son, Solomon, who asked to be the wisest, and therefore was likewise
made the richest, most prosperous, and most peaceful of kings. No enemy
rose against him, but all the nations sought his friendship; and Zidon
for once had her merchandise hallowed by its being offered to build and
adorn the Temple, Solomon's great work. The spot chosen for it was that
of Isaac's sacrifice, where was the threshing-floor bought by David from
Araunah, but to give farther room, he levelled the head of the mountain,
throwing it into the valley; and thus forming an even space where,
silently built of huge stone, quarried at a distance, arose the courts,
for strangers, women, men, and priests, surrounded by cloisters,
supporting galleries of rooms for the lodging of the priests and
Levites, many hundreds in number. The main building was of white marble,
and the Holy of Holies was overlaid even to the roof outside with plates
of gold, flashing back the sunshine. Even this was but a poor token of
the Shechinah, that glorious light which descended at Solomon's prayer
of consecration, and filled the Sanctuary with the visible token of
God's Presence on the Mercy Beat, to be seen by the High Priest once a
year.
That consecration was the happiest moment of the history of Israel,
What followed was mournful. Even David had been like the kings of other
eastern nations in the multitude of his wives, and Solomon went far
beyond him, bringing in heathen women, who won him into paying homage
to their idols, and outraging God by building temples to Moloch and
Ashtoreth; though as a prophet he had been inspired to speak in his
Proverbs of Christ in His Church as the Holy Wisdom of God. A warning
was sent that the power which had corrupted him should not continue in
his family, and that the kingdom should be divided, but he only grew
more tyrannical, and when the Ephraimite warrior, Jeroboam, was marked
by the prophet Ahijah as the destined chief of the new kingdom, Solomon
persecuted him, and drove him to take refuge with the great Shishak,
King of Egypt, where he seems to have learnt the idolatries from which
Israel had been so slowly weaned. Sick at heart, Solomon in his old age,
wrote the saddest book in the Bible; and though his first writing, the
Canticles, had been a joyful prophetic song of the love between the Lord
and His Church, his last was a mournful lamentation over the vanity and
emptiness of the world, and full of scorn of all that earth can give.
LESSON VII.
THE KINGDOM OP JUDAH.
"But if his children forsake My Law, and walk not in My judgments: if
they break My statutes, and keep not My Commandments, I will visit their
offences with the rod, and their sin with scourges."--_Ps._ lxxxix. 31,
32.
Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, brought about, by his own harshness and
folly, the punishment that God had decreed. By the advice of his hasty
young counsellors, he made so violent a reply to the petition brought to
him by his subjects, that they took offence, and the ten northern tribes
broke away from him, setting up as their king, Jeroboam, who had been
already marked out by the prophet.
The lesson of meekness seems to have been the one chiefly appointed for
Rehoboam, for when he assembled the fighting men of Judah and Benjamin
to subdue the revolt, Shemaiah the prophet was sent to forbid him, and
he submitted at once; and when again Jeroboam's friend Shishak invaded
his kingdom, Shemaiah told him it was as a punishment sent him by God,
against which he must not struggle; so he gathered all the riches left
him by his father, paid the tribute that the Egyptians required; and
for being thus patient and submissive, he was again blessed by God, and
Judah prospered. No doubt Rehoboam's obedience saved him from sharing
the fate of the other kings whom Shishak conquered and dragged back to
Egypt, where he yoked them to his chariot, four abreast, and made them
draw him about. Shishak was a great conqueror, and in nine years overran
all Asia, as far as the river Ganges. All his victories were recorded
in hieroglyphics, and the learned have made out the picture of a people
with the features of Jews, bringing their gifts to his feet, no doubt
the messengers of Rehoboam. He lost his sight in his old age, and is
said to have killed himself.
In 955 Abijah came to the throne instead of Rehoboam, and was permitted
to gain a great victory over Jeroboam, but he died at the end of three
years, and was succeeded by his son Asa. The great temptation of the men
of Judah seems to have been at this time the resorting to hill tops and
groves of trees as places of worship, instead of going steadily to the
Temple at Jerusalem; and the kings, though obedient in other respects,
did not dare to put down this forbidden custom. Asa's mother, Maachah, a
daughter of Absalom, even had an idol in a grove; but after the king
had been strengthened to gain a great victory over the Ethiopians, he
destroyed the idol, and put her down from being queen. His end was less
good than his beginning; he made a league with the Syrians instead of
trusting to God; and threw the prophet Hanani into prison for having
rebuked him; and in his latter years he was cruel and oppressive. He
died in 891.
