«YAILIE«¥]MII¥EI^SIIir¥- • iLnisiK^iKy •

DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

GIFT OF

Prof. Henry Hallam HJwee&y

JERTJSALEM

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Frontispiece.
THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE, *

JERUSALEM THE HOLY CITY
ITS HISTORY AND HOPE

BY
MRS. OLIPHANT
AUTHOR OF " MAKERS OP FLORENCE," " MAKERS OF VENICE," ETC.

" Mount Zion which cannot be removed, but abideth for ever "

WITH WOOD ENGRAVINGS FROM DRAWINGS BY HAMILTON AIDE
AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY P. M. GOOD

New Ifatk
MACMILLAN & CO.
AND LONDON
1892
AU rights reserved

Copyright, 1891,
By MACMILLAN AND CO.

Set up and electrotyped December, 1891.
Beprinted February, 1892.

TO MY
DEAR CHILDREN AND COMPANIONS
J. E. 0., M. 0. W.
AND THEIR ELDER BROTHER
C. P. 0.
WHO HAS SINCE DEPARTED FROM US TO THE
JERUSALEM THAT IS ABOVE

NOTE.
The writer scarcely needs to say that this book is
no record of Eastern travel : her experiences in the
Holy Land having no special importance, save as
making more vivid to herself the scenes to which the
following history is devoted. It may be well, how
ever, to say that these holy places may be visited
with no exertion that is beyond the powers of a
person in ordinary health, though neither young nor
adventurous. Nothing can exceed the care and
kindness of the attendants who escort the not-robust
travellers through a region where convenience and
comfort are by no means the rule of life. And she
has a special remembrance to make of the kindness
of the Greek ecclesiastical authorities in Jerusalem,
and of the constant attention of the excellent drago
man, David Jamal, who was the Providence of her
little party.

INTRODUCTION.

THE story of Jerusalem is one of the most wonderful
in the world, besides being of unparalleled impor
tance to the human race. Insignificant in power even at
its greatest, it has been, through all the ages of secular
history, no better than a tributary and dependent of
great empires which have risen and fallen and passed
away, yet left this little city on its hills, always the most
interesting spot on earth, the indestructible, the source
of the mightiest influence, the foundation of the greatest
systems of earthly law and thought. Before the litera
ture of Greece had been thought of, song and story and
the noblest inspirations of philosophy and poetry had
come to being upon the little crests of Zion and Moriah :
the Temple had been built there which has never faded,
though destroyed, burned, broken down a dozen times,
swept far from sight and knowledge, from the memory
and imagination of men : and the records of humanity
had begun to be put forth in full splendour of character
and impulse and feeling, in chronicles which are as fresh
and living now as when they were transcripts of the life
of three thousand years ago. We go no farther than the
heroic age of Hebrew genius when we name this date :
beyond, in the mist of the ages, before even ancient
Egypt had begun to engrave her rigid annals upon stone,
the record goes back, not in hieroglyphics, but in his-

xii INTRODUCTION.
tories of living men. A learned sect studies and scruti
nises with painful confusion of images what a great
Kameses may or may not have done: but the child of
to-day wants no better entertainment than that story of
Joseph and his brethren which is told in every language
and never fails to touch the simple heart. Before Homer
had begun his primitive minstrel strain to celebrate the
fights and wiles of the chiefs and kings, Isaiah had risen
to the highest heights of poetry, had opened the great
dim gates of Hades, and had revealed, on the other hand,
a dazzling glimpse of a Heaven in which one God sat
upon a throne of light, and judged and tried the spirits
of men. There is no such record in all the histories.
The psalms which began with David, breathe forth the
deepest emotions of our race to-day. The wisdom which
throughout all the tenacious East bears the name of Sol
omon, has never been outpassed by any successor. And
when we descend the course of the ages and come to a
still more glorious and wonderful history, it is Jerusa
lem still which is the scene both of tragedy and triumph,
of the greatest and most wonderful life which was ever
lived among men.
We are told that the successive histories in which all
this line of life and being is preserved, having now been
exposed to the researches of modern criticism, have been
found to be untrustworthy, and that all our views of his
torical truth, and all our faith in ancient and sacred per
sonages, must be given up. The labours of half-a-dozen
learned Germans working by no light except that of their
own genius, upon the most ancient literature in the world,
amid all the difficulties attending research in a language
which contains nothing else with which to compare or
collate the works under examination, and belonging to a
period when language was being formed, and when sci
ence, either in that or in any other region, did not exist,

INTRODUCTION. xiii
forms the sole standing-ground for this demand. Very
few people know the Hebrew language, or are able to
test these assertions, except by such light of ordinary
criticism as they may happen to possess, by the laws of
.literature and the force of nature ; but I think that few,
comparatively, will be tempted to transfer a faith, in
whicli they have been trained from their childhood, to
a small group of unknown persons, whose motives are
dubious, and their methods more ingenious than ingenu
ous ; and to reject on their authority, as a series of often
fraudulent fables, the history so full of nature, so instinct
with every feeling of humanity, which has been the food
of our imagination and the inspiration of our thought, all
our lives. It is a blind confidence whicli is required by
them, not an intelligent faith. When we say that these
writers are inspired by dubious motives, we mean that
they are moved by a foregone conclusion, the determined
conviction that everything which is based on super
natural influences, and records communications between
God and man, is necessarily untrue — which is a very
large assumption to begin with. The disingenuousness
of their methods is a matter which could only be set
forth in detail, but will, we imagine, strike the ordinary
reader who has himself no parti pris. I have no claim
to set myself forth as one who has any authority in
these matters, but I may say on my own part, what
every individual has a right to say, that to transfer my
faith and confidence from the writers of the Old Testa
ment to the Herrn Wellhausen, Kuenen, etc., would
seem to me the wildest insanity. Moses I know and
Samuel I know, but who are these ? To me, and to far
the greater number of readers, they are but names and
no more : and to pin my faith to their utterances in any
matter either human or divine is what I am incapable
of doing. The little which I have read of these utter-

xiv INTRODUCTION.
ances does not impress me with any sense of reality.
To listen to a dull voice proclaiming authoritatively that
this one verse in a narrative is true and all the rest
fictitious : that this little group of words is to be received
as genuine, but the other part is a modern interpolation
(by modern being understood a date two thousand seven,
or five, hundred years ago), conveys neither satisfaction
nor enlightenment to my mind. I have some small
knowledge of how human character is depicted, and the
means by which a man who has departed from this
world is made to live and breathe again: and I know
that this is not done as a bird's nest is constructed, by
thieving here and there, a scrap from one and a scrap
from another. There are but two ways which I can
recognise in literature of producing a recognisable and
genuine human being : the one is by the tale of his life
as it happened : the other is by the effort of genius con
ceiving and creating such a man, under great laws of
truth to nature which cannot be transgressed. And the
history of the Bible is above all things biographical, the
records of individual lives. These men are no things of
shreds and patches, but human beings far more clearly
distinguishable, far more real than the moles of erudition
who poke about the roots of all history, and endeavour
to make the world as blind as themselves.
I must add that I have read a little, but only a little,
of the original critics themselves : but some of their
English exponents, and their great French disciple and
commentator M. Benan, are sufficiently practicable read
ing, and require no learning to understand. The infor
mation of the latter is so minute, not to say self-confident,
that the careless reader may well be confounded by his
light-hearted assumptions of knowledge. He can tell
little details about the construction of the Pentateuch
so that it is scarcely possible to doubt that he must

INTRODUCTION. xv
have private intelligence on the subject, if not that the
different editions, "redactions," of which he discourses
so glibly, must have been entered at some ancient Sta
tioners' Hall, of which the register has fallen into his
hands. M. Benan tells us cheerfully that no such per
son as Abraham ever existed, and that on another page
of his own book (Le Peuple d' Israel) there will be found
" des donnees plus solides " upon this imaginary person
age. But when we turn, somewhat anxiously, to that
previous page, we find nothing but the statement of
M. Benan, unsupported even by any suggestion of proof
— a statement which seems to me the least solid of all
foundations of belief. That he is also certain that David
was merely a skilful performer on various instruments,
but did not write any psalms, on the authority of the
book of Jasher, is a confusing statement, and awakens
an impression in the mind that the book of Jasher is a
new document which may throw much light upon the
old. But when we find that M. Benan knows no more
of the book of Jasher than we ourselves do — that is, by
means of two very brief allusions to it in the historical
books of the Old Testament — that impression gives way
to another very distinct one, which is, that the device of
throwing dust in our eyes is not a new one, but is very
ingenious, and a favourite method in this argument.
This is the proof he brings forward to invalidate the
force of a tradition which, according to his own showing,
has been persistent and unbroken for two thousand eight
hundred years among the most tenacious people in the
world. An English expositor of the same doctrines, a
clergyman, but too insignificant to name, varies this as
sertion further, and informs us very confidently that
David wrote nothing but drinking songs : and this on
the authority of a verse in the Prophet Amos, where he
upbraids the careless for their indifference to the fate of

xvi INTRODUCTION.
their country while occupied with smaller matters, such
as inventing instruments of music, like David. The
reader will judge whether his faith in Abraham or in
David — men whom he has known from his youth up, of
whom he has in his hands the unvarnished record, in
which there is naught extenuate, but everything good
and bad impartially set down — is shaken by such asser
tions. The chief principle laid down by the new criticism is
that the laws of Moses, and all the authoritative teach
ing of the Old Testament, were gradually invented, put
together, and made into a code, by a series of priestly
writers, amplifying and enlarging in every generation
the religious system which put an unlimited sway into
their hands, forging, interpolating, inventing in one case
a whole new booktof the law, at one stroke, in the name
of God, and under the lying pretence that it was all an
cient and directly inspired by him. Their own princi
ple is the antagonistic one that nothing came from God
at all, that there is no supernatural authority for any
thing, that communications between God and man are
impossible, and therefore could not be. We have thus
two parties to the debate, according to their ideas, occu
pying an exactly similar standing ground, both working
towards a foregone conclusion : the priests and scribes to
invent their law, and make it as lifelike as possible ; the
critics to prove that it is all invention ; neither one nor
other caring much for that ideal Truth in whose name so
many lies are accumulated, but only seeking "proof,"
which is a very different thing, of their own theories.
Of the priests and the scribes far off in the mist of the
ages we can ill judge, save by these works which they
have left, and which, to most of us, prove the marks of
their true origin very clearly : but of the critics we are at
full liberty to judge, for they do not conceal the fact that

INTRODUCTION. xvii
everything they do is done with the distinct motive of prov
ing their own negative. M. Benan rejoices, as the accom
plished end of their inquiries, that every one is now able
to form his own romance about the origin of religion, it
being clearly proved that no religion has any supernat
ural origin, and that God, if there is a God, never spoke
to man at all. In what then can the unlearned take
refuge ? In proofs like those quoted above ? in the dis
integration of a consistent and living record ? My own
conclusion is very simple. I will take Herr Wellhausen's
word for nothing, above all for nothing on which he has
formed his theory before he began to inquire into the
subject. I will take M. Benan's word for less than
nothing, were that possible, because he has abundantly
proved himself incapable of judging in respect to all the
higher mysteries of human character, thought, and feel
ing. Abraham I know and David I know : but who are
these ?
In speaking thus, I speak only as one of the masses,
unacquainted with the ancient language in which these
researches are carried on, as is the case of most people,
and entirely unqualified to enter into its earliest utter
ances, or judge in any matter of codexes or subtleties of
accent for myself. I cannot understand how, setting
aside the only record in existence of those times, a man
of our own can pronounce authoritatively that another
certain man living three thousand years ago did not do
what that record says he did, and what all the ages since,
and especially his own nation, by all its traditions, con
sistent and unbroken, have asserted and believed him to
have done. Without that record we may as well say
that no such person as David ever existed, as the reader
knows it has been already asserted there was no such
person as Abraham. But why, in the face of that only
witness, admitting his existence, we should take from

xviii INTRODUCTION.
him those works by which he is most chiefly known, I
am unable to conceive. The use of criticism may justi
fiably come in to examine and judge, according to the
differing style and references of the Psalms, which may
be most surely attributed to David, and which to later
writers. This commends itself to reason. I do not think
the other does so, especially as I find nothing but mere
sweeping denial of a fact which rests not only upon the
assertion of the only existing witnesses, but on the un
broken tradition of a people whose records are avowedly
the most ancient and the most continuous of all nations
on the earth. I believe it has been quite impossible (in
a very much less important matter) to come to any
certain conclusion in respect, for example, to the so-
called poems of Ossian, a publication of this century, of
avowedly modern redaction. Are they genuine ? are they
not so ? It is difficult to believe that any natural and
genuine bard ever uttered anything so inflated and arti
ficial : yet it is equally impossible to deny that there is
foundation in the floating traditions of the Highlands
for much that was published by Macpherson. Thus, in
a question of our own age, with all the materials within
our reach, no absolute certainty has ever been attained,
notwithstanding that the internal evidence is against
those high-flown strains. But in the case of the Psalms
of David, the internal evidence is all in favour of the
identity of the poet. They are not high-flown : they are
the voice of a natural man of high genius and strong
emotions in the very circumstances in which David is
allowed to have been placed. So natural are they, utter
ances so true of the troubled or the thoughtful mind in
the midst of the struggles of life, that our deepest emo
tions find expression in them to-day. What object, then,
can there be in seeking for them another author ? The
Bacon to that Shakspeare must have lived with him,

INTRODUCTION. xix
suffered with him, rejoiced with him, if it is not himself
who thus pours forth his heart, in the fields of Bethle
hem, under the great stars almost projected out of heaven
in their grandeur — or in the high places of Israel, and
the gates through which, with songs and rejoicing, he
carried the Ark of the Lord. Who is it ? what closest
comrade ? what dearest friend ? what all-devoted poet ?
if it is not David, the sinner and sorrowful, the man of
passion and strife, of penitence and confession, the man
we know ? To another man whom I do not know, whom
no one ventures to name, I will not transfer the songs
that have been sung as his for three thousand years, the
first strains of divine poetry ever revealed to mine and
to many another infant soul.
This book, it will be seen, has no claim upon the atten
tion of the erudite. Let them not lose ten tickings of
their watch on this unprofitable writing. It is addressed
only to those for whom the soil of Palestine, so fondly
and so long known as the Holy Land, is peopled with
the known and loved, the poets and sages and kings with
whom we are familiar as with the records of our own
lives : and consecrated to all time by One, more wonder
ful than it had entered into the heart of man to conceive,
until he came, the climax and divine completion of
the old world, the divine leader, teacher, and Lord of
the new.

CONTENTS.
PABT I.— THE HOUSE OF DAVID.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
THE SHEPHERD OF BETHLEHEM  1
CHAPTER II.
THE OUTLAW IN THE WILDERNESS  29
CHAPTER III.
THE KING OF ISRAEL  66
CHAPTER IV.
SOLOMON  142
CHAPTER V.
THE KINGS OF JUDAH  184
PABT IL— THE PBOPHETS.
CHAPTER I.
ISAIAH  225

xxii CONTENTS.
CHAPTER II.

JEREMIAH.

EZEKIEL

PAGE
..270

CHAPTER III.
 327

PABT III.— THE EETUBN AND BESTOBATION.
CHAPTER I.

ZERUBBABEL — EZRA .

.354

CHAPTER II.
NEHEMIAH  388
CHAPTER III.
THE MACCABEES  411
PABT IV.— THE FINAL TEAGEDY.
CHAPTER I.
THE SON OF DAVID  430
CHAPTER II.
MESSIAS  485
CHAPTER III.
THE END OF THE JEWISH DISPENSATION  521

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
THE CHURCH OP THE HOLY SEPULCHRE  Frontispiece
DISTANT VIEW OP BETHLEHEM  5
RAVINE OP THE KEDRON. WILDERNESS OF ENGEDI  33
HEBRON  71
THE ANCIENT JEBUS. JERUSALEM OP DAVID'S TIME (CONJECT
URAL)  78
the jerusalem of solomon (conjectural)  82
Absalom's pillar, valley' of jehoshaphat  119
the wall of wailing : ancient wall of temple enclo
SURE  149
a cedar of lebanon  152
valley of jehoshaphat, with rocks of siloam, the dwell
ing of the tyrian masons  156
yamuch, a port of lebanon  159
the interior of the temple enclosure: the golden gate. 171
sebastieh (samaria)  190
samaria: ruins of crusaders' church in foreground  197
a street in jerusalem  202
pool of hezekiah  213
david's tomb, Jerusalem  243
jericho and the dead sea  ,-  249
a street in jerusalem  255
fenced cities. jezreel  284
the valley of jehoshaphat : ascent by moriah  292

xxiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE
ANCIENT MANUSCRIPT AT SHECHEM  302
BANIAS : NEAR THE ANCIENT DAN  314
JERUSALEM : NORTH-EASTERN CORNER. NEBY SAMWIL IN THE
DISTANCE  317
THE GOLDEN GATE  349
DOME OF THE ROCK, SITUATED ON THE SITE OF THE ANCIENT
TEMPLE  -  361
in the temple enclosure : the tomb of elias  372
sculptured capital  377
sculptured capital  379
north-east corner of wall, temple enclosure (haram-
esh-sherif)  394
western wall of jerusalem, with jaffa gate  399
open-air pulpit in the temple enclosure  408
village of banias (cesarea philippl) , on the sources of
JORDAN  427
nazareth  433
the bethlehem road  436
Rachel's tomb, on the way to bethlehem  438
convent op the nativity, bethlehem  440
a street in bethlehem  446
lake of galilee ; the horns of hattin, on which the
sermon on the mount was preached, in the distance. 454
tiberias : lake of galilee  468
tiberias: sea of galilee : the only" city now existing there .487
ain-et-tin : sea of galilee  491
pilgrims' tent : ain-et-tin, near bethsaida  493
on the shores of the sea of galilee  496
khan on the road to jericho, by tradition that of the
good samaritan  514
jericho road : traditional spot where the man fell
among thieves  518
from bethany, looking towards jericho  526

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. xxv
PAGE
SYRIAN CHILDREN WITH PALM BRANCHES  530
ON THE HILL OF EVIL COUNSEL  533
EL-AKSA : IN THE TEMPLE ENCLOSURE  542
ANCIENT OLIVE-TREE IN THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE  552
FOUNTAIN NEAR THE GATE OF THE CHAIN  558
THE VIA DOLOROSA  561

PART I.— THE HOUSE OF DAVID.1
CHAPTEE I.
THE SHEPHERD OF BETHLEHEM.
IN the days when Israel first desired a king, when the
troubled period of the Judges had come to an end,
and rising strength and numbers impelled the Hebrews
to a more full and thorough carrying out of the conquest
of their promised land, one of the strong little cities
peculiar to the country, where every village was planted
upon a hillside, for natural defence and strength, stood
in an exceptionally strong position, surrounded on three
sides by the ridges of protecting hills, a city of the Jebu
sites, which, during all these wild years of war and .blood
shed, had retained its little nationality, and withstood
the assaults of the invaders. In the early days, when
all as yet was chaos in history, the strangers from the
wilderness, swarming into the land, took and lost again
many strongholds, which were reoccupied by their native
inhabitants as the fluctuating horde rose and fell, and a
fairer region, or one more ready for their uses, tempted
an individual band, even after victory, to stream on to
further conquests, indifferent to those already made. In
this way the Jebusite city would seem more than once
to have fallen and risen again. But when David became
d b
1 Copyright, 1891, by Macmillan & Co.

2 JERUSALEM. [chap.
king, and united, after civil war and many disturbances,
the whole nation of Israel under one head, something
in the form of a capital, or centre of royal authority,
from whence laws might proceed, and where government
should dwell, must have become necessary. David was
at this time living in Hebron, at the farther end of his
kingdom, a place with no claim either to central position
or special strength. Saul, his predecessor, had, it would
appear, entertained no idea of royal state or central
authority. He was a man of war, and no statesman ; the
experiment of kingship was new, against all the previous
ideas of the tribes : and the first king, in his confused
and troubled intelligence, and life of excitement, war
fare, and mistake, had little time for those ideas of
consolidation and permanent establishment which are
necessary for the maintenance of authority and govern
ment. We are not told in what way David was directed
towards the little stronghold of the Jebusites as the site
of his throne. It would seem to have been his own per
sonal choice, not indicated to him by any oracle. He
must have been acquainted with it in his youth, must
have skirted the hill on which it stood many times in
the course of his early wanderings and dangers ; and
lover of Nature, and of all things beautiful as he was,
no doubt the little city set on a hill, always so charming
an object, as well as the more practical recommendation
of those steep slopes and ridges of rock almost impreg
nable to the efforts of early warfare, must have caught
his dreaming eyes on many occasions long before he was
conscious that one day or another he should there found
a royal city and set up a throne.
The spot had other associations, though they are not
mentioned in the narrative, and probably have been en
larged and dwelt upon only in later times. If there was
any tradition of Abraham's sacrifice lingering about the

i.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 3
green but rocky hill which lay opposite the Jebusite city,
it must have been faint and dim, especially as, at that time,
when places of sacrifice were many, and every famous
inhabitant had somewhere built an altar, even so great
and memorable a sacrifice as that of Abraham's would
scarcely bear the importance which has attached to it in
later days. We have no reason to suppose that the
young warrior had as yet conceived the great idea of a
temple to be placed upon that twin hill, and the double
strength of altar and throne to be thus given to the capital
of his kingdom. But the Jebusite city at once pleased
his eye and satisfied his mind as adapted for his purpose.
It was, if not in an absolutely central position, as near
so as could be, while still within the vicinity and protec
tion of the tribe of Judah, the kindred and natural par
tisans and followers of the new king. As it stood there,
high on its rocky height, looking over the rounded sum
mit of Moriah to the loftier slopes of the mountain now
known to us with all its pathetic and sacred associations
as the Mount of Olives, the sun dwelling upon it in all
his course from east to west, the steep streets in it so
strong that the blind and the lame, according to the
brag of its elders, were enough to defend it even against
that man of valour, the great chief and warrior David —
the little city was full to him of every fierce and every
gentle attraction, a much envied prize, a place which had
scorned and defied him, a mount of vision and beauty
satisfactory to all the poetic fancies of his heart. That
jest about the blind and the lame would seem specially
to have piqued the young conqueror who had overcome
so many things and was not now to be daunted, only
excited and drawn on by the temerity of the rash
Jebusites, a little people of no account, who thus dared
and defied the Lord's anointed. And we know that
neither these feeble defenders nor all the strength of
b2

4 JERUSALEM. [chap.
the townsmen could keep out the victorious bands of
Judah. The city was taken, the fortress, high upon the
western height, and all the low square and windowless
hovels which hung about it. In all probability there
has been little change since then in the strange little
dark dwellings which Arabs and Syrians still inhabit in
our own days, and which are rather shelters from the
sun by day and the dew by night for a people whose life
is chiefly spent in the open air, than dwellings such as
we understand. Many a hillside throughout Palestine
still shows around the one point of distinction, the fort
or mosque which is its centre, those level lines, square
and low, with openings of wide doorways and flat roofs
of mingled clay and straw, or something less savoury
still, which are the houses natural to the soil, often ex
panding into chambers darker, yet cooler still, wrought
out in the rock below or behind.
Such, no doubt, was the city which David took, and
which he made into the city of David, the stronghold of
Zion, a city which has had more influence on the world
than any other on the face of the earth. Great has been
the power of Athens, great that of imperial Bome, but
from Jerusalem has come an inspiration more lofty, an
influence more continuous than either. The springs of
life which rose within that rocky enclosure flow yet
through all the world — through all our world it would
perhaps be more just to say, seeing that as yet the far-
distant East has been little influenced by them : though
it would be indeed a mistake to assert that the creed of
Mahomet was unconnected with that potent fountain-
head from which it has derived almost all that is worthy
in it. In the meantime, however, our object is more
limited than to discuss the influence which, that little
strip of country, that little rocky stronghold, have had
upon the world. In the first place comes its actual early

I-]

THE HOUSE OF DAVID.

history, and that of the Eastern hero and warrior, the
shepherd, the poet, the feudatory chieftain, the king of
Israel, who first made for it an everlasting name.
David, the son of Jesse, of the tribe of Judah and
the town of Bethlehem or Ephrath — the latter being the
ancient name of the time of the patriarchs — was the
youngest of a large family possessing land and some
importance in the district, which was one of much agri
cultural and pastoral wealth. The soft slopes on which

DISTANT VIEW OF BETHLEHEM.

the town is placed, the green and smiling valley, broader
than those ravines among the hills which are so charac
teristic of the land of Judea, give it a character of peace-
fulness and primitive wealth. The gray town lies along
the side of the hill in a prolonged line, as if it never had
been gathered together for protection under any rude
little stronghold; and indeed there is little record of
fighting about this chosen and fertile spot. The valley
is so green, so wide and level, that it might almost, in
this land of rocks and hills, be called a plain ; and, no
doubt, all that genial expanse was filled with corn and
productive trees, while the grazing land occupied the

6 JERUSALEM. [chap..
farther slopes and edge of the valley. Though Jesse
was a substantial man, rich enough to send supplies to
his sons with the army, and offerings to propitiate their
captain, his household, like all families of the time, was
fully occupied by the care of the family property and
possessions, on a footing very little different from that
of the servants born in the house, who were a sort of
humble brethren and counted among its children. David
was the shepherd-boy, the lowest and least skilled of the
brothers in those early days, when Samuel, the old
prophet from Eamah, paid a visit to their city, and
honoured the house of Jesse by choosing it for his rest
ing-place. The public reason for this visit was to offer a
sacrifice, an object apparently accepted as natural and
just by the elders of the town ; but Samuel's chief motive
and interest was in his review of the sons of Jesse, seven
young men of fine stature and good looks, any one of
whom appeared to the prophet fit for the divine choice ;
but not among them was the chosen of the Lord.
The youngest was absent, keeping the sheep — a boy of
no particular account in the presence of the firstborn
and his stalwart brethren, yet a beautiful lad, ruddy and
fresh as the dews of the morning, as are still the hand
some and gentle race which inhabit Bethlehem. In the
leisure of his occupation — the most thoughtful and poeti
cal of all rural pursuits — no doubt this youth had begun
to feel the rising of the poet's passion, the elation and
inspiration of that gift which more than any other lifts
up the heart. The light that never was on sea or shore
lit up for him the beloved valley, the encircling hills.
He had already seen in his waking dreams, in the early
light, the sun, all radiant in triumph and glory, come
forth like a bridegroom from his chamber : and had con
sidered the heavens which God had made, when suddenly,
as the day ended, the moon and the stars came forth,

i-] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 7
silently proclaiming the praises of the Lord. All these
natural sounds and sights had entered into his heart,
which was full of that tender piety of youth not always
maintained in maturer life, which is one of the most
beautiful aspects of humanity. That he also possessed
great courage and strength is evident from the statement
of his struggle with the lion and the bear in defence of
his flocks. But great as was the promise of his early
years, young David, amid the members of the household,
was but the junior — a youth unacquainted with the
world and its fiercer enjoyments of battle and raid, at
the time of the old prophet's visit. How it was that the
anointing of David, which was Samuel's special mission,
attracted so little notice, it is difficult to tell ; but neither
the family nor David himself seem to have attached any
importance to it. It must have appeared to them only a
special kindness, a mark of affectionate interest in the
youth from the old man, and was probably rather a favour
accorded to Samuel himself, to show him where the king
more worthy than Saul was to be found, than any sign of
future sovereignty made known to David. His broth
ers do not even taunt him with it, as Joseph's brethren
taunted him with his dreams, though the firstborn, the
head of the house, was so wroth with his presumption on
an after-occasion in venturing to put himself forth as the
champion of Israel. That such compliments were not
unknown may be seen from various allusions throughout
the sacred writings ; " Thou anointest my head with
oil," David himself says in the 23d Psalm, meaning, it is
evident, a sign of favour and kindness, not a sacred
consecration. When the sacrifice and the feast which
Samuel came to make at Bethlehem were accomplished,
the townsfolk, no doubt, escorted the old prophet back
upon his way to his house at Bamah, young David, to
whom he had shown such special favour, first among the

8 JERUSALEM. [chap.
nimble youths that ran by the old man's side as he
ambled upon his mule along the narrow paths between
the fields, as still the young attendants run, to anticipate
any wish of the great man they escort and accompany,
to lead his beast over the hard places of the way, and
render him that reverential homage which is never so
perfect as in the East. And then the soft landscape,
the young shepherd-lad disappear from our vision for a
time, and the prophet goes his way to the disappoint
ments that awaited him — the endless chidings and heart
burnings which attended the troubled path of Saul.
Of the shepherd's youthful life we have no further
record unless in the songs which, whether produced then
or in an after day, are doubtless the product of his early
thoughts and experiences as he watched his flocks by night,
like those other shepherds in the same fields to whom the
birth of David's son and Lord was announced in the after
ages — or led them about during the day by hillside and
deep valley, by the green pastures and beside the quiet
waters. Perhaps he did not acquire so much command
of language in his early youth as to compose that Psalm
which we all know so well : but it must have been float
ing in his mind as he led his sheep over the pleasant
slopes and flowery turf of his father's pastureland. The
reader will forgive me if I quote that Psalm in the ver
sion dear to Scotland — the first that every child in that
country learns, the homeliest, yet faithfullest translation
of David's shepherd song —

' The Lord's my Shepherd, I'll not want.
He makes me down to lie
In pastures green : He leadeth me
The quiet waters by.
My soul He doth restore again ;
And me to walk doth make
Within the paths of righteousness,
Ev'n for His own name's sake.

i.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 9
" Yea, though I walk in death's dark vale,
Yet will I fear none ill :
For Thou art with me ; and Thy rod
And staff me comfort still.
My table Thou hast furnished
In presence of my foes ;
My head Thou dost with oil anoint,
And my cup overflows.
' Goodness and mercy all my life
Shall surely follow me :
And in God's house for evermore
My dwelling-place shall be."
Another picture never to be obliterated came into his
dreaming soul when he sat by night, with that great
Eastern heaven stretched out above him — the balmy
breath of the wonderful atmosphere, the great stars so
near in the pulsations of ineffable light, the broad serene
calm of the moon.

' When I consider the heavens,
The work of Thy hands,
The moon and the stars,
Which Thou hast ordained ;
What is man,
That Thou art mindful of him?
Or the son of man,
That Thou visitest him ? "

Modern critics are eager to assure us that these won
derful words could not have come from the lips of the
shepherd youth of Bethlehem. But there is no proof to
be given of this assertion that can weigh for a moment
against the long-continued tradition in their favour of
his tenacious race, the only one on earth which can
claim any historical connection with times beyond the
farthest ken of the science of history. They have borne
his name for thousands of years : they follow all the
indications of his life. Pew poems even of the latest
times can have a more satisfactory guarantee.

10 JERUSALEM. [chap.
Thus he sat and sang his happy songs in the pleasant
valley and upon the fragrant hill, with the low line of
the roofs of Bethlehem, and the distant enclosure of his
father's house shining under the broad radiance of that
Eastern moon, and all manner of great thoughts swelling
in his youthful bosom, ambitions perhaps — the vague
ecstasy of those visions of distinction and fame, and of
making a great name, Avhich are common to tlie dreaming
boy, whether in the east or in the west, in ancient ages
or at this day. He who invented instruments of music
in his latter days, and took so much pains with the choirs
and anthems of the national worship, we may be sure had
made himself some shepherd's pipe upon which to play,
more melodious, let us hope, than the doleful Arab pipe
which sounds upon those slopes in the present age. In
that same valley, so full of associations, Euth, the young
widow from the land of Moab, whose name has become
a symbol of faithful affection, gleaned " among the alien
corn," and won the heart of the rich landowner Boaz ;
and in an age scarcely then forgotten Bahab, another for
eign woman of less creditable antecedents but equal faith,
came up from the deep banks of the Jordan into this fer
tile and tranquil place, and found, we may be permitted
to suppose, in the house of one of the men whose lives
she had saved at Jericho, a home and refuge. The blood
of both these women ran in the veins of Jesse's son. He
was thus of kin to other races, with a mingling in him
of foreign instincts, and perhaps had inherited tastes and
dreams of beauty and luxury unknown to the desert-
wanderers of Israel from the older civilisation of the rich
Jericho and the cities of Moab. But chief of all, he had
the blood of the conquerors in his veins, the tradition of
those victorious bands who had overrun the rich country,
and pulled one by one the little monarchs of the land
from their seats. His thoughts were of all these things

i.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 11
while he fulfilled his youthful occupation about the pleas
ant hills. An English youth with perhaps a Spanish
grandmother, with the tradition of some dazzling beauty
from the East among his progenitors, might thus feel
himself the inheritor of all the races, mingling the romance
of his foreign ancestresses with the masterful confidence
of the Englishmen who have conquered and assimilated
all these alien glories. And David, in the fair country
in which he was born, must have felt the thrill of the
stranger inspiration, the poetry of the beautiful women
thus made to contribute to the perfection of his race. I
have heard a hot theorist deny the proposition disagree
able to him, that our Lord Himself, according to the flesh,
was a Jew, by reference to this, so far back, mingled
parentage, the woman of Moab and the woman of Jericho
— a very futile argument. But to David, though a Hebrew
of the Hebrews, they were not far back, and the romance
and tradition of them was warm in his veins. Here she
of Jericho must have passed in the conqueror's train,
clinging perhaps to the desert warrior whom she had
saved, and who had saved her in return ; and here Buth
had wandered, forlorn among the women of the place,
with no one to take her part save the astute old woman
in the village whom she had followed far from her own
people. Thus every element of poetry and romance lay
about young David's feet as he led his sheep through the
gate at which his forefather Boaz plucked off his kins
man's shoe, and past the well for whose waters he longed
afterwards in the exhaustion of battle. Poetry and
romance are not the ideas which many people associate
with the Old Testament narratives, and yet how full of
both these records are !
The curious incidental description of how the youth of
Bethlehem, on account of his fame as a musician, was
sought to soothe the troubled moods of Saul, is inde-

12 JERUSALEM. [chap.
pendent of chronology ; yet this must have occurred
between the time of Samuel's visit to Bethlehem and
that important expedition to the army to see his breth
ren which decided David's after fate. It is strange to
find Saul inquiring who was the stripling who went
forth to defy Goliath after the intimate intercourse
which apparently preceded this, when we are told that
Saul " loved greatly " the young harpist who stood and
played before him when his fits of gloom and depression
occurred. It might be that when the king saw the
lightly-clad shepherd youth with his sling going forth in
face of the two armies, he could not believe it possible
that this could be David whom he had just seen armed
in his own breastplate, and therefore in his astonish
ment imagined that a new champion had arisen. But
this of course is only a conjecture, as everything must
be which is concerned with all incidents beyond the
record. Nothing could be more picturesque and vivid
than the account of that crisis in the young hero's life.
The scene was one of those narrow valleys which are the
most characteristic features of the land of Judah. A
few slightly sloping fields lie on either bank of the
stream — a small thread of water in a very broad stony
bed, such as is to be seen constantly in the East, and
which travellers who have not gone so far will remember
in Italy and the south of France — evidences of the
moment when swollen by rain the little stream becomes
a flood, and rages between those wide banks which are
so disproportionate to its usual phase. It is but a thread
of water, a brooklet easy to step across during most of
the year. On either side rise the hills upon which the
rival armies were ranged, contemplating each other from
a safe distance, neither ready to make the rush into the
comparatively level ground below.
By the winding ways among the hills, strong passes

i-] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 13
here and there, and slopes of pastureland, David had come
eager and expectant from Bethlehem, with his burden of
parched corn for his brothers, and home-made cheeses
for a present to their captain ; and one of the first things
that attracted him, eager for every sign of battle, would
be the sight at which the two armies were looking on,
and which interrupted every movement. Between the
opposing hosts upon the bank of the stream, in sight of
both, strode forth the swashbuckler, Goliath, daring the
armies of Israel, a big man, blazing in his rich armour
under the sun, with the huge spear in his hand which
has been part of the equipment of so many giants since
his time. There are few things more apt to be exag
gerated in the most exact of records than the size of an
exceptionally tall and strong champion, and it is evident
that David himself was able to wield the giant's sword
in later days, so that it is not necessary to conclude that
there was anything miraculous about his great size.
That the sight of him, shouting out his defiance in the
narrow valley, should have caught the attention and
fired the spirit of young David with that sudden per
ception of the opportunity which to a youth of genius
and daring is all that is lacking, is the most natural
incident, as is also the impatience and displeasure of
his elder brothers, no doubt aware of something of
those high-reaching dreams which were in the lad's
mind, as if he were better than the others of his fam
ily. "I know thy pride and the naughtiness of thy
heart," cries Eliab, vexed with the lad's eager question,
and seeing the sudden flame lighting up in his eyes ;
"with whom hast thou left those few sheep in the
wilderness?" The few sheep were David's concern, not
the battles which were for his elders and betters. The
reproach is as old as human nature, and ready to be
repeated to-day.

14 JERUSALEM. [chap.
David made no more reply than any other young hero
made light of among his kindred. He took his way into
some other indifferent group, indifferent to himself,
wholly occupied with the brag of the Philistine and the
humiliation of having no man among them who would
venture to meet him : and listened to every word that
was said. Great promotion and honour, the king's
daughter to be his wife, a place unequalled among the
host which stood there overawed at the sight of the
bully. It is too early an age for love-stories, or it might
be imagined that David had already raised his eyes, as
to one altogether out of his reach, to the daughter of
Saul, the sister of Jonathan who loved him. But it
must be remembered also that love had already begun
to bear a part in the history of the Hebrews, which no
other ancient history has allowed. Jacob, that man of
riches and rapacity, true parent of the grasping Jew
of modern times, had loved his Bachel like any Chris
tian knight, transmitting thus from the very dawn of
human records an absolute romance such as never entered
into the thoughts of any graceful Greek. But it would
be trivial and unnecessary to bring in such a notion to
the story here. David had evidently everything to gain,
had there been no Michal in the case : the opportunity
first of all of distinguishing himself, of vindicating his
nation, of beating down the pride of the oppressor —
objects enough, any one of them, to set a gracious spirit
on fire, not to speak of the still deeper impulse of a high
indignation against the heathen braggart who dared to
set himself up in his brute strength against the living
God. David in his after years was far from being a
blameless man, as everybody knows. He fell under the
temptations and abused the privileges of power, and his
passions were strong and unrestrained ; but when he
came fresh from those fields where he had considered

i.J THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 15
the heavens the work of God's hands, and where, in the
fervour of his youth he had felt himself to be the object
of a heavenly care and love more deep than his own
devotion to the few sheep in the wilderness, which yet
he had guarded at risk of his life — the passion of his
young soul for the honour of the God of Israel, the living
God, the Lord who needed not that His champion
should bear sword or spear, was as a fire in his heart.
Something of the absolute trust which is more easy to
youth than to any other period of life, an almost brag
gadocio of self-abnegation, generous scorn of all precau
tion, the confidence not so much of a hero as of a child,
is in his attitude and equipment. "Who is this uncir-
cumcised Philistine ? " man enough to keep a whole vul
gar host in dread before his challenge, and to fill his
own side with arrogant triumph, yet at the mercy of a
shepherd's sling in the hand of a lad who stood for God.
The favourite subject of poetry ever since, nay, the
highest theme of all that has been sung and said on
earth, is this triumph of faith, this victory of the simple
and small over the proud and strong, the humble hero
over embattled hosts, the champion of the oppressed
over the oppressors. It is not to be found in any primi
tive literature but that of the chosen people. Strength
and valour are the universal subjects of the applauses of
the olden ages, whether cultured Greek or wild Scandi
navian. The Hebrew poet alone has celebrated that race
which is not to the swift, and the battle which is not to
the strong.
The death of Goliath threw the army of the Philistines
into the greatest disorder ; the greater part fled dismayed,
making a stand here and there, band by band, as in that
spot where there was " a parcel of ground covered with
barley," where Eleazer the son of Dodo, the Ahohite,
interrupted them, and destroyed that remnant of the

16 JERUSALEM. [chap.
retreating army.1 "The men of Israel and Judah arose
and shouted, and pursued the Philistines," David no
doubt, if not at the head, at least in the front rank of
the wild triumphant host, whose spirit, tamed by oppres
sion, had suddenly come back, as in the days of their
fathers, at the touch of victory. What the fight and
slaughter must have been is shown by that unfortunate
utterance of popular applause with which the young hero
of the fight was received as the triumphant army swept
and straggled along towards Gibeah, the headquarters
of Saul, the women streaming out of every village to
celebrate their victory. Not very long before the same
rejoicing groups had come out upon the passage of Saul
proclaiming his name to all the echoes: and the fickle
ness of that popular applause, its ready transfer from
one to another, came bitterly to the knowledge of the
deserted king, as it has done to hundreds since — " Saul
has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands."
Had there been no contrast, had the shouts been confined
to David's personal prowess, it would have been less
invidious ; but the comparison went to the very heart of
the leader, whose place was no longer the first in the
opinion of the turbulent people so little accustomed as
yet to any veneration of the crown. Thus the star of
David rose while that of Saul began to set.
The record of Scripture is sternly impartial, whosoever
for the moment is its subject. Jacob is chosen to carry
on the line of Israel because, no doubt, of the strength
and native resolution of his crafty and persistent nature ;
but it is over Esau that our hearts soften and our tears
1 This feat of arms M. Renan, rejecting the whole story of Goli
ath, states wildly, on his own authority, as the chief incident in
the encounter, graciously, however, allowing David to have fought
by the side of Eleazer. It is not certain that the incident took
place, indeed, on this precise occasion, but I think we are justified
in accepting it as having done so.

i.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 17
fall. In the same way Saul, fallen from his high estate,
cast down to the very depths of that excitable and sen
sitive nature which made him so subject to all external
influences, makes the heart of the reader ache with pity :
and but for the wild chivalry and generosity which soon
show themselves in David, would draw away our sym
pathies altogether in his forlorn and heaven-abandoned
kinghood, in his wild impetuous hastiness and the mis
takes of his desperation, from that young and applauded
hero, of whom it is said that all he did pleased the
people. David, however, escapes that unpleasing con
trast of the prosperous with the unfortunate by the
quickly following romance of his story. In the next
access of that partial madness to which Saul was sub
ject, which showed itself in raving utterances, having
apparently some resemblance to the rapture of the
prophets, David was called from his military command,
as he had been called before from his sheepfold, to soothe
the distracted king with music ; and Saul, in his insane
excitement — not without method still, the bitterness of
his soul breaking through the mist of his faculties —
snatched a javelin from the wall, and flung it at his sup-
planter in the affections of his people. This would seem
to have been the first overt act of that dire jealousy
which was part of the madness, yet part of the anguish
too — a passion which is so comprehensible and so pite
ous. Por not only did Michal love this upstart of the
fields, but Jonathan, the heir, if any thought of heirship
was, and clearly the beloved son and constant companion
of his father, loved him too, exchanging with him the
closest vows of brotherhood and admiring friendship.
Thus the young supplanter had penetrated into the very
domestic stronghold, stealing away the household hearts
that were his own from the unfortunate chief.
It is a contrast full of all the elements that touch the
c

18 JERUSALEM. [chap.
hearts of men, and one cannot but wonder how the com
mentators, whose criticisms are supposed to destroy the
consistency of these records, making of them a mass
of disjointed scraps put together to serve certain pur
poses of statecraft by various hands at various times, have
been able to free themselves from the charm and spell of
human sympathy which is in these marvellous narra
tives. Two more distinct human creatures than Saul
and David never existed, nor can we imagine a story
more deeply moving, more tragically true to nature.
The great warrior, now fading from the glory of his
youth, never a man of judgment, hasty, passionate, mis
taken, unable to learn the self-command and obey the
restraints that hem about the footsteps of a ruler, yet
full of a certain primitive greatness, standing high above
the mass of ordinary men, both in the heyday of his
valour and the tragedy of his despair ; and modest in
his presence, reverent of his office, yet perhaps scarcely
capable of keeping out of his thoughts the paeans of the
admiring Israelites, the consciousness already of know
ing better and of being more capable of rule — the
younger hero, more engaging, more attractive than the
moody and excitable Saul could ever have been, a man to
steal the hearts of all who came near him, young, fortu
nate, full of charm. David made no mistakes in that
difficult position- — almost a son of the house, deeply
beloved by some of its chief members, yet hated and
feared by its head : whereas Saul's career had been full
of mistakes, and he had never been able to find the
medium between hasty over-obedience and wilful trans
gression of the commandment. He must have seen that
Jonathan, with his heart completely stolen by that in
terloper, would strike no blow and make no stand for the
kingship. It was the youth of Bethlehem, the shepherd-
lad of the valley of Elah, the mere musician who had

I-] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 19
called forth, as such menials do, a certain tribute of easy
praise, to whom the eyes of all men were turning. To
David the Ephrathite, the son of Jesse — to him who
had been nobody till the other day, and was nobody save
as the king's favour made him ! It is but too easy to
understand the exasperation, the keen sense as of a use
less struggle, yet fierce determination to get rid of and
overthrow this disturber of his life, which was in the
mind of Saul.
And how full of life and nature is the whole scene ;
the consultations of the younger members of the house
hold who love him with the persecuted and threatened
David, the troubled talks and anxious expedients for his
safety. "My father will do nothing without showing it to
me," says the unquiet and disturbed Jonathan who " de
lighted much" in his sworn brother and friend : and again
and again the crisis was tided over, the catastrophe averted,
sometimes by Jonathan's anxious explanations, sometimes
by a new campaign against the Philistines in which, it
being well known that David would need no wile to
place him in the forefront of the battle, the king might
always hope that a chance dart would deliver him from
his rival. At last when the danger could be averted no
longer, the brother and sister to whom David was so
der«r had to take the matter into their own hands. It
wsja Michal's part to get him off suddenly from the
threatened destruction, letting him "down through a
window," doubtless upon the outer wall, on the summit
of one of the rocky slopes of Gibeah, where Saul's resi
dence was. While the enraged and gloomy king waited
for the return of his messengers, to bring him news
that all was over and the danger, once for all, removed
from his path, David, breathless with the sense of death
so barely escaped, was already out of reach in the dark
ness of the night which had favoured his escape, at last
c2

20 JERUSALEM. [chap.
convinced of the deadly peril in which he stood, and not
knowing where to find refuge. To go home to Bethlehem
does not seem to have occurred to him. Probably he
was not assured of any welcome there if he arrived sud
denly, a fugitive from the wrath of the king ; perhaps
even more likely, for his father and mother were still
living who could not have refused him a shelter, he was
afraid to draw upon his kindred the anger and vengeance
of Saul. But more near than Bethlehem, more secure
than any common house, there was the old prophet at
Bamah to appeal to, he who had shown so much kind
ness to David, who had refused to allow the feast to
begin till the shepherd-boy had been called, and who had
kissed and anointed the ruddy lad fresh from the fields,
as he had not done to Eliab or any of the stalwart breth
ren. Though I think it is quite clear that David did not
know what that anointing meant, yet it was a token of
favour ; and as he cast about in his mind where to turn
for succour the recollection of Samuel must have flashed
across his thoughts like a sudden light.
Nothing more wild and strange than the description of
his temporary shelter with the old prophet could be.
Samuel would seem to have taken the fugitive to some
more secure refuge than his own open house in Bamah
where for years he had judged Israel, and which would
naturally be accessible on all sides to those who came to
consult him, and bring their difficulties to be solved. It
was to "Naioth in Bamah," "the house of learning,"
that he transferred himself and his guest, no doubt some
secluded school of the prophets, where special instruc
tion and training might be given to those who were to
instruct the people. "The company of the prophets
prophesying, and Samuel standing as appointed over
them " — was the sight that Saul's messengers saw when,
hot in their bloody errand, they reached this place. It

I.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 21
was probably what we should call the college of the con
secrated Levite youths, studying their future functions
under the superintendence of the deeply experienced and
highly gifted old man, who had served God from his
infancy, and was the acknowledged head of all sacred
science in Israel. That this instruction, however, was
accompanied by ecstatic manifestations now coming upon
one, now upon another, would seem to be implied in the
strange narratives that follow. The messengers, men of
the sword, soldiers of Saul's irregular and lately formed
army, came suddenly, unaware, we may suppose, of what
they were about to see, thinking only of their fierce
commission, into the midst of this wonderful scene, and
excited, overawed, seized by that contagion of strange
emotion which the primitive mind is so easily affected
by, fell into a nervous imitation of what they saw, and
"prophesied" also. So still the rude recruits of a
" revivalist " meeting are sometimes affected with an in
comprehensible yet evidently in many cases unfeigned
convulsion of nature unaccustomed to such strong spir
itual stimulants. That the same effect should be pro
duced upon the second band, who saw their comrades
thus weeping and praying and calling out to God, was
perhaps less wonderful. And when Saul himself came
after them, fierce and troubled, his mind already half-
overturned with hate and terror and revenge, and per
haps remorse — moved by the sight of those scenes where
his first consecration had taken place, where he had
previously shared the vigils and the ecstasies of the
young prophets, the wonder is still less that his impas
sioned spirit should have given way. So many recollec
tions must have risen before him — the high aims and
resolutions of his youth, the self-devotion of which he
must then have felt himself capable, the high renuncia
tion of everything but the service of God and the care

22 JERUSALEM. [chap.
of God's people : and now what was this erring and
passionate man ? a king who had failed in his mission,
the anointed of the Lord turned into a miserable avenger
of his own unworthy quarrel, a would-be murderer, hot to
shed his neighbour's blood. All these thoughts must have
overwhelmed the impassioned and despairing soul, whose
hate against David was so much made up of a still deeper
sense of his own inadequacy and failure. He had not
seen Samuel since the day when he parted with him in
anger, after the death of Agag. And here, so near the
scene where his future greatness was first communicated
to him, now when that greatness was so smirched and
faded, and nothing but downfall and ruin before him, to
feel the eyes of the prophet, which saw through and
through all the wild and furious movements of his spirit,
upon him once again ! The wild access of passion and
trouble, which he had never had sufficient self-control to
restrain, burst upon him with giant force. He tore off
his insignia of royalty, his garments themselves, and
fell down, shouting out what wild movements of self-
denunciation, of woe to Israel, of judgment, judgment,
and the wrath of God, who can venture to imagine. A
king whose kingdom was passing from him, a great war
rior overpowered and outdone, a man who had lost all
guidance, and was stumbling and crashing downward on
the wrong way — and last and worst of all, who saw and
knew that he was so doing through all his miserable
moods, and in the severe clear shining of that old
prophet's eyes.
David, it would appear, did not wait to see the issue
of these strange incidents ; he. went back hurriedly to
Gibeah as soon as he saw that the absence of his pur
suers was thus ensured for a little time, and hastened to
Jonathan his friend and brother. " What have I done,"
he said, "that your father should seek my life? " "God

i.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 23
forbid," said the generous young man, trying even now
to defend both father and friend. " It is not so ; my
father will do nothing great or small without letting me
know : and why should he hide this from me ? " It
would appear from these words that Jonathan had not
been aware of that expedition to Bamah. A touching
arrangement was then made between the two young men.
It was close to the time of the new moon, when Saul and
all great men made feasts for their households, and where
David's place would naturally be an important one, both
as the king's son-in-law, and as one of the great warriors
and captains of Israel. Jonathan consented to make an
excuse for David's absence on this occasion, and thus to
ascertain the mind of Saul towards him, while David,
either secretly returning to his own house, or in hiding
somewhere near, awaited the issue of the trial. When
this was arranged between them in some private place
of meeting Jonathan drew his friend into "the field,"
probably near to some sacred place, to give solemnity
to his engagement ; and there under the cover only of
the sky, beyond which, in all ages men have looked
for the dwelling of God, appealed to the Supreme Dis
poser of events to ratify the bargain, the Lord God of
Israel who knew and beheld in all their ways the sons of
men. If he were not true to David, did not warn him,
did not save him, " the Lord do so and much more to
Jonathan" he prayed. If this story came to us without
any sanction of Holy Writ, if it were but part of the
epic of a Hebrew Homer, the reader would need no such
solemn adjuration to convince him of the truth of
Jonathan. There followed after this a succession of the most
exciting scenes. The king returned from that wild
pursuit to Bamah, perhaps ashamed of his passion, per
haps in the return of his sober consciousness feeling it

24 JERUSALEM. [chap.
advisable to make no further show of his hostility to
David, who was one of the prdps of his throne : and pre
pared as usual for the feast of the new moon, himself
presiding, seated " as at other times upon a seat by the
wall," the head of the primitive table, with Abner by his
side, his commander-in-chief. For the first day he took
no notice of David's vacant place ; but on the second
demanded an explanation. " Why does not the son of
Jesse come to meat, neither yesterday nor to-day ? "
Upon this question, Jonathan made the excuse that had
been agreed upon. There was a feast of the family at
Bethlehem, and David's brother — which looks as if
Eliab was now head of the family, perhaps acting so on
account of the age and weakness of Jesse, for there is
still mention of the father later on — had commanded
him to be present. Upon this Saul burst forth into fury
upbraiding the folly of his son. "Do not I know that
thou hast chosen the son of Jesse to thine own confu
sion ? " he cried. It was not David, not the familiar
name of the household, the name too famous in Israel,
which the angry king employed, but that of the alien
house, the opposed clan, a name of Judah which had
always assumed to be the first in Israel. " As long as
the son of Jesse liveth upon the ground thou shalt not
be established nor thy kingdom," exclaims the king, with
a feeling more honourable than that of his own fierce
enmity. And there can be little doubt that Jonathan
himself had a prevision of this since he had already
appealed to the time when David's enemies should be
cut off every one from the face of the earth, and com
mended his own race and house to the protection of the
hunted and persecuted man. Yet he stood with all the
faithfulness of his nature for the fugitive. " What hath
he done ? " he asked, while all the company sat silent,
keenly attentive of this discussion. But Saul in the

i.J THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 25
transport of his anger and disappointment and fierce
incapacity to bear opposition, snatched a javelin from
the wall behind him, and flung it at his son, as he had
before done at the object of their quarrel. It became
evident that no more was to be said, nor the name of
David named again in that primitive court, where it
would appear no voice was raised for the ambitious young
captain but that of the heir alone.
The reader's heart goes with Jonathan, as so often in
these records. Saul and David are the chief figures in
the struggle, one with the painful crown of tragedy, the
other the laurels and the peeans of success. But between
them stands the noble young man, fated to share the sor
row and punishment which he had no hand in incurring,
his sympathy all with the persecuted, his duty all with
the persecutor, his love divided between them who were
so fiercely separated from each other. It would seem
that there had been in other matters a special closeness of
union between Saul and his firstborn. They are named
together in all the first campaigns of the reign before
David comes upon the scene, Jonathan like a young
knight-adventurer, a gallant heir-apparent, performing
rash feats in which :
" Desperate valour oft made good,
Oft with its daring vantage rude
Where prudence might have failed."
" My father will do nothing great or small that he does
not let me know," Jonathan himself says; and "that
they were lovely and pleasant in their lives," almost like
twin brothers rather than father and son is the testimony
given afterwards. And no sign of failure from his
father's side is ever recorded of Jonathan, though he
would seem to have accepted the signs of fate, and fore
seen the triumph -of the other who was his natural enemy
and supplanter yet his most beloved friend. The situa-

26 JERUSALEM. [chap.
tion is one that calls forth every sympathy and makes
of this pure and chivalrous figure the highest light in
the wonderful picture. Jonathan went forth sad and
angry, with that wrath of love that " works like madness
in the brain," as soon as the morning dawned after this
troublous scene, and took down his bow from the wall,
and called a boy from among the many retainers to go
with him, striding forth with a clouded brow, as all
would understand, to divert his troubled mind with a
favourite exercise. " The field " in which these meetings
took place must have been some sheltered spot, some
hollow on the other side of the hill, where there were
rocks and caves, such as abound everywhere in Palestine,
in which a fugitive could be hid ; for it would seem that
all this time David had been lurking near, no doubt in
one of these caves. There Jonathan shot his arrows
according to the sign agreed upon, and perhaps with
some show of impatience not to have hit a desired mark,
gave his bow to his attendant as soon as the arrows had
been gathered up, and sent him hastily home. When
the lad had disappeared the hidden fugitive stole forth
into the dewy field. It was morning, all still and solitary,
before life or work had begun. These strange new cir
cumstances, and perhaps his melancholy vigil, and the
sense that his life was in the hands of this generous
young prince who had adopted him as his brother,
brought home, no doubt, to David the wonderful differ
ence between himself, a homeless fugitive, and the son
of Saul the king. He bowed himself three times to the
ground, falling on his face, in all the abasement of East
ern reverence. He was no longer the great captain, the
husband of Michal, the honoured of Israel, but once more
the son of Jesse, youngest and least important, the shep
herd of his humble family, of little account even in his
own tribe, how much less here among the cities of Ben-

I-] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 27
jamin. But when the friends met all these artificial dis
tinctions would seem to have been swept away, and
Jonathan and David kissed each other and wept. It
was as if the friendly earth, upon which their young
swift steps had gone together on many an errand both
of war and peace, had been rent between them. Few
words were needed, if any : the abyss was not one which
could be bridged over with hopeful speech of better days
and other meetings. They were silent in the rending
asunder of their lives. " Go in peace ; and the Lord be
witness of that which is between me and thee," was
all that Jonathan could say. "They wept one with
another till David exceeded." The fugitive, the poet, the
man of quick emotions lost his self-control in the misery
of his banishment : while Jonathan, perhaps still more
deeply sad, without that power of self-expression, turned
back with a heavy heart to the city, where he had to put
on a face of stone, and know nothing of David any more.
While he lay thus forsaken in his cave during the
three days that must have elapsed between these inter
views, reflecting with ail the intensity of his youth upon
his home so near yet so far away from him, on Michal anx
ious in her solitary chamber, and Jonathan more anxious
still amid the laughter and mirth at his father's table — see
ing most likely from his refuge the lights of the little city
on the hill, hearing the shouts of the festivity, himself
fasting, deserted, in danger of his life, was it with such
a strain as this that he consoled himself with his courage
as yet unbroken though his heart was sore?
" In the Lord put I my trust :
How say ye then to my soul :
That she should flee as a bird to the hill ?
" For, lo, the ungodly bend their bow,
They make ready their arrow upon the string,
To shoot privily at them that are true of heart.

28 JERUSALEM. [ch. i.
" The Lord is in His holy temple,
The Lord's seat is in heaven :
His eyes behold, His eyelids try, the children of men.
The Lord trieth the righteous :
But the ungodly and him that loveth wickedness
Doth His soul abhor.
" For the righteous Lord loveth righteousness ;
His countenance will behold
The thing that is just."
To most minds the constant reference of the Psalmist
to his enemies is a continued jar and discord : but it
would be strange indeed if David in his hunted life,
never from this time allowed a moment of rest, should
have left out of the songs by which he encouraged his
own heart amid all his troubles, any allusion to his per
secutors. This Psalm, probably the first of these utter
ances of his soul in trouble, is purely abstract in its
reference to them. They are the ungodly abhorred by
God because they work wickedness, and upon whom He
rains snows, fire and brimstone, storm and tempest. The
fugitive, the sufferer, calls down no curses on his own
account out of the patient skies.

CHAPTEE II.
THE OUTLAW IN" THE WILDERNESS.
THIS was the beginning of the most painful portion
of David's life : that probation in the wilderness
which is the portion of most men who are destined to
greatness. He stole away from the neighbourhood of
Gibeah, from all his brief prosperity and happiness, from
his position as commander at once and minstrel, prince
and poet, the favourite and the hero, whom the people
loved : the companion of Jonathan, the husband of
Michal : now a fugitive far more poor and solitary than
ever could have been the shepherd-boy who had come so
suddenly to all those distinctions. It was probably by
night that he left the neighbourhood of Gibeah, escaping
through the silent fields, with none of that noble retinue
which was his clue as a leader of Israel, yet probably a
faithful retainer or two sadly following his uncertain
steps across the wilds, without provisions, without arms,
not knowing where he went, travelling vaguely towards
the south.
The first place to which he came was Nob, where it is
apparent there was at that time a sanctuary and centre
of worship, though in the confusion of the period it is
difficult to know precisely what this means. The geog
raphy is confused as well as the economy of the disturbed
and unsettled land, still overrun with continual raids of

30 JERUSALEM. [chap.
the hostile races which surrounded Israel on every side,
and with no established centre of authority either secular
or sacred. For Saul's headquarters at Gibeah were no
more a royal capital than the dwellings from which the
judges who preceded him had partially and confusedly
ruled the people, each in his own house. And neither
the ancient tabernacle of the wilderness which was at
Gilead, nor the temporary re-establishment of the Ark
at Kirjath-Jearim (the latter, it would seem, entirely
fallen into forgetfulness), had been received as a national
shrine : but each tribe or district formed, as it would
seem, their own religious centre for themselves with as
much of the established ritual as was within their power.
David arrived faint and weary at the house of the priest,
answering to the astonished question of how he came to
be alone, i.e. with no formal retinue, by the excuse of a
sudden commission and urgent business for the king,
which had compelled him to leave home without aide-de
camp or officer, even without his weapons. " Give me
some bread," he asked ; " whatever you may have."
But the priest had no bread except the sacred shewbread
which he had just taken from the altar, and which, it
had been commanded, was to be eaten by the Levites
alone. It must thus have been on the Sabbath Day that
David, fasting and faint, arrived at the sanctuary ; for
it was on the Sabbath that the loaves or cakes of the
hallowed bread were replaced by new, and removed from
the holy table. The analogy was therefore doubly com
plete between this and the incident in the life of our
Lord to which He Himself compared it. Neither the
priest nor David seem to have entertained any Pharisaical
hesitations on the subject, mercy and succour having been
at all times recognised as of first necessity even under
the bonds of the Jewish law. When he had secured for
himself and " the young men " that needful food, David

n.J THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 31
asked if there were any weapons in the peaceful shrine ;
and it must have been a great encouragement to his soul
when the priest drew forth out of its wrappings no other
than the sword of Goliath, " whom thou slewest in the
valley of Elah." It must have been as if God Himself
had thus laid up in store for him the weapon to which
no man had so clear a right — the sign of his first and
greatest victory. " There is none like that ; give it to
me," he said, with a fervency of utterance in which we
can fully sympathise.
It is less easy, however, to understand after this sign,
which must, one would suppose, have appealed to his
imaginative nature by every argument of encouragement,
how he should have gone to Gath girded with the very
sword of their champion to seek refuge among the ene
mies of Israel. Perhaps in the bitterness of his soul and
the extravagant despondency of the first misfortunes of
youth, he took it for a sign that he was cut off from Israel,
and had no resource left but to throw himself among an
alien people : perhaps the very sight of it suggested the
hostile city whose chief enemy was the same Saul who
had cast out and was pursuing himself. And it is scarcely
possible to believe that, notwithstanding the persistent
national hatred, there should not have been private ties
between individuals of the two races so near together
within the narrow boundaries of Palestine. Thus Scots
and English in the old fighting days, though nationally
the deadliest enemies, yet found friends, brides, and hus
bands among the hostile race, and took refuge when in
disgrace at home in the court of the other kingdom,
always bland and complaisant to the fugitive, proving in
its courtesy how much better worth serving it was than
that from which he had come. There is no reason to
suppose that the flight to Achish was more than the flight
to an early James or Henry of a discontented or injured

32 JERUSALEM. [chap.
baron on either side. But terror was in the soul of the
fugitive. He would seem to have found threatening faces
about him from the moment he entered the foreign city,
which was not wonderful considering what his achieve
ments had been. He was like Coriolanus in Corioli, a
man who had gained his name at the expense of those
whose succour he sought ; and it was soon apparent to
him that safety was not to be found there. Perhaps he
had hoped that he would not be recognised, but might
pass as a mere Hebrew refugee in trouble with his own
people, seeking service in the neighbouring court. But
he soon became aware that a soldier so distinguished
could not remain unknown. " Is not this David ? " said
the very first officials to whom he addressed himself,
" David the king of the land ? did they not sing one to
another of him in dances, Saul has slain his thousands,
and David his tens of thousands." Before even the news
was carried to Achish of this visitor whose appearance
created so much commotion, David had begun to perceive
how great a mistake he had made. The wonder, whieh
was so ready to turn into a menace, as they hurried him to
the king's presence, showed him his danger ; and though
the expedient of feigning madness was not a digni
fied one, it was not unusual in the East. When Achish,
eager to see this newcomer, but perceiving as he thought
a mere maniac, turned upon those who had excited his
curiosity and alarm, scornfully with the question, " Have
I need of mad men, that ye have brought this fellow into
my house ? " the fugitive does not seem to have lost a
moment in making his escape.
What was he to do, driven out at once from Israel and
from Israel's enemies ? No doubt it was hard for the
young man to throw himself into the life of an outlaw, to
lurk in caves and desert places, to snatch a painful living
from those who were weaker than himself. The son of a

RAVINE OF THE KEDRON. WILDERNESS OF ENGEDI.

