a new gift was sent from the treasury to Jerusalem, under the care of
Ezra, a man of the seed of Aaron, and very learned in the Law. He gave
himself up to the work, which had sadly languished since Zerubbabel's
time; and he began in the right way, for ere entering the Glorious Land,
he halted all the companions of his pilgrimage, and fasted three days,
entreating the Lord for forgiveness, and protection from their enemies.
It is from this time, about 458, that the seventy weeks of years,
mentioned by Daniel, began to be counted, perhaps because till this time
the work hardly proceeded in earnest. Another great helper soon followed
Ezra, namely Nehemiah, one of the palace slaves, who, hearing of the
miserable state of Jerusalem, prayed with all his heart, weeping so
bitterly that when he went to wait upon the king and Queen Esther at
their meal, they remarked his trouble; and on their asking the cause, he
told them, with secret prayers, how his heart was grieved that his city
and his fathers' sepulchres lay waste, and begged for permission to go
with authority to Jerusalem, to assist in the rebuilding. His request
was granted, authority was given to him, and he set off with a train of
servants and guards, for he was a very rich man; but when he came near,
he left them all, and rode on by night to examine the state of the city.
Most sad was the sight; the gates broken and burnt, and the walls lying
in ruins, the streets blocked up so that no one could pass! Nehemiah at
once encouraged the Jews to set to work, and build up the breaches; and
they heartily began, while he kept open house at his own expense for all
his poor brethren. Down upon them came the Samaritans again, scoffing at
those "feeble Jews," saying that a fox could break down their wall,
and then attacking them; so that Nehemiah was forced to set a constant
watch, and the workmen built with their swords ever ready for use. When
the walls once more girded around the city built upon the hill, the
inhabitants were no longer easily molested by their foes; and a great
assembly was held, when Ezra read and explained the Law, for seven days,
at the feast of the Tabernacles, after which there was a great fast and
confession of sin, and the Covenant was solemnly renewed. Still a great
purification was needed; the Sabbath had become ill observed, many of
the people, even priests and Levites, had married heathen wives, and one
of the sons of the High Priest was son-in-law to Sanballat, the worst
enemy of the Jews. Ezra and Nehemiah brought many to a sense of their
sin: no burdens were allowed to be touched on the Sabbath, and the
heathen wives were put away; but this priest refusing to part with
his wife, was thrust out from the priesthood, and was received by the
Samaritans, who afterwards built a schismatical temple upon Gerizim, the
Mount of Blessing.
At this time lived Malachi, the last of the prophets, who left the
promise of the coming of the Prophet Elijah, as the forerunner of the
Messiah, and of the rising of the Sun of Righteousness. Ezra is believed
to have composed the Books of Kings from older writings, under the
guidance of inspiration, to have collected the latter part of the book
of Psalms, and to have been taught to discern which histories, and which
books of the Prophets to keep, and which to cast aside. The Scriptures
were all put under the keeping of scribes, who wrote the copies out with
the utmost care, and were held guilty if the smallest point or mark
failed; and a roll was placed under the care of the priests, besides
many others which were dispersed through the country, that they might
never be forgotten again. Ezra likewise arranged, that in places too far
from Jerusalem for people to come weekly to worship at the Temple, there
should be synagogues, or places of meeting for prayer, though of course
not for sacrifice. There, every Sabbath day, eighteen prayers were
appointed to be said, and lessons from the Scripture were read aloud and
explained. In their exile, the Jews had forgotten their Hebrew tongue,
and learnt to speak Chaldean, so that after the Law was read in their
own language, a scribe stood up to translate and explain it, and thus
they were saved from forgetting the Scripture, as they had done in
the time of Josiah, and from resorting to groves and high places for
worship. Idolatry was so thoroughly purged out of them, that they never
returned to it; and their hope of the Messiah was kept alive, though
they had no new prophets.
They enjoyed quiet and peace for many years; and most of the Jews who
were settled in other countries--in Persia, Babylon, and Egypt--came
from time to time to keep the feasts, and make offerings; while those
settled near enough kept the three yearly pilgrimages to Jerusalem,
singing, as it is believed, the beautiful psalms called in the Bible
the Songs of Degrees, as the parties from towns and villages went up
together in procession towards the Hill of Sion.
