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HELON'S PILGRIMAGE
TO
JERUSALEM.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
HELON'S PILGRIMAGE
TO
JERUSALEM.
A PICTURE OF JUDAISM,
IN THE CENTURY WHICH PRECEDED THE ADVENT
OF OUR SAVIOUR.
_TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF_
FREDERICK STRAUSS,
WITH NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE TRANSLATOR.
------------------
Ἡ ΣΩΤΗΡΙΑ ἘΚ ΤΩΝ ἸΟΓΔΑΙΩΝ ἘΣΤΙΝ.
VOL. II.
------------------
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR J. MAWMAN, LUDGATE-STREET.
---
1824.
LONDON: PRINTED BY A. APPLEGATH, STAMFORD-STREET.
CONTENTS.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------
VOL. II. BOOK III.
CHAPTER I.
Page.
The Sacerdotal Office 1
CHAPTER II.
The Journey to Joppa 19
CHAPTER III.
The Feast of the New Moon 50
CHAPTER IV.
The Admission into the Priesthood 75
CHAPTER V.
The Essenes 124
CHAPTER VI.
The Betrothment 151
CHAPTER VII.
The Feast of Pentecost 176
BOOK IV.
CHAPTER I.
The Journey to Dan 193
CHAPTER II.
The Nuptials 234
CHAPTER III.
The Avenger of Blood 248
CHAPTER IV.
The Water of Jealousy 267
CHAPTER V.
The Day of Atonement 290
CHAPTER VI.
The Feast of Tabernacles 312
CHAPTER VII.
The Conclusion 339
HELON'S PILGRIMAGE
TO
JERUSALEM.
[Illustration]
BOOK III.
THE FEAST OF PENTECOST.
CHAPTER I.
THE SACERDOTAL OFFICE.
The feast of the Passover was ended. The multitude had returned to their
homes, or resumed their occupations in the city. The ashes on the altar
of burnt-offering, whose gradual accumulation, during the week of the
Passover, had raised them at last into a lofty pyramid, had been cleared
away. The days of unleavened bread were past; the people had returned to
their ordinary food, and all the glory of the festival seemed to have
disappeared from the city.
Helon stood on the roof, on the following morning, contemplating the
rising sun. His eyes turned towards the temple, and he remembered, with
a feeling of disappointment and regret, that on this as on the preceding
day, only a single customary sacrifice would be presented there. He
looked down upon the streets—the exhilarating commotion of the festival
had vanished, and all was solitary and still, save where a Tyrian
merchant was seen hastening through the gate with his empty sacks, or a
Galilean dealer in cattle, driving before him the remnant of his herd,
for which he had been unable to find a purchaser. No pilgrim from Hebron
or Libna, no stranger of the Diaspora was to be seen.
A deep melancholy took possession of Helon’s mind, and this day seemed
likely to pass even more gloomily than the preceding. The dejection of
mind which for several years past had been his habitual companion, had
suddenly vanished during the paschal week. The enthusiasm which began at
Beersheba, when he knelt down to greet the land of his fathers, had gone
on constantly increasing; and he had felt within himself a resolution,
which it seemed as if nothing could daunt, to keep the law of Jehovah.
But now, though still in the Holy Land and in the city of God, his
spirits sunk at every moment; his feelings had been too highly excited,
and this depression was the natural consequence. He could not descend to
the ordinary occupations of life in Jerusalem, in which, as the city of
Jehovah, it seemed to him that a perpetual festival ought to prevail.
In the preceding days only the psalms, with their tone of cheerful and
exulting piety, or the joyous prophecies of Isaiah, had been in his
heart and on his lips; now the plaintive strains of Jeremiah, his former
favourites, recurred to his mind, and he began to feel how removed he
still was from that inward peace for which he longed, and which he
thought that he had found in the first days of the festival. When he
looked down upon the streets, whose compatative emptiness seemed to him
absolute desolation, the beginning of the Lamentations came to his mind,
How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people!
How is she become as a widow!
And he could scarcely forbear adding from the same prophet,[1]
My soul is removed from peace,
And I said my confidence is perished
And my hope in Jehovah.
-----
Footnote 1:
Lam. iii. 18.
