STRIFE.
Hebrew god of War--Samaël--The father's blessing and curse--Esau
--Edom--Jacob and the Phantom--The planet Mars--Tradesman and
Huntsman--'The Devil's Dream.'
Who is this that cometh from Edom,
In dyed garments from Bozrah?
This that is glorious in his apparel,
Travelling in the greatness of his strength?
I who promise deliverance, mighty to save.
Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel,
And thy garments like him that treadeth the wine-vat?
I have trodden the wine-press alone;
And of the peoples there was none with me:
And I will tread them in mine anger,
And trample them in my fury;
And their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments,
And I will stain all my raiment.
For the day of vengeance is in my heart,
And the year of mine avenged is come.
And I looked, and there was none to help;
And I wondered that there was none to uphold;
Therefore mine own arm gained me the victory,
And mine own fury, it upheld me.
And I will tread down the peoples in mine anger,
And make them drunk in my wrath,
And will bring down their strength to the earth. [63]
This is the picture of the god of War. Upon it the comment in Emek
Hammelech is: 'The colour of the godless Samaël and of all his princes
and lords has the aspect of red fire; and all their emanations are
red. Samaël is red, also his horse, his sword, his raiment, and the
ground beneath him, are red. In the future the Holy God shall wear
his raiment.' [64] Samaël is leader of the Opposition. He is the
Soul of the fiery planet Mars. He is the Creator and inspirer of
all Serpents. Azazel, demon of the Desert, is his First Lord. He was
the terrestrial Chief around whom the fallen angels gathered, and his
great power was acknowledged. All these characters the ancient Rabbins
found blended in his name. Simmé (dazzling), Sóme (blinding), Semól
(the left side), and Samhammaveth (deadly poison), were combined in
the terrible name of Samaël. He ruled over the sinister Left. When
Moses, in war with the Amalekites, raised his ten fingers, it was a
special invocation to the Ten Sephiroth, Divine Emanations, because
he knew the power which the Amalekites got from Samaël might turn his
own left hand against Israel. [65] The scapegoat was a sacrifice to
him through Azazel.
Samaël is the mythologic expression and embodiment of the history of
Esau, afterward Edom. Jacob and Esau represented the sheep and the
goat, divided in the past and to be sundered for ever. As Jacob by
covering his flesh with goat-skins obtained his father's blessing due
to Esau, the Israelites wandering through the wilderness (near Edom's
forbidden domain) seemed to have faith that the offering of a goat
would convince his Viceroy Azazel that they were orthodox Edomites. The
redness of Samaël begins with the red pottage from which Esau was
called Edom. The English version does not give the emphasis with which
Esau is said to have called for the pottage--"the red! the red!" The
characteristics ascribed to Esau in the legend are merely a saga built
on the local names with which he was associated. 'Edom' means red,
and 'Seir' means hairy. It probably meant the 'Shaggy Mountains.' [66]
It is interesting to observe the parting of the human and the
theological myths in this story. Jacob is the third person of a
patriarchal trinity,--Abraham the Heavenly Father, Isaac the Laugher
(the Sun), and Jacob the Impostor or Supplanter. As the moon supplants
the sun, takes hold of his heel, shines with his light, so does Jacob
supplant his elder brother; and all the deadliness ascribed to the
Moon, and other Third Persons of Trinities, was inherited by Jacob
until his name was changed by euphemism. As the impartial sun shines
for good and evil, the smile of Isaac, the Laugher, promised great
blessings to both of his sons. The human myth therefore represents
both of them gaining great power and wealth, and after a long feud
they are reconciled. This feature of the legend we shall consider
hereafter. Jehovah has another interest to be secured. He had
declared that one should serve the other; that they should be
cursed who cursed Jacob; and he said, 'Jacob have I loved, Esau
have I hated.' Jahvistic theology had here something more important
than two brothers to harmonise; namely a patriarch's blessing and
a god's curse. It was contrary to all orthodoxy that a man whom
Jehovah hated should possess the blessings of life; it was equally
unorthodox that a father's blessing should not carry with it every
advantage promised. It had to be recorded that Esau became powerful,
lived by his sword, and had great possessions.
