_^^^^^^,ttUe«„,f,,,^^. // . /;. cjc^ PRINCETON, N. J. % Shelf Division Jj.w/t ^ J Section i tl M (? N^nr^.. 12 THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE EDITED BY THE REV. W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D. Editot of " The Expositor " THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS F. W. FARRAR, D.D.. F.R.S. NEW YORK A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON 51 EAST TENTH STREET E^E THE^EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE. Crown Svo, cloth, price Si 50c. each vol. Colossians. First Series, 1887-8. 1 Samuel. By A. Maclaren, D.D. St. Mark. By Very Rev. the Dean of Armagh. Genesis. By Prof. Marcus DoDS, D.D. Galatians. By Prof. G. G. FiNDLAY, B.A. The Pastoral -Epistles. By Rev. A. Plummer, D.D. Isaiah i. — xxxix. By G. A. Smith, M.A. Vol. I. ' By Prof. W. G. Blaikie, D.D. 2 Samuel. By the same Author. Hebrews, By Principal T.C. Edwards.D.D. Second Series, 1888-9. I Tlie Boiok of Revelation. By Prof. W. Milligan, D.D. 1 Corinthians. By jrof. Marcus Dods, D.D. I The Epistles of St, John. I • By Rt. Rev. W. Alexandkr,D.D. Judges and Ruth. By Rev. R. A. Watson, D.D. Jeremiah. By Rev. C. J. Ball, M.A. Isaiah xl. — lxvi. By G. A. Smith, M.A. Vol. II. Third Series, 1889-90. St. Matthew. By Rev. J. Monro Gibson, D.D. Exodus, By Very Rev. the Dean of Armagh. St. Luke. By Rev. H. Burton, M.A. Ecclesiastes. By Rev. Samuel Cox, D.D. St. James and St. Jude. By Rev. A. Plummer, D.D. Proverbs. By Rev. R. F. Horton, M.A. Fourth Series, 1890-1. I Leviticus. The Psalms. By A. Maclaren, D.D. Vol. I T and 2 Thessalonians. By Jamhs Dknnky, B.D. The Book of Job. By R. A. Watson, D.D. 1 Kings. By Ven. Archdeacon F.^rrar. Fhilippians. By Principal Rainy, D.D. Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther. By Prof. W. F. Adhney, M.A 2 Kings. By Ven. Archdeacon Fakrar. Romans. By H. C. G. MouLE, M.A. 1 Chronicles. By Prof. W. H. Bennett, M..\ By Rev. S. H. Kellogg, D.D. The Gospel of St. John. By Prof. M. DoDS, D.D. Vol. I. The Acts of the Apostles. By Prof. Stokes, D.D. Vol. I. Fifth Series, 1891-2. I Ephesians. By Prof. G. G. FiNDLAY, B.A. The Gospel of St. John. ByProf.M. Dods, D.D. Vol.11. The Acts of the Apostles. By Prof. Stokes, D.D. Vol. II. Sixth Series, 1892-3. Joshua, By Prof. W. G. Blaikie, D.D. The Psalms. By A. Maclaren, D.D. Vol. II. The Epistles of St. Peter. By Prof Rawson Lumbv, D.D. Seventh Series, 1893-4. 2 Corinthians. By James Denney, B.D. Numbers. By R. A. Watson, D.D. The Psalms. ByA. Maclaren, D.D. Vol. III. THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS F. W. FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S. LATE FF.LLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE ; ARCHDEACON OF WESTMINSTER NEW YORK A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON 51 EAST TENTH STREET CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE AHAZIAH BEN-AHAB OF ISRAEL (b.C. 855-854) . . 3 A weak, shadowy, and faithless king — I. Relations between Judah and Israel — 2. Alliance with Jehoshaphat — 3. Revolt of Moab — Mesha and the Moabite Stone — 4. The fall from the lattice — Baal-Zebub — Elijah calling down fire from heaven — How are we to judge respecting the Elijah-spirit ? — Variations of moral standard. CHAPTER n THE ASCENSION OF ELIJAH. . . .. . -19 Uncertain date — The journey to Gilgal ; to Bethel ; to Jericho ; to the Jordan — The double portion — Chariot and horses of fire — Elisha recrosses the Jordan — The young prophets and their search— Grandeur of Elijah. CHAPTER ni ELISHA 25 Cycle of supernatural stories — Elisha and Elijah — The cure of the unwholesome fountain — "Go up, thou bald-head" — The children and the bears, CHAPTER IV THE INVASION OF MOAB ...... 29 Death of Ahaziah — Jehoram Ben-Ahab of Israel — Good beginnings — Attempts to recover Moab — Alliance with Judah and Edom — The invasion — An army perishing of thirst — Elisha — Music — Trenches in the wady— Error of the Moabites — CONTENTS PAGE Their disastrous rout — Devastation of the country — Mesha propitiates Chemosh — " Great wrath against Israel " — The invading army retreats. CHAPTER V elisha's miracles . . . . . . .40 Their chronological vagueness — Difference between Elisha and Elijah — Contrasts and resemblances — Social life in Israel — I. The widow and the oil — 2. The lady of Shunem — Her hospitality — Her reward — 3. The boy's death — Her distress — The resuscitation — 4. Death in the pot — 5. The multiplied first-fruits. CHAPTER VI THE STORY OF NAAMA ...... 50 The little maid — The leper — ^ Letter of Benhadad to Jehoram — His indignation — ^Elisha's message — Naaman's disappoint- ment and anger — His servants — His healing— His gratitude — Bowing in the house of Rimmon — Mean cupidity of Gehazi — Stricken with leprosy — The axe-head. CHAPTER VII ELISHA AND THE SYRIANS 66 Syrian marauders — They are baffled — Anger of Benhadad — The vision at Dothan — Meaning of the promises — How ful- filled to God's saints on earth — Some are delivered, some are not — Elisha misleads the Syrians — His generosity to them — Its effects — A fresh Syrian invasion. CHAPTER VIII THE FAMINE AND THE SIEGE .... 76 Horrible straits of the besieged Samaritans— Stress of famine — The King of Israel — The miserable women — Sack- cloth under the purple — The king's fury and despair — He threatens Elisha — The messenger — Th king upbraids him — Prophecy of sudden plenty — The disbelieving lord — The extra- mural lepers — The Syrian camp — The king's misgivings — The lord killed in the rush of the people. CONTENTS CHAPTER IX PAGE THE SHUNAMMITE AND HAZAEL 87 The lady of Shunem leaves her estate — Her return — Gehazi talks with the king — Entrance of the Shunammite — Her estates restored — Elisha visits Damascus — A royal present— Ben- hadad's illness — Hazael — The dark prophecy — Unexplained death of Benhadad — Hazael's usurpation — Real meaning of Elisha's words to Hazael. CHAPTER X TWO SONS OF JEHOSHAPHAT 99 Jehoram (b.c. 851-843) — Ahaziah (b.c. 843-842) — Jehoram ben-Jehoshaphat of Judah — Perplexing uncertainty of minute chronological details — The blight of the Jezebel-alliance — The husband of Athaliah — His apostasies — Revolt of Edom — Narrow escape of Jehoram — Revolt of Libnah — Jehoram's murder by his brethren — Philistine invasion — Incurable disease — Ahaziah ben-Jehoram — Joins his uncle (Jehoram ben-Ahab) in the campaign against Ramoth-Gilead — Visits him at Jezreel — Shot down by Jehu. CHAPTER XI THE REVOLT OF JEHU (b.C. 842) .... I06 Misery of Jehoram's reign — Thwarted invasion of Moab — Aggression of Benhadad — At Ramoth-Gilead — The young prophet — The two kings absent from the camp — The dangerous commission — The assembled captains — Jehu secretly anointed — His accession enthusiastically welcomed by the army — His sudden enthronement — His swift resolution^ The watchman at Jezreel — The two horsemen— The two kings — Their murder — Ferocity of Jehu — Elijah's prophecy — ^Jezebel — She is hurled down — Jehu drives over her body — The curse fulfilled. CHAPTER XII. JEHU ESTABLISHED ON THE THRONE (b.C. 842-814) . I25 His politic subtlety — The murder of the seventy princes — The ghastly heaps — Hypccritic ferocity. CONTENTS CHAPTER XIII PAGE FRESH MURDERS THE EXTIRPATION OF BAAL-WORSHIP (B.C. 842) 131 Wading through blood to a throne — The ride to Samaria — The brethren of Ahaziah of Judah — The corpse-choked tank of the shepherds — The Bedawy ascetic — The scene of slaughter in the temple of Baal — Did Elisha approve of these atrocities ? — Prophetic judgment on Jehu — Ravages of Hazael — Jehu's anguish — He pays tribute to Assyria. CHAPTER XIV ATHALIAH (b.C. 842-836) — JOASH OF JUDAH (b.C. 836-796) 146 The murderess-daughter of Jezebel — Fierce ambition — Jehosheba — The rescued child — Reared in the Temple — The high priest's plot — The coronation of the boy-king — Athaliah enters the Temple — Her murder — The fate of Baal's high priest — Proposed restoration of the Temple— Joash calls to task the defaulting priests— Death of Jehoiada — Defection 01 Joash — Murder of Zechariah — Bad record of the line of Jewish priests — Hazael attacks Judah — Defeat of Joash and plunder of Jerusalem — Murder of Joash — Names of the murderers, CHAPTER XV AMAZIAH OF JUDAH (b.C. 796-783 [?]) . . . 167 The House of David — Amaziah brings to justice the murderers of his father, but spares their children — Grounds for this — Different views taken of him by the historian and the chronicler — Splendid victory of Amaziah in the Valley of Salt — Expansion of the stoiy in the Chronicles — His defiance of Joash — His defeat and murder. CHAPTER XVI THE DYNASTY OF JEHU — JEHOAHAZ (b.C. 814-797) —JOASH (b.C. 797-781) 175 Israel at its nadir — Calf-worship — Oppression ot Hazael — Disappearance of Elisha — Repentance of Jehoahaz — Joash CONTENTS PAGE of Israel visits the death-bed of Elisha — "The arrow of the Lord's deliverance " — Three victories over the Syrians — Death of Elisha, and posthumous marvels — Joash and Amaziah — Contemptuous answer to the King of Judah — Crushing defeat of Judah. CHAPTER XVII THE DYNASTY OF JEHU (CONTINUED) — JEROBOAM II. (B.C. 781-740) 187 Jeroboam II. the greatest of the kings of Israel — His con- quests and wide dominion — A dying gleam of prosperity — Cause of his success — Relations with Assyria — Dawn of written prophecy — Jonah. CHAPTER XVIII AMOS AND HOSEA — ZACHARIAH BEN-JEROBOAM (b.C. 740) 1 93 Amos describes the condition of Israel — Growth of usury and vice — Humble origin of Amos — His burdens — Degenera- tions of the "calf-worship" — Uncompromising denunciation — Collision of Amos with Amaziah the high priest at Bethel — His expulsion from Bethel — The curse denounced — His justi- fication of his mission — -Hosea the saddest of the prophets — — His pictures of Ephraim — Jeroboam II. — His death — His • son Zachariah — His desertion and shameful end. CHAPTER XIX UZZIAH OF JUDAH (b.C. 783[?]-737) — JOTHAM (b.C. 737-735) 209 Wane of Assyria — Uzziah a wise and good king — His other name Azariah — Expansion of the story of his conquests in the Chronicles — Training of his army — Defeated by the As- syrians (?) — Stricken with leprosy — The story — Jotham acts as his public representative — Diminished power of Judah under Jotham — Beginning of Isaiah's prophecies — Death of Jotham. CONTENTS CHAPTER XX PAGE THE AGONY OF THE NORTHERN KINGDOM — SHALLUM, MENAHEM, PEKAHIAH, PEKAH (b.C. 74O-734) . 217 Shallum, an usurping murderer — Rapid disappearance of kings — Distracted epoch — The prophet Zechariah and the three shepherds — Zechariah's prophecies — The cruel shepherd, Menahem — His savage deeds — Portentous appearance of the Assyrians in Israel — Menahem pays tribute — Tiglath-Pileser — Fulfilment of Hosea's prophecy — Pekahiah — His murder — Pekah — His alliance with Rezin against Judah — Ahaz appeals to Assyria — Defeat and death of Rezin — Fulfilment of pro- phecy of Amos — Beginning of the captivity of the Ten Tribes — Tiglath-Pileser's successors — Murder of Pekah by Hoshea — Horrible state of Israel as described by Isaiah. CHAPTER XXI KING HOSHEA AND THE FALL OF THE NORTHERN KINGDOM (b.C. 734-725) 235 The name Hoshea — The king and thg prophet — Occasional gleams of hope and promise — A humiliating reign — Death of Tiglath-Pileser — Hoshea revolts to Sabaco of Egj-pt— Seized by Shalmaneser — Samaria besieged — Terrible state of the city — Sabaco renders no help — Usurpation of Sargon —Capture of the city — Greatness of Sargon — Fall of the Northern King- dom— Blighted destiny — God's mercy — " God, and not man " — Despoliation of the tribes — Moral of the story — Assyria and Egypt — The strength and weakness of a nation — Machiavelli — Mixture of alien emigrants — Their worship — The lions — Strange syncretism — The Jews and the Samaritans. CHAPTER XXII THE REIGN OF AHAZ (s.C. 735-7x5) • • • . 260 The chronology— A distracted kingdom — Dark pictures from Isaiah— No sign of repentance — Grapes and wild graphs. CONTENTS CHAPTER XXIII PAGE ISAIAH AND AHAZ ....... 265 Isaiah — Rezin and Pekah — Ahaz meets Isaiah — He receives a promise of deliverance— He refuses a sign — The sign given him — Immanuel — Birth of Messianic prophecy — Maher-shalal- hash-baz — The promised DeUverer. CHAPTER XXIV THE APOSTASIES OF AHAZ ...... 273 Moloch-worship — Sacrifice of children — Ahaz appeals to Assyria for help — Ruin of Damascus and death of Rezin — Ahaz does homage to Tiglath-Pileser at Damascus — Records of Tiglath-Pileser — The new altar — Complaisance of the priest Urijah — Unpopularity of Ahaz — Further misgivings — His death. CHAPTER XXV HEZEKIAH (B.C. 715-686) 287 Dates — Importance of the reign — Hezekiah's age — His cha- racter— His reformation — Partial suppression of the bamoth — Removal of the matstseboth and Asherim — Destruction of the brazen serpent — Trust in Jehovah — Psalm xlvi. — Chastise- * ment of the Philistines — Three parties in Jerusalem — i. The Assyrian party — 2. The Egyptian party — 3. The national party — Its attitude to the others — Micah — Mockery of Egypt — Anger and insults of the priests against Isaiah — Confidence of Isaiah — Waverings of Hezekiah. CHAPTER XXVI hezekiah's sickness — THE BABYLONIAN EMBASSY . 305 The story of Hezekiah's illness misplaced^At the point ot death — Isaiah's message — The king's agony of mind — The prayer — The reprieve — The sun-dial of Ahaz — The king's gratitude and thanksgiving — Merodach-Baladan — Rising power of Babylon — Object of the embassy — The king's action — The prophet's reproof — The king's humble submission. CONTENTS CHAPTER XXVII PAGE HEZEKIAH AND ASSYRIA (b.C. 701) .... 3I9 Greatness of Sargon— His campaigns — Defeat of Egypt at the battle of Raphia — Ashdod — Defeat of Merodach-Baladan — Grandeur of Sennacherib — His invasion of Judaea — Earlier collisions — His campaigns — i. Against Babylon — 2. Against Elam — 3. Against the Hittites and Philistines — Defeat of the Ethiopian Tirhakah at Altaqu — Heavy mulct imposed on Hezekiah — Siege of Lachish — Sennacherib breaks his com- pact— Distress o erusalem, CHAPTER XXVIII THE GREAT DELIVERANCE (B.C. 701) . ' . . . 331 Embassy of the Turtan, the Rabsaris, and the Rabshakeh — Misery and licence in the city — The conference — Oration of the Rabshakeh — Its effect on the king's ministers and on the people — Taunting insults of the Rabshakeh — Faithfulness and self-control of the people — Heroic faith of Isaiah — Failure of the embassy — Sennacherib's threatening letter — Hezekiah's prayer — Isaiah promises deliverance in the name of Jehovah — The sign — The angel of death— Scene of the catastrophe — The Egyptian tradition of Sethos and the mice — Death and burial of Hezekiah — The campaign as recorded on the Assyrian monuments — The triumph of indomitable faith — Grandeur of Isaiah — Wane of Assyria — Beautiful tolerance of Isaiah. CHAPTER XXIX MANASSEH (b.C. 686-64 1 ) 35 ^ The name Manasseh — His tender age — Influence of evil counsellors— Heathenising party — Their dislike of Hezekiah's reformation and of the exclusive w^orship of Jehovah — Tendency to trust in sacrifices and asceticism — Sanctification of licence— Arguments of the heathenisers — Disparagement of the work of Isaiah — Doubts and disbelief— Influence of the banioth-^riesis — Reliance on Assyria — The immoral and idolatrous reaction — I. Restoration of the bamolh, and argu- ments in their favour — 2. Adoption of Phoenician nature- CONTENTS worship — 3. Assyrian Sabaism and star-worship — Connivance of the priests — 4. Canaanite Moloch -worship — 5. Mesopota- mian Shamanism — 6. The Asherah — Denunciation of the prophets — Persecution and the shedding of innocent blood — Asserted captivity, repentance, and reforming energy of Manasseh — Difficulties of the story — Reign of Amon (b.c, 641-639) — Wretchedness of his reign — Zephaniah and Jere- miah— Murder of Amon. CHAPTER XXX JOSIAH (b.c. 639-608) 374 Three vast movements — Jeremiah's earlier prophecies — The state of society — The Scythians — Prophecies of Ezekiel — Herodotus — The fate of Nineveh — Rise of the Chaldaeans — Habakkuk. CHAPTER XXXI josiah's reformation 385 Growth of Josiah's character — Repairs of the Temple — Hil- kiah finds the Book of the Law — Intense effect produced on mind of the king — His message to the prophetess Huldah — Great assembly — Renewal of a solemn league and covenant with Jehovah — The Artwo//«-priests degraded — Defiling of Tophet — He carries the reformation into Samaria — Its strin- gency and severity — The Passover — Suppression of heathen corruptions — Jeremiah's share in the reformation — Its dangers and disappointing results — Jeremiah's warnings against all trust in externals — -The prophecy of a new covenant — Note TO Chapter XXXI. : The Book found in the Temple. CHAPTER XXXII THE DEATH OF JOSIAH (b.C. 608) .... 402 Prosperity and happiness of Josiah — Accession of the great Pharaoh Necho II.^His excursion against Carchemish — Josiah determines to bar his path — Warnings of Pharaoh Necho — Disaster at Megiddo and death of Josiah — ^Mistaken hopes — God's dealings with men and nations — Distress among Josiah's subjects — The king's burial — Misgivings respecting the future — Sorrow of Jeremiah — Ultimate fulfilments. CONTENTS CHAPTER XXXIII PAGE JEHOAHAZ (b.C. 6o8) . . . . . . . 41I Four sons of Josiah — Shallum chosen by the people of the land — Elegy of Ezekiel — Change of name from Shallum to Jehoahaz — Conquests of Pharaoh Necho II. — Jehoahaz sum- moned to Riblah — Carried captive by Pharaoh to Egypt — Tribute imposed on Judaea. CHAPTER XXXIV JEHOIAKIM (b.C. 608-597) 416 Eliakim — His change of name — Ignored by Ezekiel — Evil influences — .Esthetic selfishness and oppressive greed — Denunciation by Habakkuk — Denunciation by Jeremiah — Murder of Urijah — Threatened murder of Jeremiah averted by Ahikam — Fall of Nineveh — Utterances of the prophets — Rise of the Chaldaeans — Nabupolassar — Defeat of Pharaoh Necho by Nebuchadrezzar — His return to Babylon — His in- vasion of Judaea — Beginning of the Babylonian captivity — Jehoiakim revolts to Egypt in spite of Jeremiah's warnings — Imprisonment of Jeremiah — Baruch — The menacing roll — Alarm of the princes — Rage of the king — He cuts the scroll to pieces and burns it — Wretchedness of the times — A great drought — Captives of Jerusalem — Miserable death of Jehoia- kim— "That which was found in him." CHAPTER XXXV JEHOIACHIN (b.C. 597) 431 Bad influence over him — His brief reign — Allusions to him by Jeremiah at Jerusalem— Second captivity — Regret felt for Jehoiachin — Did he die childless ? CHAPTER XXXVI ZEDEKIAH, THE LAST KING OF JUDAH (b.C. 597-586) 437 His oath to the King of Assyria — Ezekiel's prophecies — The exiles and the remnant — Weakness of Zedekiah — Continu- ance of idolatry as described by Ezekiel — The king breaks his CONTENTS PAGE oath with Assyria — Indignation and warnings of Jeremiah — The false prophet Hananiah — The wooden and iron yokes — Death of Hananiah — False prophets — The broken covenant — Advance of Nebuchadrezzar — Belomancy and Babylonian divinations — Siege of Jerusalem — Gloom of Jeremiah's pro- phecies. CHAPTER XXXVII JEREMIAH AND HIS PROPHECIES 449 Pathos of Jeremiah's lot — The sad epoch in which he lived — Religious changes — Arrest of eremiah — Progress of the siege ^Zedekiah sends for the prophet — His hardships alleviated — Horrors of famine — Wicked defiance — A sudden death — Anger of the priests and nobles against Jeremiah — He is thrust into a miry pit — Compassion of Ebed-Melech — Purchase of a field at Anathoth — Secret interview with Zedekiah — It becomes known— Distress of Zedekiah. CHAPTER XXXVIII THE FALL OF JERUSALEM (b.C. 586) .... 