Marathon, we must regard it as a fable; but when we read that Jehovah
fought with the Jews against the five kings at Gibeon, we must regard it
as historical truth, and if we doubt it we shall be eternally damned.
Not only did the Lord join in the war-hunt, but Joshua wrought the
greatest miracle on record by causing a stationary body to stand still.
He stopped the sun from "going down" and lengthened out the day for
about twelve hours, in order that the Jews might see to pursue and kill
the flying foe. "The sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the
people had avenged themselves upon their enemies." What Joshua really
stopped, if he stopped anything, was the earth, for its revolution,
and not the motion of the sun, causes the phenomena of day and night.
Science tells us that the arrest of the earth's motion would generate a
frightful quantity of heat, enough to cause a general conflagration.
Yet nothing of the kind happened. How is it, too, that no other ancient
people has preserved any record of this marvellous occurrence? The
Egyptians, for instance, carefully noted eclipses and such events, but
they jotted down no memorandum of Joshua's supreme miracle. Why is this?
How can Christians explain it?
When Jupiter personated Amphytrion, and visited his bride Alcmena, the
amorous god lengthened out the night in order to prolong his enjoyment.
Why may we not believe this? Is it not as credible, and quite as moral,
as the Bible story of Jehovah's lengthening out the day to prolong a
massacre? Were the Greeks any bigger liars than the Jews?
It has been suggested that Joshua was so elated with the victory that
he drank more than was good for him, and got in such a state that in the
evening he saw two moons instead of one. Nobody liked to contradict him,
but the elders of Israel, to harmonise their leader's vision, declared
that it comprised the sun and the moon, instead of two moons, which
were clearly absurd. The court poet improved on this explanation, and
composed the neat little poem which is partially preserved by the Jewish
chronicler, who asks "Is not this written in the book of Jasher?" The
waggish laureate Jasher is supposed by some profane speculators to have
got up the whole miracle himself.
The five kings fled with their armies and "hid themselves in a cave at
Makkedah." Joshua ordered the mouth to be closed with big stones until
the pursuit was ended. At last they were brought out and treated with
great ignominy. Their necks were made footstools of by the captains of
Israel, and they were afterwards hung on trees until the evening, when
their carcasses were flung into the cave. After this highly civilised
treatment of their captives, the Jews took all the capital cities of
these five kings and slew all the inhabitants. Then they desolated the
hills and vales. Joshua "left none remaining, but utterly destroyed
all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel commanded." Hazor and many
other places were also treated in the same way, "there was not any left
to breathe."
Jehovah was not, however, able to execute his intentions completely. The
children of Judah could not drive the Jebusites out of Jerusalem; nor
could the children of Manasseh entirely drive out the Canaanites from
their cities. After Joshua's death, as we read in the book of _Judges_,
"the Lord was with Judah, and he drave out the inhabitants of the
mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because
they had chariots of iron." Iron chariots were too strong for the
Almighty! Yet he managed to take off the wheels of Pharaoh's chariots
at the Red Sea. Why could he not do the same on this occasion? Were the
linch-pins too tight or the wheels too heavy?
Joshua died at the ripe old age of a hundred and ten. Whatever else he
may have been, he was certainly one of the gamest fighting cocks that
ever lived. Jehovah never found a better instrument for his bloody
purposes. They buried him at Timnath-serah. Joseph's old bones, which
Moses brought out of Egypt, were buried at Shechem. Had they been kept
much longer some Hebrew "old-clo' man" might have carried them off and
made an honest penny by them.
After Joshua's death, the tribe of Judah fought against Adoni-bezek.
When they caught him they cut off his thumbs and his big toes. He
acknowledged the justice of his punishment, and admitted that God had
served him just as he had himself served seventy kings, whose great toes
he had cut off, and made them eat under his table. Kings must have been
very plentiful in those days.