In the meantime, their masters, the Persian kings, grew worse and worse;
brother killed brother, son rose against father, and the women even
committed horrible crimes. They invented tortures too horrid to mention,
and lived between savage cruelty and vain luxury, till there was no
strength nor courage in them, and in less than 200 years from the time
that Cyrus had conquered Babylon, their realm was rotten, and their time
of ruin was come. All through this time, the Jews were chiefly ruled
by the high priests, though paying tribute to the Persian king, and
sometimes visited by the Satrap of the Province of Syria, to which
Palestine belonged.
LESSON XV.
ALEXANDER.
"Ships shall come from Chittim, and shall afflict Eber, and shall
afflict Assur."--_Num_. xxiv. 24.
Mountain lands, small islets, and peninsulas broken into by deep bays
and gulfs, rise to the northward of the east end of the Mediterranean,
and were known to the Jews as the Isles of the Gentiles. The people who
dwelt in them have been named Greeks; they were sons of Japhet, and were
the race whom God endowed, above all others, with gifts of the body and
mind, though without bestowing on them the light of His truth. They had
many idols, of whom Zeus, the Thunderer, was the chief; but they did not
worship them with cruel rites like the Phoenicians, and some of their
beautiful stories about them were full of traces of better things. Their
best and wisest men were always straining their minds to feel after more
satisfying knowledge of Him, Who, they felt sure, must rule and govern
all things; and sometimes these philosophers, as they were called, came
very near the truth. Every work of the Greeks was well done, whether
poems, history, speeches, buildings, statues, or painting; and the
remains have served for patterns ever since. At first there were many
separate little states, but all held together as one nation, and used
to meet for great feasts, especially for games. There were the Olympian
games, by which they reckoned the years, and the Isthmean, which were
held at the Isthmus of Corinth. Everyone came to see the wrestling,
boxing, racing, and throwing heavy weights, and to hear the poems sung
or recited; and the men who excelled all the rest were carried high in
air with shouts of joy, and crowned with wreaths of laurel, bay, oak, or
parsley, one of the greatest honours a Greek could obtain. Of all the
cities, Athens had the ablest men, and Sparta the most hardy; and these
two had been the foremost in beating and turning back the great Persian
armies of Darius and Xerxes; but since that time there had been quarrels
between these two powers, and they grew weak, so that Philip, King of
Macedon, who had a kingdom to the north of them, and was but half a real
Greek, contrived to conquer them all, and make them his subjects.
The ensign of Macedon was a he-goat, the rough goat that Daniel had seen
in his vision; and the time was come for the fall of the Ram of Persia.
Philip's son, Alexander, set his heart on conquering the old enemy of
Greece; and as soon as he came to the crown, in the year 333, though he
was but twenty years of age, he led his army across the Hellespont into
Asia Minor. His army was very brave, and excellently trained by his
father, and he himself was one of the most highly-gifted men who ever
lived, brave and prudent, seldom cruel, and trying to do good to all
who fell under his power. The poor weak luxurious Persian King, Darius,
could do little against such a man, and indeed did not come out to
battle in the way to conquer; for he carried with him all the luxuries
of his palace, his mother, and all his wives and slaves. Before his
army marched a number of men carrying silver altars, on which burnt the
sacred fire; then came three hundred and sixty-five youths in scarlet
dresses, to represent the days of the year; then the Magi, and the
gilded chariot and white horses of the Sun; and next, the king's
favourite soldiers, called the Immortal Band, whose robes were white,
their breastplates set with jewels, and the handles of their spears
golden. They had small chance with the bold active Greeks; and at the
Battle of the Issus they were routed, and Darius fled away, leaving all
his women to the mercy of the conqueror. The poor old Persian Queen, his
mother, had never met with such gentle respect and courtesy as Alexander
showed to her old age; he always called her mother, never sat down
before her but at her request, and never grieved her but once, and that
was by showing her a robe that his mother and sisters had spun, woven,
and embroidered for him, and offering to have her grandchildren taught
the like works. She fancied this meant that he was treating them like
slaves, and he could hardly make her understand that the Greeks deemed
such works an honour to the highest ladies, and indeed thought their
goddess of wisdom presided over them.
While Darius fled away, Alexander came south to Palestine, and laid
siege to Tyre upon the little isle, to which he began to build a
causeway across the water. The Tyrians had an image of the Greek god
Apollo, which they had stolen from a temple in Greece, and they chained
this up to the statue of Moloch, their own god, to hinder Apollo from
going over to help the Greeks; but neither this precaution nor their
bravery could prevent them from being overcome, as the prophet Zechariah
had foretold, "The Lord will cast her out, and will smite her power in
the sea, and she shall be devoured with fire."