To face page 32.

ii.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 35
plentiful householder, of honest and well-known folk,
who had probably known what it was to suffer from the
incursions of such wanderers, it might have appeared to
him a better way to join the enemy as Coriolanus did, to
be ,able to enforce terms upon his old persecutor, than
to become in his turn a persecutor of the peaceful dwellers
in the land, with whom all his sympathies were. But
David had now no resource. He went back from Gath
towards his own country again, a troubled and discour
aged soul, the few retainers who had followed him droop
ing their crests as they toiled along the plain, until they
reached that strange and wild district lying between the
country of the Jebusites, the as yet unknown Jerusalem,
and the Dead Sea, where the soft rock of the limestone
hills, gray and gloomy, is hollowed out into numberless
caves enough to give such lodging as was sufficient for
their primitive necessities, to many men.
The wonderful impartiality J of these biographies which
form the Scriptural record was never more evident than
in the description of the troop which gathered here about
the exile. Had the story been of the Middle Ages — and
it is of those daring and chivalrous times that we are
most reminded by the varied and endless adventures of
this wandering paladin — an air of romance would have
been thrown even upon his surroundings. Knights full
of devotion to the bravest among them, casting in their
lot with him, resolved if need were to die with him,
would have formed a circle round the hero. And that
there was such a circle round David is clear. His " three
mighties," and the thirty who were also examples of
1 M. Renan, by means of those private sources of information
which he evidently possesses unknown to the world, informs us
that these details were probably taken from David's own accounts
in later life, a sort of official narrative, such as he wished to have
received in his own favour — whioh makes the impartiality more
remarkable still.
d2

36 JERUSALEM. [chap.
valour, though not so distinguished as the first three,
the captains of his army in later days, when it was the
legitimate army of Israel — were about him from the
beginning of his wanderings. But the account of his
band, though picturesque and graphic, has none of this
romance cast about it. "Every one that was in distress,
and every one that was in debt (pursued by his credi
tors), and every one that was discontented, gathered
themselves unto him." The company of those broken
men reached to the number of four hundred, some of
them escaped from justice, many of them " bitter of
soul " — a band of refugees dangerous to any country.
The thirty or thirty-three heroes are not even mentioned
in the official record, though probably they too were men
with grievances like the rest. A more respectable con
tingent was brought to him by the arrival of his breth
ren and all his father's house, probably driven out from
Bethlehem either by some actual attempt on the part of
Saul, or terror of what he might do, and including such
formidable elements as his three nephews, the sons of
that unknown but evidently high-spirited mother in
Israel, whose name remained to David the characteristic
designation of her still more dangerous sons. The silent
caves, with their far-stretching branches running deep
into the entrails of the hills, suddenly filled in every
corner with dark warriors, and murmurous with the hum
of a crowd, form a wild and wonderful scene. These
fastnesses of nature were in no way so inharmonious
with the habits of the Hebrews as they would have been
even with those of the wildest mediaeval troop in the
different climate of the North. A cave was the familiar
and most secure nucleus of the homestead on many a
pleasant hillside, the coolest and the safest. The dark
ness did not discourage them, accustomed as they were
to seek refuge there from the glare of day. Each man

n.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 37
would^ring with him for as long as it lasted his easily
carried provision of parched corn, his cakes of bread and
handful of fruit. There would need no hecatombs of slain
cattle to maintain these eastern warriors : yet many a raid
must have gone out from the stronghold of Adullam, to
keep four hundred men alive — raids, however, in which
the prey carried off was probably stores of bread, raisins,
and figs and parched corn, as in the story of Nabal, with
an occasional sheep, rather than the "lifted" cattle and
utter desolation left behind them of modern reivers, a
much less destructive kind of plunder. There must have
been wild animals in those wild regions to make a sub
stantial addition to the fare of the exiles. It is pleasant
to find in this record of a wild and lawless episode that
the outlaw of Adullam took pains to secure a safe shelter
for his father and mother in Moab, where there would
still be kindred on the side of Buth to welcome her
descendants. Another addition to the numbers of this wild band,
which must have been of the greatest importance to its
prestige and character, soon followed in the person of
Abiathar, the son and successor of the priest Ahimelech,
who had received David so kindly at Nob, and whom
Saul, on the malicious report of Doeg the Edomite, had
sent for with all his family to Gibeah, and massacred,
his own followers refusing the office, by that miscreant's
hand. The young priest, who thus in terror Of his life,
took refuge with the outlaws, brought to them the ap
pointed order of national worship and the permitted
method of " enquiring of the Lord," whatever that may
have been ; and no doubt by his very presence put many
scruples, in no bosom more strong than in that of the
leader of the band, at rest. But not for a moment did the
pursuit of Saul relax. He had justification now for all
the rigour of persecution. David, though he had set up no

38 JERUSALEM. [chap.
organised rebellion, no attempt upon the crown, wa^yet in
arms, in self-defence, no more to be dealt with as an indi
vidual. Though he had been driven to it by the force of
circumstances, and though he never raised his arm in
offensive hostilities, not even Jonathan, who loved him,
could plead now as in former times for the pardon of the
misguided brother. Once again indeed that faithful
friend came to him in the wilds where he had taken
refuge, to warn him of renewed pursuit, and to repeat
the covenant or oath of brotherhood between them : but
after this hurried and secret meeting these two friends
saw each other no more.
While shifting from one stronghold to another, from
cave to forest, " in the hold " of those natural fastnesses,
David had the opportunity of delivering the town of
Keilah from the Philistines, a piece of legitimate work
which must have delighted his soul, but to which it
would seem his followers, demoralised by continual flight
and that sense of being hunted like wild beasts, which
destroys at once courage and self-respect, were averse,
afraid of trusting themselves in the low country and
having little confidence in the gratitude of men, a
scepticism afterwards fully justified. Their leader in
sisted, however, encouraged by the promise of success
from God, which must have been obtained by some
dream or spiritual consciousness alone, since Abiathar,
it would appear, only joined him with the ephod and
recognised means of spiritual communication after the
deliverance of the city. For what reason except the
generous one of delivering the oppressed town and aim
ing a blow at the acknowledged enemies of his people,
or the astute one of thus securing to himself friends
and a refuge, David should have interposed in this mat
ter, which of course was the business of the legal de
fenders of Israel, it would be difficult to imagine. If it

n.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 39
was the latter argument which moved him he was soon
destined to discover how futile was any such trust.
King Saul, who had not stirred to rescue the city, heard
with delight that David had ventured into " a town that
hath gates and bars," and at once gathered together his
followers to besiege the rebel, concluding with prema
ture triumph that " the Lord hath delivered him into my
hands"; not so quickly, however, but that David had
time to escape, having first assured himself that Keilah
had no mind to stand a siege on his behalf. We may
well imagine that the addition of six hundred outlaws
(to which number the band had now increased), with the
wildness of their wandering life about them, to feed and
lodge, could not be an agreeable element in the life of
the crowded hillside town, and acknowledge that the men
of Keilah had some excuse for desiring to be rid of
them. The harassed exile had nothing to do but to re
turn to the wilderness, and once more take refuge in the
caves and woods. The area of his wanderings is but a
limited one, and indeed it is almost inconceivable how
small the limits are, altogether, of this wonderful country
so full of story and recollection and influence on the
world. The inhabitants settled on the borders of those
desert tracks were evidently in greater sympathy with
Saul than with David, whose bands of hungry men, with
neither fields nor pastures of their own by which to live,
must have been a perpetual danger to their peaceful
neighbours. An instance of their dealings with these temporary
neighbours is to be found in the story of Nabal, a true
Eastern romance, picturesque and vivid. The rich nig
gard of the fields was celebrating his feast of sheep-
shearing, when David's messengers, " the young men "
so often described, approached him with Eastern cour
tesy. Their desire for a share of the good things of the

40 JERUSALEM. [chap.
feast was less a petition than an inference : " Thy
shepherds were with us and we hurt them not, nor was
anything missing unto them all the time they were in
Carmel. Therefore let the young men find favour in
thy sight." Nabal replied to them with taunts and
injuries. "There be many servants that break away
from their masters," he said. "Who is this David?
this son of Jesse ? " One asks one's self whether David
expected this defiance and insult, and thus meant to
justify himself for the destruction of Nabal, and absorp
tion of all his wealth. This at least was the effect upon
him of the rash and contemptuous message. He called
his six hundred desperadoes together to avenge the
insult and take the spoil, an enterprise that could not
but be agreeable, faring sparely as they were in their
desert fastnesses with no joys of sheep-shearing, no new
moon festivals in their way.
The alarm of the peaceful herdsmen, when in the
midst of their feast they heard their master's insulting
reply to the "young men" with their spears and swords,
is easy to imagine. To have that horde brought down
upon them, unarmed and unprepared as they were,
simple agriculturists and shepherds, was a sentence of
destruction to every harmless soul among them. And
the master was such a son of Belial that no one dared
speak to him. So while he bragged and plumed himself,
not perhaps without a secret misgiving now that the
deed was done, the dependents, who would be the first
to suffer, sought the women's quarter where their wiser
mistress was superintending the feast. " They were a
wall to us both by day and by night," they cried in their
consternation. The reader knows what the rural lady of
some three thousand years ago, the rich farmer's wife
of the Judean valleys, did : she took a plentiful supply
of the provisions of the great pastoral establishment,

n.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 41
leaving, one would fear, but little for the disappointed
sheep-shearers thus forced to redeem their lives at the
cost of their feast — "two hundred loaves, and two
bottles of wine " (skins no doubt like those in the gro
tesque blunted shape of the animal to whom they be
longed, which are still employed by the water-sellers
about the streets of Syrian cities), " five sheep ready
dressed, and five measures of parched corn," besides a
liberal supply of fruit. Abigail was not a moment too
soon ; she met David and his men " by the covert of the
hill " in warlike array with their swords girded on them,
coming swiftly on to execute judgment. The record
does not say as it does on so many occasions that
Abigail was beautiful, but only that she was wise, and
as is evident, possessed the gift of eloquent words. She
acknowledged with the fulness of conjugal certainty
and indignation her husband's folly, and also set before
David the extreme inexpediency on his own part, with
the future that lay before him, of making enemies or
leaving memories that might be brought up against him
— so powerfully that his hasty wrath was quenched.
It will be remarked that the offering made was not of
a kind to impoverish permanently any great house : it
was the product of the wealthy establishment, not its
property or means of sustenance, a gift which probably
made the feast a poor one for the revellers but imposed
distress or destruction upon none.
The end of the story, the death of Nabal, turned to stone
by the tremendous risk he had run, and the conviction of
his danger aud his folly; and the reception of Abigail
into that harem, in which David it must be allowed did
not stint himself, reads like pure romance ; but so indeed
do many incidents in the most sober life.
There are two other episodes in the tale of the wan
derings of David which we could understand the critics'

42 JERUSALEM. [chap.
objection to, had it been possible to conceive that they
were foisted into the record in the days of Proissart, in
the thirteenth or fourteenth century. But as the most
scathing criticism ventures on nothing worse than the
suggestion that David's history was written some hun
dreds of years after David, and acknowledges that every
thing that savours at all either of the supernatural or
romantic must have been introduced into it in the days
of the Jewish kings, we are but strengthened in our
conviction that the easiest explanation of these wonder
ful tales is that fact which is much stranger than
fiction. No one in Homer, who was a later writer even
than the scribes of the days of Hezekiah, which these
writers have selected as the age wdien Hebrew genius
developed, had any conception of such chivalry as that
of the Jewish outlaw in the wilderness, when he cut off
the skirt of his enemy's mantle and let the enemy him
self go free — or when he penetrated into Saul's camp
in the depths of night and brought away the spear that
was planted by his bedside, but aimed no blow at him
self lying there unprotected in his sleep. These are
actions which would have become the blameless Bayard,
which Sir Lancelot or Sir Galahad might have performed.
But who should have suggested them to the Hebrew
scribe, what could have made them possible to the exile
of Judah in his hard struggle for life ? This mystery
is one which no learned savant pretends to explain ; it
is far more wonderful than any arithmetical discussion
of the numbers of the Israelites or other such highly
important question. That numerals should change and
be altered in the process of time and the multitude of
transcriptions is likely enough. But who put such a
thought into the mind of a Hebrew writer before chiv
alry had any existence ? All the learning in the world
will not clear up this. Hebrew accents and Chaldean

n.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 43
idioms may occupy the learned philologist for ever if he
will, but will never make him aware how it was that
in this primitive age a story worthy of the most mag
nanimous Christian chivalry could find a place — or more
wonderful still be invented, where no code of manners
or of morals existed to make such an incident possible
had it not been true.
We are all acquainted from our cradles with these
twin tales. David, hunted from place to place, now
driven from the city he had rescued, now from the woods
and wild recesses of the desert, was lurking with a band
of his followers in a deep cave where perhaps they were
listening breathless to the crash of Saul's soldiers upon
the rocks, and their stumbling progress over the tufts of
bristling desert herbage and thickets of thorny growth :
when lo ! Saul stood in the entrance of their cave alone.
The men who crowded in those dark crevices pressed
upon one another's shoulders to gaze, and with fierce
whispers and gestures pushed forward David to seize
the opportunity. Could it be more evident that the
Lord had delivered his enemy into his hand ? It must
have required no small force to resist that fierce impul
sion, even had no deliverance depended upon it. But
David was incapable of taking his foe at a disadvantage,
though it was not upon this ground that he held back :
"The Lord forbid that I should do this thing to my
master, to stretch forth my hand against him, seeing he
is the anointed of the Lord." But half for policy doubt
less, half in poetic impulse, he cut the skirt of Saul's
garment to prove what had been in his power. The
king's train we may suppose had scattered over the
rocky hillside, clambering up its wild terraces as they
could, thinking their master in no danger; and when
Saul resumed his way he was still virtually alone.
David followed him out of the cave with the bit of stuff

44 JERUSALEM. [chap.
in his hand. He called after Saul and stood face to face
with him, man to man : and few interviews more affect
ing were ever recorded : " I have not sinned against thee.
Why huntest thou my soul to take it?" he pleaded.
"Moreover, my father, see, yea, see the skirt of thy
robe in my hand : for in that I cut off the skirt of thy
robe, and killed thee not, know thou and see that there
is neither evil nor transgression in mine hand. The
Lord judge between me and thee and the Lord avenge
me of thee : but mine hand shall not be upon thee. As
saith the proverb of the ancients, Wickedness proceedeth
from the wicked : but mine hand shall not be upon thee."
Who taught the primeval outlaw that noble appeal to
the better nature of the enemy whom David had never
been able to learn how to hate, notwithstanding all his
cruelty ? And Saul, a man of swiftly changing moods,
of quick perceptions, with a strain of wild generosity
too in the heart which was subject to the sway of pas
sions so dark, and that despair which is so often poison
ous in the depth of its gloom — was not unresponsive to
the appeal. "Is this thy voice, my son David?" he
cries, penetrated to the heart.
The other scene is still more picturesque. Again
there is treachery at work but with more excuse than
that of the men of Keilah. No doubt David and his six
hundred were uneasy neighbours for the Ziphites, and
held them in perpetual alarm, and it was little wonder
that they should send word to the king, who was known
to desire nothing so much as the capture of the son of
Jesse, that the outlaw was there, lurking among the
hills, and with little possibility of escape were the pur
suing force sufficiently strong. The news was brought
to David, we may be sure, as soon as the tents were
pitched upon the opposite slopes whence Saul in
tended to encircle and crush his victim. The wanderer

ii.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 45
looked out from the heights upon the encampment below
and saw the place where Saul lay with Abner his general
close by. " Who will go clown with me to Saul to the
camp ? " he asked after long gazing at the spot where
his pursuers lay. Abishai, his sister's son, was the man
who offered himself for that dangerous service, and
when the night came, the two Eastern heroes, lightly
clad, and softly shod, descended noiseless into the midst
of the slumbering multitude. Again we are reminded
of the ages of chivalry, of the minstrels' tales, and
romance of modern thought. The two gliding figures
reached the very centre of the encampment where the
king lay, with his spear stuck in the ground within
reach of the piled mats or carpets which formed his bed.
Once more Abishai whispered that the moment had
come, that the Lord had delivered their enemy into
their hand. " Let me smite him, I pray thee, with the
spear even to the earth at once," said the fierce murmur
in David's ear, " and I will not smite the second time "
— grim promise which the son of Zeruiah would not
have failed to redeem. But no such thought was in the
mind of the noble outlaw. There is in the utterances
of David at these moments a strain of emotion which is
very remarkable. One would say as of a man in whose
heart there was still a great yearning of affection for
that doomed king, of whom he now knew that he was,
yet never desired to be, the most dangerous rival — the
king who was so capable of being touched by the truth,
yet so incapable of continuing in it, or departing from
the rage of jealous fear and certainty of doom that was
in his heart. It is still more remarkable to see how
that certainty had become by this time the acknowledged
feeling of all who were most closely concerned. Not a
word of it comes from the lips of David, but the others
do not hide their conviction. " Behold I know well that

46 JERUSALEM. [chap.
thou shalt surely be king," says Saul himself after the
encounter in the cave ; and even at au earlier date Jona
than had expressed the same conviction. They were
fighting, as they knew, a lost battle : it was David finally
to whom all the honour, all the success must come ; and
this conviction in Saul's mind, fiercely resisted no doubt
with wild outbursts of fury and despair, -gave bitterness
and passion to all his actions. When Abigail came upon
her mission to David she expressed the same sentiment,
which shows that it had already affected the popular
mind, "When the Lord shall have done to my lord
according to all the good that He hath spoken concern
ing thee, and shall have appointed thee ruler over Israel."
It would seem that no one but David himself had any
doubt that the outlaw who went in daily danger of his
life pursued from wilderness to wilderness, was the
future King of Israel — and least of all the family so
closely connected with him, between whom and himself
there were such ties of love and hatred, the household
of the king whom he was to supplant and to succeed.
Still more like a romance of the days of chivalry was
the action of David after that night visit to the camp of
Saul. When the morning broke, and they had stolen their
way through the sleepers eluding any watch that might
have been set, or careless sentinel — David and his attend
ant stood upon the hillside and called to the astonished
host below. It was Abner whom he called, the com
mander, upbraiding him with the inefficient watch he
had kept. " Art not thou a valiant man ? And who is
like to thee in Israel ? " he cries, " Wherefore then hast
thou not kept thy lord the king ? For there came one
of the people in to destroy the king thy lord." " One of
the people ! " There is a careless pride in the phrase
which bears no resemblance to the pride that apes
humility. David would not say that it was himself:

ii-] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 47
the greater shame to the ineffectual guard that it was
one of the people, any man so to speak, who had been
able to thread the sleeping ranks and carry off the king's
spear. Saul was a man of unusual stature, and no doubt
his spear was known among the people like that of
Goliath, "like a weaver's beam." And to see it, with
its glittering blade shining in the morning sun on the
other side of the ravine in the hand of the poet-orator,
whose indignant yet tender remonstrance came pealing
over those depths, must have affected powerfully the
listening and eager host, as it affected the unhappy king
himself, in whom once more his better nature burst
forth. But Saul's moods of compunction were evanes
cent, and it was his only policy to destroy David if that
might be. The knot was cut in this instance by the sud
den alarm of a Philistine invasion : Saul was compelled
to turn back from his private vengeance to meet the
public foe.
But it would seem that but for this unexpected diver
sion the outlaws surrounded in the wilderness had little
prospect of escape before them. And David having
made that last attempt to move the heart of his pursuer,
fell himself under the heaviness of despair. He had
escaped for this time, but one day or other in face of
such a desperate and ceaseless pursuit he must perish
by the hand of Saul. To what end should he struggle
further ? Deeper and deeper had he burrowed in those
desolate places, in the wildest caverns, the most dreary
deserts, even down to the arid shores of the Salt Sea,
that region accursed, with all its dismal memories. It
must have given an additional pang to his warlike soul to
know that the very necessity which saved him and called
off his pursuers was one in which, had things been other
wise, he himself would have been the champion, the
leader sent against the Philistines. Once more we may

48 JERUSALEM. [chap.
find a parallel to David's case in that of a Scots noble in
disgrace betaking himself with shame and wrath to the
protection of the English, with whom he had been in
warfare all his life. In the same way the Douglas ban
ished sought refuge in England, nay even a Stuart,
Alexander of Albany, who was persecuted by his brother
James III. on warrant no greater than that of Saul,
followed the same example : both, however, falling into
the guilt of plots against their native kingdom from
which David kept himself free.
The story of David is indeed that of a blameless
knight, a cavalier sans peur et sans reproche up to this
time. He had done all in honour from the first moment
of his appearance, putting forth no pretensions, behaving
himself with all the grace of a perfect hero. What little
transactions there may have been in the wilderness with
those six hundred and their train of women and children
to provide for, there is no record ; but at all events he
would seem to have been courteous and conciliatory even
to those upon whom he levied supplies, as in the case of
Nabal, where there is an ingratiating tone of friendliness
and modesty in the first demand, remarkable in the case
of a brigand chief, as David has constantly been called,
who was so able to take without apology what he desired.
Blackmail, to be sure, is an ugly word : but the most
carefully constructed system of taxes is in reality noth
ing but blackmail, the payment of that protection which
an established government gives, and which it has no
moral right to exact except on that supreme and uni
versally acknowledged argument. The clays of David
were very primitive days, and Saul's authority or power
of protection as king must have been limited: so that
the outlaw who was, according to Nabal's herdsmen, " a
wall to us both by day and by night," was in reality the
only representative of a protecting government to those

n-J THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 49
defenceless people. Any defence of David, however, on
this score is sophistry to us, and would have been the
most unnecessary thing in the world to him.
At all events the severest critic can find little else to
reproach David with in this period of his career. He
was forced into — not rebellion, for no act against Saul's
authority is ever suggested— but into a wild and feuda
tory life by incessant pursuit and persecution ; yet he
raised no hostile banner, put forth no pretensions to the
crown. And when in despair and sickness of heart he
turned away and directed his steps once more to the
Philistine court to seek the protection of the enemies of
Israel, it was not like Coriolanus to ruin Bome, nor like
Albany to sign secret treaties against the independence
of his country, but only to shelter himself from a cease
less pursuit, and to give rest to the land harassed by
that perpetual search and invasion.
And while he thus found his only home in those caves
and secret solitudes the poet-wanderer poured forth in
many a troubled strain the sorrows of his heart to God.
So many of the critics as consent to his part in the
Psalms at all, tell us that these are rough and untune-
able, the most primitive accents of poetry (perhaps as
Milton in his learned superiority spoke of the immortal
diction of Shakespeare as " wood-notes wild ") ; but to
the multitudes who have used for thousands of years
those very words of David to express their own sorrow
and pain, and have found no such perfect utterance in
all the system of modern hymns and canticles, the crit
icism means little. It must be amazing to the musi
cian who knows the elaborate structure of his own art,
to see how easily proficiency in that science, so much
less simple than poetry, is attributed to the primitive
singer. The music to which these psalms were set in
after years, or to which, who can tell, David himself
simply adapted them as he sat in the mouth of his cave,
E

50 JERUSALEM. [chap.
or at the door of his tent in the clear Eastern nights, in
those intervals of peace when the pursuers were not
at his heels, was probably a mere chant with cadences,
that wild natural strain nothing in itself but an aid to
the utterance of the poem — the minstrel's story, or the
mourner's lament, or the psalm of triumph and joy—
which is the beginning of all primitive music. And
such as the following were the songs of the desert, the
cry of the exile and outlaw —
" 0 Lord my God, in Thee do I put my trust :
Save me from all them that persecute me ;
Deliver me : lest he tear my soul like a lion,
Rending it in pieces, while there is none to deliver.
" O Lord my God, if I have done this ;
If there be iniquity in my hands ;
If I have rewarded evil unto him that was at peace with me ;
(Yea, rather I have delivered him
That without cause was my enemy :)
Let the enemy persecute my soul, and take it ;
Yea, let him tread down my life upon the earth,
And lay mine honour in the dust.
" Arise, 0 Lord, in Thine anger, against the rage of mine enemies :
Awake for me, Thou who hast decreed justice.
So shall the congregation of the people compass Thee about :
For their sakes return Thou on high.
" The Lord shall judge the people :
Judge Thou me, 0 Lord, according to my righteousness,
And according to the integrity that is in me.
Oh, let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end ;
Establish Thou the just :
For the righteous God trieth the hearts and the reins.
" My defence is of God,
Who saveth the upright in heart.
God is a righteous Judge ;
He showeth His indignation every day.
If (the wicked) be turned not, He will whet His sword ;
He hath bent His bow, and made it ready.
He hath also prepared for him the instruments of death ;
His arrows are as flame against the persecutors.
Behold, the wicked travaileth with iniquity ;

n.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 51
He hath conceived mischief,
And brought forth falsehood.
He made a pit, and digged it,
And is fallen into the ditch which he hath made.
For his mischief shall return upon himself,
And his violent dealing upon his own head.
" I will praise the Lord according to His righteousness :
I will sing praise unto the name of the Lord most high." i
Another psalm which breathes the same spirit of
almost despair, rising by the healing action of poetic
utterance and deep reflection upon the grace of God into
confidence and hope, we have already identified with that
agonising pause in David's life when he waited in hiding
for Jonathan's message. Again, and it might well be
after those encounters with Saul when he had hoped by
generosity and affection to touch his pursuer's heart, he
breathes forth that appeal of the sufferer so often re
peated through the ages : " How long, 0 Lord, how
long ? "
"How long wilt Thou forget me, 0 Lord ? for ever ?
How long wilt Thou hide Thy face from me ?
How long shall I take counsel in my soul,
While sorrow is in my heart daily ?
How long shall mine enemies be exalted over me ?
" Consider and hear me, O Lord my God :
Lighten mine eyes,
Lest I sleep the sleep of death ;
Lest mine enemy say, I have prevailed against him ;
And those that trouble me
Rejoice when I am moved.
"But I have trusted in Thy mercy ;
My heart shall rejoice in Thy salvation.
I will sing unto the Lord,
For He hath dealt bountifully with me."
1 One or two very slight deviations from the authorised version
of the Psalms are taken from the critical exposition of Messrs.
Jennings and Lowe.
e2

52 JERUSALEM. [chap.
It is, as has been already remarked, a commonplace
to say — what every devout reader must have felt in per
sonal use of the Psalms — how often the denunciations of
the enemies of the writer come in with a jarring discord
into the prayers and vows of the supplicant : yet so far
as David personally is concerned there is not only much
excuse, but his force of malediction is in reality much
less than is supposed. Doeg the Edomite, who betrayed
the fact of his brief passage through Nob, and the kind
offices of the unfortunate priest, thus bringing about
the massacre of that priest and all his family, was, for
instance, a ruffian who would have had short shift in
any community : while on the other hand it is to be
remarked that David's prayers for vengeance are limited
to the desire that his enemies should fall into the net
which they have laid for him, and the pit they have
digged. That their craft and evil devices should fall
back upon themselves, is, in the age when an eye was
to be for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, a very moderate
denunciation. It is remarkable indeed that to Saul him
self David never from beginning to end shows any bitter
ness, and that he is always fully capable of appreciating
the honesty and valour of such a character as Abner, with
whom he has no quarrel. Curious too we must add
again is the absolute want of partisanship in the record.
Saul with all his faults never loses our pity, almost it
may be said even at his worst moments our affection.
Abner is fully recognised in his manly simplicity, made
vivid to us by a few lines of portraiture. One might be
warranted in saying that no such impartial history exists,
and that never in any record, especially of civil war and
much personal conflict, did the opponents of the eventu
ally successful side get so fully their due.
The second visit of David to the Philistine king was
very unlike the first. It was indeed equally the move-

H-J THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 53
ment of despair which led him: but he was no longer
a solitary and powerless man, whose life might have
been at any moment the forfeit of his temerity in thus
venturing into the stronghold of his enemies : but at the
head of a valiant and desperate band, certain to have
sold their lives dearly if hospitality had been refused
them. It is clear, as has been already said, that neither
at this time nor at any other during Saul's lifetime had
David any thought of an avowed and formalised rebellion.
He was not a rival candidate for the throne : nor was he
even stung by continual and unceasing pursuit to set up
any rebel standard. The necessities of existence drove
him to the ordinary predatory life of a desert chief,
which was not then or for many centuries after a reproach
to any man. It is a little difficult to understand how in
Adullam or the other desert places where he afterwards
found refuge, there could have been sufficient booty pro
curable to maintain such a body of men. Bich cara
vans from Egypt or from Tyre, wealthy travellers from
south to north or north to south, the manufacturers of
Damascus, or the traders from the already noted cities
of the coast would scarcely have passed that way : and it
is little likely that the agriculturists or pastoral farmers
around, whom he rather protected (as in the case of
Nabal) than assailed, could have furnished enough had
they been devoured altogether, for such a band — though
it is difficult to imagine any other means of support
which they could have had. But if they plied the out
law's usual trade there is not the slightest evidence that
they had ever thought of raising the banner of King
David in opposition to King Saul, nor did the wanderer
ever attempt to meet in battle the armies brought against
him, notwithstanding the fact that a number of the
greatest warriors of Israel had followed him into the
wilderness. Had the six hundred made a descent from

54 JERUSALEM. [chap.
their vantage ground on the hill, upon that sleeping host
through which David threaded his way to the very tent
of the king, who could doubt that the result would have
been most disastrous for Saul and his careless followers?
But no such idea ever seems to have entered his mind.
The cynical reader may say that the strength was too
certainly on Saul's side to make any such attempt
possible : but that consideration has never restrained
any rebel of David's prestige and importance, nor
probably could any ordinary levy of three or four times
their number have stood before these tried and renowned
warriors led by such a chief. It is most singular and
remarkable that no project of resistance ever seems to
have been considered. David and his men disappeared
into the fastnesses which they knew so well, when they
were pushed by their pursuers; twice, as we have seen,
he attempted to overcome the strong hostility against
him by parley and the evidences of his own veneration
for the Lord's anointed. But when neither continual
failure, nor those signs of a magnanimity which Saul had
the heart to appreciate though they made no permanent
difference in his actions, failed to cut short the pursuit,
the harassed outlaw could hold out no longer. "And
David said in his heart, I shall now perish one day by
the hand of Saul : there is nothing better for me than
that I should speedily escape into the land of the Philis
tines ; and Saul shall despair of me, to seek me any more
in any coast of Israel : so shall I escape out of his hand."
This step, doubtful as it may appear to have been, as
adopted by a Hebrew patriot, was the dictate of necessity
no less than of a weary despair : and it seems to have
been successful in its immediate object. Perhaps Saul
felt that the rival whom he so feared had put himself at
a disadvantage in thus seeking the protection of the
common enemy : just as the Scots in their early history

ii. J THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 55
found it difficult to pardon a Scottish knight who had
accepted the protection of England. And the result was
that the pursuit was stopped, and David was left alone
in his exile. It was no doubt an advantage also to the
harassed country, continually troubled by a kind of civil
war, though the action was all on one side.
The career of David in the land of the Philistines was
a strange one. It may well be imagined that Achish, a
king of a traditionary race, possessing all the civilisation
of the time, and much more advanced than the Israelites
who were still only a few generations out of the desert,
should have had no desire to keep these six hundred wild
men out of the wilderness with their multitudinous train
of women and children, about him in his capital. But
he never seems to have hesitated about receiving them,
and the friendship and society of the wandering paladin
would appear to have been delightful to him as to almost
all whom David encountered. Uniting policy with hos
pitality, however, Achish speedily allotted to his for
midable visitors the city of Ziklag, by what summary
process of turning out its previous inhabitants, or forcing
this tremendous invasion of guests upon them, we have
nothing to show. Let us hope that Ziklag had been
previously devastated by some pest, or emptied of its
people by some petty war, neither of these unlikely
events. It would seem probable indeed by the fact that
Ziklag continued to be the property of the kings of
Judah, that it was given over entirely as a gift to David.
It cannot be said that he behaved so nobly in respect to
Achish as he had done to Saul. But here again the
record is wholly impartial, making no attempt to put
any gloss upon his actions. He was no sooner settled in
Ziklag than, necessities of existence no doubt coming in,
he made a raid against the southern people between
Philistia and the land of Egypt, allies or tributaries of

56 JERUSALEM. [chap.
his protector "the Geshurites, the Gezrites and the
Amalekites," all, it must be allowed, ancient enemies of
Israel, and accordingly fair prey to a Hebrew warrior —
destroying both cities and people and carrying away all
their substance. That this was recognised as his means
of living is evident from the highly characteristic ques
tion, put in all civility and friendliness by Achish, over
whom the Hebrew chief had exercised his usual charm.
" Whither have ye made a raid to-day ? " said this indul
gent monarch. The magnanimous David did not hesitate
to tell a politic lie. He pretended that his expedition
had been against the south of Judah. It was much as
if a Scots knight under hiding in England had made his
foray against some peaceful lowland dale on the south
side of the border, but explained to the English au
thorities that it was from Liddesdale that he had
brought those herds of lowing cattle. In both cases the
reason would have satisfied his own conscience that his
raid was justifiable by the fact that these were the
enemies of his own country whom he had despoiled,
whatever might have been its effect upon his hosts.
David went a step farther with true Oriental cruelty and
completeness. He " saved neither man nor woman alive,
lest they should tell on us saying, So did David, and so
will be his manner all the while he dwelleth in the
country of the Philistines." Achish fell completely into
the trap. He believed that the raid had really been
made upon David's own race, and that " He hath made
his people Israel utterly to abhor him; therefore he
shall be my servant for ever." To offer any excuses for
David is no more the part of this writing than of the
strictly impartial and just record. His name must bear
this reproach as it has other and still more grievous
reproaches to bear.
After, however, he had lived more than a year in Zik-

ii.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 57
lag, doubtless employing himself in various expeditions
of the kind above recorded, and settling himself more
and more comfortably in his newly-acquired residence,
like an Italian captain of the Middle Ages, a Sforza or a
Colleoni, there came an alarming crisis in this lawless
yet carefully ordered life. War was again declared be
tween the Philistines and Saul, and there was a general
gathering of the forces of the plains against those of the
mountains. Here was a test which David perhaps had
not foreseen in the first impulse of his despair, that he
should be called upon to join the army of his protector
against his own people. It was no doubt a bitter
moment ; but the severe and self-restrained record gives
us no glimpse into the musings of the exile, torn in two
as he must have been by the cruel situation, which was
terrible to every sentiment as well as destructive to
every ambitious desire or hope for the future : for how
could Israel ever forgive the sight of her own son fight
ing against her in the ranks of her bitterest enemies ?
Yet how could he desert the friend who had sheltered
him in his worst need ? The mediaeval captain to whom
we have compared him turned his arms gaily from one
side to another according to the remuneration offered
him. But David was no mercenary, and as yet had done
nothing, except the mere fact of living among the Philis
tines, contrary to his allegiance.
The moment of trial, however, had now come. " Know
thou assuredly," said Achish, calling his guest to him,
" that thou shalt go up to battle with me, thou and thy
men." There is something authoritative, even threaten
ing in this intimation. And whether the reply of David
was intended for an equivocation or not it is difficult to
tell. "Surely thou shalt know what thy servant can
do." Did he mean to be "falsely true" to Achish as
the king understood him, or did he intend a treachery

58 JERUSALEM. [chap.
which the stronger ties of patriotism and kindred might
have justified to himself? A more exciting moral crisis
could not be. But we shall never know how it would
have ended : whether faith unfaithful, and the honour
of a fugitive so deeply indebted to his protector, or nat
ural feeling and all the strong inducements of ambition
and policy would have carried the day. Fortunately for
David the Philistine leaders here interfered. There
were among them no doubt many whose relations and
friends had fallen by David's hand, many who had fled
before his hot pursuit after that battle in Ephes-dam-
mim, and others not identified in history — many too who
were jealous of his favour with Achish and who had no
faith in the truth or fidelity of an Israelite. When
these leaders found that David and his men were in the
contingent which Achish himself led to the rallying-
point, they turned upon the king with remonstrances
which show how little superiority the fact of kingship
gave among those independent captains. "What do
these Hebrews here ? " they asked fiercely. Achish was
plausible and conciliatory in his explanation. "Is not
this David, which has been with me three years and I
have found no fault in him ? " Is not this David ! Well
did they remember who this David was, the man of
whom the Hebrew women had sung, " one to another in
dances, saying, Saul has slain his thousands, and David
his ten thousands." " Make this fellow go back," they
cried with one voice, not without an angry jibe at the
partiality of Achish. " Let him return, that he may go
back to his place which thou hast appointed him : and
let him not go down with us to battle, lest in the battle
he may be an adversary to us : for wherewith should he
reconcile himself to his master? Should it not be with
the heads of these men ? "
It is easy to imagine with what a sensation of relief

u.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 59
David must have listened to the echoes of this contro
versy, which no doubt had flown through all the camp as
every new detachment arrived, and soon penetrated to
where the Hebrews — heavy and sad — pitched their tents
among the alien host. "Their honour rooted in dis
honour stood : " every claim of gratitude and loyalty
bound them to the generous king : and yet when they
saw before them the standard of their country, and rec
ognised the ensigns, each man of his tribe, what pangs
must have been in every heart ! The rage of the Philis
tine leaders no doubt fell like balm from heaven upon
David and his men. He made a little polite objection, a
little remonstrance to his royal patron — " What have I
done ? What hast thou found in thy servant that I may
not go up against the enemies of my lord the king ? "
But Achish was happily peremptory, and anxious, it
would seem, to avert any possibility of collision. "As
soon as ye be up early in the morning, and ye have light,
depart," he said. One can imagine with what alacrity,
with what thanksgiving to the God of Israel who thus
prevented such a sin against Himself and His people, the
hardy warriors sprang up in the dawning and vanished
from the warlike scene. Their faith to Achish forbade
them to draw sword for their brethren, and no doubt
there were many anxious thoughts over the issue of that
day to Israel, but at all events they were preserved from
the horror of fighting against them, and on the enemies'
side. This providential deliverance was carried out and
made still more emphatic by the next incident which
occurred to David and his men: a terrible incident
enough yet one which must have been always possible in
their lives. They returned to Ziklag to find their town
in ruins, smoke and flame still bursting from the roofs,
the place deserted, not a woman nor a child about to

60 JERUSALEM. [chap.
greet their return, and every sign of a successful raid
such as those with which they were themselves familiar,
not a living creature left in the desolate place to tell the
tale. With the same measure with which they had
meted out it was measured to them again : but perhaps
that is not a reflection which consoles any one, especially
not a band of men, returning to find their homes empty
and everything belonging to them destroyed or carried
away. In the first moment of anguish and horror even
his brothers-in-arms turned upon David. There was
wild talk among the men of stoning him in the rage of
their desolation, as the cause of this trouble : which of
course was as foolish as it was unjust, since it was David
to whom they owed their homes and possessions, and he
was himself as great a sufferer as any. It would seem,
however, that he soon found means of quieting these
murmurs and of deciding what course to pursue. There
must have been some spectator, some old man, or useless
person hidden among the ruins who stole forth at sight
of the returning band, and informed them that it was
the Amalekites, one of whose cities David had treated
so cruelly, who had taken this vengeance, but who more
merciful than David had killed nobody, so that there
was still hope of recovering the captives. David put
heart and courage into his men by consulting God, in the
extraordinary way which it is so difficult to understand,
by means of the ephod, and receiving a favourable answer,
re-formed at once his weary followers and set out in
pursuit. The men had been marching all day, and when
they reached Ziklag were already exhausted with their
journey ; but the occasion was too urgent for rest. Two
hundred of them, however, were so faint that they could
not go far, and had to be left behind halfway while the
others went on. The end was that the fierce and anxious
pursuers came down upon their spoilers in the moment

"¦] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 61
of repose, when they had stopped for the night, and
secure in the absence of all the warriors of the country
and the impossibility of pursuit, had given themselves
up to feasting and rejoicing. It was not only Ziklag
that had been spoiled but the borders of Judah, and those
of Philistia, both nations in preparation for the coming
conflict having been compelled to leave their frontiers
unguarded ; and the night camp was surrounded by bleat
ing of sheep and lowing of cattle, as well as by the
unhappy groups of women and children huddled together,
not knowing perhaps the moment when the caprice of
their conquerors might inflict still greater misery. Upon
them in their moment of relaxation the fierce Hebrews,
full of the rage of exhaustion as well as revenge, fell
like wolves upon sheep. They took them with the cup
at their lips, with their arms laid aside : " they smote
them from the twilight even unto the evening of the
next day." Four hundred "young men who rode upon
camels " are said to have escaped. The numerals of the
Old Testament are always confusing, and the whole
strength of David's band was but four hundred. But
such victories over overwhelming numbers are character
istic of primitive warfare, and the young men on the
camels may have been some advanced guard, who be
lieved all Judah to be upon them. At all events David's
band recovered their wives and children, which was their
first object, besides an immense spoil.
This may be said to have been the end of David's
career as an outlaw. His conduct after this extraordi
nary victory was full of wisdom and policy. He not only
ordained and settled as a law in Israel that the men who
had been left behind should have their share in the spoil,
but he sent portions of it to the cities of Judah in which
he himself had found succour and refuge in his earlier
wanderings, recalling himself thus to their recollection,

62 JERUSALEM. [chap.
and proving how very differently he had been employed
than in the army of the Philistines, where no doubt the
rumour had already run that he was in arms against
Israel. Much the reverse ! pursuing the Amalekites in
a totally different direction, avenging his own quarrel
and those of his compatriots, recovering the spoil which
he thus generously shared with all his friends. The
generosity and chivalry of David's character, so unex
ampled in his time, need not make us overlook those
qualities of policy and astute calculation in which he
was likewise strong. He was not a knight of romance
alone, though he was so in a manner unknown to any
other primitive literature of any nation — but at the
same time he was a far-seeing and clear-headed Oriental
chief, aware of a great future before him, and with no
mind to neglect any just means of conciliating the popu
lar favour. That he should have been able to turn that
decisive moment when fate seemed against him, when it
seemed all but certain that he must compromise himself
for ever with Israel by fighting on the side of her ene
mies, into a triumphant vindication of his patriotism and
unfailing sympathy for his country is the most wonder
ful instance of the way in which fact itself, and the
contrarieties of human sentiment, fight for the man who
knows how to use them. Had the Philistine lords been
wise like David they would have forced him into that
self-committal instead of affording him the means of
turning the situation to his advantage in every way.
The very Amalekites helped him in that futile raid of
theirs, which for the first moment looked like the over
turn of his fortunes and happiness.
He was still iu the flush of his triumph dividing his
spoil, sending out his presents here and there, perhaps in
his excitement almost forgetting the great battle that
had been raging on the plains, when a fugitive with

"¦J THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 63
all the signs of woe upon him, his garments rent and
earth upon his head, ostentatious in his show of mourn
ing, arrived with news of the fight. The Israelites had
been beaten ; they had been driven back dispersed and
flying before the Philistines, and Saul and Jonathan
were both killed. It was not a Hebrew but an Amalekite
who brought the news, a man with no natural occasion
for such lamentation, whose attempt to curry favour with
himself was evidently more clear to David than his
sorrow for the calamity. And when he proceeded to tell
a fabulous story of how it was he who had killed Saul at
the prayer of the defeated king "because I was sure
that he could not live after that he was fallen" — evi
dently with a confident hope that he was thus recom
mending himself to the highest favour — David made
short work of the braggart who deserved his fate. It
was policy, it may be said, thus to give the clearest proof
that these news were no joyful news to the exile. But
it is fully consistent with all we know of David to
believe, that the rage of sudden grief which is not less
bitter perhaps but rather worse, from the fact of separa
tion and grievance between us and those we mourn, was
not less the motive of this act than of the song of
sorrow, the beautiful elegy that burst from his full
heart. There is a curious touch of realism in the inter
polation "also he bade them teach the children of
Israel the use of the bow," 1 which is put in at the
beginning of this song: "for Saul had been sore wounded
by the archers " in the course of the battle, before in
1 This interpolation, quoted from the book of Jasher, is the
foundation upon which M. Renan founds his statement that David
wrote no Psalms, but only an occasional "copy of verses" on
public subjects. Another very usual argument that the supposed
Psalms of David are impossible to be his as expressing sentiments
much more elevated than was known in his time, could scarcely
have a stronger contradiction than this, one of the most beautiful
poems in any language.

64 JERUSALEM. [chap.
his misery and downfall he fell upon his sword. It
recalls the fervour with which the first James of Scot
land pursued the same exercise, apparently without
effect in either case. But the wonderful song of both
national and personal sorrow, the lament of Israel at
once and of David, whose affections had never been
altogether alienated from Saul, the first patron of his
youth, by any intervening events, and who loved Jona
than as a brother : is one of those immortal songs which
to all nations and in all languages become the utterance
of the heart.

' How are the mighty fallen !
The beauty of Israel
Is slain upon thy high places.
' Tell it not in Gath,
Publish it not in the streets of Askelon ;
Lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice,
Lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph.
' Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew,
Neither rain, upon you,
Nor fields of offerings :
For there the shield of the mighty is cast away,
The shield of Saul,
As though he had not been anointed with oil.
' From the blood of the slain,
From the strength of the mighty,
The bow of Jonathan turned not back,
The sword of Saul
Returned not empty.
1 Saul and Jonathan
Were lovely and pleasant in their lives,
And in their death
They were not divided :
They were swifter than eagles,
They were stronger than lions.
1 Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul,
Who clothed you with scarlet,
Who put on ornaments of gold
Upon your apparel.

n.J THE HOUSE OF. DAVID. 65
' ' How are the mighty fallen
In the midst of the battle !
" 0 Jonathan,
Thou wast slain in thy high places.
I am distressed for thee,
My brother Jonathan :
" Very pleasant hast thou been to me :
Thy love to me was wonderful,
Passing the love of women.
"How are the mighty fallen,
And the weapons of war perished ! "
Thus the first portion of the life of David, his pro
bation and training, came to an end, in great calamity
and confusion and national overflow. Nothing could
have ended more disastrously to the Hebrews than that
first essay at the kingship which they had so much
desired. It remained yet to be seen whether the house
of Saul could make any head among the shattered
people, or what new settlement of the affairs and con
stitution of Israel was in the hand of Providence.

CHAPTEB III.

THE KING OF ISRAEL.

THE romance of David's life is so full of attraction
that we are a long time arriving at Jerusalem,
which is the special aim of this narrative. We will not
therefore linger upon the intermediate steps, or the con
fused period which elapsed before his full recognition as
King of Israel. It was only after receiving the Divine
command that he left Ziklag and adventured himself in
Hebron, in the southern part of Judah, as far removed
as the boundaries of the tribe permitted from the home
of Saul : which had always been an important place, the
ancient city of Abraham, still deeply venerated as such
even in the .present day. Here he settled with a certain
tentative air, his men scattering themselves among the
villages, many, no doubt, finding after all their wander
ings their native homes again. His tribe which, no doubt,
had followed his erratic career with interest, and heard a
thousand reports and half-fabulous tales of bis prowess,
besides the still more attaching influence of those songs
in the wilderness, which had flown from lip to lip as
oral literature does everywhere, but nowhere so surely
as in the East — must by this time have felt that its own
power and greatness as the first of the tribes was bound
up with his fame. And they lost no time in taking the
bold step, dangerous if Saul's family had been able to

cm in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 67
retain their power, of anointing David king. One of his
first acts was to reward and promise special protection
to the men of Jabesh-Gilead who had recovered Saul's
remains from the Philistines and given them honourable
burial; and no doubt the strains of the funeral song
were sung over the whole country at once in celebration
of the dead and honour to the living. But David had
yet many difficulties before him ere his position was
established. These difficulties were not only with his
enemies but among his friends and defenders ; for it is
only now that another figure, more rugged and far less
attractive than David, but full of character and power, a
strong shrewd Hebrew without embellishment or grace,
apt to do whatever commended itself to his powerful
practical sense without favour or scruple, the bold and
ready Joab, appears fully on the scene. His two
brothers Abishai and Asahel, shadows of this strong
primitive figure always accompanying him, add to his
terrible presence an additional power. They would seem
to have moved and fought and thought together, a sort
of threefold champion, devoted to the interests of their
kinsman which were their own, but by no means inclined
to consider those delicacies of feeling, those scruples of
sentiment which distinguished David, nor capable of
understanding the chivalrous side of his character. Not
for the sons of Zeruiah was that mission of pure romance,
like the finest inspiration of the Middle Ages, totally
unlike anything in Greek or Eoman story, on which the
three mighty men of David's band fought their way
through the Philistines to bring their chief a draught of
water from the well of Bethlehem. Joab was by far too
hard-headed, too practical a man to have lent himself to
such an enterprise ; one can almost imagine the snort of
indignant scorn with which he would watch the three,
all breathless from the struggle bringing that precious
f 2

68 JERUSALEM. [chap.
draught to the tent door where their leader sat. What
a waste of strength and effort he must have thought it!
but when the question was one of hard fighting and the
responsibilities of a great command, Joab and his attend
ant brothers were never at fault.
The first great event in David's reign was the battle
between the supporters of Saul's family under his great
general Abner, and the host of Judah and servants of
David under Joab. Abner, though he occupies but a
small place in the record, is so set before us as to acquire
all our sympathies. It would be hard to say precisely
why this is, for we have few details of this manly and
noble personage and can scarcely give a reason for the
attraction we feel towards him. His was all the real
strength that belonged to the impoverished house of Saul
shorn of its natural leaders, the heir as well as the head
of the race. Abner it was who set up the feeble son
that remained upon an insecure throne, and gathering all
the forces at his command sought the test of battle
without delay, hoping no doubt to crush the rival of
his master at a blow. The fight took place at Gibeon,
though it would seem to have been unlike Joab's pru
dence to allow himself to be drawn so far from home, and
to risk the newly established kingdom of David on such
a hazard. Once more the account of the battle might
have come out of Proissart. The armies placed them
selves, "sat down," one on each side of the pool of
Gibeon. " Let the young men now arise and play before
us," said Abner. "Let them arise," said Joab. Was
this tragic play, this ordeal of battle — twelve champions
of Benjamin against twelve of Judah, meeting between
the two watching armies — a test perhaps of eventual
success, a rehearsal of the fight?
" Who spills the foremost foeman's life
His party conquers in the strife."

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 69
We are not told what was the issue of that preliminary
struggle — though no doubt it was mutual slaughter : but
in the end Abner was beaten and his followers broken
and dispersed, though not without a melancholy incident
to spoil the triumph of the victors. The youngest of the
three brothers, Asahel, was " as light of foot as a wild
roe," and as Abner retreated pursued him, no doubt fired
by the thought of distinguishing himself and emulating
the exploits of his uncle David in his youth. Abner
turned to warn the hot-headed lad again and again, bid
ding him seek a more tit antagonist, almost imploring
him to save himself. But when such arguments proved
unavailing and there was no alternative but to kill or be
killed, the regretful general struck the youth with " the
hinder end of his spear," hoping perhaps to disable with
out killing him. When the other pursuers came to that
barrier on their way, the body of the swift-footed young
warrior lying across the path, they stood still and went
no farther, though Joab seems to have sounded the bugle
of recall without knowing what fatal object it was which
had checked the pursuit. That the fierce and down
right Joab would take the first opportunity of avenging
his brother was of course certain — but the peremptory
roughness with which he questioned David when Abner,
offended by Ishbosheth, his own mock king, came to
offer his allegiance, shows with what red-hot material
David had to deal. "Why is it that thou hast sent him
away? is he quite gone?" cried the furious captain tak
ing his own measures with all the swiftness of an avenger
to intercept and call back the visitor. When Abner
returned unsuspecting, believing himself to be recalled
by David, Joab met him in the gate of Hebron with a
treacherous aspect of kindness which could scarcely,
however, deceive a man as well acquainted with the
usages of the time as himself, and taking him aside " to

70 JERUSALEM. [chap.
speak with him quietly " killed him there. According
to the morals of his age he had a right thus to avenge
his brother ; but it was a tragic incident with which to
begin a reign. There was a universal mourning over the
great general, who was honoured even by his adversaries :
and some three thousand years after the people wept
for Abner we, too, who read the story acknowledge a
remorseful regret for the great career cut short, the
noble knight laid low. David's wail over him is not so
fine, nor so clear as his lament for Saul, being dictated
by no such intimate connection. The untoward event,
however, called forth indignation as well as regret.
1 ' Died Abner as a fool dieth?
Thy hands were not bound,
Nor thy feet put into fetters :
As a man falleth before wicked men,
So fellest thou."
Perhaps this was a little hard upon Joab, to whom
David was so deeply indebted in after years, and who
stood by him doggedly through many troubles, without
ever awakening that sympathy in his poetic nature which
went out so warmly towards Jonathan, and felt so deeply
the charm of Abner's character. The sons of Zeruiah
were faithful servants to their kinsman, yet hard task
masters too.
There is nothing said in sacred history of the plans
that matured in the mind of David while those years
were passing in which no great event occurred. He was
seven years in Hebron, reigning over his tribe and its-
dependents, no doubt doing much, both in the subjuga
tion of foes around, and in the ordering of laws and
liying within; but it would appear, except for that one
eventful battle which made a blood feud between Joab
and Abner, and decided the fate of the latter, taking
no distinct step to procure for himself the entire sover-

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 73
eignty of the nation, or to disturb the feeble sway of
Ishbosheth in the midland tract of Palestine which
recognised his authority: notwithstanding the constant
muttering of hostilities, never brought to any decisive
battle, which existed between them. In any case it is
apparent that his views of kingship were very different
from those elementary views of Saul who was more the
champion of Israel than its monarch, and had not
changed his residence nor probably much modified his
living on account of that imperfectly comprehended
charge. The kings of the surrounding nations were
kings of cities, of small subdivisions of the country,
without importance enough to favour any lofty view of
the royal office. It was a king to go out at their head in
battle, to give coherence to their host, which Israel had
asked when the idea, first occurred to them. The King
of Philistia even, lord of the plain and sea-coast, though
wealthier and stronger, and no doubt much more advanced
in civilisation than the king of a mountain-tribe, must
yet have held a petty empire in comparison with that
headship of a nation, and sway from Dan to Beersheba
of which David dreamed. Even that was a little king
dom enough in any modern sense of the word. If the
modes of communication of our present time were ever
introduced into Palestine, from Dan to Beersheba would
scarcely be a day's journey: yet when compared with
the kingdoms of Tyre and Sidon, for instance, the
dominion over the Hebrews must have appeared a mighty
empire. David would seem to have been the first since
Moses who had thought upon that peculiar people as an
indivisible race: and it would appear that among his
other qualities he knew how to wait. He looked on
while "ishbosheth alienated Abner: and even when the
hopes of that general's action in his own favour were
closed by his sudden death, would seem to have taken no

74 JERUSALEM. [chap.
steps to precipitate matters, but to have kept in full
fidelity his promise to Saul not to cut off his house.
In the meantime, however, it is impossible to doubt
that his mind was full of thought and deliberation over
the high part which he had yet to play and the best
means of consolidating and establishing on the soundest
foundations that kingdom which he foresaw.
Hebron was at the extreme end of the territory of
Judah, much less suited than Gibeah had been for a
capital. With our present ideas it would have seemed
to us very natural that the historian should have spoken
here of the sacred recollections of Mount Moriah,, and of
that great act of Abraham which had made it so memor
able. To the Jew of later times, as well as to the
Christian, and to the Mohammedan, that association
would assuredly have occurred, and have been stated, as
an important motive in the choice of Jebus for the future
capital; but ancient tradition is by no means clear upon
the fact, and the more ancient writer occupies himself
with that alone and leaves the motives to evidence them
selves. The city of the Jebusites had other recommen
dations. Its position was strong and central. The
mountains encompassed it about like a natural guard;
towards Philistia, for example, on the south and west
it was defended by a series of rocky defiles, where a few
men could have held an army at bay, and though these
natural fortifications were less towards the north, that
was precisely the point of the least importance when the
tribes of Israel should have become one nation. In no
other place were there the same advantages combined.
It is curious to find that little Jebusite town, upon the
scarps and shelves of its rocks, which had been counted
from the age of the first incursion into Canaan among
the cities allotted to Judah, still holding its fierce local
independence five or six generations after: but it is evi-

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 75
dent that this occurred with no small number of the
towns which had been given over on paper, as we should
say, to the invading tribes, but which sloth or an unusu
ally firm resistance, or the intervention of other motives
of a more immediately urgent kind, had induced them
to leave alone until a more convenient season.
It would almost appear as if David had made overtures
to the inhabitants of this little city of some peaceful
mode of acquiring possession, for we have their answer
full of defiance and vain confidence. The message is
confused in phraseology or has become so through defec
tive translations. " Even the blind and the lame. He
shall not come in," says the improved version on the
margin of our Bibles : meaning no doubt a brag that
the blind and the lame were strong enough to defend
the rocky streets and steep ascent, against any troops
that could be brought against them. David took up the
jibe and called to his bravest captains to sweep away
those blind and lame from his way, promising the post
of commander of the army to him who did so. Those
mighty men whose feats are recorded, the great Benaiah,
the gallant Eleazer and the rest, David's favourite
brothers-in-arms, were probably less skilful in this kind
of service ; and it was Joab, the dour and long-headed
captain who won the day. The Jebusites, punished in
their pride, were dislodged: and their city with its
strong fort on the crest of the hill, its deep ravines
below, the ledges of rock upon which its dwellings were
perched, came out for ever from the obscurity of the
ancient ages, and was made into, not the centre of Israel
alone, but of a great undiscovered world of which its
conquerors knew nothing — empires mighty and famous,
races undeveloped or unborn, of which its little history,
its insignificant forces, its strange people, should shape
both the character and the fate.

76 JERUSALEM. [chap.
Strange and wonderful destiny for a rude Eastern
village wrapped round with the stony involutions of
inhospitable hills ! Athens was not as yet, far less any
trace in the darkness of imperial Eome ; nay, even Troy
was not, nor any knowledge of its legendary struggles.
It is the most bewildering thought when we attempt to
look back, with all our modern theories of advancing
progress and the development of the human race, and
see amid the mists that covered all the rest of the world,
that incident as vivid as if it had happened yesterday,
far more clear than the events which are taking place,
for instance, in India, notwithstanding all the electric
telegraphs in the world. What was there in that little
town among the hills that it should thus come in for ever
into the moral landscape, be taken and retaken, ruined
and burned, and raised again, century after century, age
after age, without ever losing its supreme place in the
thoughts, or its supreme influence over the destiny of
the human race? How the Greek — invented, himself
and all his works, centuries later — would have scorned,
and the Boman laughed at, such a possibility! Yet
there it stands having outlived and transformed them
all, having printed its history upon the very souls of
nations unborn, standing still among its ruins, waiting
in silence for who knows what final demonstration? The
scientific philosopher does well to keep his questioning,
his jibes, his arguments for a miracle of a moment, for
which the narrator had no leisure, and saw no necessity,
to furnish proof. But he does not attempt to explain
that miracle of the world, or demand of the great witness
of all the ages how such a prodigy could be.
The writer may here confess, if a personal fancy prob
ably fantastical enough, may be permitted, to a strong
desire to communicate to the reader what it was an
individual interest to attempt to trace, the original aspect

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 77
of this future capital, in one sense, of the world. Two
hills, which are not much more mountains than are the
seven hills of Bome, may be traced in profile from the
higher ground on the other side of the valley of Him-
mon: The western hill rising to a point against the
morning sun slopes downward, the modern wall marking
the outline of the descent; then that line of defence
rises to the summit of an angular platform on another
eminence, square and bold, from whence the eastern
slope falls abruptly, almost at one point a precipice, to
the second valley below. Beyond this, inseparable, is
the third hill of the little range, the Mount of Olives,
now painfully crowned by a high white modern campa
nile which has no business there. We cannot dissociate
this third eminence from the scene, though it is not
Jerusalem, but only the everlasting attendant and spec
tator of Jerusalem. This is how they lie, the distinctive
contour half buried in ruin, modern houses grown like
weeds upon the buried masses of ancient houses, palaces
and public places, which are only to be traced and fol
lowed in their original lines by excavations many feet
deep under the modern surface. The little conjectural
illustration here given shows what the first aspect of the
little town must have been, and its transformation when
the Temple was built. Much increased building and the
filling up of all hollows, more or less, with ruin and the
dibris of the past, have made the aspect of the modern
city that of an almost continuous slope from the height
of Zion to the fortified wall of the Temple enclosure, the
present Haram-esh-Sherif, from which the grass-clad de
clivity of Mount Moriah descends into the little glen of
the Kedron, the valley of Jehoshaphat.
But when Joab's soldiers swarmed up these slopes
from the deep valley now called the Tyropoeon, the
primitive buildings of the Jebusites were upon the

78

JERUSALEM.

