gold round his brow, and rings of gold on his arms and legs, the old
king talked with them about fighting the men of Israel, and gave them
their orders; and best of all his warriors the king loved Naaman the
Syrian.
Now when Naaman blew the king's horns and beat the king's drums up and
down the country, calling the young men of the tribes for a raid across
the Jordan, it was either to steal cattle and corn, or to capture
slaves; and boys and girls were the slaves they liked best.
One day, when he returned from one of these slave-raids, Naaman brought
back with him a little Jewish maid; and she looked so pretty with her
dark eyes and ruddy cheeks that he gave her as a present to his Syrian
wife, to wait upon her and run her messages. When her mistress washed
her hands, the little maid held the basin on bended knee. When she
dressed her dark hair, she held the comb and the oil, and the little
pots of yellow dye for her nails and the black paint for her eyebrows.
When she went out, this little maid went also, in a little dress of
scarlet, with a white kerchief on her dark head.
She learnt to love her mistress very much; and was sorry for her
master, for he was troubled with the terrible sickness of leprosy, and
she often wished he could be made well. One day she sighed, and said
to her mistress,--
"Oh, I would to God that my master were with our prophet in Samaria!
then he would get better of his leprosy."
She believed with all her heart that Elisha the prophet, like a clever
doctor, could do something for him.
Now what she had said was told to Naaman, who told it to the king; and
as they had both heard about Elisha, the wild prophet of Israel, the
king told his favourite chief to go and see the wonderful man. And he
also wrote a letter to Joram, the King of Israel, and gave it to Naaman
to deliver; and this is what he wrote:--
"When this letter comes to thee, O King Joram, it is to tell thee that
I have sent Naaman, my servant, for thee to heal him of his leprosy."
Naaman folded the letter in his tunic, and filling a few small bags
with silver and gold, and rolling up some bundles of new clothing, he
put them into the wide saddle-bags of his camels as presents for the
King of Israel. Then stepping into his chariot, he drove down the
river valley, with his men clattering after him, and up the hills to
Samaria on the watch-hill, where he delivered the letter.
[Illustration: Naaman at the house of Elisha.]
The King of Israel read it, and his chiefs saw that he was much
troubled. Seizing his white tunic with both hands, he tore it from
neck to hem--a sign of great grief--saying bitterly that _he_ was not
able to heal people of leprosy, and that the powerful King of Syria was
only seeking another cause to quarrel with him. What kings say and
what kings do many tongues tell, and Elisha the prophet, who had a
house in white-walled Samaria, heard about the king's grief, and sent
his servant Gehazi to give him a message,--
"Why do you rend your clothes? Send the man to me!"
The king was delighted, and soon Naaman's chariot and horses, his armed
guards and his brown camels, were standing at the door of the prophet's
house. But only Gehazi appeared in answer to the captain's call.