"Gaza also shall see it, and shall be very sorrowful." Alexander took
this brave Philistine city after a siege of two months, and behaved more
cruelly there than was his wont. It was the turn of Jerusalem next; but
the Lord had promised to "encamp about His House, because of him that
passeth by;" and in answer to the prayers and sacrifices offered up by
the Jews, God appeared to the High Priest, Jaddua, in a dream, and bade
him adorn the city, and go out to meet the conqueror in his beautiful
garments, with all his priests in their ephods. They obeyed, and as
Alexander came up the hill Sapha, in front of the city, be beheld the
long ranks of priests and Levites in their white array, headed by the
High Priest with his robes bordered with bells and pomegranates, and
the fair mitre on his head, inscribed with the words "Holiness unto the
Lord." One moment, and Alexander was down from his horse, adoring upon
his knees. His friends were amazed, but he told them he adored not the
man, but Him who had given him the priesthood, and that just before he
had left home, the same figure had stood by his bed, and told him that
he should cross the sea, and win all the chief lands of Asia. He then
took Jaddua by the hand, and was led by him into the Temple, where he
attended a sacrifice, and was shown Daniel's prophecies of him as the
brazen thighs, the he-goat and the leopard; he was much pleased, and
promised all Jaddua asked, that the Jews might follow their own laws,
and pay no tribute on the Sabbath years, when the land lay fallow.
Alexander next passed on to Egypt, where he built, at the mouth of the
Nile, the famous city that still is called by his name, Alexandria;
indeed he founded cities everywhere, and made more lasting changes than
ever did conqueror in the short space of twelve years. He then hunted
Darius into the mountain parts of the north of Persia, and after two
more victories, the Greeks found the poor Persian king dying on the
ground, from wounds given by his own subjects. So the soft silver of
Persia yielded to the brazen might of Greece. After this, Alexander
called himself King of Persia, and wore the tiara like an eastern king.
He took his men on to the borders of India, but they thought they were
getting beyond the end of the world, and grew so frightened that he had
to turn back. All that the Medes and Persians had possessed now belonged
to him, and he wanted to make Babylon his capital; he made his court
there, and received messengers who paid him honour from all quarters;
but he was hurt by so much success; he grew proud and passionate; he
feasted and drank too much, and did violent and hasty things, but worst
of all, he fancied himself a god, and insisted that at home, in Greece,
sacrifices should be offered to him. He tried to restore Babylon to what
it had been, and set multitudes to work to clear away the rubbish, and
build up the Temple of Bel; but when he ordered the Jews to share in the
work, they answered that it was contrary to their Law to labour at an
idol temple, and he listened to them, releasing them from the command.
He wished to turn the waters of the Euphrates back into their stream,
and drain the swamps into which they had spread; but Babylon was under
the curse of God, and was never to recover. Alexander caught a fever
while going about surveying the unwholesome swamps, and after trying to
hold out against it for nine days, his strength gave way. He said there
would be a mighty strife at his funeral, perhaps recollecting how the
prophecy had said that his kingdom should not continue; and instead of
trying to choose an heir, he put his ring on the finger of his friend,
and very soon died. He was but thirty-two, and had not reigned quite
twelve years; but perhaps no one ever did greater things in so short a
time. He died in the year 323; and so the great horn of the goat was
broken when it was at the strongest. No one hated him; for though
sometimes violent, he had generally been kind; he was frank, open,
and free-handed, warm-hearted to his friends, and seldom harsh to his
enemies, and he had done his best to educate and improve all the people
whom he conquered. It was owing to him that Greek manners and habits
prevailed, and the Greek tongue was spoken everywhere around the eastern
end of the Mediterranean, though Persia itself soon fell back into the
old eastern ways. Babylon became almost deserted after his death; the
swamps grew worse, till no one could live there, and at last, the only
use of the great walls was to serve as an enclosure for a hunting
ground, where the wild beasts had their home, and kept court for ever.
LESSON XVI.
THE GREEK KINGS OF EGYPT.
"Why hast Thou then broken down her hedge, that all they that go by
pluck off her grapes?"--_Ps_. lxxx. 12.
The leopard of Daniel's vision had four heads--the great horn of the
rough goat gave place to four horns; so when Alexander was taken away so
suddenly from the midst of his conquests, leaving no one in his room,
his great officers divided them between themselves; and after much
violence and bloodshed, four Greek kingdoms were formed out of the
fragments of his conquests, Thrace, Macedon, Egypt, and Syria. It is
only the two last of which we have to speak. The angel who spake to
Daniel called their princes the Kings of the North and South. The north,
or second kingdom of Syria, was very large, and went from Asia Minor to
the borders of India, and it had two great capital cities, Antioch in
Syria, and Seleucia upon the Tigris, where the Babylonians went to live
when their city became deserted and uninhabitable. Both these places
were named after the Greek Kings of Syria, who were by turns called
Seleucus and Antiochus.