-----
With such feelings he wandered up and down on the roof, in the cool air
of morning. Suddenly the smoke of the morning-sacrifice arose on mount
Moriah, and the sound of a solitary trumpet was heard from the hill of
the Lord. All Helon’s feelings returned with the associations of this
sight and sound. “There is then,” he exclaimed, “one occupation in
Jerusalem, which is a perpetual festival. It is theirs who dwell in the
house of the Lord and minister at his altar. Why do I delay my
resolution?”
At this moment the door of the Alijah opened, and the venerable Elisama
issued from it. He had been performing there his morning devotions.
Helon went up to him, wished him peace, and with kindling looks thus
addressed him; “My uncle, often hast thou told me that Israel is Israel
only in the Holy Land, yet even here I cannot remain, unless I become a
priest.”
“Restless youth,” said Elisama smiling; “is it not enough for thee that
thou art in the city of Jehovah?”
“But,” replied Helon, “even in the city of Jehovah, the priests alone
keep a perpetual festival; and I fain would keep it with them.”
Elisama looked at him in joyful surprise. It had been his own wish that
Helon, whose dislike of commerce he perceived, should become a priest,
but wishing that it should be his spontaneous choice, he had forborne to
suggest it to him; and he had not hoped for so speedy and so decisive a
declaration. Scarcely able to repress his joy, he replied, “In a son of
Levi the wish is natural; but what has suggested it?”
Helon related to him what he had felt on the second day of the Passover,
when offering the burnt-offering; how the desire of entering into the
sacerdotal order had ripened into resolution, and how ever since that
time the words of the prophet,[2] “the priest is an angel of the Lord,”
had been perpetually before his mind, till at length his painful
feelings on seeing the deserted city, and the joy which had revived in
him on hearing the trumpet from Moriah, had convinced him that he could
be happy only by entering into the priesthood.
-----
Footnote 2:
Mal. ii. 7.
-----
Elisama embraced him, and both remained for a time weeping. At length
Elisama, breaking silence, said, “We will go to-morrow to the
high-priest; he knows our family and me. In truth,” he continued,
“Jehovah has blessed our house with much wealth in a foreign land, and
thou, alas, art its only heir. It is right that thou shouldest revive
the priesthood in our family, in which it has slept for four hundred
years. This is the curse which rests on Israel in foreign lands. The
privilege to be anointed to Jehovah by birth, and to have the right of
ministering before him, is despised, and a Levite becomes but like
another man. This I have often thought; the pursuits of commerce have
indeed prevented my acting on this conviction, but all my wealth has
been an inadequate consolation to me.”
“My second father,” exclaimed Helon, “my heart overflows with joy to
hear that you think so; and with gratitude, that you permit me to revive
the priesthood in our family.”
“Yes, Helon,” said Elisama, “I feel, too, that the priest is an angel of
the Lord of Hosts. In the hour in which thou didst resolve to make a
journey to the Holy Land, I framed in my heart the blessing which my
lips now pronounce upon thee. But let us go to the grave of thy father,
that thou mayest receive his blessing.”
Without entering the house, they descended the staircase which led
directly from the roof into the outer court, and so into the street.
Passing along the Broad-street they came immediately from the Higher
City into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and its cedars, and proceeded
beneath their solemn shade, till they reached the well-known sepulchre
of the Egyptian pilgrim.
Both stood before it awhile in silence, and seemed to expect that some
voice should still issue from it, or that the spirit of the beloved
father and brother should come forth.
“O! hadst thou lived to see this hour,” at length exclaimed Elisama,
“how had thy paternal heart rejoiced!”
Helon wept, whether in joy or sorrow he himself scarcely knew—but such
tears are of a higher kind. He threw himself upon the grave, and long
remained there praying and weeping. Elisama too gave free vent to his
tears. “Arise,” he said, at length, to Helon, “and let us repeat
together the 90th psalm. Thy father will answer thee in this song of
Moses, and bless thee in the words of the man of God.”
Helon arose, and they both said together,
Lord, thou hast been our refuge
From generation to generation.
Before the mountains were brought forth,
Or ever thou hadst fashioned the earth and the world,
From everlasting to everlasting, thou art God!
Thou turnest man to destruction,
And sayest, Return ye children of men:
For a thousand years are in thy sight
As yesterday when it is past,
And as a watch in the night.
Thou sweepest them away; they sleep.