It had also to be recorded that 'Edom revolted from under the hand of
Judah and made a king unto themselves,' and that such independence
continued 'unto this day' (2 Kings viii. 20, 22). There was thus no
room for the exhibition of Jacob's superiority,--that is of Israel's
priority over Edom,--in this world; nor yet any room to carry out
Isaac's curse on all who cursed Jacob, and the saying: 'Jacob have
I loved, Esau have I hated, and laid his mountains and his heritage
waste for the dragons of the wilderness' (Mal. i.).
Answers to such problems as these evolve themselves slowly
but inevitably. The agonised cry of the poor girl in Browning's
poem--'There may be heaven, there must be hell'--marks the direction in
which necessity led human speculation many ages before her. A future
had to be invented for the working out of the curse on Esau, who on
earth had to fulfil his father's blessing by enjoying power, wealth,
and independence of his brother. In that future his greatness while
living was repaid by his relegation to the desert and the rock with
the he-goat for his support. Esau was believed to have been changed
into a terrible hairy devil. [67] But still there followed him in his
phantasmal transformation a ghostly environment of his former power
and greatness; the boldest and holiest could not afford to despise
or set aside that 'share' which had been allotted him in the legend,
and could not be wholly set aside in the invisible world.
Jacob's share began with a shrewd bargain with his imprudent
brother. Jacob by his cunning in the breeding of the streaked animals
(Gen. xxx.), by which he outwitted Laban, and other manoeuvres, was
really the cause of bringing on the race called after him that repute
for extortion, affixed to them in such figures as Shylock, which they
have found it so hard to live down. In becoming the great barterers
of the East, their obstacle was the plunderer sallying forth from
the mountain fastnesses or careering over the desert. These were the
traditional descendants of Esau, who gradually included the Ishmaelites
as well as the Edomites, afterwards merged in the Idumeans. But as
the tribal distinctions became lost, the ancient hostility survived
in the abstract form of this satan of Strife--Samaël. He came to
mean the spirit that stirs up antagonism between those who should be
brethren. He finally became, and among the more superstitious Jews
still is, instigator of the cruel persecutions which have so long
pursued their race, and the prejudices against them which survive
even in countries to whose wealth, learning, and arts they have
largely contributed. In Jewish countries Edom has long been a name
for the power of Rome and Romanism, somewhat in the same way as the
same are called 'Babylon' by some christians. Jacob, when passing
into the wilderness of Edom, wrestled with the invisible power of
Esau, or Samaël, and had not been able to prevail except with a lame
thigh,--a part which, in every animal, Israel thereafter held sacred
to the Opposing Power and abstained from eating. A rabbinical legend
represents Jacob as having been bitten by a serpent while he was
lingering about the boundary of Edom, and before his gift of goats
and other cattle had been offered to his brother. The fiery serpents
which afflicted Israel were universally attributed to Samaël, and
the raising of the Brazen Serpent for the homage of the people was an
instance of the uniform deference to Esau's power in his own domain
which was long inculcated.
As I write, fiery Mars, near enough for the astronomer to detect
its moons, is a wondrous phenomenon in the sky. Beneath it fearful
famine is desolating three vast countries, war is raging between
two powerful nations, and civil strife is smiting another ere it has
fairly recovered from the wounds of a foreign struggle. The dismal
conditions seem to have so little root in political necessity that
one might almost be pardoned even now for dreaming that some subtle
influence has come among men from the red planet that has approached
the earth. How easy then must it have been in a similar conjunction of
earthly and celestial phenomena to have imagined Samaël, the planetary
Spectre, to be at work with his fatal fires! Whatever may have been
the occasion, the red light of Mars at an early period fixed upon that
planet the odium of all the burning, blighting, desert-producing powers
of which it was thought necessary to relieve the adorable Sun. It
was believed that all 'born under' that planet were quarrelsome. And
it was part of the popular Jewish belief in the ultimate triumph of
good over evil that under Mars the Messias was to be born.