[chap.

western hill alone. The little town lay, as the towns of
Judah still lie, upon the side of the eminence, its little
stronghold planted upon the height, its low houses cling
ing to the rocky sides, probably in many cases with a
cave for the innermost room, and founded upon the ledges
and layers of the living stone. They were so much higher
it would seem, in civilisation then, than are the Arabs
even of the present day who content themselves with
mud huts plastered against the protecting slope— that

¦ ¦ ,-

jggfejg.1

THE ANCIENT JEBUS. JERUSALEM OF DAVID'S TIME (CONJECTURAL).

their houses were of stone, a distinction due to their
stony country which provided the materials of such solid
construction. Across that deep low trench of a valley
lay a green and rounded hill, through which broke points
of rock, sloping softly upward on the side which was
towards the town, but steep on the further declivity.
We may be permitted to conjecture that its slopes were
covered with corn, that a primitive farm spread out its
long sheds and shelters for man and beast somewhere

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 79
upon the western slope looking towards Jerusalem, and
that the farmer had placed his winnowing floor upon the
height where all the winds would help him in his work,
close by the rocky altar on which Abraham had made
his sacrifice. There must have been so many rudely-
built altars all about the country, that perhaps that
traditional place was less remarked — or it might be
that the farmer hoped it would bring him good fortune
to thresh his corn near a sacred place. It must, how
ever, again be noted that we know nothing of any ancient
Jewish traditions as to this spot, which explains why it
is that no mention of the sacred associations of Mount
Moriah are found either in the history or in the many
psalms and sacred songs which have to do with the Ark
and Temple. Was it Mohammed in his anxious selec
tion of novelties wherever he could find them to grace
his new system, who first insisted upon the shrine of
Abraham, and founded one of his holiest centres there
— thus recalling to the Christian and even to the Jew its
primeval consecration? But that is a question to which
we cannot reply, the sole answer being that the mount
upon which the Temple was built is called Mount Moriah,
briefly and without any reference to its sanctity, in the
description of the Temple of Solomon, but is nowhere
else mentioned in Scripture except in the story of the
sacrifice of Abraham, which was made in "the land of
Moriah." We have, therefore, really no warrant for be
lieving that the site of the new capital was chosen for
any motive beyond that of its extreme convenience and
almost unique adaptation to the desired use. That the
adjoining hill should be the site of the great Temple,
their pride and glory, the most magnificent work of their
face, even it would appear splendid enough to be the
glory of the time, though Tyre and Sidon and other
accompanying nations abounded in luxuries and splen-

80 JERUSALEM. [chap.
dours unknown to Israel, was evidently enough for the
Israelites. It was presumably soon after the murder of Ishbo
sheth, which he avenged summarily, as he had avenged
Saul upon his self-alleged slayer, that David took the
stronghold of the Jebusites and made it the seat of his
power. It was within the borders of Benjamin, yet also
within close reach of his brethren of Judah, and stood
high upon a mount of vision where any proposed inva
sion could be guarded against. Possibly it was a con
ciliatory measure towards that tribe of Benjamin thus
cast down from its high position as having given a king
to Israel, to place the capital of the kingdom within its
territory. David had no sooner taken possession of the
place than he set to work to strengthen and beautify it,
and above all to add to it the sanctity of all that was
most sacred and full of hallowed associations in Israel.
One of his earliest acts after the full establishment of
his kingdom was to proclaim a day of high festival
throughout the country which, bit by bit and tribe by
tribe had acknowledged his sway, inviting all to come
with him to bring up the Ark to the new centre of the
national life. The Ark had been left at the village of
Kirjath-Jearim on the road between Jaffa and Jerusa
lem, and close to the border of the Philistine country,
when it was sent away in terror by the Philistines
according to a previous narrative; and had remained
there from the early days of Samuel till now, there being
probably no pause long enough among the distractions
of the time to suffer any ruler to think of its proper dis
posal, or place sufficiently strong and safe to place it
permanently. It is probable enough that in the con
tinual struggle for life, the recollection of that sacred
emblem at once of their history and their faith, had
faded in great measure out of the minds of the warring

in-] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 81
race, whose mere physical necessities were so overwhelm
ing, and who had to hold their own on every side against
strong and watchful enemies. Nothing can be more
deceptive than our calculations of policy as solely act
uating such a movement. Had David not been moved
by strong religious faith, and a boundless conviction
that God was with him, and all things in the Divine
hand, he never would have attained the position he now
held; and it would be out of harmony with all that we
know of him could we suppose that he was not himself
the most fervent of the worshippers who filled the valley
with their songs as they went along towards the village
on its little elevation, where half forgotten in the long
neglect, yet no doubt surrounded with a superstitious
veneration, the ancient Ark of the desert, symbol of all
the touching and wonderful story of Israel, the Ark
which had passed before them through the wilderness,
which had stood in the bed of Jordan when the people
passed over, and accompanied them through all early
dangers, remained where chance had carried it when sent
forth from Philistia.
There would seem to have been no attempt made before
to bring it into any consecrated place. The death of the
priests, the destruction of the house of Eli, and uni
versal distraction of the country, only half conquered at
the best, full of enemies both within and without, had
prevented any such effort. Various places of worship
had set themselves up in various parts of the small area :
— the tabernacle from which the Ark had been taken
was at Gibeon: — at Gilgal, at Bamah, where Samuel
lived in his patrimony, at Nob, where a whole Levitical
family were destroyed by Saul, centres of worship had
been established where some attempt to carry out the
appointed ritual of worship was made, sacrifices were
offered and the people " inquired at the Lord " in that
G

82

JERUSALEM.

[chap.

curious way which it is so hard to understand. But
these were probably old shrines either adapted from the
surrounding nations or instituted hastily to meet an
everyday necessity. Kirjath-Jearim lies on a soft little
knoll in the sunshine, its level lines of low houses sur
rounded by trees more luxuriant than are usual in Pales
tine, its position especially peaceful and smiling — though
so near the border line, where the fierce Philistines must

THE JERUSALEM OF SOLOMON (CONJECTURAL).

have watched, one cannot but feel, those strange proceed
ings of the now conquering and prosperous Hebrews with
much curiosity and some alarm. The procession must
have surrounded the house of Abinadab which was " on
the hill," with their music and their songs, waiting
till the Ark was brought forth upon " a new cart " or car,
the sons of Abinadab, one in front and one behind, con
ducting it. In that very valley the men of Bethshemesh
had been punished for their vulgar and profane curiosity
in opening and looking into the sacred treasures. But
that was already an old story, and perhaps the popular

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 83
delight and excitement of the festival had made the
crowd of followers almost forget what was the sacred
occasion of their rejoicing: and by the time that the
music and the rhythmic dance — those convolutions of
almost solemn movement, which are so unlike anything
that we know under the name of dancing — had reached
the southern valley under the hill of Zion the wild ex
citement of the crowd had probably reached a climax.
As we have no reason to suppose that natural causes are
not used by Providence in all ages, it is legitimate, we
think, to believe that the sudden death of Uzzah, who is
said to have taken hold of the Ark to steady it, and thus
called down upon him the wrath of the Lord — was due
to the fatigue and excitement, the pressure of the crowd
and the blazing of the sun : but the incident which was
so emphatic an interruption of their mirth affected as
nothing else could have done the imagination of the mul
titude, and recalled them to a sense of the sacredness of
that symbol of God's presence which in the delight of
their holiday they had been so ready to forget.
David was as much startled and terrified as the
least instructed of his followers, and the terrible Ark
was hurriedly dragged aside to the nearest farmsteading,
where it was placed once more upon a threshing-floor
and abandoned, the gay processionists dispersing to their
homes in terror and dismay. "David was displeased,"
indignation mingling with alarm in his heart that God
whom he had meant to honour should have "made a
breach upon Uzzah." He called the fatal spot by the
victim's name as he hurried away to hide his head in his
castle on the hill. The impartial record has no indul
gence for him, but puts down this sullen fit of- anger
with the same composure as his most pious acts. It is
not a sentiment unknown to any of us, even the most
devout; yet none of our historians now would venture to
g2

84 JERUSALEM. [chap.
say that we were " displeased " with what was recognised
to be an act of God.
But this mood did not last. The king looked down
from his fortress night and day upon the valley in which
was hidden that sacred symbol : and as he came and went
beheld on his way the empty tabernacle, the folds of the
closed and vacant tent where he had meant to place the
venerable token of God's presence with his people. It
must have become a growing preoccupation, an eager
longing and desire ; indeed from this period the fixed
idea of a House of God, more splendid than any tent
or tabernacle, seems to have taken possession of David's
mind. And then there came tales of how everything
throve in the household of the man who had given to
that sacred symbol the shelter of his roof, until by
degrees the superstitious terrors wore off, the project
was taken up again, and the wish of the king's heart
was temporarily fulfilled. A feast more joyous still than
the former which ended in so much trouble, made the
shout of the newly named Jerusalem echo to the skies,
as all the splendour of Israel, everything that the warlike
people possessed of glittering armour and waving ensigns,
and many coloured robes, in the brilliancy yet harmony
of hues which is natural to the East, poured down into
the valley. David had taken advantage of the pause to
secure that duly qualified and appointed persons should
be there to convey the solemn burden to its place, and
satisfy all the reverential laws which hedged about the
sacred Ark of the testimony. The white-robed band of
Levites in the midst arranged in their orders, singers and
harpists, and all the fit attendants, with the priests at
their head, must have made a wonderful shining centre
to all the dark array of the mighty men of valour, the
captains and champions, sunburnt with their life in the
wilderness, who were inseparable from their leader, his

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 85
brothers-in-arms: and all the commoner train that
crowded after them. We have no clear information
where it was exactly that Obed-edom and his sons
wielded their flails, while the winnowing winds through
the open shed drove the useless chaff away. But no corn
would be threshed or labour of the field go on on that
great day. All the way up to the city gates through the
ravine, all gay with many coloured crowds, what a sight
to see that procession wind! — the first of many won
derful sights, the beginning of the link which bound the
lesser hill to the loftier, the throne of national worship
to the throne of the house of David. And as the choirs
mounted towards the city, and the dark escort sur
rounded their white ranks, and the dancers marched and
swayed in time, this was how the Levites without and
within answered to each other and sang :
" Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord ?
Who shall stand in His holy place ?
" He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart ;
Who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity ,
Nor sworn deceitfully.
" He shall receive the blessing from the Lord,
And righteousness from the God of his salvation.
" This is the generation of them that seek Him,
Of them that seek Thy face,
Even of the house of Jacob.
" Lift up your heads, 0 ye gates ;
Be ye lifted up, ye ancient doors,
That the King of glory may come in.
' ' Who is this King of glory ?
The Lord strong and mighty,
The Lord mighty in battle.
" Lift up your heads, 0 ye gates ;
Lift them on high, ye ancient doors ;
And the King of glory shall come in.

86 JERUSALEM. [chap.
" Who is the King of glory ?
The Lord of hosts,
He is the King of glory."
The curious story which follows shows us from some
window in the wall a woman looking out upon the ap
proaching procession, a woman sad at heart, torn from
her ancient surroundings, brought back perhaps to a
husband whom she had ceased to love, expected to wear
a face of joy at the establishment of a new kingdom over
the ruins of her father's house. Michal had loved David
and saved his life in the early days of their devotion.
But since then years of trouble and change had elapsed
and other loves had taken the place of that romance. She
had been restored not without reluctance on her part,
forced perhaps by the extraordinary manners of the
time, brought back with weeping to find other women
in David's house and a crowd of children with whom she
had nothing to do. Her heart, most like, was weary for
an occasion to pour forth its bitterness. And when
Saul's proud daughter saw the new king leading that
dance, dressed in the scanty white tunic of a priest with
his armour and his splendour laid by, all these accumu
lated griefs burst into that satire and ridicule which
are the sharpest weapons of an angry woman. " How
glorious was the King of Israel to-day ! uncovering him
self in the eyes of the handmaids of his servants : " —
lowest vanity of all, to please the miserable women who
were not worthy to look at a king, seeking their admira
tion, always the bitterest jibe a woman can find, " like
one of the vain fellows." Truth to say the reader in
these distant days is apt to agree with Michal in her
scorn, knowing nothing of what these dances were, or of
the conditions in whicli they were accounted a reverential
service. David, who was at all times a man of fervent
emotions, throwing himself into the act of the moment,

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 87
had no doubt been as superior to the vile motive which
she attributed to him as are to this day many men on
whom angry kinsfolk throw like aspersions — and an
swered indignantly : " I will yet be more vile than this,
I will be base in my own sight," he cries. " It was before
the Lord, who chose me before thy father, and before all
his house." This altercation breaks painfully into the
beautiful scene full of national devotion and sacred tri
umph, but embittered, as so often happens, by domes
tic discord. Michal had no child until the day of her
death. She remained alone in the crowded household
passionate and soured, she who had been the hero's first
love. Let us hope she had not left children behind her
who were not his in the distant Gibeah from whence she
had been torn. But probably the old friends who looked
on, distressed at this bitter breach, were helpless to in
tervene, knowing, as we say to-day, that on both sides
there was a great deal to be said.
David had now attained the height of his glory, and
the people of Israel had entered upon that period in
which their greatness as an independent and united
nation came to a climax.. On every side enemies were
subdued and neighbours conciliated, and the full force of
the promises which gave to the children of Abraham if
not full possession, at least supremacy, over the whole
land of Canaan, began at last to come true. It was
probably during one of the episodes of this interval of
fighting, before the final conquest of the Philistines,
when that strong and warlike people had spread them
selves in swarming bands in the valley of Bephaim while
David, probably unwilling to risk his newly acquired
stronghold had gone down to "a hold" — perhaps the
familiar ground of those old caves toward the east of
Judah, with which his warriors were so well acquainted,
or some strong natural fort thereabout where his head-

88 JERUSALEM. [chap.
quarters could be established — that one of the most ro
mantic incidents of his career took place. Day after day
the battle raged, irregular, the reinforcements of the foe
swarming to the front, with ever-renewed zeal. The
whole country would seem to have been occupied by
them; they were in force at Bethlehem, and had overrun
all the fruitful fields and peaceful pastures of David's
youth. It must have been at the end of one of those con
tinuous days of fighting when tired and harassed, not
certain what was the response of the Lord to his prayers,
he sat down by the mouth of his cave and sighed for a
draught of that water from the well at the gate of Beth
lehem which had refreshed him on many an evening
when he came in with his flock from the distant pastures.
As tired as the king himself, as hot and worn with the
conflict of the day, must have been the three mighty men
of valour who overheard the exclamation and looked at
each other with a simultaneous purpose, true brothers-in
arms — accustomed to stand by each other shoulder to
shoulder — knowing, in the true humility of generous
souls, that the king who bore the burden of care for all,
was of more value than all three to Israel and the world.
They must have stolen out from his presence into the
night breathless with that common thought, to make
their way through those crowding hosts with whose
breathing the very air of the desert was heavy, and heed
less of watch or picket about Bethlehem, to the well at
the gate. Eleazer was one of them, he who has had the
honour of being selected as M. Benan's favourite: and
two others whose names vary in the record — Jashobeam
the son of Hachmoni, and Shammah from Harar, men
who knew every step of the way. They forced their pas
sage through the night, through a hundred deaths, like
knights of the Bound Table, like followers of Eobert
Bruce or Cceur de Lion. The entire tale is pure chivalry,

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 89
worthy of the age in which such sheer devotion was the
ideal of the spotless character. And like the high hero
of the poet's dream, the Arthur who never was by sea
or shore, David whom we all discuss with so many dis
paragements, the ambitious, the schemer, the voluptuary
— David received this proof of supreme devotion like the
prince and poet he was. "My God forbid it me," he
cries, "that I should do this thing: shall I drink the
blood of these men that have put their lives in jeop
ardy? for with the jeopardy of their lives have they
brought it." No drop of that precious cruse was for
human lips. He poured it out before the Lord. Where
did they learn this sentiment, unrevealed to the gracious
Greek or noble Boman, the flower of Christian devotion
and grace, those heroes of obscure and uncivilised tribes,
the sons of herdsmen, the reivers and outlaws of the
desert? This is beyond the power of any critic or com
mentator to tell.
In the life of every man whatever he may be the chief
period of interest is that of struggle and suffering. Of
the prosperous life, the successions of good fortune, the
conquests and the triumphs there is little to say. Who
cares for the addition of feoff to feoff, and victory to
victory? When the hero wades deep in troubled waters,
when his life is a series of hairbreadth escapes and inces
sant efforts, then it is that men care to look on, to mark
and listen, to watch with long-drawn breath the successive
billows that roll over his head, the tide that threatens to
submerge him altogether. If one might risk such a con
jecture as that the innumerable worlds which form the
universe were peopled with faithful hosts who have never
broken the law of God nor been placed in the conditions
of temptation, one might imagine this little tragic earth,
the abode of sorrow, to be in its way, to that great au
dience, an endless centre of interest and spectatorship, an

90 JERUSALEM. [chap.
unfolding drama, with its great rolls of story full within
and without of lamentation and mourning. It is the
common idea of humanity that its own extraordinary and
incomprehensible being is in some sort the centre of the
universe, an idea of which it would be impossible to dis
abuse the primitive mind, and which it is difficult even
for the most fully informed to forego. We know that the
stars are greater worlds than our own and that they are
innumerable in their greatness, but still the inalienable
poetry of nature compels us to see in them the lights
that fill our nights with beauty, the spectators of our
wayward courses. It may be that we are indeed the
object of continual interest in this other way. The record
of happiness is blank : the moving story, the eloquence,
the poetry, even the keener flashes of delight, must all
be the accompaniments of mortal distress. We can pur
chase the attention of the spheres in no other way.
And in David's case the time had now arrived of suc
cess and widespreading victory. He overcame all the
peoples round him, taking homage and tribute from the
Moabites and Philistines, and from distant Damascus, the
renowned city where he " put garrisons, " bringing from it
golden shields and "much brass": a curious token that
the same industry which flourishes still in that ancient
and wealthy place, was already one of its known attri
butes. One can imagine the Israelitish warriors, unused
to such wonders, prowling about the great bazaars, prob
ably little different from those of to-day, and gazing
amazed at the glittering wares high piled upon every
side, the wonderful carpets, the vessels of gold and sil
ver, the garments woven in many colours: carrying off
that for the king, and this to gladden the eyes of those
daughters of Israel who would greet their returning steps
with song and pour out from every village to hail the
conquerors. Amalek and Edom alike owned the suprem-

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 91
acy of David, and the great traders of Tyre, perhaps
to divert his attention from their wealth, and the fact
that they had no army on land sufficient to resist him,
made haste to offer their friendship and their gifts and
their skilful workmen to build the new king a palace
worthy his great name. It was perhaps the first in
troduction of anything that could be called luxury into
the spare dwellings of the hitherto but partially settled
tribes: and the wonder must have spread through the
little rocky city as the caravans arrived with their spoils,
and the Tyrians with their loads of cedar : and the great
hewn stones, Cyclopean masses which still are the won
der of the excavators of the nineteenth century, were
dragged up the steep slant to that mount where the new
palace walls began to show, a miracle of strength and
beauty. The city of the Jebusites had come to as great
promotion as had the king himself who had tended his
few sheep in the wilderness some dozen years before.
The carvings and the decorations of his new house
abashed David himself in all the elation of his victories.
His astonishment at his own greatness took the form, in
a mind so open to all generous emotions, of compunction.
" See now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the Ark of
God dwelleth within curtains," he said to that uncom
promising prophet, Nathan, who here makes his earliest
appearance in the record. Not to David, however, was
this privilege given. Nathan who had at first encouraged
his wish to build for the Lord a still nobler palace than
his own, came back to his royal patron with another
message, full of grace yet of severity. God would not
accept the offering : yet He rewarded the intention by a
promise to establish the house of David, given as would
seem in compensation for the refusal. He would not
accept from the warrior who had shed much blood, that
Temple in all its magnificence, the house for the Lord,

92 JERUSALEM. [chap.
which already had shaped itself in his fervent imagina
tion. Not for him, with blood upon his hands, was this
great and crowning achievement of life to be. To the
poet, framing in his mind all glorious things, who had
already begun to muse and dream of the great walls, the
fragrant portals of cedar, the wreathed work of the cor
nices and capitals, this was no doubt a terrible check
and disappointment. Many years after when he unfolded
his plans to his son Solomon, David described all the
decorations which he desired to be carried out in the yet
unbuilt Temple, with a sigh of unaccomplished desire.
"All this," he said, "the Lord made me understand in
writing by hand upon me," an expression in which there
is all the pathos of a cherished hope unfulfilled.
When Nathan left him after this interview David en
tered into the tent where the Ark dwelt in solemn gloom
under its curtains, and poured out his soul in thanks to
God, who had promised to establish his house for ever.
" Who am I, 0 Lord God ? and what is my house,
That Thou hast so brought me hitherto ?
Yet was this but a small thing in Thy sight,
O Lord God ;
But Thou hast spoken also of Thy servant's house
For a great while to come.
And is this the manner of man,
O Lord God ? "
It was not the manner of man : and yet there is a poig
nant note of pain in the outpouring of thanksgiving.
The Lord had given him far more than he had thought
of or demanded, not only a son to sit on his throne after
him, but an everlasting throne to be established for ever,
the throne of a greater than man already divinely indi
cated to the hopes of the world. Yet hidden in this
bountiful giving there was a withholding which wrung
David's heart : more a hundred times than he could have
asked or imagined, but not the desire of his soul. He

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 93
had had his share of glory, the glory of great fame and
honour and incalculable promotion, the renown of a great
leader and ruler. He had established the dominion of
Israel, and — crowning happiness in the eyes of an East
ern prince — he was thus proclaimed father of a never-
ending line of kings to be : but that Temple of his dreams,
more glorious than was ever built with hands, that great
psalm erected in everlasting stone and lined with gold
and filled with music, that beautiful imagination was
refused to him. To know that Solomon should do it,
was no doubt a great thing: but yet a man's son, though
dear, is not himself. His was the imagination, his the
heart in which this great thought had been conceived:
but not to him should be the blessedness of carrying it
out. His thanksgiving is, we cannot but feel, almost
aching with a humility and pathetic acknowledgment
of the overwhelming mercy of the promise, too great
almost for human thanks, yet acute with an unexpressed
pang within. "0 Lord God, Thou hast spoken it; Thou
hast revealed to Thy servant ' I will build Thee an
house.' " But in the pouring out of that blessing God
had brought his servant to a sudden pause. It was not
for him, that man so favoured, to have the last boon
which above all things he desired most.
Thus David also had his great disappointment in the
midst of all his glory and success.
It would have been well for his future peace had the
record of these years of success and peaceful consolidation
of the kingdom, varied by much building at Jerusalem,
and increase and decoration of the capital, contained no
darker story. But the severe impartiality of the history
spares David not a line of the condemnation due to him :
although it is true that this impartial history itself says
not a word either of blame or praise — and only reflects
as in an incorruptible mirror the incident which is the

94 JERUSALEM. [chap.
chief reproach of his life. By this time he had retired
from the active conduct of the wars which were still
going on all around under the generalship of the re
doubtable Joab. David himself had been prevented by
the strong remonstrance of his counsellors and the peo
ple generally from leading his own army as in former
times "lest Thou quench the light of Israel," and had
yielded to that reasonable prayer : so that now " at the
time when kings go forth to battle, " a curious indication
of the warlike habit of the nations round, "David sent
Joab and his servants with him, and all Israel " to de
stroy Ammon, or whatsoever other work of the kind
might be in hand. " And David sat in his house " — set
aside, although on the complimentary argument that his
life was too valuable to be risked : and dreamed of the
Temple he was not to be allowed to build, and entered in
all the force of his mature life and passions into the
storm of fierce temptation, never so strong as with those
whose active life has thus come to a pause.
There were in those days no scruples in Israel as to
polygamy, and David was in this respect very far from a
saint. He seems at once to have celebrated his conquest of
Jerusalem, for instance, by taking more wives out of the
newly acquired city, the one event following the other as
a natural consequence in a manner almost comic to our
eyes. But to take into his house the wife of another
great warrior, a man of sufficient importance to appear
among the list of the thirty heroes, was a more serious
matter. It is unfortunately in all history an incident so
common that it would scarcely have counted as a reproach
in any other literature, and few kings have the right to
throw stones at David. But the careful record of his
attempts to conceal the shame of the woman and avoid
the vengeance of the man whom he had dishonoured,
bring the whole matter before us too clearly to be ig-

m.J THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 95
nored. David dared not, it would seem, risk such a
scandal in his new capital, and to hide his guilt had re
course first to mean expedients and then to a bloody and
desperate act. Failing in all attempts to seduce Uriah
he sent to Joab in the field that commission of murder
and treachery. " Set Uriah in the forefront of the hot
test battle." To be in the van is at all times a credit for
a soldier, the post of honour, as of danger: probably
Uriah was made to feel himself the selected champion,
and so, let us hope, met his death gloriously with no
consciousness of the shameful cause.
It is curious to remark that the uncompromising Joab,
who was by no means certain to give to his master's
orders a servile obedience, made no remonstrance in this
case as he did so often, nor, it would seem, ever asked
a question. He was accustomed to carry out his own
schemes of vengeance with the utmost indifference to
David's opinions, or to any motive either of mercy or
policy: and probably he took it for granted that this was
a personal quarrel, which the king proposed to avenge
otherwise than by his own hand: or if he had any
information on the .subject of Bathsheba, the motive
would be still more simple. He carried out the order
with prosaic straightforwardness, and a certain grim
despatch: sending back the king's messenger with an
account of the proceedings in which there is a fine irony
of which David could not but be conscious. "Tell the
king " such and such details, says Joab. " And if the
king's wrath arise, and he say unto thee, Wherefore
approached ye so nigh unto the city when ye did fight?
knew ye not that they would shoot from the wall? Then
say thou, Thy servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also."
Who can venture to imagine what was in the heart of
the king when he received this message? He was a man
full of generous impulses, if also of passion and deter-

96 JERUSALEM. [chap.
mination to satisfy all his desires. There was a hideous
pause during which the wife of Uriah mourned for her
husband, which seems to the reader an additional horror
in the mockery of sorrow. But let us hope that Bath
sheba knew nothing about the cause of his death, and
that even the guilty satisfaction with which she must
have felt that this event secured her own safety, would
stir up compunctions in her mind and make the mourn
ing not all a pretence and mockery. To enter into the
harem of the king in such circumstances would be not
unattended by trouble we may be sure, to the woman
whose story would be whispered with many a commen
tary from one to another by those free-spoken women of
Israel, who, notwithstanding the bondage of polygamy,
were never slow to express their opinions, even to their
lord himself. But for David there was reserved a more
emphatic condemnation. The incident would have been
swept aside, like so many similar incidents in the lives
of kings, perhaps would never have secured a mention
in the chronicle, but for the Divine reproof that fol
lowed. If as M. Benan1 supposes the records of David's
life were taken from his own account, favourably shaped
in his own interest, it would be difficult to imagine
what the motive could be for introducing the parable of
Nathan — unless that the poet gained mastery over the
man, and David felt himself incapable of keeping back
a story so instinct with poetry and feeling. The king
was in the flush of passion satisfied, and the excitement
of a new incident in the life of comparative inactivity,
to which he was now condemned, when Nathan appeared
charged with his message. The prophet came as to the
1 That great authority is of opinion that the story of Uriah is a
mere fable, though he does not tell us on what grounds — perhaps
as a compensation to David for taking his Psalms from him : and
certainly a great relief to all our minds could we take M. Renan's
word for it.

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 97
judge of Israel, bound to see right and justice admin
istered everywhere, with his brief but tremendous indict
ment. " There were two men in one city ; the one rich, and
the other poor. The rich man had exceeding many
flocks and herds: but the poor man had nothing, save
one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished
up: and it grew up together with him, and with his
children ; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his
own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was to him as a
daughter. And there came a traveller unto the rich man,
and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own
herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto
him; but took the poor man's lamb, and dressed it for
the man that was come to him." Nothing could add to
the beauty and simple force of the parable. It has
become for all time the protest of the weak, the strong
est plea against the oppressor. David hasty and gener
ous was in arms in a moment against the ruthless tyrant.
"His anger was greatly kindled against the man; and
he said to Nathan, As the Lord liveth, the man that
hath done this thing shall surely die. And Nathan said
to David, Thou art the man."
In all history there is no situation more striking —
the prophet strong in the inspiration of his message from
on high, probably fired also with human indignation,
facing the all-powerful Eastern chief in whose hands
were life and death, the royal lover who had shrunk
from nothing in the carrying out of his desires. If
there ever was a moment in which David was minded to
strike down his accuser there is no sign of it in the
record. That fiery arrow went to his heart. " I have
sinned against the Lord," is all that he can say.
It is curious to note the character of the immediate
chastisement, first sign and symbol of- much more to

98 JERUSALEM. [chap.
come, which is said to have followed. The loss of a
new-born infant would seem but a small matter in that
overflowing Eastern house, swarming with the sons of
the king; yet no father of one sole heir and hope could
have felt it more deeply than David appears to have
done. As he lies on the ground in an agony of humilia
tion and prayer all the night through, beseeching God
for the life of his child, absorbed and swallowed up in
his penitence as he was before in his pleasure, the heart
of the reader melts over the stricken man. His punish
ment was far from being over in the death of that inno
cent. Absalom lay before him in his way, and Amnon,
and many a grief connected with his children : not easily
or lightly was his expiation to be made: but no man,
and still less any woman, who has passed through such
a vigil, will refuse the tribute of sympathy to David.
What was one little life among so many? but of each
was it not possible that he was the chosen one, the seed
of David who was to sit upon David's throne for ever?
When all was over, and he rose from his prostration in
that calm which his astonished servants .could not under
stand, those words with which millions of bereaved
parents have endeavoured to staunch their wounds, fell
from David's lips: "I will go to him; but he shall' not
return to me." The child had a better fate than that of
any king's son: the father went out to his duties a
changed and sobered man.
The very next step in his career plunges him into his
more real and bitter punishment, into those troubles of
a father among a tumultuous company of high-spirited
and privileged young men, which the father of princes
can perhaps best understand, but which are not unknown
to humbler spheres. That " evil against him out of- his
own house " which Nathan had denounced was not slow
to come. It is impossible to understand the story, so

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 99
painful and revolting to our ears, of Amnon and Tamar,
nor how it could be possible that a legitimate and per
mitted bond could exist between the son and daughter,
even though by different mothers, of the same man.
But the vengeance of Absalom is quite comprehensible,
justifiable indeed according to every rule of that primi
tive period. It opens to us another glimpse of the econ
omy of Israel and the manners of the time. It would
seem that Absalom was in special favour with his father,
one of the chief among the king's sons, to all of whom
in his excess of parental love David was over-indulgent.
His mother was a king's daughter, who must have caught
the roving eye of David in his raid upon Ziklag against
the kingdom of Geshur: and he was himself the most
handsome and distinguished of all his contemporaries
" without blemish from the crown of his head to the sole
of his foot," a son of whom any father might be proud.
Probably his birth on his mother's side designated
him more or less surely as the heir, notwithstanding
Amnon' s seniority, and he must have been able and
ambitious as well as distinguished in other ways. The
party of pleasure, which he made — a sheep-shearing,
which was the great festival of the time, upon his pas
toral farm at Baal-hazor, near Ephraim — is the first
note of his individual story after his reception of his
unfortunate sister. It would be strange if some specta
tors in Jerusalem had not seen the outraged Tamar go
weeping by, with dust upon her head, and the fair
apparel of the king's daughter rent in the anguish of her
shame, or known of her abode, in solitude and sadness
in her brother's house. But the doer of the wrong had
evidently escaped punishment: and was not afraid,
which is still more remarkable, to trust himself in the
power of the brother whom he had thus grievously
insulted.
h2

100 JERUSALEM. [chap.
The young men went down out of Jerusalem joyously
to their merry-making, each with his little retinue of
familiars, his counsellor and henchman at his elbow,
making the streets gay with their finery and their
jests. Jerusalem by this time had blossomed into some
thing very different from that strait little city of the
Jebusites. David's great new palace blazed in the sun
upon the height, and the new wealth, the constant
acquisition of territory, the tributes and offerings of the
people, pouring into his treasury, had no doubt made
itself felt in the expansion of all his surroundings. He
had built houses innumerable for the officials and chiefs
who surrounded him, and filled the town with swarm
ing inhabitants and enlarged it on every side. It was
" builded as a city that is compact together " according
to a later description, and must have been surrounded
with new and enlarged fortifications, walls and ramparts
from which the watchman could sweep the whole coun
try, and the surrounding valleys both north and south.
Winding along through the pleasant fields on the com
parative level of the northern side, the group of gay
young cavaliers must have been a cheerful sight to the
gazers who came out to the gates after them to see the
revellers pass by. The king himself had refused — as
probably it was certain he would do — the invitation of
his son, with a smile and a blessing. The joys of youth
were by this time over for David, and he and his graver
court would have been a hindrance to the rustic mirth
and jollity. Young Solomon was in all likelihood but
an open-eyed all-observant child, of no account, not
thought of among the festivities of the elders, when the
king watched his beautiful boy, that gallant son of whom
he was so proud, with his abundant locks upon his
shoulders, setting off down the stony street. There is
perhaps a more exquisite pleasure in sending forth the

m.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 101
children in their glory and joy of youth, than there was
in that joy when possessed by ourselves. David must
have turned back to his graver life with the smile and
the blessing still upon his lips.
But very different was the return. Towards the even
ing while it was scarcely yet time to look for the home
coming of the revellers, a hasty post came wildly up the
hill, with clang of hoofs and breathless shout of evil
tidings — the king's sons all killed, the sheep-shearing
turned into a carnage. Before it reached David the cry
had become more definite. " Absalom has slain all the
king's sons, and there is not one of them left." The
king heard the evil news and it would seem did not
doubt or question. Was Absalom so masterful, so intent
upon being the first that there was something in it which
sounded possible, even likely, to the father's heart ?
He tore his garments and threw himself on the earth in
his despair while all the servants stood weeping round.
The king's nephew, however, Jonadab, interposed the
voice of reason. We feel with indignation that he was
the last who should have dared to speak, since it was he
who had counselled Amnon to the crime which had now
received its punishment. Was he jealous of the king's
sons and plotting their destruction, this " subtil man "
who had pretended to be Amnon' s friend? He consoled
David by heightening the certainty at least of a portion
of the disaster. " Let not my lord suppose that they
have slain all the young men, the king's sons; for
Amnon only is dead. By the appointment of Absalom
this has been determined." Perhaps this adviser of evil
was the confidant of both: at least he was wise and
divined what must have happened. While he spoke the
watchman on the wall came in with news that a train of
many people was coming up "by the way of the hill
side behind, " a roundabout way perhaps adopted in their

102 JERUSALEM. [chap.
panic to deceive the possible pursuer : and immediately
there burst into the hall the frightened and breathless
company of the young men who had left home so gaily.
" They lifted up their voice and wept sore : and the king
and all his servants wept." They were safe, but one
brother was dead, and one fled with the stain of blood
upon him. There would be among that distracted group
some for Amnon and some for Absalom: the brpther
who had brought shame on the whole family and the
brother who had avenged that shame so bitterly : but they
were all probably very young and in their sudden terror
unfit for anything but flight. And was it, perhaps, already
floating through all minds that the foolish indulgence of
David, who had not chastised the crime of the first, was
thus to blame for the whole catastrophe? but on these
points we can but conjecture, the record says nothing.
Amnon was the firstborn of David's sons, and perhaps
that distinction made it more difficult for him to visit
one who was next to the head of the house, and held a
certain right of authority over the others, with the pun
ishment he deserved. It was also no doubt an additional
motive to Absalom in whose heart the hope of succeed
ing, if not already the idea of superseding his father had
taken root, to remove his elder brother out of his way.
This was the beginning of the tragedy which over
shadowed the remainder of David's life and brought him
into affliction and downfall greater than in all the trou
bles of his youth he had ever known. Jerusalem, after
the time of mourning was over which filled her lately
rejoicing streets with woe, came back to her usual aspect
and went on with her building and thriving, covering
the hillside with new houses, extending her boundaries
day by day, welcoming back her armies crowned with
victory, and her visitors who came, with designs and
ornamental works, from all the regions in which art

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 103
flourished to show what they could do to the king. The
city throve, the kingdom increased in extent and order,
the soldiers of Israel and their general returned to their
homes in the stormy season, and went forth with their
banners flying in the spring. The natural course and
order of all things went on as before. But the King of
Israel in his house of cedar, the palace that shone in the
sunshine, was cheered neither by conquest nor tribute,
nor by the vessels of gold and silver which he was laying
up, nor the plans which he was drawing out for the
future house of God. His heart was heavy for his chil
dren, not only for Amnon' dead, but for Absalom in exile,
whose gallant presence he missed at every point and for
whom he sighed night and day, although justice forbade
him to call the sinner back. No doubt there would be
many besides David who sighed for Absalom, his mother,
and his friends, and the populace which loved him, and
remembered with pride and regret his beauty and his
graciousness, and did not condemn too severely the
vengeance which commended itself to every wild law of
natural justice.
Absalom in the meantime had sought refuge with his
mother's brother at Geshur, still, it would appear, in its
small way an independent kingdom; and three melan
choly years elapsed, during which "the soul of King
David longed to go forth " to his banished son, but could
not withdraw his sentence from the murderer of his
brother. The blunt and uncourtly Joab perceived the
state of affairs when laid up in winter quarters in
enforced leisure, no fighting practicable in the stormy
season, when the rains flooded the great rivers, and wild
winds dashed every tent to the ground. He might feel
that nothing he could himself say in his stubborn way
would much affect the matter, and yet that he must do
something to cut the knot. His expedient was full of

104 JERUSALEM. [chap.
the simplicity yet primitive wisdom of the time. He
sent a wise woman to David as he sat sad and moody in
the place of judgment, with a simulated story. Her two
sons had quarrelled in the field with no one near to act
as peacemaker, and one had killed the other; and now
her whole kindred had risen against her, desiring ven
geance, and the life of her only remaining child was in
deadly peril. David listened no doubt with many a sad
thought in his own heart, and promised her protection
for her son ; whereupon the woman put forth her trem
bling plea for Absalom. " The king," she said with that
boldness which the women seemed to share with the
prophets, though their sex was but a small protection to
them in those primitive times, "the king doth speak this
thing as one that is faulty, in that the king does not
febch home again his banished."
How could he punish her who advised him to do what
his soul most desired ? David divined the hand of Joab
in the contrivance and was not angry. Joab no doubt
had done what he could to plead the cause of Absalom
before, and now he had his reward and was sent to bring
the exile home. It is evident that David never loved
the son of Zeruiah of whom he speaks in angry bitter
ness, always in the plural as if he were a tribe, probably
because the brethren were involved in Joab, thinking
and acting with him, so as to give to his single person
ality the force of several men. But there was a great
deal of ingratitude in this dislike, for Joab's rough
good sense and sagacity was of use to him often in the
great crises of his life. It is doubtful if this was good
advice which he offered now ; but it would not seem that
any one as yet had suspected the ambitious side of
Absalom's character. He had been the representative
of grace and all that was beautiful and noble in youth,
an ornament to the too abundant family and undeveloped

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 105
court. But most likely nobody had taken the handsome
youth seriously until that deed of blood which distin
guished him still more effectually than his good looks
and royal parentage, from among the crowd of his
brethren — or indeed thought of that action now as any
thing but a well-deserved and not dishonourable revenge.
Two years of humiliation followed during which
Absalom, though permitted to inhabit Jerusalem, was
not allowed to enter his father's house, or see his face,
years which were no doubt more hard upon the king who
loved his son than upon the son who was plotting how
best to overthrow his father's throne. It is difficult to
account for so long continued a punishment in this case,
while Amnon had been allowed to go free. Was it that
an injury to a woman counted for so much less, even in
Israel? but this was not according to the law, which
showed a singular impartiality in that respect; or was
it because his firstborn was more or less out of David's
power? for that he did not love Absalom less but rather
more is apparent from every line of the record. Perhaps
the very love he -bore the offender was a reason for
special severity, his sense of the necessity of justice
being intensified by the weakness and yearning of his
own paternal heart. At last, however, upon the medi
ation again of Joab the last barrier was thrown down.
During this long period when the guilty son of the royal
house was in Jerusalem, but unacknowledged by his
father, many unsuspected intrigues were going on, and
the young man must have drawn about him a sort of
secondary court of the disappointed and discontented,
such a court as, in our own history, a Prince of Wales
has sometimes held, full of dissatisfaction and bitterness,
of open ridicule and suppressed rebellion, and of those
jibes which the populace loves. David and his old-
fashioned ways, his poetry, his music, his inactivity,

106 JERUSALEM. [chap.
his continual poring over those plans for the impossi
ble Temple, his encouragement of foreign artists, filling
Jerusalem with useless dilettantism, taking the bread
out of his warriors' mouths, would no doubt be the sub
ject of many a lampoon, whispered from guest to guest,
with bursts of profane laughter. Who was to carry out
those plans and put away all that treasure from the use
of those who were young and full of the faculty of enjoy
ment? Not Absalom one might be sure, who loved to
have everything beautiful and splendid about him, and
had all the royal instincts of magnificence which David,
humbly born, directed to that dream of a house of God.
And the people who loved David in reality, yet never
can resist the influence of such jests, no doubt laughed
too, pleased to make that harmless rebellion against con
stituted authority, and full of malicious hostility to the
foreigners, the artists who would be closeted with the
king for hours while even his own son was kept out.
And all that was young and gay would collect about
Absalom who had pleasure and advancement to bestow
in the future and for the present a lively youthful house
full of sport and brightness instead of those sober cham
bers of the monarch where care dwelt and serious
thought. When the embargo was removed from this dangerous
prince, and the king had received him with ill-deserved
effusion of long-suppressed love, Absalom became bolder
still. He set up a household beyond the pretensions
even of a Prince of Wales, like a king, with an army of
running footmen when he went forth to clear the way
before him, and all the tokens of Oriental greatness. He
had learned that fashion no doubt at his uncle's court at
Geshur, where the uses of royalty were more firmly es
tablished than among the democratic Hebrews. And he
took another step of such cruel policy that the hand of

in-] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 107
Ahithophel, the wisest of the Israelites, must have been
already in it, though that great counsellor was not yet
openly on Absalom's side. He made a practice of going
out to the gate where it was the king's duty to sit in
judgment and hear all the cases that were brought before
him, placing himself in all his bravery, and with his
gracious bearing, in the way of the litigants. It is im
plied though not said that David had become perhaps
careless of this duty, came seldom to the seat of justice,
was more and more preoccupied and absorbed, as it would
be the policy of the plotters to represent, with that
Temple of his, and his plan of hiding away for its future
use or ornament all those treasures of gold and silver,
from the public treasury, from being of any use to the
people. Outside the gates upon the open square where
travellers paused to take breath after the steep climb
upwards, what a sight to see would be that young prince,
the handsomest man in Israel, with his train of followers!
and so friendly in his splendour, stepping forward to
inquire "of what city art thou?" nay, more courteous
still, to give the kiss of peace to those who paid him the
tokens of respect due to his position, and to ask what
was their business, to hear their case, to commiserate
their grievance whatever it was, and agree that they
were right, with only the deep regret, " Oh that I were
judge, that I might do justice! " and shaking of the head
over the sad fact that there was no man deputed from
the king to hear, or stranger still that no man from the
king downward would listen to the plaints of the people.
"So Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel."
It was not within Jerusalem, however, that the rebel
lion broke forth. Notwithstanding Absalom's popularity
and wiles, David was too firmly seated in his own city,
the place which he had changed from a fortified village
into the capital of a kingdom, to be cast violently off his

108 JERUSALEM. [chap.
throne there. The rebel pleaded a vow which he had
taken to perform sacrifices at Hebron, and received his
father's permission to leave Jerusalem for that purpose
with a strong following, all his own intimates and their
trains, and two hundred men in addition who apparently
formed the escort of the pretended pilgrims. Some time
elapsed before it became known in Jerusalem what this
expedition meant, and then we must suppose from his
after conduct that it burst like a thunderbolt upon David,
who had either been unaware of all that was happening,
or had turned a deaf ear to any further accusation against
his son after having been separated from him so long.
The conduct of David seems unaccountable in this sudden
and great emergency. Not a thought of resistance or the
maintenance of his own right seems to have been in him,
nothing of the spirit of the old warrior. It is true that
he was already an old man; but that does not seem to
account for the complete collapse, not only of power, but
of spirit, in him. The first thoughts in his mind when
he heard that his son was in open revolt were those of
terror and submission. "Arise, and let us flee; for we
shall not else escape from Absalom : make speed to de
part, lest he overtake us suddenly, and bring evil upon
us, and smite the city with the edge of the sword." The
one wrord of generous feeling in this, the desire to pre
serve Jerusalem from the horrors of a siege and the ven
geance of the successful rebels, is the only thing that
softens the reader's amazement and almost contempt.
The great David, the hero of so many fights, the con
queror not of Jerusalem alone but of so many lands and
cities, he who had been celebrated in song in his very
boyhood as the slayer of tens of thousands — that he
should rise and fly without a word or attempt at holding
his own is so extraordinary that the spectator can but
look on aghast. What was it that took all the strength

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 109
out of the old warrior and all his courage? Was it those
long years of inactive life, the creeping sloth of age, the
loss of every habit of enterprise, the preoccupation with
other things? Had his essays in art, his pattern draw
ing, his plans of architecture, taken all the spirit out of
the old hero? But even in an old war-horse, full of
years and corn, there will still remain the ashes of his
former fires. One cannot but feel that there must have
been more in it, the sense of a long deferred, but all the
more potent, punishment, that evil out of his own house
which had been promised to him many years before when
he himself was in the heyday of life. He had thought,
and perhaps Nathan his instructor had also thought, that
the death of Bathsheba's infant was a sufficient blow to
a father so exceptionally tender : but what words were
those which came back now echoing in his ears? " There
fore the sword shall never depart from thine house."
" Evil shall be raised up against thee out of thine own
house." "Thou didst it secretly: but I will do this
thing before all Israel, and before the sun."
Who can doubt that these threatenings were in David's
ears? and that the sense that not only Absalom, his
cherished son — a thought in itself enough to crush the
father's heart — but the Lord was against him, took all
strength out of his spirit? What sight more sad was
ever seen than that melancholy train hurrying out of the
protecting walls which he had built and strengthened,
leaving behind the desolated house which he had built
for his dynasty, himself and his sons after him, the
palace and the city of David. What a different place
was that which he left with a wail of trouble rising
round him, from the strait little city of which he had
taken possession so many years before ! He had enlarged
it on every side, embellished and enriched it, made it
the centre of law, the chief city of Palestine, already

110 JERUSALEM. [chap.
the glory and the pride of Israel. There is not a word to
say that the inhabitants rose against him in his distress.
His guards were faithful to him, the Cherethites, the
Pelethites, and the" Gittites, the Swiss Guards, so to
speak, whom he had banded about him to keep the peace
and defend the city when the soldiers of Israel were at
the wars. The captain of these mercenaries is the cause
indeed of one of the pauses in David's evidently hope
less flight. " Beturn to thy place, and abide with the
king," he says with the strangest instantaneous abdica
tion of that dignity in his own person. " For thou art a
stranger, and also an exile. Whereas thou earnest but
yesterday, why should I this day make thee go up and
down with us? seeing I go whither I may, return thou,
and take back thy brethren: and mercy and truth be
with thee." We recognise our generous hero of the
Adullam days, the magnanimous young soldier who never
sacrificed a friend, in this episode : and it is good to feel
that the brave Gittite was worthy of the consideration,
and faithful to his protector.
Something of the same care for others mingling with a
reverential unwillingness to disturb the worship of God,
must have been in David's mind when he sent back the
Ark which the priests and Levites had brought out of
the city, and set down probably on the platform before
the gate, in imitation of the days when that sacred Ark
was posted in the middle of the way until the marshalled
ranks of Israel had gone over — whether Jordan or other
dangerous passes : once more the priests, the descendants
of Aaron, set down their sacred burden while the trou
bled train poured forth "until all the people had done
passing out of the city." But David with his old com
punction returning in all the despair of remorse into his
heart, would not assume for himself the position of that
ancient Israel, the people of the Lord, travelling under

m.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. Ill
His sanction and guardianship. How could a guilty wan
derer flying from the vengeance that had been denounced
upon him lay that flattering unction to his soul? It
seems to have brought a faint glimmer of hope, however,
into his mind to see the sacred symbol and feel that the
sympathies of the priests were with him ; for a thought
of coming back breaks in now for the first time into his
despair. " Carry back the Ark of God into the city," he
says. " If I find favour in the eyes of the Lord, He will
bring me again, and show me both it, and His habita
tion." The mournful procession must have paused while the
priests took up their burden, and turned sadly back : and
David stood gazing after it, with death in his heart. Was
it for this he had brought it back out of the neglect and in
difference of many years, for this that he had bidden those
ancient narrow portals to be lifted up, the old doors to be
thrown open to their widest that the King of Glory might
eome in ? But on what side now was that King of Glory?
against David as his own beloved son was against David,
and all the vials of wrath poured out upon his head.
Very different now were those great gates and lofty col
umns from the narrow arch which had framed the door
way under which the Ark first passed. He must have
watched it disappearing, the white attendants winding
along between the dark houses, the daughters of Jerusa
lem gazing and weeping at every window — then turned
away, with his face towards the desert once more. The ¦
dark crowd moved downward into the depths of the
valley and across the brook, winding round the southern
side of Moriah, all green and fertile, with nothing but
Araunah's farm-buildings upon its crest, and took its
way towards the wilderness. " And all the country wept
with a loud voice, and all the people passed over : the
king also himself passed over the brook Kidron." One

112 JERUSALEM. [chap.
cannot but remember how often in after days He who
was the Son of David passed over that brook, going to
His sacred meditations in the garden, or coming back to
the cross and the grave.
"David went up the ascent of Olivet, and wept as he
went up, and had his head covered, and he went bare
foot: and all the people that was with him covered
every man his head, and they went up, weeping as they
went. " This was evidently more than a mere flight : it
was a penitential procession, a confession of the half-
forgotten sins for which now, at last, retribution had
come. He was going back to those old haunts where
his troubled youth had been spent : and he remembered
his errors and bowed his head before that justice which
had tarried long but never had forgotten. It might have
been said of David as it was of Job — had he served God
for nought? What promotion had been given to him,
what prosperity, what glory ! " I have seen the wicked
flourish like a green bay tree. " How his own words, the
utterances of his prosperous and glorious days, must have
poured back upon his mind as he went forth leaving all
behind him. And, deepest pang of all, by the hand of his
son whom he loved, who had brought misery and shame
upon him, but towards whom his heart never ceased to
yearn. Those who scoff at David and set forth his great
crime as the central point of his life can never have fol
lowed the tragedy through its after scenes. That was in
deed its central point to his own consciousness, the grand
contradiction to all the generosities and magnanimi
ties of his life, the one occasion on which passion made
him false and cruel, he whose nature was so chivalrous
and kind. What humiliation was too great for the man
who had so sinned, whose offence had thus been brought
back to him in all the terrible and vivid light of Divine
judgment? He had forgotten it in the calm of many

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 113
prosperous years : but God had not forgotten it. What
else but this could have taken the heart out of the old
warrior, the mighty man of valour? We all remember
against him the death of Uriah : but few take any ac
count of the stricken father, the fugitive king, the self-
humiliated penitent, his head bowed under the veil of
mourning, his feet torn upon the stony ways, his glory
departed from him, and most of all his son turned against
him, his son whom he loved. Not only the death of
Uriah, but many an error besides was no doubt in David's
mind, and that sense of supreme failure which is so bitter
in the heart of a parent whose children are unkind and
undutiful : — the consciousness of weak indulgence, of
misplaced severity, of a house not well ordered before
God, must have added the gnawing of the serpent's tooth
to all other distresses. A thankless child ! and the thought
that had he himself been otherwise, more just, more firm,
less disposed to humour all their fancies, these sons might
not have been the passionate tumultuous tribe who
already had cost him so much sorrow. Amnon dead:
Tamar shamed and broken-hearted: Absalom in fierce
rebellion, seeking his father's life. David might well
go upon his way weeping, overwhelmed with the bitter
ness of his downfall. Many a man was there in Israel
who had sinned more grievously and met with no such
punishment. The adventures of the way were partly consolatory and
partly grievous. Ziba, the steward of Mephibosheth,
into whose motives David did not inquire in the prac
tical comfort furnished by his politic contribution of food
and wine; Shimei who came out like a cur to jibe at the
fallen monarch, and curse him in his humiliation; the
faithful Hushai whom with a momentary gleam of spirit
he sent back to confound the counsels of Ahithophel, all
broke for good or for evil the monotony of the journey;
i

114 JERUSALEM. [chap.
and when the mournful party came to a halt, the liberal
succours afforded both by friends and former enemies —
the King of Ammon among others, with generous forget
fulness of old feuds, sending supplies to the camp— must
have softened the first sensation of unmitigated distress,
as the necessity for exertion in itself and the experience
of every new event must always do more or less. David
was still so self-abased in his keen consciousness of Divine
chastisement, that he would permit no vengeance to be
taken upon the vulgar abuse of Shimei who threw stones
at him as he passed. " Behold, my son seeketh my life :
how much more now may this Benjamite do it? " he says
as he passes on.
In the meantime a terrible scene was being enacted in
Jerusalem, one of insult and affront to the king, which
is inconceivable to modern minds, not to speak of indi
vidual shame and horror, which is never taken account
of at all in any primitive record. The distracted city
had not stopped its weeping for David when Absalom
and his train came clanging up the steep ascent making
the walls ring with their shoutings, and the noise of their
cavalcade. The women at the windows with the tears
not dried in their eyes, would yet, no doubt, flash forth
a glance of welcome at the newcomer, the handsome Ab
salom in himself a spectacle to drive care away. He
who had all the charm that had distinguished his father
in his youth would not be wanting, we. may be sure, in
salutations flung here and there on every side, at each
familiar face, the touch of his rapid hand from his breast
to his brow, heart and head engaged in the old allegorical
greeting — with all his young men after him, flushed
with excitement and daring, and the hope of advance
ment to come. The crowd would gaze and sway and
change, as crowds do, welcoming, as every crowd must,
the relief of pleasure after mourning, the happy possi-

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 115
bility of forgetting that any one is injured, in the satis
faction of restored brightness and triumph. And the
throng would surge on after him, pushing up the streets,
pouring out of every house, towards the palace which
stood vacant in the guardianship of those ten poor
women — empty for any man to seize and take posses
sion of it. One wonders whether that dark counsellor by
Absalom's side, a mere speck among the bravery of the
brilliant train, had wrongs or slights to avenge against
David who knew his force, at least, whether he had
employed him or not? or if it were mere cold wisdom
and policy which dictated his advice?1 Ahithophel was
well aware that hereafter no compromise was possible,
and that the wisest thing to do was to press the matter
at once to its violent conclusion. He knew, though the
foolish young men did not, that David's spirit must come
back, that the country must come to its senses, and that
the greatest captains, as well as the most trustworthy
of the people, were, though scared and silenced for the
moment, on David's side. When therefore Hushai came
in with his counsel of delay, the real conspirator felt at
once that all was over. What need to wait till David
came back, till legitimate vengeance disposed of his
head, his property and all that was his? Most likely
the wild young following of the prince, and Absalom him
self in the heat of his triumph, were glad when that
serious plotter turned from them in disgust and despair,
taking away the dark shade of his dissatisfied face from
the night of uproar and commotion which would follow
1 Ahithophel is traced in the lists given in the Book of Samuel
as having been the father of a certain Eliam. And Bathsheba,
David's wife, was the daughter of Eliam : whence it has been sup
posed that she was the grand-daughter of Ahithophel. But Eliam
is not an uncommon name, and it is difficult to understand how
the wise man oould be the deadly opponent of his grandchild's
husband in the interest of another branch of the family.
i2

116 JERUSALEM. [chap.
such a day. He who foresaw the inevitable results could
have looked on with little satisfaction at the revel had
he remained, and the sound of the hoofs of his mule, as
he turned again down the stony street and answered the
challenge of the watchman at the gates, would no doubt
be a good riddance to the triumphant crew who felt that,
counsel or no counsel, everything was now at their feet.
Meantime David, having put the Jordan between him
self and the rebels, had established himself in Mahanaim,
a city near the borders of Israel, near enough to Ammon
to flutter the hearts of the Ammonites, who were not
guiltless towards him, though they had hastened to pro
pitiate him by presents. For by this time the fugitives
had grown into a host, with the greatest generals of Israel
at its head, men who were entitled to make but light of
Absalom, a man of pleasure and not of war, though he
had Amasa of their own warlike blood, a grandson of
Jesse of Bethlehem, as were the sons of Zeruiah, to lead
his followers. What Joab's sentiments were about the
matter it is not difficult to imagine; a deep wrath and
disgust with his showy and specious cousin must have
been in his self-restrained and stubborn spirit. It had
been he who had induced David to follow the dictates of
his own longing and bring home his rebellious son. He
had in a manner answered for Absalom, that now all
would go well. And the man he had thus protected and
served had overturned the kingdom which was founded
on the labours of Joab's life as well as David's, after
many a tough struggle and weary watch. In Joab's
heart there was none of that love which had weakened
the judgment of the king. He, too, no doubt, had re
garded with affection in his way the beautiful boy who
had grown up under his eyes, his gracious young kins
man, gay and pleasant, who had charmed all Israel. He
had been seduced into believing that to be restored to his

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 117
own house and his people was all that Absalom wanted.
But now that he was undeceived there was no indulgence
in Joab's heart. Had he been a man of policy alone we
might imagine that the certainty that Absalom so long as
he lived would be a standing danger to the crown, was
what moved him most: but though his strong sense
made that too apparent to him, Joab had thus more poig
nant reasons still for being remorseless towards Absalom
who had deceived him.
Nothing could be more vivid, or more touching, than
the picture of the setting out of the forces from their city
of refuge to meet the rebels. The king was not allowed to
go forth with them for reasons that are evident ; but he
came out and stood by the gate to see them march past
"by hundreds and by thousands," in companies and bat
talions as we should say; and as each captain appeared
at the head of his troop David stopped the march a mo
ment for a parting word. It was not any counsel of war
that the experienced old soldier gave to his officers.
"Deal gently for my sake with the young man," was
what the anxious father said. "And all the people
heard when the king gave all the captains charge con
cerning Absalom." With pity, with sympathy, with
anger and impatience no doubt they listened, the com
mon men, always the most accessible to emotion, touched
and softened, while their leaders chafed, impatient of
such a restriction. The rebel, the usurper, the traitor,
condemned by all laws ! was not this a weakness more
than could be borne on the part of the king, who had
been hunted from his home, the crown taken from his
head, the allegiance of his people stolen away, by this
same Absalom of whose safety now he thought more than
of the welfare of all his faithful servants! Joab, for
one, must have given neither answer nor pledge, but
marched on with his stubborn countenance and certainty

118 JERUSALEM. [chap.
that if he found that dainty gallant in his way there
should be short shrift. Thus the army went forth to
the battle.
And David "sat between the two gates." He was
still the light of Israel, not to be risked in such a con
flict, and perhaps his heart was too faint with the unnat
ural struggle, to seek a point of vantage whence he
could see the approach of the messengers or the far-off
dust of the battle. He sat where he could catch the first
runner from the field, and hear the first news, but not
see, perhaps, the rush of fugitives retiring, perhaps his
son dragged hither a prisoner. When the watchman
called out from above that some one was visible on the
way and that his running was like that of Ahimaaz the
son of Zadok, the king in his anxiety answered that his
news must be good for he was a good man : but it was
not Ahimaaz, but the blunt Cushi, the other Levite
whom Joab, not loving him it would seem, had charged
with that dire news, who told it. David did not ask
what was the issue of the fight, he said, " Is the young
man Absalom safe? " What did kingdom or crown mat
ter in that awful moment — his son, his son ! And how
many a heartbroken man and woman, father and mother,
have echoed that cry of anguish after him, which burst
from his lips when the tale of victory was told. " 0 my
son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I
had died for thee, 0 Absalom, my son, my son ! " Earth
and Heaven are silent before that cry — there is no more
that words can say.
" And the king went up to the chamber that was over
the gate, and wept," tbe first place where he could hide
his head, caring to hear nothing more. In all literature
there is no such picture, so brief, so poignant and true.
All policy, all satisfaction in his deliverance were for
gotten, " 0 my son Absalom, 0 Absalom, my son, my

To face page 118.
ABSALOM'S PILLAK. VALLEY OF JEHOSHAPHAT.

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 121
son ! " This was the cry that the returning victors heard
as they came back triumphant to the gates of the city,
where, no doubt, the scared and sorrowful people were
standing about, wrung to the heart by that outcry. The
music stopped, the warriors huddled together, feeling,
each man, as if he were a murderer. They broke out of
their ranks and " gat them by stealth into the city, as
people being ashamed steal away when they flee in
battle." Nothing could be added that would not dimin
ish the wonderful effect of such a description. The day
was won, yet it was as if it had been lost.1
But so true, so real is the tale that when Joab strides
in once more with his stubborn sense and practical force,
even the most deeply-touched spectator cannot contra
dict him or disapprove. Short of that removal of the
rebel, what peace could there have been for Israel? and
the mourner who lay there with his face covered from
the light of day, was a king first, and not a father at
liberty to express his anguish. " Thou hast shamed the
faces of thy servants, who this day have saved thy life,
and the lives of thy sons and daughters, " says the stern
captain with his coat and heart of steel; "in that thou
lovest thine enemies, and hatest thy friends. For thou
hast declared this day, that thou regardest neither princes
nor servants: for this day I perceive, that if Absalom
had lived, and all we had died, then it had pleased thee
well." David could not resist this voice of reason. For a
king there is little time for the indulgence of sorrow, or
indeed for any man or woman encompassed with the
cares of life. He descended from that retirement and
1 1 need say nothing to those critics who find in David's attitude
a hypocritical pretence at sorrow. They may know philology and
other learned sciences: but not the heart of man, that more won
derful thing still. M. Renan is naturally one of those apes of
genius who mock this profoundest utterance of human sorrow.