457 Nebuzaradan and the Babylonians — The final captivity — Dreadful fate of Zedekiah — Prophecies of Ezekiel and Jeremiah — ;Sack of the city — Massacre of the chief inhabitants — Burning of the city and Temple — Desolation — Respect shown by the Babylonian general to Jeremiah — He decides to remain with the remnant in Judaea. CHAPTER XXXIX GEDALIAH (b.C. 586) 465 Sad parting from the exiles — The wail at Ramah — Geda- liah's appointment as satrap perhaps due to Jeremiah — Desolation of Jerusalem — The seat of government removed to Mizpah — A respite and a gleam of hope — Guerilla bands — Johanan warns Gedaliah against Ishmael — ^Unsuspecting generosity of the governor — He receives Ishmael and his confederates with hospitality — He is brutally murdered — Massacre of the pilgrims from Shiloh — The horrible well — Johan-an pursues Ishmael — His escape — Proposal to migrate CONTENTS PAGE to Egypt — Jeremiah consulted — His advice refused — Prophecy of Jeremiah at the khan of Chimham — Kindness shown by Evil-Merodach to Jehoiachin. EPILOGUE 477 The interest of the preceding history and the great moral lessons which it involves — The central conceptions of Hebrew prophecy — The end of the whole matter. APPENDIX I THE KINGS OF ASSYRIA, AND SOME OF THEIR IN- SCRIPTIONS 487 APPENDIX II INSCRIPTION IN THE TUNNEL OF THE POOL OF SILOAM 493 APPENDIX III WAS THERE A GOLDEN CALF AT DAN ? . . . 494 APPENDIX IV DATES OF THE KINGS OF ISRAEL AND JUDAH, AS GIVEN BY KITTEL AND OTHER MODERN CRITICS . 495 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS "Theoi-ies of inspiration which impaginate the Everlasting Spirit, and make each verse a cluster of objectless and mechanical miracles, are not seriously believed by any one : the Bible itself abides in its endless power and unexhausted truth. All that is not of asbestos is being burned away by the restless fires of thought and criticism. That which remains is enough, and it is indestructible." — Bishop of Derry. CHAPTER I AHAZIAH BEN-AHAB OF ISRAEL B.C. 855—854 2 Kings i. I — 18 "Ye know not of what spirit are ye." — Luke ix. 55. " He is the mediator of a better covenant, which hath been enacted upon better promises." — Heb. viii. 6. AHAZIAH, the eldest son and successor of Ahab, has been called "the most shadowy of the Israelitish kings." ^ He seems to have been in all respects one of the most weak, faithless, and deplor- ably miserable. He did but reign two years — perhaps in reality little more than one ; but this brief space was crowded with intolerable disasters. Everything that he touched seemed to be marked out for ruin or failure, and in character he showed himself a true son of Jezebel and Ahab. What results followed the defeat of Ahab and Jehoshaphat at Ramoth-Gilead we are not told The ' Rawlinson, Kings of Israel attd Judah, p. 86. "The name of Ahaziah (' the Lord talceth hold '), like that of all Ahab's sons, testifies to the fact that the husband of Jezebel still worshipped Jehovah. Among the names of the judges and kings before Ahab in Israel, and Asa in Judah, scarcely a single instance occurs of names compounded with Jehovah; thenceforward they became the rule" (Wellhausen, Israel and Judah, Es. i, p. 66). 3 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS war must have ended in terms of peace of some kind — perhaps in the cession of Ramoth-Gilead ; for Ahaziah does not seem to have been disturbed during his brief reign by any Syrian invasion. Nor were there any troubles on the side of Judah. Ahaziah's sister was the wife of Jehoshaphat's heir, and the good understand- ing between the two kingdoms was so closely cemented, that in both royal houses there was an identity of names — two Ahaziahs and two Jehorams. But even the Judaean alHance was marked with misfortune. Jehoshaphat's prosperity and ambition, to- gether with his firm dominance over Edom — in which country he had appointed a vassal, who was sometimes allowed the courtesy title of king ^ — led him to emulate Solomon by an attempt to revive the old maritime enterprise which had astonished Jerusalem with ivory, and apes, and peacocks imported from India. He therefore built ** ships of Tarshish " at Ezion-Geber to sail to Ophir. They were called ** Tarshish-ships," because they were of the same build as those which sailed to Tartessus, in Spain, from Joppa. Ahaziah was to some extent associated with him in the enter- prise. But it turned out even more disastrously than it had done in former times. So unskilled was the seamanship of those days among all nations except the Phoenicians, that the whole fleet was wrecked and shattered to pieces in the very harbour of Ezion-Geber before it had set sail. Ahaziah, whose affinity with the King of Tyre and possession of some of the western ports had given his subjects more knowledge of ships and voyages, then proposed to Jehoshaphat that the vessels ' I Kings xxii. 47 ; 2 Kings iii, 9 : comp, viii. 20. i-i8.] AHAZIAH BEN-AHAB OF ISRAEL should be manned with sailors from Israel as well as Judah. But Jehoshaphat was tired of a futile and expensive effort. He refused a partnership which might easily lead to complications, and on which the prophets of Jehovah frowned. It was the last attempt made by the Israelites to become merchants by sea as well as by land. Ahaziah's brief reign was marked by one immense humiliation. David, who extended the dominion of the Hebrews in all directions, had smitten the Moabites, and inflicted on them one of the horrible atrocities against which the ill-instructed conscience of men in those days of ignorance did not revolt.^ He had made the male warriors lie on the ground, and then, measur- ing them by lines, he put eveiy two lines to death and kept one alive. After this the Moabites had continued to be tributaries. They had fallen to the share of the Northern Kingdom, and yearly acknowledged the suzerainty of Israel by paying a heavy tribute of the fleeces of a hundred thousand lambs and a hundred thousand rams. But now that the warrior Ahab was dead, and Israel had been crushed by the catastrophe at Ramoth-Gilead, Mesha, the energetic viceroy of Moab, seized his opportunity to revolt and to break from the neck of his people the odious yoke. The revolt was entirely successful. The sacred historian gives us no details, but one of the most priceless of modern archaeological discoveries has confirmed the Scriptural reference by securing and translating a ' 2 Sam. viii. 2. On the ethics of these wars of extermination, such as are commanded in the Pentateuch, and were practised by Joshua, Samuel, Saul, David, and others, see Josh. vi. 17 ; i Sam. xv. 3, 33 ; 2 Sam. viii. 2, etc., and Mozley's Lectures on the Old Testament, pp. 83-103. THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS fragment of Mesha's own account of the annals of his reign. We have, in what is called ** The Moabite Stone," the memorial written in glorification of himself and of his god Chemosh, " the abomination of the children of Amnion," by a contemporary of Ahab and Jehoshaphat.^ It is the oldest specimen which we possess of Hebrew writing ; perhaps the only specimen, except the Siloam inscription, which has come down to us from before the date of the Exile. It was dis- covered in 1878 by the German missionary Klein, amid the ruins of the royal city of Daibon (Dibon, Num. xxi. 30), and was pvuxhased for the Berlin Museum in 1879. Owing to all kinds of errors and intrigues, it did not remain in the hands of its purchaser, but was broken into fragments by the nomad tribe of Beni Hamide, from whom it was in some way obtained by M. Clermont-Ganneau. There is no ground for questioning its perfect genuineness, though the dis- covery of its value led to the forgery of a number of spurious and often indecent inscriptions. There can be no reasonable doubt that when we look at it we see before us the identical memorial of triumph which the Moabite emir erected in the days of Ahaziah on the bamah of Chemosh at Dibon, one of his chief towns. This document is supremel}^ interesting, not only for its historical allusions, but also as an illustration of customs and modes of thought which have left their traces in the records of the people of Jehovah, as well as in those of the people of Chemosh.^ Mesha tells us that his father reigned in Dibon for thirty years, and ' See Stade, i. 86. He gives a photograph and translation of it at P- 534- ^ See Records of the Past, xi. 1 66, 167. i. 1-18.] AHAZIAH BEN-AHAB OF ISRAEL 7 that he succeeded. He reared this stone to Chemosh in the town of Karcha, as a memorial of gratitude for the assistance which had resulted in the overthrow of all his enemies. Omri, King of Israel, had oppressed Moab many days, because Chemosh was wroth with his people. Ahaziah wished to oppress Moab as his father had done. But Chemosh enabled Mesha to recover Medeba, and afterwards Baal-Meon, Kirjatan, Ataroth, Nebo, and Jahaz, which he reoccupied and rebuilt. Perhaps they had been practically abandoned by all effective Israelite garrisons. In some of these towns he put the inhabitants under a ban, and sacrificed them to Moloch in a great slaughter. In Nebo alone he slew seven thousand men. Having turned many towns into fortresses, he was enabled to defy Israel altogether, to refuse the old burdensome tribute, and to re-establish a strong Moabite kingdom east of the Dead Sea ; for Israel was wholly unable to meet his forces in the open field. Month after month of the reign of the miserable son of Ahab must have been marked by tidings of shame, defeat, and massacre. Added to these public calamities, there came to Ahaziah a terrible personal misfortune. As he was coming down from the roof of his palace, he seems to have stopped to lean against the lattice of some window or balcony in his upper chamber in Samaria.^ It gave way under his weight, and he was hurled down into the courtyard or street below. He Vv^as so seriously hurt that he spent the rest of his reign on a sick-bed in pain and weakness, and ultimately died of the injuries he had received. A succession of woes so grievous might well have ' 2 Kings i. 2; Heb., be'ad hass'bakJfi ; LXX., 5td. rod diKTvurov; \u\g., per caiicel/os (comp. i Kings vii. 18; 2 Chron. iv. 12). THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS awakened the wretched king to serious thought. But he had been trained under the idolatrous influences of his mother. As though it were not enough for him to walk in the steps of Ahab, of Jezebel, and of Jeroboam, he had the fatuity to go out of his way to patronise another and yet more odious superstition. Ekron was the nearest town to him of the Philistine Pentapolis, and at Ekron was established the local cult of a par- ticular Baal known as Baal-Zebub (" the lord of flies ").' Flies, which in temperate countries are sometimes an intense annoyance, become in tropical climates an intolerable plague. Even the Greeks had their Zeus Apomuios ("Zeus the averter of flies"), and some Greek tribes worshipped Zeus Ipuktonos ("Zeus the slayer of vermin"), and Zeus Muiagros and Apomuios, and Apollo Smintheus ("the destroyer of mice ").^ The Romans, too, among the numberless quaint heroes of their Pantheon, had a certain Myiagrus and Myiodes, whose function it was to keep flies at a distance.^ This fly-god, Baal- Zebub of Ekron, had an oracle, to whose lying responses ' LXX., BttaX /tutai' ^e6j' 'A/c/capcij'. So, too, Jos., ^4»/^., IX. ii. i. It is possible that the god was represented holding a fly as the type of pesti- lence, just as the statue of Pthah held in its hands a mouse (Herod., ii. 141). Flies convey all kinds of contagion (Plin., H. N., x. 28). - Pausan., v. 14, § 2. ^ The name, or a derisive modification of it, was given by the Jews in the days of Christ to the prince of the devils. In Matt. xii. 24 the true reading is BeeXffjSoi/X, which perhaps means (in contempt) " the lord of dung"; but might mean "the lord of the [celestial] habita- tion " (olKode(rTr6T7]v). Comp. Matt. x. 25 ; Eph. ii. 2 ; " Baal Shamaim," the Belsamen of Augustine (Gesen., Monum. Phaenic, ;^8y ; Movers, Phonizier, i. 176). For "opprobrious puns" applied to idols, see Lightfoot, Exercitationes ad Matt., xii. 24. The common word for idols, gilloolim, is perhaps connected with galal, " dung." Hitzig thinks that the god was represented under the symbol of the Scarabceus pillularius, or dung-beetle. i. 1-18.] AHAZIAH BEN-AHAB OF ISRAEL 9 the young and superstitious prince attached implicit credence. That a king of Israel professing any sort of allegiance to Jehovah, and having hundreds of prophets in his own kingdom, should send an embassy to the shrine of an abominable local divinity in a town of the Philistines — whose chief object of worship was "That twice-battered god of Palestine, Who mourned in earnest when the captive ark Maimed his brute image on the grunsel edge Where he fell flat, and shamed his worshippers" — .was, it must be admitted, an act of apostasy more outrage- ously insulting than had ever yet been perpetrated by any Hebrew king. Nothing can more clearly illustrate the callous indifference shown by the race of Jezebel to the lessons which God had so decisively taught them by Elijah and by Micaiah. But Quern vidt Dens perire, dementat prius ; and in this " dementation preceding doom " Ahaziah sent to ask the fly-god's oracle whether he should recover of his injury. His infatuated perversity became known to Elijah, who was bidden by " the angel," or messenger, "of the Lord" — which ma}'^ only be the recognised phrase in the prophetic schools, putting in a concrete and vivid form the voice of inward inspiration — to go up, apparently on the road towards Samaria, and meet the messengers of Ahaziah on their way to Ekron. Where Elijah was at the time we do not know. Ten years had elapsed since the calling of Elisha, and four since Elijah had confronted Ahab at the door of Naboth's vineyard. In the interval he has not once been mentioned, nor can we conjecture with the least certainty whether he had been living in congenial THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS solitude or had been helping to train the Sons of the Prophets in the high duties of their calling. Why he had not appeared to support Micaiah we cannot tell. Now, at any rate, the son of Ahab was drawing upon himself an ancient curse by going a-whoring after wizards and familiar spirits, and it was high time for Elijah to interfere.^ The messengers had not proceeded far on their way when the prophet met them, and sternly bade them go back to their king, with the denunciation, " Is it because there is no God in Israel that ye go to inquire of Baal- Zebub, the god of Ekron ? Now, therefore, thus saith Jehovah, ' Thou shalt not descend from that bed on which thou art gone up, but dying thou shalt die.' " He spoke, and after his manner vanished with no less suddenness. The messengers, overawed by that startling apparition, did not dream of daring to disobey. They at once went back to the king, who, astonished at their reappearance before they could possibly have reached the oracle, asked them why they had returned. They told him of the apparition by which they had been confronted. That it was a prophet who had spoken to them they knew ; but the appearances of Elijah had been so few, and at such long intervals, that they knew not who he was. " What sort of man was he that spoke to you ? " asked the king. " He was," they answered, " a lord of hair,^ and girded about his loins with a girdle of skin."^ ' Lev. XX. 6. 2 "lyb' b^2 (LXX., Sa<7vs), whether in reference to his long shaggy locks, or his sheepskin addereth, /iriXuTri (Zech. xiii. 4 ; Heb. xii. 37). ^ ^ihvT} dep/xuTivT] (Matt. iii. 4). i. i-iS.] AHAZIAH BEN-AHAB OF ISRAEL Too well did Ahaziah recognise from this description the enemy of his guilty race ! If he had not been present on Carmel, or at Jezreel, on the occasions when that swart and shaggy figure of the awful Wanderer had confronted his father, he must have often heard descriptions of this strange Bedawy ascetic who " feared man so little because he feared God so much." " It is Elijah the Tishbite ! " he exclaimed, with a bitterness which was succeeded by fierce wrath ; and with something of his mother's indomitable rage he sent a captain with fifty soldiers to arrest him. - The captain found Elijah sitting at the top of " the hill," perhaps of Carmel ; and what followed is thus described : — "Thou man of God," he cried, "the king hath said, Come down." There was something strangely incongruous in this rude address. The title " man of God " seems first to have been currently given to Elijah, and it recognises his inspired mission as well as the supernatural power which he was believed to wield. How preposterous, then, was it to bid a man of God to obey a king's order and to give himself up to imprisonment or death 1 " If I be a man of God," said Elijah, " then let fire come down from heaven, to consume thee and thy fifty." 1 The fire fell and reduced them all to ashes.^ Undeterred by so tremendous a consummation, the king sent another captain with his fifty, who repeated the order in terms yet more imperative.