It would have seemed natural for Palestine to have belonged to Syria,
but the Greek King of Egypt, whose name was Ptolemy Lagos, contrived
to secure it. He entered Jerusalem on the Sabbath-day, when the Jews
thought it wrong to fight, and so he gained the city without a blow;
but this was no great misfortune to them, for the first Ptolemies were
milder masters than the Seleucidæ, and did not oppress their subjects.
Ptolemy, however, brought a colony of Jews and Samaritans to live in
Lybia and Cyrene, parts of Egypt, and so fulfilled Isaiah's prophecy,
that five cities in Egypt should speak the language of Canaan. They were
treated with much favour, for he saw that they were the most trustworthy
of all his people. Indeed, the Greeks respected them much; and one of
Ptolemy's soldiers tells this story: he says that while travelling in a
large company by the Red Sea, he fell in with a very brave strong Jew,
called Masollam. Presently the whole company came to a halt. Masollam
asked why; and a soothsayer, pointing to a bird, told him that if the
bird stopped, it would be lucky for them to stop; if it flew on, they
might go on; if it went back, so must they. All the answer Masollam
made, was to fit an arrow to his bow-string, and shoot the bird dead;
and when the Greeks cried out at him, he rebuked them for thinking the
poor bird could know their future, when he could not even save himself
from the arrow.
At this time the High Priest was Simon the Just, son of Onias, the
same who is so highly praised in the fiftieth chapter of the Book of
Ecclesiasticus, and compared to the morning star, and to a young cedar
of Libanus, when he stood before the Altar in his beautiful robes, and
turned round and blessed the people. He was the last of the hundred
and twenty great prophets, or wise men, whom the Jews called the great
Synagogue; and it was he who sealed up the Old Testament, adding to the
former collection the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Malachi; and it is
thought, compiling the books of Chronicles from older writings, for the
genealogy of the house of David there given, comes down to about the
year 300, when he was alive, since he died in 292. The Jews thought
nothing went so well with them after his time, and were alarmed when
the scape-goat, with the band of scarlet wool on his brow, instead of
rushing down a precipice, as usual, and being killed at once, ran off
into the desert, and was eaten by the Arabs. They enjoyed tolerable
peace for the whole of the time they were under the Greeks of Egypt.
Ptolemy Lagos wanted to make his new city of Alexandria as much famed
for learning as Athens; and for this purpose he founded a great
library there, collecting, from every quarter, books written either on
parchment, or on the paper rush of Egypt. When he died, in the year 284,
his son, Ptolemy Philadelphus, or lover of his brethren, went on still
more eagerly seeking for curious writings; and among those for which he
wished were the Holy Scriptures. As they were in Hebrew, he caused them
to be translated into Greek; and the Jews believe that this was done by
seventy-two elders, who were shut up all day, two and two, in thirty-six
little cells in a palace on a little island in the Nile, each pair
taking one book of the Bible, and going back every evening to sup with
the king. This history does not seem likely to be true, but it is quite
certain that a version of the Old Testament from the Hebrew into Greek
was made about this time, and is called the Septuagint, from this
tradition about the seventy. It came more and more into use, as Greek
was considered the language of all learned men in the east. Most of the
quotations in the New Testament are taken from it, and it is of great
value in helping to show the exact meaning of the old Hebrew.
But if Ptolemy did desire to have the Scriptures in his own tongue,
it was only for curiosity, not for edification, for he was a great
idolater; and when his wife died he tried to build a temple to her at
Alexandria, which was to have a loadstone arch, with a steel statue of
her in the middle, where he hoped the equal attraction would keep it as
if flying in the air; but of course the fancy could not be carried out.
He had a quarrel with Antiochus Theos, King of Syria, but it was made up
by his giving his daughter Berenice in marriage to the Syrian, as
Daniel had foretold: "The king's daughter of the South, came to make an
agreement with the King of the North." But Antiochus had another wife
before, whom he loved better; so when, in 246, Ptolemy Philadelphus
died, he put Berenice away, and took her back. She requited him by
poisoning him for fear her favour should not last, and her son,
Seleucus, became king, and taking Berenice prisoner, put her to death.