122 JERUSALEM. [chap.
sat in the gate, and received the captains who came
before him, discouraged, with drooping crests, and such
of the warriors as had not dispersed already, half indig
nant, half sorry to their homes. All that he could do to
make up for his momentary failure it is clear that he
did, but probably with but partial effect. And it is
equally clear that Joab, never beloved, was in disgrace
from that day. No doubt David heard of the personal
share he had in the slaying of Absalom, and resented
doubly on this account the abrupt disturbance of his
seclusion by the very man who had struck the blow.
He made overtures to Amasa, who had been Absalom's
general, with some thought of policy perhaps, but
assuredly more in bitterness and deep resentment. He
would have nothing more to say to those sons of Zeruiah,
who had always been as thorns in his flesh. When
Amasa failed him, or seemed to fail, on a later occasion,
it was to Abishai, the less important brother and not to
Joab, whom David turned. But it was not long before
that determined man regained, in his usual unscrupulous
way by bloodshed and force, the command which was
evidently his by right of nature. Whatever private
feeling might do or say this great general was not to be
put aside or ignored.
David came back to Jerusalem in a kind of melancholy
triumph. He would have no vengeance taken upon the
miserable Shimei who came down, like a cur, to the bank
of Jordan to proffer his abject prayer for pardon.
" Shall there any man be put to death to-day in Israel?
for do not I know that I am this day king over Israel?"
he said. It is bad for David's fame that the matter did
not rest there : but the most sentimental spectator could
scarcely feel any sympathy for Shimei in his baseness.
And David was lavish in his gratitude to Barzillai, the
aged chief of Gilead, who had succoured him in his dis-

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 123
tress. His conduct to Mephibosheth, the son of Jona
than, whom he had protected all his life is less creditable :
he had made a hasty promise of all that his master
possessed to Ziba, the steward of Mephibosheth, who
had hurried after him on his flight with provisions for
the retinue, and a false story of his master's hopes of
recovering the kingdom. When the lame prince came
hurrying out to the gates to meet the king, David — his
heart heavy no doubt as he approached that fateful place
where such orgies had been held in his absence, where
Absalom had flashed through his brief reign of a day,
where all the events of that brilliant young life, which
was now over in trouble and shame, had taken place
— was in little case for other thoughts. This lame son
of Jonathan, this disabled man, lived and was faithful,
while the tragedy of the other was ended. There are
moments when even the goodness of another is bitter to
us in comparison with the failure of our own. And he
was weary and sick at heart with all the demands upon
him which triumph and victory made. When it was
made apparent to him that his decision in favour of
Ziba had been a rash one, he replied in that weariness
and impatience with which a man harassed beyond his
powers, turns from the error he cannot undo : " Why
speakest thou any more of thy matters? I have said,
thou and Ziba divide the land." It was unjust and
unkind, but David was driven to the end of his -strength.
Was it not enough that he had to keep a smile upon his
face, to keep up a joyful bearing, to reply to the plaudits
and the songs, to look as if he were coming back as a
conqueror, proud and glad of the downfall of his ad
versary — although his adversary was his son, his best
beloved for whom he would willingly have given his
life. That fierce son of Zeruiah behind him with his
stern reason would not spare David a jot of the triumph.

124 JERUSALEM. [chap.
Perhaps it gave him a little ease to thrust poor Mephi
bosheth from him, Mephibosheth who had understanding,
who did not insist,, but fell back from the path of the
suffering king.
After this return to Jerusalem there is but little
remaining to record of the life of David. There was
another rebellion, that of Sheba the son of Bichri, of
which we are told little except in so far as it affected the
disgraced general, Joab, who took the opportunity in his
old trenchant way to rid himself of the man who had
been put over him — Amasa, his cousin, who had been
Absalom's general, and whom David had promoted,
whether from policy or from a perverse regard for the
man who had been his son's support, even against him
self — or from sheer hatred of Joab and determination
to get rid of him, it is impossible to say. Amasa had
been a laggard, had not done all that was required of
him ; and Abishai had been sent out in his place to lead
the hosts of Israel, Joab and his men following, appar
ently without any protest. But after Amasa was killed
we hear of Abishai no more. Joab must have stepped
into his natural place the moment the army was in
the field and generalship was needed — generalship and
policy as well. For it would seem that there was need
of caution in dealing with the agitated country, and
when the rebel had been tracked to his last stronghold
even the fierce commander-in-chief was glad to secure
a victory without bloodshed through the means of that
woman of Tekoah who spoke to him from the wall.
Joab, it is evident, did not despise the mediation of a
mother in Israel. He had himself employed the same
means in former times. And it is a curious instance of
the singular mixture of respect and disrespect with
which women were treated in these primitive times, that
we see them on one page exposed to the unimaginable

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 125
careless cruelty practised by Absalom, and by almost
every usurper, the last affront that could be offered to a
deposed monarch without any consideration of the imme
diate victims ; and on the next find a woman negotiating
for her city, describing herself with the confidence of an
assured superiority as "one of those who are peacea
ble and faithful in Israel." "A mother in Israel." The
same anomaly, however, still exists in the East. It is
no doubt an instance of the great power of individual
character in the primitive conditions of life.
There are other details of David's life into which we
can scarcely enter. His conduct to the house of Saul
had been hitherto almost free of reproach : but it is hard
to account for the giving up of those sons of Eizpah who,
nameless as they are, have found a place in everlasting
remembrance from the devotion of their mother. Let it
be said in qualification of his conduct that as soon as he
was told of Eizpah's terrible watch he lost no time, him
self an ever-mourning father, to give what consolation
was possible to her misery. Otherwise, save in that
other moment of trouble at the gates of Jerusalem, when
poor Mephibosheth was mulcted of half his lands, he
was never unfaithful to his vow to Jonathan, or alle
giance to his early patron. The troubles of Saul were of
his own seeking. David was not the origin of any of
them, but throughout, with these exceptions, bore him
self with magnanimity and generosity of the most chiv
alrous kind.
And towards Israel he seems never to have failed,
unless in those mysterious numberings of the people —
the repeated census, which seems harmless enough to
us, and was so evident a suggestion of legislation :
yet which were in some strange way imputed to him
as offences against God. At all events they cannot in
any way be considered a transgression of morals. He

126 JERUSALEM. [chap.
made his people great, he welded the tribes together as
never had been done before, and made a united kingdom
of the differing clans and districts which had been so
apt each to fall into a little local centre of its own. He
turned the little Jebusite city into a capital, distinct in
the history of the world, and to be renowned through
all time. It was he in whose fertile mind first rose the
conception of that great Temple, which was one of the
marvels of the ancient world. And whatever the caviller
and critic may say in the uncertain, often mistaken,
constantly superseded suggestions of their science, which
at the best cannot be more than conjecture, there can
surely be no evidence half so weighty as the tradition of
his race and the internal witness of these noble poems,
against his character as a poet. After thousands of years
even his words, the expressions of feeling which belong
to his life rather than to his works, his wail for Absalom,
his remonstrances with Saul — come to our lips still as
the expression of our deepest emotions. And no other
poet, not even Shakespeare, has entered so deeply into
the hearts of all men. The race of mankind has " con
sidered the heavens " for all these centuries, yet has
never found anything so magnificent to say of them as
the words in which the shepherd of Bethlehem, the King
of Israel, described the sun as coming like a bridegroom
out of his chamber, and rejoicing like a giant to run his
race. The astronomer may tell us that the sun does
not move, that the description is inaccurate, just as the
philologist tells us, but on far inferior evidence, that the
Psalm is the interpolation of some nameless scribe. But
the astronomer is a fool for his pains : for to us mortals
as long as we live under the conditions of earth, the
sunrise and the sunset are as certain as our own exist
ence. And the moon and the stars which God has
ordained, which are the Divine language by which day

hi.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 127
unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showetli
knowledge, are to us as they were to the ancient singer,
the lamps of heaven, the lights of this little earth — of
which we are not more sure in our advanced knowledge
that it is but an atom in boundless space, than he felt
it to be in his sublime ignorance when he cried in the
midst of that overwhelming glory "What is man that
thou art mindful of him? " What Newton, what Her-
schel could say more ?
Thus said David, if the evidence of the most carefully
preserved records in the world are not altogether with
out truth : and if, what is more infallible still, the indicar
tions of true literary criticism, the truth to nature, the
accord of those great lyrics with the occasions of a much
troubled life, are not without truth — which latter we
believe to be impossible, even should there be any weak
ness in the tradition. The story and the song illustrate
each other, and give and take a mutual interest. They
show David to us as a man ready to the touch of every
emotion, open to all nature, moved, like the harp upon
which he played, by every breath, pouring forth his
complaints, his adorations, his triumphs, the depths of
his soul on the frequent occasions when that fervent soul
was deeply affected, with a voice which is now like the
softest air of heaven and now like the storm that rends
the rocks; and in which no note is false, whether it is
that which celebrates the springs that run among the
hills, and the birds that sing in the branches — or that
which declaims the grandeur of Him who flies upon the
wings of the wind. This great singer, this impetuous,
impassioned prince, this man whose voice is as distinct
and far more magnificent than that of any contemporary
we know, proves his own reality by every sign of genius
and life.
The man after God's own heart! to many this has

128 JERUSALEM. [chap.
been a wonder and stumbling-block, remembering Uriah
and all that wild and terrible story. It is no excuse to
say that it is a story which would never have been
remembered or thought of in the history of any other
Eastern king, who probably would have bow-stringed
Nathan for his remonstrance and thought no more of it.
But great as that sin was, it was bitterly expiated. The
severest judge could not have desired a more terrible
punishment for the worst criminal than the stormy his
tory of these few years in David's house, the tragedies
of Amnon and of Absalom, the flight and return of the
father-king who could not draw his old sword, the sword
of Goliath, against his son, and was not permitted to
mourn for him. To follow him in his triumph as he
rode back through Jerusalem, received with acclaim,
every gay carpet and garment hung out, the whole city
shining with joy and welcome: and Joab behind him,
the murderer of his boy, great Joab, the greatest warrior
of his day, the most successful general, with a stern eye
upon the king lest his smile should fail, and the outcry
of his heart break forth: and not to fling himself on
David's side, to take the part of that sufferer, is impos
sible, we think, to any sympathetic reader. But in all
this, -as we say, he took his punishment like a man — if
we except, perhaps, that moment when his courage gave
way altogether at the sight of Absalom in rebellion, and
he fled in what seems like an undue and humiliating
panic from Jerusalem, a panic which the recollection of
Nathan's message years before, mingled with the pang
of so unnatural a pursuit, can alone account for. It is
evident that this, too, was a,n element in a character
so full of the play of human emotion, so sensitive to
love, so doubly sensitive to hate. His first flight from
Saul has the same element of panic in it, a sense of the
intolerable, as if life were over for the man against

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 129
whom his own familiar friend, his almost father in one
case, his favourite son in the other, had turned. In both
cases that quick overwhelming movement and sudden
despair has something cowardly in them to our more self-
restrained and impulse-concealing race.
But it is this very play of feeling which makes him
so full of attraction, so supreme in the affections of his
surroundings, that the historian translates his charm
and fascination of nature by that superlative phrase.
His life is a poem from beginning to end, not a point in
it which does not touch the spectator. His early youth
ful imaginative valour, that quintessence of boyish dar
ing which made of him at once, fresh from the sheep-
folds, a hero, and prince among his people : the love
that sprung into life everywhere on the appearance of
the beautiful youth, half wondering, half adoring, the
love of the fickle Michal, and the faithful Jonathan —
and scarely less the unjust and bitter hatred produced
by no act of his, the jealous dread of Saul's moody
spirit : the cruel reverses that followed his good fortune,
the wanderings in the desert, the drama of that roving
life, the magnanimity and chivalric generosity of his con
duct to the king : every incident as it occurs leads on the
imagination as through the most perfect composition of
romance. The extraordinary vitality and activity of
thought and emotion which never flag, the hasty succes
sion of great impulses, with the occasional break of a with
drawal equally hasty, as when overwhelmed by awe he
leaves the Ark on the way, and hurries home disappointed
in imaginative alarm and distress, all carry us along with
him in a rush of sympathy and interest. The story of
Bathsheba breaks in with a sudden violent light of pas
sion into the tale, the keenest flash of illumination
surrounded by the most sombre shadows. Wrhen it is
over, that sudden tragedy, we see the sinner prostrate in
K

130 JERUSALEM. [chap.
the dust, unresistant, self-condemned, without a thought
of excuse or apology. Neither does his historian put
forth for him any plea. And then the unquenchable life
springs up again and a hundred projects throb and
quicken in his brain. A splendid city, the joy of the
whole earth — a still more splendid house of God: and
then again the pause, the crushing disappointment, the
quick recovery. A man of impulse throughout, obeying
in hot haste the ideas, almost always generous and noble,
that crowd into his mind, the quick inspirations of a
great genius — there is a spontaneousness, an uncon
sciousness, a warm spring of nature in everything about
him which is an unfailing delight. He is a perfect
impersonation of humanity, so genuine a man all through,
so unguarded, so little given to any arrangement of cir
cumstances or calculation of self-interest (notwithstand
ing the quick eye of Eastern policy, which could not
overlook a visible advantage) that the imagination is
never weary of him. An erring man with hot and un
ruly passions, a hasty soul plunging into many snares,
a father how foolish, how fond, how over-trusting ! Yet
with a splendour of force and purpose in him which
carried all before it, not to speak of that stubborn and
dark-browed Joab behind, who opposed and bullied and
remonstrated, yet always with a fierce devotion, fasci
nated and held captive through all disapproval and oppo
sition. David returned, no doubt, after this terrible break in
his life to all his occupations, and specially to his plans
and designs for the Temple which he was not to build :
and procured himself a little distraction, let us hope,
from sadder thoughts, in overlooking the artists from
Tyre as they devised decorations and embellishments,
perhaps suggesting himself, adding a rough sketch, an
idea for the carving of a capital, for the wreathed flowers

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 131
of a cornice ; or arranging with Asaph and his men the
service that was to be, the chorus and antiphon, the
adagio and allegro of the music, and how to fit to its
primitive strain the verses which critics tell us are so
rude and ill-adapted for music, of his primitive Hebrew
— which nevertheless must have been the best Hebrew
going in that day or long after, as it has ranked among
the noblest poetry going through all the centuries since
then. But a chill would seem to have come over that
bright spirit in his later years. It is no strain of the
imagination to believe that it was said in Jerusalem of
the king that after the death of Absalom he never held
up his head again. How often have such words been
said! Calamity comes, death comes into his house,
when a man is still in full vigour, his eye not dim, nor
his natural force abated : and soon every bystander will
tell you with shaken head and bated breath, that he has
never held up his head again. It is true that in those
thanksgivings for delivery in which the entire assembly
took part, those who had unthreaded the rude eye of
rebellion, and those who came up when all the trouble
was over to congratulate the king — there is no diminu
tion of energy or force. Perhaps the very heat and pas
sion of his grief made it more possible to him to keep
up in this way the fictitious joy which Joab and policy
insisted upon in his return to his capital. And it must
have been a relief for the sorely wounded father to put
the blame upon Ahithophel and other evil counsellors,
and to exult with stern delight in their overthrow.
How the air of Jerusalem must have rung again, and
what a shout passed over the valley when the choirs
answering to each other poured forth their song !

" The Lord is my rock,
And my fortress,
And my deliverer ;
k2

132 JERUSALEM. [chap.
" In Him will I trust :
He is my shield,
And the horn of my salvation,
My refuge, and my tower.
"I will call upon the Lord,
Worthy to be praised :
So shall I be saved from mine enemies.
"The waves of death compassed me about,
The floods of ungodly men
Made me afraid ;
" The sorrows of hell compassed me about ;
The snares of death
Stood in my way ;
" In my distress I called upon the Lord,
And cried unto my God :
And He heard my voice,
And my cry entered into His ears. ' '

' I have pursued mine enemies, and destroyed them ;
I have consumed them, and wounded them :
Yea, they are fallen under my feet.
' For Thou hast girded me with strength for the battle :
Them that rose up against me
Hast Thou subdued under me.
' Then did I beat them as small as the dust of the earth,
I did stamp them as the mire of the street,
And spread them abroad as the dust before the wind."

"For who is God,
Save the Lord ?
And who is a rock,
Save our God ?
" God is my strength and power :
He maketh my way perfect,
And my feet swift as the hinds'.
" He teacheth my hands to war ;
So that the bows of steel are broken
He setteth me in my high place.
" The Lord liveth ;
And blessed be my Rock ;
And exalted be the God
Of my salvation."

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID.

133

With such strains as these the Levites answered to
each other in their companies, and the harps and the
psalteries thrilled the air, while the king in his high
place, and the warriors fresh from battle stood by, and
the concourse of the women, a many-coloured crowd,
moved and murmured through the courts outside, around
the folded curtains which concealed the Ark, the symbol
of God's protecting presence and of so many victories
past. But David though he gave expression to this cry
of triumph went back mirthless to his house with death
in his heart.
One great public ceremonial still remained in the life
of David. It had probably become apparent to all that
in the tumultuous state of the king's house, to avoid the
inevitable struggle that must come afterwards, it was
necessary that he should solemnly select and appoint his
successor. How it was that the choice fell on Solomon,
whether because of his intrinsic qualities or from the
special love borne by his father to Bathsheba, there is no
mention in any of the histories : but in Chronicles it is
fully related as the immediate choice of God and for a
particular end. He was far down in the list of the
king's sons, but it may well have been that the boy's
natural greatness and superiority to the host of ordi
nary young men about him was already apparent to all,
though that has seldom been an effectual argument with
men. At all events upon whatever ground the choice
was made, the alleged reason for it was distinctly that of
the great Temple that had to be built and for which
Solomon had been indicated as the builder. In the
solemn assembly of all his chiefs and people which
David held for the purpose of this selection, there is no
mention of wars abroad or legislation at home, but solely
of the house of the Lord which was to be the great
glory of the Hebrew race. "David assembled all the

134 JERUSALEM. [chap.
princes of Israel, the princes of the tribes, and the cap
tains of the companies that ministered to the king by
course, and the captains over the thousands, and the
captains over the hundreds, and the stewards over all
the substance and possessions of the king, and of his
sons, with the officers, and with the mighty men, and
with all the valiant men, unto Jerusalem." He called
together, as we should say, the great officials of the
kingdom, his ministers, the heads of departments, his
privy-councillors and officers in high command, the
great men of the nation, with the military element pre
ponderating as was natural — and presented to them his
young son, most probably to the great surprise of many,
and no doubt to the dismay and confusion of the elders
of the family, and especially of Adonijah who was now
the firstborn, after the death of Absalom. The king
himself would seem to have felt that an explanation was
necessary of this choice. When he rose to address that
assembly he reminded them how he himself had been
selected for the royal dignity: first Judah "chosen to
be the ruler ; and of the house of Judah, the house of my
father ; and among the sons of my father He liked me to
make me king over Israel." Among the assembly there
must have been many who remembered well the place
which David had held in his father's house: and all
present were of course aware that he was the youngest,
and that his elder brothers had served submissively in
his army after the first shock of his high distinction
over them. When he had thus established the antece
dent, he set forth before them the reason of his choice,
which was that Solomon had been elected by God to
build His house.
It would seem that this house of God must have be
come by this time an object of enthusiasm with Israel,
as well as with the king. They had all known his desire

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 135
and his disappointment, and the promise that had been
made to him : and the object had become a national one,
kept always before the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the
provincial visitors to the capital by the immense prepara
tions which David was making, the hewing of the great
blocks of stone, the carvings which were intended for the
interior, the treasures of gold and silver which were laid
up for the decoration of that wonderful place. Jerusa
lem must have been pervaded with the odour of the cedar
which was measured and piled up in masses of fragrant
planks and pillars : and throughout all Israel the women
must have been at work wherever there was one who
was skilful in embroidery, on some vestment or curtain.
Thus it was carried through every rank of the people,
whose pride it was to be, a great national work, an
undertaking in which every man should have his share.
David told his parliament how he had been hindered
because he was a man of war with blood on his hands,
from this sacred work, and how God had said " Solomon
shall build me an house." One can imagine the interest,
the profound attention of the assembly. The elders
among them would feel with David the poignant disap
pointment that the great work was not to be in their
day, but also that profound Eastern sentiment of satis
faction in the establishment and continuance of their race,
which was doubly secured by the promise that their sons
should carry it out. And another promise was involved,
one that must have shed balm to the farthermost corner
of the land, that there should be peace upon Israel.
Solomon was to be no man of war like his father, but a
king of peace. He was to have rest from his enemies.
The younger men among the captains might hear the
news without satisfaction, thinking of promotion ar
rested, and no further spoils to bring home, but what
balm the elder envoys would carry back with them to

136 JERUSALEM. [cHAr.
the depths of the country, what encouragement to every
industry, what comfort to every heart ! " I will give him
rest from all his enemies round about: I will give peace
and quietness to Israel in his days : for his name shall
be Solomon." It was in itself a promise and assurance
to make the harassed land rejoice.
When the king had made this oration he showed to
his assembled counsellors the preparations he had made,
the masses of hewn stone all ready for the building, the
treasury full of precious metals, the jewels, onyxes and
glistening " stones of divers colours " and marble in
abundance, and gold to overlay the walls of that precious
house that was to be. He showed them what had been
the work of all his later life, his collections of every
kind, the results of endless labour and thought. And
fired as they must have been by the sight and by his
glowing words, and invitation to all to take their part
in this great national undertaking, the princes and the
chiefs brought in their turn whatever they had that was
precious to add to the store, jewels no doubt from many
a source, taken from the necks of many a captive, car
pets of glorious colours, embroideries upon which the
women at home had spent their patient lives. The wife
working in the cool of the clay at the tent door or on the
steps of her house had her share like her lord. There
was a national contribution " offered willingly " from all
the chiefs and the head men, and the treasuries of the
unbuilt Temple were filled to overflowing.
This was the last great public act of David's life. He
set his favourite project splendidly on foot, and settled
the succession of his kingdom, and made every arrange
ment for the splendour of the age to come ; and then the
princes dispersed — the parliament was closed, the keys
turned on the stores. Solomon went back to the quietude
and training of his youth, and David to such care of his

in.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 137
kingdom as his advancing age permitted : and then came
that pause which occurs continually in every history, the
interval of every day between the past and future, which
happily has no record, which is only our human life.
Almost the last stage of all seems to have been reached
in David's life, when another sudden disturbance came
upon the capital, dispersing the somewhat heavy and
ominous calm which hung over it, the weary suspense of
an ending life. David was old, shut up in his chamber
under the charge of his young nurse, unable for the
weight of sovereignty, and rarely seen, we may believe,
in the city of which he was the life and pride : and all
men had grown weary of the waiting, the pause in those
celebrations and solemnities which held the national
life together. Solomon after his solemn selection as the
heir must have fallen back into the quiet and occupied
no prominent place : and it is no wonder if the eldest of
David's surviving sons, the legitimate heir according to
our modern ideas, a mature man in the full force of life,
deeply wounded and indignant no doubt by that choice
of a younger brother, an untried boy, to occupy his place,
should have made an attempt to recover his natural rights.
Adonijah was the next in succession after Absalom, a
" goodly man " like his brother, although of less strength,
fibre, and passion than he whom his father lamented so
deeply. And for the first time Joab, a man who under
stood no such changes from the right of nature, who prob
ably had an angry scorn for the woman who had been the
cause of so much harm, and resented the elevation of her
son : and to whom all those promises of peace and the
dream of the new Temple, and all the wasteful prepara
tions for it, were an offence : turned against the master
to whom he had been so rude an adviser often, but always
so true a servant. Yet probably he made it out to him
self as no turning against David but rather in his interest

138 JERUSALEM. [chap.
as well as that of the nation, to set aside the foolishness
of his old age, and establish a successor after him who
should follow the old conquering traditions, and continue
the old warlike life. What was this boy Solomon that
he should be chosen from among the lowest ranks of the
family, over the head of the gallant prince who was the
true heir? Abiathar was of the same mind, the priest
who had been faithful to David through all his troubles,
who had been with him in the wilderness, and among the
Philistines, sharing all the evil as well as the good of
his life. It is very probable that even among the priest
hood there were two parties, one maintaining that a
tabernacle for the Ark was all that God had ordained,
that the Temple was but a dream, and all the silver and
gold more fit to be divided among the chiefs and people
than to be appropriated to this visionary use. To what
purpose is this waste ? Probably both Joab and Abiathar
conceived that it would be far more to the glory of Israel
to diffuse such wealth among the people than to accumu
late it in this one place, and alienate it from the use of
man in order to appropriate it to that of God, to whom
it was as the dust of the field. And Adonijah was the
legitimate heir. They were the true royalists, the legit
imists of their day, the Conservatives, or rather the
Tories, of Israel, determined against all innovations.
And there is no doubt that they had much reason on their
side as well as force, with the high priest and the com
mander-in-chief at their head, while David dozed over
the fire in his chamber in the chill and lethargy of his
old age. They might easily conclude that they were de
livering him, too, from the plotters about him, from the
influence of Bathsheba and Nathan, who had procured
the elevation of that other young pretender to the throne.
These great leaders, however, reckoned without their
king. He was old, older than his years, for he scarcely

m.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 139
seems to have been more than seventy, which is by no
means invariably an age of decrepitude. And when the
mother of Solomon came in breathless with the news of
the great tumult in the city and the proclamation of the
new king, and eager appeal to him, and reminder of
his promise that her son should succeed him — followed
immediately by the prophet with the same news — David
roused himself at once from his lethargy and gave his
directions, clear and brief, without any weakness or
wavering. The king's name had fallen into no contempt
it is evident in Jerusalem, the city of his own crea
tion, for which he had done so much. And when Solo
mon was led forth on the king's own mule, with the
heralds blowing their trumpets before him, the rebellion
collapsed in a moment. It was scarcely a rebellion in
deed at all. Adonijah, it would seem, was not a man to
run the risk of any irremediable act, nor were Joab and
Abiathar sufficiently bold to advise it. The legitimist
party would seem to have broken up in the most com
plete confusion and panic, as if there was neither right
nor reason among them. They could have had no support
from the people, and no true soul even among themselves.
The sound of the trumpets blowing down from the city,
and the other music which accompanied them, when it
reached the valley where the conspirators were assem
bled at Enrogel brought an immediate pause. " Where
fore is this noise of the city in an uproar?" The sudden
news brought paleness to all faces and dispersed the revel
lers like the chaff before the wind. Joab, remembering
well, no doubt, the many grievances that David had
against him, was the first to disappear from the scene.
David's name was stronger yet than any of their corn-
plots. The old king, the old lion roused from his doze
of age, and with a gleam of long-restrained fury in his
eyes, called to his bedside the son in whose favour he

140 JERUSALEM. [chap.
had abdicated, the fortunate prince who was to build the
house of God, and make Israel glorious ; and while the
fading fire lasted gave him a few fierce brief counsels, hot
and bitter with that anger of old age which is all the
more strong that it has no longer any personal potency.
All that Joab had done came before him in a flash of angry
recollection, the death of Abner, the death of Amasa —
who can doubt, above all, the death of Absalom. "Do
thou therefore according to thy wisdom, and let not his
head go down to the grave in peace." Was this charge
so dreadful as appears to us? Joab had served David
well, but he had never admitted any obstacle to his private
vengeance, and he was the most dangerous foe that young
Solomon could have while yet unassured upon the throne.
That there should have come into the old king's mind
after this his own bitter enemy and reviler, the Benja-
mite, who had thrown jibes and curses and stones at him
on his flight from Jerusalem, is more difficult to under
stand. Perhaps the recollection flitted across his failing
mind in the temporary fury which the name of Joab had
raised. He had forgiven Shimei in order not to stain
with blood the day of his return to Jerusalem : but had,
perhaps, seen reason since to regret his clemency, and
felt Shimei, too, to be a danger and probable enemy to
the new king. Upon this subject we can only conjecture.
The charge leaves a painful impression on the mind as
of a man who could not in policy avenge his own quar
rels, but left the legacy of blood to his son. It can only
be said that not in these days nor for long centuries after
had the nobler thought that injuries were to be forgiven,
not avenged, been communicated to man : as also that the
flicker of suddenly-raised passion through decrepitude,
the last fierce impulse of a failing mind and temporary
outburst of the capricious fury of an old man's shattered
nerves and sinking strength is scarcely to be laid to his
charge.

ni-J THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 141
Here is a softer recollection, with which to take leave
of the hero, the song with which the words and the days
of the son of Jesse came to an end. " Now these be the
last words of David " — the young king, his eyes full of
ardour and of melancholy, the newly anointed, the great
thinker and poet of days to come, sitting thoughtfully
by- " He that ruleth over men should be just,
Ruling in the fear of God.
" And he shall be as the light of the morning,
When the sun riseth,
A morning without clouds ;
"Like the tender grass out of the earth
In the clear shining after rain.
" Although my house be not so with God ;
Yet hath He made with me an everlasting covenant,
Ordered, and sure :
This is my salvation, and my desire."
There is something extraordinarily pathetic in the old
poet's comparison unspoken, of his own old and failing
state with that of him who was as the light of the morn
ing: and when we remember who that was, who was thus
rising like a morning without clouds over Jerusalem, the
great ruler, the most splendid and potent of all the
monarchs of the East, the sage whose disillusion has per
vaded the whole earth, the master and heir of all things,
satisfied with none — the comparison grows more expres
sive still.
Thus David died, and the greatest romance of history,
let us seek it in what records we will, came to an end.
And Jerusalem sat solitary as another poet in still deeper
affliction, proclaimed of her in after days, and mourned
for her king.

CHAPTEE IV.

SOLOMON".

THE traditionary character of Solomon, the greatest
potentate and philosopher of the East, the man
above all others who has influenced the development of
that vast world of sentiment, passion and thought which
the passage of centuries has scarcely made more compre
hensible to us, the world of the subtle Jew and the
dreamy, yet fierce Mohammedan was as different from
that of his father as can well be imagined. In such
wonderful figures there is certainly no heredity. How
the warrior of the desert, the shepherd of the hills and
valleys, the paladin and hero of romance who was his
predecessor, could have produced that man of observation
and thought, that great spectator of the ages, who was
at the same time so great an actor on the far distant and
crowded stage that it is difficult to conceive how little
Judea could have contained him — is beyond the imagi
nation of man. He rises in that dim distance the first
born of all the philosophers, arriving at conclusions which
the latest have done little more than carry out : the first
great thinker, whose musings have breathed through the
whole world, neither corrected nor rendered obsolete by
all advancing lore or increasing wisdom of mankind.
What progress that race has made since then ! how
changed are all our conditions ! there is no comparison

ch. iv.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID.

143

between the circumstances of well-being which surround
the poorest among us, and those precarious and painful
conditions of existence in which our own early ancestors,
much more the older ages of the world, lived and died :
yet beyond the rude poetry of David, and the broken
thoughts of Solomon, humanity has not advanced. We
express the loftiest aspirations of our hearts, and the
deepest and saddest convictions of our minds, in their
unchanged words to-day. Useless to attempt to examine
whether that poetry and those thoughts are but tradi
tionary of these two names, upon wrhich subject we can
never perhaps arrive at any certainty either on one side
or the other. I have already ventured to say that when
the question is between unvarying tradition (not to
take refuge in any shelter of inspiration) absolute verisi
militude, the accompanying picture of the two men of
whose history the Psalms and the Poem of Ecclesiastes
are illustrations — and the researches of a small sect of
German philologists, I prefer to take the word of the
older ages. Since anyhow it must be a matter of faith
in any case, the evidence on the one side is, I think,
infinitely more trustworthy than that on the other. But
to the reader who thinks that David had no share,
even in the Psalms, whicli illustrate his life ; and that
not Solomon, but some nameless sage is the author of
Ecclesiastes, what can be said ? No more, I think, than
can be said to the man who believes that Lord Bacon
and not William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet. This the
ory scarcely diminishes the antiquity to our ken, and
much increases the wonder of those surpassing produc
tions of genius. They come to us from the dimness of a
distance which there is no means of penetrating, and
remain still the earliest utterances of humanity, as they
are so far as we are aware, upon their chief subjects,
almost its final word. Our ancestors in Scotland falsified

144 JERUSALEM. [chap.
history and invented, to their own glory, a whole line of
visionary kings : but how far are they behind the splen
did fictionists (according to the critics) who flourished
nameless among those primitive Jews ! for Scots histo
rians put no immortal poetry into the mouth of their
fabulous Fergus, no essence of human wisdom to the
credit of any Achaius. Solomon and his philosophy,
and David and his Psalms on the contrary are rooted
among the deepest certainties of the wide Eastern world
which brought them forth.
Solomon the man of rest is a new personality alto
gether in primitive history. He rises out of that tu
multuous, yet vague, tribe of David's sons without any
right of priority, nay with almost the reverse, with, one
would have imagined, a prejudice against him as the son
of the woman who had caused the darkest tragic epi
sode in David's life, chosen by God in the exercise of a
selection which, to our thinking, might almost be called
arbitrary, the same which took not only David from
the sheep-cotes, but Mohammed from among the camel
drivers, and Dante from the Florentine bourgeoisie, and
Shakespeare from the actors of a primitive theatre, to
make of them unheralded, unexpected, no better than
their neighbours, the instructors of a world. We are not
told even that Solomon was a " goodly man " to predis
pose Jerusalem to receive him as she had tentatively
received his elder brothers. When he was led along the
stony streets upon his father's mule, with all its royal
trappings, the trumpets sounding before him, and, of all
the captains of Israel, only stout Benaiah behind, to
where the Ark within its tent stood awaiting the house
in which he was to enclose it, we may well imagine how
the throngs in the city, the men gathering in irresolute
bands, the women at every window and doorway, stood
open-mouthed, not knowing for the moment which side

iv-] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 145
to take. Adonijah's guests, in all their bravery, had
gone by but a few hours before to the great feast in the
valley which the splendid heir-presumptive, the legiti
mate successor, was giving — and what was this young
prince, the man of peace, undistinguished yet by either
valour or greatness ?
The crowd must have gathered dumbly after him,
pouring down to the door of the tabernacle. But when
the priest came out from within the mysterious curtains
with the consecrated oil, and in the sight of all men
anointed the grave young king, a sudden enthusiasm
would seem to have seized the crowd. The sound of the
uproar in the city blew downward upon the wind to the
cool margin of that well in the valley where Adonijah
sat with his guests. There was a moment, no doubt, of
consternation, of varying and panic-stricken thoughts,
of pale faces : and then the assembly melted hurriedly
away. Evidently the sound of those shouts was abso
lutely convincing, and every man recognised that there.
was in David's legitimate heir no stamina to stand
against the young usurper of his rights. Not so was
Absalom ever abandoned. Joab for once disappeared
without a word to say.
It was no easy heritage which David left to his succes
sor. All the schemes of the harem were against him,
the influence of the priest Abiathar, still more the in
fluence of the commander-in-chief: — and no doubt the
prejudices of all the military section of the people whose
prosperity depended upon war and plunder rather than
upon peace and the arts of peace. The summary man
ner in which he got rid of the competitor to the throne,
and .of that obdurate and powerful Joab, whose unresist
ing end strikes us with amazement after the masterful
life in which he had carried everything with so high a
hand — must, however, have proved at once to all Jeru-

146 JERUSALEM. [chap.
salem looking on, that this new king though a man of
peace was not one to be trifled with or from whom any
weakness of clemency and toleration was to be expected.
The man of thought was also a man of action, prompt,
trenchant, and decided. No doubt it was policy which
led him to make a round of the ancient high places from
which he was about to take all the importance, and spe
cially to that in Gibeon where the ancient tabernacle of
the wilderness, the tent in which the Ark had been orig
inally sheltered, with all its old-world ornamentations,
still stood, and the huge altar of brass upon which sac
rifices had been offered from the earliest days of the
national life. It would conciliate the people round,
perhaps startled by the idea that there was hencefor
ward to be but one centre of national worship in Israel
to the discredit of their own ancient shrine, that one of
the first acts of the new king should be to visit and offer
innumerable sacrifices upon that altar. It is curious to
realise what an accompaniment to every religious service
must have been that odour of burning, the heavy smoke
and smell of the sacrifices, so much of them as was actu
ally consumed upon the altar, which all the incense, and
the pure air of the open eminences, the high places on
which these altars were generally raised, could scarcely
dissimulate. The best way of doing so no doubt was that
of the feast aud reverent consumption "before the Lord"
of the greater part of the offering : while the column of
smoke ascending, so clear a symbol to the mind of the
beholder of the blood and fire with which symbolically
his own life, forfeit to justice, was redeemed, had its
aspect of stern yet solemn poetry as well, which must
have reconciled the minds of the people to this other
wise disagreeable feature of their worship. There is not
a word, however, of this in all the record : no sensitive
priest objected, no worshipper had a complaint to make.

iv.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 147
The burning flesh was a sweet savour unto the Lord.
Close examination, however, shows that the amount thus
consumed was comparatively small, so that, perhaps, the
trial to the, in this respect not very keen, perceptions
of the East, might not have been nearly so great as we
suppose. The remarkable vision which was vouchsafed to Solo
mon in Gibeon, after he had accomplished all the rites of
religion there, is both touching and impressive, although
we are distinctly informed with greater emphasis than
in any other instance of a similar kind, that " Solomon
awoke, and behold it was a dream." Yet a dream full
of instruction and consolation. He was still " young and
tender " according to David's description ; " I am but
as a little child " according to his own. And his great
heart was all absorbed in the thought of that work which
he had to do, inexperienced as he was, and without help
or counsellor. " Give therefore thy servant an under
standing heart, that I may discern between good and
evil." What more fit petition could be put forth by any
monarch ? It shows us better than anything else could
do that sensation of awe at his own responsibilities and
absolute pre-occupation with them, which is one of the
most impressive aspects of royalty, and still more of
royal youth. The ill-fated heir of France wept in the
tremor of that awe when the news of his accession was
brought to him ; and well might he weep. Solomon was
not of this mild nature : yet his prayer shows the fixed
idea of his mind, which was not upon the splendours or
greatness of his position, but on its difficulty and the
dread charge thus laid upon his shoulders. "An under
standing heart."- We know little except in the world-
renowned example called par excellence the judgment of
Solomon which follows in the tale of the two women, of
his judicial wisdom : but that he possessed the under-
l 2

148 JERUSALEM. [chap.
standing heart in every sense of the words, his works
leave no manner of doubt.
The historian would seem to have considered that one
superlative instance of understanding and judgment to
have been enough, as who should stop to prove a thing
so spread about the world and everywhere known as the
wisdom of Solomon ? and leaving that transports us at
once to Jerusalem to the busiest scene of activity, the
very climax of life and occupation. The sheds and store
houses in which all David's wealth of preparation for
the Temple were laid up, and where the armies of work
men he had employed were busy in their labours, must
have been outside the gates, spread over the hollows
where there would be room for all their operations, yet
near enough for constant supervision. The men must
have clustered like bees about the huge masses of stone
which the excavators of our day have discovered with
amazement deep under the rubbish of ages, the founda
tions of the great superstructure to come. They look
as if giants alone could have hewed them and elephants
dragged them to their place, though it was but the skil
ful masons of Tyre with their Hebrew journeymen who
shaped and severed these prodigious blocks. The deep
quarries in which they were hewn and shaped lay close
by : and the workshops where the fine stone carvings
were prepared, the furnaces of the metal-workers would
all find ample place in the valley between Jerusalem and
Moriah, along with the sheds for the carpenters with
their piles and stacks of fragrant wood. In the city
itself, no doubt, the fine work, wood-carving, and the
beating out of the more precious metals into plates for
the lining of the interior, and all the ornamental work,
in some cases adorned with precious stones, must have
been carried on, in special workshops and under close
superintendence. It is apparent that all this immense

iii|p«

$ B , ' i •
',' ' i
!>."¦¦''¦¦¦;.;': te=;,-:'|.

To /«ce ^jaf/e 148.
THE WALL OF WAILING : ANCIENT WALL OF TEMPLE ENCLOSURE.

iv.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 151
accumulation of industries must have been going on for
years during the reign of David, who had set the masons
to work to hew the stones, and " prepared iron in abun
dance for the nails, for the doors of the gates and for the
joinings, and brass in abundance without weight " — not
to speak of the designs minutely prepared, and the calcula
tions of quantities and values required. How far we
may trust to the numbers and statements of weight it
would be difficult to say, for nothing is so likely to have
suffered in the course of innumerable transcriptions as
these details, which in many cases, and especially in the
successive numberings of the people, seem inconceivably
large for so small a territory.
What is more interesting is to realise the extraordinary
stir of national life which must have been occasioned by
so much employment, so much collected treasure, and
the growth of trade and communication with other sur
rounding nations in the peaceful way of mutual use and
service. Tyre, the great trading centre of the age, was
brought into the closest relations to Jerusalem by this
prodigious work, and bartered her cedars against the
grain and oil and wine of the rich plains of Palestine,
and lent her sailors to man the ships that Solomon com
missioned, and set up a close alliance with those rude
and warlike neighbours who were now signalising their
entrance into the brotherhood of civilisation and pro
gressive life by so great an enterprise. Then as now the
Hebrews seem rather to have hired workmen and skill
in manufacture than to have produced them ; but already
the cunning of the negotiator and merchant must have
existed among them. They had long made use of tribu
taries, the subjeet villages whose population had been
spared in their first inroad into Palestine, partly from
weakness and partly from policy, whose descendants
probably remain there to this day. And already the

152

JERUSALEM.

[chap.

future manipulators of European finance had found out
the way of exchanging the productions of their vassals,
the Gibeonites and Jebusites, who laboured the fields
and worked the winepress and crushed the oil-berries for
them, for the manufactures of the trading Tyrians, and

A CEDAR OF LEBANON.

the wonders brought from beyond the seas. This was
their first introduction into those commercial affairs in
which they have had so much importance since.
And thus the little hill city, built for defence upon the
rocks and declivities, with strait skirts gathered about
her, and a dwelling so steep that the lame and the
blind were supposed able to defend her against the bold-

iv.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 153
est raid, expanded in one generation into a great city
enlarged and beautified, towards which the wealth of the
whole country flowed, a centre of industry where every
skilled workman was sure of finding employment and
every manufacturer a market for his wares. The quick
ening of life, the new activity, the change from that
restricted village fortress with jealous gates ready to
close at every rumour, is too marvellous for description.
Perhaps the momentary effect was not at first one of
improvement. If some old Jebusite strolling forth upon
the walls in the evening burst forth into outcries of in
dignation like the wailings of Mr. Ruskin, over the glow
of the furnaces in the valley, the dust of the masons'
yards, which spread everywhere, instead of the unbroken
green and the breath of flowers that had been wont to
breathe upward upon the evening air, who could won
der? And when scaffoldings began to rise, and deep
pits of foundation to be dug, upon the green hill where
heretofore the peaceful labours of Araunah's threshing-
floor had been the only object which disturbed the seren
ity of the landscape, the cornfields below and the terraced
vines, and here and there a group of feathery olives
above — how hotly would the old men talk of the ravages
made by the new ideas and the destruction of all that was
most dear and beautiful and homelike in that once verdant
and fertile scene ! No more an unbroken prospect of soft
swelling hills and green hollows, the Mount of Olives
rising up to the skies, the Kedron purling over its peb
bles in the valley below, the soft contour of Mount
Moriah, one of those little hills of Judah that were like
lambs, filling the centre of the scene — but all over the
slopes, and in the low ravine beyond, the disfiguring
workshops, the gleam of the fires, the sound of chisel
and hammer, taking all the repose and sweetness out of
the air! Thus the old inhabitant must have thought,

154 JERUSALEM. [chap.
with a sigh for the good old times, when his own Jebusite
chief held the little town, and all was silence around :
and so, too, must have thought the group of old soldiers
who would look out, contemptuous, upon all those arts
of peace, and remind each other of the stirring trumpet
notes when great Joab, now dead and gone, or greater
David, had called them together and led them down,
with clang of sword and shimmer of spear, down into
the plain to victory and spoil.
But while these old Conservatives had their grumble
apart, what robust life must have poured through the
land where everybody was busy, what commotion and
activity in all the streets ! Solomon, the young king,
had other tastes than his father. He made a splendid
alliance with the greatest of ancient kingdoms, bringing
Pharaoh's daughter to his palace on the hill, not con
tenting himself with any wayside beauty as his father
had done — Pharaoh's daughter, a descendant of the race
which had made slaves of Israel, and which had suffered
so sorely by means of that strange and irreconcilable peo
ple ! What greater proof could be of the new position
of Israel and the final place which she had won for her
self among the nations of the earth when the great King
of Egypt did not despise her alliance ? The Egyptian
princess would come with new luxuries and splendours
in her train, always adding to the rising tide of wealth
and work and universal embellishment. And as the
seasons went on, and year followed year, the great build
ing growing on the hill would gradually absorb the
interest of Jerusalem, a perpetual object of observation
and criticism and remark, of national enthusiasm and
pride. No one could look out from the windows of the
palace, from the heads of the steep streets, from any house
top or rampart, without seeing before them the rising
walls, the vast edifice taking shape, the great new thing

iv.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 155
slowly growing in whiteness and noble proportion like
a magic dwelling. The great stones must have been
dragged up the hill with shoutings and outcries of men,
and labouring breath of animals taking their share, they,
too, in their voiceless way, in the offering ; but • once
there, were poised, without noise of building, one upon
another in their courses without sound of the hammer
or any tool. It would become the first idea in the morn
ing with all that highly-stimulated and excited people to
look out and see how much had been done in the previ
ous twenty-four hours, what new doorway had become
visible, what sculptured lintel added, or wing of cherub,
or wreath of pomegranate. And what expeditions ' there
would be on the Sabbath Days and when the feast of the
new moon gave a little break in the continuity of labour,
across the valley where the forges and ateliers were for
the moment silent, to see the progress of that great
object which was the chief thing in life ! The women
must have streamed out in bands, with their veils and
ornaments, to wonder and admire and point out to each
other the added height since their last visit, the growth
like enchantment of that house of God which was more
wonderful than any dream, and the rising courses of
the mighty wall surrounding it, rooted on the rock, from
which, on the eastern side, they could look down upon
Kedron and the deep valley winding away southward
where, on the rocks of the opposite slope, the Tyrian
workmen had built their low houses, half excavation,
half construction, and on the quiet pool under the hill
catching the glimpses of the sun — the pool and the vil
lage of Siloam. To us how full of wonderful association
is that scene where the Cyclopean blocks of the ancient
foundations still lie securely bedded in the rock ! the
Mount of Olives, that sacred hill of meditation, the road
that winds along its side to little Bethany round the

156

JERUSALEM.

[chap.

corner of the hill, and deep down in the valley the old,
old group of hoary trees which mark Gethsemane, that
spot full of awe and anguish. But no such knowledge
was in the mind of the lighthearted groups which must
have leant over to see the huge courses of new-laid
stones, the men explaining, the women wondering as in
any holiday expedition of to-day. These blocks of deep-

VALLEY OF JEHOSHAPHAT, WITH BOCKS OF SILOAM, THE DWELLING
OF THE TYRIAN MASONS.
est antiquity, perhaps, and certainly one other silent
witness, the dark mass of rock — now canopied and en
shrined in one of the most exquisite pieces of Oriental
building, the so-called Mosque of Omar, the Dome of the
Rock— which may have been Abraham's altar, but at
all events is an unchanged portion of the original hill
top— are the sole existing things which saw the commo
tion and excitement of that day.
One other great work, a feat of engineering and con-

iv.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 157
structive skill, must have been the bridges, the relics of
which have been found within this generation, with
which the deep but narrow valley between the city of
David and the Mount Moriah was crossed. The Arch
called Bobinson's, and which is close to the most ancient
portion of the Temple wall, now known as the wailing
place of the Jews, where the pilgrims of that nation or
residents in Jerusalem still assemble to repeat their litany
of lamentation— and the other relic near the south-east
corner, known as Wilson's Arch, show where those won
derful highways were. They crossed the valley some
thing in the same way as do the bridges in Edinburgh,
spanning the ravine, and making locomotion more easy
than when the slope of Zion on one side and Moriah on
the other had to be ascended and descended on every
passage. The acclivity of Mount Moriah on which the
Temple was placed was loftier than the terraced slope
upon which the new town of Edinburgh is founded, but
otherwise the North Bridge in that beautiful city affords
a good example of what Solomon's bridges must have
been. The Tyropoeon valley is now filled up with masses
of ruin, and houses built upon these masses, thus equalis
ing more or less the natural level, but still the ravine is
sufficiently marked and the bridge of Solomon, did it
exist, would be a great solace to the weary pilgrim, who
has at present to descend the precipitous street of the
city and mount again long flights of steps to reach the
area of the Temple, the "Noble Sanctuary" of the Mo
hammedans, to whom it is, as to us, though from different
reasons, with one exception the most sacred spot on earth.
It was not upon the Temple alone, however, that Solo
mon, though it was his special mission, spent all his
thoughts. He would seem to have organised every kind
of industry and trade. His merchants, our authorised
version tells us, brought him "yarn out of Egypt," but

158 JERUSALEM. [CHAr.
this seems based upon a mistaken translation, and it
appears that it was troops of horses which his messengers
brought, and chariots which hitherto had been rare in
Judea, the strongest arm of military service. He " made
silver and gold at Jerusalem as plenteous as stones,"
filling the country with work and money, and the per
petual coming and going of commerce. This it would
seem could not be done without a certain oppression of
the people, corvees as in France, forced labour and inter
ference with personal liberty in order to swell the great
ness of the king and kingdom. The appeal of the elders
of Israel in the succeeding age to Behoboam to ease them
of the grievous yoke which his father had put upon
them no doubt refers to this, a natural expedient of the
time, too common among the other races to be remarked,
though always resented by the fierce and wayward inde
pendence of the Israelites. There is, however, no trace
of resistance or discontent while Solomon's powerful
hand held the reins of state. His great alliances, his
great undertakings, the links of profit and mutual inter
est which he formed between himself and all the sur
rounding peoples, fully fulfilled the promise Of his first
years that he should be a man of peace and have rest
from his enemies ; but yet he was no soft or effeminate
prince, altogether absorbed in the arts of peace. He
would seem to have extended the boundaries of Israel on
all sides, and specially to have completed the subjugation
of those remnants of the original people, the ancient
Canaanitish races which the invading tribes had not the
strength, perhaps, let us hope, had not the heart to drive
out of their cities. Neither did Solomon drive them out;
he made of them useful servants, sometimes indeed not
much more than slaves, doing the hard work to which
the proud Hebrews would not bow their neck, quarrying
in the stony depths of the hills, and dragging the loads

IV.]

THE HOUSE OF DAVID.

159

of stones, the cargoes of wood from Jaffa, all the ruder
labours necessary. The number of these original inhabit
ants, sometimes holding their own in spurts of little wars,
as the Jebusites had held their town against David, some
times tolerated and linked by bonds of familiarity and
neighbourhood with the conquering race, never so op
pressed as were, for example, the Saxons by the Normans,

YAMUCH, A PORT OF LEBANON.

was evidently greater than we have any idea of, and contin
ued to represent a distinct element in the population for
centuries, preventing at all times the perfect homogene
ity of the inhabitants of Judea and the land of Israel,
and the full realisation of the promise. That a great part
of the hard work of Solomon's buildings fell upon their
shoulders is evident, and as the use of horses was a new
thing, and the roads little adapted for any cartage, all
the heavy loads of material must have been carried to
Jerusalem either by mules or camels or by the work of

160 JERUSALEM. [chap.
man. Neither mules nor camels could carry conveniently
the great logs of cedar, still less drag forth the blocks of
stone from the quarries, therefore it must in some cases
have been by sheer hard labour of scores of men that
the transport was accomplished. All this heavy work
would seem to have been laid upon the tributaries, the
aborigines of the country. " Of the children of Israel
did Solomon make no bondmen," but the Amorites,
Hittites, Perrizites, Hivites, and Jebusites were levied
en masse for this forced service. The corvee would lose
its unpopularity when thus exacted from the natural
vassals, and it does not appear that any rebellious senti
ment arose among those labouring crowds. The Israel
ites filled their places of overseers and captains, and they
were sent to Lebanon, to the wood-cutting, in relays,
their period of service being one month in three.
How far all this quickened life and increase of work
and activity was to the real advantage and enrichment of
the land, however, it is very difficult to decide. A splen
did capital is a glory to a well established and stedfastly
governed kingdom, but it is doubtful whether the Israel
ites were sufficiently tamed and civilised to appreciate
it, or whether the distant shores of Zebulon and Naph
tali, the outlying tribes of Gad and Dan would care much
for what went on upon the heights of that far-off Jerusa
lem. The inhabitants of these regions were described as
" people that walked in darkness " so much later as the
times of Isaiah, and it is scarcely possible to imagine that
they could have felt a great interest in the buildings at
Jerusalem, for the sake of which they were called upon
to join the band of labourers, which made its way every
month through their country to Lebanon, unless indeed
it might be sweetened by pay and reward as is doubtful.
Yet even that train, travelling in its detachments under
its officers, increased by contributions from every tribe,

iv.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 161
must have caused a thrill of life and mutual acquaintance
through all the tribes as it went and came, with its new
experiences, so much to tell of Jerusalem on one hand,
and of the mountains on the other : not to speak of the
wonders of the caravans from Egypt, the reports of the
shipmen who went so far into fabulous lands across in
credible seas. The country folk must have looked for
the passing of that train with all the excitement of rus
tics to whom a glimpse into other worlds is thus afforded
periodically. It is said in our own days that nothing has
so welded the newly formed kingdom of Italy into one,
as the military service which carries the Neapolitan into
the cities of the north, and makes the hardheaded Pied-
montese acquainted with Eome and Sicily, revealing on
all sides, to the astonishment of the narrow rustic or
narrower citizen, the unity of a great country, the Patria
which is something greater than the puese to which all his
thoughts have been limited. These journeys to Lebanon
and mutual occupation about one great work which was
for the glory of all Israel must, one would imagine, have
had a similar effect. And the continual passage of mer
chandise and caravans could not but enrich the peasants
who furnished food for man and beast to the wandering
traders and their little army of camels and mules. It is
possible, of course, that the king's lavish expenditure on
his buildings might excite the discontent, especially of
his subjects at a distance: but scarcely credible that the
increased movement and stir of life and trade should not
have benefited all.
Still more certain advantage must have been in the
reconstruction of ancient cities, the acquisition of new,
in which colonies of Hebrews could be 'placed, and the
boundaries of their sway enlarged. It seems very doubt
ful what is meant by " Tadmor in the wilderness "—
which has been generally taken to be Palmyra, far away
M

162 JERUSALEM. [chap.
among the wilds, far beyond Damascus, which for a
great part of Solomon's reign was unfriendly to him —
unless indeed his workmen had attained so great profi
ciency, both the Tyrian experts and their Hebrew pupils,
that they were sought for in their turn as Hiram's work
men had been sought for, to form the mighty columns
and lay the prodigious stones of these wonderful temples
and palaces. It is now, however, considered more proba
ble that the desert on the other side, between Egypt and
Judea, is the wilderness indicated. But the narrative is
full of undertakings nearer home, "cities of stone," "cities
for his chariots and cities for his horsemen," the primi
tive vagueness of description revealing, if nothing else, a
universal activity and the continual addition of new cen
tres of occupation and life. Still more wonderful is the
glimpse into immensity afforded by those ships which
Solomon is said to have built on the shores of the Bed
Sea, with their Tyrian captains and overseers and Hebrew
seamen, sailing away into the unknown, a long uncertain
three years' voyage, to the mysterious land of Ophir, the
wonderful ancient Arabia or India whence gold and pre
cious stones and sweet-smelling sandal-wood, and, per
haps, some rare knowledge of inlaying and fine works in
ivory and gold, were brought. What were the exchanges
the subtle Hebrews, with their natural turn for finance,
would offer ? What could they bring that was not already
more plentiful in a world so overflowing with primitive
wealth? Perhaps the wool and woven stuffs, the em
broideries of the women of Israel, the carpets and the
cloths of goat's hair, the primitive furnishings of the
tents. The Venetians in their day, so much later, ex
ported salt-fish and wooden bowls and spoons, insignificant
articles enough to purchase the treasures of the East,
but yet no doubt answering to necessities still more
imperative than any need of luxury could be. The

iv.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 163
record does not enter into these details. The voyages
themselves are wonder enough, the earliest record of
extended trading and the navigation of the unknown
seas. And even the briefness of the statement adds to
its interest. What strange novelty, unknown to us, who
have so little left to surprise us, what excitement must
have been in that vague blundering about those brilliant
seas, what tragic experiences of cyclone and tempest,
what loitering in strange places, waiting upon wind
and weather, in the long, long wandering of those three
years !
Was the Queen of Sheba, that mysterious and legendary
princess, the only royal visitor that came in her time out
of the invisible to see the great king whose emissaries
had stirred the mists that veiled one part of the world
from the other ? She is, at least, the only one that makes
a visible appearance in the record, with her offerings and
her great train "the camels that bore spices and very
much gold and precious stones." Over what deserts had
she come to see the wonders of art and hear the words
of wisdom that had reached her in distant echoes so far
away : or was she one of the passengers in the returning
ships, taking advantage of those wonderful pioneers in
the unknown seas'? This, of course, we shall never
know, nor who the lady was who showed so great an
appreciation of wisdom, nor even what was the founda
tion of fact in the legend, to which its picturesqueness
gives an importance which it scarcely has in the record.
How was it that this petty king, lord of a little land,
no bigger than Wales, filled the world with his greatness ?
How was it that his temple, which some of the critics of
the present day describe as a small edifice (idicule M.
Benan calls it) not much more than a royal chapel,
should remain down to these times, after the passage of
nearly three thousand years, in the imagination and

164 JERUSALEM. [chap.
memory of the later ages, the symbol of everything that
is splendid and vast in architecture and in riches ? The
same critics tell us that in Solomon's time there- was a
rage for building temples, and that all the little nations
were doing it, raising sanctuaries for their worship far
more imposing than that of Solomon. How is it then
that all of these have crumbled and departed, not only
their ancient walls — which is natural — but all memory
and knowledge of them — while still the Temple on Mount
Moriah shines, where it stood three thousand years ago,
in the recollection of men ? The great temples of Egypt
still stand in solemn ruin, which were far more vast and
more splendid still, yet we have but the' faintest under
standing of them. Neither Tyre nor Sidon nor even
Egypt have sustained the remorseless destructions that
have swept over the holy place of the Jews : and yet
they are all gone into uttermost darkness, while the other
remains triumphant over time and all its revenges. The
vast blocks of stone that recent excavators have laid bare
fill us with a wondering awe: but not upon them is
founded the everlasting memory which makes the Temple
of Solomon as real to us as St. Peter's at Rome, or our
own minsters and abbeys which our eyes have seen.
The temples of the Greeks are so much later that they
are almost modern in comparison, and their visible and
splendid ruins are still wonderful in their decay : but
Solomon's Temple stands only in recollection, in a his
tory which has been a hundred times rent to pieces, and
which many a critic has fondly believed himself to have
discredited for ever : yet it stands as firm as when it
was built, a thing for reverence and admiration till the
end of time. One asks one's self why ? And how is it
that the heart of the nineteenth century sobs forth its
anguish in the words so called of David and breathes
over all earthly ways the sigh which bears the name of

iv.] THE HOUSE OF DAATD. 165
Solomon? Those to whom these potentates of the an
cient ages are the insignificant and half fabulous kings
of an obscure people must answer after their fashion.
To the rest of us the explanation is sufficiently clear.
It is needless to touch here upon the immense place
which Solomon occupies in the imagination of the East,
¦ or the mass of stories and incidents, many no doubt
quite fabulous, which have collected about his name.
That Mohammed should have adopted him with so much
fervour and faith is a proof of his legendary importance
among the peoples which were not his own, but which
had been already pervaded for ages by the reports and
echoes of his wisdom and his greatness. But we may
with more reason add to the brief record of his story the
other productions, still more lasting than the Temple,
which bear his name. "The Song of Songs, which is
Solomon's" has been represented by some writers as a
popular ballad of his time, setting forth how a certain
beautiful maiden of low degree clung to the shepherd of
her choice and scorned the advances of the king, a sug
gestion so completely foreign to the character of the
poem, in any natural interpretation, that we leave it to
those who can be persuaded into such a theory. By
others this poem, as well as Ecclesiastes, is supposed to
be the production of some anonymous poet of a much
later date, who, more disinterested than modern poets
are, extinguished himself in order to place the name of
Solomon on his work, for what reason it would be diffi
cult to imagine. It would have been as easy to have
placed the name of the real author and his description at
the head of the poem as that of "the Preacher, the Son
of David," and more gratifying to natural instinct, which
never since has reached this height of self-abnegation.
Men have been found in numbers to give their lives for
their kings, to abandon comfort, and happiness, and

166 JERUSALEM. [chap.
wealth for their sakes, but never once as in this case to
give up to them the dearer fame of poem or work of
genius. Such a piece of self-effacement is unknown to
any other language, to any race that ever existed. No
Greek gave the credit even of a ballad to the tyrant of
his state, or cut off his own name from the admiration
and knowledge of posterity in order to give fictitious
glory to his master. On what inducement the poets of
Judea in the dawn of consciousness should have done so,
why they were so far different (being so curiously like
in other particulars the most tenacious and self-seeking
of men) to all other human beings, is too deep a question
for the ordinary intelligence. We prefer to receive them,
as at least from the inspiration of Solomon, whether they
may have been written out or not, by his own hand. We
are told that "he spake" of many things upon which
his utterances have perished : beasts and birds, and trees
and plants. The botany and natural history, curious as
they would have been, we can do without. The greater
treasure has been preserved for us.
The Song of Solomon has never had fair play, if we may
use such a word with the modern reader. Its strange mis
placement (according to all nature and analogy) in the
sacred canon, the wonderful efforts that have been made
to twist its fervent strophes into a spiritual meaning, and
the strain of everything that is natural and seemly, as
appears to me, in the effort, has given a false character
to the poem from which it is difficult to disengage the
imagination. This, I am aware, is a very bold thing for
the unlearned to say, and I venture to say it only as one
of the unlearned, and according to mere literary instinct,
no more. When we treat it frankly as what it is "a
song of loves" it becomes one of the most interesting
relics of literature, the oldest of love-songs, a little can
tata, half lyrical, half dramatic, of the happy meetings,

iv.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 167
the temporary estrangements, the mutual adoration of
the youthful pair, more beautiful to each other than
anything else on earth, and eager to prove to the world
around each, the superlative attraction of his or her
choice. The slight setting of the contemporary life by
which the lovers are surrounded, is clear as a picture.
There are the streets, the watchmen that go about the
city, the keepers of the walls, the silence of the night
into which the lady strays who has lost her love ; there
is the spring awaking over all the fields, the call of the
lover to his love to come forth, like Corinna to the May
ing. " The flowers appear ; the time of the singing of
birds has come, the voice of the dove is heard in the
land." There is the beloved at the window seeking
entrance, going "down" to his garden, to the beds of
spices, to the gardens of nuts, to see the fruits of the
valley, and the budding of the pomegranates, to gather
lilies ; or he comes swift in his ardour over the moun
tains like a roe or a young hart, or out of the wilderness
" like pillars of smoke," clouds of dust rising round the
swiftness of his coming. Whether it was the daughter
of Pharaoh who describes herself as " black but comely "
while her lover lavishes upon her every adoring attribute,
or whether the Shulamite was one of the many other
loves with which the king surrounded himself, who can
tell ? Who indeed can tell anything certain about this
earliest of love-songs ? Its broken canticles, its hyper
bole of Eastern detail, its love-longing and wistfulness
of pursuit, the constant eluding of the supreme meeting
which is the very soul of the love-song, are perfect in
their Oriental expression. And so are the exquisite
little vignettes of description, the glimpses of the world
around, which are so much less important to the singer
than are the charms of his love, his fair one, the fairest
among women — or to her than the beloved who is far
more than any other beloved —