In the morning they are as grass that groweth up,
In the morning it is green and flourishing,
In the evening it is cut down and withereth.
For we are consumed by thine anger,
And by thy wrath we are troubled.
Thou settest our iniquities before thee,
Our secret deeds in the light of thy countenance.
Our days are wasted by thy anger,
Our years are spent as a breath.
The days of our years are threescore years and ten,
And if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,
Yet is their strength labour and sorrow;
For it is soon cut off and we flee away.
Who knoweth the power of thine anger
Which is terrible that thou mayest be feared?
So teach us to number our days,
That we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.
Return to us, O Jehovah—how long?
Be again gracious to thy servants.
O! satisfy us speedily with thy mercy,
That we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us,
And the years wherein we have seen evil.
Let thy work appear unto thy servants
And thy glory unto their children.
May the favour of the Lord our God be upon us
And prosper thou the work of our hands;
Yea, the work of our hands may thy goodness prosper!
“Be that the blessing of thy father upon thee,” said Elisama when they
had finished. “Does not this psalm seem to have been composed to suit
our circumstances; beginning with lamentation on account of death, and
confession of sin; yet even in the midst of these, calling on Jehovah,
on him who has been our refuge from generation to generation? Yes,
Helon, such has he been to the whole series of our ancestors even to him
who, with the prophet Jeremiah, was compelled to flee into Egypt; and on
this we found our prayer, Return to us O Jehovah! The Lord has heard
thee, happy youth! Thou shalt behold the works of Jehovah! And from the
sepulchre of thy father, from beneath these primeval cedars, his spirit
blesses thee and says, The favour of the Lord thy God be upon thee. May
he prosper all the work of thy hands, yea the work of thy hands may his
goodness prosper. And now let us go. We will return home by Zion and by
the spring of Siloah.”
At the south-east corner of Jerusalem, near the termination of the
Kedron, lies the valley of Hinnom, where once sacrifices were offered to
Moloch on Tophet. They bent their course around the Water-gate and went
through this valley which lies on the southern side, along the aqueduct
of Siloah, which had been erected by Solomon. They came first to the
lower pool, then to the remains of a noble garden, and at last, opposite
to the south-west side of the city to the upper pool, near which was the
highly-prized fountain of Siloah, which Manasseh, on his return, had
connected with the city by means of a well. Isaiah describes the waters
of Siloah as “flowing softly.”[3]
-----
Footnote 3:
Isaiah viii. 6.
-----
This is the holy spot where the wisest king of Israel was anointed.
David, then grey with years, said, “Set Solomon my son on my own mule,
and bring him down to Gihon (so this fountain was then called) and let
Zadok the priest, and Nathan the prophet, anoint him there king over
Israel. So Zadok and Nathan, and Benaiah and the Kerethites and the
Pelethites went down thither, and Zadok took a horn of oil out of the
sanctuary and anointed Solomon, and they blew the trumpet, and all the
people came up after him piping and rejoicing, so that the earth was
rent with their sound.”[4]
-----
Footnote 4:
1 Kings i. 33.
-----
“It was not without reason,” said Elisama, “that I brought thee hither
to-day. As the king is the anointed of a people, so is the priest of a
family. For thy own sake I led thee to the valley of Jehoshaphat; it
shall serve as an omen to myself that I have brought thee hither.”
They were both silent. Passing by the Fuller’s Field,[5] as it was
called from ancient times, and bending round the western side of the
city, by the ruins of the aqueduct of Hezekiah, they entered the valley
of Siloah. Between the gate of the Fountain and the gate of the Valley
they saw the tower of Zion, formerly called the tower of the
Jebusites,[6] and now the city of David, rising in the midst of the
Higher City which had been built around it. The Higher and Lower City
were separated by a valley, which was called the Tyropœon (valley of
the cheese-makers.) They entered by the gate of the Valley and thus
reached again the house of Iddo, in the Higher City, and in the
Broad-street.
-----
Footnote 5:
2 Kings xviii. 17. Isaiah vii. 3.
Footnote 6:
Judges i. 21.
-----
How did Iddo sympathize in the joy with which Elisama announced to him
the determination of Helon! He was standing in the outer court, and had
just taken leave of some acquaintance, when they entered. Leading them
with exclamations of joy to the inner court, he called his wife from the
apartment of the women, made the slaves place cushions around the
fountain, and repeatedly exclaimed, “What a happiness for a family! The
priest is indeed an angel of Jehovah of Hosts.”