^ ' There is perhaps an intentional play of words between "man (B^\S) of God " and " fire ('tJ'N) of God " (Klostermann). - Hebrew. ^ "Come down quickly" (2 Kings i. 9). THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS Again Elijah called down the fire from heaven, and the second captain with his fifty soldiers was reduced to ashes. For the third time the obstinate king, whose infatua- tion must indeed have been transcendent, despatched a captain with his fifty. But he, warned by the fate of his predecessors, went up to Elijah and fell on his knees, and implored him to spare the life of himself and his fifty innocent soldiers. Then " the angel of the Lord " bade Elijah go down to the king with him and not be afraid. What are we to think of this narrative ? Of course, if we are to judge it on such moral grounds as we learn from the spirit of the Gospel, Christ Himself ■has taught us to condemn it. There have been men who so hideously misunderstood the true lessons of revelation as to applaud such deeds, and hold them up for modern imitation. The dark persecutors of the Spanish Inquisition, nay, even men like Calvin and Beza, argued from this scene that " fire is the proper instrument for the punishment of heretics." To all who have been thus misled by a false and superstitious theory of inspiration, Christ Himself says, with unmis- takable plainness, as He said to the Sons of Thunder at Engannim, " Ye know not what spirit ye are of 1 am not come to destroy men's lives, but to save." ' In the abstract, and judged by Christian standards, the ' Luke ix. 51-56. This is a more than sufficient answer to the censure of Theodoret, that "they who condemn the prophet are wagging their tongues against God." The remark is based on utter misapprehension; and if we are to form no judgment on the morality of Scripture examples, they would be of no help for us. Compare the striking remark of the minister to Balfour of Burleigh in Scott's Old Mortality. i. 1-18.] AHAZIAH BEN-AHAB OF ISRAEL 13 calling down of lightning to consume more than a hundred soldiers, who were but obeying the orders of a king — the protection of personal safety by the miraculous destruction of a king's messengers — could only be regarded as a deed of horror. " There are few tracks of Elijah that are ordinary and fit for common feet," says Bishop Hall ; and he adds, " Not in his own defence would the prophet have been the death of so many, if God had not, by a peculiar instinct, made him an instrument of His just vengeance." ^ For myself, I more than doubt whether we have any right to appeal to these " peculiar instincts " and unre- corded inspirations ; and it is so important that we should not form utterly false views of what Scripture does and does not teach, that we must once more deal- with this narrative quite plainly, and not beat about the bush with the untenable devices and effeminate euphemisms of commentators, who give us the " to-and- fro-conflicting " apologies of a priori theory instead of the clear judgments of inflexible morality. " It is impossible not to feel," says Professor Milligan,^ "that the events thus presented to us are of a very startling kind, and that it is not easy to reconcile them either with the- conception that we form of an honoured servant of God, or with our ideas of eternal justice. Elijah rather appears to us at first sight as a proud, arrogant, and merciless wielder of the power committed to him : we wonder that an answer should have been given to his prayer ; we are shocked at the destruction of so many men, who listened only to the command of their captain and their king ; and we cannot help contrasting Elijah's conduct, as a whole, with the ' Quoted by Rev. Professor Lumby, ad loc. - Elijah, p. 146. 14 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS beneficent and loving tenderness of the New Testament dispensation." Professor Milligan proceeds rightly to set aside the attempts which have been made to represent the first two captains and their fifties as especially guilty — which is a most flimsy hypothesis, and would not in any case touch the heart of the matter. He says that the event stands on exactly the same footing as the slaughter of the 450 prophets of Baal at Kishon, and of the 3000 idolaters by order of Moses at Sinai ; the swallowing up of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram ; the ban of total extirpation on Jericho and on Canaan ; the sweeping massacre of the Amalekites by Saul ; and many similar instances of recorded savagery. But the reference to analogous acts furnishes no justi- fication for those acts. What, then, is their justification, if any can be found ? Some would defend them on the grounds that the potter may do what he likes with the clay. That analogy, though perfectly admissible when used for the purpose to which it is applied by St. Paul, is grossly inapplicable to such cases as this. St. Paul uses it simply to prove that we cannot judge or understand the purposes of God, in which, as he • shows, mercy often lies behind apparent severity. But, when urged to maintain the rectitude of sweeping judgments in which a man arms his own feebleness with the omnipotence of Heaven, they amount to no more than the tyrant's plea that " might makes right." " Man is a reed," said Pascal, " but he is a thinking reed." He may not therefore be indiscriminately crushed. He was made by God in His image, after His likeness, and therefore his rights have a Divine and indefeasible sanction. i. i-iH.] AlIAZIAH BEN- AH AS OF ISRAEL 15 All that can be said is that these deeds of wholesale severity were not in disaccord with the conscience even of many of the best Old Testament saints. They did not feel the least compunction in inflicting judg- ments on whole populations in a way which would argue in us an infamous callousness. Nay, their con- sciences approved of those deeds ; they were but acting up to the standard of their times, and they regarded themselves as righteous instruments of divinely directed vengeance.^ Take, for instance, the frightful Eastern law which among the Jews no less than among Babylonians and Persians thought nothing of over- whelming the innocent with the guilty in the same catastrophe ; which required the stoning, not only of Achan, but of all Achan's innocent family, as an ex- piation for his theft ; and the stoning, not only of Naboth, but also of Naboth's sons, in requital for his asserted blasphemy. Two reasons may be assigned for the chasm between their moral sense and ours on such subjects — one was their amazing indifference to the sacredness of human life, and the other their invariable habit of regarding men in their corporate relations rather than in their individual capacity. Our conscience teaches us that to slay the innocent with the guilty is an action of monstrous injustice ; ^ but they, regarding each person as indissolubly mixed up with all his family and tribe, magnified the conception ' This is practically the sum-total of the answer given again and again by Canon Mozley in his Lectures on the Old Testament, 2nd edition, 1878. For instance, he says that "the Jewish idea of justice gives us the reason why the Divine commands (of exter- minating wars, etc.) were then adapted to man as the agent for executing them, and are not adapted now" (p. 102). - Comp. Ezek. xviii. 2-30. l6 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS of corporate responsibility , and merged the individual in the mass. It is clear that, if we take the narrative literally, Elijah would not have felt the least remorse in calling fire from heaven to consume these scores of soldiers, because the prophetic narrator who recorded the story, perhaps two centuries later, must have understood the spirit of those days, and certainly felt no shame for the prophet's act of yengeance. On the contrary, he relates it with entire approval for the glorification of his hero. We cannot blame him for not rising above the moral standard of his age. He held that the natural manifestation of an angry Jehovah was, literally or metaphorically, in consuming fire. Con- sidering the slow education of mankind in the most elementary principles of mercy and righteousness, we must not judge the views of prophets who lived so many ages before Christ by those of religious teachers who enjoy the inherited experience of two millenniums of Christianity. Thus much is plainly taught us by Christ Himself, and there perhaps we might be con- tent to leave the question. But we are compelled to ask, Do we not too much form all our judgments of the Scripture narratives on a priori traditions and unreasoned prejudices ? Can we with adequate know- ledge and honest conviction declare our certainty that this scene of destruction ever occurred as a literal fact ? If we turn to any of the great students and critics of Germany, to whom we are indebted for the floods of light which their researches have thrown on the sacred page, they with almost consentient voice regard these details of this story as legendary. There is indeed every reason to believe the account of Ahaziah's accident, of his sending to consult the oracle of Baal- i. 1-18.] AHAZIAH BEN-AHAB OF ISRAEL 17 Zebub, of the turning back of his messengers by Elijah, and of the menace which he heard from the prophet's Hps. But the calHng down of lightning to consume his captains and soldiers to ashes belongs to the cycle of Elijah-traditions preserved in the schools of the prophets ; and in the case of miracles so startling and to our moral sense so repellent — miracles which assume the most insensate folly on the part of the king, and the most callous ruthlessness on the part of the prophet — the question may be fairly asked, Is there any proof, is there anything beyond dogmatic assertion to convince us, that we were intended to accept them au pied de la lettre ? May they not be the formal vehicle chosen for the illustration of the un- doubted powers and righteous mission of Elijah as the upholder of the worship of Jehovah ? In a literature which abounds, as all Eastern literature abounds, in vivid and concrete methods of indicating abstract truths, have we any cogent proof that the supernatural details, of which some may have been introduced into these narratives by the scribes in the schools of the prophets, were not, in some instances, meant to be regarded as imaginative apologues ? The most orthodox divines, both Jewish and Christian, have not hesitated to treat the Book of Jonah as an instance of the use of fiction for purposes of moral and spiritual edification. Were any critic to maintain that the story of the destruction of Ahaziah's emissaries belongs to the same class of narratives, I do not know how he could be refuted, however much he might be denounced by stereotyped prejudice and ignorance. I do not, however, myself regard the story as a mere parable composed to show how awful was the power of the prophets, and how fearfully it might be exercised. I look upon it rather 2 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS as possibly the narrative of some event which has been imaginatively embellished, and intermingled with details which we call supernatural.^ Circumstances which we consider natural would be regarded as directly miraculous by an Eastern enthusiast, who saw in every event the immediate act of Jehovah to the exclusion of all secondary causes, and who attributed every ocurrence of life to the intervention of those "millions of spiritual creatures," who " walk the earth Unseen both when we wake and when we sleep." If such a supposition be correct and admissible — and assuredly it is based on all that we increasingly learn of the methods of Eastern literature, and of the forms in which religious ideas were inculcated in early ages — then all difficulties are removed. We are not dealing with the mercilessness of a prophet, or the wielding of Divine powers in a manner which higher revelation condemns, but only with the well-known fact that the Elijah-spirit was not the Christ-spirit, and that the scribes of Ramah or Gilgal, and " the men of the tradition " and the " men of letters " who lived at Jabez, when they used the methods of Targum and Haggadah in handing down the stories of the prophets, had not received that full measure of enlightenment which came only when the Light of the World had shone.^ ' For the idea involved see Num. xi. i ; Deut. iv. 24; Psalm xxi. 9; Isa. xxvi. II ; Heb. x. 27, etc. '^ I Chron. ii. 55, where " Shimeathites " means " mm of the tradition,"' and " scribes,'" " men of letters." CHAPTER II THE ASCENSION OF ELIJAH 2 Kings ii. i — 18 'HXt'as t'^ avOpwiroiv rjcpavladri, Arat ovdels i'yuia juexp'S Tyj^ irijfiepov wuTOv T7)v TeKeirriv. — Jos., Antt., IX. ii. 2. Veydvaaiv a.bpov. * According to the Moabite Stone. iii. 4-27-] THE INVASION OF MOAB 31 hundred thousand lambs and one hundred thousand rams was too serious to be Hghtly faced. ^ Jehoram laid his plans well. First he ordered a muster of all the men of war throughout his kingdom, and then appealed for the co-operation of Jehoshaphat and his vassal-king of Edom. Botji kings consented to join him. Jehoshaphat had already been the victim of a powerful and wanton aggression on the part of King Mesha,^ from which he had been delivered by the panic of his foes in the Valley of Salt. Though the king of Edom had, on that occasion, been an ally of Mesha, the forces of Edom had fallen the first victims of that internecine panic. Both Judah and Edom, there- fore, had grave wrongs to avenge, and eagerly seized the opportunity to humble the growing pride of the people of Chemosh. The attack was wisely arranged. It was determined to advance against Moab from the south, through the territory of Edom, by a rough and mountainous track, and, as far as possible, to take the nation by surprise. The combined host took a seven days' circuit round the south of the Dead Sea, hoping to find an abundant supply of water in the stream which flows through the Wady-el-Ahsa, which separates Edom from Moab.^ But owing to recent droughts the Wady was waterless, and the armies, with their horses, suffered all the agonies of thirst. Jehoram gave way ' It is not clear whether the lambs and rams were sent with the fleeces. The A.V. says "lambs and rams with their wool," in accord- ance with Josephus — /nvpiddas eiKoai Trpo^aTwv ffvu toTs ttokois. The LXX. has the vague iirl wSkuv, and implies that this was a special fine after a defeat in the revolt (iv ttj inavaaTciffec) : but comp. Isa, xvi. i. - 2 Chron. xx. I-30. •' Robinson {Bibl. Res., ii. 157) identifies it with the brook Zered. Deut. ii. 13 ; Num. xxi. 12. The name means "valley of water-pits." W. R. Smith quotes Doughty, Travels, i. 26. 32 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS to despair, bewailing that Jehovah should have brought together these three kings to deliver them a helpless prey into the hands of Moab. But the pious Jehoshaphat at once thinks of " inquiring of the Lord " by some true prophet, and one of Jehoram's courtiers informs him that no less a person than Elisha, the son of Shaphat, who had been the attendant of Elijah, is with the host.^ We are surprised to find that his presence in the camp had excited so little attention as to be unknown to the king ; - but Jehoshaphat, on hearing his name, instantly acknowledged his prophetic inspiration. So urgent was the need, and so deep the sense of Elisha's greatness, that the three kings in person went on an embassy " to the servant of him who ran before the chariot of Ahab." Their humble appeal to him produced so little elation in his mind that, addressing Jehoram, who was the most powerful, he exclaimed, with rough indignation : '* What have I to do with thee? Get thee to the prophets of thy father," — nominal prophets of Jehovah, who will say to thee smooth things and prophesy deceits, as four hundred of them did to Ahab — " and to the Baal- prophets of thy mother." Instead of resenting this ' Comp. I Kings xxii. 7. The phrase " who poured water on the hands of Elijah " is a touch of Oriental custom which the traveller in remote parts of Palestine may still often see. Once, when driven by a storm into the house of the Sheykh of a tribe which had a rather bad reputation for brigandage, I was most hospitably entertained ; and the old white-haired Sheykh, his son, and ourselves were waited on by the grandson, a magnificent youth, who immediately after the meal brought out an old richly chased ewer and basin, and poured water over our hands, soiled by eating out of the common dish, of course without spoons or forks. - This seems to have struck Josephus {Antl., IX. iii. i), who saj-s that "he chanced to be in a tent {^rvxe KareaKT^vuKihi) outside the host." iii.4-27.] THE INVASION OF MOAB scant respect Jehoram, in utmost distress, deprecated the prophet's anger, and appealed to his pity for the peril of the three armies. But Elisha is not mollified. He tells Jehoram that but for the presence of Jehoshaphat he would not so much as look at him : so completely was the destiny of the people mixed up with the character of their kings ! Out of respect for Jehoshaphat Elisha will do what he can. But all his soul is in a tumult of emotion. For the moment he can do nothing. He needs to be calmed from his agitation by the spell of music, and bids them send a minstrel to him. The harper came, and as Elisha listened his soul was com- posed, and " the hand of the Lord came upon him " to illuminate and inspire his thoughts.* The result was that he bade them dig trenches in the dry wady, and promised that, though they should see neither wind nor rain, the valley should be filled with water to quench the thirst of the fainting armies, their horses and their cattle. After this God would also deliver the Moabites into their hand ; and they were bidden to smite the cities, fell the trees, stop the wells, and mar the smiling pasture-lands, which constituted the wealth of Moab, with stones. That the hosts of Judah and Israel and jealous Edom should be prone to afflict this awfully devastating vengeance on a power by which they had been so severely defeated on past occasions, and on which they had so many wrongs and blood-feuds to avenge, was natural ; but it is surprising to find a prophet of the Lord giving the commission to ruin the gifts of God and spoil the innocent labours of man, and thus to inflict misery on generations yet unborn. ' Comp. I Sam, x. 5 ; i Chron, xxv. i ; Ezek. i. 3, xxxiii. 22. Menaggen is one who plays on a stringed instrument, n'gindh. The Pythagoreans used music in the same way (Cic, Tusc. Disp., iv. 2). 3 34 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS The behest is directh' contrary to rules of international war which have prevailed even between non-Christian nations, among whom the stopping or poisoning of wells and the cutting down of fruit trees has been expressly forbidden. It is also against the rules of war laid down in Deuteronomy/ Such, however, was the command attributed to Elisha ; and, as we shall see, it was fulfilled, and seems to have led to disastrous consequences. Cheered by the promise of Divine aid which the prophet had given them, the host retired to rest. The next morning at day-dawn, when the minchah of fine flour, oil, and frankincense was offered,^ water, which, according to the tradition of Josephus, had fallen at three days' distance on the hills of Edom, came flowing from the south and filled the wady with its refreshing streams. The incident itself is highly instructive. It throws light both upon the general accuracy of the ancient narrative, and on the fact that events to which a directly supernatural colouring is given are, in many instances, not so much supernatural as providential. The deliver- ance of Israel was due, not to a portent wrought by Elisha, but to the pure wisdom which he derived from the inspiration of God. When the counsels of princes were of none effect, and for lack of the spirit of counsel the people were perishing, his mind alone, illuminated by a wisdom from on high, saw what was the right step to take. He bade the soldiers dig trenches in the dry torrent bed, — which was the very step most likely to ensure their deliverance from the torment of thirst, and which would be done under similar circumstances to ' Deut. XX. 19, 20. * Lev. ii. I. Comp. I Kings xviii. 