168 JERUSALEM. [chap.
" How shall I your true love ken
From another one."
The sentiment is universal and runs through all the ages.
He is the chiefest among ten thousand: and of her she
is but one, the choice one of her mother : " there is none
like her, none." Sometimes she is even terrible in her
beauty " like an army with banners " to the adoring lover.
The Jerusalem that comes vaguely into sight behind these
two beautiful figures is settled and orderly, the slopes of
its hills covered with gardens, its inner economy safe and
sure : — beyond its walls, stretching out in the valleys, lie
pleasant fields full of vines and pomegranates and apple-
trees : the rural paths are sweet with flowers, lilies above
all, of which it was said a thousand years after, that Sol
omon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these :
a delightful link of association between that far-distant
scene and the past, less remote, which is so much more
momentous and dear. The great singer who made the
song may not have been Solomon, it may have been out
of pure loyalty to enhance his monarch's name that he
allowed it to be attributed to Solomon ; or there may be
collected in it, strung upon the exquisite thread of its
little drama, other utterances of primitive song in cele
bration of other beloveds. But it is full of unity from
beginning to end. Its passion is legitimate and chas
tened, not hot with anxiety or any suggestion of the clan
destine. It is a song of espousals, of love with no darker
shadow iu it than the passing clouds, the little evasions,
the keen momentary pang of a meeting missed or a visit
lost. Ecclesiastes is a poem of a very different strain : yet
there is no discord between the two, nothing in one,
though it is the antipodes of the other, which could make
us feel it incompatible that the author should be the same.
On the contrary that grave and musing philosopher who

iv.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 169
stands on the eminence of maturity and experience, has
by his own showing sought with ardour all the triumphs
and pleasures of life, and tasted every joy, and fathomed
every sweetness. Such a man of all others is most like
to have expanded himself at once in the refinements and
the ardours of sentiment, and could scarcely have fallen
into the monotonous garbage of so-called passion during
that youth of genius and high aspiration " feeding among
the lilies " which was capable of so much finer things.
He had now seen the emptiness of all. Bomance had
died out from him : his Shulamite had become like other
women, his Egyptian princess a fellow-creature moved
with like passions as himself. In all the other pursuits
of earth having failed in this, he had sought that supreme
satisfaction which his heart had dreamed— and found it
nowhere. Not in wisdom, nor in pleasure, nor in ambi
tion, acquisition, any of those great things that excite the
wishes of men. His great public works, his agriculture,
his provisions of water for a thirsty land, those prodigious
reservoirs which still bear his name, his wonderful build
ings, his luxuries, his pleasures " the delights of the sons
of men," music in all its kinds, everything that was beau
tiful, had failed like the rest. They occupied him but
satisfied him not. As soon as an undertaking was accom
plished, he found it to be vanity :_ it was neither so great
as he had intended it to be, nor did it produce the result
he sought. Even in wisdom and knowledge the end was
the same : even justice and equity failed to , satisfy his
soul ; for who could tell how soon these wise decisions
should be reversed, these able measures overturned by
the folly of the man who should come after him, a sad
but certain prevision which after events so conclusively
proved ?
This last bitter thread of disappointment, the most
penetrating of all sad thoughts, the profoundest, perhaps,

170 JERUSALEM. [chap.
of human griefs, runs through all his great and melan
choly musings, the same dread disappointment which had
produced so much anguish to David. Yet David's had
been different, more violent, less like the canker that eats
into the life. Solomon was not a man to fight against a
conclusion like the hotter human heart of his poet father ;
nor was his son a warlike, ambitious Absalom, which
might perhaps have been borne — as we think always of
the griefs that are not our own. What an end was that
to all his plans, his manifold designs and imaginations,
the greatness which had spread through the world, that
he should be succeeded by a fool ! We do not know nor
does he tell us the preliminary steps which brought him
to that conviction, nor how, after the first almost equally
discomposing thought that he knew not who should come
after him, the succession out of his host of children should
have been changed and his choice narrowed down to
Rehoboam, the son of a mother quite undistinguished, an
Ammonite, a heathen woman, one of those for whom the
too tolerant king, — perhaps thinking lightly in his wis
dom of the distinction of names, and with a conviction in
his great soul that every god to whom offerings were
made was but an adumbration to the ignorant of the one
God that filled heaven and earth — had created a place of
worship upon Olivet. Had he specially bound himself
in the heat of passion to this woman that her son should
be his successor ? or had the unhappy choice been forced
upon him by some untold calamity, some depth of per
sonal disappointment or sorrow, the absence of other prog
eny, so unlikely in such a case, or the inroads of death ?
This thing, of course, can never be known to us : but
it is curious that while two daughters of Solomon are
mentioned in the record there is not a word of any other
son, a silence which of itself is full of suggestion, and
seems to indicate a still more profound depth of sorrow

iv.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 173
or destitution below. Whether there had never been any
others, whether they had been swept out of his house by
calamity, here he remains in the end of his life, a wise
man conscious that his successor will be a fool. What
were all his labours worth in sight of that listless or friv
olous boy, who was the heir of all ? perhaps beloved as
Absalom was, but concerning whom his father's melan
choly insight prevented all illusion. This also was vanity,
the most bitter of all. It is the keynote of the sorrowful
strain which is full of the composure of despair. The
great stillness of these musings is broken at the end with
an impassioned appeal to the young man rejoicing in his
youth, with which, perhaps, in the pathos of human
weakness he might have hoped to reach that careless
heart. Perhaps the shout of the revellers came borne
upon the evening breeze to the ear of the philosopher as
he sat musing over all those great achievements, pursued
and carried out with such ardour and delight which now
began to appear to him like the wrecks of life — who can
tell ? That, too, was vanity, the last, the most bitter,
the most hopeless of all.
There is, however, something besides, another element
to modify this refrain which has been caught up all over
the world and through all the ages, and is, in one sense,
the unalterable verdict of humanity upon itself. There
is and always will be a revulsion of the soul in resist
ance to so dreadful a conclusion : as well as also an
indignant resistance to that still more dreadful sense of
the nullifying and, as it were, annihilation of all the
results of a great man's life, and even of his individu
ality, which is involved in the sweeping downfall of
every trace and effect of him, brought about by the folly
of another. The heart rises against this profound injus
tice, the heaviest doom of nature and the one which can
be least guarded against. But it seems to me that in no

174 JERUSALEM. [chap.
production of human genius is the alternation of two
different aspects of life so well set forth as in this great
poem, which has been taken by the world only as the
dread proclamation of one burden. Solomon, however,
does not insist more strongly upon that conclusion of all
mortal things that " this is vanity," than he does upon
the individual balance to it which we so often lose sight
of and continually ignore, the great compensation of the
labourer whose work so often must come to nought.
"There is no good but for a man to rejoice, and do good.
And also that every man should eat and drink and enjoy
the good of all his labour." "It is good and comely . . .
to enjoy the good of all the labour that he taketh under
the sun . . . and to take his portion and rejoice in his
labour . . . because God answereth him in the joy of his
heart." This is not the doctrine of the epicurean though
it may seem so to a superficial glance. It is the deep
conviction of the sorrowful man who has had every
thing, and possesses all, and knows that everything he
possesses is slipping from his grasp. He has laboured
above the power of ordinary men, looking continually
for some supreme result. He has embarked upon great
undertakings and pushed them on with ardour to their
end, with the swift concentration of every faculty upon
them, with the ever renewed and ever failing hope that
in that end will be the satisfaction, the sublime content,
the rest from his labours which every man desires. He
has added city to city, and land to land, he has built
temple and palace : — and these being not enough has added
ever and ever some new thing, the house of the for
est of Lebanon on its fragrant thicket of pillars, and
Gezer and Beth-horon with their new colonies, and the
storehouses, and the stables and a hundred things be
sides : — but all the while in the folly of his wisdom 
for is not he, too, the wise man himself, in this a fool ?

iv.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 175
— has not perceived till now that the work and labour
were the joy, and not the always imperfect, never accom
plished end. To rejoice in his labour because God an
swereth him in the joy of his heart ! Here is the one
thing that is not vanity. It is in the happiness of
making, of producing, of exercising all the faculties
that God has given, of conceiving in his heart and work
ing out with his hands the work which he loves. A
smile comes even upon that sorrowful face at the thought
of the working days, the peaceful evening of rest, the
awaking to all the joys of active life. No more beautiful
picture of the cheerful tenor of the common life, the
modest man among his fields, the workman at his work,
was ever made than that which comes from the lips of
this dark and sad philosopher upon the desolate heights
of being, warning the world that all is vanity. Yes.
Vanity of vanities saith the preacher. But yet —
" Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with
a merry heart ; for God now accepteth thy works.
" Let thy garments be always white ; and let thy head lack no
ointment. "Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of
the life of thy vanity, which He hath given thee under the sun :
for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou
takest under the sun.
" Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."
" To rejoice in his labour : this is the gift of God."
So speaks the philosopher, the first great pessimist, who
has had this gift above most men, and thought little of
it according to the ways of man, always hurrying for
ward to a result which, when attained, was not what he
sought : but who looking back sees clearly what that
gift was, and the unthought-of happiness that has been.
David amid all his store of preparations, his designs for
the house of God which he was not allowed to build, his
patterns, his laying up of this and that for the work,

176 JERUSALEM. [chap.
was more happy than he who accomplished everything.
But yet Solomon would not have had this revelation
had not he, too, recollections of the fulness of his career,
when he worked with all his might at whatsoever his
hand found to do, and rejoiced in his labour, and found
every day too short for the work that filled it. How
little he had thought of that in his eager pressing
towards the end, towards the result ! Yet it was his
portion : the result was not for him but for the world.
There was a preacher of our own day, scarcely faded
yet into obscurity, who once made a strange sermon upon
not only the fallacy of the hopes of men, which is a
threadbare subject, but upon what he almost ventured
to call the fallacy of the promises of God. He had no
profane or irreverent meaning: but the burden of his
teaching was that God drew men on with delusive prom
ises in order to lure them to the better country in which
all these promises were to come true. He showed how
Abraham had the promise of the land in which he dwelt
but never possessed more of it than sufficed for his
grave, and so with all the patriarchs. How David was
promised an established reign and throne, and yet his
kingdom was broken up in the second generation ; and
how the supreme Disposer of events, like the classic
Fates "kept the word of promise to the ear, and broke
it to the heart." Mr. Robertson, of Brighton, was him
self a man of many disappointments, and it gave, no
doubt, a certain balm to his wounds to see how that bit
ter strain ran through all careers and anticipations of
men. But yet I think that teaching of his was far infe
rior to the teaching of the acknowledged preacher of
disappointment, the philosopher whose burden it is, pro
claimed and assented to through every age of human
history, that all is vanity. Clear as daylight in one
reiteration after another he proclaims this one thing

iv.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 177
that is not vanity: that a man should take pleasure in
the doing of his work: that he should rejoice in his
labour, that this is his portion and the gift of God, and
that God answereth him in the joy of his heart. From
the highest artist down to the ploughman, the straight-
ness of whose honest furrow is the delight of his life :
from the monarch — let us take a familiar example, the
Queen of our own days, who if ever man or woman
might, could rejoice in the results of her reign — yet who
takes pride and pleasure in her labour, most of all, and
daily toil — to the seamstress who sets forth overnight
the work she is doing, her little creations of ribbon and
muslin, to inspire her when she wakes, and rises with
eagerness to continue. " For it is his portion : this is
the gift of God : because God answereth him in the joy
of his heart."
The reader will note what a magnificent pendent to
the Jerusalem of the " Song," embowered in its gardens,
with the watchmen upon the walls, and the silence of
the safe and slumbering night guarded by the keepers
of the city, comes in the end of this later poem, the con
clusion of the tragedy which was so fair and beautiful,
a romance in its beginning : when "those that look out
of the windows are darkened, and the doors are shut and
the daughters of music brought low," when the bride
groom who once came over the mountains, in the haste
of his coming, like pillars of smoke, "is afraid of that
which is high, and fears every stone in the way." When
to him who fed among the lilies, the featherweight as of
a grasshopper becomes a burden, and to him who was so
full of life and love of life, even desire fails — " because
man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about
the streets." He who traversed the city in those hours
of youthful joy and knocked at the window of his love,
and played the pretty drama of evasion to draw her after
N

178 JERUSALEM. [chap.
him — now looks down from his palace roof, and sees in
imagination the last scene, so soon to come, the mourn
ers rending their garments, passing about the shadowed
ways with bent heads, and dust upon their foreheads.
The one is as clear to him as the other in the light of
sombre anticipation, as in that of the voluptuous moon,
the evening light of memory. His life is complete with
all its ambitions between these two scenes, his lilies no
longer sweet to him, his burial cave open and ready
beside his father David, the work of whose life, like his
own, is to be scattered to the winds by that careless
youth and his boyish councillors who are holding their
revels close by. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Yet
Solomon, too, had had his portion — the gift of God.
Solomon, however, great as he was, was not all great.
The morality of that early age was all unsettled and un
assured. In respect to the sexes no utterance had been
made, nor was ever made by authoritative command — a
strange thing to think of, but a true. The best of men
had a plurality of wives, and the number was but a
detail, the principle being thus granted. David cele
brated his entrance into Jerusalem by adding a number
of women to his harem. Solomon according to the
record went far beyond even that indulgence. He
" loved many strange women, together with " or in addi
tion to " the daughter of Pharaoh." The mother of his
son Rehoboam was an Ammonite. Probably something
of the same kind of research, which was afterwards car
ried into effect for king Ahasuerus, the collection of all
the most beautiful women of the time wherever they
were to be found, was made for the delectation of Solo
mon, connoisseur as he was in every kind of beauty.
From Moab, from Ammon, from Sidon, the daughters of
kings, the most accomplished and perfect of the maidens
of all the surrounding nations would be brought up for

iv.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 179
his choice, the most delicate homage that could be ren
dered to the potentate. Did the proud race of Judah,
the no less proud and independent tribes of Israel, his
own people, revolt against such a tribute one wonders,
and object to render up the flower of their households
to the caprice of the king ? Such a conjecture at least
may be permitted, in view of the constant succession of
strange nationalities in the list of royal marriages. Per
haps in the busy life of such a man, the fair new face,
the piquancy of such varied manners as might be possi
ble among nations between which so little real difference
of race existed, gave a diversion not forbidden to the
many occupations and thoughts with which his mind was
full. To imagine that these surroundings made Solo
mon into a mere voluptuary, above all into that most odi
ous of characters, a feeble and senile libertine, is quite
uncalled for. It is not this which brings censure upon
his head, but the fact that the princesses and slaves of
his household were " strange women," foreigners, each
bringing with her some foreign worship. The critics
tell us that it was the jealousy of the priests, the petti
ness of local prejudice, which made this bringing in of
" strange women " a thing so continually denounced in
Israel. But no reasonable judgment can fail to see how
fatal the force of such an influence must have been upon
the religious principles of the people. Eome, the wisest
of human corporations, has found it necessary in our
advanoed times to take the strongest steps against this
danger, well foreseeing not only the risk of anything like
justice in the matter, of yielding up half of the children
to the training of a Protestant mother — but also the
inevitable slackening of all bonds, even when this is pre
vented, which must ensue. It was more fatal still when
the antagonism was between a national system painfully
struggling to keep intact the worship of one God, and

180 JERUSALEM. [chap.
the idolatries that seem to have had at all times so many
attractions for light and unwary spirits. The Jewish
priests and conservators were like those reformers who
looked on with angry and jealous eyes at the royal chapel
in which the foreign queen had to be permitted to hear
her mass, whatever reasons there might be against it.
The reasons were infinitely stronger on the side of the
Jews. But with Solomon, who probably looked on all
those clinging dependents round him with a certain con
tempt as far too slight creatures to affect any man except
for the fleeting moment of their beauty and empire over
his senses — it is not difficult to understand the facility
with which he might be persuaded to provide for each
her means of religious comfort or distraction, her grove
on Olivet, her cherished idol : nay that he should have
been led by one soft persuasion after another to go with
the queen of the moment and witness her rites, he
whose desire— perhaps whose weakness — it was to appro-
fondir everything, to know what was meant in every
vagary of human fancy, in very development of human
thought. What he did from such a motive, with the
smile upon his grave lip to see how far the folly and
the wisdom of mankind, its superstition and dim appre
hension of the supernatural would go : or dragged by
some winning favourite to satisfy her love or her pride
by the triumph of his companionship : would be of the
most fatal example for the lighter beings who were
drawn along in his train, and who, perhaps, believed it
would please the king if they followed these gods of the
women: and still more for the ignorant and gaping
crowd for whom there were always so many attractions
in those mysteries of the groves and high places. Queen
Mary's mass in Holyrood was no such danger even for
the courtiers who surrounded her, yet we know how
fiercely that was resisted, with what denunciations, —

iv.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 181
Astarte herself meaning nothing more terrible even to
the most reasonable of that time.
This is the shadow that fell upon Solomon's great
career. Perhaps also he fell into the abyss of luxurious
self-indulgence which is the great temptation of Oriental
life, in his later years ; or at least so retired himself —
having done all and organised all and set the machine
of government in full operation — within the seclusion
of royal solitude, as might make it appear that he had
thus fallen. And yet it is impossible to associate with
his name any such anti-climax of sensual decadence.
The still despair of that conclusion to which in his
heart he had come, the conviction that a man may do
all, realise all, achieve all that his fancy can conceive,
yet remain for ever unsatisfied, achieving nothing per
fectly, incapable at his best of turning his ideal into
reality or accomplishing what he would : the still more
profound disenchantment with which all his early dreams
of human nobleness fell back upon his heart, leaving
nothing better than the possibility that one man among
ten thousand might be found that was true, but among
women, not so much as one — no doubt turned him
away in a growing distaste for the company of flatterers
and deceivers, to his forlorn isolation of kinghood and
greatness. And who can tell what private disappoint
ments made his great heart sick. Had he no son but
Behoboam ? had some curse of barrenness fallen on his
house, or some plague ravaged the chambers of the
children ? was there but one, and he a fool, oh, last and
most overwhelming of disappointments ! to inherit the
name of the great Solomon and carry on his mighty
works, his splendour and his power ?
All this is lost in the mists of a distance which no eye
can penetrate ; the wonderful thing is that we should
know so much of him, behold him thus in his palace

182 JERUSALEM. [chap.
and his retirement, the most ambitious, the most energetic,
the most aspiring, the most deeply disappointed of all men :
hurrying through a thousand labours, organising every
kind of enterprise, pressing the very progress of the
world to forestall the times and satisfy his soul : setting
out like a bridegroom to run his race in all the glory
and joy of youth: standing at the end upon his high
tower of contemplation to deliver the judgment of
humanity upon itself. He is no primitive hero, no
product of the primeval imagination. Such an image
belongs, we should say, to the very climax of civilisa
tion, to the most accomplished and exhausted age, when
all has been done that man can do. The mind of Solo
mon bears a far deeper moral and consciousness than
that of Alexander : the one longing for more worlds to
subdue, the other gravely smiling upon a universe of
which he has tasted all the sensations, acknowledging
that were there yet a thousand worlds before him, there
would be in all but the repetition of a failing experi
ment, a continually renewed dissatisfaction, a dream
always pursued but never realised.
But still more wonderful, more extraordinarily ad
vanced in progress and experience is the conviction with
which every proclamation of his disappointment is ac
companied : that it is in the doing of the work, and not
in the end and result of it that the happiness of ex
istence lies. So cheerful, so merciful, so consoling an
utterance is not what we have been taught to look for
from Solomon : yet there it is, pervading the gray twi
light of that ending life with the reflections of a glowing
manhood: that a man should "rejoice and do good in
his life," that he should " enjoy the good of his labour "
" for it is his portion " — that he should " rejoice in his
labour : for this is the gift of God," " because God
answereth him in the joy of his heart " ! The other

iv.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 183
the darker sentence that "all is vanity" has been adopted
by acclaim, a conclusion in which he has simply fore
stalled every generation of his successors, and all the
wise men who have followed him. But this, too, is the
burden of Solomon, not less emphatic : — that the joy of
life is in the doing : that the gift of God is that satis
faction which lies in a man's work and the exercise of
his faculties : that he who does with all his might what
his hand finds to do, is the happy man. The sage and
the fool, alike, hurry over that wholesome happiness of
the daily round, despising it, looking for something
better, for some pitiful result, some poor achievement
which is to make them demigods among men. And
this is vanity, vanity of vanities. But to rejoice in his
labour is not vain : it is the portion of man : it is the
gift of God. God answereth him in the joy of his
heart.

CHAPTEB V.
THE KINGS OF JUDAH.
THEBE could be no more tremendous comment upon
that conclusion of Solomon's philosophy than the
history of his own house and kingdom. The life of this
great prince was wholly occupied in building up and
assuring the monarchy which his father had founded.
He had entered upon an inheritance full of embarrass
ment and care, with an elder brother in semi-rebellion,
and the great chief of his army, the head of all warlike
enterprise in Israel opposed to him — while himself still
young, untried, upon the top of that wave of fickle popu
lar enthusiasm upon which no one can calculate for more
than a moment. He had upon his shoulders as his chief
charge, his raison d'etre, so to speak, the building of that
great Temple which, no doubt, was to many a devout
imagination, and of which, perhaps, very few foresaw
the future importance as the one centre and rallying
ground for the national spirit and heart. Solomon had
before him the tremendous task not only of building that
.Temple, but of making it accepted of the people — the
distant tribes who acknowledged his sway, but knew
nothing of his Jerusalem, and who had their own favour
ite shrines and altars, sanctified by great names over all
the country, and perhaps saw no necessity for that cen
tralisation of worship. This work, as happens with so

(ii. v.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 185
much great national work, besides the glory and joy of
executing it, — which he recognised afterwards, as we
have seen, as in reality the recompense of his labour,
and the best thing in his life, — was for the good of
future generations rather than of those immediately
succeeding him. Its result, no doubt, was immediate
disappointment. After the effort of its construction,
and the great ceremonies which attended its consecra
tion, and which must for the mere pageant's sake if
nothing else, have caused much excitement, and attracted
crowds to Jerusalem — it must soon have become evi
dent to the king that the habits of the people were too
deeply rooted to be overthrown, and that not in a day or
in a lifetime would that revolution be accomplished, and
the heart of Israel turned to a sole centre of worship.
Even in the time of Solomon himself it is very probable
that the attendance at the yearly ceremonies dwindled
away, and after the first curiosity was satisfied, and the
excitement calmed down, that Jerusalem alone, the
king's household, and the citizens, and perhaps the vil
lages of the surrounding country, furnished all or almost
all the attendance in its courts. This would be so
natural that perhaps it did not strike any one as wonder
ful in the composure of everyday life which succeeded
the transport of the great national foundation, the new
thing in Israel. That Solomon's own action — whether
in contemptuous toleration of the women's wishes as
things of little account, or in spectatorship of them as
curious moral phenomena which it was worth while to
study, or— what is much less conceivable — in actual di
vergence from. his own loftier way into the worship of
those idols which it was the first principle of the Hebrew
creed to denounce and condemn — should have been the
first and greatest interruption of the influence of the
established creed and worship, is wonderful indeed. Its

186 JERUSALEM. [chap.
extraordinary inconsistency is, however, even less amaz
ing than the possibility of a downfall of the kind in such
a man. It is still more wonderful to think of the sudden
breaking up of the kingdom which had been established
as it appeared on so strong a foundation, and which
seemed to have so many guarantees of security. That
one slight soul should have overturned with one act of
folly the labours of two great men, and changed the
future of his race at a touch, seems well nigh inconceiv
able, if it were not that the period was one in which
such catastrophes were frequent, and in which not only
individual kings and dynasties, but great empires disap
peared in a day, and were succeeded by others, as one
wave follows another over the surface of the sea: and
also because the whole history of Israel is that of a
struggle between good and evil, a sort of great historical
lesson or parable written in the lines of nature and fol
lowing the laws of a succession such as all history records
and acknowledges : but yet in all its circumstances spe
cially answering to the great purpose, which has made
this little story, the chronicle of one of the smallest
realms in the world, into an example for the universe.
No doubt, however, Solomon's very splendour, and the
great things he had done, had some share in the rending
asunder of the kingdom he had made so great. He had
inflicted a great deal of compulsory work upon the
nation which loved fighting better than labour, and
demanded contributions which perhaps were not always
given with a willing heart; he had laid upon their
shoulders the yoke which national unity implies, the
expense of settled government, the taxes — which it is
so difficult to persuade a primitive people are but their
honest share of national expenses. All the stirring up
of new life and habits, the introduction even of new

v.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 187
industries, the work in Lebanon, the pressgang, perhaps,
which constrained the timid fishermen of the coast into
those voyages beyond sea which were the most wonder
ful enterprise of the time — were disturbing influences to
the pastoral people, who, when they were not fighting,
were chiefly occupied with the care of cattle or the
unlaborious tillage of a soil in which the corn grew -and
the vine threw forth its clusters, almost of themselves.
And the final consolidation of these wandering tribes into
a fully organised nation was a delicate operation calling
for both prudence and power, neither of which the new
sovereign possessed. The disruption was as sudden as
the formation had been. The multitude dispersed as it
had come together under one prevailing influence. The
attraction of a personal notability, a great hero in whose
prowess and power of defending them from all assault
they were confident, had been the foundation of the
throne. And now the counter-influence, the sense of
weakness which could neither protect nor deliver them,
exercised a similar though contrary power. "To your
tents, 0 Israel ! " The multitudes who had formed the
larger portion of the kingdom melted away, and the
house of David was left upon its hill top with its splen
did Temple and palace all glowing in gold and colour,
far too magnificent for its diminished resources and
power. It had the promise of continuance, and that it
should be established for ever; but the greater part of
its strength and prestige was irrevocably gone.
Yet the kingdom of Judah and Benjamin, the remnant,
overweighted with the relics of its own greatness, was in
much better case than the revolted Israel. For that
self -doomed people there was henceforward little peace.
Eebellion after rebellion rose among them : one usurper
succeeded another, and one idolatry was added to another
till anarchy and blasphemy reigned. It is unnecessary

188 JERUSALEM. [chap.
to enter into the troubled and often confused story which
is in many respects the most like a collection of legends
strung upon a spare thread of history of anything in the
Scriptures. The story of the prophets Elijah and Elisha
contained some of the finest and most picturesque scenes
and some of the most rude and trivial. Nothing can
exceed the majesty of the lonely figure in the desert, his
head wrapped in his cloak, his soul enveloped in dark
ness, who stands before the great invisible God through
thunder and earthquake in an extraordinary mingling of
submission and defiance, with a proud desolation and
sense of abandonment which is a reproach to his Maker,
" I, I alone am left " : — neither is there anything more
wonderful in those ancient records than the still small
voice which is the voice of God, nor that which it says,
a statement so unexpected, an answer which cuts the
very ground from the feet of the self-absorbed and self-
asserting prophet : " Yet have I seven thousand men in
Israel who have not bent the knee to Baal." Human
folly and faithlessness in the midst even of heroic suf
fering and solitude, confronted with the great calm and
knowledge of all secrets which are in the fathomless
consciousness of the Divine, were never more exquisitely
or more surprisingly set forth. But on the other hand
the atmosphere of miracle which surrounds Elisha brings
us back from those primeval wilds with something of
the same feeling with which we regard the petty prodi
gies of a mediaeval saint in which mere convenience is
sufficient warrant for a breach of the laws of nature, and
the sacred workman fatigued hangs his axe upon a sun
beam, with a comfortable composure which reaches the
length of absurdity. The almost complete freedom of
the miracles of Scripture from this continually recurring
debasement of all other records of sign and wonder, is
one of the most striking distinctions of sacred story:

v.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 189
only lost, I think, and for a very short time, in these
confused, probably abridged and bewildering narratives
of a period of anarchy and trouble. This history of
continual overthrow and re-establishment, the reign of
might over right, — in which such supremacy as there
was, was within the reach of every strong man that
might arise, and no principle of patriotism or fealty
survived to protect the distracted race, — lasted for some
hundred and fifty years : when Israel was obliterated by
the Assyrians and their race and record swept off without
recovery. That those "seven thousand" — a numeral of
multitude not to be rigidly interpreted — the undefiled
souls, incapable of infidelity, who were safe in the per
fect understanding of their God, maintained their religion
wherever they were driven: that many faithful bands
and groups and pious individuals retained during all
changes the great ideal of the national mission and its
dwelling at Jerusalem, there can be no doubt: or that
many a humble family was left when the miserable
stream of captives disappeared into the darkness — feed
ing their flocks upon the hills of Samaria and keeping
up the traditions of a purer faith among the colonists
of the north. But Israel, as a nation, with all its anar
chies and rebellion, ceased to be, in the natural course of
events, and was heard of no more. How it was warned,
entreated, threatened, and besought to save itself in time,
to return to the Lord, and give up its idols, and live
purely and truly according to those teachings of the law
which it had inherited as much as Judah, the impas
sioned utterances of the prophets prove. That they, too,
fell into utter confusion, and became by times a school
of flatterers, promising victory and happiness to please
the king and keep their popularity among the people, is
equally evident. But there rarely failed some indepen
dent voice to proclaim the sudden penalties which in

190

JERUSALEM.

[chap.

those days were part of the economy of moral govern
ment, the strong and unmistakable language of a typical
and primitive age. "But Israel would not hear, my
people would not consider." The ferocity of nature, the
wild forces of rebellion and anarchy, the impure religions
that were the special affliction and temptation of the
time, swept like a flood over the people, who had not

SEBASTIEH (SAMARIA).

been able to preserve their individuality, and that mis
sion which has separated their race from all others in the
records of the world.
It fell to Judah to keep up that mission, to Judah
already distinguished, which held the privilege of birth
right among the tribes, and which had already been
chosen to produce the reigning family, the throne estab
lished upon the promise of the Lord. It is curious to
find that Benjamin, the tribe of Saul, which might well

v.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 191
have entertained a grudge against his supplanters, and
set up its grievance as a motive for withdrawal more
keen than any other of the tribes could claim, should be
the one faithful to the house of David which had humil
iated and overthrown its chief: but perhaps the local
bond, and the fact that Jerusalem was within its borders
gave a counterbalance of attraction.
These two tribes were left with their splendid city, in
the smallest of kingdoms — less than a German principal
ity, and more than usually apt, with all the stores of gold
and precious things which were known over all the East as
decorations of Solomon's Temple, to call forth the cupid
ity of their stronger neighbours. It was not indeed very
long before this temptation brought up a raid of Egyp
tians, no doubt perfectly informed through the attendants
of Solomon's queen of what wonderful things lay at the
mercy of an invader with so small a contingent to guard
them. Behoboam had been but five years upon his dimin
ished throne when this occurred, and there is no record
even of any serious resistance made. The Egyptian
hordes came up in numbers sufficient to overpower all
the feeble forces of Judah. They crushed the " fenced
cities," the little vanguard of defence each on its hillside
which stood between the capital and the desert of the
south. And when the princes gathered round the king
in Jerusalem to consult what were their possibilities of
defence, the prophet who came into the midst of them
with his message forbidding resistance, was no doubt the
most prudent as well as the most safe adviser. Reho
boam was no hero, neither had he the talents of a gen
eral. He had been trained in the arts of peace rather
than war, and no doubt those foolish counsellors who had
betrayed him into the great misadventure of his life,
were like himself the product of a luxurious period of
peace— or they would not have let the enemy reach

192 JERUSALEM. [chap.
their very gates before they gathered, cowed and vacil
lating, round the king whom they had already so sorely
misled. " Oh for one hour of Wallace wight
Or well-tried Bruce to rule the fight ! "
Oh, for the Lion of the house of Judah, the grim Joab,
the three mighty men who once burst through the Phil
istine hosts, to bring their chief a cruse of water from
the well of Bethlehem ! No such heroes were those who
looked out with pale faces from the ramparts of Jeru
salem, and saw the dark Egyptians with their strange
ensigns swarming in the valley. They " humbled them
selves, " the sons of those men whose feet were on the
neck of kings, the heir of great Solomon, the successors
of the heroes — and stood by with what countenances we
may imagine while the dark crowd poured into the
Temple, and carried off its riches, tearing down the gold
from cornice and lintel, bearing away the great shields
and splendid vases which must have made the very
paths burn and glow, the fierce sun striking out dazzling
reflections from every blazing surface, as the captors
wound down the hill carrying their trophies high. Not
the old men alone but those who were still in their prime
must have remembered how these same golden vessels
had thrown back the sunshine in triumph, as they were
carried into the Temple over the great bridge which
spanned the valley, to decorate the house of the Lord.
Vanity of vanities saith the preacher. But who, the
darkest of dreamers, the most austere of judges, could
have imagined that it would come so soon?
The history of Judah is a long tale of national vicissi
tude, of rising and falling fortune, such as has always
distinguished primitive history, especially in the East,
where catastrophes are so sudden, and the character of
the monarch has so much to do with the prosperity of

v.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 193
the kingdom. There were great examples of enlightened
and powerful princes who crushed the idolatry into which,
up to a certain point in their history the Jews seem to
have been so ready to relapse, and preserved that national
consecration as the people of God, which was their great
distinction in the world, making such a difference be
tween them and their neighbours of Moab and Edom,
and even the highly civilised and wealthy Tyre, as words
cannot say; while there were also on the other hand
kings of less note, most frequently the sons of foreign
mothers, to whom the debasement of idolatrous worship
was more congenial than the austere rites of the Temple.
That many a family group from the depths of the coun
try came up unmolested in their humility to keep the
feasts in the great national sanctuary cannot be doubted,
nor that there came great seasons of national compunc
tion when the memorials and associations of idolatry
struck the minds of the faithful with unusual horror,
and caused sudden uprisings of renewed devotion as well
as of fierce antagonism to the secret shrines and false
gods which remained here and there hidden among the
trees in some luxuriant grove. On the other hand it was
more easy to a people busy with their fields and flocks to
offer their own sacrifices on some old altar near at hand,
sanctified by the recollection of patriarch or prophet,
than to put all secular business aside, and withdraw the
ass and the camel from the necessities of daily work in
order to present themselves at Jerusalem: so that the
two impulses acted and reacted upon each other, keeping
a perpetual rising and falling of the spiritual barometer.
Though we do not question that the prosperity and peace
of Jerusalem followed these risings and fallings, the
quickened religious life being a symptom as well as a
cause of quickened energy and greater power, while the
vice and superstition of the idolatrous rites — probably

194 JERUSALEM. [chap.
pursued among the Hebrews, who were nothing if not
religious, with greater fervour than among the care
less peoples who knew no better — involved debasement
in every characteristic faculty : yet, no doubt, all was
worked out according to the ordinary rules of life with
out bearing any specially miraculous character in the
eyes of those to whom it was the course of every day.
And there were great princes in the line of rulers who
succeeded each other for nearly three hundred years,
son following father with an extraordinary continuance,
while the other kingdoms about rose and fell, and Israel,
the prey of one victorious captain after another, at last
disappeared altogether from the scene. Asa, Jehosha
phat, Hezekiah, Josiah, brought back something of the
wealth and supremacy of Solomon's days again and again
to the city among the hills : they had their little wars,
sometimes against their brethren of the other tribes,
sometimes against the old traditional foes of Ammon and
Edom and Moab. And in the midst of these there sud
denly rose up against them a more powerful enemy, the
new scourge of the East, the great empire which had
appeared like a portent marching from the north over
the necks of all the lesser sovereignties, the Assyrians
who were destined to sweep Israel away, and to make in
the end a long eclipse of Jerusalem. But even against
this foe little Judah held head for a long time, sometimes
by diplomacy, sometimes by arms. It was a hard fight
ing life for the little kingdom which lay surrounded by
rivals and enemies, with its little circle of fenced cities,
its citadel on the. hill of Zion, its sanctuary still rich
with spoil which might well have attracted envious eyes,
amid the other little brigands of nations camping to the
east and west, towards the coast of the Mediterranean
on one hand, and beyond the Dead Sea on the other. To
this sanctuary every one of the greater kings made such

v.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 195
additions and restorations of ornament and wealth as
were possible, and the advent of each new monarch of
the higher and better kind was signalised by a sort of
reformation, now greater, now less, casting down of high
places, burning of idols, national acts of worship, and a
recall to the service of God of those who so persistently
and continuously fell away from it as soon as the imme
diate pressure was withdrawn. This curious struggle is
of itself a sufficient answer to those critics who would
have us believe that Jehovah, the great " I am " of early
visitation, was a local deity appropriate to the Jews as
Baal or Dagon were to other tribes about them. The
worshippers of Baal and Dagon had no objection to a god
of the Hebrews. When the colonists of Assyria were
settled in the place of the Israelites all they wanted was
to be taught how to perform the worship of the deity
of their new habitation. They were quite willing and
ready to add that god to their other gods, and no prophet
or even priest objected in the name of religion.
But with the Hebrews there was no such toleration.
The struggle against idolatry was constant and undeviat-
ing ; though that it was also at the same time an ever-
enduring attraction and temptation is very evident. The
Jews, like every other conquering people, retained
among them a great number of the aboriginal inmates of
the country; they were their neighbours, their servants,
and even in some cases their defenders : and there could
be no such marked inferiority as is usually seen in the
subject race where Hittites and Jebusites were found
even among the "mighty men" of the primitive army.
Closer still was the bond made by marriages between
the superior and inferior races. Myriads of little He
brews must have been led under the cover of their
mothers' draperies to watch the mysteries of the grove,
to kiss their hands to the queen of heaven, in a ready
o2

196 JERUSALEM. [chap.
childish devotion half made of natural obedience and
half of the charm of things forbidden ; so that the earliest
associations of life would be connected with those stolen
rites, . with the fascination of the outdoor service, the
great stars looking down through every green tree to
charm the heart into natural adoration of that dazzling
host of heaven. The child brought up in a harem is
naturally far more the child of his mother than of his
father, and, no doubt, this fact explains not only the
continual relapses of the Hebrews, but the denunciations
of the prophets against women, who notwithstanding
now and then the practical example of a notable woman,
like her who spoke to Joab from the wall of Tekoa, are
almost universally spoken of in the Old Testament in a
harsh and contemptuous tone. It would be curious to
inquire how much of the habitual contempt of the tone
of men towards women in all ages is derived from this
same source — the habit of the early world to consider
the often foreign and alien wife as in continual secret
opposition, baffling and bringing to nought the best-laid
plans of the head of the house, who was but one to resist
the many, full of individual and differing characteristics
whom all his efforts could never fathom or understand.
The deeply founded doctrine of feminine perversity and
unaccountableness may well be one of those survivals of
the unfittest sentiment, which mock science to its face.
This, however, is too natural to require to be dwelt
upon. What is wonderful is that so evident a tendency
existing among its people was never recognised or yielded
to by the little kingdom which lay in the very heart of
all these idolatries. Why should the Hebrew have re
sisted the tolerant philosophy of his neighbours and
refused to carry on his own worship in good-humoured
fellowship with all the others? Why if Jehovah was but
as Baal should that little belligerent people have fought

SAMAEIA : RUINS OF CRUSADERS' CHURCH IN FOREGROUND.

To face page 196.

v.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 199
a continual battle for His supremacy and poured out of
its heart every denunciation, every scorn that human
words could express upon the things of wood and stone,
the images which had eyes and saw not, which had ears
and heard not, the god who perhaps was asleep, or on
a journey — last and most tremendous satire of all, who
was cut from the same tree with which the workman
made his fire. "He will take thereof and warm himself:
yea he kindleth it and baketh bread: yea he maketh a
god and worshippeth it." Why this irreconcilable intol
erance, this struggle carried on from age to age against
every law of natural association, and all the precedents
and all the examples around?
The critics can allege no better reason than a con
spiracy of certain wild bards, half poet, half maniac,
who invented both history aud law, not to speak of
the poetry in which it cannot be denied that they were
supreme, in order to make themselves the rulers of the
destiny of their people. But there is no explanation in
this very artificial hypothesis of the violence of Hebrew
opposition, from their first revelation as a distinct people,
against all fellowship with idols. The struggle was one
of life and death, especially in the latter part of their
career. Whenever there was an infirm or feeble ruler,
the relaxed authority led to ever fresh fallings away of
the people ; but whenever the government was in a capa
ble hand it began with a reformation, a recalling of the
original conditions upon which the kingdom was consti
tuted, and a determined stand against the idols and
abominations of the stranger. The anarchy and continual
revolutions of Israel pointed the moral of that other and
greater apostasy. Had their God been but the local
deity, the little Jehovah of the hill country and the
desert, how much trouble might all have been spared,
how much unnecessary pressure of the conscience, how

200 JERUSALEM. [chap.
many national convulsions ! The other gods would not
have objected to share their Olympus, such as it was, with
an additional pretender to Divine honours. There need
have been no trouble about the matter. A god the more
was far less offence than a nationality the more in that
crowded area, and what with perpetual bouts of fighting
and endless treaties and pacts between themselves in an
ever-changing balance of power, these crowded nations
managed to exist together and make what progress was
possible. But between the great God of heaven and
earth and the idols that were stocks and stones there
could be no pact or compromise. The fight in this case
was unceasing, everlasting. There was no remaining
silent while that controversy went on. It was as a fire
burning in the veins of him who was compelled to be
a witness of the transgression of his people, an iniquity
which could not be condoned.
The reign of Hezekiah is, perhaps, the greatest era in
the later history of the house of David. We have a two
fold record of it, that of the historical books, and the more
detailed narrative of certain portions of his life which is
to be found amid the wonderful odes and lyrics of the
prophet-poet Isaiah. He was the son of Ahaz, one of
the princes of the line who had fallen away most fatally
from the tradition and mission of his race. The amplified
record of the book of Chronicles represents that king in
the blackest colours. He not only fell into the most
brutal of idolatries, that of sacrificing his children to
Moloch, but wreaked a sort of superstitious vengeance
upon the Temple when he found himself in the lowest
depths of trouble, not only conciliating the Assyrians by
the sacrifice of its treasures, which would be comprehen
sible, but cutting down its altars with the savage disap
pointment of an idolater whose god has not responded to
his appeal, and shutting up its desecrated doors, so that

v.] THE HOUSE .OF DAVID. 201
for a time, at least, the authorised and established ser
vices of religion must have come to an end. His son, as
sons so often do, no doubt a disapproving spectator of the
father's errors, began his reign upon a principle entirely
different. It is strange to think what must have been
the thoughts of a young man who had himself in his child
hood perhaps " passed through the fire to Moloch," if that
mysterious horror means anything less than absolute
murder, or, at least, had received an image of the horri
ble ceremony in its fire and smoke and shrieks' of suffer
ing into his earliest memory — when he himself in his
turn assumed the power. His mother was "the daugh
ter of Zechariah " — probably a Zechariah described in the
reign of Hezekiah's grandfather Uzziah as a man "who
had understanding in the visions of God " — at all events
a Hebrew and not a stranger; and he had accordingly in
all probability been trained in the faith of his fathers,
to abhor and abominate the system which reigned in
Jerusalem where there were "altars in every corner"
While the national sanctuary was closed and desolate.
Hezekiah began his reign by opening and repairing
the Temple, calling together again the dispersed priests,
and with as little delay as possible restoring the system
of worship with all its solemnities. A proscription of
priests has been a sufficiently common occurrence in his
tory since then — but no restoration, perhaps, has been
so complete as that of the tribe of banished and perse
cuted Levites of all classes from the high priest to the
doorkeepers, whom Hezekiah " gathered together into the
east street," probably that which is still known as
the street of David, in order to commit the purification
of the Temple into their hands. They must have come
up from the villages where they were living, and out of
tbe depths of the city where they had been hidden, at
the first proclamation of the young king to whose acces-

202

JERUSALEM.

[chap.

sion, no doubt, all had been looking with anxiety and
hope. The streets of Jerusalem we are warranted in
believing are little changed from that day : with the same

A STREET IN JERUSALEM.

deep caverns of primitive shops and houses, low arches
opening upon a chamber with little shelter from the
passer-by outside : the precipitous narrow line of way like
a ravine cut deep between two walls of dark buildings

v.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 203
inclining often towards each other, keeping out the hot
and fervid day : or covered with sombre arcades, here and
there debouching into a little opening which shows a
blaze of sunlight at the end of the darkness : and now
and then penetrated by some arrow of light from a win
dow or slit in the lofty arches overhead. The crowd still
streams up and down upon the steep causeway and con
tinual rough steps of stone that dive into the hollow
with an abruptness modified by no thought or possibility
of wheeled conveyance passing that way.
We can imagine the young king in one of the openings,
above or below, addressing the servants of the Temple
who streamed into the arcade, an indefinite crowd in
their white tunics, while the priests stood round him be
low. " My sons, be not now negligent : for the Lord hath
chosen you to stand before him, to serve him." Other
than mere burning of incense was the business required
of them now. They had to cleanse the house of the Lord,
the priests bringing out " all the uncleanness " — the ruins
of those altars and decorations which Ahaz had cut in
pieces, the broken metal, and fragments of the desecrated
sanctuary — to the outer court, whence all this rubbish
which once was hallowed to sacred use was carried by
the Levites into the valley of the Kedron, to be cast into
the brook there. The process of cleansing within the
Temple occupied eight days, and on the sixteenth day
the restoration was completed. Then once again Jeru
salem put on her festal robes and the whole city streamed
forth following the joyful procession of the king across
the great bridge that spanned the valley, where the
crowd proceeding from one height to another must have
been a sight unrivalled to all the groups upon the house
tops and those that thronged the outer courts spreading
green and cool around the renovated sanctuary. The
harps and the cymbals, "the instruments of David," the

204 JERUSALEM. [chap.
priests with the silver trumpets sounded forth a welcome
as the procession drew nigh. "And when the burnt
offering began, the song of the Lord began also with the
trumpets, and with the instruments ordained by David
the king." What was the song they sang?
" Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised
In the city of our God,
In the mountain of His holiness.
' ' Beautiful for situation,
The joy of the whole earth,
Is Mount Zion,
" The city of the great King.
God is known in her palaces for a refuge."
Or was it this, the burden of which is repeated again
and again in all the accounts of the different restorations
of the Temple and its worship, as though it were the
anthem fixed for such occasions.
' ' O give thanks unto the Lord ; for He is good :
For His mercy endureth for ever.
1 ' Let Israel now say,
That His mercy endureth for ever.
"Let the house of Aaron now say,
That His mercy endureth for ever.
"Let them now that fear the Lord say,
That His mercy endureth for ever.
" I called upon the Lord in distress :
The Lord answered me,
And set me in a large place.

' Open to me the gates of righteousness :
I will go in unto them,
And I will praise the Lord,
; This gate of the Lord,
Into which the righteous shall enter.

v.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 205
' ' I will praise Thee :
For Thou hast heard me,
And art become my salvation.

' Blessed be he that cometh
In the name of the Lord :
We have blessed you
Out of the house of the Lord.

Over the deep inner valley of the Tyropoeon, spanned
by Solomon's great bridge, across which the long proces
sion wound, over the valley of the Kedron upon the other
side of Mount Moriah, now called the valley of Jehosh
aphat, which winds round the base of the Temple, the
unaccustomed music must have rung out awaking many
echoes. The great sanctuary stood between the two,
upon its heights, walled round with the ramparts of Solo
mon. Whether the king inhabited Solomon's palace in
the same enclosure, or whether that — no doubt, ravaged
as well as the sanctuary by repeated invaders, had also
fallen into ruin, there is no evidence. But in any case
crowds of passengers and many a processional group from
the faithful around must have streamed over the bridge
keeping up a continual flutter of movement and colour,
while the welcoming blessing rang out from the sacred
gates to those that came in the name of the Lord, the
blessing out of the house of the Lord which was so old
and yet so new, a liturgical drama as perfect as anything
that has been devised by all the refinements of ecclesias
tical ceremony. The music of the East has never been
that language of the soul which it has come to be in the
reflective and sentimental ages of modern Europe, and,
no doubt, it was a very primitive science in these prime
val days, a chant in which the words and meaning of the
song were of more importance than harmony and effective
combinations of sound. Yet when the great strain rose

206 JERUSALEM. [chap.
up to the skies with many a heavy bass and many an
untrained treble joining in (and, no doubt, also many a
sob and outcry of religious fervour) as the multitude
poured a long singing — " Open to me the gates of right
eousness " : and was answered by the clear pealing notes
of the educated voices — " Blessed is he that cometh in the
name of the Lord : we have blessed you out of the house
of the Lord," the effect of an appeal and answer so uni
versal, so comprehensible, the real voice of the people
and reply of its leaders must have been far greater than
the most admirably constructed service. I once heard, in
Notre Dame in Paris, at one of the conferences des hommes,
the Lenten course of instruction which occasionally fills
that wonderful church with an assembly of men, thou
sands together, the great hymn of the Stabat Mater sung
in plain song, in unison, by the whole assembly. Musical
connoisseurs who would have listened with calm criticism
to the most perfect performance of Eossini's chef-d'oeuvre,
stood there speechless and could only listen and tremble
at the great song that rolled through those noble arches,
a volume of sound which the imagination could not but
feel more worthy of the ear of God than the most melo
dious trills and intricate harmonies of all the singing
men and singing women in the world. And thus with
the wild Oriental note, the cadenced cry of a primitive
people, must the renewed service of the Temple have
sounded forth, filling the vibrating air and all the hill
tops of Judah with the sound of the worship of a multi
tude, most imposing and impressive hearing to be had
upon this earth.
The same scene with more touching ceremonies still
was repeated shortly after, when the first Passover of
which we have any account in the histories of Judah as
a kingdom, was celebrated. It is a fact much relied
upon by those who support the strange theory that the

v.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 207
elaborate ceremonials of Jewish worship were invented,
so to speak, in the reign of Hezekiah, that this is the
first occasion upon which it appears in the national his
tory. There were, however, many reasons which make
the detailed narrative here, on this special occasion, very
reasonable and natural. It was not only the greatest
expression of a national reformation and revival of relig
ion — but it was at the same time a most politic act,
perhaps the wisest that could be taken to bring about a
reunion of the so long separated tribes and to re-establish
Jerusalem as the general centre for all Hebrews, not only
the section of Judah and Benjamin. The kingdom of
Israel had come to a disastrous end, and its constitution
as a separate economy was destroyed. Its king, its
chiefs, all the governing classes, the educated and the
wealthy portion of the people had been carried away into
captivity ; only the insignificant and harmless part of the
nation, the pastoral dwellers in the fields, the defence
less villages which could form no danger for the conquer
ing race, were left — a remnant in which, however, the
very soul of a nation and its best power of renovation
often lies. To draw back this remnant of Israel into its
old allegiance to the house of David, and to re-establish
the ancient unity of the tribes was a work to which no
true statesman could be indifferent, nor any sound be
liever. And Hezekiah and his counsellors proved them
selves to be both (as well, perhaps, as ambitious and
astute men of the world) by making immediate overtures
to that wreck of a nation. The King of Judah "sent
posts " over all the country with a proclamation, calling
upon the people to come up to Jerusalem to keep the
Passover " for they had not done it of a long time in such
sort as it was written." His intention was that this
invitation should be published from Dan to Beersheba :
but it would seem that the messengers, in the distraction

208 JERUSALEM. [chap.
of the times, or because the other parts of the territory
of Israel had been already colonised by foreign races,
accomplished only a part of their mission. The posts
passed from city to city through the country of Ephraim
and Manasseh even unto Zebulon. They were not well
received in the house of Joseph : " They laughed them
to scorn and mocked them " we are told. " Nevertheless
divers of Asher and Manasseh and of Zebulon humbled
themselves, and came to Jerusalem " — the remnant of
humble and faithful people which is always left in every
period of national apostacy. Had the passover been a
new thing this call to the scattered Israelites would have
been mere arrogant folly alienating instead of conciliat
ing : for what interest could Ephraim or the other tribes
have had in a new invention of the Jews?
From all the immediate country, the land of Judah and
Benjamin, the households came, with that united force
of religious feeling and of the pleasure of a national
holiday which is in every pilgrimage. Those who have
seen the curious groups that come up from the coun
try to Jerusalem now, in slow and silent progress, the
women mounted high upon the camel, sometimes shel
tered by a strange little tent which sways and shakes
with every long measured step like a boat at sea, the
man armed to the teeth, with his feeble old musket
slung over his shoulder, his pistol and knife in his belt,
mounted upon the ass whicli always heads the proces
sion, or walking by its side — can form some idea of what
the travelling pilgrims must have looked like, as in soli
tary families or groups and combinations from town and
village they came along towards the white walls and
towers gleaming on the hillside, and visible far off from
the direction of Israel, from all the paths that led from
the north. The religion of Mohammed in its skilful
adoption of dates and customs has organised a yearly

v.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 209
pilgrimage from Jerusalem to the so-called tomb of
Moses, which makes a sort of balance to the feasts of
the Jewish. Passover and the Christian Easter, and thus
calls together a crowd of pious Mussulmans to hold in
check the other crowds that pour into Jerusalem at that
season. And it is among the pilgrim groups, which come
from the distant desert and many a far-off village, for
this ceremonial that the most perfect picture of the
primitive pilgrimage is furnished. The pilgrim from
Asshur or Zebulon would have no rifle, no pistol, in his
belt, with which to defend his household — but he would
have his knife, his spear, perhaps a bow slung at his
back: and his cloak of camel's hair, the covering on his
dark head of kerchief or hood, or twisted shawl would
be much the same. And the camel and the ass, strange
companions through every Eastern journey, the humble
brother in front, the garrulous burden-bearer behind, are
identical. And the same is tbe long slow journey day
by day, the same patient progress, the great soft sway
ing tramp of the laden beast, sinking and rising in mo
notonous motion, the night encampments by the little
watchfire — as it is the same clear heaven and glowing
stars, vibrating in intensity of light which shine over
the heads of the pilgrims.
When the Passover had been celebrated With all its
touching and significant rites, with the thin crackling
cakes of unleavened bread, and the blood of the lamb,
the sign of redemption on every lintel — all Judah, as
sembled for the feast, and the visitors from Israel wdio
swelled their ranks, made a raid forth into the country
to all the dependent cities and in the fervour of their
faith assailed the centres of idolatry, cut down the
groves and broke the images which meant not only the
worship of idols but every immorality and uncleanness.
It is a mission which is always congenial to a multitude, r

210 JERUSALEM. [chap.
and, no doubt, the work of destruction was not only a
cutting off of the accursed thing but an outlet for the
pent-up excitement of so much hot popular feeling. The
Israelites must have carried on the work as far as they
were able as they returned to their homes, for it is re
corded that it extended even into Ephraim and Manas
seh. AVe may well believe that enough of ancient sen
timent remained through the country to make a Jewish
village still blush for the grove and the idol to which
it gave an intermittent worship, and that many would
be ashamed to resist this raid of reformation : even
though they might steal back as soon as the noisy train
of reformers had swept past, to pick up the fragments of
the image which had not known how to defend itself,
and to cherish the quick springing saplings with which
nature, more capable, would soon make up her part of
the mischief. We hear no more of the Passover in the
days of Hezekiah, probably because it became a matter
of common use and wont and demanded no further men
tion in the brief record which deals only with the chief
features of his reign. One result of the great revival of
faith was, however, that the people in the impulse of
that renewed unity and devotion, offered their tithes and
contributions so largely, that for the first time there was
need of storehouses in which to lay up the superfluity
which was so much more than enough for immediate
needs. It was not very long, however, before Judah shared
the terror and disturbance which the new and great
scourge of the East, the Assyrian, carried all around.
King Ahaz, the father of Hezekiah, had invited the
aid of that great power against his familiar enemies of
Damascus, and had accepted the character of a tributary
and vassal : and Jerusalem, no doubt, had trembled yet
exulted in its own safety as it saw the other little king-

v.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 211
doms round carried off into captivity by this irresistible
conqueror. It must have seemed little less than fool-
hardiness on the part of Hezekiah, notwithstanding the
victories over the Philistines with which his reign began,
to withdraw the submission which his father had made.
But he was, no doubt, made bold by his prosperity and
prospect of regaining supremacy over all Israel, and by
a strong confidence in the succour and support of God.
"He rebelled against the King of Assyria and served
him not " is the brief record : but it was not long before
he was compelled to repent of his boldness, and renew
the tribute his father had paid. Not satisfied with this
compromise, however, the great Sennacherib, himself
just setting forth on an expedition against Egypt, sent
his general Rabshakeh to summon Jerusalem to complete
submission, or in default of this to take the city, with,
no doubt, the inevitable carrying away into captivity
that followed. Nothing could be more picturesque or
striking than the scene in which these envoys are made
visible to us outside tbe walls of Jerusalem parleying
with the representatives of the king, and shouting forth
their message so that all the dismayed and eager crowds
thronging every point of vantage might hear.
A great deal had been done by King Uzziah, the great
grandfather of Hezekiah, to strengthen the fortifications
of his capital. He had built "towers in Jerusalem at
the corner gate, and at the valley gate, and at the turn
ing of the wall," all probably on that exposed portion
of the city towards the north whence danger came ; —
all invaders down to Titus making their encampments,
it would appear, about Mount Scopus, and attacking
from that side. The city had sustained at least one
siege in the interval, but the towers still remained, huge
erections built with great stones, no doubt like those
pieces of ancient wall which still remain, buildings of
p2

212 JERUSALEM. [CHAr.
which the existing Tower of David may give some idea.
Hezekiah himself had " repaired the wall where it was
broken, and raised it up to the towers, and another wall
without, and repaired Millo in the city of David, and
made darts and shields in abundance." He had even
diverted the course of the waters which supplied Jeru
salem and stopped up the fountains, that there might be
no water for the besiegers. Perhaps some of the uncouth
machines " invented by cunning men to be on the towers,
and upon the bulwarks, to shoot arrows and great stones
withal," might still remain in their old places — means
of desperate defence such as that made in later times
when the Jews fought every step of their doomed town
and fortress against all the strength of the Boman army
— so that the town was fully fortified and as able, per
haps, to encounter a siege as any small and crowded
town subject to blockade on all sides by overpowering
numbers could be. But that was little even in days
before artillery was invented : and the heavy hearts of
the Jewish ministers may well be imagined as they went
out to meet the embassy which had arrived outside the
walls, at the head of some portion of Sennacherib's
army, enough to frighten into submission the little royal
town which could never have held head against so great
an invader. Sennacherib himself was besieging Lachish
in the plains, the capital of the Philistines: and there
was in the mission of his general an undisguised con
tempt for the strength of Jerusalem, and conviction that
the mere sight of the Assyrians would strike terror to
the Jewish soul. " He stood by the conduit of the upper
pool in the highway of the fuller's field " — having ap
parently made a circuit to the western side of the city
circling that corner, "the turning of the wall," and anx
ious, no doubt, to finish summarily this small piece of
business, without the trouble or expense of a siege.

|.,,.,|I,T ,,,;¦,¦

1 1 J, i LiiLil n ii .1 ,i .1. m I, i; .ui! Ll: ,1 ,

v-j THE HOUSE OF DAVID.