His son Jehoshaphat was a very good and gentle prince, but his very
gentleness seemed to have led him into error, for he became too friendly
with the idolatrous House of Ahab in Samaria, and allowed his son
Jehoram to take to wife the child of Ahab and Jezebel, Athaliah, who
proved even more wicked than her mother. Jehoshaphat was in alliance
with Ahab, and went out with him to his last battle at Ramoth-Gilead,
where Ahab tried to put his friend into danger instead of himself by
making him appear as the only king present, but entirely failed to
deceive the hand appointed to bring death. Afterwards, when the
Edomites, Ammonites, and Moabites came up against Judah, Jehoshaphat was
commanded to have no fears, but to go out to meet them, with the Levites
singing before him, "Praise the Lord, for His mercy endureth for ever!"
So the battle should be his without fighting; for the three banded
nations fought among themselves, and made such a slaughter of one
another, that the Jews had nothing to do but to gather the spoil, which
was in such heaps, that they spent three days in collecting it. And
again, when Jehoshaphat went out with Jehoram, King of Israel, against
the Moabites, with Jehoshaphat's tributary, the King of Edom, another
miraculous deliverance was granted by the hand of Elisha, and the water
which was sent to relieve the thirsty hosts of Israel and Judah, seemed
to the Moabites as blood; so that, thinking the three armies had
quarrelled and slain each other, they made an unguarded attack, and
suffered a total rout.
Jehoshaphat was succeeded in 891 by his son Jehoram, who, though he had
seen such signal proofs of God's power, chose rather to follow the
will of his wicked wife Athaliah, than to obey the commands of God. To
strengthen his dominion, he followed the example of the worst heathen
tyrants, and killed his seven brethren; and he permitted and encouraged
idolatry in the most open manner. He was first punished by the loss of
the Edomites, who rose against him, and set up a free kingdom according
to the prophecy of Isaac; next by an in-road of the Arabians and
Philistines, who ravaged his very house, and killed all his children
except the youngest, Ahaziah; and lastly, by a loathsome and deadly
disease, which ended his life in the fortieth year of his age.
Ahaziah was only twenty-two, and was ruled by his mother Athaliah for
the one year before, going to visit his uncle Jehoram, of Israel, he
was slain with him in Jehu's massacre of the House of Ahab. Athaliah
herself fulfilled the rest of the decree which she did not acknowledge.
She was bent on reigning, and savagely murdered all her grandsons who
fell into her hands; but as the House of David was never to fail, one
tender branch, the infant Joash, was hidden from her fury by his aunt,
the wife of the High Priest Jehoiada; and when the fitting time was
come, the Levites were armed, and the people were shown their little
king. They acknowledged him with shouts of joy, and Athaliah coming to
see the cause of the outcry, was dragged out of the Temple and put
to death. Jerusalem was cleansed from the worship of Baal, and all
prospered as long as the good Jehoiada lived. After his death, however,
Joash fell away grievously, and promoted idol worship; nay, he even slew
the son of his preserver, Jehoiada, for bringing him a Divine rebuke,
and for this iniquity his troops suffered a great defeat from the
Syrians, and his servants slew him as he lay sick on his bed in 838. His
son Amaziah began well, obeying the Lord by dismissing the Ephraimites
whom he had hired to aid him against the Edomites, and he was therefore
rewarded with a great victory; but so strangely blind was he, that he
brought home the vain gods of Edom and worshipped them. He too was slain
by rebels in the flower of his age, leaving his son Uzziah, also called
Azariah, to succeed him at sixteen years old. Uzziah met with such
success at first, that his heart was lifted up, and in his pride he
endeavoured to intrude into the priest's office, and burn incense on the
Altar; but even while striving with the High Priest, the leprosy broke
out white on his brow, setting him apart, to live as an outcast from
religious services for ever. His son Jotham became the governor of the
kingdom during his lifetime, and afterwards reigned alone till the year
759, when he was succeeded by his son Ahaz, one of the worst and most
idolatrous of the Kings of Judah. The Syrians made alliance with Israel,
and terribly ravaged Judea, till Jerusalem stood alone in the midst
of desolation; and Ahaz, instead of turning to the Lord, tried to
strengthen himself by fresh heathen alliances, though the prophet Isaiah
brought him certain messages that his foes should be destroyed, and
promised him, for a sign, that great blessing of the House of David,
that the Virgin's Son should be born, and should be God present with us.