36. iii. 4-27.] THE INVASION OF MOAB this day. They saw neither wind nor rain ; but there had been a storm among the farther hills, and the swollen watercourses discharged their overflow into the trenches of the wady which were ready prepared for them, and offered the path of least resistance. Moab, meanwhile, had heard of the advance of the three kings through the territories of Edom. The whole military population had mustered in arms, and stood on the frontier, on the other side of the dry wady, to oppose the invasion. For they knew this would be a struggle of life and death, and that if defeated they would have no mercy to expect. When the sun rose, and its first rays burned on the wady, which had been dry on the previous evening, the water which, unknown to the Moabites, had filled the trenches in the night, looked red as blood. Doubtless it may have been stained, as Ewald says, by the red soil which gave its name to the red land of the "red king, Edom " ; but as it gleamed under the dawn the Moabites thought that those seemingly crimson pools had been filled with the blood of their enemies, who had fallen by each other's sv/ords. Their own recent experience when Jehoshaphat met them in the Valley of Salt showed them how easy it was for temporary allies to be seized by panic, and to fight among themselves.' The army of their invaders was composed of hetero- geneous and mutually conflicting elements. Between Israel and Judah there had been nearly a century of war,^ and only a brief reunion ; and Edom, recently the willing and natural ally of Moab, was not likely to fight very zealously for Judah, which had reduced her to vassalage. So the Moabites said to one another, ' Tins dreadful result crippled the revolt of Vindex against Nero. * Jeroboam I., B.C. 937 ; Joram, 854. 36 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS as they pointed to the unexpected apparition of those red pools : ** This is blood. The kings are surely destroyed, and they have smitten each man his fellow. Moab to the spoil ! " They rushed down tumultuously on the camp of Israel, and found the soldiers of Jehoram ready to receive them. Taken by surprise, for they had expected no resistance, they were hurled back in utter confusion and with immense slaughter. The three kings pushed their advantage to the utmost. They went forward into the land, driving and smiting the Moabites before them, and ruthlessly carrying out the command attributed to Elisha. They beat down the cities — most of which in a land of flocks and herds were little more than pastoral villages ; they rendered the green fields useless with stones ; they filled up all the wells with earth ; they felled every fruit-bearing tree of any value. At last only one stronghold, Kir- haraseth, the chief fenced town of Moab, held out against them.^ Even this fortress was sore bested. The slinger.s, for which Israel, and specially the tribe of Benjamin, was so famous, advanced to drive its defenders from the battlements. King Mesha fought with undaunted heroism. He decided to take the seven hundred warriors who were left to him, and cut his way through the besieging host to the king of Edom. He thought that even now he might per- suade the Edomites to abandon this new and unnatural alliance, and turn the battle against their common ' Isa. XV. I, Kir of Moab; Jer. xlviii. 31, Kir-heres. It is built on a steep calcareous rock, surrounded by a deep, narrow glen, which thence descends westward to the Dead Sea, under the name of the Wady Kerak. We know that the armies of Nineveh habitually practised these brutal modes of devastation in the districts which they conquered. See La3'ard, passim ; Rawlinson, Aiideiil Moiioirliies, iii.4-27.] THE INVASION OF MOAB 37 enemies. But the numbers against him were too strong, and he found the plan irnpossible. Then he formed a dreadful resolution, dictated to him by the extremity of his despair. His inscription at Karcha shows that he was a profound and even fanatical believer in Chemosh, his god. Chemosh could still deliver him. If Chemosh was, as Mesha says in his inscription, " angry with his land " — if, even for a time, he allowed his faithful people and his devoted king to be afflicted — it could not be for any lack of power on his part, but only because they had in some way offended him, so that he was wroth, or because he had gone on a journey, or was asleep, or deaf.^ How could he be appeased ? Only by the offering of the most precious of all the king's possessions ; only by the self-devotion of the crown-prince, on whom were centred all the nation's hopes. Mesha would force Chemosh to help him for very shame. He would offer to Chemosh a human sacrifice, the sacrifice of his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead. Doubtless the young prince gave himself up as a willing offering, for that was essential to the holocaust being valid and acceptable.'^ So upon the wall of Kir-haraseth, in the sight of all the Moabites, and of the three invading armies, the brave and desperate hero of a hundred fights, who had inflicted so many reverses upon these enemies, and received so many at their hands, but who, having liberated his country, now saw all the efforts of his life ruined at one blow — took his eldest son, kindled the ' I Kings xviii. 27. Comp. Psalm xxxv. 23, xliv. 23, Ixxxiii. I, etc. -' Comp. Micah vi. 7. This is an entirel3'^ different incident from that alluded to in Amos ii. I. THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS sacrificial fire, and then and there solemnly offered that horrible burnt-offering/ And it proved effectual, though far otherwise than Mesha had expected. He was delivered ; and, doubt- less, if ever he reared, at Kirharaseth or elsewhere, another memorial stone, he would have attributed his deliverance to his national god. But here, in the annals of Elisha, the result is hurried over, and a veil is, so to speak, dropped upon the dreadful scene with the one ambiguous expression, " And there was great wrath against Israel : and they departed from him, and returned to their own land." The phrase awakens but does not satisfy our curiosit3^ We are not certain of the translation, or of the mean- ing. It may be, as in the margin of the Revised Version, " there came great wrath upon Israel." ■ But wrath from whom ? and on what account ? The word ** wrath " all but invariably denotes divine wrath ; but we cannot imagine (as some critics do) that any Israelite of the schools of the prophets would sanction the notion that the chosen people were allowed to suffer from the kindled wrath of Chemosh. Can we then suppose that the desperate act of King Mesha was a proof that Israel, who was no doubt the most interested and the most remorseless of the invaders, had pressed the Moabites too hard, and carried his vengeance much too far? That is by no means impossible. The prophet Amos denounces upon Moab in after years ' Eusebius (Prap. Evaiig., iv. i6) quotes from Philo's PhcEnician history a reference to human sacrifices {rots rifiupois dal/jiocnv} at moments of desperation. '' The rendering is doubtful. LXX., Kai iy^vero /xeTd/jieXos ijAya% iirl 'IcrpaTjX; Vulg., indignatio in Israel; Luther, Da ward Israel sehr "sortiig. iii.4-27.] THE INVASION OF MOAB 39 the doom that fire should devour the palaces of Kirioth, and that Moab should perish with shoutings, and all his royal line be cut off, for the far less offence of having burned into lime the bones of the king of Edom.^ The command of Elisha did not exempt the Israelites from their share of moral respensibility. Jehu was com- missioned to be an executioner of vengeance upon the house of Ahab. Yet Jehu is expressly condemned by the prophet Hosea for the tiger-like ferocity and horrible thoroughness with which he had carried out his destined work.^ Only one other explanation is possible. If " wrath " here has the unusual sense of human indignation, the clause can only imply that the armies of Judah and Edom were roused to anger by the unpitying spirit which Israel had displa3'ed. The horrible tragedy enacted upon the wall of Kirharaseth awoke their consciences to the sense of human com- passion. These, after all, were fellow-men — fellow-men of kindred blood to their own — whom they had driven to straits so frightful as to cause a king to burn his own heir alive as a mute appeal to his god in the hour of overwhelming ruin. They had done enough : " Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt." They hastily broke up the league, dissolved the alliance, returned horror-stricken to their own land. They left Moab indeed in possession of his last fortress, but they had reduced his temtory to a wilderness before they retired and called it peace. ' Amos ii. 1-3. * Hos. i. 4 : "I will avenge the blood of Jezrecl upon the house of Jehu." CHAPTER V ELISHA'S MIRACLES 2 Kings iv. i — 44 WE are now in the full tide of Elisha's miracles, and as regards many of them we can do little more than illustrate the text as it stands. The record of them clearly comes from some account prevalent in the schools of the prophets, which is however only fragmentary, and has been unchronologically pieced into the annals of the kings of Israel. The story of Elisha abounds far more in the super- natural than that of Elijah, and is believed by most critics to be of earlier date. Yet the scenes and portents of his life are almost wholly lacking in the element of grandeur which belong to those of the elder seer. His personality, if on the whole softer and more beneficent, inspires less of awe, and the whole tone of the biography which recorded these isolated incidents is lacking in the poetic and impassioned elevation which marks the episodes of Elijah's history. We see in the records of Elisha, as in the biographies — so rich in prodigies — of fourth-century hermits and mediaeval saints, how little impressive in itself is the exercise of abnormal powers ; how it derives its sole grandeur from the accompaniment of great moral lessons and spiritual revelations. John the Baptist "did no miracle," yet 40 iv. 1-44.] ELISHA'S MIRACLES 4 1 our Lord placed him not only far above Elisha, but even above Moses and Samuel and Elijah, when He said of him, " Verily I say unto you, of them that have been bom of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist." It is impossible not to Tdc struck with the singular parallelism between the powers exercised by Elisha and those which are attributed to his predecessor. "How true an heir is Elisha of his master," says Bishop Hall, " not in his graces only, but in his actions ! Both of them divided the waters of Jordan, the one as his last act, the other as his first. Elijah's curse was the death of the captains and their troops ; Elisha's curse was the death of the children. Elijah rebuked Ahab to his face ; Elisha, Jehoram. Elijah supplied the drought of Israel by rain from heaven ; Elisha supplied the drought of the three kings by waters gushing out of the earth ; Elijah increased the oil of the Sareptan, Elisha increased the oil of the prophet's widow ; Elijah raised from death the Sarep- tan's .son, Elisha the Shunammite's ; both of them had one mantle, one spirit ; both of them climbed up one Carmel, one heaven." The resemblance, however, is not at all in character, but only in external and mira- culous circumstances. In all other respects Elisha furnishes a contrast to Elijah which startles us quite as much as any superficial resemblances. Elijah was a free, wild Bedawy prophet, hating and shunning as his ordinary residence the abodes of men, making his home in the rocky wady or in the mountain glades, appearing and disappearing suddenly as the wind. He asserted his power most often in ministries of retribu- tion. Clad in the sheepskin of a Gadite shepherd or mountaineer, he was not one of those who wear soft 42 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS clothing or are found in kings' houses. He usually met monarchs as their enemy and their reprover, but for the most part avoided them. He never intervened for years together even in national events of the utmost importance, whether military or religious, unless he received the direct call of God, or there appeared to him to be a ** dignns Vindice nodusP Elisha, on the other hand, makes his home in cities, and chiefly in Samaria. He is familiar with kings and moves about with armies, and has no long retirements into unknown solitudes ; and though he could speak roughly to Jehoram, he is often on the friendliest terms with him and with other sovereigns. The stories of Elisha give us many interesting glimpses into the social life of Israel in his day. As to their literal historic accuracy, those must make positive affirmation who feel that they can do so in accordance alike with adequate authority and with the sacredness of truth. Many will be unable to escape the opinion that they bear some resemblance to other Jewish haggadoth, written for edification, with every innocent intention, in the schools of the Prophets, but no more intended for perfectly literal acceptance in all their details than the Life of St. Paul the Hermit, by St. Jerome ; or that of St. Antony, attributed erro- neously to St. Athanasius ; or that of St. Francis in the Fioretti ; or the lives of humble saints of the people called Kisar-el-anbiah, which are so popular among poor Mohammedans. Into that question there is no need to enter further. Abundet qiiisque in sensu suo. I. On one occasion a widow of one of the Sons of the Prophets — for these communities, though coenobitic, were not celibate — came to him in deep distress. Her husband — the Jews, with their usual guesswork, most iv. 1-44.] ELISHA'S MIRACLES 43 improbably identify him with Obadiah, the chamberlain of Ahab^ — had died insolvent. As she had nothing to pay, her creditor under the grim provision of the law was about to exercise his right of selling her two sons into slavery to recoup himself for the debt.^ Would Elisha help her ? Prophets were never men of wealth, so that he could not pay her debt. He asked her what she possessed to satisfy the demand. ** Nothing," she said, " but a pot of the common oil, used for anointing the body after a bath." Elisha bade her go and borrow from her neighbours all the empty vessels she could, then to return home, shut the door, and pour the oil into the vessels. She did so. They were all filled, and she asked her son to bring yet another. But there was not another to be had, so she went out and told the Man of God- He bade her sell the miraculously multiplied oil to pay the debt, and live with her sons on the proceeds of what was over. II. We next find Elisha at Shunem, famous as the abode of the fair maiden — probably Abishag, the nurse of David's decrepitude — who is the heroine of the Song of Songs. It is a village, now called Solam, on the slopes of Little Hermon (Jebel-el-Duhy), three miles north of Jezreel. At this place there lived a lady of wealth and influence, whose husband owned the sur- rounding land. There were but few khans in Palestine, and even where they now exist the traveller has in most cases to supply his own food. Elisha, in his journeys to and fro among the schools of the Prophets, ' Jos., Antt., IX. iv. 2, Thip perhaps is only suggested by the reminiscences of i Kings xviii. 2, 3, 12. - Lev. XXV. 39-41 ; Matt, xviii. 25. 44 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS had often enjoyed the welcome hospitaHty eagerly pressed upon him by the lady of Shunem. Struck with his sacred character, she persuaded her husband to take a step unusual even to the boundless hospitality of the East. She begged him to do honour to this holy Man of God by building for him a little chamber (ciliyah) on the flat roof of the house, to which he might have easy and private access by the outside staircase.^ The chamber was built, and furnished, like any other simple Eastern room, with a bed, a divan to sit on, a table, and a lamp ; and there the weary prophet on his journeys often found a peaceful, simple, and delightful resting-place. Grateful for the reverence with which, she treated him, and the kind care with which she had supplied his needs, Elisha was anxious to recompense her in whatever way might be possible. The thought of money payment was of course out of the question : merely to hint at it would have been a breach of manners. But perhaps he might be of use to her in some other way. At this time, and for years afterwards during his long ministry of perhaps fifty-six years, he was attended by a servant named Gehazi, who stood to him in the same sort of relation which he had held to Elijah. He told Gehazi to summon the Shunammite lady. In the deep humility of Eastern womanhood she came and stood in his presence. Even then he did not address her. So downtrodden was the position of women in the East that any dignified person, much more a great prophet, could not converse with a woman without compromising his dignity. The more ' 2 Kings iv. lo. Not "a little chamber on the wall " (A.V.), but an allyah with walls " (margin, R.V.). iv. 1-44.] ELISHA'S MIRACLES 45 scrupulous Pharisees in the days of Christ always carefully gathered up their garments in the streets, lest they should so much as touch a woman with their skirts in passing by, as the modern Chakams in Jerusalem do to this day.^ The disciples themselves, sophisticated by familiarity with such teachers, were astonished that Jesus at the well of Shechem should talk with a woman." So, though the lady stood there, Elisha, instead of speaking to her directly, told Gehazi to thank her for all the devout respect and care, all * the modesty of fearful duty,' ^ which she had displayed towards them, and to ask her if he should say a good word for her to the King or the Captain of the Host. This is just the sort of favour which an Eastern would be likely to value most.* The Shunammite, however, was well provided for ; she had nothing to complain of, and nothing to request. She thanked Elisha for his kindly proposal, but declined it, and went away. " Is there, then, nothing which we can do for her ? " asked Elisha of Gehazi.^ There was. Gehazi had learnt that the sorrow of her life — a sorrow and a source of reproach to any Eastern household, but most of all to that of a wealthy householder — was her childlessness. " Call her," he said. ' Frankl., Jews in the East. "^ John iv. 27 : " Then came His disciples, and marvelled that He was talking (/xera yvvaiKbs) with a woman." '■' 2 Kings iv. 13 : "Behold, thou hast been careful for us with all this care" (LXX., iraaav rr)v ^Koraffiv TarjTyjv). * The Sheykh with whom I stayed at Bint es Jebeil could think of no return which I could offer for his hospitality so acceptable as if I would say a good word for him to the authorities at Beyrout. ■* Gehazi is usually called the na'ar or " lad " of Elisha — a term implying lower service than F.lisha's " ministry " to Elijah. 