During Joshua's lifetime the Jews served God, and they kept pretty
straight during the lifetime of the elders who had known him. But
directly these died they went astray; "they forsook the Lord and
worshipped Baal and Ashtaroth." God punished them by letting their
enemies oppress them. "Nevertheless," says the story, "the Lord raised
up judges, which delivered them out of the hand of those that spoiled
them. And yet they would not hearken unto their judges, but they went
a whoring after other gods, and bowed themselves unto them; and they
turned quickly out of the way which their fathers walked in, obeying the
commandments of the Lord; but they did not so..... And it came to pass,
when the judge was dead, that they returned and corrupted themselves
more than their fathers, in following other Gods to serve them, and
to bow down unto them; they ceased not from their own doings, nor from
their stubborn way."
God's selection of the Jews as his favorite people does not seem to
reflect much credit on his sagacity. All who came out of Egypt, except
two persons, turned out so badly that they were pronounced unfit to
enter the promised land, and doomed to die in the wilderness. The new
generation who entered Canaan, after being circumcised to make them
holy; after seeing the miracles of Jordan and the valley of Ajalon;
after having gained a home by God's assistance in a land flowing with
milk and honey; this very generation proved worse than their fathers.
The original inhabitants of Canaan, whom they dispossessed, could hardly
have surpassed them in sin against Jehovah; and therefore the ruthless
slaughter of their conquest was as unreasonable as it was inhuman. So
much for "God's Thieves in Canaan."
CAIN AND ABEL.
BIBLE ROMANCES.--11.
By G. W. FOOTE.
God completed the immense labors described in the first chapter of
Genesis by creating man "in his own image," after which he serenely
contemplated "everything that he had made, and; behold, it was very
good." Yet the first woman deceived her husband, the first man was
duped, and their first son was a murderer. God could not have looked
very far ahead when he pronounced everything "very good." It is clear
that the original pair of human beings were very badly made. As the Lord
was obliged to take a rest on the seventh day, it is not unreasonable to
suppose that he was pretty tired on the sixth, and scamped the work.
All the sin and suffering in this world is the consequence of man having
been the fag-end of creation. If the Lord had rested on the sixth day
and created man on the seventh, how different things might have been!
The Devil would probably have done no business in this world, and the
population of hell would be no more now than it was six thousand years
ago.
After leaving the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, having no fear of
Malthus in their hearts, began to "multiply and replenish the earth."
When their first child was born, Eve said, "I have gotten a man from
the Lord," poor Adam's share in the youngster's advent being quietly
ignored. She christened him Cain, a name which comes from a Hebrew root
signifying to _acquire_. Cain was regarded as an _acquisition_, and his
mother was very proud of him. The time came when she wished he had never
been born.
Some time after, but how long is unknown, Eve gave birth to a second
son, called Abel. Josephus explains this name as meaning _grief_, but
Hebrew scholars at present explain it as meaning _nothingness, vanity,
frailty_. The etymology of Abel's name shows conclusively that the story
is a myth. Why should Eve give her second boy so sinister a name? How
could she have so clearly anticipated his sad fate? Cain's name has,
too, another significance besides that of "acquisition," for, as
Kalisch points out, it also belongs to the Hebrew verb to _strike_, and
"signifies either the man of violence and the sire of murderers, or
the ancestor of the inventors of iron instruments and of weapons of
destruction."
Cain and Abel had to get their own living. Being born after the Fall,
they were of course debarred from the felicities of Eden, and were
compelled to earn their bread by the sweat of their brows, in accordance
with God's wide-reaching curse. Both, so to speak, were forced to deal
in provisions. Abel went in for meat, and Cain for vegetables. This was
an admirable division of labor, and they ought to have got on very well
together; one finding beef and mutton for dinner, and the other potatoes
and greens. They might even have paid each other handsome compliments
across the table. Abel might have said "My dear Cain, these vegetables
are first-rate," and Cain might have replied, "My dear Abel, I never
tasted a better cut."