We may regard Esau-Samaël then as the Devil of Strife. His traditional
son Cain was like himself a 'murderer from the beginning;' [68] but in
that early period the conflict was between the nomad and the huntsman
on one side, on the other the agriculturist and the cattle-breeder,
who was never regarded as a noble figure among the Semitic tribes. In
the course of time some Semitic tribes became agriculturists, and among
them, in defiance of his archæological character, Samaël was saddled
with the evils that beset them. As an ox he brought rinderpest. But
his visible appearance was still more generally that of the raven,
the wild ass, the hog which brought scurvy; while in shape of a dog
he was so generally believed to bring deadly disease, that it would
seem as if 'hydrophobia' was specially attributed to him.
In process of time benignant Peace dwelt more and more with the
agriculturists, but still among the Israelites the tradesman was
the 'coming man,' and to him peace was essential. The huntsman, of
the Esau clan, figures in many legends, of which the following is
translated from the Arabic by Lane:--There was a huntsman who from a
mountain cave brought some honey in his water-skin, which he offered
to an oilman; when the oilman opened the skin a drop of honey fell
which a bird ate; the oilman's cat sprang on the bird and killed it;
the huntsman's hound killed the cat; the oilman killed the dog; the
huntsman killed the oilman; and as the two men belonged to different
villages, their inhabitants rose against each other in battle,
'and there died of them a great multitude, the number of whom none
knoweth but God, whose name be exalted!' [69]
Esau's character as a wild huntsman is referred to in another
chapter. It is as the genius of strife and nomadic war that he more
directly stands in contrast with his 'supplanter.'
From the wild elemental demons of storm and tempest of the most
primitive age to this Devil of Strife, the human mind has associated
evil with unrest. 'The wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot
rest.' Such is the burthen of the Japanese Oni throned in the heart
of the hurricane, of the wild huntsman issuing forth at the first
note of war, of Edom hating the victories of peace, living by the
sword. The prophecy that the Prince of Peace should be born under
the planet Mars is a strange and mystical suggestion. In a powerful
poem by Thomas Aird, 'The Devil's Dream,' the last fearful doom of
Satan's vision is imprisonment beneath a lake for ever still,--the
Spirit of Unrest condemned for ever to the realm of absolute stillness!
There all is solemn idleness: no music here, no jars,
Where Silence guards the coast, e'er thrill her everlasting bars.
No sun here shines on wanton isles; but o'er the burning sheet
A rim of restless halo shakes, which marks the internal heat;
As, in the days of beauteous earth, we see with dazzled sight
The red and setting sun o'erflow with rings of welling light.
Oh! here in dread abeyance lurks of uncreated things
The last Lake of God's Wrath, where He His first great Enemy brings.
Deep in the bosom of the gulf the Fiend was made to stay,
Till, as it seemed, ten thousand years had o'er him rolled away;
In dreams he had extended life to bear the fiery space;
But all was passive, dull, and stern within his dwelling-place.
Oh! for a blast of tenfold ire to rouse the giant surge,
Him from that flat fixed lethargy impetuously to urge!
Let him but rise, but ride upon the tempest-crested wave
Of fire enridged tumultuously, each angry thing he'd brave!
The strokes of Wrath, thick let them fall! a speed so glorious dread
Would bear him through, the clinging pains would strip from off
his head.
The vision of this Last Stern Lake, oh! how it plagued his soul,
Type of that dull eternity that on him soon must roll,
When plans and issues all must cease that earlier care beguiled,
And never era more shall stand a landmark on the wild:
Nor failure nor success is there, nor busy hope nor fame,
But passive fixed endurance, all eternal and the same.