46 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS She came back, and stood reverently in the doorway. " When the time comes round," he said to her, " you shall embrace a son." The promise raised in her heart a thrill of joy. It was too precious to be believed. " Nay," she said, " my lord, thou Man of God, do not lie unto thine handmaid." But the promise was fulfilled, and the lady of Shunem became the happy mother of a son. III. The charming episode then passes over some years. The child had grown into a little boy, old enough now to go out alone to see his father in the harvest fields and to run about among the reapers. But as he played about in the heat he had a sunstroke, and cried to his father, " O my head, my head ! " Not knowing how serious the matter was, his father simply ordered one of his lads to carry the child home to his mother. The fond mother nursed him tenderly upon her knees, but at noon he died. Then the lady of Shunem showed all the faith and strength and wisdom of her character. " The good Shunammite," says Bishop Hall, " had lost her son ; her faith she lost not." Overwhelming as was this calamity — the loss of an only child — she suppressed all her emotions, and, instead of bursting into the wild helpless wail of Eastern mourners, or rushing to her husband with the agonising news, she took the little boy's body in her arms, carried it up to the chamber which had been built for Elisha, and laid it upon his bed. Then, shutting the door, she called to her husband to send to her one of his reapers and one of the asses, for she was going quickly to the Man of God and would return in the cool of the evening. " Why should you go to-day particularly ? " he asked. "It is neither new iv. 1-44.] ELISHA'S MIRACLES 47 moon, nor sabbath." " It is all right," she said;^ and with perfect confidence in the rectitude of all her purposes, he sent her the she-ass, and a servant to drive it and to run beside it for her protection on the journey of sixteen miles. ** Drive on the ass," she said. " Slacken me not the riding unless I tell you." So with all possible speed she made her way — a journey of several hours — from Shunem to Mount Carmel. Elisha, from his retreat on the hill, marked her coming from a distance, and it rendered him anxious. " Here comes the Shunammite," he said to Gehazi. " Run to meet her, and ask Is it well with thee ? is it well with thy husband ? is it well with the child ? " "All well," she answered, for her message was not to Gehazi, and she could not trust her voice to speak ; but pressing on up-hillwards, she flung herself before Elisha and grasped his feet. Displeased at the familiarity which dared thus to clasp the feet of his master, Gehazi ran up to thrust her away by force, but Elisha interfered. " Let her alone," he cried ; " she is in deep afQiction, and Jehovah has not revealed to me the cause." Then her long pent-up emotion burst forth. " Did I desire a son of my lord ? " she cried. " Did I not say do not deceive me ? " It was enough — though she seemed unable to bring out the dreadful words that her boy was dead. Catch- ing her meaning, Elisha said to Gehazi, " Gird up thy loins, take my staff, and without so much as stopping to salute any one, or to return a salutation,^ lay my staff on the dead child's face." But the broken-hearted ' 2 Kings iv. 23. Hebrew " Peace "; A.V., " It shall be well." * Salutations occupy some time in the formally courteous East. Comp. Luke x. 4. 4« THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS mother refused to leave Elisha. She imagined that the servant, the staff, might be severed from EHsha ; but she knew that wherever the prophet was, there was power. So Elisha arose and followed her, and on the way Gehazi met them with the news that the child lay still and dead, with the fruitless staff upon his face. Then Elisha in deep anguish went up to the chamber and shut the door, and saw the boy's body l3dng pale upon his bed. After earnest prayer he outstretched himself over the little corpse, as Elijah had done at Zarephath. Soon it began to grow warm with return- ing Hfe, and Elisha, after pacing up and down the room, once more stretched himself over him. Then the child opened his eyes and sneezed seven times, and Elisha called to Gehazi to summon the mother. " Take up thy son," he said. She prostrated herself at his feet in speechless gratitude, and took up her recovered child, and went. IV. We next find Elisha at Gilgal, in the time of the famine of which we read his prediction in a later chapter.^ The sons of the prophets were seated round him, listening to his instructions ; the hour came for their simple meal, and he ordered the great pot to be put on the fire for the vegetable soup, on which, with bread, they chiefly lived.. One of them went out for herbs, and carelessly brought his outer garment (the abeyali) '^ full of wild ^poisonous coloquinths,^ which, by ignorance or inadvertence, were shred into the pottage. But when it was cooked and poured out they perceived ' 2 Kings viii. i. ^ Not " lap," as in A.V. (Hcb., beged) ; LXX. avvi\iie TrXrjpei rb t/xdriov auToO ; Vulg., iniplevil vestem snain (both correctly). ■' Heb., paqitolh ; LXX., ro\inrr)v dyplav ; Vulg., colocyntliidas ngyi. Hence the name cuaimis proplietnrHm. iv. 1-44.] ELISHA'S MIRACLES 49 the poisonous taste, and cried out, " O Man of God, death in the pot I " " Bring meal," he said, for he seems always to have been a man of the fewest words. They cast in some meal, and were all able to eat of the now harmless pottage. It has been noticed that in this, as in other incidents of the story, there is no invocation of the name of Jehovah. V. Not far from Gilgal was the little village of •Baalshalisha, ^ at which lived a farmer who wished to bring an offering of firstfruits and karmel (bruised grain) in his wallet to Elisha as a Man of God.^ It was a poor gift enough — only twenty of the coarse barley loaves which were eaten by the common people, and a sack ^ full of fresh ears of corn.* Elisha told his servitor^ — perhaps Gehazi — to set them before the people present. " What ? " he asked, " this trifle of food before a hundred men 1 " But Elisha told him in the Lord's name that it should more than suffice ; and so it did. ' Lord of the Chain and " Three lands." Three wadies meet a this spot, a little west of Bethel. ^ 2 Kings iv. 42, Karmel, Lev. ii. 14. Perhaps a sort of frumenty. ^ The word for " wallet " {tsiqlon ; Vulg., pera) occurs here only. Peshito, "garment." The Vatican LXX. omits it. The Greek version has ev KUpOKi^) avrov. * See Lev. ii. 14, xxiii. 14. * 2 Kings iv. 43. The word for " his servitor " (m'chartho) is used also of Joshua. It does not mean a mere ordinary attendant. LXX., \eiT0vpy6s; Vnlg., miriisier. CHAPTER VI THE STORY OF NAAMAN 2 Kings v. i — 27 Matt. viii. 3 : Qi\u}, Kadaplcrd-qTi. AFTER these shorter anecdotes we have the longer episode of Naaman.^ A part of the misery inflicted by the Syrians on Israel was caused by the forays in which their light- armed bands, very much like the borderers on the marches of Wales or Scotland, descended upon the country and carried off plunder and captives before they could be pursued. In one of these raids they had seized a little Israelitish girl and sold her to be a slave. She had been purchased for the household of Naaman, the captain of the Syrian host, who had helped his king and nation to win important victories either against Israel or against Assyria. Ancient Jewish tradition identified him with the man who had " drawn his bow at a venture " and slain King Ahab. But all Naaman's valour and rank and fame, and the honour felt for him by his king, were valueless to him, for he was suffering from the horrible affliction of leprosy. Lepers do not seem to ' It is curiously omitted by Josephus, though he mentions him {"Ajxavos:) as the slayer of Ahab (Ant/., Vlll. xv. 5). The name is an old Hebrew name (Num. xxvi. 40). 50 v.i-27.] THE STORY OF NAAMAN 51 have been segregated in other countries so strictly as they were in Israel, or at any rate Naaman's leprosy was not of so severe a form as to incapacitate him from his public functions. But it was evident that he was a man who had won the affection of all who knew him ; and the little slave girl who waited on his wife breathed to her a passionate wish that Naaman could visit the Man of God in Samaria, for he would recover him from his leprosy. The saying was repeated, and one of Naaman's friends mentioned it to the king of Syria. Benhadad was so much struck by it that he instantly determined to send a letter, with a truly royal gift to the king of Israel, who could, he supposed, as a matter of course, command the services of the prophet. The letter came to Jehoram with a stupendous present of ingots of silver to the value of ten talents, and six thousand pieces of gold, and ten changes of raiment.^ After the ordinary salutations, and a mention of the gifts, the letter continued " And now, when this letter is come to thee, behold I have sent Naaman my servant, that thou mayest recover him of his leprosy." Jehoram lived in perpetual terror of his powerful and encroaching neighbour. Nothing was said in the letter about the Man of God ; and the king rent his clothes, exclaiming that he was not God to kill and to make alive, and that this must be a base pretext for a quarrel. It never so much as occurred to him, as it certainly would have done to Jehoshaphat, that the prophet, who was so widely known and honoured, and whose mission had been so clearly attested in the invasion of Moab, might at least help him to face this ' The word Vboosh means a gala dress. Comp. v. 5; Gen. xlv. 22. XiTwi-es iTrrmoi^oi (Horn., Oc/,, xiv. 514). Comp. viii. 249. 52 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS problem. Otherwise the difficulty might indeed seem insuperable, for leprosy was universally regarded as an incurable disease. But Elisha was not afraid : he boldly told Jehoram to send the Syrian captain to him. Naaman, with his horses and his chariots, in all the splendour of a royal ambassador, drove up to the humble house of the prophet. Being so great a man, he expected a de- ferential reception, and looked for the performance of his cure in some striking and dramatic manner. ** The prophet," so he said to himself, " will come out, and solemly invoke the name of his God Jehovah, and wave his hand over the leprous limbs, and so work the miracle."^ But the servant of the King of kings was not exult- antly impressed, as false prophets so often are, by earthly greatness. Elisha did not even pay him the compliment of coming out of the house to meet him. He wished to efface himself completely, and to fix the leper's thoughts on the one truth that if heahng was granted to him, it was due to the gift of God, not to the thaumaturgy or arts of man. He simply sent out his servant to the Syrian commander-in-chief with the brief message, " Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and be thou clean." Naaman, accustomed to the extreme deference of many dependants, was not only ojffended, but enraged, by what he regarded as the scant courtesy and pro- crastinated boon of the prophet. Why was he not received as a man of the highest distinction ? What necessity could there be for sending him all the way to the Jordan ? And why was he bidden to wash in that wretched, useless, tortuous stream, rather than in ' Kiisha would not be likely to touch the place. V. 1-27.] THE STORY OF NAAMAN 53 the pure and flowing waters of his own native Abanah and Pharpar?^ How was he to tell that this "Man of God " did not design to mock him by sending him on a fool's errand, so that he would come back as a laughing-stock both to the Israelites and to his own people ? Perhaps he had not felt any great faith in the prophet, to begin with ; but whatever he once felt had now vanished. He turned and went away in a rage. But in this crisis the affection of his friends and servants stood him in good stead. Addressing him, in their love and pity, by the unusual term of honour "my father," they urged upon him that, as he certainly would not have refused some great test, there was no reason why he should refuse this simple and humble one. He was won over by their reasonings, and descend- ing the hot steep valley of the Jordan, bathed himself in the river seven times. God healed him, and, as Elisha had promised, "his flesh," corroded by leprosy, " came again like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean." This healing of Naaman is alluded to by our Lord to illustrate the truth that the love of God extended farther than the limits of the chosen race ; that His Fatherhood is co-extensive with the whole family of man. It is difficult to conceive the transport of a man cured of this most loathsome and humiliating of all earthly afflictions. Naaman, who seems to have pos- sessed "a mind naturally Christian," was filled with gratitude. Unlike the thankless Jewish lepers whom Christ cured as He left Engannim, this alien returned ' Now the Burdda (" cold ") and the Nahr-el-Awaj. 54 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS to give glory to God. Once more the whole imposing cavalcade rode through the streets of Samaria, and stopped at Elisha's door. This time Naaman was ■ 'admitted into his presence. He saw, and no doubt Elisha had strongly impressed on him the truth, that his healing was the work not of man but of God ; and as he had found no help in the deities of Syria, he confessed that the God of Israel was the only true God among those of the nations. In token of his thankful- ness he presses Elisha, as God's instrument in the unspeakable mercy which has been granted to him .o accept "a blessing" (i.e., a present) from him — "from thy servant," as he humbly styled himself Elisha was no greedy Balaam. It was essential that Naaman and the Syrians should not look on him as on some vulgar sorcerer who wrought wonders for " the rewards of divination." His wants were so simple that he stood above temptation. His desires and treasures were not on earth. To put an end to all importunit}', he appealed to Jehovah with his usual solemn formula — " As the Lord liveth before Avhom I stand, I will receive no present."^ Still more deeply impressed by the prophet's incor- ruptible superiority to so much as a suspicion of low motives, Naaman asked that he might receive two mules' burden of earth wherewith to build an altar to the God of Israel of His own sacred soil.- The very ' Compare the answer of Abraham to the King of Sodom (Gen, xiv. 23.) '^ The feeling which influenced Naaman is the same which led the Jews to build Nahardea in Persia of stones from Jerusalem. Altars were to be of earth (Exod. xx. 24), but no altar is mentioned in 2 Kings v. 17, and the LXX. does not even specify earth (yofios ^070$ rnJLibvujv). V. 1-27.] THE STORY OF NAAMAN 55 soil ruled by such a God must, he thought, be holier than other soil ; and he wished to take it back to Syria, just as the people of Pisa rejoiced to fill their Campo Santo with mould from the Holy Land, and just as mothers like to baptize their children in water brought home from the Jordan. Henceforth, said Naaman, I will offer burnt-ofifering and sacrifice to no God but unto Jehovah. Yet there was one difficulty in the way. When the King of Syria went to worship in the temple of his god Rimmon it was the duty of Naaman to accompany him.^ The king leaned on his hand, and when he bowed before the idol it was Naaman's duty to bow also. He begged that for this concession God would pardon him. Elisha's answer was perhaps different from what Elijah might have given. He practically allowed Naaman to give this sign of outward compliance with idolatry, by saying to him, " Go in peace." It is from this circumstance that the phrase " to bow in the house of Rimmon " has become proverbial to indicate a dangerous and dishonest compromise. But Elisha's permission must not be misunderstood. He did but hand over this semi-heathen convert to the grace of God. It must be remembered that he lived in days long preceding the conviction that proselytism is a part of true religion ; in days when the thought of missions to heathen lands was utterly unknown. The position of Naaman was wholly different from that of any ' This is the only place in Scripture where Rimmon is mentioned, though we have the name Tab-Rimmon (" Rimmon is good"), I Kings XV. l8, and Hadad-Rimmon (Zech. xii, ll). He was the god of the thunder. The word means " pomegranate," and some have fancied that this was one of his symbols. But the resemblance maj' be accidental, and the name was properly Raiuman, S6 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS Israelite. He was only the convert, or the half-convert of a day, and though he acknowledged the supremacy of Jehovah as alone worthy of his worship, he probably shared in the belief — common even in Israel — that there were other gods, local gods, gods of the nations, to whom Jehovah might have divided the limits of their power.^ To demand of one who, like Naaman, had been an idolater all his days, the sudden abandonment of every custom and tradition of his life, would have been to demand from him an unreasonable, and, in his circumstances, useless and all but impossible self- sacrifice. The best way- was to let him feel and see for himself the futility of Rimmon-worship. If he were not frightened back from his sudden faith in Jehovah, the scruple of conscience which he already felt in making his request might naturally grow within him and lead him to all that was best and highest. The temporary condonation of an imperfection might be a wise step towards the ultimate realisation of a truth. We cannot at all blame Elisha, if, with such knowledge as he then possessed, he took a mercifully tolerant view of the exigencies of Naaman's position. The bowing in the house of Rimmon under such conditions probably seemed to him no more than an act of outward respect to the king and to the national religion in a case where no evil results could follow from Naaman's example.^ ' See Deut. xxxii. 