"But out of a branch of her roots shall one stand up in his estate,
which shall come with an army, and shall enter into the fortress of the
King of the North." This was the brother of Berenice, Ptolemy Euergetes,
or the Benefactor, who came out of Egypt, overran Syria, and killed the
murderess, carrying home much spoil and many of the Egyptian gods, which
had been taken from the temples there in the time of Cambyses. Ptolemy
Euergetes himself came to Jerusalem, and attended a sacrifice in the
Temple; but Greek learning was doing the Jews no good, and some began
to reason like the heathen philosophers. A man named Joseph taught that
people ought to be holy for the love of goodness, and not for the sake
of a reward after death; and his follower, Zadok, or Sadoc, went still
farther, saying that there was no promise of any reward. His disciples,
who were called Sadducees, declared that the soul was not separate from
the body, but died with it; that there were no angels, nor spirits,
and that only the five books of Moses were the real Word of God, thus
casting aside all the prophecies. Such Jews as abhorred this falling
away, kept themselves apart, and were called Pharisees, from a word
meaning separate; and these grew the more strict in the observance of
all that had come down to them from their fathers, adding to it much
that had gradually been put into the explanations and interpretations of
the Law which were read on the Sabbath in the Synagogue.
Ptolemy the Benefactor was the last brave man of his family; his son,
Ptolemy Philopator, or lover of his father, was weak and violent, and
had a disastrous war with Antiochus the Great of Syria. In the course of
the conflict he came to Jerusalem, and tried to force his way into the
Holy of Holies, though the High Priest and all the priests and Levites
withstood him, and prayed aloud that the profanation might be hindered.
When he came to the court of the priests, such a strange horror and
terror fell on him, that he reeled and fell, and was carried out half
dead; but he was only hardened by this great wonder, and on his return
revenged himself by collecting the Jews at Alexandria, and insisting
that they should be marked with the ivy leaf, the sign of the Greek god
of wine, or else be made slaves, or put to death. Out of many thousands,
only three hundred submitted to this disgraceful badge; so in his rage,
he collected all the others in the theatre, and caused elephants to be
made drunken with wine and frankincense, so that when driven in on them,
they might trample them to death. But for two days following the king
was too drunk himself to be present at the horrible spectacle, and the
Jews had all that time for prayer; and when, on the third day, the
execution was to take place, the beasts ran upon the spectators instead
of upon the martyrs, so that though numbers of Greeks were killed,
not one Jew was hurt, and Ptolemy gave up his attempt; though he did
afterwards commit one savage massacre on his Jewish subjects. He died
when only thirty-seven years of age, worn out by drunkenness; and the
Jews, who had learnt to hate the Egyptian dominion, gladly received the
soldiers of his enemy, Antiochus the Great, into Jerusalem, deserting
his young son, who was only five years old; and thus, in the year 197,
Jerusalem came to belong to the Seleucidæ of Syria, instead of to the
Ptolemies of Egypt. The history of Ptolemy Philopator in predicted from
the 10th to the 13th verse of the 11th chapter of Daniel's prophecy. The
Jews suffered terribly all through these wars, which were usually fought
out on their soil. Each sovereign robbed them in turn, while they were
too few to guard themselves, and could do no otherwise than fall to the
strongest.
LESSON XVII.
THE SYRIAN PERSECUTION.
"The dead bodies of Thy servants have they given to be meat unto the
fowls of the air, and the flesh of Thy saints unto the beasts of the
land."--_Ps_. lxxix. 2.
The history of Antiochus the Great is foretold in the 11th chapter of
the prophet Daniel, from the 14th to the 19th verse. On the death of
Ptolemy Philopator, this king entered Palestine with a great army, and
easily obtained from the time-serving Jews the surrender of Jerusalem.
Some of them who had forsaken their Law to gain the favour of Ptolemy,
were punished by Antiochus, because he knew that no trust could be
placed in men who cared for their own profit more than for their God. He
then laid siege to Gaza and to Sidon, and won great victories, ravaging
and consuming the adjoining lands with his armies; and afterwards made
peace with young Ptolemy Epiphanes, giving him his daughter in marriage,
hoping that she would betray her husband to him. She, however, entirely
forsook him, and made common cause with her husband. "After this," the
prophecy declared that he would "turn his face to the isles and take
many." This meant that he should make an expedition to Greece, where he
gained a good deal of land; but here he came in contact with the iron
power, shadowed out by the great and terrible beast of Daniel's second
vision.