Delitzsch, whose criticisms are huge jokes, frowns on this picture of
fraternal peace. He opines that Cain and Abel were vegetarians and never
enjoyed a beef-steak or a mutton-chop. Abel kept only small domestic
cattle, such as sheep and goats, whose woolly skin might be used to
cover "their sinful nakedness." The utmost Delitzsch allows is that they
perhaps drank milk, which, although animal nutriment, is not obtained
through the destruction of animal life. But, as Colenso observes,
animals were slain for sacrifices, and they may have been killed also
for eating. Besides, even a vegetable diet involves infinite destruction
of minute animal life. On the whole we prefer to disregard Delitzsch
in this matter, and to stand by our pleasant picture of the two first
brothers at dinner.
Their admirable arrangement, however, brought mischief in the end. It
was right enough so far as they were concerned, but it worked badly
in relation to God. They liked a mixed diet, but the Lord was purely
carnivorous and liked all meat. He devoured Abel's provisions with
great relish, but turned up his nose at Cain's vegetables. The mealiest
potatoes, the tenderest green peas, had no charm for him; and even the
leeks, the garlic, the onions, and the cucumbers, which were afterwards
so beloved by his Jewish favorites, were quite unattractive. In the
language of Scripture, "Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an
offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of
his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and
to his offering: But unto Cain and to his offering he had no respect"
Elsewhere in the Bible we read "God is no respecter of persons,"
but Scripture is full of contradictions, and such things present no
difficulty to the spirit of faith, which, like hope, "believeth all
things."
Why was Cain's offering slighted? The Bible does not tell us, but many
reasons have been advanced by commentators. The Talmud supposes that
Cain did not offer his _best_ produce, but only the inferior kinds, thus
giving God what he did not require himself, and treating the holy rite
of sacrifice as a means of working off his refuse vegetables. Kalisch
waives this theory, and thinks it probable that Cain's sin was primarily
not against God, but against man. "The supposition," he says, "is
obvious that envy and jealousy had long filled the heart of Cain, when
he contrasted his laborious and toilsome life with the pleasant and easy
existence of his brother Abel. With incessant exertion, tormented by
anxiety, and helplessly dependent on the uncertainty of the skies,
he forced a scanty subsistence out of the womb of the repugnant soil;
whilst his brother enjoyed a life of security and abundance, in the
midst of rich valleys, beautiful hills, and charming rural scenes. And
while he envied Abel's prosperity, he despised his idleness, which was
indebted for the necessaries of life to the liberality of nature, rather
than to personal exertions. This hatred and jealousy took root in Cain's
heart. He beheld the happiness of his brother with the feelings-of an
enemy. The joy at the success of his own labors was embittered by the
aspect of his brother's greater affluence. How could God look with
delight upon an offering which the offerer himself did not regard with
unalloyed satisfaction? How could he encourage by his applause a man
whose heart was poisoned by the mean and miserable passion of envy?"
But all this is gratuitous and far-fetched. Cain was not afflicted with
so laborious an occupation. Adam supported himself and Eve, and all Cain
had to do was to provide himself, and perhaps Abel, with vegetables. Nor
could Abel's occupation have been light, for flocks and herds require
a good deal of attendance, and in those early days they needed vigilant
protection against the ravages of wild beasts. Abel's task must have
been quite as heavy as Cain's. Our opinion is that the Lord showed his
usual caprice, hating whom he would and loving whom he would. Jehovah
acted like the savage hero of Mr. Browning's "Caliban on Setebos," who
sprawls on the shore watching a line of crabs make for the sea, and
squashes the twentieth for mere variety and sport. If Jehovah is
requested to explain his loves and hates, he answers with Shylock, "it
is my whim." It was his whim to love Jacob and hate Esau, and it was no
doubt his whim to accept Abel's offering and reject Cain's.