8, where the LXX. has Kara dpidixbv dyy^Xcoi'. * The moral difficulty must have been early felt, for the Alexandrian LXX. reads Kal irpoaKW-qauj &/j.a avrip eyu) Kvplip ry Qe(f /xov. But he would still be bowing in the House of Rimmon, though he might in his heart worship'God. " Elisha, like Elijah " (says Dean Stanley), "made no effort to set right what had gone so wrong. Their mission was to make the best of what they found ; not to bring back a rule of religion which had passed away, but to dwell on the Moral Law which could be fulfilled everywhere, not on the Ceremonial Law V. 1-27.] THE. STORY OF NAAMAN 57 But the general principle that we must not bow in the house of Rimmon remains unchanged. The light and knowledge vouchsafed to us far transcend those which existed in times when men had not seen the days of the Son of Man. The only rule which sincere Christians can follow is to* have no truce with Canaan, no halting between two opinions, no tampering, no compliance, no connivance, no complicity with evil, — even no tolerance of evil as far as their own conduct is concerned. No good man, in the light of the Gospel dispensation, could condone himself in seeming to sanction — still less in doing — anything which in his opinion ought not to be done, or in saying anything which implied his own acquiescence in things which he knows to be evil. "Sir," said a parishioner to one of the non-juring clergy : " there is many a man who has made a great gash in his conscience ; cannot you make a little nick in yours ? " No I a little nick is, in one sense, as fatal as great gash. It is an abandonment of the principle ; it is a violation of the Law. The wrong of it consists in this — that all evil begins, not in the com- mission of great crimes, but in the slight divergence from right rules. The angle made by two lines may be infinitesimally small, but produce the lines and it may require infinitude to span the separation between the lines which inclose so tiny an angle. The wise man gave the only true rule about wrong-doing, when he said, *' Enter not into the path of the wicked and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn which circumstances seemed to have put out of their reach : ' not sending the Shunammite to Jerusalem ' (says Cardinal Newman), ' not eager for a proselyte in Naaman, yet making the heathen fear the Name of God, and proving to them that there was a prophet in Israel'" (Stanley, Lectures, ii. 377; Newman, Sermons, viii. 415). 58 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS from it and pass awa}^" ^ And the reason for his rule is that the beginning of sin — Hke the beginning of strife — " is as when one letteth out water." ^ - The proper answer to all abuses of any supposed concession to the lawfulness of bowing in the house of Rimmon — if that be interpreted to mean the doing of anything which our consciences cannot wholly ap- prove— is Obsta principiis — avoid the beginnings of evil. "We are not worst at once; the course of evil Begins so slowly, and from such slight source, An infant's hand might stem the breach with clay ; But let the stream grow wider, and philosophy, Age, and religion too, may strive in vain To stem the headstrong current." The mean cupidity of Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, gives a deplorable sequel to the story of the prophet's^ 'magnanimity. This man's wretched greed did its utmost to nuHify the good influence of his master's example. There may be more wicked acts recorded in Scripture than that of Gehazi, but there is scarcely one which shows so paltry a disposition. He had heard the conversation between his master and the Syrian marshal, and his cunning heart despised as a futile sentimentality the magnanimity which had refu.sed an eagerly proffered reward. Naaman was rich : he had received a priceless boon ; it would be rather a pleasure to him than otherwise to return for it some acknowledgment which he would not miss. Had he not even seemed a little hurt by Elisha's refusal to receive it ? What possible harm could there be in taking what he was anxious to give ? And how useful those magnificent presents would be, and to what excellent uses could the}' be put I He could not approve of the fantastic and unpractical scrupulosity ' Piov. iv. 14, 15. - Prov. xvii. 14. V. 1-27.] THE STORY OF NAAMAN 59 which had led Elisha to refuse the " blessing " which he had so richly earned. Such attitudes of unworldli- ness seemed entirely foolish to Gehazi. So pleaded the Judas-spirit within the man. By such specious delusions he .inflamed his own covetous- ness, and fostered the evil temptation which had taken sudden and powerful hold upon his heart, until it took shape in a wicked resolve. The mischief of Elisha's quixotic refusal was done, but it could be speedily undone, and no one would be the worse. The evil spirit was whispering to Gehazi : — "Be mine and Sin's for one short hour; and then Be all thy life the happiest man of men." " Behold," he said, with some contempt both for Elisha and for Naaman, " my master hath let off this Naaman the Syrian ; but as the Lord liveth I will run after him, and take somewhat of him." "As the Lord liveth!" It had been a favourite appeal of Elijah and Elisha, and the use of it by Gehazi shows how utterly meaningless and how very dangerous such solemn words become when they are degraded into formulae.^ It is thus that the habit of swearing begins. The light use of holy words very soon leads to their utter degradation. How keen is the satire in Cowper's little story : — " A Persian, humble servant of the sun, Who, though devout, yet bigotry had none, Hearing a lawyer, grave in his address, "With adjurations every word impress, — Supposed the man a bishop, or, at least, God's Name so often on his lips — a priest. Bowed at the close with all his gracious airs, And begged an interest in his frequent prayers!" ' On Gehazi's lips it meant no more than the incessant Wallah, "by God," of Mohammedans. 6o THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS Had Gehazi felt their true meaning — had he realised that on Elisha's lips they meant something infinitely more real than on his own, he would not have forgotten that in Elisha's answer to Naaman they had all the validity of an oath, and that he was inflicting on his master a shameful wrong, when he led Naaman to believe that, after so sacred an adjuration, the prophet had frivolously changed his mind. Gehazi had not very far to run,^ for in a country full of hills, and of which the roads are rough, horses and chariots advance but slowly. Naaman, chancing to glance backwards, saw the prophet's attendant running after him. Anticipating that he must be the bearer of some message from Elisha, he not, only halted the cavalcade, but sprang down from his chariot,"'^ and went to meet him with the anxious question, " Is all well ? " " Well," answered Gehazi ; and then had ready his cunning lie. " Two youths," he said, " of the prophetic schools had just unexpectedly come to his master from the hill country of Ephraim ; and though he would accept nothing for himself, Elisha would be glad if Naaman would spare him two changes of garments, and one talent of silver for these poor members of a sacred calling."^ Naaman must have been a little more or a little less than human if he did not feel a touch of disappointment on hearing this message. The gift was nothing to him. ' 2 Kings V. 19. Heb., kibWath aretz, "a little way" — literally, "a space of country." (The Vatican LXX. follows another reading, eh At^paOk rr/s yrjs ; Vulg., electa terras tempore \1'\.') ' LXX., KaTeir-qd-r}a /j.h ovk4tl . . . (pavepQis di. vi. 1-23.] ELISHA AND THE SYRIANS 75 place, the encompassing of Dothan had been carried out by "« great host with horses and chariots," which is hardly consistent with the notion of a foray, though it creates new difficulties as to the numbers whom Elisha led to Samaria ; secondly, the substitution of a direct invasion for predatory incursions would have been no gain to Israel, but a more deadly peril ; and, thirdly, if it was fear of Elisha which stopped the king's raids, it is strange that it had no effect in preventing his invasions. We have, however, no data for any final solution of these problems, and it is useless to meet them with a network of idle conjectures. Such diffi- culties naturally occur in narratives so vague and unchronological as those presented to us in the docu- ments from the story of Ehsha which the compiler wove into his history of Israel and Judah.^ ' Kittel, following Kuenen, surmises that this story has got mis- placed ; that it does not belong to the days of Jehoram ben-Ahab and Benhadad II., but to the days of Jehoahaz ben-Jehu and Benhadad III., the son of Hazael {Gesch. der Hebr., 249). In a very uncertain ques- tion I have followed the conclusion arrived at by the majority of scholars, ancient and modern. CHAPTER VIII THE FAMINE AND THE SIEGE 2 Kings vi. 24 — vii, 20 "Tis truly no good plan when princes play The vulture among carrion ; but when They play the carrion among vultures — that Is ten times worse." Lessing, Nathan the Wise, Act I., Sc. 3. IF the Benhadad, King of Syria, who reduced Samaria to the horrible straits recorded in this chapter, (2 Kings vi.) was the same Benhadad whom Ahab had treated with such impohtic confidence, his hatred against Israel must indeed have burned hotly. Besides the affair at Dothan, he had already been twice routed with enormous slaughter, and against those disasters he could only set the death of Ahab at Ramoth-Gilead. It is obvious from the preceding narrative that he could advance at any time at his will and pleasure into the heart of his enemy's country, and shut him up in his capital almost without resistance. The siege-trains of ancient days were very inefficient, and any strong fortress could hold out for years, if only it was well provisioned. Such was not the case with Samaria, and it was reduced to a condition of sore famine. Food so loathsome as an ass's head, which at other times the poorest would have spurned, was now sold for eighty shekels' weight of silver (about ;^8) ; and the fourth part 76 vl, 24-vii. 20.] THE FAMINE AND THE SIEGE >j>j of a xestes or kab — which was itself the smallest dry- measure, the sixth part of a seah — of the coarse, common pulse, or roasted chick-peas, vulgarly known as "dove's dung," fetched five shekels (about I2s. 6d.)} While things were at this awful pass, ** the King of Israel," as he is vaguely called throughout this story, went his rounds upon the wall to visit the sentries and encourage the soldiers in their defence. As he passed, a woman cried, '* Help, my lord, O king ! " In Eastern monarchies the king is a judge of the humblest ; a suppliant, however mean, may cry to him. Jehoram thought that this was but one of the appeals which sprang from the clamorous mendicity of famine with which he had grown so painfully familiar. " The Lord curse you ! " he exclaimed impatiently.^ " How can I help you ? Every barn-floor is bare, every wine-press drained." And he passed on. But the woman continued her wild clamour, and turning round at her importunity, he asked, ** What aileth thee ? " He heard in reply a narrative as appalling as ever smote the ear of a king in a besieged city. Among the curses denounced upon apostate Israel in the Pentateuch, we read, *' Ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat " ; ^ or, as it is expressed more fully in the Book ' So asafoetida is called "devil's dung" in Germany; and the Herba alcali, " sparrow's dung " by Arabs. The Qri, however, supports the literal meaning; and compare 2 Kings xviii. 27 ; Jos., B.J., V. xiii. 7. Analogies for these prices are quoted from classic authors. Plutarch (Artax., xxiv.) mentions a siege in which an ass's head could hardly be got for sixty drachmas (J^2 los.), though usually the whole animal only cost £1. Pliny (H. N., viii. 57) says that during Hannibal's siege of Casilinum a mouse sold for j{^6 5s. ^ So Clericus. Comp. Jos. iir-qpAaaro ain^. ^ Lev. xxvi. 29. 78 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS of Deuteronomy, " He shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout all thy land. . . . And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath given thee, in the siege, and in the straitness wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee : so that the man that is tender among you, and very delicate, his eye shall be evil towards his brother, and towards the wife of his bosom, and towards the remnant of his children which he shall leave ; so that he shall not give to any of them of the flesh of his children whom he shall eat, because he hath nothing left him in the siege. . . . The tender and delicate woman, which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil towards the husband of her bosom, and towards her son, and towards her daughter, and towards her children : for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the siege and the straitness, if thou wilt not observe to do all the words of the law, . . . that thou mayest fear the glorious and fearful name, The Lord thy God." ^ We find almost the same words in the prophet Jeremiah ; ^ and in Lamentations we read : '* The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children : they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of My people." ^ Isaiah asks, " Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb ? " Alas I it has always been so in those awful scenes of famine, whether after shipwreck or in be- leaguered cities, when man becomes degraded to an animal, with all an animal's primitive instincts, and ' Deut. xxviii. 52-58- ^ Jer, xix. 9. 3 Lam. iv. loicomp. ii. 20; Ezek. v. 10; Jos., B.J., VI. iii. 4. vi. 2]-vii. 20.] THE FAMINE AND THE SIEGE 79 when the wild beast appears under the thin veneer of civihsation. So it v/as at the siege of Jerusalem, and at the siege of Magdeburg, and at the wreck of the Medusa, and on many another occasion when the pangs of hunger have corroded away every vestige of the tender affections and of the moral sense. And this had occurred at Samaria : her women had become cannibals and devoured their own little ones. " This woman," screamed the suppliant, pointing her lean finger at a wretch like herself — " this woman said unto me, * Give thy son, that we may eat him to-day, and we will afterwards eat my son.' I yielded to her suggestion. We killed my little son, and ate his flesh when we had sodden it. Next day I said to her, ' Now give thy son, that we may eat him ' ; and she hath hid her son ! " How could the king answer such a horrible appeal ? Injustice had been done ; but was he to order and to sanction by way of redress fresh cannibalism, and the murder by its mother of another babe ? In that foul obliteration of every natural instinct, what could he do, what could any man do ? Can there be equity among raging wild beasts, when they roar for their prey and are unfed ? All that the miserable king could do was to rend his clothes in horror and to pass on, and as his starving subjects passed by him on the wall they saw that he wore sackcloth beneath his purple, in sign, if not of repentance, yet of anguish, if not of" prayer, yet of uttermost humiliation.^ But if indeed he had, in his misery, donned that sackcloth in order that at least the semblance of self- mortification might move Jehovah to pity, as it had ' I Kings xxi. 2.7 ; Isa, xx. 2, 3. 8o THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS done ill the case of his father Ahab, the external sign of his humihty had done nothing to change his heart. The gruesome appeal to which he had just been forced to listen only kindled him to a burst of fury.^ The man who had warned, who had prophesied, who so far during this siege had not raised his finger to help — the man who was believed to be able to wield the powers of heaven, and had wrought no deliverance for his people, but suffered them to sink unaided into these depths ef abjectness — should he be permitted to live ? If Jehovah would not help, of what use was Elisha ? " God do so to me, and more also," exclaimed Jehoram — using his mother's oath to Elijah ^ — " if the head of Elisha, the son of Shaphat, shall stand on him this day." Was this the king who had come to Elisha with such humble entreaty, when three armies were perishing of thirst before the eyes of Moab ? Was this the king who had called Elisha ** my father," when the prophet had led the deluded host of Syrians into Samaria, and bidden Jehoram to set large provision before them ? It was the same king, but now transported with fury and reduced to despair. His threat against God's prophet was in reality a defiance of God, as when our unhappy Plantagenet, Henry II., maddened by the loss of Le Mans, exclaimed that, since God had robbed him of the town he loved, he would pay God out by robbing Him of that which He most loved in him — his soul. Jehoram's threat was meant in grim earnest, and he sent an executioner to carry it out. Elisha was sitting in his house with the elders of the city, who had come ' Compare the wrath of Pashur the priest in consequence of the denunciation of Jeremiah (Jer. xx. 2). '^ I Kings xix. 2, vi. 24-vii. 20.] THE FAMINE AND THE SIEGE 8i to him for counsel at this hour of supreme need. He knew what was intended for him, and it had also been revealed to him that the king would follow his messenger to cancel his sanguinary threat. " See ye," he said to the elders, " how this son of a murderer " — for again he indicates his contempt and indignation for the son of Ahab and Jezebel — " hath sent to behead me ! When he comes, shut the door, and hold it fast against him. His master is following hard at his heels." The messenger came, and was refused admittance. The king followed him,^ and entering the room where the prophet and elders sat, he gave up his wicked design of slaying Elisha with the sword, but he over- whelmed him with reproaches, and in despair renounced all further trust in Jehovah. Elisha, as the king's words imply, must have refused all permission to capitulate : he must have held out from the first a promise that God would send deliverance. But no deliverance had come. The people were starving. Women were devouring their babes. Nothing worse could happen if they flung open their gates to the Syrian host. " Behold," the king said^ " this evil is Jehovah's doing. You have deceived us. Jehovah does not intend to deliver us. Why should I wait for Him any longer ? " Perhaps the king meant to imply that his mother's Baal was better worth serving, and would never have left his votaries to sink into these straits. And now man's extremity had eome, and it was God's opportunity. Elisha at last was permitted to announce that the worst was over, that the next day ' In 2 Kings vi. 33 we should read mekk (king) for maleak (messenger). Jehoram repented of his hasty order. 