The day was spent in domestic festivity, but Helon could not be present
at the evening sacrifice, because he had made himself unclean by contact
with a grave.[7] It seemed somewhat strange to him, that he should have
been defiled by a visit to his father’s tomb, and be unfit to appear in
the temple of Jehovah, because he had shed there tears not of earthly
sorrow but of heavenly hope. But he consoled himself with the thought
that the priest was more secure even in this respect.
-----
Footnote 7:
Numb. xix. 16.
-----
In the afternoon, as he could not go up to the temple, he strayed,
accompanied by his host, through the Higher City, the Lower City, and
came at last into the New City. The artisans were at their labours, in
shops open to the street, and presented a picture of animated activity.
They passed the ruins of the palaces of David, in the Upper City, and
Solomon in the Lower City, and saw the tower of Baris, where Helon was
to appear on the following day, before the high-priest, and at length
turned in the New City around the hill Bezetha, by the Gate of the
Corner which lay in the north-east side of the city. The sepulchres of
the kings,[8] a splendid work, hewn out of the rock, was near. Helon and
Iddo proceeded, and winding round the west side of the city came into
the vale of Gihon. “Yonder,” said Iddo, “is Golgotha,” as they came to
an open space.
-----
Footnote 8:
2 Chron. xxi. 20.
-----
A dim remembrance of the connection of this place with some past event
of his life came into Helon’s mind, and he at length recollected his
dream. “I have had,” said he to his host, “an extraordinary dream, which
I have been unable to shake off and which ended with Golgotha.” When he
had related it to him, Iddo replied, “Remember the words of Elihu,
In a dream, in visions of the night,
When deep sleep falleth upon men,
In slumberings upon their bed
God giveth instruction unto men.—Job xxxiii. 15.
A part of the dream is on the point of being fulfilled, in your
receiving the sacerdotal unction, and we will hope that the rest
portends only good. What Golgotha should mean I do not understand.”
Helon purified himself in the evening, by the prescribed ablutions, from
the uncleanness which he had contracted by the contact of the grave.
Still he was not permitted to enter the temple for seven days to come;
for so long the uncleanness lasted which was produced by touching a
sepulchre. But the prohibition applied only to the temple.
The following day was a sabbath. Elisama took the presents which he had
destined for the high-priest, and Helon and he went together to the
castle of Baris. It was a stately edifice erected by Hyrcanus. It stood
at the north-east corner of the temple, on a steep rock fifty cubits
high, and formed a quadrangle, in the midst of which a splendid palace
stood. Besides a court, it was surrounded with a wall, on the four
corners of which were towers, that on the south-east side being the
highest, for the purpose of commanding the temple from it.
The high-priest received the stranger, sitting in the inner court, by
the fountain, and bade them welcome. Elisama had been known to him
before, and Hyrcanus rejoiced to see him after an interval of many
years. With lofty panegyrics of his government, and the heroic deeds of
himself and his progenitors, Elisama laid his Egyptian presents at his
feet, consisting of valuable or curious productions of nature and art
from that country, and then made application for Helon’s admission into
the priesthood. The high-priest lent a favourable ear to the request,
but observed, that as the triumphal entry of his sons was to take place
on the approaching new moon, he could not before that time admit Helon
to the temple service, and he recommended it to Elisama to employ the
interval in examining the genealogical table of the young candidate.
Having promised them all necessary aid in carrying their purpose into
effect, he dismissed them.
The first step had now been taken. Helon left the castle, full of
exultation, and congratulating Israel that such a hero as Hyrcanus sat
upon its throne. On their return home Elisama announced to Iddo his
intention of making a journey with Helon to Joppa, where the keeper of
the genealogical register of their family dwelt. “Since you are now to
be an inhabitant of the Promised Land,” said he to Helon, “it is right
that you should become acquainted with it and with your kinsmen who
dwell in it. We shall return in time to witness the triumphal entry.”
Helon requested that they might take Anathoth in their way, a place
which he felt an indescribable longing to see, as being the native town
of his prophet Jeremiah. Elisama agreed, and as soon as the sabbath was
ended preparations for the journey were hastily made.