Mythologically the acceptance of Abel's offering and the rejection of
Cain's are easily intelligible. The principle of sacrifice was deeply
imbedded in Judaism. Without shedding of blood there could be no
remission of sin. Under the Levitical law the duties of the priesthood
chiefly consisted in burning the sin offerings of the people. It is,
therefore, not difficult to understand how the Jewish scribes who wrote
or revised the Pentateuch after the Babylonish captivity should give
this coloring to the narrative of Genesis; nor is it hard to conceive
that for centuries before that date the popular tradition had already,
under priestly direction, taken such a color, so as to give the oldest
and deepest sanction to the doctrine of animal sacrifice.
It must also be noticed that Abel, who found favor with God, was "a
keeper of sheep," while Cain, whose offering was contemned, was "a
tiller of the ground." This accords with the strongest traditional
instincts of the Jews. The Persian religion decidedly favors
agriculture, which it regards as a kind of divine service. Brahminism
and Buddhism countenance it still more decidedly, and even go to the
length of absolutely prohibiting the slaughter of animals. The Jews,
on the other hand, esteemed the pastoral life as the noblest, and
the Hebrew historian very naturally represented it as protected and
consecrated by the blessing of Jehovah, while agriculture was declared
to have been imposed on man as a _punishment_. The nomadic origin of the
Jews accounts for their antipathy to that pursuit, which survived
and manifested itself, long after they settled in Palestine, devoted
themselves to the cultivation of the soil, and enacted agrarian laws.
They always esteemed agriculturalists as inferior to shepherds; men of
superior attainments in their histories and legends rose from pastoral
life; and kings kept their flocks. David, the man after God's own heart,
and the national hero of the Jews, was a shepherd, and the Lord came
to him while he was keeping his father's sheep. Moses was keeping his
father-in-law's sheep when God appeared to him in the burning bush at
Mount Horeb; Jacob kept his uncle Laban's sheep when he fled from Esau;
and Abraham, the father of the faithful, was rich in flocks and herds.
To recur to our story. Abel probably enjoyed the conspicuous mark
of divine favors conferred on him. Cain, however, experienced very
different feelings. He "was very wroth, and his countenance fell."
Whereupon the Lord somewhat facetiously asked him what was the matter.
"Why," said he, "art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If
thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well,
sin lieth at the door." This was all very well, but as a matter of fact
Cain's offering had already been _rejected_, and according to the Bible
he had done nothing to deserve such harsh treatment.
The Lord's final words on this occasion read thus in our English Bible:
"And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him." These
words are construed as applying to Cain's mastery over Abel, as the
elder brother; but they seem quite unmeaning in that connexion; for
Abel left no offspring, and the prophecy, if such it were, was never
fulfilled. Kalisch throws light on this obscure passage. The Lord,
he says, was referring not to Abel but to Cain's secret sin, and the
passage should read "And to thee is _its_ desire, but thou shalt rule
over it."
Cain then "talked with Abel his brother." Gesenius supposes that he
communicated to him the words of God, and treats this as the first step
towards a reconciliation. However that may be, we hear nothing more of
it, for the very next words relate the murder of the younger brother by
the elder. "And it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain
rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him."
This abrupt narrative certainly requires explanation. Kalisch seems to
think that Cain went about his work, after the interview with God, in a
better frame of mind; but while he toiled hard "in the field" he became
incensed at the sight of Abel loafing under a fine umbrageous tree
and calmly watching his flock. Forgetting the divine admonitions,
and listening only to the voice of passion, he madly killed his only
brother, and made himself the first murderer. The Talmud gives several
legends about the hatred between the two brothers. One imputes the
difference to Cain's avarice, another to his ambition, another to his
innate sinfulness, and another to his envy and jealousy on account
of Abel's wife. The last of all seems the truest; namely, that they
differed "in their views regarding Providence, the moral government of
the world, and the efficacy of virtuous deeds for happiness." This idea
informs Byron's tragedy on the subject. In "Cain" the younger, brother's
offering is burnt up with supernatural fire, while the elder's altar
remains unkindled; whereupon Cain inveighs against God's partiality, and
denounces the bloody sacrifice which finds greater favor than his own
peaceful tribute of fruit and flowers. He then advances to scatter the
relics of Abel's offering from the altar, but is thwarted by his brother
who resists the sacrilege. Abel is felled in the struggle, and Cain, who
had no intention of killing him, finds himself an actual murderer before
his brother's corpse.