LESSON VIII.
THE KINGDOM OF SAMARIA.
"As for Samaria, her king is cut off as the foam upon the
water."--_Hosea_, x. 7.
Many promises had marked out Ephraim for greatness, and at first the
new kingdom seemed quite to overshadow the little rocky Judah. But the
founder of the dominion of the ten tribes sowed the seeds of decay,
because, like Saul, he would not trust to the God who had given him his
crown. He was afraid his subjects would return to the kings of the House
of David, if he let them go to worship at Jerusalem, and therefore
revived the old symbol of a calf, which he must have seen in Egypt in
his exile, setting up two shrines at Bethel and at Dan, the two ends of
his kingdom, bidding his people go thither to offer sacrifice. Thus he
made Israel to sin; and while hoping to strengthen his power, was the
cause of its ruin. Prophets warned him in vain, that his line should
not remain on the throne; and in the reign of his son Nadab, the rebel
Baasha arose and slew the whole family of this first king of the
idolatrous realm, in the year 952. Baasha was not warned by the fate of
Nadab, but followed the same courses; and his son Elah and all his house
were destroyed in 928, when after the slaughter of two short-lived
usurpers, the captain of the army, Omri, became king. Omri belonged
to the city of Jezreel, in the inheritance of Issachar; but he built
Samaria in the midst of Ephraim, between the two hills of blessing and
of cursing, and this town becoming the capital, gave its name to the
whole kingdom. In 918, Omri left his crown to his son Ahab, who allied
himself with the rich Phoenicians, and took the Zidonian princess
Jezebel for his wife; the most unfortunate marriage in the whole
Israelitish history. Sinful as had been the calf-worship, it was still
meant for adoration of the true God; but Jezebel brought her foul
Phoenician faith with her, and tried to force on the Israelites the
worship of Baal as a separate god, in the stead of the Lord Jehovah.
Ahab was weak, and yielded; and the greater number of the nation were so
much corrupted by the breach of the Second Commandment, that they were
not slow to break the First, although God had sent the most glorious of
all His prophets to prove to them that "the Lord, He is the God." Three
years of drought showed who commands the clouds, and then came Elijah's
challenge to the four hundred prophets of Baal, to prove who was the God
who could send fire from Heaven! All day did the four hundred cry wildly
on their idol, while Elijah mocked them; at evening his offering was
made, and drenched with water to increase the wonder of the miracle. He
prayed, the fire fell at once from Heaven, and the people shouted "The
Lord He is the God!" and gave their deceivers up to punishment; and when
this partial purification was made, he prayed upon Mount Carmel, and the
little cloud arose and grew into a mighty storm, bringing abundance of
rain on the thirsty land.
Who could withstand such wonders? Yet they only hardened Jezebel into
greater cruelty, and Elijah was forced to flee into the utmost desert,
where he communed with God on Mount Sinai, even like Moses. Only once
more did he appear again to Ahab, and that was to rebuke him for having
permitted the murder of a poor subject whose property he had coveted,
and to foretell the horrors in which his line should end.
Ahab was not wholly hardened, and often had gleams of good which brought
favour upon him. A new enemy had risen up since the Canaanites had been
destroyed, and the Philistines repressed, by David; namely, the Syrians,
a powerful nation, whose capital was at Damascus, a city which is said
to be a perfect paradise, so delicious is the climate, and so lovely
the two rivers, one making the circuit of the walls, the other flowing
through the middle of the town. These Syrians were appointed to bring
punishment upon Samaria; but at first, two great victories were
vouchsafed to Ahab, because Benhadad, King of Syria, fancied that
the Israelites only won because their gods were gods of the hills.
Afterwards, when Ahab went out to recover Ramoth Gilead, wilfully
trusting to lying prophets, and silencing the true one, not all his
disguise could avail to protect him; he was slain in the battle; and
when his chariot was washed, the dogs licked his blood, as they had
licked that of his victim Naboth.
Ahaziah, his son, soon died of a fall from the top of his palace, and
the next brother Jehoram reigned, trying to make an agreement between
the worship of God and of Baal. It was now that Elijah was taken away
into Heaven by a whirlwind, leaving behind him Elisha to carry on his
mission of prophecy and to execute the will of the Lord. It was Elisha
who sent a messenger to anoint Jehu, the warrior who performed the
vengeance of the Lord upon the House of Ahab. In the year 884 Jehoram
was slain in his chariot; Jezebel, thrown out of window by her own
slaves, perished miserably among the ravenous flocks of street dogs; and
all the princes of the line were slaughtered by the rulers of Samaria;
the worshippers of Baal were massacred, and the land purified from this
idolatry. Still Jehu would not part with the calves of Dan and Bethel;
and he was therefore warned that his family should likewise pass away
after the fourth generation.