215

Whether he had tried his arguments first upon the
representatives of Hezekiah before he lifted his voice,
and addressed the crowd upon the walls which had come
to gaze and listen to the parley, we are not told : but it
is clear that he perceived the advantage of raising a
popular panic and gaining the town without fighting.
" In what does Hezekiah trust? " cried the envoy—
"in the staff of this broken reed, on Egypt? But if thou
say to me, We trust in the Lord our God — am I now
come up without the Lord against this land to destroy
it? The Lord said unto me, Go up against this land,
and destroy it. " Babshakeh was evidently a man aware
of the past history of the Jews, though making the
natural mistakes of a foreigner in some important mat
ters. He had heard of the destruction of the images by
Hezekiah, and he imagined these to be images of the
god of the country, the local deity — sharing in this
respect the views of the enlightened critics of the nine
teenth century. " Is not this -he whose high places and
whose altars Hezekiah has taken away?" The ven
geance of that god was thus on his side as well as the
might of his master, and every element was combined to
strike the populace with terror. The entire, yet per
fectly natural, misconception in this address, and the
curious difference between the great Lord of heaven and
earth — of whom the dullest Jew had some conception,
as a Being standing alone, eternally separate from and
opposed to all the petty gods devised by the imagination
of man — and the assumption of the cultivated Assyrian
magnate who understood nothing better, is full of
instruction. He must have supposed them a kind of
infidels who had destroyed their gods in pride and
defiance of all spiritual influence.
Eliakim and Shebna and Joah, the ministers of Heze
kiah, listened with dismay to an address which was so

216 JERUSALEM. [chap.
well calculated to arouse the smouldering superstitions
of all that eager fringe of listeners on the walls. How
easy to make them believe that the vengeance of Baal
and Astarte had brought this proud invader upon them,
and that these offended deities smote by his arm ! They
besought the Assyrian to speak in his own language,
which they could understand, and not in that of the
people, the hasty and incompetent judges whose panic
might at any moment precipitate matters. But this very
prayer was, no doubt, an inducement the more to make
Eabshakeh raise his voice and strengthen his argument.
" Hath my master sent me to thy master, and to thee, to
speak these words?" he said, "hath he not sent me to
the men that sit upon the wall?" "They held their
peace, and answered him not a word," says the record.
. . . But when Hezekiah's ministers had returned
within the gates they rent their garments in sign of
sorrow and humiliation and with bowed heads wrent up
among the anxious crowds of the people to lay the mes
sage of the Assyrian before the king. Hezekiah received
them with equal distress and almost despair: for the
fate that awaited him and his people whether they
yielded or whether they resisted was equally terrible.
The best that was offered was that they should be car
ried away " to a land like your own land, a land of corn
and wine " ; captivity, in any case, with all the horrors
which no fine promises could do away with, a fate which
they had seen to overtake their brethren of Israel. In
this terrible conjuncture the anxious king and his min
isters could take refuge but in one hope. — tbe aid of
God — and even that with all the trouble and uncertainty
which attends an appeal to the unseen, faith itself trem
bling even in its utmost rapture lest, perhaps, the will
of the Supreme Helper might not have settled the alter
native so. The unhesitating response of the Prophet

v.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 217
Isaiah, here first introduced into the record, when called
upon to answer for the Lord, reassured, however, the
trembling questioners. "I will send a blast upon him,
and he shall hear a rumour." With what wondering
suspense must these words have been heard! for what
rumour could conjure away the substantial might of the
Assyrian cohort lying outside their walls?
The promise was, however, almost immediately ful
filled: for in the meantime the Assyrian envoy without
the walls had heard that his master had withdrawn
from the siege of Laehish to Libnah, along with a rumour
of the approach of the King of Egypt with a great army
which made it expedient that all the forces of Assyria
should be collected together. In haste, then, intending
a speedy return and meaning to make short work, when
he came back, of the city, which was no more than a
mouthful in comparison with the conquests of Assyria,
Rabshakeh sent his ultimatum to the king. The idea of
resistance in the ordinary sense of the word does not
seem to have occurred as possible to the rulers of Jeru
salem. Hezekiah did not call to the walls the defenders
whose hearts had been melted within them by the Assyr
ian's defiance. There were among them men who had
fought and conquered in Philistia, but the very name of
the greater foe seems to have been enough to quench all
courage. What the king did was to go up to the
Temple, and spread out the insulting letter before the
Lord. The whole narrative is full of vivid life and
pathos. Classic story has no parallel for those conflicts
of the weak with the mighty, those struggles in which
the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong,
with which the literature of the Hebrew nation has
leavened our imagination, in these later ages. The
catastrophe which followed and which for a time deliv
ered Jerusalem from all fear of the Assyrians brings the

218 JERUSALEM. [ciiAr.
Hebrew record into sudden contact with the beginnings
of other history without diminishing the mystery of the
event or giving us any clearer understanding of it.
Sennacherib and his army had marched on to conclude
matters with Egypt, a foe more worthy of their steel,
meaning afterwards on their homeward way to crush the
little rebel Jerusalem: and had reached the Egyptian
borders when the silent and instantaneous overthrow of
all their forces occurred. The reader of the Bible record
has generally understood that the army destroyed in a
night lay outside the very walls of Jerusalem. But this
is not said: indeed it is clearly intimated that there was
no army lying outside Jerusalem at the time when Isaiah
in the Temple proclaimed the doom of the Assyrian. It
is very curious that, according to Herodotus, in the
narrative given him by the priests of Memphis, the pre
liminaries of this destruction should be almost exactly
the same, with the difference that the King of Egypt
was the suppliant, and that the promise of deliverance
came to him in the temple of his god, a very remarkable
and somewhat confusing supplement to that of the Bible.
It leaves no doubt as to the event : the explanation of it —
the irruption of the field mice and their destructive work,
seems somewhat fantastic ; but on this point the Hebrew
record gives no information. Whatever it was, it not only
destroyed the bulk of his army, but cowed the spirit of
Sennacherib. He returned hastily to his own country, to
his great Nineveh, thinking for the moment of no more
sieges or defiances of God. And, though he lived to fight
in other regions before his miserable death by the hands
of his own sons, never came near Jerusalem again.
The story of Hezekiah's sickness and miraculous pres
ervation, the not very noble or generous satisfaction
which he expressed in the exclamation : " There will be
peace in my day" . . . are personal incidents into

v.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 219
which it is unnecessary to enter. Perhaps that ejacula
tion is not so selfish as it appears. It is a sentiment
very natural to a man growing old who has had his share
of the struggles and defeats of life, and who no longer
feels himself able to cope with the contradictions of the
wicked. Such a man will naturally breathe a sigh of
satisfaction on the assurance of a tranquil ending, an
evening of life disturbed by no calamity, even though he
may recognise sadly that the troubles which he sees
gathering round will burst on his successor. That suc
cessor will, at least, be a new man with strength to bear
them, not one disheartened and worn out by many
conflicts past. And this king, though a great reformer
and pious man, was not a hero. Of war or fighting he
can have known little, notwithstanding his successful
struggle with the Philistines. No impulse of resistance
seems ever to have been in his mind except against his
sentence of death, for the revocation of which he pleaded
passionately — a good but timid man, afraid to fight,
afraid to die, though not afraid in the direct service of
God to defy the superstitions into which his people had
fallen, and make urgent and trenchant reformation.
It has pleased the critics to choose Hezekiah as the
Pisistratus of the Hebrews, the Maecenas of the prophets,
under whom a great literary movement sprang up, and
the beginning of that conspiracy and invention of a relig
ion which it is supposed arose in his days. In the entire
absence of proof it is, of course, quite simple to conjec
ture and assert anything of the kind, and Hezekiah
might have invented the loom for anything we know, or
can prove to the contrary. The only evidence for the
suggestion is that a number of prophets, the majority of
those whose writings are preserved to us, arose in or
about his time ; and that there was, in fact, during that
period a great outburst of poetry, the greatest perhaps

220 JERUSALEM. [chap.
known in history, poetry full of the sublimest sentiments
and endowed with the most beautiful power of expression,
besides its claim of prophetic inspiration and of opening
the future to the glimpses of men. Such a great figure
as Isaiah suddenly arising in a limited circle is assuredly
enough, — or at least may appear so to the after historian
— to put a stamp upon his age. We know, indeed, that
our own great Milton, not to speak of our still greater
Shakespeare, made very little immediate difference to the
time in which they lived, and owed their greatness to
no royal patronage. And we know also, what is perhaps
more cognate to the matter, that Isaiah's writings are
full of a perpetual protest against his time and appeal to
a better to come, as are those of most great religious
moralists and poets. But yet by right of his prophetic
character he occupied, no doubt, a certain definite posi
tion, and was, we know, consulted on occasional emer
gencies. The fact of his existence and of that of Amos
and other prophets, chiefly in fierce opposition to the
course of events and the conduct of society: and one
little verse in Proverbs which records the fact that the
six chapters that follow "are also proverbs of Solomon,
which the men of Hezekiah King of Judah copied out "
. . . are the sole evidence (the latter the only docu
ment) in proof of the theory that the time of Hezekiah
was something like "the spacious times of great Eliza
beth " in our own history. As for the further develop
ment of that theory which asserts very confidently that
the law as well as the prophets originated in his reign,
and that the whole system of the Jewish economy was
invented by "the men" who copied out the proverbs,
there is no evidence at all in the Bible, which contains
the only contemporary information. It may be so, as
anything may be of which we know nothing whatever,
and have no means of knowing : and the assertion is so

v.] THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 221
far safe enough, because we cannot prove that anything
did or did not originate in the age of Hezekiah : but that
is all. It is seldom that a Puritan king, destroying, as
no doubt he did, some advanced specimens of art in the
high places of the idol worship, and probably the finest
statuary of the time in the images of the idols, is at the
same time a great patron of literature. But we may at
least be glad that Hezekiah in this hypothesis is spared
the denunciations of the artist. All we can know of him
with any certainty is that he was a great reformer, that
he was no general, that he was unwise in displaying all
his stores and wrealth of precious metal to the Assyrian
ambassadors when they visited him in the way of peace,
thus exciting their cupidity and inducing them to make
notes of future probabilities of spoil : — and that he was
very much afraid of dying and thankful to enjoy a tran
quil old age, putting away from him the thought of
troubles to come. This is not the picture of a very
great king: and it is evident that he bad not the power
to amend or even overawe the society of his time, of
which, as we shall hereafter see, the prophets made
so gloomy a description ; but he was very zealous for the
framework of religion and a pious though timid man.
After Hezekiah came the long and evil reign of Manas
seh, who undid almost all that his father had done, and
the short one of his son, Amon, who followed that exam
ple : followed by the strong reaction of Josiah who once
more enacted the part of reformer, and in whose reign
"the book of the law" was found in the Temple. The
critics pursuing their former theory of an elaborate con
spiracy descending from age to age, assert, of course,
that this book of the law was not found, but newly writ
ten, to answer the further exigencies of the time, and
imposed upon the guileless king and credulous people by
the high officials of the kingdom, in concert with Jere-

222 JERUSALEM. [chap.
miah, the prophet, by whom it was written. It need
scarcely be pointed out that such a consistent long-ex
tended conspiracy is unique in the history of man, and
that Jeremiah's own writings are extant, from which it
may be judged whether he was likely to set his hand to
a deliberate and elaborate fraud. The book of the law
which thus suddenly burst upon the public of Judah was,
as is asserted, the book of Deuteronomy: and we may
well envy the people of that ancient time such a piece of
good fortune. It is not often, nay unparalleled and with
out any analogy, that so great a contribution to national
history, such a constitution and code of laws should be
published to a people in a moment without warning or
tradition. But in any case the effect it produced was
great and called forth a second reformation of the same
sort as that of Hezekiah, but still more thorough — the
idols, restored during the two intervening reigns, being
not only broken but stamped into powder, that no model
for later days might remain. The previous reformation
had been in the beginning of Hezekiah's reign, whicli
lasted twenty-nine years. His son, Manasseh, reigned
fifty-five, Amon two, and young Josiah, who ascended
the throne at eight, may be allowed to have attained some
thing near his majority before he carried out his work of
reformation. There was thus very nearly a century be
tween the two religious revolutions, time enough amid all
the vicissitudes of the Temple for that book of the law
to have been hidden and forgotten. And what, if it did
not exist, nor any other recognised code, inspired the
reformation of Hezekiah? but such a disturbing question
does not enter into the theories of the critics.
Josiah was the last King of Israel who had any claim
to greatness. One feeble youth after another of his sons
succeeded him, while the disorganisation of Hebrew
society, the weakness and wickedness of the people grew

v.J THE HOUSE OF DAVID. 223
under these inconsiderable princes. And outside the
walls of Jerusalem reigned great and contending forces
between which no little kingdom could stand : the Egyp
tians in whose hands one party of the Hebrews would
fain have placed themselves, in the hope of escaping the
other, the terrible adversary who came from the north.
Anarchy and misery arose in the devoted city where no
man knew what to do, and least of all the poor puppets
of kings, one succeeding another, struggling between the
prophets who denounced and the princes who overbore
and treated them as nonentities. The question of entire
destruction, in the face of an adversary so strong, and in
the midst of such divided counsels, and a structure of
society so entirely rotten, was, of course, but a question
of time; and at length Judah fell crumbling into pieces
in a complete and overwhelming disaster which had been
over and over again foretold. One poor young king was
carried off to Egypt, another to Babylon: and for the
last of all a still more dreadful fate was reserved. The
details of the catastrophe are so much more closely in
volved in the story of the prophets, and more fully told,
that we postpone them to another chapter. It is enough
to add here the virtual conclusion of the kingdom. With
famine in the streets and every way of escape blockaded,
the last defenders broke out " of the gate between two
walls, which is by the king's garden," probably the
slopes on the southern side under the walls of the Temple
enclosure, at one end of which the king's palace was —
and fled, under cover of the night, towards Jericho and
the desert, leaving the deserted city to the mercy of the
assailants. They were soon, however, overtaken, dis
persed, and destroyed, and Zedekiah, the last king of
the house of David, was dragged, a heart-broken prisoner,
in the final train of the captives to Babylon, whither all
that was considerable in Jerusalem, princes, officers of

224 JERUSALEM. [ch, v.
state, priests and scribes, and wealthy persons, had al
ready been despatched in melancholy bands at the pleas
ure of the victors. When they got as far as Biblah,
probably coming up there with the victorious army, the
sons of Zedekiah were murdered before his eyes, which
were thereafter cruelly put out, and he himself carried
off in chains to end his days in prison. Thus the king
dom of Judah came to an end.
The destruction of the city followed with a dreadful
completeness. The Temple, so often assailed and raised
up again, so often desecrated, where idols had been wor
shipped instead of God, and every kind of rebellion
against the mission and purpose of the race had been
carried out, was burned to the ground. " The house of the
Lord, and the king's house, and every great man's house "
perished one after another in those devouring flames.
And the smoking ruins were left under high heaven
when the noise and the tumult of the great army and its
prisoners died away, a few poor inhabitants only lurking
in those houses that were not worth destroying. These
miserable remnants of the population would, no doubt,
steal out after a while to find a silent mass of burning
houses and dead men who had died in their defence, all
that was left of that Jerusalem which the}" had so proudly
celebrated in songs and sacred anthems as the joy of the
whole earth.

PART 1 1.— THE PROPHETS.
CHAPTER I.
ISAIAH.
XT is understood that all classes of critics, those who
believe and receive as well as those who doubt and
question, have come to a tolerably general decision that the
prophecies of Isaiah should be attributed to two persons
— one the Isaiah of Hezekiah, the other an altogether
unknown, nameless, and untraceable man. I have made
no use of this hypothesis, because it seems to me un
necessary. It is of course difficult to apply the ordinary
rules of literary criticism to a work which is only known
in a translation : seeing it is always possible that the
style of the translators, in this case so admirable and
homogeneous, may have obliterated the distinctions of
the original. The restoration and return from the often.
prophesied captivity is indeed more clear in the late
chapters ; but if it may be difficult to account for this
and for the introduction of Cyrus by name, it is equally
difficult to account for so much of the noblest poetry
without a name : when even such scraps of verse as those
of Nahum and Obadiah preserve the identity of their
writers. For my own part I cannot feel that it matters
much. Supposing that there was a poet of the captivity
Q

226 JERUSALEM. [chap.
who was willing to sink his own. fame in that of his pred
ecessor, indifferent even to "the last infirmity of noble
minds," he, the evangelical prophet, as he has been
called, was still farther off from the Man of Sorrows,
whom he has described in such sublime strains, than the
original Isaiah was from Cyrus. There is no difficulty
set at rest, to my mind, by the idea that there were two :
— but neither to the English reader or writer is the ques
tion one of much importance. If they are two, the
world is richer by an example of such humility as it has
never known before or since combined with a splendour
of genius and inspiration to which the same terms may
almost be applied.
The only real basis of probability upon which the con
jectures in respect to Hezekiah's age as the first literary
age of Hebrew history seems to rest is the fact that
there was in his days a remarkable school of prophets —
whether associated together or arising individually we
have no way of knowing, — what we may call a great
outburst of poetry, and of poetry not legendary or asso
ciated with the feats of bygone heroes as primitive poetry
is in every language, but having reached a much more
advanced stage, the poetry of ode and elegy, of eloquence
and sentiment, concerned with every moral theme that
can stir the imagination or touch the heart. The love-
drama, the deep burden of philosophy, the never ending
human discussion of the ways of God with men, arose all
of them in this wonderfully gifted race before they were
either known or thought of by any other. Those silent
yet wonderful words which are writ in Egyptian stones,
and which have made the thread of primitive history
more or less clear, are all tersely historical, the memorials
of reigns and conquests, — but the literature of the
Hebrews holds everything that has ever during the
whole history of the world been put into measured and

!-J THE PROPHETS.

227

orderly words— the lyrics, the oratory, the morals, the
thought, with an Eastern wealth of metaphor, with a
strain and vehemence of passion, with a music and
harmony of sound, which in all these centuries and
millenniums have never been surpassed. The literature
of the Greeks is much later, but yet it is not so universal.
It does not touch every note of the harp as does that of
the Hebrews — and strangely enough that great literature,
the foundation of all modern learning, and in a certain
sense the inspiration of the whole world, is far less
acquainted with the secrets of the heart, and far less
adapted to embody all aspirations and sentiments than
that of the Hebrews. Socrates is great but his voice is
not that of the race of mankind as is Solomon's. Even
in that point the Greek is for the scholar, the Hebrew
for every man. The systems of the one are the basis of
learning, but the utterance of the other is the voice of
the heart. The common mind which would be plagued
beyond expression by the philosopher who pursued every
subject to its last corner of refuge, and convicted of
fallacy every received conclusion, recognises with a uni
versal sentiment which takes something of the sting
from that dreadful decision, that all is vanity. The one
concerns thought alone, the other feeling. Socrates has
au amused satisfaction in demolishing every stronghold
that human futility has built for itself ; but the empti
ness of all human satisfaction is as the sigh of nature
breathing from every soul. Strange to think that the
poet-nation which thus almost before any expression of
emotion was, divined and gave it utterance, should be
now — still retaining as it does its marked and separate
conditions — so voiceless, so unbeloved, odious to many,
the object of admiration and enthusiasm to none. The
same thing has happened to a certain degree in respect to
the modern Greek, for whom the most devoted classicist
q2

228 JERUSALEM. [chap.
entertains no genial weakness, no impulse of indulgence
for the sake of his forefathers— but is still more strong
in respect to that strange people in whose words we
utter our deepest emotions, and whom in most cases we
repudiate and dislike. The effect is a very strange one.
The great outburst, if we may call it so, of Hebrew
poetry occurred at a time when the two nations of the
Jews had great vicissitudes of power and of downfall, yet
as much or more of the former than of the latter. The
reign of Uzziah was a great reign until the disaster of
the conclusion which was rather personal to the king
than affecting the people. And the reign of Hezekiah
was also a great reign, full of wealth and progress, and
great national deliverances, besides being, if the opinion
of the critics is any way to be considered, a sort of
Augustan age of literature. The twenty years occupied
by the deplorable reign of Ahaz came between, it is
true, justifying any kind of lamentation and presage of
evil. Yet it must be remembered that throughout this
whole period, at its highest as well as its lowest fortune,
the tenor of the prophetic utterances, the subject of the
impassionate poetical addresses which the poets of Judah
and Israel poured forth are invariably the same cry
against national degradation and wickedness, the same
denunciation of evil to come.
Amos is the first of these great instructors and power
ful Protestants against the sin around him. His prophe
cies were chiefly concerning Israel and were uttered in
the period during which Jeroboam IL, the son of Joash,
reigned in Samaria and Uzziah in Jerusalem, the two
reigns being contemporary for fourteen years. Thus it
was in the latter years of the King of Israel, a great
prince by whom according to the record " Israel was
saved " from many humiliations and raised to prosperity :
and in the early part of the reign of Uzziah, at the begin-

I-] THE PROPHETS.

229

ning of a great, prosperous, and as yet unblemished
career, that his prophecies were composed. All was
well with the two kindred nations ; over them, no doubt
as over all the other little powers in Palestine the shadow
of the great Assyrian empire was beginning to rise — but
for the moment Jeroboam had got the upper hand of
Syria, which up to this time had been the strongest of
Israel's enemies, and held Damascus captive. Nothing
but well-being and prosperity seems to have existed,
nothing but auguries of good fortune to come would
seem natural in the circumstances. On the other hand-
in Judah King Uzziah was no idolater, but, till the pre
sumptuous idea of himself burning incense in the Temple
seized him, a man who " walked in the ways of his
father David." Even his transgression was not such as
to bring down national retribution. He was stricken in
his own person, sadly enough, indeed, but not so as to
affect his people. How is it, then, that the burden of
the earliest as well as the later prophets is one unbroken
denunciation of trouble to come, of an overwhelming
reign of evil among the people, and of an approaching
doom which nothing but a swift and immediate change
of national habit and life could turn away ? But it is
wrong to say that it is unbroken — there is an alternative
to the picture :— while continually repeating that imme
diate deliverance is still possible, if those who are ex
horted to a complete change of life consent to the course
pointed out to them — it is not that hope, a fallacious and
unlikely one, as the most careless reader can see, upon
which they dwell ; it is in the far-off future of a golden
age, when such a King as earth never saw was to spring
from the root of Jesse, and the whole world, covered
with righteousness as the waters cover the sea was to
own and rejoice in his sway. In this hope, from the
smallest to the greatest of these poets and prophets,

230 JERUSALEM. [chap.
every one is agreed. Was it, perhaps, a young Hezekiah,
a young Josiah of whom they fondly hoped in the first
place that he might be the deliverer ? but if so — and in
the dim yet splendid vision that rose before them, the
lines were all indefinite, and who could refuse to hope
that any noble and gracious youth might unfold into
that promised prince ? — there is no insistence upon it,
no affirmation, nor even anything that could be inter
preted into an assurance that this was he. They had
every inducement that men could have to make their
• prophecy agree with the prognostics of a new reign :
but they never did so — nor did all the prosperities and
splendours of the present ever draw them from their
painful certainty of what was to come.
The critics, as has been said, have found it necessary
to invent a second Isaiah to account for the prophecy
concerning Cyrus which, according to their foregone con
clusion, can only have been written after the fact : but
they do not explain how it was that Amos, of whose date
and authenticity no doubt is ever expressed, should in
the middle of the successful reign of Jeroboam have
prophesied not only the entire downfall of Israel, but the
captivity which did not take place till thirty years later,
and which at that moment, with a strong monarch full
of conquest and triumph on the throne, must have seemed
as little probable as any calamity could be. It was not
without an indignant protest that these denunciations
were listened to : the priest of Bethel made a stand
against that prophet of evil. He reported to Jeroboam
that Amos had said: "Israel shall surely be led away
captive out of their own land." " The land is not able
to bear his words," said that unquestionable witness.
This incident is the fullest proof that the prediction was
made at a most unlikely moment when Israel was in full
prosperity under her powerful monarch. " 0 thou seer,"

i-] THE PROPHETS. 231
cries the disturbed and angry priest, "flee thou away
into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy
there : but prophesy not again any more at Bethel, for
it is the king's chapel, and it is the king's court" (or
the sanctuary and the house of the kingdom, according
to the marginal correction of the authorised version).
"I was no prophet," answers Amos, "neither was I a
prophet's son. I was a herdsman and a gatherer of syca
more fruit : and the Lord took me as I followed the flocks,
and the Lord said unto me, Go, prophesy unto my people
Israel." The same message with individual modifica
tions is conveyed by all the prophets of the day. In
Micah there seems a hope, his message being addressed
to Israel alone, that in Judah the people of God might
find shelter and peace ; but the prophets of Judah convey
the same tremendous menace to their half of the sepa
rated nation. Captivity and desolation when they were
at the height of national prosperity and success ! The
historical record describes territories extended, acquisi
tions made, new fortifications, new strength. Uzziah
has cunning engines mounted upon his new towers,
Hezekiah makes still more elaborate preparations for
defence ; and both these monarchs extend their borders,
and increase their wealth. But through all the busy
and rich and gay city peals the same cry of alarm —
captivity ! something more terrible than defeat or that
adverse fortune which they have met like their neigh
bours for hundreds of years, now beaten clown, now
rising up, in the vicissitudes of war, and that perpetual
life of conflict which is natural to a small kingdom sur
rounded by ambitious and warlike neighbours. From
Solomon's days there had been, perhaps, no king so
hopeful, so powerful as Uzziah, and no reformer so
happy, with so much reason to look for assured comfort
and well-being as Hezekiah. Assyria had not even

232 JERUSALEM. [chap.
arisen in the days of the first monarch to make Pales
tine tremble; yet even in Judah was the trumpet of
coming disaster sounded, " The cities shall be wasted
without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and
the land be utterly desolate."
Who could wonder if this terrible prophecy was as
madness in the ears of the prosperous and powerful
Hebrews, "in the year when King Uzziah died?" The
city was full of comfort and enjoyment, festivity and
national well-being. Tribute and quit-rent came flow
ing in, luxury had found a place in many homes, no city
of Palestine was more forward in the march of civilisa
tion, more advanced in fashion, more likely to take the
lead among the surrounding nations. Captivity, desola
tion, cities without inhabitants, without a man left, the
forlorn women clinging to any defender they could
find, imploring to have the protection of his name — what
did the madman mean ? Were these follies of weight
enough to disturb a single banquet, to make either
prince or moneylender pause ? The populace, always
ready to entertain any grumbler, might listen with that
satisfied thrill of excitement with which the populace
everywdiere hears its superiors threatened : — but who
would give up a dinner, who would sacrifice an ad
vantage, who would restore a pledge, for anything these
wild fellows might choose to say ? The Cassandras of
fate are comprehensible enough when the downward
course has visibly begun, and the enemy is at the
gates ; but he who threatens thunder out of a clear sky
is less intelligible. In Isaiah's time there were even
special signs of God's favour, troubles averted, deliver
ances given, yet without any cessation of the warning.
Nay, there were all the signs of outward piety in one
portion of Isaiah's time. There were continual sacri
fices, offerings at the altar, a great religious system care-

i-J THE PROPHETS. 233
fully carried on — yet still the same cry. The prophets
unfold to us the state of morals and manners which
existed in both the fated kingdoms with a sternness of
censure which, no doubt, to their contemporaries, seemed
exaggerated, such a trenchant "criticism of life" as even
Mr. Matthew Arnold could not have dreamed.
It should always be remembered, however, that the
utterances of Hebrew prophets and preachers were not
addressed to individuals but to the nation. The absence
of all reference to after rewards and punishments and
the compensations of another life, remarkable as it is,
would be more remarkable still were these utterances re
corded for the comfort of the immediate sufferer, the
support of the troubled individual, as in Gospel times.
Christianity does emphatically address the individual,
but in the Jewish dispensation it was not so. It is the
fate of the nation which is always the subject of the
prophet. The poor man whom our Lord adjured with
heavenly tenderness to " Take My yoke upon you and
learn of Me " is not contemplated by the seer who flings
abroad with the vehemence of passion his addresses to
his race. Israel had been set as a wonder in the earth,
Judah as a sign to all nations, and they had disregarded,
scorned, and departed from their mission. Not even the
address, "Rejoice, 0 young man, in thy youth" of Solo
mon is in the thoughts of Amos or Isaiah. To them,
too, perhaps, as to Elijah in his despair, it may have
been communicated that there yet remained seven thou
sand men in Israel who had not bowed the knee to Baal.
These faithful ones were in God's own hand, in the
secret of His heavenly consolations. Whatever might
happen to them it was well with them — whatever might
happen to the others individually, was also the secret of
God and in His hand. But it is to the nation that the
prophet's message is addressed, that nation which had

234 JERUSALEM. [chap.
been set up as a witness and had forgotten and abjured
its testimony. Its special existence depended altogether
upon its fulfilment of that trust. Its national life was
an office, a service. From time to time fitfully that
office had been filled and that service performed more or
less well — now with enthusiasm so that all the world
might see — now languidly with doubtful arms and sway
ing banners. And anon the standard of the Lord had
been precipitated into the dust and the mission of Israel
had been forgotten. This it was which was the object
of the prophets, the burden of every message. A coun
try, a nation has no hereafter; its duties are to be ac
complished now and here, its rewards or punishments
awarded in this world — and such is the only thought in
the prophet's mind. He lays bare the corruption of the
nation with an unsparing hand. The king is a good
king ; he has made reformation, he has walked in the
ways of his father David — for him and for his day there
will be a postponement, an arrest of justice; but the
nation is corrupt and condemned, and has abandoned
and become incapable of performing its great mission.
The experiment which has been tried in the face of all
nations has failed. "Israel will not know, My people
will not consider." One last outcry of warning, the
greatest, the most continuous ever made, for a time fill
ing the very air with its manifold voice giving the echoes
no rest, is to complete the record of God's ceaseless en
deavours to induce His chosen people to fulfil their
office — but that like every other is to be in vain.
I do not doubt that the very humblest thinker forms
some theory to himself, for the most part in silence, un
expressed — -myriads who have no words in which to set
forth their thoughts justifying or accusing the great
Ruler of the world according to their different imperfect
reasonings upon what they see and what they cannot see.

J-] THE PROPHETS.

235

Among these humble hosts without authority, whose
musings are incomplete and their conclusions framed
without any thought of scientific accuracy, I may venture
to put forth my conviction that the freedom of the
human will is so complete that God will force no one,
neither individual, neither nation into the right way.
With the strongest belief that this world contains but
a portion of our existence, that it may be for aught we
know a great parable and lesson for the myriads of other
worlds which we know to be around us in space : and
without any attempt to enter upon that bewildering cer
tainty that the result of every man's decision must be
known beforehand and from all eternity, by the God to
whom a thousand years is as one day, I believe that in
no way will the Creator force the steps of His creatures.
What to the simplest apprehension is compulsory good
ness ? a thing without merit, if not a mere hypocrisy
which is the most common though unjust view — but
always, at least, a thing suspect, satisfactory to no man.
Against this, which is the very prerogative and privilege
of humanity, the theorist, and often the most lovable of
theorists, gnashes his teeth, in many cases taking it as
a reason for denying God altogether. Can a great and
pure and loving Being exist, and permit the crimes and
miseries that devastate the earth, they cry with passion,
and so great a show of tenderness superior to that of
God, and mercy above that of the All-merciful, that
many tongues are silenced — and it is perhaps the most
popular of all atheistical arguments. What, then, do
these indignant critics demand ? a race cut to conformity
with the model of goodness, a man in leading strings so
that he cannot err ? — and of what good, then, of what
meaning would be his virtue ? The God of Israel, the
God of Christianity, that most perfect of all the concep
tions of men of the one Being who is inexplainable and

236 JERUSALEM. [chap.
incomprehensible, yet is always more or less understood
by the heart, lays the case very plainly before every one
of His creatures. To the lowest intelligence, as to the
highest, there is a standard, a line which divides between
good and evil. There are a hundred arguments on
either side, and the case has been gone over and over
again since the beginning of the world in every genera
tion under all circumstances. And many a breaking
heart has cried and implored in every age for the one
thing that cannot be granted, that God would force
child or friend or husband or wife into that right way,
would annihilate the perverse will, and destroy the dis
obedient instincts, and make men good who have no
desire to be good. It seems to me that this is the ever
lasting No of which the philosopher writes. God who
has such pity as a father hath, supplies every argument,
every inducement that can affect a thinking and loving
being ; but He will not take away that power of choice
whicli is the man's distinction in the universe, nor force
the soul to obey Him. The mortal father follows hum
bly, without knowing it, in pain and sorrow, this same
sole practice. With man it is dictated indeed by the
force of things, by the impossibility of compelling an
other mind into any way which it does not itself choose ;
but with God I venture to believe it is the great secret
which explains all that is inexplainable. The way is
clear, be it to the savage, be it to the sage : — the infinite
Pity watches over all and in many a silent moment en
forces unseen the open lesson — but leaves in this world
the inalienable liberty which men have as men: to be
exchanged, let us hope, in another sphere, for that soft
irresistible constraining whicli the love of Christ exer
cises even in this life, and which there may be, we trust,
the universal rule.
This is a digression, and the expression of an individual

i-] THE PROPHETS. 237
thought. But as it is impossible to avoid forming indi
vidual theories upon matters which concern us all so
deeply, I hope the reader will pardon the momentary
departure from our immediate subject. On these lines,
at least, the great parable of the Jewish history was
carried out. Their mission was set very clearly before
them, the highest honour conceivable for a nation : their
law, so stern in rectitude, yet accompanied with such
wonderful shadings of charity and kindness, was given
to them centuries before any such code is known in
any other race (and this on the showing of the most
determined critics, who impute a system of wholesale
imposition to the leaders of the tribes, yet cannot deny
the antiquity of certain fragments, and these the most
essential of their code) : and that well-spring of poetry
which was their privilege and distinction, entirely inspired
by religious themes and motives, sprang up in their midst
with extraordinary fulness before the most ancient bal
lad or list of names is recorded of any other people,
with the exception of the hieroglyphics of Egypt. In
all these ways did God endeavour to persuade that people
to fulfil its mission. But the resistance of an unsubdued
human will, and the lower inducements which had more
force upon them than the higher, and, perhaps, even that
weakness of human nature to which a lofty strain of
purpose is always exhausting, overcame every better
impulse. The Hebrews seem to have asked themselves
from the beginning of their national career why they
should have been chosen for this, and why they should
be bound to follow that higher purpose : why they should
be different from other men, why they should not eat
and drink and content themselves with the common
course, the feasts and license of their neighbours. Per
haps there were some who thought such an assumption
of superiority arrogant and intolerable, who preferred

238 JERUSALEM. [chap.
to share the lot of those about them to whom their purer
creed would seem a standing reproach. To take their
chance with their neighbours instead of assuming airs of
sanctity, — might not that be a thought not ungenerous,
attractive, indeed, as more magnanimous than any self-
salvation to many minds ? and the always powerful
current of custom round, and the shallow poetry of an
Astarte and Baal more cognate to the multitude than the
Diviner strains, recommended by aboriginal wives and
mothers, and by constant sight and association, must
have appealed to all the lighter impulses of the soul.
The charm of idol worship is one which the modern
mind is quite incapable of understanding ; yet it is evi
dent that it must have been great ; and the Hebrews
were alone in that worship which forbade any graven
image, and tasked the powers of the mind to imagine
a great Spirit everywhere expanded, yet nowhere seen,
who demanded not external rites so much as righteous
ness and truth, and held out no reward of pleasure, but
denounced and denied the gratification of the senses as
evil and not good. This role in the world was too high
for the race ; and yet it pleased their pride to dally with
it, to be thus distinguished among other men ; and they
would seem to have had a certain superstitious reliance
upon the protection of a God who, for His own credit,
so to speak, would not allow them to be overcome, even
while they rejected every bond of duty towards Him.
It is to this people that the prophets address all their
entreaties and warnings. Theirs is no individual appeal
calling upon every man to repent. The threatenings of
Divine justice are for the nation, for which there is no
future retribution, which has to accomplish its warfare
as a nation upon the earth and to undergo the recom
pense of final national apostasy, the penalty of national
destruction. I do not say that the absence of all but

'•] THE PROPHETS. 239
strong inference— such a cry as " Whom have I in heaven
but Thee," the cry still of the most devout spirit— of the
world beyond the grave is not remarkable throughout
the Old Testament : but that in the impassioned utter
ances of the prophets it would be inappropriate and is
not to be looked for, since it is the corporate body to
which all their remonstrances and menaces are addressed,
the Jewish nation, in its general system and economy,
an economy essentially mortal and earthly, made to run
its course on the earth as a system, of which there was
no promise nor any indication that it could ever be trans
ferred to another state of being.
The state of Hebrew society is made clear to us,
within the formulas of the national history by this
succession of great poets. How the foundations of
primitive law, the immemorial commands of Divine
charity were broken, and that which was to be the re
proach of the Jew through all ages begun, is already one
of the first things revealed to us. " They lay themselves
down upon clothes laid to pledge." What more curious
description could be made of the race which is the money
lender of all humanity, the pawnbroker of all the ages !
It had not been denied to the primitive Hebrew to
exercise this all-congenial trade. He had been allowed
to accept the garment in pledge, the upper cloak which
a man did not require at his work, for the day during
whioh he was working : and, no doubt, it was implied if
not absolutely expressed that the borrower should pay
out of his day's wages the sum lent and reclaim his
garment. But in no case was it allowed by the law,
payment or no payment, that the pledge should be re
tained. The garment was not only the completion of
the workman's attire by day, but it was his covering by
night ; and the commandment is as express and distinct
as " Thou shalt not steal " that it should be restored to

240 JERUSALEM. [chap.
him. "If thou at all take thy neighbour's raiment to
pledge, thou shalt deliver it unto him by that the sun
goeth down : for that is his covering only, it is his rai
ment for his skin : wherein shall he sleep ? " The Shy-
lock of modern history has put this charge far out of his
ken, and so had the Hebrew of the days of the last
Jeroboam. They lay down upon clothes laid to pledge
— what we call now the Arab cloak, which is his house,
his cover from the scorching sun, his bed and blanket in
which he still lies down secure under any tent or tree
wherever it may chance to him to pass the night. The
poor man, unable to bring his penny of redemption,
must have shivered in the night air in his light tunic
while the traditionary Jew, the impersonation of the
usurer, stretched himself in the most primitive form of
warehousing, on the coverings of his debtors — the cru
ellest form of pawnbroking. The next item in the
indictment follows closely upon this. "They sold the
righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes."
What but bondage and slavery remained for the unfor
tunate from whom his all was thus taken ? Bondage,
too, was permitted in such a case, that a man should
work out his debt, but not that he should be sold by his
countrymen, his kinsmen. Thus one of the greatest
offences of the race, an organised and systematic breach
of the law, is denounced by xlmos. The Hebrew instinct
had been foreseen and guarded against in that law with
its special and strict enactments ; but here it appears in
full and flagrant operation, open to the eye of day.
Such an example has a more picturesque and convinc
ing effect than the more general condemnations of oppres
sion, of misprision of justice, of the taking of bribes,
and the falsification of judgment, all of which the
prophets declare to be common in Israel as is the idol
atry which is the cause of all. It would seem, however,

i.] THE PROPHETS. o41
in the midst both of idolatry and law-breaking, that the
Israelites continued to give a certain worship to God in
conjunction with their idols : for the prophet indignantly
exclaims against the meat offerings and burnt offerings
which God will not accept, which were offered to him in
shameful combination with the offerings made to Jero
boam's calves at Gilgal, and to the other false gods after
whom Israel had gone. Not this impulse of superstition
and terror, but judgment and righteousness is what God
requires of them, that they should "hate the evil, and
love the good, and establish judgment in the gate."
Not less striking is the picture of a dissolute and cor
rupt society, which the prophet finds indifferently in
both the capitals, Samaria and Jerusalem. "Ye that
put far away the evil clay, and cause the seat of violence
to come near ; that lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch
themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of
the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall ;
that chant (or quaver, a significant correction, and one
which throws a certain light upon the primitive music
of the time) to the sound of the viol, and invent to them
selves instruments of musick, like David ; that drink
wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the chief
ointments." Curiously enough this imputation of luxury
and self-indulgence, especially in wine, is repeated in
almost all these terrible and vivid pictures of evil.
"Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that
they may follow strong drink ; that continue till night
till wine inflame them ! " says Isaiah. It is an unlikely
reproach for the sober East, but it is so often repeated
that it must point to a fatal weakness of the time.
"Mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle
strong drink," says another passage. "Which justify
the wicked for money, and take away the righteousness
of the righteous ! " A society depraved and corrupt in

242 JERUSALEM. [chap.
which that craving for money to supply their luxuries
which is so constant a feature of a falling state, leads to
every kind of injustice and oppression : where the cause
of the weak is unsafe, peculation in every public office,
the very hand of the judge not clean : where ostentation
and luxury prevail, the women's special prodigality of
dress calling forth an indignant protest as in all other
primitive indictments, the men's indolent effeminacy,
their vacant lives, and pursuit of pleasure reckless and
boundless, filling in the details of the picture. Cruelty
and oppression appear on all sides, exactions of all
kinds, extravagance and self-indulgence, the prophets
prophesying falsely and the people loving to have it
so : the courts of law debased, the lender turned into
a usurer, the debtor threatened with slavery, a soci
ety altogether disorganised, without effective authority,
without rule, pervaded by license and a slackening of all
bonds. But in its very depravity and corruption what a pic
ture of supposed security is here ! There are no gather
ings for defence, no attempts to rouse the ancient spirit.
The picture is like that of the depraved Romans in the
last stage of the empire, or of Sardanapalus in his court.
The princes stretched out upon their couches, at their
long drawn-out luxurious repasts, with all the foreign
affectations that have come to them from Egypt or from
among the millionaires of Tyre : touching a careless viol,
quavering a song of loves : keeping all straight with
heaven perhaps by a hecatomb of burnt offering at which
they would assemble their friends to eat a morsel of the
sacrifice, and propitiate the God who could be so easily
kept in good humour by the smoke that offended their
dainty nostrils : — then straying forth by Solomon's beau
tiful gate, where perhaps their mules, or the fine-limbed
desert horses, which were the last word of Hebrew lux-

David's tomb, Jerusalem.

To face page 242.

!•] THE PROPHETS.

245

ury, waited at the gate, to take them across the valley
in a party of mingled pleasure and devotion, and up the
slope of Olivet to some favourite grove, where half clan
destine, half recognised, the gayer rites of another wor
ship were performed. Nothing like being on the safe
side, one can imagine the cynic nobles saying, as they
came back to envelop themselves in their silken robes,
and lay themselves upon their sculptured couches with
all the fine work of ivory and gilding: — while stew
ard and intendant outside ground every farthing that
could be got out of the misery of the needy, out of the
prodigal's greedy want and the shivering poor man who
had given his cloak for the pleasure of a rude debauch.
Was this Israel, was this Judah, the chosen of the
Lord ? — was this the hill of Zion, so often re-consecrated
to God where the solemn processions had passed but
now from hilltop to hilltop, celebrating a renewed cove
nant ? The prophets cry their accusations aloud in
every marketplace, at every gate, while still these songs
of sacred joy have scarcely died out of the echoes. The
mission of Amos was accomplished in two brilliant reigns,
that of Jeroboam IL, and that of Uzziah. And the Assyr
ian was not yet known in his day. And yet his burden
is captivity, captivity ! not punishment or calamity alone,
which came from time to time in the shape of the all-
devouring locust, God's army, or in tempests and convul
sions of nature : but destruction complete and hopeless,
the carrying away into a strange country, the loss of
name and fame as an independent nation. What won
der that the land could not bear his words ? What did
he mean, this herdsman in his sheepskin, with his wild
looks and fiery eyes ? Captivity ! when all was well in
Israel : when Damascus had been brought under tribute
and all the north : when the kingdom was stronger than
it had been for generations, enriched by all the wealth

246 JERUSALEM. [chap.
of the cornfields of Esdraelon, the fisheries of Galilee,
the little ports upon the margin of the great sea. Yet
for all this " Israel shall be captive in a strange land."
When he was hunted forth across the border into Judah,
even then his voice was not silenced. And that promise
to bring back again the captivity of Israel, what did it
mean ? and to build again the tabernacle of David upon
which no one had attempted to lift up a profane hand ?
It was more natural that during the reign of Ahaz,
when everything was overturned and the king himself
profaned the altar and closed the Temple, these cries of
warning should resound over the land. But Hezekiah
and his reformations seemed scarcely to have silenced for
a moment these melancholy predictions of evil to come.
Isaiah was a man who had seen many changes in Israel.
The ecstatic trance in which he saw the Lord sitting on
his throne, and that mystic and splendid vision of the
seraphs and their six wings, " with twain he covered his
face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain
he did fly " (which I have heard a physiologist explain
as in accordance with the structure of the human body
and capable of being realised in it in some future purifi
cation of form, a devout imagination with which the old
doctor pleased his fancy), happened in the year in which
King Uzziah died. Jotham reigned sixteen years and
his son Ahaz sixteen, so that when the reign and the
reformation of Hezekiah their son and grandson came,
the prophet must have been at least beyond his prime.
He had seen the most wonderful revolutions in Jeru
salem. He had seen conquest and triumph, the wealth
of captured cities carried across the great bridge to be
laid up in the house of the Lord : and anon a rage of
destruction in that sacred place, the spoils carried away,
the golden lining stripped from the walls, the Temple
left desolate. And then the whirligig of time had turned

!•] THE PROPHETS.

217

and he had beheld the restoration, the re-dedication, a
reverent bringing back of still greater glory. He had
seen siege after siege, the humiliation of the city before
the power of Damascus, its conquest by the King of
Israel, thousands of captives dragged from their homes,
but coming back again in the sudden compunction of the
conquerors moved by old brotherhood and kindness, not
withstanding the severance and enmity of years. The
mind of the prophet must have been in itself a chronicle
full of the vicissitudes of national life. And he was one
of the greatest poets that had arisen in Israel, a man full
of high genius and the noblest powers. Between him
and David there had arisen no such exquisite voice of
song, no such large and splendid inspiration. Fire from
the altar had touched his lips. If any man was capable
of beholding the seraphim and even the glory of the
Lord upon his throne, this was the man. In his great
poem or collection of poems there is no monotony of
denunciation. His harp has many strings. The most
triumphant measure as well as the saddest is congenial
to his great voice. He is capable of the irony of the
satirist and the sweetness of the pastoral : he has fore
stalled Dante and given to Milton a keynote beyond that
great poet's compass. The hell of his vision is more
grand than that of the Florentine, his heaven far more
splendid than that of the English poet : his song falls
from the height of sombre grandeur to that
" Sound as of a hidden brook
In the leafy month of June,"
which Coleridge has described and exemplified as one of
the most exquisite expedients of poetic art — but not with
such grace and sweetness as Isaiah. The portrait of the
falling race, so true to many a last stage of empire since,
is not more clear in those dark lines of woe and misery

248 JERUSALEM. [chap.
than is the triumphant vision of a time to come in which
all that is joyful shall return under the reign of the
Prince of Peace, the root and the offspring of David, the
King whose name is Wonderful. He turns from one
scene to another with the freshness of a noble faculty to
which monotony is impossible, which from the depths of
humiliation bursts glorious into the deliverance to come,
and cannot be confined to one note. In his early years
he is like the wild Ezekiel among the miserable exodus
of the captivity, a sort of natural sign and parable to the
people, he and his wife " the prophetess " and his chil
dren : but in his elder age he is the king's counsellor, a
distinguished member of Jewish society, the representa
tive of all that is highest in religion. It is to him the
troubled statesmen go when they have met Babshakeh
at the gate and have not been able to keep his insolent
message from the rabble that crowded the walls, that
foolish rabble thoughtful of nothing but its own safety
which might so easily make a disastrous panic within
and force the hand of the king and his advisers, aud pre
cipitate destruction. And it is he who dissipates those
fears, who calms the terrors of the crowd, and gives a
tremulous confidence to the threatened city : — to be fol
lowed by how profound an impression when the news
comes of that astounding and incomprehensible catas
trophe which swept Sennacherib's army from the face of
the earth, and reduced his power in a moment. How
extraordinary, we say ! surely enough to impress for ever
upon the minds of the most frivolous people the convic
tion that Isaiah's warnings must be true, that his en
treaties and adjurations were worthy of all their atten
tion, that what was said by the prophet, so tremendously
attested by God, was as trustworthy when he threatened
punishment as when he promised deliverance : and so it
ought to have been by all human analogy, and so by all

!•] THE PROPHETS.

251

human example it was not. The awe, the solemn impres
sion, the extraordinary relief in a moment to all the
terrors of the threatened city died with the day that
brought them forth, and the human routine went on as
before. So it has been in every age : and so it will be,
no doubt, till the race comes to an end, or some other
impulse higher than any known heretofore gives a higher
possibility, an alteration beyond all hopes to the well-
known and long-established " way of the world."
It is strange to imagine this great and remarkable in
dividual amid the crowded life of the ancient Jerusalem.
Amos and the other prophets were of different mould.
The herdsman taken from following his flock frequented
the woodland sanctuaries of Bethel, roaming by the way
side, meeting the pilgrims who went and came, one of
the outdoor crowd, proclaiming his message to all the
winds, a wild figure of the sort that had never been
unknown in Israel, a rhapsodist, a wandering minstrel —
but with something more exciting still than the story
telling of the East, a message which was, indeed, to all,
but which the crowd of the needy and poor would, no
doubt, eagerly appropriate to their betters, with that in
variable satisfaction in the denunciation which is natural
to every crowd. In the beginning of his career in the
later days of Uzziah and the confused and miserable
reign of Ahaz there are similar features in the aspect of
Isaiah. In those strange bold symbolisms of fate, by
which he makes his own domestic life a parable, and
audaciously dates his prophecy of the destruction of the
conspiring powers which had brought trouble to Judah,
by the birth and growth of his child — Isaiah adopts the
most tremendous practical method of bringing his pre
dictions home to his hearers. His son Maher-shalal-
hash-baz, " in making speed to the spoil he hasteneth the
prey " (hasteneth the moment when he shall himself be

252 JERUSALEM. [chap.
the prey?), was not in existence at the time of the
prophecy. The prophet had just taken to himself that
bride who is afterwards spoken of as the prophetess. It
was when the King of Syria and the King of Israel had
made their raid upon Judah, destroying the fenced cities
round about, and carrying away many captives, chiefly
it would seem from the valley of Jordan towards Jericho ;
and Jerusalem, naked of these advanced posts, trembled
for the moment when the triumphant army should appear
under her own walls — that these espousals would seem
to have taken place. Two witnesses were chosen by the
prophet to record the exact date. " For before the child
shall have knowledge to cry, My father, and my mother,
the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria shall
be taken away before the King of Assyria." A strange
test and a bold, belonging to the language of symbol and
fact which is always so impressive to the primitive mind.
The whole city must have known that extraordinary
wager with Providence. And when the news came that
the great Assyrian from Nineveh — that distant wonder
ful city of which it was already known in story and in
song that a prophet of the Hebrews had been unwillingly
sent to warn it of its wickedness — had appeared in the
north, calling back the Syrian king in hot haste to defend
his capital ; and when a little later terror-stricken mes
sengers brought the report that the hordes of that distant
and dimly apprehended power had swept away Israel
from Samaria, till there was left only the poorest leav
ings — " As the shepherd taketh out of the mouth of the
lion two legs or a piece of an ear," according to the simile
of Amos — with what awe-struck wonder must the in
habitants of the city have gathered round the prophet's
door, and watched the little dark-eyed child stammering
forth the Lo and Ammi, the first syllable's of baby speech.
In this way it seems Isaiah established his authenticity

!¦] THE PROPHETS.

253

before his race: with great indecency, M. Renan and
other critics say, but that is scarcely the question. It is
an incident that might occur even now, though probably
not with the same universal publicity, in the same un
changed and unchangeable land.
And was it, perhaps, at the same early period that he
stood — in one of those characteristic openings of the
steep dark street where the crowd that gathered to listen
would establish itself as in a theatre in the narrow depth
of that ravine of building, each line of glowing turban or
kerchief threaded with gold, rising a little higher than
the other; and with the viol in his hand which was
capable of serious as well as frivolous use, sang in the
hearing of half Jerusalem " a song to my wellbeloved, a
song of my beloved touching his vineyard." Did the
crowd expect it to be no more than a song of loves, a
variation upon the old familiar theme ? Did those who
knew the singer best pluck at their neighbours' elbows,
and bid the more serious pause because of the moral
that must be in it, though the beginning sounded like
mere poetry?
" My wellbeloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill :
And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof,
And planted it with the choicest vine,
And built a tower in the midst of it,
And made a winepress therein. . . .
" And now, 0 inhabitants of Jerusalem,
O men of Judah,
Judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. ..."
Would there be some who would start and shift and
disturb the crowd, suspecting the unwelcome message
that was to come ? and some who would press nearer
hoping, perhaps, to exercise their sharp wits on a ques
tion of casuistry, or to hear a tale of oppression, perhaps
a tirade against some patrician, or a piece of veiled, and
piquant treason such as the mob loves ?

254 JERUSALEM. [chap.
" What could have been done more to my vineyard,
That I have not done in it ?
Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes,
Brought it forth wild grapes ?
" And now go to ;
I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard :
I will take away the hedge thereof,
And it shall be eaten up ;
And break down the wall thereof,
And it shall be trodden down :
And I will lay it waste :
It shall not be pruned, nor digged ;
But there shall come up briars and thorns :
I will also command the clouds
That they rain no rain upon it."
Then, one can fancy the louder note struck from the
instrument, the pause of the singer, the stir in the multi
tude —
1 ' For the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts
Is the house of Israel,
And the men of Judah
Are the plant of His pleasure. . . "
One of the most wonderful of those early odes of Isaiah
is the wild and terrible song with its burden " For all
this His anger is not turned away, but His hand is
stretched out still" in which vengeance is denounced
against a power scarcely yet known. By the guidance
at once of the subject matter of the poem, and of the date
which precedes a briefer lyric, it would seem to have
been written or rather delivered during the reign of
Ahaz. All Jerusalem which had lately trembled for the
advance of the allied armies of Samaria and Damascus,
" Eezin and Eemaliah's son " : and whom Isaiah had
reassured not only by prophecy but by the curious limit
of time during which that prophecy and their destruc
tion was to be accomplished : had after a moment's
exultation and relief begun again to apprehend the
approach of a greater danger in the still more powerful
conqueror from the north, who had overthrown its

^  -mi

A STREET IN JERUSALEM.

To face page 254.

i.] THE PROPHETS. 257
enemies ; the Assyrian whom the King of Judah had
been so unwise as to call to his aid, not perceiving that
he himself and his little kingdom must be the next
mouthful to that potentate, a far more dangerous oppo
nent than the other little kings with whom there had
always been a give and take of neighbourly warfare,
victories and reprisals going on from generation to gen
eration. Assyria meant nothing less than to sweep the
whole stretch of that rich historic country — the little
territory which yet held an importance altogether incom
mensurate with its area, the country which included that
mystic sacred Temple and kingdom of Solomon, of which
all the existing world had heard, the dynasty which had
lasted in lineal succession for two hundred years — as
well as the great and important seaport Tyre, and many
other rich cities full of spoil. There would, no doubt,
be men in Jerusalem who could perceive and understand
the ambition of this new empire, far more vast and with
much larger aims than had any of the surrounding
kingdoms of Palestine, an empire which destroyed and
depopulated, not one whose incursions in one generation
could be repaid by the next as was the use and wont of
Palestine. And, perhaps, even the one threatening
troublous visit which Tiglath-pileser had made to his
trembling protige Ahaz, had impressed even the populace,
after their brief exultation in the removal of their im
mediate enemies, with an uneasy sense of that great
potentate behind, who could crush Judah when he
pleased still more easily than he had crushed Israel.
It was probably in some special outburst of this
smouldering panic that the prophet came out to his door,
or took his stand in the great highway between the city
of David and the Temple, the opening where Solomon's
great bridge crossed the valley, or some other public
place; and declaimed once more his message, "Thus

258 JERUSALEM. [chap.
saith the Lord." How that many-coloured Eastern
crowd would swarm down every rocky lane and steep
street to hear what this message was, eager as all crowds
are to hear something new, more eager still because of
the tremendous fulfilment of his last great commission
and the general conviction, tempered by practical scep
ticism, that God spoke by His prophet. One can scarcely
doubt that the little symbolic child, the infant whose
baby stammerings had marked the time in which his
father's prediction was to be verified, was somewhere by,
clinging to the prophet's robe, looking out with childish
eyes accustomed to the stare of the wondering crowd,
and to the sound of the great voice that pealed over his
head. What was it that this bold prophet had to pro
claim — the destruction perhaps of some other poor little
kingdom by the great world conqueror ? No ! but the
destruction of that conqueror himself: vast Babylon, a
wonder in the mystic depths of distance, a golden city,
miraculous in her extent, her wealth and greatness : and
her sublime emperor who defied even God Himself, who
had laughed at all the gods of the nations, who had
devoured race after race like a cluster of grapes, to whose
following and armies there was no end. The Assyrian !
that name of fear ! What had the prophet to say of this
avenger, this universal victor, whose power overawed all
the known world? In the little capital of this small
kingdom, a speck among the hills, amid a people terrified
and helpless, debased by effeminacy and fear, no longer
the mighty men of the heroic ages, this Hebrew stood up
and poured forth the voice of his vision.
" Ho, Assyria, the rod of Mine anger,
The staff in his hand is Mine indignation.
I will send him against a hypocritical nation,
And against the people of My wrath will I give him a charge,
To take the spoil,
And to take the prey,
And to tread them down
Like the mire in the streets.

i-J THE PROPHETS. 259
" Howbeit he meaneth not so,
Neither does his heart think so.
" For he saith,
By the strength of my hand I have done it,
And by my wisdom ; for I am prudent :
I have removed the bounds of the people,
I have put down the inhabitants
Like a valiant man. .
" Shall the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith ?
Shall the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it ?
As if the rod should shake them that lift it up,
Or the staff against that (the hand) which is not wood."
We can only pause here to note how the prophet bursts
forth in the midst of this discourse, as of many others,
into that great proclamation of final deliverance which
throughout all seems to seize him from time to time by
an overmastering force, carrying him far beyond the par
tial and temporary deliverances which are his immediate
subject, transporting him into a changed world which in
his inspired rhapsody is near at hand as to-morrow, the
everlasting day-spring, the fulfilment of all promises.
So full is his mind with that hope, that it bursts from
him whenever he pauses to take breath, raising no doubt
a bewildering excitement in the mind of all these eager
listeners who had heard vaguely of a Messiah, a great
King, all their lives, and who would recognise in the
uplifted eyes, the illuminated face, the change of voice,
that the orator had been swept away into that subject
most congenial to him. He returns to his present theme
with a sigh, a sob of altered utterance. "Therefore
thus saith the Lord God of Hosts, 0 My people that
dwellest in Zion, be not afraid of the Assyrian." No,
not even when he comes, when his hosts pour over the
country, when the terrified posts bring news of his ad
vance day by day, and imagination paints his progress
over the desolated country.
s2

260 JERUSALEM. [chap.
" He is come to Aiath,
He is passed to Migron ;
At Michmash he hath laid up his carriages :
They are gone over the passage :
They have taken up their lodging at Geba ;
Ramah is afraid ;
Gibeah of Saul is fled.
Cry shrill with thy voice, O daughter of Gallim :
Listen, 0 Laish ! thou poor Anathoth.
Madmenah is scattered ;
The inhabitants of Gebim gather to flee.
" This very day he will halt at Nob :
He will shake his hand
Against the mount of the daughter of Zion,
Against the hill of Jerusalem."
This is as who should say, the invader is landed at
Dover, he has abandoned his ships, he has passed Canter
bury and Rochester, the men of Kent have forsaken their
villages, he has set up his camp at Woolwich and threatens
London. It is in imagination that the prophet sees this
terrible advance. But the trembling hearers knew that
it was a thing that might happen any day. It did hap
pen when Babshakeh and his party made their way, their
master to follow as soon as he had completed the siege
of Lachish — to the gates of Jerusalem. But —
' ' Behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts,
Shall lop the bough :
The high ones shall be hewn down,
The haughty shall be humbled.
" He shall cut down the thickets of the forest with iron,
And Lebanon shall fall
By one that is mighty."
More distinct and detailed is the burden of Babylon
which follows, in which her utter destruction is the theme,
and the Medes in their fierce disinterestedness,1 "which
1 I take from the commentary of Dr. Payne Smith the remark
able note, " Xenophon makes Cyrus speak to the Medes of not hav
ing joined him from a desire of money."

i.] THE PROPHETS. 261
shall not regard silver," rise up pitiless before our eyes :
and still more wonderful is the vision in which the
prophet, suddenly rapt as is his characteristic from the
more practical and immediate scope of his poem, and
plunged with an overwhelming force of impulse into the
future and the unseen, tears aside the dark veil of Hades
and displays the great dead, the monarchs of the past,
rising to meet the fallen conqueror —
' ' Hell from beneath is moved for thee
To meet thee at thy coming :
It stirreth up the dead for thee,
Even all the chief ones of the earth :
It hath raised up from their thrones
All the kings of the nations.
' ' All they shall speak and say unto thee,
Art thou also become weak as we ?
Art thou become like unto us ?
" Thy pomp is brought down to the grave,
And the noise of thy viols :
The worm is spread under thee
And the worms cover thee.
' ' How art thou fallen from heaven,
0 Lucifer, son of the morning !
How art thou cut down to the ground,
Which didst weaken the nations !
1 ' They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee,
And consider thee,
Is this the man that made the earth to tremble,
That did shake kingdoms ?
" That made the world as a wilderness,
And destroyed the cities thereof ;
That opened not the house of his prisoners ? "

One may imagine how years after, when Sennacherib's
great army perished, and all the immediate alarms of the
Hebrews were silenced in a moment by the great news,
and the messengers were surrounded with excited crowds
from every street to hear each detail of that unhoped-for

262 JERUSALEM. [chap.
deliverance — Isaiah's great ode which had been listened
to in its first utterance with troubled and wondering in
comprehension, may have been taken out from among the
other rolls of mystic writing and read with an under
standing and awed acknowledgment, of its tremendous
truth. Sennaeherib's fall was not the final meaning of
that prophecy, yet it might well have seemed so, a pres
age and preface. Hezekiah no doubt had heard it pro
claimed, when he was a boy, in his father's troubled and
disastrous reign, when, perhaps, the utmost that was
thought of it was that it was an imaginative speculation,
a vision of what might be if ever that great and conquer
ing power should fall. In the same way, I believe, it was
applied to Napoleon in the time of his glory. And it
can scarcely be believed that there were not men in Judah
who were capable of feeling the force of the poetry and
upon whose memory that picture of Hades had imprinted
itself with the vividness of youthful recollection. When
the first wonder, the first stunned and startled sensation,
the rapture of exultation in their deliverance were some
what abated, would not they bethink themselves — was
there not something we have heard, a poem beginning
"Hades is moved" a vision that made the heart beat?
Surely it was of the Assyrian the prophet spoke? Isaiah
in these latter days was no longer, perhaps, the minstrel
prophet who had declaimed his warnings and his prom
ises in the public places, who had walked barefoot as a
sign and symbol, whose child had been the measure of
predicted time. He was the councillor of the king, the
man to whom even the politicians made their resort
when their difficulties were overwhelming, the great and
acknowledged instructor as well as the most wonderful
poet that was known in Jerusalem. Did some gay depu
tation of young lords pour into his chamber, all joy and
tumult, more sceptical than believing, rousing him from

I-] THE PROPHETS. 263
those great dreams of the Deliverer to come, on which
all his being was intent, bidding him come and read to
the king that old thing of his, which the old men were
talking of, that vision, or whatever it might be, of Hades ?
Let him arise and bring it forth and read to the king.
And with what awe would Hezekiah listen, in his timid
faithfulness, for whom Hades would never be disturbed,
whose hope was for peace in his own day whatever might
follow, and perhaps a humble slipping into heaven at the
end, no king, but the least of God's servants. No exulta
tion, no cry of triumph was in that poem, but the awe of
a great judgment and a great suffering, a vast and dim
unseen world where there was neither fire nor flame, but
a great suspense. Dante has nothing so splendid in all his
sublime Inferno.
Isaiah grew old like other men. He lived through
four reigns and filled Jerusalem with his voice : and
poured forth, pealing through those deep streets, such
songs as had never been heard among them save in the
first splendid age of national consolidation. There had
been wandering poets of lesser note in sheepskin and
camel's hair out of the wilderness, a herdsman like
Amos, wild and strange in the fatigue of his flight, ban
ished out of Israel for his words that troubled the land ;
or a sudden apparition undistinguished even by his
father's name, Nahum the Elkoshite, Micah the Moras-
thite, appearing like meteors, passing across the busy
background of common life, listened to for a moment by
the rushing crowd ever eager for song or story, and never
unwilling to hear what terrors were denounced against
its neighbours of the northern kingdom. But Isaiah
must have been as well known to Jerusalem as the
towers of Millo, or the pillars of the Temple ; and in
his old age a certain change had come over his great
voice. Probably he came forth no longer to declaim his

264 JERUSALEM. [chap.
message, to give expression to the confusion and terror
of the popular heart as when the whole city was stirred
to listen for every rumour of those dreadful deeds that
were being enacted in Samaria, and his cry " Watchman,
what of the night ? " pealed into every soul. He was
now abiding in his house, an old man, rapt more and
more in the heavenly vision, in those strong consolations
which God had provided for the faitliful among his peo
ple ; yet still by times moved by what was going on
around, pouring forth his denunciations upon the sins
of Jerusalem, the extortion, the injustice, the cruelty of
men who made their appearance daily at the Temple ser
vices and attempted in their folly and wickedness to flat
ter the great God with sacrifices, as if the smoke of their
offerings might keep Him from seeing the burdens which
they bound upon the poor and feeble. " Is it such a fast
that I have chosen ? " he cried with indignant wrath and
irony, " a day for a man to afflict his soul ? is it to bow
clown his head like a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth
and ashes under him ? Is not this the fast that I have
chosen ? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the
heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that
•ye break every yoke ? " And when the gentle Hezekiah
died he poured forth his tribute of lamentation : — not to
mourn for him ; for why should the old prophet mourn
for a good man removed, taken away from the evil to
come ? " He shall enter into peace " .- but yet it was
heavy on the patriot spirit to see that "The righteous
perisheth and no man layeth it to heart " and that now
once more is the time for "the sons of the sorceress" to
lift up their heads under the new reign, which is that of
a child, destined in his time to be one of the worst of
Judah's kings.
All these things does Isaiah remark in his seclusion
with a profound and indignant sorrow. Nor does he for-

i.] THE PROPHETS. 265
get his cry of " Woe to Babylon " nor the doom which he
has already so often denounced upon that still powerful
and splendid city, to which the seat of power of the
Assyrian empire was to be transferred, and whose final
action as the scourge in God's hand was yet to be carried
out against Jerusalem, from which the danger had been
averted by the destruction of Sennacherib, but only for
a time. The wonderful details of the destruction de
nounced upon Babylon, that come in, as if seen by a
gleam of lightning in the confused atmosphere of disas
ter — the iron gates unbarred, the two-leaved gates, a par
ticular also proclaimed by Nahum, with that sudden touch
of precision in the mist and rolling clouds of prophetic
rhapsody which recur so often — and the indication of
Cyrus by name as at once the destroyer of the Assyrian
power, and the deliverer of Judah — are so extraordinary
that it is only natural that critics to whom in their denial
of all that is supernatural this would be a deathblow,
should contend violently for a second Isaiah, not the
prophet we know but another, an equally great poet, but
without so much as a sign of his passage through the
crowd. These things, however, though they have so
much importance in history, are but accidental, so to
speak, the asides of the great revelation in which the old
prophet's1 whole soul is absorbed : which is that of the
Messiah, the King of Bighteousness, the Son of David,
of whom and for whom all the promises of the establish
ment of David's throne had been made. That glorious
prospect which rose upon him in the quiet of his age
while all the conflicts raged without, transported Isaiah
by times into those old fervours of prophetic ecstasy
which are so characteristic of his splendid manhood and
passionate height of inspiration. He who proclaimed
trouble and distress so often, who even in his promise
of immediate deliverance had not concealed a darker day

266 JERUSALEM. [chap.
to come, breaks forth anon into cries of joy that thrill
the air. Or if the reader pleases it is now the new
Isaiah, the poet of the restoration who speaks.
"Awake, awake ;
Put on thy strength, 0 Zion ;
Put on thy beautiful garments,
O Jerusalem, the holy city !
Shake thyself from the dust ;
Arise, 0 Jerusalem :
Loose thyself from the bands of thy neck,
0 captive daughter of Zion.
" How beautiful upon the mountains
Are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings,
That publisheth peace ;
That bringeth good tidings,
That publisheth salvation ;
That saith unto Zion,
Thy God reigneth !
" Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice ;
With the voice together shall they sing :
For they shall see eye to eye,
When the Lord shall bring again Zion.
" Break forth into joy,
Sing together,
Ye waste places of Jerusalem :
For the Lord hath comforted his people,
He hath redeemed Jerusalem.
" The Lord hath made bare His holy arm
In the eyes of all the nations ;
And all the ends of the earth
Shall see the salvation of our God."
By whom was this glory to come, this joy so far trans
cending everything that eye has seen or ear heard or
the heart of man conceived — not the salvation of Judah
alone but of all the ends of the earth, crowding round
her as the holy city ? It is by the King that shall reign
in righteousness, the new branch which shall spring out
of the root of Jesse, " My Servant " called by Jehovah,
"Him in whom my soul delighteth." And of what

i.J THE PROPHETS. 267
manner of being is this Holy One of Israel ? This is
what Isaiah asks, in vision, in high and wonderful poetic
musings, " searching," as St. Peter explained long after,
"what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which
was in him did signify." What did it signify ? Some
thing too strange for belief, too wonderful for the most
authentic vision. Was he but dimly conscious what it
meant ? did he believe it allegorical, a similitude, a spir
itual picture, not a fact to be verified in every detail?
or did he cry out like Peter and the rest, "Be it far
from thee, Lord ! " in the first anguish and comprehen
sion of what they meant, those wonderful words ?
" He is despised and rejected of men ;
A man of sorrows,
And acquainted with grief :
And we hid as it were our faces from him ;
He was despised,
And we esteemed him not.
"Surely he hath borne our griefs,
And carried our sorrows :
Yet we did esteem him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.
"But he was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities :
The chastisement of our peace was laid upon him ;
And with his stripes we are healed.
" All we like sheep have gone astray ;
We have turned every one to his own way ;
But the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
" He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
Yet he opened not his mouth :
He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter,
And as a sheep before her shearers is dumb,
So he opened not his mouth.
" He was taken from prison and from judgment :
And who shall declare his generation ?
For he was cut off out of the land of living :
For the transgression of my people was he stricken.