We are bound to conclude that the first quarrel in the world, like
nine-tenths of those that have occurred since, was about religion. Cain
thought God should be worshiped in one way, Abel thought he should be
worshiped in another; and they settled the question, after the manner of
religious disputants in all ages, by the stronger knocking the weaker on
the head. In religion there is no certitude on this side of the grave;
if we are ever destined to know the truth on that subject, we must die
to find it out. We may therefore argue fruitlessly until the day of
judgment. The only effectual way of settling a religious problem is to
settle your opponents.
After the murder the Lord paid Cain another visit, and asked him where
Abel was. Cain replied that he was not his brother's keeper and didn't
know. He does not appear to have thought God a particularly well
informed person. Then the Lord said that Abel's blood cried unto him
from the ground. "And now," he continued, "art thou cursed from the
earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from
thy hand; when thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield
unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be on the
earth. And Cain said unto the Lord, my punishment is greater than I
can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the
earth; and from thy face shall I be hid, and I shall be a fugitive and
a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass that every one
that findeth me shall slay me. And the Lord said unto him, Therefore
whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And
the Lord set a mark on Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. And
Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of
Nod, on the east of Eden."
Now let us examine this story. Why was Cain so solicitous about his
safety? Why did he fear that everybody would try to kill him? He had
slain his brother, and his father and mother were the only people in
the world besides himself and perhaps his sisters (? who knew). Kalisch
suggests that he apprehended the future vengeance of mankind when the
world grew more populous. But how, in that case, could a distinctive
mark be any protection? It would publish his identity to all beholders.
Besides, one would suppose that Cain, the first man ever born into the
world, would always be well known without carrying about a brand like a
special wine or a patent edible. And what was the mark? Kalisch thinks
it was only a villainous expression. Others think it was the Mongolian
type impressed upon the features of Cain, who became the founder of that
great division of the human race. A negro preacher started a different
theory. When the Lord called out in a loud voice "Cain, where is thy
brother Abel," Cain, who was a black man, like Adam, turned pale with
fear, and never regained his original color. All his children were pale
too; and that, said the preacher, "accounts for de white trash you see
ebery war in dese days."
How did Cain manage to go "out from the presence of the Lord," who is
everywhere? Satan does the same thing in the Book of Job, and Jonah
tries to do it later on. Jehovah was clearly a local as well as a
visible God, and not the infinite spirit of the universe.
Where was the land of Nod situated? East of Eden, says the Bible. But
nobody knows where Eden was. As we pointed out in "The Creation Story,"
scores of different positions have been assigned to it. The only point
of agreement among the commentators is that it was _somewhere_. All that
can safely be affirmed, then, is that Nod was east of Somewhere. The
name itself is very appropriate. No doubt the Lord was not quite awake
in that locality, and hence we may explain how Cain managed to go "out
from his presence."
In this strange land of Nod, Cain "knew his wife." Who was she? Probably
his own sister, but the Bible does not tell us anything about her. Their
first son was called Enoch. Cain then "builded a city, and called
the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch." But this is
directly opposed to the curse "a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be
in the earth."
Delitzsch notices this, and, as usual, seeks to explain it away. Cain,
he says, "in this way set himself against the divine curse, in order
to feel it inwardly so much the more, as outwardly he seems to have
overcome it." To which we reply--first, that there is no evidence
that Cain felt the curse "more inwardly" after he built the city; and,
secondly, the idea of a man successfully setting himself against an
omnipotent curse is a trifle too absurd for credence or criticism.