6 82 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS plenty should smile on the besieged city. ** Thus saith the Lord," he exclaimed to the exhausted and despondent king, "To-morrow about this time, instead of an ass's head being sold for eighty shekels, and a thimbleful of pulse for five shekels, a peck of fine flour shall be sold for a shekel, and two pecks of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria." The king was leaning on the hand of his chief officer, and to this soldier the promise seemed not only incredible, but silly : for at the best he could only suppose that the Syrian host would raise the siege ; and though to hope for that looked an absurdity, yet even that would not in the least fulfil the immense prediction. He answered, therefore, in utter scorn : " Yes ! Jehovah is making windows in heaven 1 But even thus could this be ? " It is much as if he should have answered some solemn pledge with a derisive proverb such as, " Yes ! if the sky should fall, we should catch larks ! " Such contemptuous repudiation of a Divine promise was a blasphemy ; and answering scorn with scorn, and riddle with riddling, Elisha answers the mocker, "Yes 1 andjvoM shall see this, but shall not enjoy it." The word of the Lord was the word of a true prophet, and the miracle was wrought. Not only was the siege raised, but the wholly unforeseen spoil of the entire Syrian camp, with all its accumulated rapine, brought about the predicted plenty. There were four lepers ^ outside the gate of Samaria, like the leprous mendicants who gather there to this day. They were cut off from all human society, except their own. Leprosy was treated as contagious, and if " houses of the unfortunate " {Biut-el-Masdkin) were ' The Jews say Gehazi, and his three sons (Jarchi). vi. 24-vii. 20.] THE FAMINE AND THE SIEGE 83 provided for them, as seems to have been the case at Jerusalem, they were built outside the city walls.^ They could only live by beggary, and this was an aggrava- tion of their miserable condition. And how could any one fling food to these beggars over the walls, when food of any kind was barely to be had within them ? So taking counsel of their despair, they decided that they would desert to the Syrians : among them they would at least find food, if their lives were spared ; arid if not, death would be a happy release from their present misery. So in the evening twilight, when they could not be seen or shot at from the city wall as deserters, they stole down to the Syrian camp. When they reaehed its outermost circle, to their amazement all was silence. They crept into one of the tents in fear and astonishment. There was food and drink there, and they satisfied the cravings of their hunger. It was also stored with booty from the plundered cities and villages of Israel. To this they helped themselves, and took it away and hid it. iiaiwig spoiled^ this tent, they entered a second. It was like- wise deserted, and they earned a fresh store of trea- sures to their hidjng-pl^^^^ And then thev began to leel uneasy at not divulging to their starving fellow- citizens the strange and golden tidings of a deserted canip„.,_Xhe night was wearing on ; day would reveal the secret. If they carried the good news, they would doubtless earn a rich guerdon. If they waited till morning, they might be put to death for their selfish retjcence and thefit. It was safest to return to the city, and rouse the warder, and send a message to the palace. So the lepers hurried back through the night, ' Lev. xiii. 46 ; Num. v. 2, 3. 84 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS and shouted to the sentinel at the gate, "We went to the Syrian camp, and it was deserted I Not a man was there, not a sound was to be heard. The horses were tethered there, and the asses, and the tents were left just as they were." The sentinel called the other watchmen to hear the wonderful news, and instantly ran with it to the palace. The slumbering house was roused ; and though it was still night, the king himself arose. But he could not shake off his despondency, and made no reference to Elisha's prediction. News sometimes sounds too good to be true. ** It is only a decoy," he said. " They can only have left their camp to lure us into an ambuscade, that they may return, and slaughter us, and capture our city." " Send to see," answered one of his courtiers. " Send five horsemen to test the truth, and to look out. If they perish, their fate is but the fate of us all." So two chariots with horses were despatched, with instructions not only to visit the camp, but track the movements of the host. They went, and found that it was as the lepers had said. The camp was deserted, and lay there as an immense booty ; and for some reason the Syrians had fled towards the Jordan to make good their escape to Damascus by the eastern bank. The whole road was strewn with the traces of their headlong flight ; it was full of scattered garments and vessels. Probably, too, the messengers came across some disabled fugitive, and learnt the secret of this amazing stampede. It was the result of one of those sudden unaccountable panics to which the huge, unwieldy, heterogeneous Eastern armies, which have no organised system of sentries, and no trained discipline, are con- vi. 24-vii. 20.] THE FAMINE AND THE SIEGE 85 stantly liable. We have already met with several instances in the history of Israel. Such was the panic which seized the Midianites when Gideon's three hundred blew their trumpets ; and the panic of the Syrians before Ahab's pages of the provinces ; and of the combined armies in the Valley of Salt ; and of the Moabites at Wady-el-Ahsy ; and afterwards of the Assyrians before the walls of Jerusalem. Fear is physically contagious, and, when once it has set in, it. swells with such unaccountable violence, that the Greeks called these terrors '' panic," because they believed them to be directly inspired by the god Pan. Well-disciplined as was the army of the Ten Thousand Greeks in their famous retreat, they nearly fell victims to a sudden panic, had not Clearchus, with prompt resource, published by the herald the proclamation of a reward for the arrest of the man who had let the ass loose. Such an unaccountable terror — caused by a noise as of chariots and of horses which rever- berated among the hills — had seized the Syrian host. They thought that Jehoram had secretly hired an army of the princes of the Khetas ^ and of the Egyptians to march suddenly upon them. In wild confusion, not stopping to reason or to inquire, they took to flight, increasing their panic by the .noise and rush of their own precipitance. No sooner had the messengers delivered their glad tidings, than the people of Samaria began to pour tumultuously out of the gates, to fling themselves on the food and on the spoil. It was like the rush of the dirty, starving, emaciated wretches which horrified the keepers ' The capitals of the ancient Hittites — a nation whose fame had been almost entirely obliterated till a few years ago — were Karchemish, Kadesh, Hamath, and Helbon (Aleppo). 86 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS of the reserved stores at Smolensk in Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, and forced them to shut the gates, and fling food and grain to the struggling soldiers out of the windows of the granaries To secure order and prevent disaster, the king appointed his attendant lord to keep the gate. But the torrent of people flung him down, and they trampled on his body in their eagerness for relief He died after having seen that the promise of EHsha was fulfilled, and that the cheapness and abundance had been granted, the prophecy of which he thought only fit for his sceptical derision. "The sudden panic which delivered the city," says Dean Stanley, " is the one marked intervention on behalf of the northern capital. No other incident could be found in the sacred annals so appropriately to express, in the Church of Gouda, the pious gratitude of the citizens of Leyden, for their deliverance from the Spanish army, as the miraculous raising of the siege of Samaria."^ ' Lectures, ii. 345. CHAPTER IX THE SHUNAMMITE AND HAZAEL 2 Kings viii. i — 6, 7 — 15. (Circ, b.c. 886.) "Our acts still follow with us from afar, And what we have been makes us what we are." George Eliot. THE next anecdote of Elisha brings us once more into contact with the Lady of Shunem. Famines, or dearths, were unhappily of very frequent occurrence in a country which is so wholly dependent, as Palestine is, upon the early and latter rain. On some former occasion Elisha had foreseen that " Jehovah had called for a famine " ; for the sword, the famine, and the pestilence are represented as ministers who wait His bidding.^ He had also foreseen that it would be of long duration, and in kindness to the Shunam- mite had warned her that she had better remove for a time into a land in which there was greater plenty. It was under similar circumstances that Elimelech and Naomi, ancestors of David's line, had taken their sons Mahlon and Chilion, and gone to live in the land of Moab; and, indeed, the famine which decided the migration of Jacob and his children into Egypt had been a turning-point in the history of the Chosen People. ' Jar. XXV. 29; Ezek, xxxviii. 21. 87 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS The Lady of Shunem had learnt by experience the weight of EHsha's words. Her husband is not men- tioned, and was probably dead ; so she arose with her household, and went for seven years to live in the plain of Philistia. At the end of that time the dearth had ceased, and she returned to Shunem, but only to find that during her absence her house and land were in possession of other owners, and had probably escheated to the Grown. The king was the ultimate, and to a great extent the only, source of justice in his little kingdom, and she went to lay her claim before him and demand the restitution of her property. By a providential circumstance she came exactly at the most favourable moment. The king — it must have been Jehoram — was at the very time talking to Gehazi about the great works of Elisha. As it is unlikely that he would converse long with a leper, and as Gehazi is still called "the servant of the man of God," the incident may here be narrated out of order. It is pleasant to find Jehoram taking so deep an interest in the prophet's story. Already on many occasions during his wars with Moab and Syria, as well as on the occasion of Naaman's visit, if that had already occurred, he had received the completest proof of the reality of Elisha's mission, but he might be naturally unaware of the many private incidents in which he had exhibited a supernatural power. Among other stories Gehazi was telling him that of the Shunammite, and how Elisha htid given life to her dead son. At that juncture she came before the king, and Gehazi said, " My lord, O king, this is the very woman, and this is her son whom -ha recalled to life." In answer to Jehoram's questions she confirmed the story, and he was so much impressed by the narrative that he not only ordered viii. 1-6, 7-15.] THE SHUNAMMITE AND HAZAEL 89 the immediate restitution of her land, but also of the value of its products during the seven years of her exile. We now come to the fulfilment of the second of the commands which Elijah had received so long before at Horeb. To complete the retribution which was yet to fall on Israel, he had been bidden to anoint Hazael to be king of Syria in the room of Benhadad. Hitherto the mandate had remained unfulfilled, because no oppor- tunity had occurred ; but the appointed time had now arrived. Elisha, for some purpose, and during an interval of peace, visited Damascus, where the visit of Naaman and the events of the Syrian wars had made his name very famous. Benhadad II., grandson or great-grandson of Rezin, after a stormy reign of some thirty years, marked by some successes, but also by the terrible reverses already recorded, lay danger- ously ill. Hearing the news that the wonder-working prophet of Israel was in his capital, he sent to ask of him the question, " Shall I recover ? " It had been the custom from the earliest days to propitiate the favour of prophets by presents, without which even the humblest suppliant hardly ventured to approach them.^ The gift sent by Benhadad was truly royal, for he thought perhaps that he could purchase the intercession or the miraculous intervention of this mighty thauma- turge. He sent Hazael with a selection " of every good thing of Damascus," and, like an Eastern, he endea- voured to make his offering seem more magnificent ^ by distributing it on the backs of forty camels. At the head of this imposing procession of camels ' See the cases of Samuel (i Sam. ix. 7), of Ahijah (i Kings xiv. 3), and of Elisha himself (2 Kings iv. 42). - As Jacob did in sending forward his present to Esau. Comp. Chardin, Voyages, iii. 217. 90 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS walked Hazael, the commander of the forces, and stood in Elisha's presence with the humble appeal, " Thy son Benhadad, King of Syria, hath sent me to thee, saying, Shall I recover of this disease ? " About the king's munificence we are told no more, but we cannot doubt that it was refused. If Naaman's still costlier blessing had been rejected, though he was about to receive through Elisha's ministration an in- estimable boon, it is unlikely that Elisha would accept a gift for which he could offer no return, and which, in fact, directly or indirectly, involved the death of the sender. But the historian does not think it neces- sary to pause and tell us that Elisha sent back the forty camels unladen of their treasures. It was not worth while to narrate what was a matter of course. If it had been no time, a few years earlier, to receive money and garments, and olive-yards and vineyards, and men-servants and maid-servants, still less was it a time to do so now. The days were darker now than they had been, and Elisha himself stood near the Great White Throne. The protection of these fearless prophets lay in their utter simplicity of soul. They rose above human fears because they stood above human desires. What Elisha possessed was more than sufficient for the needs of the plain and humble life of one whose com- muning was with God. It was not wonderful that prophets should rise to an elevation whence they could look down with indifference upon the superfluities of the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, when even sages of the heathen have attained to a similar inde- pendence of earthly luxuries. One who can chmb such mountain-heights can look with silent contempt on gold. But there is a serious difficulty about Elisha's answer viii. 1-6, 7-15.] THE SHUNAMMITE AND HAZAEL 91 to the embassage. " Go, say unto him " — so it is rendered in our Authorised Version — **Thou mayest certainly recover : howbeit the Lord hath showed me that he shall surely die." It is evident that the translators of 161 1 meant the emphasis to be laid on the '^^ mayest" and understood the answer of Elisha to mean, " Thy recovery is quite possible ; and yet " — he adds to Hazael, and not as part of his answer to the king — "Jehovah has shown me that dying he shall die," — not indeed of this disease, but by other means before he has recovered from it. Unfortunately, however, the Hebrew will not bear this meaning. Elisha bids Hazael to go back with the distinct message, "Thou shalt surely recover," as it is rightly rendered in the Revised Version. This, however, is the rendering, not of the ivritten text as it stands, but of the margin. Every one knows that in the Masoretic original the text itself is called the K'thib, or " what is written," whereas the margin is called Q^ri, " read." Now, our translators, both those of 161 1 and those of the Revision Committee, all but invariably follow the Kethib as the most authentic reading. In this instance, however, they abandon the rule and translate the marginal reading. What, then, is the written text ? It is the reverse of the marginal reading, for it has : "Go, say, Thou shalt not recover." The reader may naturally ask the cause of this startling discrepancy. It seems to be twofold. (I.) Both the Hebrew word /o, "not" (xb), and the word /o, " to him " (i'p), have precisely the same pro- nunciation. Hence this text might mean either " Go, say to hinif Thou shalt certainly recover," or "Go, 92 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS say, Thou shalt not recover." The same identity of the negative and the dative of the preposition has made nonsense of another passage of the Authorised Version, where "Thou hast multipHed the nation, and not in- creased the joy : they joy before Thee according to the joy of harvest," should be " Thou hast multiplied the nation, and increased its joy." So, too, the verse *' It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves," may mean " It is He that hath made us, and to Him we belong." In the present case the adoption of the negative (which would have conveyed to Benhadad the exact truth) is not possible ; for it makes the next clause and its introduction by the word **Howbeit" entirely meaningless. But (II.) this confusion in the text might not have arisen in the present instance but for the difficulty of Elisha's appearing to send a deliberately false message to Benhadad, and a message which he tells Hazael at the time is false. Can this be deemed impossible ? With the views prevalent in "those times of igno- rance," I think not. Abraham and Isaac, saints and patriarchs as they were, both told practical falsehoods about their wives. They, indeed, were reproved for this, though not severely ; but, on the other hand, Jael is not reproved for her treachery to Sisera ; and Samuel, under the semblance of a Divine permission, used a diplomatic ruse when he visited the household of Jesse ; and in the apologue of Micaiah a lying spirit is repre- sented as sent forth to do service to Jehovah; and Elisha himself tells a deliberate falsehood to the Syrians at Dothan. The sensitiveness to the duty of always speaking the exact truth is not felt in the East with anything like the intensity that it is in Christian lands ; viii. 1-6, 7-IS-] THE SHUNAMMITE AND HAZAEL 93 and reluctant as we should be to find in the message of Elisha another instance of that falsitas dispensativa which has been so fatally patronised by some of the Fathers and by many Romish theologians, the love of truth itself would compel us to accept this view of the case, if there were no other possible inter- pretation. I think, however, that another view is possible. I think that Elisha may have said to Hazael, " Go, say unto him. Thou shalt surely recover," with the same accent of irony in which Micaiah said at first to the two kings, " Go up to Ramoth-Gilead, and prosper ; for the Lord shall deliver it into the hand of the king." I think that his whole manner and the tone of his voice may have shown to Hazael, and may have been meant to show him, that this was not Elisha's real message to Benhadad. Or, to adopt the same line of explana- tion with an unimportant difference, Elisha may have meant to imply, " Go, follow the bent which I know you will follow ; go, ^arry back to your master the lying message that I said he would recover. But that is not my message. My message, whether it suits your courtier instincts or not, is that Jehovah has warned me that he shall surely die." That some such meaning as this attaches to the verse seems to be shown by the context. For not only was some reproof involved in Elisha's words, but he showed his grief still more by his manner. It was as though he had said, "Take back what message you choose, but Benhadad will certainly die " ; and then he fastened his steady gaze on the soldier's counte- nance, till Hazael blushed and became uneasy. Only when he noted that Hazael 's conscience was troubled by the glittering eyes which seemed to read the inmost 94 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS secrets of his heart did Elisha drop his glance, and burst into tears. " Why weepeth, my lord ? " asked Hazael, in still deeper uneasiness. Whereupon Elisha revealed to him the future. " I weep," he said, " because I see in thee the curse and the avenger of the sins of my native land. Thou wilt become to them a sword of God ; thou wilt set their fortresses on fire ; thou wilt slaughter their youths ; thou wilt dash their little ones to pieces against the stones ; thou wilt rip up their women with child." That he actually inflicted these savageries of warfare on the miserable Israelites we are not told, but we are told that he smote them in all their coasts ; that Jehovah delivered them into his hands ; that he oppressed Israel all the days of Jehoahaz.