268 JERUSALEM. [chap.
"And he made his grave with the wicked,
And with a rich man in his death ;
Because he had done no violence,
Neither was any deceit found in his mouth.
' ' Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him ;
He hath put him to grief :
When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin,
He shall see his seed,
He shall prolong his days,
And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand."
When it burst upon Isaiah that this wonderful descrip
tion, rising line by line to his poet lips, concerned the
King, the Saviour, the God with us, of his own long-past
prophecy, did the old man fall upon his face before the
Lord and cry " Not so, not so ! " But the prophet has
no longer anything to say of himself. It is not his now
to undo the sandal from his foot and the sackcloth from
his loins until these things should come to pass. Par
off in the distance in times unknown lay this tragedy
so fully told, so unmistakable. "Abraham rejoiced to
see my day : he saw it and was glad." But was not
Isaiah rather glad that not to his eyes except in vision
should this anguish be ? Be it far from thee, Lord ! so
we should all have cried had we been in that secret.
What imagination of man could have dreamed of a
Deliverer like this ? And was it, perhaps, with some
vain human thought of averting that Sufferer's pain that
the old man at the end of his career flung up his arms
to heaven and cried as so many since then have done
after him " 0 that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that
thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might
dissolve at thy presence ! " Oh that thou wouldest so
burst forth upon the world in manifest majesty, in glory
that no man could gainsay, that the stubborn race might
be convinced once for all in spite of itself ! Who has
not consciously or unconsciously echoed that prayer ?
but not such are the ways of God.

i.J THE PROPHETS. 269
There is an old, old tree, supported by props of piled
stones, still standing near the waters of Siloam in the
valley of Hinnom, at the foot of Moriah — a hoary and
venerable tree like an old man in the last decrepitude
of age, under which, according to local tradition, Isaiah
was cruelly put to death by King Manasseh, the suc
cessor of the good Hezekiah — sawn asunder says the
legend. He must have been so old that, let us hope,
the hands of the executioners shook the feeble life out
of him before the atrocities began. Is the old mulberry-
tree the descendant of some tree that saw that terrible
deed accomplished ? for tradition is very tenacious in
those strange unchanging countries. At all events it
bears the most pathetic resemblance to the oldest of
conceivable old men — and as such may be accepted as
a natural monument to the old poet who has provided
us with many of the most glorious imaginations that
have ever passed through the mind of man, and whom
we have known in his impassioned youth and vehement
manhood as well as in his old age, a wonder and a splen
dour in the earth.
We might ask, supposing that Cyrus was added by an
anonymous contemporary, what hand pictured forth the
Man of Sorrows ? and how did even he, the imaginary
Isaiah of the captivity, know of that Divine Sufferer that
was to be — yet was not to be for many hundreds of years ?
Cyrus is a trifle in comparison. But this is no place for
vain argument.

CHAPTER II.

JEREMIAH.

APEEIOD of about sixty years elapsed between the
end of Isaiah's career and the beginning of that
of Jeremiah — a period in which there were the usual
vicissitudes, the fall, and the reaction which are so uni
versal in Jewish history. Manasseh, who had succeeded
to the throne as a child, became wildly profligate in his
manhood and adopted the most cruel and abominable
superstitions, until, presumably in his later years, trouble
came upon him, and the humiliation of being dragged to
Babylon in the train of the conqueror brought tardy con
viction and penitence to his heart. This foretaste of
the destruction that was to come would seem to have
sobered and startled the rulers of Israel : for Josiah his
grandson, after the brief reign of his son Anion, must
have been brought up in the fear of God, since his
earliest acts are those of reformation, a reformation more
thorough-going than any that had preceded it, and fondly
hoped, it would seem, to have been decisive : since the
idols, with the fierceness of a vengeance upon those
senseless things which is very human and natural, were
ground to powder, thus securing that they should never
be raised up again. Notwithstanding in the fourteenth
year of this good king's reign, while these reformations
were going on, the voice of warning was again raised in

ch. ii.] THE PROPHETS. 271
Jerusalem, and this time with a force which exceeded
all previous threatenings in the unbroken terror of its
denunciations, as the events about to take place exceeded
all others in their misery.
When Jeremiah began his prophecies Josiah his con
temporary was twenty-two, a young man strongly im
bued with religious feeling, and anxious to conform his
kingdom to the regulations of its ancient worship. Judah
however by this time shared the diminished condition
of every other little kingdom round, overshadowed by
the great Assyrian, and retaining its separate existence
only by his forbearance. It was diminished in prestige
if not in actual power : its borders had already been
devastated again and again, its frontier cities taken, and
its very capital visited by the conqueror. It would not
seem, however, that these disasters had seriously affected
the people, at least in a moral point of view. There
had, indeed, already arisen in that small stronghold and
sanctuary of national life among the hills, an Egyptian
party, hoping to find in that great powrer, itself just
springing into vigour again after defeat and humiliation,
an ally who could defend them, from the Assyrian : just
as there was in the Scotland of the Reformation an
English party much recommended by reason, but highly
objectionable to national feeling : the Egyptian party in
the former case being one to which the king himself
was strongly opposed.
At the same time there existed a still more visible con
flict, the struggle of the king to bring about such a revolu
tion of feeling as might still save his nation, but working
almost alone with the aid of a " clerical party," perhaps ;
though the priesthood, too, seems to have been supine, only
able to effectuate any reform by the initiative of the king
— and the country entirely indifferent to any such esoteric
way of defending itself, intent upon other methods, on get-

272 JERUSALEM. [chap.
ting more warlike races to fight its battles, on securing
by diplomacy its exemption from those evils which had
already overwhelmed so many little nations under its
eyes. King Josiah's idea that a reform of morals could
have any effect on the position of affairs was, no doubt,
folly and fanaticism in the eyes of his chiefs and cap
tains, as well as in those of the people generally, a
devout imagination worthy of the most benighted
times. No doubt they turned with contemptuous im
patience from such suggestions, which might suit the
old world, but were far too antiquated and arriere for
them, and lamented the Puritanism which occupied itself
with cutting down pleasant trees, and burning many
fine examples of Phoenician art in the way of deities,
when it ought to have been framing useful treaties and
making alliances of a profitable kind in preparation for
confronting the Assyrian. On the contrary Josiah, it
would seem, was faithful to the treaty made with the
Assyrian whose tributary Judah had been from the time
his grandfather, Manasseh, figured among the captive
kings at Babylon.
In those days a young priest of the highest rank — the
son of Hilkiah, the high priest, as generally believed —
very different in station and breeding from the other
prophets who had made the air resound with their out
cries in the former generations — a young man, no doubt
full of all the learning of the time ; was suddenly visited
by that mysterious impulse which like other breathings
of the spirit went where it listed, calling one here and
one there by an irresistible call. The young priest was
consecrated to God's service, yet not in so strange and
terrible a way — and diis spirit failed him when this
vocation came upon him. " Ah, Lord God ! behold, I
cannot speak : for I am a child," he cried. He had not
the innocent unconsciousness of the child-prophet in

n.] THE PROPHETS. 273
•the ancient tabernacle, the young Samuel who answered,
" Here I am " in the same simple faith to his master on
earth and his Master in heaven. Jeremiah, from his
youth, must have had a melancholy and troubled spirit,
feeling to the depths of his heart the uneasy condition
of all about him, the seething of all the disorderly ele
ments, the decomposition of the national life. He
shrank in his timidity and sadness from the terrible
task put upon him. He had not the splendid and fiery
eloquence of Isaiah, the impetus of genius and energy
which carried that prophet, swift and triumphant, to the
heights and depths of his subject whatever that might
be. And the rapid dramatic succession of terror and
deliverance, the parables, the songs, the visions, the
infinite variety of his predecessor were not his. He
could play but on one string, in one key, touching the
mournful notes of lamentation, descending to the deep
bass of despair, but rarely rising to any happier tone.
Indeed there was little to move him that way. The
sweep and impulse of the stream, nearing the rapids, the
growing velocity of a course which was always down
ward, and in which there was every day more certainty
that it could never now be arrested, was all around him
— and his message was the heaviest given to man, the
proclamation of opportunities lost and never to be re
covered, of judgment no longer to be averted, of pun
ishment beyond reprieve. Other1 prophets had amid all
their darkest auguries a gleam of light. It had still
been possible for the fated people to change their own
destiny, to turn aside disaster, to stay their own steps
in the evil way. But now the time of possibility was
almost over. " Gird up thy loins, and arise, and speak
unto them all that I command thee : be not dismayed at
their faces, lest I confound thee before them. For, be
hold, I have made thee this day a defenced city, and an

274 JERUSALEM. [chap.
iron pillar, and brazen walls, against the whole land,*
against the kings of Judah, and the princes thereof,
against the priests thereof, and against the people of
the land. And they shall fight against thee ; but they
shall not prevail against thee ; for I am with thee, saith
the Lord, to deliver thee."
What a charge was this for the trembling youth in his
linen ephod, with his timid habits of the cloister, so to
speak, the Temple courts, the service of the altars. All
against him — kings, and princes, priests, and people —
and he to stand and proclaim the anathema upon them
all ! " Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem." His
father, the high priest, head of that troubled hierarchy,
so often dismissed with obliquity, so often hastily brought
together again from their hiding-places, to reorganise the
national worship — with what terror he must have seen his
son separate himself from the other harmless neophytes,
thrust himself forward to the gaze and gape of the peo
ple defying all the powers that were ! Most likely the
office of the prophet was never a popular one : but how
much less popular now when there was nothing to say
but evil, nothing to promise but destruction. And it
was not enough that this chosen messenger of doom
should put down his predictions upon the parchment,
and write them on a roll. Not so easily as this, in the
quiet of his own chamber within hearing of the songs of
the Temple, with the soothing routine of religious rites
dividing the hours — was his task to be accomplished.
" Stand in the gate of the Lord's house, and proclaim
there his word, and say : Hear the word of the Lord all
ye of Judah, that enter in at these gates to worship the
Lord." Tl , whole scene comes before us in these words,
as all Jerusalem lay before him : the crest of Millo, the
town of David, the tomb upon the height that covered
the remains of Israel's greatest kings. Across the deep

n.] THE PROPHETS. 275
cleft of the valley under the Temple wall he could see
the steep streets pouring down their crowds towards the
gates and the open country beyond ; while across the
great bridges streamed the devout and the formal, and
the fringe of idlers and curious persons coming towards
the Temple. He was no orator, "behold, I cannot
speak." He had not the confidence of the wild herds
man from Tekoa in his sackcloth and sheepskin whom
nobody knew, and who might babble as he would to a
mob of strangers without any personal committal or
compromise. But Jeremiah was well known — the high
priest's son, a patrician youth, yet one of whom all might
say, how dared he to put himself forward, a mere boy,
presuming on his father's office, and on the favour of his
kinsfolk ? No wonder that he hesitated and held back :
— yet the impulse was too mighty to be resisted. "I
am pained at the very heart ; my heart maketh a noise
in me ; I cannot hold my peace: because thou hast heard,
O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war."
" Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem,"
cries the young envoy delivering the message of the
Lord, and throwing out his hands to those streets with
all their visible crowds, "and see now, and know, and
seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man, if
there be any that executeth judgment, that seeketh the
truth ; and I will pardon it." Once more the argument
of Abraham is brought forth, recalled in its impassioned
prayer and pleading to his descendants. "If ye can find
a man ... I will pardon it." " Surely," the prophet
replies in his pleading, " these are poor ; they are
foolish : for they know not the way of the Lord, nor the
judgment of their God. I will get me to.t^e great men,
and will speak to them ; for they have known the way
of the Lord, and the judgment of their God." But it is
a hopeless quest : as it was in Sodom and Gommorah
t2

276 JERUSALEM. [chap.
so it is now with Jerusalem. Even now, at this last
monient, the promise and the offer are repeated. If you
can find a man : — but the man is not to be found. Is
there, then, no longer the remnant, the seven thousand
who had not bowed the knee to Baal ? These remain
always, but hidden in the depths, in the secret places —
timid souls, perhaps, overcome by the tide of wicked
ness, without influence in the guidance of the people,
without courage or strength to strive against the over
whelming current. But the nation as a nation hurries
on, without thought of her high commission, her place
in the world, feasting in the gay despair of the epicurean
because there is no hope and to-morrow we die : or
striving in the eagerness of statesmanship at its wit's
end, to find some foreign prop against the invader : or
with a still more characteristic sordid instinct, the hun
ger of that grasping greed and love of acquisition which
was to be their reproach to the latest ages, spoiling
every man his needy friend, his starving brother to add
a little more to his guilty stores. Zedekiah, perhaps,
the last King of Israel, was one of that remnant, too
weak to stem the tide, sitting helpless in his palace,
sorrowfully extending a little private protection to the
prophet, unable to contend with the princes who sur
rounded him — a good man in all his innermost relations,
but not the Man : not one who could stand up strong
against a host, and hold the standard of justice and
truth. We are, however, when the prophet's mission begins,
still far from that tragic moment : and once more it is in
a time of partial prosperity that it is first proclaimed.
The young king had but lately made his reformation,
and in the restoration and clearing out of the Temple
the books of the law had been found. It is the opinion
of the critics, as has been said, in the elaborate system

ii. J THE PROPHETS. 277
of pious frauds by which they conceive the religion of
the Jews to have been instituted, that Jeremiah wrote
this book of the law, and that Hilkiah, the high priest,
found it where he had himself hid it, a fiction of the
most elaborate character, outdoing any simple device
of the kind that the world has known. There have
been such attempts made in our own century : but Mr.
Ireland who invented a new play for Shakespeare
had short shrift, and even the hapless Chatterton
though a poet could carry on his deception but a very
short time. But this trick was perfectly successful the
German gentlemen think, though Jeremiah must have
been still a youth, not recovered out of his first fright
and panic when he accomplished this great piece of
work if their guess was correct : besides being a young
cheat and dishonourable lad without any truth in him,
though his life was made, as we know, a misery to him
in consequence of his search for truth and denunciation
of falsehood. Such arguments, however, being only
those of nature and of all literary as well as human
analogy, have no effect upon the theory which is built
upon a foregone conclusion. But there is not the slight
est reason, according to nature and the sole record which
even touches upon the subject, to believe that Jeremiah
was a hypocrite and impostor, and that all his supposed
zeal for truth and purity was an elaborate falsehood, the
worst and most dreadful of lies. To think of such a
steadfastly maintained, never-avowed deception, in the
presence of that sad and persecuted man, oppressed by the
weight of his prophetic burden, struggling against it, re
monstrating with his God who had made him a messen
ger of woe, yet carried on by the impulse within him
which was more strong than all the rebellions of the flesh
—is a sin against every indication of humanity, a shame
ful wrong and insult to an honourable name. For there

278 JERUSALEM. [CHAr.
is neither prevarication nor sign of deceit in this sorrow
ful soul. He is not sympathetic like Isaiah, he does not
make the heart beat or the spirit rise. It is sometimes
a complaint of exquisite pathos which falls from his lips,
a lament that penetrates to the very soul ; but it is
always a lament, always a voice of sorrow with which he
speaks, touching the saddest minor keys, breathing
forth the melody of desolation, the hush, the faltering
dying notes of despair. It is true that he, too, knows of
the better hope, the Deliverer who is to come, the final
triumph : and here and there bursts forth into a solitary
shout of the great Branch of David, the King who shall
reign and prosper, whose name shall be called the Lord
our Bighteousness : but he has not the heart to dwell
upon that prospect. He knows of it to save him from
despair ; but his spirit has not elasticity enough to rise
to the height of a triumphant proclamation. He is made
to perform one symbolical act by buying a field from his
cousin, to prove his absolute faith in the return of the
captivity. And he proclaims over again the destruction
of Babylon with the same minute and vivid touches of
reality which we have already seen : but his first mes
sage is to his kindred, a message of woe.
When he stood in the gate — shortly after the res
toration of the Temple, it was the most tremendous
indictment which with his still tremulous uncertain
voice he proclaimed against Jerusalem, "Will ye," he
cries, always in the name of his Master, "steal, murder,
and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn in
cense to Baal, and walk after other gods whom ye know
not ; and come and stand before Me in this house, which
is called by My name, and say, We are delivered to do
all these abominations ? Is this house, which is called
by My name, become a den of robbers in your eyes ?
Behold, even I have seen it, saith the Lord." He re-

ii.] THE PROPHETS. 279
sumes with stern and simple details which bring before
us a sudden glimpse of the idolatrous city as if cut with
a diamond. " Seest thou not what they do in the cities
of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem ? The children
gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the
women knead the dough, to make cakes to the queen of
lieaven, and to pour out drink offerings to other gods,
that they may provoke Me to anger. Do they provoke
Me to anger ? saith the Lord : do they not provoke
themselves to the confusion of their own faces ? " The
stern gravity of the rebuke that follows, the sorrowful
indignation of the Almighty Spectator, before whom this
constant human mistake of His great intention is per
petually recurring, is in the highest tone of remon
strance, worthy the Divine speaker if ever human words
were. "For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded
them in the day that I brought them out of Egypt, con
cerning burnt offerings or sacrifices : but this thing com
manded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be
your God, and ye shall be my people : and walk ye in all
the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be
well with you."
How often had these remonstrances been made
already ? What to God were the cattle on a thousand
hills ? the smoke of their sacrifices was an offence to
Him being devoid of all meaning. What were these
rites, without the heart to understand and to obey ?
And now that the service of God was performed as if
He were one among many, to share the superstitious
observances of a people from whom all knowledge of a
spiritual worship had departed, the last word of warning
had been spoken. And now nothing but doom remained
behind. This doom it was Jeremiah's mournful mission to pro-

280 JERUSALEM. [chap.
claim without ceasing. It was not with his own will
that he did it. Again and again does he mourn his
cruel fate, cursing the hour that he was born, upbraiding
God himself for having put this yoke upon his shoulders,
with that wild audacity of suffering which breaks forth
so often in the weak. " 0 Lord, thou hast deceived me,
and I was enticed," i.e. to deliver this painful unwilling
message, he cries : '• thou art stronger than I, and hast
prevailed. I said I will not make mention of Him, nor
speak any more in His name. But His word was in
mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and
I was weary of forbearing, and I could not stay." Thus,
notwithstanding all dark looks, all threats directed
against him, and no doubt the restraints which his
respectable kindred both in Jerusalem and Anathoth
would attempt to enforce, nothing stayed the melancholy
messenger, who was there in all the assemblies of the
people, a shadow upon every brief rejoicing, an unyield
ing monitor monotonous in the continued warning,
which his melancholy countenance uttered even when
his voice was silent. Sometimes he calls upon the pas
toral people coming up to the markets with their produce
to abandon their tents and villages and collect in the
defenced cities : sometimes he describes the progress of
that fierce nation from the north coming up from Dan
with a snorting of horses, till the whole land trembles :
sometimes imitates the wild and confused cries of those
upon whom this sudden destruction falls : sometimes
describes in words of fire the desolate country without
inhabitants, the land lying waste, the silent evacuated
houses, the fields in which there is no voice of cattle
the streets from which every sound of life has fled.
" For the land shall be desolate." And sometimes as he
takes his stand not far from the Temple gates, whence
all the people coming and going must have heard the

ii.] THE PROPHETS. 281
voice which had become so familiar, Jeremiah pours
forth his lament with that individual voice, with that
strong cry of personal anguish, which is the most con
vincing of all.
" Oh that my head were waters,
And mine eyes a fountain of tears,
That I might weep day and night
For the slain of the daughter of my people !
" Oh that I had in the wilderness
A lodging place of wayfaring men ;
That I might leave my people,
And go from them !
For they be all adulterers,
An assembly of treacherous men."
It is no wonder, perhaps, that the men of Anathoth,
when the mournful prophet went down to his father's
farm and terrified the herdsmen and labourers with this
cry of evil to come, should have risen up against him :
nor is it wonderful that the authorities of Jerusalem
interfered to prevent the proclamation of the message,
not only at the gate of the Temple which even a cynical
non-believer or all-believer which was much the same
thing — would allow to be privileged ground : — but at the
city gates where the crowd resorted, by which the king
wrent and came, and even at the very palace doors where
his presence could not be ignored. If it were not that the
habit of hearing him brought in the indifference of famil
iarity, what could be so intolerable as that perpetual
promise of evil, " Except ye amend " : while to amend
was the last thing this doomed people thought of. They
had evidently made everything right as they thought
with God by giving Him his share with the others, the
lowing cattle, the bleating sheep, the smoke of the sacri
fice — coarse primitive worship, not so refined as that
gayer service of the queen of heaven to whom cakes and
dried offerings sufficed, but still an easy tribute enough

282 JERUSALEM. [chap.
to keep Him in good humour since that was what He
required. And this fellow for ever about the streets,
hindering every function of life, stirring up old supersti
tions among the common people, mutely assented to by
the devotees who shut themselves up in their houses
and took no share in public life — must have become in
supportable to the rulers of Jerusalem. He was a man,
too, of rank who could not be hustled away, the son of
an exalted personage, with many friends and connections
who, though they might not approve of him, would be
irritated by any disrespect paid to him. And it is easy
to imagine that the sight of his white figure in the
priest's dress, conspicuous amid the many-coloured
crowd, would be a sight at once exasperating and alarm
ing to every official. To see the passengers arrested
in the open space outside the gate, the country folk
open-mouthed with wonder, the ear even of the officer
of the guard himself caught by that voice : to trace him
through the streets to the convenient place where he
would pause and pour forth his burden, to know that no
hour and no place was safe from these continual inter
ruptions, must have been more than ordinary patience
could bear. If they hoped to make any lengthened
defence when the invasion did come, which everybody
knew must come, then these perpetual auguries of evil
would steal the very heart out of the defenders of Jeru
salem : if they desired to forget as long as possible the
inevitable danger, and to snatch a fearful joy from the
ominous tranquillity while it lasted, the sound of that
prophetic lamentation would disturb every feast. Who
could touch the careless viol and sing of love or war
when every passing breeze brought in the echo of that
other voice whose song Was nothing but woe ? who could
make up his books in peace, and lay aside his pledges,
and count his riches, while at his very threshold the

n.] THE PROPHETS. 283
prophet might be standing ? The wonder is not that he
was seized and punished at last, but that his freedom
from insult and injury lasted so long.
It is only after we have been made to hear the long
series of prophecies, modified, indeed, in word by the
repeated promise of salvation should repentance be
shown — which, however, the prophet does not expect in
his sorrowful experience of the temper and habits of his
people : and after we have seen him for years vaguely
appearing at city or at Temple gateway, proclaiming his
message : that he comes fully forth into the historical
record in a manner confusing indeed to the reader who
finds himself plunged into the quick recurring scenes
of a chronicle without chronology and full of broken
sequences, chapter xx. relating events which occurred
four years later than those that are set forth in chapter
xxvii., and so forth. The greater part of these melan
choly prophesies had been uttered, wonderful to imagine,
in the reign of the good King Josiah who had, no doubt,
used all the force of his influence and authority to bring
about the desired reformation, yet with little more effect
upon the people than to turn their idolatry into an en
larged pantheistic system, taking in the God of their
fathers as one among the crowd of deities who peopled
their harsh Olympus. But when Josiah, happily for
himself, found an honourable death in battle at Megiddo,
a new age, a changed cycle began. That king was the
last of the kings of Judah with any power or consistent
kingdom worthy of the name. Others had paid tribute
and acknowledged servitude. Josiah himself was prob
ably no better than a vassal of the Assyrian, and when
he rashly met the forces of Egypt did so in a chivalrous
fidelity to his bond, to stem the tide of that other great
empire which was threatening his suzerain. But after
him the whole economy of the Hebrew kingdom was in

284

JERUSALEM.

[chap.

solution : the young sons whom he had left behind to
meet the emergency were wholly unfit to face its diffi
culties, and probably the wisest and bravest of his coun
sellors and champions perished with him at Megiddo,
leaving Judah as Scotland was after Flodden, defence
less, at the mercy of the conqueror. The son who suc
ceeded him, Jehoahaz, not the eldest in age but probably
the child of a mother of superior rank, had a precarious
reign of three months during which time Pharaoh Necho
became master of the kingdom and city, exacted an
enormous indemnity, and dethroned and carried off the

FENCED CITIES. JEZREEL.

youth (old enough, however, at twenty-three to have
made a stand for his country had it been in him), raising
an elder brother under the name of Jehoiakim to the
insignificant throne. This period of trouble and misery
has little place in the record : no doubt the city was but
a scene of disorder, fugitives coming and going, the un
happy remnants of the army who had fled from Megiddo :
and conflicting, miserable discussions going on, whether
to attempt any resistance to the invader or to leave him
to enter at his will — which is evidently what was clone
in the want of any fit head or trustworthy defence. But
Jehoiakim had a little more promise, it would appear,
of stability : and sad though it must have been to see

"•] THE PROPHETS. 285
the captives who were led away in the train of the con
quering Pharaoh, the unfortunate young king and so
many of his princes and attendants as that potentate
chose, yet there must have been a great moment of relief
in the national breast when the last dark Egyptian band
disappeared, and the exhausted and bereaved country
was left a little to itself. What would the new king
do? Would he prove another Josiah and lead a more
effectual reformation ? Would he at last carry the people
back towards Him in whom the only hope of Israel lay ?
or would he relapse into the painful intrigues of a small
state toppling over towards destruction, clutching des
perately again at the skirts of Egypt, who was so little
like to confront the hordes of the north unless it served
her own purpose, to rescue any dependent principality ?
It must have very soon been proved to the eyes of
those who were eagerly on the lookout for any sign of
penitence that Jehoiakim had no heroic intentions. And
in the beginning of his reign, Jeremiah, silent for a time
as may be supposed in the grief of his heart, occupied
with the mourning for Josiah, chanting the lamentation
which he made over the fallen king, "the breath of our
nostrils, the anointed of the Lord," or unable to gain a
hearing in the anarchy of those three terrible months
before the Egyptians had marched away : comes forth
once more to the court of the Lord's house to address the
people coming up to worship and call upon them again
to repent. His message this time is like a stroke with
a spear, sharp, sudden, and penetrating. God commands
him not to diminish a word of the doom he is commissioned
to pronounce. Once more the opportunity is held out,
the call given to obedience and reformation. But "if ye
will not hearken," cries the prophet, throwiug forth his
arms towards the historic Temple, so often spoiled, so
often restored, polluted, and desecrated, yet by this time

286 JERUSALEM. [chap.
certainly the pride even of those who defiled it, a national
distinction and glory : " If ye will not hearken ... I will
make this house like Shiloh, I will make this city a curse
among all the nations of the earth." The crowd had no
difficulty in understanding his words. It was from
Shiloh that the Ark had been carried forth to procure,
like a fetish, the triumph of the Israelites, who had
come to look upon it as the heathens looked upon their
gods of wood and stone: it had been disastrously lost in
the lost battle : and Shiloh had become Ichabod, a place
from whence the glory had departed. This prophecy, so
appalling, so definite, so clearly comprehensible, pro
duced an immediate tumult in the crowd : they were no
longer under the sway of the pious King who protected
the prophets ; they were no longer afraid to raise their
voices or their heads in the presence of their victors.
Masters for the moment of their own city, free to do
what they would, with many an unsettled score of resent
ment against this prophet of evil, the first outcry of the
angry priests against him lit up the excitement of the
people into fury. How dared he to say that this house
should be as Shiloh ? The priests seized upon the auda
cious speaker, the angry crowd clustered round him.
" Death " was the universal cry, the fierce impulse of the
uncontrollable multitude, their first word as soon as they
had the power, as when hundreds of years later they cried
" Crucify him." The noise of the sudden tumult reached
the " princes," the secular authorities of the country, a,s
they came up from the king's house, perhaps from a
palace on the site of Solomon's palace within the enclos
ure of the Temple, perhaps from the city of David where
his ancient house had been : most probably the former,
where they would be near at hand and no tumult could
escape their notice. They went and took their seats in
the entry of the new gate, which was the eastern or sun

n.] THE PROPHETS. 287
gate, perhaps that now called the Golden Gate (so care
fully built up to prevent the entrance of Messiah, when
he comes in modern Mohammedan times) and called to
the rioters to bring the prisoner before them. What had
he done ? The priests answered with an outcry " He is
worthy to die ; for he hath prophesied against this city,
as ye (the cloud of witnesses round) have heard with
your ears." Jeremiah answered for himself, undaunted
before those grave judges in whose hands, at least, he
was safer than in those of the enraged mob. " The Lord
sent me to prophesy against this house and against this
people all the words ye have heard. Therefore now
amend your ways and your doings, and obey the voice
of the Lord your God ; and the Lord will repent Him of
the evil that He hath pronounced against you. As for
me, behold, I am in your hand : do with me as seemeth
meet and right to you."
When he had thus seized the opportunity to repeat his
message, he awaited, with a courage which could scarcely
have been looked for from his downcast and heavy spirit,
the decision of his judges, who were not always so merci
ful to him as now. They were, perhaps, alarmed at the
thought of how far the popular rage might go were it
to be permitted such a victim, and they pronounced the
prophet innocent : "for he hath spoken to us in the name
of the Lord our God." In this they were backed up by
certain " elders of the people," tribunes one may suppose
of the humbler sort, old men who had seen other such
sights, who reminded the crowd how Micah the Moras-
thite had prophesied in the days of Hezekiah that Zion
should be as a ploughed field and Jerusalem as heaps,
yet had not been silenced or punished, but on the con
trary turned many people to repentance. Was it some
old sage nearly a century old, at the last flicker of mortal
life, who came tottering through the crowd from where

288 JERUSALEM. [chap.
he had been sunning himself on the steps of the Temple,
to tell that tale, as a thing he could himself recollect ?
At all events Jeremiah's protectors were more powerful
than those who were against him and for the time he
went free.
After this events would seem to have followed each
other quickly in the prophet's life and in that of the
doomed nation. It was still early in Jehoiakim's reign
when Jeremiah was bidden to use for the first time the
symbolism so common with the prophets. His teaching
up to this time had been confined to words alone : now
he was to employ one of the most trenchant images ever
held forth as a picture before the eyes of the unlearned.
He was commanded to go down to the potter's house to
watch that most interesting and oldest of all industries.
So bold and so telling is the simile that it is impossible
to see now that operation, so little changed, the lump of
clay in the potter's hand, the flying rustle of his wheel,
the absolute power he has over his material, making one
vessel to honour and another to dishonour, without an
almost awe of the simple and beautiful labour so extraor
dinarily adapted to the metaphor, more conspicuous and
convincing than any force of words, the oldest of all
human crafts, which no new invention has ever done
away with. The potters carried on their labours in the
opening of the valley towards the south where Hinnom
and Jehoshaphat join. Was this local habitation perhaps
a relic of the time when the Phoenicians formed their
colony at Siloam, bringing with them all the plastic arts ?
for the sheds of the potter must have filled the declivity
at the foot of the village on its rocky shelves. To be
sure the art of the potter is too primitive and universal
to be introduced by strangers, and the presence of the
necessary clay and the pools close at hand are enough
to account for the workshops on that particular spot.

ii- J THE PROPHETS. 289
Jeremiah must have come from the Temple, probably
by that new gate where he had just been tried for his
life, and down the slopes of Moriah to where pleasant
Kedron ran in the bottom of the valley, and followed the
stream to the southern end where Absalom's tower rose
up to point the way. No doubt there were devout fol
lowers who would not miss a movement of the prophet,
who would point to each other the way he had taken and
go after him : and no doubt also angry enemies eager to
catch him in his talk, and devoted in hate as the others
in love to every trace of his footsteps. There could be
no more pleasant walk about Jerusalem than that path
by the purling of the little river under the olive-trees :
Olivet rising gently green on one side, the slopes of
Moriah crowned with the fortifications and the shining
roofs and towers of temple and palace, on the other.
But it is scarcely possible that Jeremiah can have had a
great audience in that spot so far out of the town. His
sad musing would be half to himself, a conning over,
perhaps, of the lesson to be proclaimed after to the peo
ple in their throngs at the public gate : but it was
impressed upon the memories of these few followers by
the significant vision, the symbolical work carried on
before their eyes.
" 0 house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this pot
ter ? saith the Lord. Behold, as is the clay in the potter's
hand, so are ye in My hand, 0 house of Israel." While
he mused and spoke he must have become aware of the
other followers, not those of love, who whispered together
in their indignation, listening keenly to make his words
an occasion of ruin and destruction to him, thrusting
their heads over the shoulders of Baruch and his com
panions that they might hear everything, and hurry with
their report of treachery to the king. Did Jeremiah
take up the earthenware bottle from where the potter

290 JERUSALEM. [chap.
had thrown it, with its twisted neck or imperfect form
unfit for use, and look back to call " the ancients of the
people, and the ancients of the priests " the old men born
in better days, who most probably were his friends and
the salt of Israel, to witness this final sign of doom ? or
had they by this time heard where he was and divined a
more than usually important message, and come out
after him drawing with them the usual accompaniment
of the idle crowd, till the valley was filled with the
representatives of the nation, those who were of much
importance and those who were of none, all eager to
hear what he wrould say ? Jeremiah was well aware
that half of his listeners at least were hostile to him :
but that made no difference to the message which he
pointed so emphatically. The spot near which he
stood was already accursed ground, for the potters' huts
were at but a small distance from Tophet, the lowest
point of the valley, the place in which Israel had most
horribly and cruelly sinned, the hell on earth where
Moloch's bloody altars had stood, and the children had
been passed through the fire. Here where " the blood of
innocents " had been poured forth filling the place with
horror, should destruction and murder come. "This
place shall no more be called Tophet, nor the valley of
the son of Hinnom, but the valley of slaughter." Dread
ful enough was the former name, a synonym for the
darkest hell, the bottomless pit : but more dreadful still
would be the dark valley when filled with the dishon
oured dead, the slain whom the soldiers of Babylon
would leave in heaps, and whom the miserable remnant
left would have no power to bury, who would be con
sumed by wild beasts and vultures within sight of their
homes. The valley of slaughter ! dark Aceldama with its
shadows of tombs, a fatal slope which even now seems
to repulse the sunshine, the potter's field to be bought

u.J THE PROPHETS. 291
thereafter with the price of blood, frowned upon them
where they stood to listen : and no doubt many a dread
memory of scenes already witnessed there came back to
every man's recollection. And then the prophet dashed
the bottle from his hands upon the stones, shattering it
in a hundred pieces, startling every careless ear, if care
less ears were there, even in that eager assembly, to
attention. "Even so will I break this people and this
city, as one breaketh a potter's vessel, that cannot be
made whole again." The symbol was stronger still than
that of the clay which the potter could still, while it was
unbaked, mould into a better shape, crushing it in his
hands, moistening and softening it to be capable of
another form. But the spoiled thing out of the furnace
was capable of no amendment : to dash it to pieces
against the stones was all that could be done, it was
good neither for ornament nor use.
After the fervour and passion of this dreadful message,
weary with the long course from the city, the lingering
about those huts, the awe and terror of the vision which
rose before his eyes as he proclaimed it, the effort of
utterance : Jeremiah would return slowly to the gate and
mount the green ascent, or the long flights of steps
towards the Temple, in which, no doubt, was the cham
ber, among the dwellings of the priests, where he lived.
But the crowd had melted before him, and many a light-
footed messenger had already reached the courts above
to carry news of this last offence of so many, this crown
ing and unequivocal insult to the kingdom and the hier
archy, and all that was powerful in Judah, to the author
ities there. So bold an image of destruction had never
been ventured upon before. It was a thing to strike the
imagination of the least instructed, who might gape at
the prophet's words and form to themselves some dis
torted idea of his meaning as is the habit of the igno-
u2

292

JERUSALEM.

[chap.

rant, but who could not mistake the simplicity and force
of that sign. The high priest, perhaps, was absent, per
haps unwilling to interfere with the son of his prede-

THE VALLEY OF JEHOSHAPHAT: ASCENT BY MORIAH.

cessor, a kinsman and member of the same privileged
class as himself : but the second in rank, the deputy high
priest, Pashur, the son of Immer, was too deeply horrified
and affronted to stand on any such formula. He came
out, no doubt, to see the train that followed Jeremiah

n.J THE PROPHETS. 293
from the valley, in hot indignation, but made no move
ment until the prophet paused again "in the court of
the Lord's house" and began to repeat his prophecy.
" Behold, I will bring on this city all the evil that I have
pronounced against it." Then the priest could contain
himself no longer. He gave the order to seize and pun.
ish the prophet of woe. "Then Pashur smote Jeremiah."
This would apparently indicate that, transported by a
passion of resentment to hear himself and all the ruling
party thus defied, he inflicted not only the shame of the
stocks but the punishment of the lowest offender, the
forty stripes save one, upon his fellow-priest, his kins
man whose natural rank was among the highest in Judah.
If as appears it was the nephew or brother of Jeremiah
who was the high priest at the time, the fury of his
deputy is the more extraordinary, though, perhaps, not
altogether without justification : since when this strange
scene occurred the force of Nebuchadnezzar was approach
ing, and it might well have been supposed an offence
against every instinct of patriotism thus to dishearten
the possible defenders of the city. It might be, indeed,
that Pashur's rage was wholly politic, and that it was a
strong measure to discredit Jeremiah with the common
people who had been so deeply impressed by the parable
of the potter's vessel that was intended, rather than any
vengeance upon himself.
This, however, was the end of the first portion of
Jeremiah's career. Was it while he sat or stood, fixed
in that pillory of disgrace through the falling of the day
and the long hours of the night, exposed to every scoff
and scorn that vulgar malice could put upon him, he
who had been born to respect and honour — with his face
turned towards that peaceful little Anathoth where his
youth had been spent, but in which now his countrymen
and friends of boyhood, the village folk amid whom he

294 JERUSALEM. [cHAr.
ought to have had a shelter from persecution, had turned
against him and conspired to kill him — tjhat his musings
took the form of the bitterest self-pity and almost com
plaint against his God ? "0 Lord, Thou hast deceived
me ! " What words more bitter and terrible could come
from mortal lips. So said Elijah when driven into the
wilderness, standing at the opening of the cave which,
in all the country he had served and loved, was his sole
refuge. "It is enough; 0 Lord, now let me die, for I
am not better than my fathers." "Cursed be the day
wherein I was born," cries the later prophet. The
ribald crowd has been about him, smiting his cheek,
pulling his beard, spitting upon him, pouring out jibe
and insult. And when they disperse to their rest every
man to his house, and the prophet is left alone in the
chill and darkness with every limb aching and every
hope giving way, his courage, too, deserts him and he
feels that he can bear no more. Many a man can endure
suffering whose heart sinks at the touch of shame : and
here was both. Jeremiah was a man whose mind was
full of the poetry of Israel, the literature of his country ;
and, no doubt, the story of Job, the saddest book upon
record except his own, came now to his recollection. He
went over his whole career in the silence of those dread
ful night watches, his call to the prophetic office, his
first disappointment and deception in finding that the
message he had to proclaim was met with derision and
mockery, his attempt to keep silence, the fire in his
bones, till he became "weary with forbearing, and could
not stay," the rising up of angry listeners to report him
as a speaker of evil. " All my familiars watched for my
halting." While all these miserable thoughts circle in
his mind, and every earthly hope melts from him, there
suddenly sweeps through him a breath of strong conso
lation driving them all before it. " The Lord is with me

n.] THE PROPHETS. 295
as a mighty terrible one " : a thought which in the midst
of his trouble, in the darkness of his abandonment all
shamed and suffering as he is, makes him break forth
into a sudden burst of joy, " Sing ye to the Lord, praise
ye the Lord : for he hath delivered the soul of the poor
from the hands of evildoers." Did the watchman on the
walls hear this sudden cry in the night and come down
to listen — overawed by the victim's triumph, and, per
haps, not knowing that when that momentary shout had
died on the night air, the heart of the lonely man sank
again in his bosom, and in a despondency as sudden and
instinctive he cursed the day that he was born ?
Por a long time after this Jeremiah appeared no more
in Jerusalem. He had filled the office of a prophet or
rather of the prophet of the time for more than twenty
years. That there were other prophesyings going on
during this period is evident and referred to again and
again, some of them, as those of Urijah of whom there
is a confused acount, whom Jehoiakim pursued to Egypt
and killed, following in the footsteps of Jeremiah ; some
like Hananiah taking the other side, promising victory
and deliverance, false prophets whom he never hesitated
to denounce and upbraid. Nay, Pashur himself who
inflicted upon him so much pain and contumely, would
seem to have been one of those fair-weather prophets,
flattering king and people with false hopes. But of all
these busy and conflicting voices we know none, except
that of the great prophet of doom, the one poet-seer
whose utterances bring the very atmosphere of fate, the
confusion and trouble of the city in peril, the conflicting
counsels, the hesitation and tumult, before our eyes.
Where it was that Jeremiah found refuge after that
terrible night of dismay we have no indication. " I am
shut up : I cannot go into the house of the Lord," he
says, but no more. He who had been safe for so many

296 JERUSALEM. [chap.
years under the protection of King Josiah, and the pres
tige of his own father's name, it is very possible that the
ignominy of his present position was more than he could
bear. His ministry had in some measure changed even
before this turning-point. From the beginning of the
reign of Jehoiakim he had been a man discountenanced,
to whom other methods than those of argument and
exhortation were necessary. He had been forced to
adopt the symbolical teaching which had been common
to Isaiah and the other prophets, the language of signs
and pictures, and that of a most forcible kind. He had
put a yoke upon his own neck and bonds on his limbs
as a symbol of the subjection which was to come not
only upon Judah but upon all the surrounding nations.
He had brought up the Eechabites out of their dwelling
and offered them wine in order to show by the contrast
of their faithfulness to their ancestor's command how
unreasonable was the disobedience of the Hebrews. And
last and most telling of all, he had broken the potter's
vessel, the bottle of brittle earthenware, to show how
the kingdom of David was to be dashed to pieces on the
very stones which formed its foundations. Was not
this of itself an evidence that his audience had ceased to
be the instructed and superior classes, and had come to
consist more and more of the mere multitude who would
not have understood his addresses, but who comprehended
as by a flash of lightning the primitive language of sign
and parable? And was not he himself at the gate,
standing fixed in that disgraceful pillory, a sign above
all others, a testimony that Israel would not hear, nor
God's people consider, that the time of teaching, of
warning, of reformation was past, and that nothing now
but the fulfilment of all his terrible prophecies remained.
Yet one effort more, however, had to be made. Proba
bly Jehoiakim himself, at least since he became king,

ii.] THE PROPHETS. 297
had heard but little of what Jeremiah had to say. It is
true that the prophet had been commanded on more than
one occasion to stand at the gate by which the king went
out and came in, probably where he still sat to administer
justice on set occasions according to primitive custom.
But of all persons in the world a king can escape most
easily from what he does not wish to hear, and either the
prophet might be hustled away or the king break up the
session to escape from that persecuting voice. Thus
there was yet one individual in Jerusalem to whom it
might be supposed that the warning and appeal to repent
ance, and the promise that was invariably attached to a
change of life, had not fully come. Jeremiah was there
fore instructed to write all his previous prophecies in a
roll, so as to keep a definite record of God's purpose
before the eyes of the nation : " It may be that the house
of Judah will hear all the evil that I purpose to do unto
them : that they may return every man from his evil
way, that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin."
"The roll of the book" in which Jeremiah was to write
his prophecies is one of the most primitive forms of -liter
ature : yet it exists to this day, not only in ancient man
uscripts, such as that preserved at Shechem, but in the
books used in the Jewish synagogue, where, I believe,
the roll, wound upon two strong pieces of wood and
enclosed in a case, is still the form under which the law
and the prophets are read in the public service. The
parchment was accordingly procured and prepared, and
Jeremiah's attendant and companion Baruch began to
write " from the mouth of Jeremiah " we are told, though
probably with the aid of various scattered transcriptions
of what had from the beginning of his career fallen from
his lips. In what place of refuge this work was carried
on, whether in the cave outside the northern wall of the
city, which is still called the Grotto of Jeremiah, or in

298 JERUSALEM. [chap.
some humble house at Anathoth or other shelter, we are
not told; but at all events, while it was going on the
prophet and his devoted secretary must have had an
interval of seclusion and peace.
In the meantime, while these last most significant and
momentous utterances were being collected events had
happened outside, of the highest importance, and which
gave to them all a double force of meaning. Nebuchad
nezzar, who had just won the battle of Lachmish against
the Egyptians, and once more cowed and broken that great
power, bringing dismay to all in Jerusalem who had
trusted to an alliance with Egypt for their preservation —
had passed by Jerusalem on his way back to the north,
exacting yet more tribute, a tribute not only of money
but of men, and carrying away with him a certain number
of captives : among whom were some youths and children
of royal race, especially Daniel and his companions.
This visit, though it would not seem to have implied any
fighting or to have been of a cruel character — for the great
conqueror meant no harm to his young captives, whom
he placed about his own person and advanced to much
promotion and honour — must have been a symbolical les
son even stronger than those administered by Jeremiah,
and have given to his utterances the very sharpest point,
the most vivid justification. It was probably after this
visit that the prophet put a yoke upon his own neck to
show the complete subjugation which was ordained for
his people, and broke the bottle in the valley of Hinnom.
The city was yet all agitated by the passage of the con
quering army, the country torn asunder by different plans
for resisting him if he should come again, and by specu
lations whether Egypt, crushed by such a blow, was still
fit to be trusted to, or if she were not more than ever the
bruised reed incapable of affording any support, which
the mocking Assyrian had long ago declared her to be.

n.J THE PROPHETS. 299
But no party, we may well believe, advocated as Jere
miah did, the policy of throwing aside all unavailing
resistance, and rendering full submission to the invader.
It was not a patriotic policy at the first glance. But we
may believe, at the same time, from the evidence, at once
in these same prophetic addresses, and in the national
records which point to a state of utter disorganisation
and incompetence, that Jerusalem was quite unfit to offer
any serious resistance, and that any feeble and hopeless,
if still fierce and desperate, stand she could make would
result only in deeper downfall and overthrow.
It was in these circumstances then that the roll was
prepared and written. Jeremiah was " shut up" in hid
ing, perhaps, or at least in close retirement, avoiding
publicity. When the writing was complete Baruch
took the roll and went up to the Temple. There had
been a fast proclaimed, a day of humiliation, most prob
ably on the occasion of that visit of Nebuchadnezzar, as
soon as the conqueror's back was turned. And what so
fit for such an occasion as the repetition of those impas
sioned addresses in which deliverance and safety were
still promised as the recompense of a real and univer
sal repentance. Baruch went first to that new gate in
which so many of the incidents of this mournful drama
took place, going into "the chamber of Gemariah the
son of Shaphan the scribe, in the higher court," a room
which must have opened upon the gateway, either on a
level with the stream of people coming and going, or, per
haps, over the arch of the portal. It was at " the entry
of the new gate " which all the worshippers went through :
and no doubt the sight of the Babylonian armies which
had passed there, only as it were the other day, and of
Nebuchadnezzar himself, the great conqueror, had deeply
impressed the mind of the crowd — as well as that sight,
more moving than any threat however terrible, of the

300 JERUSALEM. [chap.
train of captives following his steps, and among them
the royal boys, descendants of good King Hezekiah to
whom this very misfortune had been prophesied. It
would seem that Gemariah to whom the room belonged
was absent in attendance on the king; and when his
son Michaiah heard the nature of the prophecies which
Baruch was reading he hurried down to the king's house
to inform his father and the other great men of the
court what was being done. It is extraordinary that
these prophecies which had been spoken by the prophet
himself again and again at this same gate, and many
other places all over Jerusalem, should now be treated
as a new and alarming thing. One wonders if the
princes of Judah had become accustomed to the sight of
him and passed him lightly by as a man half mad in his
inspiration, too wild and far astray from common life to
call for serious attention — and if this sudden appearance
of a book read aloud as if it were a sacred Thora, a book
of the law, startled them as by something more weighty
not to be neglected ? A book is a thing imposing to the
ignorant even now when there are so many : and in
those days was, no doubt, looked upon with awe which
no mere speech or utterance would inspire. The startled
rulers sent immediately for Baruch that they might hear
what it was that he read in the hearing of the people.
Probably the appearance of Baruch, a well-known man
of important position, as the exponent of the prophet's
views, increased the effect of this new and alarming de
parture — as the appearance of a philosopher of known
name and acquirements, as the convert and interpreter
of certain developments of what is called spiritualism,
produced a temporary sensation iu our own day. But
even this is strange enough, for Jeremiah, too, was a
well-known person, not a nobody, and they must have
both seen and heard him on many occasions. However

ii.] THE PROPHETS. 301
this may have been, Baruch was sent for, and when he
had read his book (which probably contained but a
chosen few of the prophecies of Jeremiah) to this grave
assembly, their conclusion was that the king must be
informed. " Tell us now, how didst thou write all these
words ? " they asked. Then Baruch answered them :
"He pronounced all these words unto me with his
mouth, and I wrote them with ink in this book." The
grave men, concerned aud troubled as by a serious mat
ter heard for the first time, appear to us like a picture
surrounding the young scribe with anxious looks, dis
turbed beyond measure by what they had heard, not
knowing how the king might take it. Was it really
possible that they had never heard the prophet's mes
sage before ? There was evidently no hostile feeling in
their minds to the authors of these utterances. " Go,
hide thee, thou and Jeremiah," they said, "and let no
man know where ye be."' Whatever happened they
were anxious at least to save the bold men who had thus
proclaimed God's approaching judgments. This troubled
conclave gives us no impression of an obdurate and im
penitent race like those continually visible in the pas
sionate addresses of the prophets. They would seem to
have been unmistakably impressed by what they heard,
almost one would imagine agreeing, acknowledging the
truth of it in their hearts, anxious that the king should
hear it as a matter of public importance, and presenting
the still more curious aspect of never having heard it
before. Its effect, however, upon the king was very different.
When the counsellors with evident seriousness and alarm
had reported to him something of the purport of this new
book he sent one of his attendants to bring the roll : and
here again we have a glimpse of the interior of life as it
was led in Jerusalem in those days. The king was in

302 JERUSALEM. [chap.
" his winter-house," no doubt the southern rooms fully
exposed to the sunshine, looking over the fortifications
of the Temple enclosure to the network of ascending

ANCIENT MANUSCRIPT AT SHECHEM.

and descending paths, the intricate lines of height and
hollow that stretch out towards Bethlehem. In the
middle of the room stood the large open vessel which we
call a brazier, filled either with smouldering charcoal or

n.] THE PROPHETS. 303
with the purer fire of wood embers glowing red. The
king sat near this centre of warmth while the courtier
stood up and read. There would be some such stand as
those now used for the Koran to support the heavy roll.
But Jehudi had not read above " three or four leaves "
when the king snatched it from him, and drawing a knife
from his girdle, divided the parchment with a stroke and
threw the pieces upon the fire, " until all the roll was
consumed." Three of the princes, Elnathan (who would
seem to have been the king's father-in-law) and Delaiah
and Gemariah attempted by their entreaties to restrain
him, but without effect : the other courtiers would seem
to have been released from their terrors by the king's
audacity and indifference for " they were not afraid, nor
rent their garments," when this sacrilegious act was
done, and the last warning thus rejected with contumely.
An order to arrest Baruch and Jeremiah followed, but
the counsellors, as has been said, had happily foreseen
the possibility of this, and recommended them to seek
some secure refuge. " The Lord hid them " we are told,
so that Jehoiakim's rage was of no effect. It called
forth a denunciation of a dishonoured death to himself
without burial, the most dreadful doom that could be
threatened ; but except that in none of the records of
his death is there any mention, as is usual, where he is
laid, or any description of his funeral, we have no de
tails as to the fulfilment of this prediction.
Jeremiah and his attendant, however, disappeared
from that ever-darkening scene. Did they travel forth,
two sad pilgrims, to visit those of the first captivity in
Babylon? The curious story of the girdle which Jere
miah was bidden to hide in a rock by Euphrates looks
like this. But at all events they disappeared and no
man knew or could tell where they had gone. In their
seclusion, wherever it was, the work which Jehoiakim

304 JERUSALEM. [chap.
had destroyed was done over again. It was a serious
matter in those days to destroy a book of which only
one copy existed : but even then it was a futile effort.
The prophet repeated in the enforced leisure of his
banishment all that he had before dictated to his secre
tary, "and there were added besides many like words."
Then, as now, it was the most vain attempt that could
be made to crush the literature by which, and more then
even than now, a nation lives. For what should we
have known of Jerusalem any more than we know of
Edom, or Ammon, or Moab, but for Jeremiah and his
friend? A painfully deciphered stone, the triumphant
record of one man's doings, calls forth the wonder and
curiosity of the whole world, while the living record of
how men looked and talked and acted in all the recog-
niseableness of their humanity, is our legacy from the
Hebrews : over which naturally, it being so infinitely
more important, we make no such commotion, receiving
it calmly : or suggesting that it is, perhaps, all an inven
tion, and that no such angry king, no such anxious coun
sellors ever were.
The chronology of the after-part of Jeremiah's life is
confused and bewildering, and the reader has to follow
from page to page in doubt and difficulty, now finding
himself in the time of Jehoiakim, now with a leap in
the midst of the last reign of all, that of the troubled
and kind, but not powerful, Zedekiah — now back again
once more among the princes who were favourable,
under the young king who was not so. The historical
record of the period is very brief and not very clear.
Whether Jehoiakim died in some popular tumult in the
despair of the people at the approach of the Babylonian
hordes, or was taken prisoner by Nebuchadnezzar in
some sally, and perished so outside the walls in neglect
and despair, it is impossible to tell. Nothing is said of

"¦] THE PROPHETS. 305
the actual manner of his death. He was "bound in
fetters to be carried to Babylon" we are told in the
book of Chronicles. But he never was taken there
and disappears from history with an abruptness that
implies some sudden calamity. And either in the mid
dle of the siege or at some moment of relief when
Nebuchadnezzar was perhaps ocoupied with another
town, without, however, giving up his blockade of Jeru
salem, Jehoiakim's young son Jeconiah or Jehoiachin
was placed on the unstable throne, in his early youth —
at eighteen, as is said in one record, at eight in the
other, but the former would seem to be the most likely
age — and reigned, if reign it could be called, with a
powerful enemy without the gates, and a disheartened
and starving population within, for three weary and
troubled months, a lifetime, no doubt, of anxiety and
trouble. At the end of this time the boy or his mother
or his counsellors took the wise step, recommended by
the prophet, of going out to Nebuchadnezzar and giving
up the futile resistance which could lead to nothing but
further misery. This submission would seem to have
terminated the siege for the time at least. And young
Jehoiachin accompanied by the best of his kingdom, ten
thousand captives, princes and mighty men of valour,
and the most skilful of the craftsmen — the smiths being
especially mentioned, so as to cripple in the most effectual
way any further resistance on the part of the remnant
left in the city — was carried away to Babylon, where
long after the boy-king, who had done what little was
possible to shorten the agony of his people, had a peace
ful end in honour and comparative well-being.
The city was left in miserable plight when all its best
and strongest men were thus drafted away : — the famished
crowds that remained were perhaps too eager for the
chance of food and some relief from their sufferings, to

306 JERUSALEM. [chap.
feel as they otherwise would have done the desolation of
so many houses, in which some hapless old man or dis
tracted mother only was left where the pride of the race
had been : and that the sound of the anvil was silenced,
and all the implements of skill thrown aside. Thus
Jerusalem was left, deprived of all that was important
or serviceable in her population. No doubt Nebuchad
nezzar had an eye to the advantage of his own dominions
in carrying off the ablest of the craftsmen, as well as to
the diminishing of Hebrew capacity and power. Before
he withdrew his vast army from the surrounding country
the conqueror set up a vassal king over the remnant that
was left, one of the remaining sons of the great Josiah,
Zedekiah, the last actual king of Jerusalem. He was
young also, not much older than his dethroned nephew,
twenty-one only — though, of course, that age means
greater maturity in an Eastern climate than in ours.
The historians of Kings and Chronicles, in whose brief
records there would seem a hurry as of heart-sickness
and unwillingness to recall the circumstances of that
darkest spot in their national history, give but a rapid
summary of his reign, describing him as having done
what was evil in the sight of the Lord according to all
that Jehoiakim had done. But the story which is
mingled with Jeremiah's prophecies, gives a fuller con
temporary portrait, and one in which the part of Zede
kiah has a subdued and saddened interest. He was
young, probably in the distraction of the times with
little training and adaptation for his difficult task, a
younger son taken from among the crowd to be advanced
to this painful eminence : and his princes who remained
must have been either like himself, unconsidered scions
of the great houses of Jerusalem, or mere officials not
important enough in the eyes of Nebuchadnezzar to be
carried away. Of all the names of the high officers of

ii.] THE PROPHETS. 307
the court who stood round Jehoiakim, with troubled
faces, when Jeremiah's roll was brought before him,
there is none left but Gemariah .- though the sons of two
or three of these men are mentioned as might be expected.
The high priest, the scribes, almost all the officials are
changed. The Pashur who comes to Jeremiah from the
king is another Pashur from him who set the prophet in
the stocks. And it may easily be imagined if the serious
men, bred under King Josiah and with all the great'
traditions of his reign, were unable to hold head against
the invader, how much less able these inexperienced
rulers must have been. Jeremiah's unflattering parable
of the two baskets of figs, the one very good the other
" very naughty, which could not be eaten, they were so
bad," as symbols of the portion of Judah which had
been carried away and that which remained, sets forth
in the most uncompromising manner the change that had
taken place, and was not likely, it need not be said,
to endear him to the new men who had the power in
their hands.
Notwithstanding, the young king, when he found that
the prophet had come back to the city in the confusion
of that evil time, showed no trace of having inherited his
brother's rage against him. On the contrary he at once
acknowledged his mission and importance. Though he
might have as little inclination as his predecessor to
listen to Jeremiah's message, he had a reverence, per
haps born of' fear, for himself. And the new rulers of
Jerusalem, humbled as they were, had not abandoned
the hope of doing something yet to help themselves.
Pharaoh's army had again appeared out of Egypt, and
its appearance in the distance had been the cause of the
departure of the Babylonians. This was enough to give
a spring of renewed hope to the city even in the midst
of its abasement. And Zedekiah sent a deputation from
x2