Elisha had already wept at the fore-knowledge of the miseries which
Hazael of Syria should bring upon Israel; and Hazael, murdering his
master Benhadad by stifling him with a wet cloth as he lay sick on his
bed, became a dreadful enemy to Samaria. So much broken was the force of
Jehoahaz, Jehu's son, that at one time he had only one thousand foot,
fifty horse, and ten chariots; but after this, prosperity began to
return to the Israelites. Joash, his son, was a mighty king, and would
have been still greater, if he would have believed that obeying the
simple words of the prophet Elisha on his death-bed would bring him
victory. Yet so much greater was his force than that of Judah, that when
Amaziah sent him a challenge, he replied by the insulting parable of the
thistle and the cedar. Jeroboam II., his son, was likewise prosperous;
but neither blessings nor warnings would induce these kings to forsake
their golden calves. Amos, the herdsman-prophet of Tekoa, was warned
to say nothing against the king's chapel at Bethel; and Hosea in vain
declared that Ephraim was feeding on wind, and following after the
east-wind, namely, putting his trust in mere empty air. So in the time
of Zechariah, son to Jeroboam, came the doom of the House of Jehu, and
in 773 the king was murdered by Shallum, who only reigned a month, being
killed by his general, Menahem. Again, Menahem's son, Pekahiah, was
killed by his captain Pekah, a great warrior, who made an attack upon
Ahaz of Judah, and slew one hundred and twenty thousand Jews in one day.
Many more with all their spoil were brought captives to Samaria; but
there was some good yet left in Israel, and at the rebuke of the prophet
Oded, the Ephraimites remembered that they were brethren, gave back to
the prisoners all their spoil, fed them, clothed them, and mounted them
on asses to carry them safely back to their own land. But Pekah, and his
ally, Rezin of Damascus, were sore foes to Ahaz, and cruelly ravaged his
domains; and though God encouraged him, by the words of Isaiah, to trust
in Him alone, and see their destruction, Ahaz obstinately resolved to
turn to a new power for protection.
LESSON IX.
NINEVEH.
"Where is the dwelling-place of the lions, and the feeding-place of the
young lions?"--_Nahum_, ii. 11.
When the confusion of tongues took place at Babel, and men were
dispersed, the sons of Ham's grandson, Cush, remained in Mesopotamia,
which took the name of Assyria, from Assur, the officer of Nimrod, the
first king. This Assur began building, on the banks of the Tigris, the
great city of Nineveh, one of the mightiest in all the world, and the
first to be ruined. It was enclosed by a huge wall, so wide that three
chariots could drive side by side on the top, and built of bricks made
of the clay of the country, dried in the sun and cemented with bitumen,
guarded at the base by a plinth fifty feet in height, and with immense
ditches round it, about sixty miles in circumference. Within were huge
palaces, built of the same bricks, faced with alabaster, and the rooms
decked with cedar, gilding, and ivory, and raised upon terraces whence
broad flights of steps led down to courts guarded by giant stone figures
of bulls and lions, with eagles' wings and human faces, as if some
notion of the mysterious Cherubim around the Throne in Heaven had
floated to these Assyrians. The slabs against the walls were carved with
representations of battles, hunts, sacrifices, triumphs, and all the
scenes in the kings' histories, nay, in the building of the city; and
there were explanations in the wedge-shaped letters of the old Assyrian
alphabet. The Ninevites had numerous idols, but their honour for the
Lord had not quite faded away; and about the year 830, about the time of
Amaziah in Judah, and Jeroboam II. in Israel, the prophet Jonah was
sent to rebuke them for their many iniquities. In trying to avoid the
command, by sailing to Tarshish in a Phoenician ship, he underwent that
strange punishment which was a prophetic sign of our Lord's Burial and
Resurrection; and thus warned, he went to Nineveh and startled the
people by the cry, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be destroyed!" At
that cry, the whole place repented as one man; and from the king to the
beggar all fasted and wept, till God had mercy on their repentance and
ready faith, and turned away His wrath, in pity to the 120,000 innocent
children who knew not yet to do good or evil.