-^ That being so, there can be no question that he carried out the same laws of atrocious warfare which belonged to those times and continued long afterwards. Such atrocities were not only inflicted on the Israelites again and again by the Assyrians and others,^ but they themselves had often inflicted them, and inflicted them with what they believed to be Divine approval, on their own enemies.^ Centuries after, one of their own poets accounted it a beatitude to him who should dash the children of the Babylonians against the stones.* As the answer of Hazael is usually read and inter- preted, we are taught to regard it as an indignant declaration that he could never be guilty of such vile deeds. It is regarded as though it were " an abhorrent repudiation of his future self" The lesson often drawn ' 2 Kings X. 32, xiii. 3, 22. ^ Isa, xiii. 15, 16; Hos. x. 14, xiii. 10; Nah. iii. 10. ' See Josh. vi. 17, 21 ; I Sam, xv. 3 ; Lev. xxvii, 28, 29. * Psalm cxxxvii. 9. viii, 1-6, 7-15.] THE SHUNAMMITE AND HAZAEL 9.5 fFom it in sermons is that a man may live to do, and to delight in, crimes which he once hated and deemed it impossible that he should ever commit. The lesson is a most true one, and is capable of a thousand illustrations. It conveys the deeply needed warning that those who, even in thought, dabble with wrong courses, which they qnly regard as venial pecca- dilloes, may live to commit, without any sense of horror, the most enormous offences. It is the explanation of the terrible fact that youths who once seemed innocent and holy-minded may grow up, step by step, into colossal criminals. " Men," says Scherer, " advance unconsciously from errors to faults, and from faults to crimes, till sensibility is destroyed by the habitual spectacle of guilt, and the most savage atrocities come to be dignified by the name of State policy." " Lui-meme a son portrait force de rendre hommage, II fremira d'horreur devant sa propre image." But true and needful as these lessons are, they are entirely beside the mark as deduced from the story of Hazael. What he said was not, as in our Authorised Version, " But what, is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing ? " nor by " great thing " does he mean "so deadly a crime." His words, more accurately rendered in our Revision, are, ** But what is thy servant, which is but a dog, that he should do this great thing ? " or, " But what is the dog, thy servant ? " It was a hypocritic deprecation of the future importance and eminence which Elisha had pro- phesied for him. There is not the least sense of horror either in his words or in his thoughts. He merely means "A mere dog, such as I am, can never accom- plish such great designs." A dog in the East is utterly 96 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS despised ; ^ and Hazael, with Oriental irony, calls himself a dog, though he was the Syrian commander-in-chief — just as a Chinaman, in speaking of himself, adopts the periphrasis " this little thief." Elisha did not notice his sham humility, but told him, " The Lord hath showed me that thou shalt be King over Syria." The date of the event was b.c. 886. The scene has sometimes been misrepresented to Elisha's discredit, as though he suggested to the general the crimes of murder and rebellion. The accusation is entirely untenable. Elisha was, indeed, in one sense, commissioned to anoint Hazael King of Syria, because the cruel soldier had been predestined by God to that position ; but, in another sense, he had no power whatever to give to Hazael the mighty kingdom of Aram, nor to wrest it from the dynasty which had now held it for many generations. All this was brought about, by the Divine purpose, in a course of events entirely out of the sphere of the humble man of God. In the transferring of this crown he was in no sense the agent or the suggester. The thought of usurpa- tion must, without doubt, have been already in Hazael's mind. Benhadad, as far as we know, was childless. At any rate he had no natural heirs, and seems to have been a drunken king, whose reckless undertakings and immense failures had so completely alienated the affections of his subjects from himself and his dynasty, that he died undesired and unlamented, and no hand was uplifted to strike a blow in his defence. It hardly needed a prophet to foresee that the sceptre would be snatched by so strong a hand as that of Hazael from a grasp so feeble as that of Benhadad II. The utmost that Elisha had done was, under Divine guidance, to ' I Sam. xxiv. 14 ; 2 Sam. ix. 8. viii. 1-6, 7-15-] THE SHUNAMMITE AND HAZAEL 97 read his character and his designs, and to tell him that the accomplishment of these designs was near at hand. So Hazael went back to Benhadad, and in answer to the eager inquiry, "What said Elisha to thee ? " he gave the answer which Elisha had foreseen that he meant to give, and which was in any case a falsehood, for it suppressed half of what Elisha had really said. " He told me," said Hazael, "that thou shouldest surely recover." Was the sequel of the interview the murder of Benhadad by Hazael ? The story has usually been so read, but Elisha had neither prophesied this nor suggested it. The sequel is thus described. ** And it came to pass on the morrow, that he took the coverlet,^ and dipped it in water, and spread it on his face, so that he died : and Hazael reigned in his stead." The repetition of the name Hazael in the last clause is superfluous if he was the subject of the previous clause, and it has been consequently conjectured that " he took " is merely the impersonal idiom " one took." Some suppose that, as Benhadad was in the bath, his servant took the bath-cloth, wetted it, and laid its thick folds over the mouth of the helpless king ; others, that he soaked the thick quilt, which the king was too weak to lift away.^ In either case it is hardly likely that a great officer like Hazael would ' "I33P. Jos., Antt., IX. iv. 6, SIktvov Sid^poxov. Aquila, Sym- machus, t6 ffrpQ/xa. Michaelis supposed it to be the moequito-net (/cwj'WTreZoJ'). Comp. I Sam. xix. 13. Ewald suggested " bath- mattress " (iii. 523). Sir G. Grove {s.v. "Elisha," BM. Diet., ii. 923) mentions that Abbas Pasha is said to have been murdered in the same manner. Some, however, think that the measure was taken by way of cure (Bruce, Travels, iii. 33. Klostermann, ad he, alters the text at his pleasure). '^ 2 Kings viii. 15; UXX^rb jxax^ap; Vu\g., siragu/uw; lit., "woven cloth." 7 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS have been in the bath-room or the bed-room of the dying king. Yet we must remember that the Praetorian Prasfect Macro is said to have suffocated Tiberius with his bed-clothes. Josephus says that Hazael strangled his master with a net ; and, indeed, he has generally been held guilty of the perpetration of the murder. But it is fair to give him the benefit of the doubt. Be that as it may, he seems to have reigned for some forty-six years (b.c. 8 86-840), and to have bequeathed the sceptre to a son on whom he had bestowed the old dynastic name of Benhadad. CHAPTER X (I) JEHORAM BEN-JEHOSHAPHAT OF JUDAH B.C. 851—843 (2) AHAZIAH BEN-JEHORAM OF JUDAH B.C. 843 — 842 2 Kings viii. 16—24, ^S — 29 " Bear like the Turk, no brother near the throne." — Pope. THE narrative now reverts to the kingdom of Judah, of which the historian, mainly occupied with the great deeds of the prophet in Israel, takes at this period but little notice. He tells us that in the fifth year of Jehoram of Israel, son of Ahab, his namesake and brother-in-law, Jehoram of Judah, began to reign in Judah, though his father, Jehoshaphat, was then king.^ The statement is full of difficulties, especially as we have been already told (i. 17) that Jehoram ben- Ahab of Israel began to reign in the second year of ' The following genealogy may help to elucidate the troublesome identity of names : — Omri I ' 1 Jehoshaphat Ahab =j= Jezebel I I , , ' Ahaziah Jehoram Athaliah=pJehoram (of Israel). (of Israel). | (of Judah). Ahaziah (of Judah 99 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS Jehoram ben-Jehoshaphat of Judah, and (iii. i) in the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat. It is hardly worth while to pause here to disentangle these com- plexities in a writer who, like most Eastern historians, is content with loose chronological references. By the current mode of reckoning, the twenty-five years of Jehoshaphat's reign may merely mean twenty-three and a month or two of two other years ; and some suppose that, when Jehoram of Judah was about sixteen, his father went on the expedition against Moab, and associated his son with him in the throne. This is only conjecture. Jehoshaphat, of all kings, least needed a coadjutor, particularly so weak and worthless a one as his son ; and though the association of colleagues with themselves has been common in some realms, there is not a single instance of it in the history of Israel and Judah — the case of Uzziah, who was a leper, not being to the point. ^ The kings both of Israel and of Judah at this period, with the single exception of the brave and good Jehoshaphat, were unworthy and miserable. The blight of the Jezebel-marriage and the curse of Baal- worship lay upon both kingdoms. It is scarcely possible to find such wretched monarchs as the two sons of Jezebel — Ahaziah and Jehoram in Israel, and the son-in-law and grandson of Jezebel, Jehoram and Ahaziah, in Judah. Their respective reigns are annals of shameful apostasy, and almost unbroken disaster. Jehoram ben-Jehoshaphat of Judah was thirty-two years old when he began his independent reign, and reigned for eight deplorable years. The fact that his mother's name is (exceptionally) omitted seems to ' Jotham ben-Uzziah was not the colleague of his father, but his public representative. viii. 16-24.] JEHORAM BEN-JEHOSHAPHAT imply that his father Jehoshaphat set the good example of monogamy.^ Jehoram was wholly under the influ- ence of Athahah, his wife, and of Jezebel, his mother- in-law, and he introduced into Judah their alien abominations. He " walked in their way, and did evil in the sight of the Lord." The Chronicler fills up the general remark by saying that he did his utmost to foster idolatry by erecting banioth in the mountains of Judah, and compelled his people to worship there, in order to decentralise the religious services of the kingdom, and so to diminish the glory of the Temple. He introduced Baal-worship into Judah, and either he or his son was the guilty builder of a temple to Baalim, not only on the " opprobrious mount " on which stood the idolatrous chapels of Solomon, but on the Hill of the House itself This temple had its own high priest, and was actually adorned with treasures torn from the Temple of Jehovah."-^ So bad was Jehoram's conduct that the historian can only attribute his non-destruction to the " covenant of salt " which God had made with David, " to give him a lamp for his children always." But if actual destruction did not come upon him and his race, he came very near such a fate, and he certainly experienced that "the path of transgressors is hard." There is nothing to record about him but crime and catastrophe. First Edom revolted. Jehosha- phat had subdued the Edomites, and only allowed them to be governed by a vassal ; now they threw off the yoke. The Jewish King advanced against them to ' The only other king of Judah whose mother's name is not mentioned (perhaps because his father Jotham had but one wife) is Ahaz. ^ 2 Kings xi. l8 ; 2 Chron. xxi. ii, xxiv. 7. THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS " Zair " — by which must be meant apparently either Zoar (through which the road to Edom lay), or their capital, Mount Seir.^ There he was surrounded by the Edomite hosts; and though by a desperate act of valour he cut his way through them at night in spite of their reserve of chariots, yet his army left him in the lurch. Edom succeeded in establishing its final independence, to which we see an allusion in the one hope held out to Esau by Isaac in that ** blessing " which was practi- cally a curse. The loss of so powerful a subject-territory, which now constituted a source of danger on the eastern frontier of Judah, was succeeded by another disaster on the south-west, in the Shephelah or lowland plain. Here Libnah revolted,^ and by gaining its autonomy contracted yet farther the narrow limits of the southern kingdom. The Book of Kings tells us no more about the Jewish Jehoram, only adding that he died and was buried with his fathers, and was succeeded by his son Ahaziah. But the Book of Chronicles, which adds far darker touches to his character, also heightens to an extra- ordinary degree the intensity of his punishment. It tells us that he began his reign by the atrocious murder of his six younger brothers, for whom, following the old precedent of Rehoboam, Jehoshaphat had provided ' Vulg., Seira ; Arab., SaVr (but the historian never uses the name Mount Seir) ; LXX., Stwp. There is perhaps some corruption in the text, and the reading of the Chronicler "with his princes" shows that it may have once been VIK^'Dl?. ^ 2 Kings viii. 21. "The people" (i.e., the army of Judah) "fled to their tents." Apparently this means that they slunk away home. The word "tents" is a reminiscence of their nomad days, like the treasonable cry, "To your tents, O Israel." ' Josh. X. 29-39. viii. 25-29.] AHAZIAH BEN-JEHORAM 103 by establishing them as governors of various cities. As his throne was secure, we cannot imagine any motive for this brutal massacre except the greed of gain, and we can only suppose that, as Jehoram ben-Jehoshaphat became little more than a friendly vassal of his kinsmen in Israel, so he fell under the deadly influence of his wife Athaliah, as completely, as his father-in-law had done under the spell of her mother Jezebel. With his brothers he also swept away a number of the chief nobles, who perhaps embraced the cause of his murdered kinsmen. Such conduct breathes the known spirit of J-ezebel and of Athaliah. To rebuke him for this wickedness, he received the menace of a tremendous judgment upon his home and people in a writing from Elijah, whom we should certainly have assumed to be dead long before that time. The judgment itself followed. The Philistines and Arabians invaded Judah, captured Jerusalem, and murdered all Jehoram's ov/n children, except Ahaziah, who was the youngest. Then Jehoram, at the age of thirty-eight, was smitten with an incurable disease of the bowels, of which he died two years later, and not only died unlamented, but was refused burial in the sepulchres of the kings. In any case his reign and that of his son and successor were the most miserable in the annals of Judah, as the reigns of their namesakes and kinsmen, Ahaziah ben- Ahab and Jehoram ben-Ahab, were also the most miserable in the annals of Israel. Jehoram was succeeded on the throne of Judah by his son Ahaziah. If the chronology and the facts be correct, Ahaziah ben-Jehoram of Judah must have been born when his father was only eighteen, though he was the youngest of the king's sons, and so escaped from being massacred in the Philistine invasion. He I04 THE SECOND BOOK OF KINGS succeeded at the age of twenty-two, and only reigned a single year. During this year his mother, the Gebirah Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, and grand- daughter of the Tyrian Ethbaal, was all-supreme. She bent the weak nature of her son to still further apostasies. She was " his counsellor to do wickedly," and her Baal-priest Mattan was more important than the Aaronic high priest of the despised and desecrated Temple. Never did Judah sink to so low a level, and it was well that the days of Ahaziah of Judah were cut short. The only event in his reign was the share he took with his uncle Jehoram of Israel in his campaign to protect Ramoth-Gilead from Hazael. The expedition seems to have been successful in its main purpose. Ramoth-Gilead, the key to the districts of Argob and Bashan, was of immense importance for commanding the country beyond Jordan. It seems to be the same as Ramath-Mizpeh (Josh. xiii. 26) ; and if so, it was the spot where Jacob made his covenant with Laban. Ahab, or his successors, in spite of the disastrous end of the expedition to Ahab personally, had evidently recovered the frontier fortress from the Syrian king.^ Its position upon a hill made its possession vital to the interests of Gilead ; for the master of Ramah was the master of that Trans-Jordanic district. But Hazael had succeeded his murdered mastei", and was already beginning to fulfil the ruthless mission which Elisha had foreseen with tears. Jehoram ben-Ahab seems to have held his own against Hazael for a time ; but in the course of the campaign at Ramoth he was so severely wounded that he was compelled to leave his army under the command of Jehu, and to return to Jezreel, to be ' Jos., Aittt., IX. vi. I. viii. 25-29.] AHAZIAH BEN-JEHORAM 105 healed of his wounds. Thither his nephew Ahaziah of Judah went to visit him ; and there, as we shall hear, he too met his doom. That fate, the Chronicler tells us, was the penalty of his iniquities. " The destruction of Ahaziah was of God by coming to Joram." We have no ground for accusing either king of any want of courage ; yet it was obviously impolitic of Jehoram to linger unnecessarily in his luxurious capital, while the army of Israel was engaged in service on a dangerous frontier. The wounds inflicted by the Syrian archers may have been originally severe. Their arrows at this time played as momentous a part in history as the cloth-yard shafts of our English bowmen which " sewed the French ranks together " at Poictiers, Cre