The prophet Nahum afterwards prophesied against the bloody city, and
foretold that her men should become like women, and that in the midst of
her feasting and drunkenness an overflowing flood should make an end of
her. But first God had a work for the Ninevites to do, namely, to punish
His own chosen, who would not have Him for their God. Therefore, He
strengthened the great King Tiglath Pileser, who already held in
subjection the other great Assyrian city of Babylon, and the brave
Median mountaineers, to come out against the Syrians and Israelites.
Ahaz, King of Judah, hoping to be delivered from his distresses, sent
messengers to Tiglath Pileser, to say, "I am thy servant and thy son,"
and to beg him to protect him from his two enemies, promising to pay him
tribute. Tiglath Pileser did indeed take Damascus, and put the king to
death, destroying the old Syrian kingdom for ever, and he carried away
the calf of Dan, and severely chastised Samaria, where Pekah was shortly
after murdered by his servant Hoshea; so that Isaiah's prophecy of the
ruin of "these two tails of smoking firebrands," Pekah and Rezin, was
fulfilled; but as Ahaz had tried to bring it about in his own way, he
gained nothing. Though he went to pay his service to the conqueror at
Damascus, Tiglath Pileser did not help him, but only distressed him;
and instead of learning Who was his true Guardian, Ahaz only came
home delighted with the Syrian temples, and profanely altered the
arrangements in the Temple, which Moses and Solomon had ordained by
God's command, as patterns of the greater and more perfect Tabernacle
revealed to Moses in Heaven. He soon died, in the year 725, when only
thirty-six years old, leaving his crown to Hezekiah, then only sixteen,
the king whose heart was more whole with God than had been that of any
king since his father David, and whose first thought was to purify the
Temple, and to destroy all corrupt worship, breaking down idols, and
destroying the high places and groves, which had stood ever since
Solomon's time.
Hoshea, too, was the best King of Samaria that had yet reigned, for he
encouraged his subjects to go to worship at Jerusalem, whither Hezekiah
invited them to keep the Passover, and that feast had not been held so
fully since Solomon's time. They came back full of zeal, and destroyed
many of the idols; but the reformation came too late; the measure of
Israel's sin was full. Hoshea offended Shalmaneser, who had succeeded
Tiglath Pileser, by making friends with So, King of Egypt, and the
Assyrian army came down upon Israel in the year 722, and killing Hoshea,
carried off all the people as captives, settling them in the cities of
the Medes, never more to dwell in their own land. Sargon seems to
have dethroned Shalmaneser about this time, and to have completed the
conquest of Israel, of which he boasted on the tablets of a great palace
near Nineveh, which has been lately brought to light.
The remnant that was left, the small realm of Judah, took warning, and
turned to God with all their heart, and therefore were protected; but
they had much to suffer. Sargon's son, Sennacherib, was a proud and
ambitious monarch, who used his Israelite captives in building up the
walls of Nineveh, and making the most magnificent of all the palaces
there, eight acres in size, and covered with inscriptions. He invaded
Judea, took forty-six cities, and besieged Jerusalem, raising a mound
to overtop the walls; but on receiving large gifts from Hezekiah, he
returned to his own land. At Babylon a prince named Merodach Baladan
had set himself up against Sennacherib, and sought the friendship of
Hezekiah. When the good King of Judah recovered from his illness by a
miracle, the sign of which was, that the sun seemed to retreat in his
course, it probably won the attention of the Chaldeans, who were great
star-gazers; and Merodach Baladan sent messengers to compliment the
king, whose favour with Heaven had thus been shown to all the earth.
For once Hezekiah erred, and was so much uplifted, as to display his
treasure and his new-born son in ostentation. Isaiah rebuked him,
telling him that his children should be slaves in the hands of the very
nation who had heard his boast. He meekly submitted, thankful that there
should be peace and truth in his days. Soon after, Babylon was reduced
by Sennacherib, and Merodach Baladan driven into exile. In the latter
years of his reign, Sennacherib undertook an expedition into Egypt, and
on his way sent a blasphemous message by his servant, Rabshakeh, to
summon Hezekiah to submit, and warning him and his people, that their
God could no more protect them than the gods of the conquered nations
had saved their worshippers. In answer to the prayer of Hezekiah, came,
by the mouth of Isaiah, an assurance that the boaster who insulted the
living God, was only an instrument in His Hands, unable to go one step
against His will. Not one arrow should he shoot against the holy city,
but he should hear a rumour, a blast should be sent on him, and he
should fall by the sword in his own land.