308 JERUSALEM. [chap.
his palace to the prophet to ask his prayers and his
advice. "Pray now unto the Lord our God for us."
Was it superstition rather than devotion that inspired
this embassy, as Balak had sent to Balaam to curse the
Israelites ? Did those unfortunate rulers of the doomed
and impoverished place hope that if Jeremiah could but
be got to change his mind all would go well ? Was it
rather as a fetish than as an exponent of God's will that
they sought him ? If so they were most quickly un
deceived. The prophet after his wanderings, after the
horrors of the siege and the captivity, the fulfilment of
so many of his predictions, was not likely to be persuaded
into other views by any embassy. His message even
was scarcely tempered by the offer of a place of repent
ance. "Deceive not yourselves," he says, "saying the
Chaldeans shall surely depart from us : for they shall
not depart." It must have been with anger and disap
pointment that the baffled envoys withdrew.
And certainly Jeremiah's behaviour was not concilia
tory. He would seem to have gone about, with the gir
dle round him which had been " marred" in the rocks by
the Euphrates, and with that yoke on his neck which he
had made as a symbol of the yoke of Babylon, and which
was the occasion of a curious scene in the Temple when
a certain Hananiah of Gibeon, one of the sons or school
of the prophets, seized and broke the yoke with a false
prediction that the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar would thus
be broken in two years. The parable of the two baskets
of figs has been already referred to. And when the
messengers of Zedekiah were sent to Babylon with the
tribute money Jeremiah charged them (one being his
friend Gemariah) with a letter to the captives in which
he exhorted them to entertain no hopes of speedy deliv
erance, but on the contrary to settle themselves in their
captivity, making the best of it, conforming as far as

n-] THE PROPHETS. 309
they could to the customs of their captors. " Seek the
peace of the city whither I have caused you to be car
ried away captive, and pray unto the Lord for it : for
in the peace thereof shall ye have peace." He adds,
"for after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I
will visit you, and perform my good word toward you,
in causing you to return to this place." Seventy years !
too long a period to give hope to any living man to see
that return. How much more pleasant must it have
been to believe the voice of the flattering prophet who
promised deliverance in two ! It would not be in nature
to expect that the heart of the people, always longing to
believe what it wished, should not have preferred Hana
niah to Jeremiah. And how the hearts of those who
sat down by the waters of Babylon and wept as they
remembered Zion must have sunk within them when the
letter was read ! and yet it was the best advice that
could be given to them, and was evidently taken by
many, since such glimpses as we have of the captive
Jews in Babylon describe a number among them as rich
and prosperous men.
It is not to be wondered at, however, that the authorities
in Jerusalem should look out eagerly for any opportunity
of sequestrating from the sight and hearing of their dis
turbed and despondent people such an image and messen
ger of trouble as this uncompromising prophet. Every
appearance of him in the streets or at the gates of the
Temple with his mildewed girdle and his yoke, must
have been as a picture to the populace of mournful mean
ing, though he might never open his mouth; and at
length the opportunity came. The next scene occurs
at the moment when Nebuchadnezzar, having found his
puppet Zedekiah as rebellious and ready to conspire as
his brother and nephew had been, had returned with his
army to crush the ever insubordinate city, but momen-

310 JERUSALEM. [chap.
tarily alarmed by the rumour of Pharaoh's army ap
proaching, had made a feint of raising the siege. As
soon as the ways were liberated and the gates open
Jeremiah went out " to go into the land of Benjamin "
"in the midst of the people," no doubt among the crowd
which would pour forth in search of food and refresh
ment after long famishing in the blockaded city. But
the captain of the ward saw among the crowd the figure
of the prophet, going in all probability to his father's
fields at Anathoth to bring in provisions for himself and
his kindred. "Thou fallest away to the Chaldeans,"
he cried, seizing upon Jeremiah as he passed : and, no
doubt, the crowd would think the accusation a very
likely one considering how the prophet proclaimed the
might of the Chaldeans and discouraged all resistance to
them on every occasion. Jeremiah denied the accusa
tion, but in vain : and he was hustled away through the
throng to the Temple enclosure, and thence to the house
of Jonathan the scribe, underneath which lay the dun
geons hewn in the rock, and in such evil condition as
the ancients thought fit and meet for serious offenders.
Here, we are told, he remained "many days," which
means in Hebrew idiom a long time, long enough we
may suppose to admit of the return of the Chaldeans and
to quench the noisy-triumph of the Egyptian party in the
city. Against this dominant faction Zedekiah, it is evi
dent, could not maintain his own authority : but in the
subsequent depression he took heart to have the prisoner
brought out and conveyed secretly to his palace.
There is much that is touching and attractive in the
character of Zedekiah as here exhibited. He was not a
man of resolution or courage. He was not strong enough
even to be sure of his own opinions or faith, but wavered
according to the changes of the moment : yet he had a
feeble good meaning at the bottom of all and a trust in

"¦] THE PROPHETS. 311
the prophet of his father's time, the man whom no flat
teries or persuasions could corrupt. He came "secretly"
to the rescued prisoner with all the soils of the dungeons
upon him and asked, with what trembling we may con
ceive, " Is there any word from the Lord ? " Unhappy
king with no real confidence in his heart, forced forward
and held up by those about him in the futile and hope
less struggle ! In that secret chamber, with no one near
to excite panic or indignation, and with this childlike,
timid appeal in his ears, might not Jeremiah, might not
his God, find a word of comfort for the son of David.
Alas no! " Is there any word from the Lord ? " "There
is " : replied the prophet : " for, said He, thou shalt be
delivered into the hand of the King of Babylon." There
is something that seems inexorable, terrible, in this
doom, a doom which no individual supplication could
now avert, not the feeble attempt at well-doing of a
powerless king.
For there had just passed an event of great importance
in the history of the race, a further demonstration by
the disobedient rulers of how little any amendment
meant which misfortune or terror might force them to.
At an earlier period, whether the beginning of Zedekiah's
reign or at some other of the lowest points of national
despondency, when their hopes had sunk so deeply that
a hurried attempt to propitiate God commended itself
even to the most rebellious, it had occurred either to
the king or to some one among the rulers to suggest the
carrying out of a command in the law which had long
fallen into disuse. This was the liberation after seven
years' service of every Hebrew bondsman. It was not
forbidden to have slaves : it was even permitted to buy
a slave either from himself in repayment of a debt, or
by purchase from another who had been his creditor,
but with this powerful restraint and limitation that at

312 JERUSALEM [chap.
the end of the seventh year all the conditions of bondage
were annulled and the slave went free. He was also by
a similar law reinstated in his original patrimony when
the sabbatical year came round, so that neither slavery
nor confiscation of a permanent nature could exist in
Israel. This law, however, had fallen into absolute
disuse, and Hebrews had been retained in slavery as if
they had been strangers. It was a well-chosen act with
which to show a desire to return to the better ways of
their fathers, and render real obedience, not a mere
ceremonial service to God. But when the immediate
terror of the moment was over, this just act began to
represent itself, in what they would, no doubt, call its
true colours to the masters and owners of these liberated
slaves. What ! give up so much wealth, so much addi
tional importance as their property in these workmen
and servants gave them, sacrifice their superiority, their
money ; and for what ? For a doubtful approval from
the God whom they feared by times yet had no true
allegiance to : when here were the Egyptian banners
defiling out of the desert, and the Babylonian encamp
ments breaking up without any help from Jehovah, and
ease and safety coming back ! "But afterward they
turned and caused the servants and the handmaids whom
they had let go free to return, and brought them into
subjection." These slaves, the men of them, had doubt
less gone to the walls to help in the defence of the city in
the joy of their deliverance : but what did it matter now
about the defence of the city, when Egypt triumphant
was on her way to deliver Jerusalem ? There was still
a king of Judah captive in Egypt, Jehoahaz, and no
doubt a train of attendants with him; but who would
think of that in the delirium of extravagant hope in any
prospect of safety, which is so often seen in a country
on the brink of destruction.

ir] THE PROPHETS. 313
No sterner denunciation ever came from Jeremiah's
lips than that which followed the miserable failure of
this only real effort after amendment made in the doomed
city. It was probably uttered in the miserable dungeon
where he lay, scarcely capable of hearing, deep under
ground as he was, even those "snortings from Dan,"
when they come, that sound of a great multitude which
would intimate to the whole city that the besiegers were
gathering again to their camp outside the walls. "I
proclaim a liberty for you, saith the Lord, to the sword,
to the pestilence, and to famine ; and I will make you to
be removed into all the kingdoms of the world." It
had no doubt been after the manumission of the slaves
that Jeremiah promised to King Zedekiah though not
deliverance yet a peaceful end. But now he withdrew
that favourable sentence : " Zedekiah and his princes I
will give into the hands of their enemies, and into the
hands of them that seek their life, and into the hands of
the King of Babylon's army, which are gone from you.
Behold, I will command, saith the Lord, and cause them
to return to this city ; and they shall fight against it,
and burn it, and take it with fire : and I will make the
cities of Judah a desolation without an inhabitant." It
was in the midst of the jubilee and rejoicing caused by
the raising of the siege and the rumoured approach of
the Egyptian army that this last word of doom was
said. But that transport of fancied deliverance was soon over.
The Chaldeans came back and the state of the city was
worse than ever when Zedekiah took the prophet out of
his subterranean prison. Whether from mere super
stitious terror of offending still further the incensed God
whom Jeremiah served, or from a lingering hope that
some good might still result from the prophet's interces
sion, the king gave ear to his anxious prayer not to be

314

JERUSALEM.

[chap.

sent back to his dungeon. " Cause me not to return to
the house of Jonathan, the scribe, lest I die there," and
imprisoned him instead "in the court of the prison,"
presumably a bearable confinement which kept him out
of the way of danger. Zedekiah gave orders at the same
time that a piece of bread should be given him daily out
of the bakers' street " until all the bread in the city was

BANIAS : NEAR THE ANCIENT DAN.

spent," a significant proviso. And there Jeremiah re
mained for some time in comparative calm while the
agony of the doomed city went on, and the enemy pushed
every day nearer, and the misery and starvation increased.
He never seems to have intermitted during all this time
his dreadful denunciations. It was, no doubt, the kind
est and best thing that could be done to convince them
of the futility of the struggle and to exhort them by all
means in his power to conciliate and submit to, instead

"•] THE PROPHETS. 315
of vainly endeavouring to hold at bay, the powerful mon
arch at their gates; but at the same time it was, no
doubt, terrible that such a voice should rise without inter
mission in the midst of that famished and despairing
people : and it is impossible not to feel a certain sym
pathy for the harassed rulers at their wits' end, when
they came once more to Zedekiah to beg that the
prophet who was almost as great a terror as Nebuchad
nezzar himself might be either put to death or so impris
oned as to be made harmless at this crisis of fate. " He
weakeneth the men of war that remain in the city, and
the hands of all the people, in speaking such words unto
them." In this respect, no doubt, they had right on
their side. "Behold, he is in your hands," said the
despairing Zedekiah, " for the king is not he that can do
anything against you." The result was that Jeremiah
was thrown into a still worse and more terrible dungeon
than before, into which he was let down by cords.
" And in the dungeon there was no water (presumably
a better state of affairs), but mire : and Jeremiah sunk
in the mire." If his prophecies were fatal to the
people, they brought, at least, nothing of advantage to
himself. He was cast into this dreadful hole to starve
and die neglected while the tumult raged over his head.
Was it he who spoke in the Psalm of being brought out
of the horrible pit, and from the miry clay ? Such was,
at least, the miserable place in which he now lay.
From this terrible plight the prophet was saved by a
stranger, an Ethiopian eunuch, most likely one of those
gigantic blacks who still guard the harems of Eastern
princes, a man of considerable authority and power in
the household though his position was so little elevated.
He was more pitiful if not more pious, than the Hebrew
princes ; it is possible that as a proselyte he might be
the latter too. He went to the king "then sitting in

316 JERUSALEM. [chap.
the gate of Benjamin," the gate that looked out towards
the north, that of St. Stephen or of Damascus, per
haps, in modern nomenclature, sadly sitting looking out
upon the great army that lay stretched as far as eye
could see, superintending, perhaps, the erection of some
new machine for stones or other missiles on the walls.
" My lord," said the eunuch, " these men have done evil
in all that they have done to Jeremiah, the prophet
whom they have oast into the dungeon ; he is like to die
of hunger in the place where he is : for there is no
bread in the city." Strengthened by the king's per
mission Ebed-melech hurried away and with thirty men
to aid him succeeded in drawing up Jeremiah with the aid
of strong ropes and "old cast clouts" (but this phrase
ology is far too Saxon for the Eastern rags and frag
ments, indescribable scraps of apparel) — put under his
armholes to keep the cords from cutting into his emaci
ated frame — from the horrible pit and out of the miry
clay. Then once more Zedekiah took the prophet aside into
some chamber in one of the doorways of the Temple
" the third entry that is in the house of God." " I will
ask thee a thing," said the anxious king, "hide nothing
from me," — piteous question which it was unnecessary
to explain or to put into further words ! " If I declare
it unto thee, wilt thou not surely put me to death ? "
answered Jeremiah : but when the king swore " As
the Lord liveth, who made us this soul," most remark
able adjuration, the prophet once more opened his lips.
"Thus saith the Lord, the God of hosts, the God of
Israel ; if thou wilt assuredly go forth unto the King
of Babylon's princes, then thy soul shall live, and this
city shall not be burned with fire ; and thou shalt live,
and thy house: But if thou wilt not go forth to the
King of Babylon's princes, then shall this city be given

II.]

THE PROPHETS.

317

into the hands of the Chaldeans, and they shall burn it
with fire, and thou shalt not escape out of their hand."
That this was now wise and patriotic advice there is no
doubt; for resistance was hopeless, and only the rage
of despair carried it on. And Zedekiah was, in fact, a
revolted tributary who had accepted the kingdom under
conditions which he had broken, and whose part it
evidently was to make submission, since no higher role

JERUSALEM: NORTH-EASTERN CORNER. NEBY SAMWIL IN THE DISTANCE.

of heroism was within his power. The king heard with
out anger, making a feeble defence that the Jews who
were among the Chaldeans would turn against him, but
listening in silence to Jeremiah's further argument,
feeling, we cannot doubt," its justice, though, afraid,
shut in as he was among a fierce oligarchy of desperate
men, to take any step in obedience to it. All that he
said was to beg Jeremiah not to betray to the princes
what he had said, before he sorrowfully left the prophet,
once more in the daylight and fresh air, in that court of
the prison where life was at least endurable and where
he remained until his dread prophecies were accom-

318 JERUSALEM. [chap.
plished. "He was there when Jerusalem was taken"
looking on with a breaking heart while the last horrors
were inflicted, the streets filled with the slain, the holy
and beautiful house he loved battered down, and fire
raging among its courts. No man harmed Jeremiah in
that hour of fate: the Babylonian general would have
given him honour and promotion if he would have
accepted them, knowing, no doubt, by report that the
prophet had always been on his side. It would appear
that when all was over, he was bound with the rest in
chains and went along with the mournful procession of
captives as far as Ramah : where some one probably
told the general who he was, and he was immediately
released. " If it seem good to thee to come with me urito
Babylon, come, and I will look well unto thee ; but if it
seem ill unto thee to come with me to Babylon, forbear :
behold all the land is before thee : whither it seemeth
good and convenient for thee to go, thither go."
Jeremiah chose the latter alternative; he went back
with Gedaliah, the son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan,
of a family that had always been favourable to the
prophet, and who was now appointed governor over the
poor refugees of Jerusalem, who were left like the few
berries on an olive-tree that has been well beaten, like
the few leaves on the ends of the boughs swept by
autumn breezes, like .the two ears and part of a leg taken
by the shepherd out of the lion's mouth according to the
forcible metaphor of Amos. The land was before him !
What irony was in the words ! the land with all its
vacant houses shattered, open to the rain and scorching
sun; and Jerusalem a heap of smoking smouldering
ruins. The captives marching along the weary ways in
their chains, two and two, beating out footsore and heart
sick the long, long route to Babylon, were scarcely so
sad as the few who remained and went back to find their

n.] THE PROPHETS. 319
beautiful city, the joy of the whole earth, as they had
proudly called her in their songs, lying bare upon her
hillside, her dead unburied, the wretched relics of her
populace coming out by night like owls and bats, gather
ing what garbage they could find to eat, afraid of their
own shadows. Not any dread satisfaction in the
prophecy fulfilled, not any sense of relief in the catas
trophe accomplished would reconcile the hearts of these
miserable Hebrews to the dreadful sight before their
eyes. The unfortunate Zedekiah, forced along by the impulse
of stronger wills than his own, had been persuaded to
flee at the last moment — or had been carried off by the
superior force of his counsellors— by night in the oppo
site direction, passing the very spot where Jeremiah had
watched the potter making one vessel to honour and
another to dishonour, away wildly towards the plains of
Jericho : but was pursued and caught and brought igno-
miniously to Nebuchadnezzar at Biblah far off on the
way to Babylon. The conquerors, enraged, no doubt, by
the vain and futile resistance which had only prolonged
the siege and increased its horrors, killed the sons of the
unfortunate king — who, from his age must have been
little more than children, and who, no doubt, were among
the captives who had been brought from Jerusalem — be
fore his eyes, ere these unhappy eyes were cruelly put
out and saw no more. He was then loaded with chains
and carried off to Babylon, not permitted even the eva
sion of death ; such was the fate of a rebel and conspir
ator against his suzerain in those days of blood and fire.
There is a cave opposite what is now called the
Damascus gate of Jerusalem, deep and black on the side
of the little hill, where once Jewish criminals were
executed, and which is supposed by some to be the real
site of the greatest tragedy that earth ever saw — which

320 JERUSALEM. [chap.
tradition calls the Grotto of Jeremiah, and in which it is
believed the prophet took shelter, and wrote the great
and heartrending poem which we call the Book of
Lamentations. Nowhere could the desolation of the
deserted city be more clearly seen. It was there that
the assault had been made, and the shattered walls and
ruined fortifications would afford clear views of the
horror within, the vultures descending in dreadful clouds,
the jackals stealing forth by night to seek an awful
prey. The smoke of the burning would hang over the
whole : and over Moriah the aching void where once
Solomon's beautiful Temple had been, would wound the
eyes that gazed and gazed and found no familiar outline
in the charred ruins heaped upon the hill. And sound
there would be none in the abandoned place, the open
ings of the streets all hushed, their steep lines of descent
between buildings roofless, windowless, full of emptiness,
pathetically visible without a passenger. And there the
prophet of woe might well have looked forth under the
black shelf of the rocks, and framed his mournful song
— one of those wonderful Hebrew poems which fore
stalled in the early centuries all that later poets could
say. " How doth the city sit solitary,
That was full of people !
How is she become a widow !
She that was great among the nations,
And princess among the provinces,
How is she become tributary !
She weepeth sore in the night,
The tears are on her cheeks :
Among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her :
Her friends have dealt treacherously with her,
They are become her enemies.
" The ways of Zion do mourn,
Because none come to her solemn feasts :
All her gates are desolate :
Her priests sigh,
Her virgins are afflicted,
And she is in bitterness."

n.] THE PROPHETS. 321
The reader will remember how Dante in the sudden
hush and stupefaction of the blow which seemed to
darken heaven and earth to him, could find no words so
meet to express his sense of that cessation of life and
hope as those of his ancient fellow craftsman, the poet
of desolation, exiled, imprisoned, outlawed like him, yet
turning ever like him with a heartbroken tenderness to
the home of his love. " How doth the city sit solitary
that was full of people ! " Jeremiah's prophecies had
not possessed like those of his predecessor Isaiah the
unfailing charm of a poetic genius which never flagged,
and had all the resources of unconscious but supreme
art at its disposition. The terrible monotone of denunci
ation, just broken here and there by the melody which
he caught up from those who had gone before him, the
momentary vision which revealed the Sun of Righteous
ness even to his weeping eyes, is too continuous in its
rage of sorrow for the general ear. We are tempted
almost to turn to the lighter side by times, to approve
any tumult or noise of discord which the doomed
Hebrews could make to escape from such an unbroken
cry of doom. But when all is accomplished and the
poet's heart breaks out in that wail of mourning, we
recognise once more the great and crowning glory of the
race, the fount of poetry which flowed so full and bright,
first of all the celestial streams which have watered the
earth, first and most lasting " above all Greek, above all
Eoman fame." It takes its place among those great
poems which express in their different ways the inmost
passions and thoughts of humanity, the song of love, the
song of the vanity of human things, the song of Job,
the mysteries of God's dealings with man. The song of
sorrow fills up the wonderful tale.
" Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by ?
Behold, and see if there is any sorrow like unto my sorrow.
Y

322 JERUSALEM. [chap.
" Mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water,
Because the comforter is far from me.
" The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground,
And keep silence :
They have cast dust upon their heads ;
They have girded themselves with sackcloth :
The virgins of Jerusalem
Hang down their heads to the ground.
" The children and the sucklings swoon
In the streets of the city.
They say to their mothers,
Where is the corn and the wine ?
They swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city.
Their soul was poured out
Into their mothers' bosom.
" Arise, cry out in the night :
In the beginning of the watches pour forth thy heart like water
Before the face of the Lord :
Lift up thy hands towards Him for the life of thy young children,
That faint for hunger
In the top of every street."
Nothing can equal the force of this picture painted in
the very colours of woe, dark against the blackness of
the silent awful night, the old men, the children and
sucklings, the mothers who have no food or consolation
to give. Pitiful women, helpless old men, still more
helpless babes ! and this is Zion, the glory of the
Hebrews, the city of David, the city of God. "All
that pass by thee clap their hands at thee ; they hiss
and wag their heads, saying, Is this the city that men
call the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole
earth?" Further words but mar the perfection of a
description so heartrending, so simple, and so sublime.
Yet as he sits and muses broken gleams of other things
flit across the poet's mind ; he recalls his past life, such a
life as it has been, bowed down from youth up under the
burden of this foreshadowed desolation which now has
come ; how he was a derision to the people : how he called

ii.] THE PROPHETS. 323
upon the name of the Lord out of the low dungeon, how
he was " the music," the mountebank as it were, of the dis
dainful crowd: yet in the midst of all sorrowfully reminds
himself of the hand that had sustained him, of how the
mercies of God were new to him every morning, and the
Lord the portion of his soul. All this floats like a film
across his vision, the deepest darkness, broken by a fitful
gleam of light ; until once more his mourning eyes turn
to that city of death and once more his heart rises to
heaven in the cry of a pity which is almost too poignant
for words. The children ! it is the sight of them in their
destitution which is the most dreadful of all. The tongue
of the sucking child cleaveth to the roof of his mouth,
the young children ask for bread and no man breaketh
it to them : and there are still more, and more awful
horrors behind. Other cities have been as Jerusalem
left desolate by the destroyer, fire consuming the walls
and palaces for which men have died, the wretched and
helpless inhabitants left in their misery to perish slowly
over the spot where their natural protectors lie among
the heaps of the slain: but none have had the same cele
bration, none has impressed itself in the same way upon
the recollection of men.
There came no peaceful end, no comfort in his old age
to the prophet of woe. His protector Gedaliah, the
newly-appointed governor of Jerusalem, bore his mourn
ful office but a very short time, and was cruelly mur
dered at Mizpah by a certain Ishmael the son of Nethaniah
who belonged to the house of David, and therefore, per
haps, felt himself the natural enemy of the governor
appointed by the Babylonians. This act overthrew all
the feeble beginnings of order and restoration and threw
everything into renewed anarchy and misery. The mur
derer carried off a few relics of the people who had taken
refuge in Mizpah, among whom were the king's dattgh-
y2

324 JERUSALEM. [chap.
ters, the children spared when their brothers were killed,
for the sake, perhaps, of their harmlessness and inca
pacity to lead any future rebellion ; but was stopped in
his flight to Ammon by another captain, Johanan the
son of Karech, who had gathered a few soldiers round
him and delivered these captives. The state of the
country thus pervaded by wandering bands, suspicious
and full of alarms, not daring to go back to Jerusalem,
afraid to settle anywhere, is very vividly set forth by
these incidents. Johanan made a halt near Bethlehem
on the way to Egypt, and there consulted Jeremiah —
who being specially attached to Gedaliah was probably
among those who had been with that unfortunate ruler
at Mizpah — with much solemnity as to what they should
do. "Pray for us unto the Lord thy God"; in their
cowed and broken spirits they seem incapable even of
claiming the protection of Jehovah on their own account
as the God of their fathers. " That the Lord thy God
may show us the way wherein we may walk, and the
thing we may do." Jeremiah brought them back a
message full of comfort bidding them to dwell in the
land and they should have peace; but that in Egypt
upon which their minds were bent nothing but war
and the sword awaited them. The anxious chiefs, how
ever, would not listen to this reassuring voice, and
marched on with their helpless hangers-on to Egypt,
dragging the prophet with them. There he found him
self transferred but from one nest of idolaters to another,
the exiles of Judah throwing themselves with greater
fervour than ever into that worship of the queen
of heaven, the framework of nature, which they had
already carried on in Jerusalem. The story of the
prophet's meeting and contention with, first the women
who were evidently engaged in some great public cere
monial of worship, and of the men, their husbands and

ii.] THE PROPHETS. 325
guardians who defended and adopted their action, is very
curious ; rest or hope was not for God's messenger either
in Jerusalem or among the fugitives.
In the last portion of his book his imagination warms
with a stronger and bolder strain, not unlike the inspired
rhapsodies of Isaiah over the seething and agitated world
around him. Sick, perhaps, of contention with his own
people he lets the cherished name drop from his lips,
and gazes far from him at the tumults of the other nations
less dear, to hide from himself the continued perversions
and wicked folly of his own people that were under his
eyes. He looks, over their heads, as it were, far afield
to the great empire which had engulfed the kingdom
of Judah, to Edom and Moab and Philistia which had
rejoiced over its fall. Clouds and darkness are over them
all, trouble and misery and downfall coming even for the
greatest, Babylon, the great Babylon doomed to perish
even more completely than Jerusalem : her conqueror
approaching out of the north as she herself came in her
strength. But at last — in the end of all — a brighter
inspiration returns. The prophet had sung in dungeons
and prisons in the old clays, of that time to come when
the Lord, the Branch of David should appear on the
mountains of Judah, and when evil should be redressed
and every captive go free, and the throne be established
for evermore a throne of righteousness. So now in the
days of his fading life, amid the dusky crowds of Egypt,
amid the apostates of his own race, everything hopeless
about him, and around flaming skies of portent and evil
omens, terrible flashings of the sword of vengeance
wherever he looked — there comes at last one gleam of
radiance over the hills, one voice of celestial harmony in
his strained and well-nigh hopeless ear.
" In those days, and in that time, saith the Lord,
The children of Israel shall come,

326 JERUSALEM. [ch. ii.
They and the children of Judah together, going and weeping :
They shall go, and seek the Lord their God.
They shall ask their way to Zion with their faces thitherward,
saying,
Come, and let us join ourselves unto the Lord
In a perpetual covenant
That shall not be forgotten."
Thus the sun bursts once more from the clouds, and
sheds a glow of light ineffable upon the conclusion of that
troubled and darksome way. It is believed that he died
in Egypt in a depth of national distress more dark and
hopeless than that in Babylon : for the exiles in Egypt
were in a voluntary captivity and to them no promise of
restoration ever came.

CHAPTER III.

EZEKIEL.

THE prophet Ezekiel introduces an entirely new
figure into the record which is so full of human life
and feeling, as well as of the mysterious elements of
revelation. He is not a man like those whom we have
already seen, inspired with great moral teachings, and
bent by every means upon pressing with all their might
the high lessons of Divine justice, the evils of human
selfishness, weakness, and indifference upon the world.
This has been the first and greatest motive both of Isaiah
and Jeremiah. Their visions of the future were their
reward, and a crown of hope to all those faithful among
the faithless, whose trust in the promises of God were
met at every point by the terrible contradiction of a
nation going ever and ever more hopelessly astray, and
a race which abjured every condition upon which those
promises had been given. But their object, pursued by
perpetual remonstrance, appeal, threatening, entreaty,
renewing all the old pledges of Divine law, offering ever
a new certainty of continuance if Israel would only obey
— was to bring that unruly people to the better way, and
to re-establish God's kingdom among them. For this
they sought every argument, exhausted every image, the
highest resources of poetry to persuade and induce, the
strongest reasonings to convince, the ever reiterated

328 JERUSALEM. [chap.
presentation before the Hebrew audience of what must
follow disobedience, the fullest picture of the forces op
posed to them, which in their own strength they were
incapable of meeting. The bold language of symbol
when words failed, the picture-lesson adapted to the
rudest mind, of Isaiah's child, of the piece of pottery in
Jeremiah's hand — were all used for the same end. This
was their burden, their ceaseless effort. And when God
permitted these gifted souls, weighed clown by the na
tional destruction that was so clearly coming, and by the
contradiction of sinners, and the hopelessness of averting
that downward course, to escape into the blessed contem
plation of a remote future, and the Deliverer who was to
come — even then the highest rhapsody of prophetic vis
ion was, as may be said, practical, no vague and radiant
hope of a golden age, but a distinct portrayal of Him
whom they looked for, a description in many points so
exact that the wonder is how it could have been mistaken
when the fulfilment came. And what is true of the chief
among the prophets is true also of the minor members in
different degrees of poetry and perception, all of whom
had the same lesson to teach, the same burden of prophecy
to proclaim.
But Ezekiel breaks into this brotherhood, a different
being, a strange figure with neither that hold upon the
solid soil of earth which his predecessors had, the common
human life, through which we see them passing among
the crowds and tumults of the city, and all its occupa
tions — or that hold upon the heavenly stores of life and
truth to come which made them bold to declare a new
life and hope. A wilder and a stranger figure is that
which rises before us on the bank of the Assyrian stream
among the first captives, in those early days when the
failing kingdom still kept a precarious life upon the cliffs
of Jerusalem, and the tragedy of its ruin had still to be

in.] THE PROPHETS. 329
played out. He is, if we omit, perhaps, Elijah and Elisha,
those prophets whom we know only by their legends, so
to speak, by their acts and the historical record, not by
any preserved writings — the greatest mystic of Scripture,
involved in musings incomprehensible, seeing visions of
which the import escapes us, overfull of mystery and
wonder for ordinary perceptions, dazzled by glories and
appearances whicli human words fail to interpret. That
he pursues throughout, though with so many strange
variants, the same objects as the others, that he, too,
warns and threatens, entreats and beseeches, and that to
him also in other forms the glorious revelation of the
future is also permitted, is true indeed. But he is
throughout a thaumaturge, a seer in a meaning of the
word very different from that of Isaiah, a being full of
unearthly knowledge and strange visions, less of what is
to come on earth, which is the preoccupation of the others
— that of what exists in that unseen which is beyond
human faculties, and of which human words are incapa
ble of presenting any clear idea to men.
Along with this, however, we have in the scraps of
narrative which occur between his visions and prophecies
a very remarkable picture of an agitated period, full of
the most terrible alternations of hope and fear, of per
sonal misery and humiliation, and of a national agony
which in all the experiences of the world has never been
so fully expressed, or with so much pathos and passion.

' By the river of Babylon, there we sat down ;
We wept when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps
Upon the willows in the midst thereof.
*
' For there they that carried us away captive,
And they that wasted us,
Required of us a song, saying,
Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

330 JERUSALEM. [chap.
" How shall we sing the Lord's song
In a strange land ? "
We have no parallel to this in all the world of litera
ture, or to the impassioned cry which no Greek, no
Roman patriotism has ever given utterance to with such
heartrending force : " If I forget thee, 0 Jerusalem, let
my right hand forget her cunning ! " It was among the
exiles with whom this was the prevailing sentiment that
Ezekiel, a young man at that recognised moment of fit
ness for office and privilege and the highest work, his
thirtieth year, was suddenly called by the voice of the
Lord, and consecrated by visions ineffable to the service
of God and of his countrymen. He had been presumably
brought to Babylon with the young king Jehoiachin five
years before, to rejoin many captives of the previous
reign already there : and probably also to find the rem
nant of an older captivity still, the relics of Israel, half
identified at the end of a century with the people among
whom they had been thrown, yet, no doubt, preserving
many points of contact and much compassionate sym
pathy for the detachments of the Jews arriving one band
after another in the same condition of dishonour and de
privation. Israel, however, had now been long lost amid
the hordes of aliens, and had no national hope or centre
to make a rallying point, except so far as, in the ponder-
ings of years, the wise among them may have felt that in
the one point of Jerusalem, and in the still undestroyed
throne of David, there lingered yet a forlorn hope. That
the minds of the captive community — from those high-
placed and princely boys who served Nebuchadnezzar in
his palace, to those who sat in the shade of the willows
and had as yet recovered no energy or sense of a life still
remaining to be lived out— were fixed with an intensity
almost beyond parallel upon their distant home, is ap
parent to us in almost every record. Their gaze was

in.] THE PROPHETS. 331
strained upon Jerusalem with something of the breath
less and strained attention with which spectators watch
a doomed ship in the midst of a tempest : her efforts
to gain some sheltering harbour, the efforts made on her
behalf, the sinking and rising of the broken hulk, with
one poor flag of despair fluttering in the wild winds upon
a spar, which from moment to moment may disappear in
the blankness of the waves that rage about it — enchain
ing their every thought.
Jerusalem was like such a ship, carrying one feeble
ensign of national unity and hope, upon which every eye
was strained as it rose and fell. The captives cared little
for the troublous incidents of their own daily life. Hope
that these were to endure but a little while, that some
interposition would be made in their favour, some
Divine deliverance come to them, and that they might
at any moment hear the joyful summons to return, was
what they dwelt upon. Their very aspect shows this
suspense which kept all existence in solution, and made
all the common uses of humanity as burdens. "I was
among the captives by the river of Chebar ... I sat
where they sat, and remained there astonished (silent)
among them for seven clays." The words sound like a very
realisation of the Psalm. Were they too languid for any
exertion, sitting under the willows, thinking of nothing
but their Jerusalem, the home of their hearts ? The elders
appear in after-glimpses, and sit before the prophet wait
ing in a sort of deadly patience, abstracted from common
life, for the message he has to bring them. They were,
perhaps, a band of Levites, trained to no handicrafts, but
only the service of the Temple, who had come to this
pass, their occupation taken from them as well as their
object in life, and themselves considered by the Babylo
nians, their masters, as a mere lazy company of profes
sional musicians, good for nothing since they would not

332 JERUSALEM. [chap.
even sing. It would almost seem to have been in some
such forlorn colony that Ezekiel, the priest, the son of
Buzi, was called to his office. Somewhere about the
same time Jeremiah in Jerusalem had written £t letter to
the exiles — brought by the embassy sent from King
Zedekiah with tribute or renewal of homage to the King
of Babylon: in which he adjured them to disregard the
false promises of deliverance made to them by unauthor
ised prophets, and to build houses and plant gardens and
surround themselves with families : in short to enter
upon all the routine of settled life in the country where
their lot was now cast, and from which in the lifetime of
the present generation there was likely to be no deliver
ance. Perhaps, at the period of Ezekiel's call, this ex
hortation had not yet reached Babylon in the long delays
of the terrible road four months' journey across the
desert. Perhaps, it never did reach the humble colony
on the banks of the Chebar, apart from the greater cur
rent of life.
Their extreme absorption of thought and feeling in the
fate of Jerusalem, is vividly apparent in the sort of object
lesson which the prophet is told to give — whether in
some part for the instruction of the people, whether to
give him in his own person so vivid a sense of the inevi
table calamity that every utterance would be thereby
strengthened, it is impossible to say. He was " to por
tray the city, even Jerusalem " upon a tile, with all the
details of the siege, the military mounds raised outside
the walls (on the north side), the high tower which en
abled the besiegers to discharge their missiles with effect,
the battering rams, and all other instruments of war. No
doubt the captives would gather round to watch while he
drew on the soft unbaked clay, upon which the builders of
Babylon scratched all manner of names and symbols, the
outline of the city with all its towers, and the hosts en-

in.] THE PROPHETS. 333
camped against it. What a thing would that be to find in
some Babylonian wreck or mass of ruins, the rude drawing
on the brick or tile, the indications of gateway and rampart
which every breathless watcher over his shoulder would
recognise, as he formed them with unskilful hand ! There
on the tower of the northern gate would be King Uzziah's
engines invented by cunning men " to shoot arrows and
great stones withal," and there, opposite, the last refine
ment of war, Nebuchadnezzar's offensive works, confront
ing the other to still the defensive battery. Would the
prophet, careless of personal comfort as are all the relig
ious devotees of the East, prepare his polluted food be
fore them, and lie clown upon his side for days and nights
to show how the sins of Jerusalem weighed upon his
heart, and how long and tedious would the time be before
deliverance ? Who can tell ? Those symbols and wild
lessons of dramatic representation are the alphabet of
the primitive races. For the same end he shaved off his
beard and hair, to show how, as that hair was consumed
and scattered on the winds, so should be the fated city
from which no deliverance could come. And amid all the
stern significance of those lessons what sights of wonder
came to him between — the incomprehensible glory which
human description can only confuse, the dazzling of the
great lights which were not for mortal eyes !
To impress still more upon his mournful audience that
burden of his soul, the doom of Jerusalem, the beloved
home from which the captives could not detach their
hopes, which all that was best in them still clung to,
with a despairing conviction that at the last God must
stand forth miraculously to deliver the city which He
had chosen, and which was identified with His worship
and name — there was given to the prophet a vision,
showing the moral condition of that once holy city. A
little more than a year after his first call Ezekiel sat in

334 JERUSALEM. [chap.
his house, "and the elders of Judah sat before me,"
waiting in melancholy silence for the expected message ;
when suddenly the prophet was rapt into that state in
which the faculty of vision came to him — fell, as we
should say, into a sort of trance — in which his spirit was
suddenly transported to Jerusalem, " to the door of the
inner gate that looketh towards the north, where was
the seat of the image of jealousy," no doubt some image
of Baal, or other idol such as many successive kings had
not scrupled to bring into the house of the Lord. Eze
kiel had been familiar with those courts and all they
contained in his youth when, as a priest's son, he had
been brought up in the precincts of the Temple. " The
glory of the Lord was there " — that dazzling radiance
of holiness and light which Ezekiel with faltering lips
had endeavoured to describe to the astonished people :
but it remained outside the walls : and with that glory
in his eyes the prophet looked at the rigid features of
the idol in its immovable helplessness with righteous
contempt. But such a vacant monument of idolatry
was little in comparison with what remained. In one
of the many buildings which surrounded the Temple,
and which were used as public offices, treasuries, and
arsenals, and also for the dwellings of the priests as they
served in their courses, he looked in and saw "the idols
of the house of Israel " painted upon the wall : " every
form of creeping things and abominable beasts," the
golden calves, no doubt, the sacred cow of Egypt, the
monkeys and snakes which have in their turn represented
the framework of nature and its law to the debased
imagination — the Ascidian, perhaps, of our own disguised
idolatry and mocking worship. Seventy men of the
elders of Israel — among them one whom he recognised,
Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan, the degenerate son of a
good father— stood offering incense to these beasts and

in-] THE PROPHETS. 335
crawling things. Yet was not this all. Outside in the gate
the women, who seem in the distorted state of the race to
have been, not as usual the most faithful to the worship
of God, but foremost in every infidelity, sat weeping for
Thamuz : and passing by them, in the very inner court
at the entrance to the Temple itself — between the gate
and the altar which stood close to the gate — the prophet
saw five-and-twenty men, with their backs turned to the
Temple and their faces towards the east, worshipping
the sun, which shone over Olivet across the deep valley
upon all the glistening pinnacles of the house of God.
This was, we cannot but think, a more refined and ele
vating worship than that of the reptile and the brute :
but it was equally the worship of those natural forces
in which no deliverance, but only a remorseless fulfil
ment of the course of nature, lies. The course of nature
with Jerusalem was assuredly destruction under the hand
of a power far stronger than she. And to that course and
to those powers the city was given up. From the moral
government of God and His succour and help, as well as
from His ordinances and commandments which were the
condition of His promises, they had turned away, turned
their backs in the emphatic language of the prophet ; and
now to the course of nature they were irrevocably left.
When he comes back from his trance and takes up
once more the usual means of prophecy, Ezekiel is not
less emphatic in his unvarying tale. Jeremiah in the
disturbed and struggling city, and he so far away among
the longing exiles whose continual thought is Jerusalem,
proclaim again and again the same solemn message.
They illustrate it by every possible image, bring every
symbol and picture within their reach to their aid. In
the case of Ezekiel the effort, if not less discouraging
and sad, could not, at all events, be so distracting, so
opposite to what might seem the last heroic struggle of

336 JERUSALEM. [chap.
patriotism, as in his brother prophet : but his view of
the dreadful prospect before the doomed people is not
less sombre or terrible. To the elders who come and
sit round him, always hopeful, it would appear, that
some happier inspiration might be given, he never
changes his tone. Sometimes he turns with indignation
upon themselves as men who still maintain their idola
tries in their hearts, though they would seem to have
been effectually startled and shaken out of them in out
ward manifestation — and upon the false prophets both
men and women who gain a moment's popularity by
flattering visions, by promises of restoration and de
liverance. Sometimes he thunders against the puppet-
king Zedekiah, with a curious forestallment of the the
ories of legitimacy : although the question (even had it
ever been a dogma of the East) was doubly complicated
in those days, when a captive king in Egypt and another
in Babylon must have confused the minds even of those
who refused to consider Jehoiachin who was set up by
Pharaoh, and Zedekiah who was set up by Nebuchad
nezzar, as true sovereigns of Judah. But whatever may
be those side-glances of prophecy or admonition, the one
actual fact of the approaching destruction of the city and
with it all their present hopes, never varies. In his
frequent trances and transportations in the spirit from
the plains of Babylon to the heights of Moriah— -whether
he bursts into the wild lyric of the sword, that mystic
weapon which is furbished and flashes to the sun to
smite the princes of Israel, to cut down the great trees,
to hew asunder the gates, "A sword, a sword is sharp
ened, it is drawn forth for slaughter ! " — or paints with
tremendous force the adulteries of the two wantons
Aholah and Aholibah, Israel and Judah, and their love
of strangers, the men " who were all of them like princes
to look at," his object never changes. These wantons

in-] THE PROPHETS. 337
have had their will, they have turned from their allegiance
and broken every vow ; and now the inevitable end has
come upon them, which overtakes all wantons, accord
ing to those very laws of nature which they preferred to
the law of God.
There is something very startling and wonderful in
the description of those "men portrayed upon the wall,
the images of the Chaldeans portrayed with vermilion,
girded with girdles about their loins, exceeding in dyed
attire upon their heads," which he describes as having
charmed the imagination of the Hebrews before their
revelation as conquerors and destroyers. While Ezekiel,
with his rapt eyes beheld the prophetic vision, while the
silent elders sat round him, and saw With dismay the
great sword flash forth, and listened with downcast
heads to his parable of Judah's guilt — there were rising
gaily in Babylon and still surviving in the half abandoned
Nineveh, great buildings, decorated with those wonder
ful images, which have come to light only in our own
day. Those black-bearded Assyrians "all of them like
princes to look at," whose glory beguiled the daughters
of Jerusalem, now adorn our museums as they adorned
the walls of every palace and temple in Ezekiel's day in
the freshness of their crimson and gold. The artists
were busy everywhere, improving, no doubt, upon the
Ninevite models, adding a twisted scarf upon those black
locks, a jewel to the girdle, a pattern to the tunic, which
even the captives would go sighing forth to see in the
desolation of their exile, a wonder to behold. How
strange to bring out the decorations of those pictured
walls thousands of years after, to show us in the ends of
the earth what manner of men were those conquerors of
the ancient world, like princes to look at, the Assyrians,
Chaldeans, Babylonians — the captors of Judah, the vic
torious and not all unfriendly race !

338 JERUSALEM. [chap.
In another picture the prophet shows us the King of
Babylon standing "at the parting of the way, at the
head of two ways," to try by divination whether the
time had come to destroy Jerusalem. In his grasp were
arrows, marked with the lot, which he shook in his hand
according to an immemorial custom. And he also " con
sulted with images, he looked in the liver," trying the
auguries of classic usage, which would thus seem to
have been already existing from the remotest time.
Then came the day, the dreadful day, when the decision
was made. " Woe to the bloody city ! " cries the prophet :
"I the Lord have spoken. I will not go back, neither
will I spare, neither will I repent: according to thy
ways and according to thy doings shall He judge thee,
saith the Lord God." With what terrible interest must
the captives have listened, with what outcries of remon
strance and indignation, " Be it far from us ! " with
what trembling of heart ! Their sons and their daughters,
their fathers and mothers were left behind in the doomed
city. If this were true what was there more in life to
hope for ? How were they to endure the dread suspense,
the still more dreadful certainty of fate ? the horror of
knowing, the greater horror of not knowing, for long
months of anguish before the swiftest foot could cross
the great desert, the plains and mountains that lay
between them and their home ?
In the midst of their confusion and terror a sign of
the most appalling description was given to the exiles.
" Son of man, behold, I take from thee the desire
of thine eyes with a stroke." What was this mystic
menace, this sorrow sent not for Ezekiel's sake, but
to make him more and more a sign and parable, a
living lesson to his people ? The desire of his eyes !
yet he was to make no mourning, to shed no tears, to
show none of the usual signs of grief. The company

in.] THE PROPHETS. 339
of the captives must have kept the prophet's house in
sight during that dreadful day, wondering if fire would
come from heaven, if some great preternatural portent
would appear : the sceptics, perhaps, with an incredulous
smile watching to see what new antic the madman would
be at — as, after the event they would, no doubt, say it
' was nothing but a natural occurrence, perhaps foreseen,
callously calculated upon to make an impression ! The
prophet's narrative is calm as despair itself. "So I
spake unto the people in the morning," not knowing
what the calamity was that threatened him, but knowing
it must be supreme. " And at even my wife died ; and
I did in the morning as I was commanded." Not often
in Eastern records is a wife spoken of in this tone, God
himself recognising the first object of the man's heart..
The desire of thine eyes ! it was the most perfect symbol
of that great desolation in which all external emblems
of woe would be forgotten, so tremendous and universal
would be the calamity.
Nothing can be added to this wonderful scene : the
whole Jewish community were like Ezekiel as he stood in
that monient of suspense. The fate of their nearest and
dearest was hanging in the balance : while they drew
their terrified breath the sword, the sword of which they
had heard, was coming down upon kindred and friends :
torture and misery, starvation, burning, every evil that
the imagination could conceive : while those unhappy
listeners, spectators, were helpless, unable to lift a finger.
Would they follow confused and terror-stricken while
Ezekiel's wife was laid in her strange grave, he, speech
less man of many utterances silenced by the same stroke
that widowed him, stalking tearless by the bier in his
ordinary apparel ? "Ye shall do as I have done : ye shall
not mourn nor weep; but ye shall pine away .for your
iniquities, and mourn one toward another." No cries

340 JERUSALEM. [chap.
of, 0 Lord ! or 0 my brother ! no ashes on the head, no
rites of sepulture — but only the silence of one universal
horrible calamity too great for human signs or words.
After this tremendous sign and the predictions that
accompanied it the prophet would seem to have been
dumb, either metaphorically as saying no more upon this
subject which occupied all thoughts, or actually. There
is a long interval in his book (which by no means cer
tainly, however, implies a direct chronological succession)
during which a number of prophecies concerning other
nations, comparatively dark to us who have no material
by which to judge of their accuracy, are inserted : and it
is not till nearly three years after, that the next incident
which more nearly concerns us occurs. While he is
sitting musing, perhaps writing down the message that
has been given to him concerning Egypt, troubled all
night with strange sensations, the premonitory symp
toms of some great event and visitation, the messenger
of fate accomplished suddenly appears before him. "One
that had escaped out of Jerusalem came to me, saying,
the city is smitten. Now the hand of the Lord was upon
me in the evening, afore he that was escaped came ; and
had opened my mouth, until he came to me in the morn
ing ; and my mouth was opened, and I was no more
dumb." No doubt many public posts must have arrived
in the meantime, and the news of the great victory must
have been known in Babylon : but the captives by the
Chebar were far out of the capital, and most likely
nothing but a vague murmur had reached them, no
detailed news, none of those overwhelming particulars
which would make every family aware more or less what
its own individual losses were, until the fellow towns
man who had escaped — perhaps from the city itself in the
confusion of its overthrow, perhaps from some band of
captives — made his painful way, keeping out of public

m] THE PROPHETS. 341
routes and places where his unaccustomed garb and fal
tering speech would be remarked, through the country ;
and after long delay and many adventures, reached the
little mournful colony who had hung their harps upon
the willows.
Ezekiel, silent in his desolate house, had been troubled
all night with the sense of something coming : some
presentiment or more clear warning, a trance, or such a
climax of long-existing anxiety as makes the simplest of
mankind prescient of trouble, had disturbed the prophet's
rest. He had felt within him the sensations of a change,
the restoration of his speech, the long suspended move
ment of prophetic utterance. " My mouth was opened
and I was no more dumb." It requires no very vivid
imagination to conceive how the fugitive would be
received, how the people would gather round him, per
haps with those precautions which come naturally to the
captive, lest their kinsman's tale might be interrupted
or he himself endangered. He would bring not only
great excitement and a profound general sorrow, but
details of the slaughter and disappearance of kinsfolk
and relatives which would plunge every hut and house
into mourning — mourning which probably had to be dis
guised as Ezekiel's was, lest those heathen captors who
had called for a song of Zion, should mock at their mis
ery, or demand an account of how the news had been
received. Thus the full force of the prophet's parable
would be disclosed to them : the melancholy little band
would not dare to make itself conspicuous by its mourn
ing in the midst of a land resounding with sounds of
triumph. It would not venture to betray the knowledge
of individual calamity which it had received, at least till
the fugitive, no doubt hidden among them, represented
as this man's brother or that man's servant, should have
found some refuge in which he could be secure. Those

342 JERUSALEM. [chap.
who heard that day, perhaps of the extinction of their
family, perhaps of the death of some gallant son on the
walls of Jerusalem, or some daughter shamed and out
raged in its bloody streets — would make no outcry, would
repress every tear, bind their headgear upon their heads,
and their shoes on their feet, with a pang still more pro
found in the renunciation of every sign of mourning, than
we should feel in a similar self-denial. " Ye shall pine
away and mourn one towards, another." What descrip
tion could be more pathetic or more real ? The father
and mother would turn towards each other when they
were alone, in the silent communion of sorrow, the
woman clasp her child to her broken heart, the sisters
lay their heads on each other's shoulders, in grief that
uttered no word : then confront the daylight with still
faces and the dumbness of self-controlled despair, as
Ezekiel had done in that dark day when the desire of
his eyes had been taken from him.
And then it was that the prophet's mouth was opened
and he burst forth.
" As I live, saith the Lord God . . . Behold, I, even I, will both
search my sheep, and seek them out. According to the seeking of
a shepherd that seeketh out his flock in the day that, he is among
his sheep that are scattered ; so will I seek out 'my sheep, and will
deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the
cloudy and dark day.
"And I will bring them out from the people, and gather them
from the countries, and will bring them to their own land, and feed
them upon the mountains of Israel, by the rivers, and in all the
inhabited places.
" I will feed them in a good pasture, and upon the high moun
tains of Israel shall their fold be :
"Then shall they lie in a good fold, and in a fat pasture shall
they feed upon the mountains of Israel.
"I will feed my flock, and I will cause them to lie down, saith
the Lord God."
What a strain was this to pour over the heads of that
despairing and heartbroken people ! They came about
him languidly in the apathy of their grief, past consola-

ni.J THE PROPHETS. 343
tion, hoping for no comfort. "So thou art to them as a
very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice and
can play well on an instrument " had been the explana
tion of their attitude towards the prophet long before.
Even now in their despair this was how they sought
him, hoping, perhaps, for a moment's distraction, for
something that would occupy their self-devouring
thoughts. And this was what he proclaimed to them
— no dirge, no wail of mourning, no outcry like that
of Jeremiah : " Behold, and see if any sorrow is like
unto my sorrow." Such a cry, no doubt, was what they
expected, what would have most soothed their aching
breasts. But no : the prophet had said no word of
lamentation over his own symbolical calamity. He
makes no response now to the demand in their sorrowful
eyes: but to the captive, to the heartbroken exile, to
those strayed far away in the obscure corners of a foreign
country, proclaims but one promise, that of restoration,
of returning, of safety and of home.
And from this moment the prophecies of Ezekiel,
heretofore full of the utterances of woe, have nothing
but good tidings to Israel, promises of union as when
"the stick of Joseph, the stick of Ephraim" and "the
stick of Judah" are made into one in his hand — (a
prophecy so far fulfilled that though there was no official
restoration from captivity of the kingdom of Israel, many
remnants of that broken people amalgamated themselves
with the captive Jews, and returned with them, keeping
the name of their tribes in individual instances, notwith
standing broken genealogies and lost traditions) — and
renewed pledges that the land promised to their fathers
should again be theirs in all its beauty and fruitfulness,
its natural bounty revived, its desolate cities built again.
" The Lord shall build the ruined places, and plant that
which was desolate." "I will call for the corn, and

344 JERUSALEM. [chap.
increase it, and lay no famine upon you " — " the waste
cities shall be filled with flocks of men." Best of all,
" A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will
I put within you ; I will put my spirit within you, and
cause ye to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my
judgments, and do them. And ye shall dwell in the
land that I gave to your fathers ; and ye shall be my
people, and I will be your God." Strange message to
follow the crowning disaster of a race, its destruction
according to all precedent and every probability ! Great
Nineveh had fallen utterly, great Babylon was soon to
fall. And no restoration came to these vast empires
and thrones. But to little Jerusalem there was pro
claimed another fate ; and after thousands of years, after
renewed and repeated destruction more complete, and a
dispersion still more hopeless, the scattered descendants
of the captives of Babylon, scattered in every corner of
the earth — forming a part of every nation, yet never
united to any — still hold that promise, and lift up their
eyes towards the little land which could not hold a tithe
of them, yet which mourns for them and waits for them
till the end of time.
" I will set up one Shepherd over them, and he shall feed them
even my servant David ; he shall feed them, and he shall be their
shepherd. "And I the Lord will be their God, and my servant David a
prince among them : I the Lord have spoken it."
David's house was ending in humiliation and woe, no
prince of that race ever again to occupy the fallen throne,
every branch of the royal line in captivity or extinguished
altogether. But Ezekiel, though his mission was more
sombre, and his methods less clear than that of his
brother prophets, was yet not left without his share in
the wonderful message : the ideal King, the Hope of the
whole earth, the God-sent, the Anointed from heaven,

in.] THE PROPHETS. 345
stands out for a moment clear amid all the terrible
visions and smoke of destruction. "I will raise up for
them a plant of renown."
These proclamations of comfort and hope are, however,
far less characteristic of the prophet than the strange
and weird vision that follows them, in which he is trans
ported in the spirit " to the valley which is full of bones."
It would seem to have been the valley of Jehoshaphat,
the deep glen between Mount Moriah and the Mount of
Olives, where the dead of Judah lay, their bleached
bones strewn over those solemn slopes appealing to God.
There flows the little Kedron over its stones, and there
stand the solemn old immemorial trees of Gethsemane,
most sacred of all holy places. But when Ezekiel in his
trance saw this once peaceful valley, the traces of the
carnage were still all visible, the silent ruins of Jerusa
lem stood desolate under the pitying skies, the dead
who had fought for her, who had been flung from her
ruined ramparts, or killed as they made some desperate
sally, lay all around as the heaps of the valiant dead lie
round the standard which they have given their lives
to keep out of the enemies' hands. The sun had beaten
and the winds had blown upon those sad relics of the
slain ; the birds of prey had long finished their awful
meal; and wild beasts ceased to rove round the city
where there was no one strong enough to resist them.
Dry as the dust into which they were to moulder were
those remains of the bold and strong, as the mourn
ful prophet gazed upon them through that mystic air
of vision which was neither of the night nor of the
day. " Son of man, can these bones live ? " "0 Lord
God, Thou knowest," answered the powerless voice of
humanity. Then came the wonderful command, "0
ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord." Nothing
could be more sublime than the description that follows.

346 JERUSALEM. [cHAr.
" I prophesied as I was commanded : and as I prophesied, there
was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together,
bone to his bone.
" And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon
them, and skin covered them above : but there was no breath in
them. " Then said He unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son
of man, and say unto the wind, Thus saith the Lord God ;
" Come from the four winds, 0 breath,
" And breathe upon these slain that they may live.
" So I prophesied as He commanded me, and the breath came
unto them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceed
ing great army."
"These bones are the whole house of Israel," dry,
withered, worn by sun and rain, ravaged by the vultures
and the hyenas, the bones and mournful relics of a once
living nation ; yet — " Saith the Lord God ; Behold, 0 my
people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come
out from your graves, and bring you into the land of
Israel." With what a throb of strange emotion must all
those troubled people have listened, remembering, how
well ! that valley under the now ruined walls : realising,
how bitterly ! the condition of the unburied dead, their
brethren, their sons : and held their breath to hear of
that solemn rising, which was a type of their own rise as
a nation, as well as, no doubt, to many an awakened heart,
of another dimly promised, little understood, yet faintly
apprehended rising that was to come !
It will be seen that in all this it is never the individual
but the race and nation which is referred to. The twelve
tribes of Israel have their symbolical place even in the
heavenly land as conceived by every Jew : yet the organ
isation of a nation save in symbol cannot be immortal.
Therefore it is the restoration of human fact which is the
prospect held out to them, and the continuance of human
and historical life. Few of the individuals who stood
round the prophet to listen, or sat before him, silent,
awaiting his message, could ever hope to see that restora-

in.] THE PROPHETS. 347
tion. The prophet himself did not live to see it. With
him and with them as individuals, God had His own
methods as He has now and always. But to Israel and
Judah the only promise possible was that of renewed
and continued national life.
And was it a glorious dream of ecstatic patriotism and
faith, touched with the glamour of an inspiration which
was all symbolical, allegorical, visionary, the ethereal
atmosphere of a splendour that never was on sea or shore,
that produced that Apocalypse with which the troubled
life and vision of Ezekiel came to an end? The new
Jerusalem, the new temple, far greater and more glorious
than that of Solomon, which the angel measured as did
he whom St. John in Patmos, six hundred years later,
beheld fulfilling the same office, rose before the prophet's
eyes, shining upon the familiar hills. To John it was a
new Jerusalem descending glorious from the skies like a
bride adorned for her husband. But in Ezekiel's wild,
yet strangely regular and, as we might say, architec
turally scientific vision, the solid walls are founded on
the very soil, and built in the very fashion, only more
extended and more splendid, than that of old. That
there might be in the extraordinary details of this vision
a certain guidance for the restoration to come, a glori
fied memory of what had been, a secure storing away,
as in the most sacred place, of those lines of construc
tion which were to guide the future — upon which the
prophet with the cadence and music of his own and
other prophecies of the after-glory in his ears, and a
dazzling sense of splendour to come irradiating all before
him, looked forth with the assurance of a heavenly
triumph — we may well be allowed to imagine. These
promises were to be fulfilled but temporarily accord
ing to the immediate sense put upon them. Far more
glorious, far more Divine, was to be the tragic triumph,

348 JERUSALEM. [chap.
the everlasting dominion over the heart of man, of the
holy city, the scene of our Lord's life and death. But
by the rivers of Babylon at that dread moment the human
heart had had enough of tragedy. Isaiah himself could
but vaguely foresee that wonderful picture which he
made, "searching what and what manner of things the
spirit that was in him did prophesy," strangely revealing
in the midst of those mists of glory the countenance
marred more than any man of which he has left so affect
ing a portrait. What they needed now was the assurance
of restoration and blessing and joy.
Nor was that assurance vain even in fact. The return
of the Jews from captivity nearly seventy years after,
was such an event as is unparalleled in history. The
strenuous devotion of men born in exile to that ever-
longed-for, never-forgotten city, and the strange impres
sion made on the minds of the conquerors, by what
means we are left uninformed, which made that return
possible, forms an occurrence unique in the world, bear
ing no analogy to any other ever known. Nothing could
have seemed less possible, nothing ever was more true.
It was wonder enough to fill the dark horizon of the cap
tives with exultation : and it was once more the oppor
tunity of the race to claim and merit every ancient
promise, of blessing ; an opportunity not taken, as we
know, but which to the prisoners in Babylon it would at
that moment seem impossible that their progeny, taught
by experience so awful, could reject.
And with this assurance the prophecies olose. It was
all literal to the poet and teacher whose every lesson had
been pointed by sight and sound, who had scratched the
ruined Jerusalem on his tragic tile, and who now drew
his lines unchangeable in solid substance of stone and
wood upon the mist of that future which was made all
glorious by the promises of God. At such an ebb of

THE GOLDEN GATE.

To face page 348.

in.] THE PROPHETS. 351
national history when all seemed over and the eclipse of
their nation and city was to every mortal vision a catas
trophe without hope, there must have been something in
those measurements and details, the chambers for priests
unborn, the great splendid courts and galleries for a wor
ship extinguished and a people scattered to the ends of
the earth — something in the mingled impossibility yet
certainty, that dazzle of the contradictory which is in all
human affairs but in none so much as in the history of
the Jews — which uplifted the hearts of the captives as
nothing else on earth could do.
I may note one local detail of Ezekiel's prolonged and
realistic vision which refers to " the eastern gate of the
sanctuary," occupying it may be presumed, the place of
that which is now called the Golden Gate, a spot which
has always powerfully affected my own imagination. It
is almost opposite now to that garden of Gethsemane in
which our Lord reached one of the most bitter depths of
His anguish, so that had He entered the sacred precincts
from His favourite place of retirement, as, no doubt, He
often did, it would have been by that door. It is the gate
which Moslem tradition points out as the one by which
Messiah when He conies in triumph, treading down the
Crescent and all its cruel supremacy, will enter, and which
accordingly, with a precaution full of that strange child
ishness which mingles with the subtility of the East,
they have built up by way of safeguard. Ezekiel was led
to this eastern gate, and found that it was closed.
" Then said the Lord unto me : This gate shall be shut, it shall
not be opened, and no man shall enter by it ; because the Lord,
the God of Israel, hath entered in by it, therefore it shall be shut.
" It is for the Prince ; the Prince, He shall sit in it to eat bread
before the Lord ; He shall enter by the way of the porch of that
gate, and shall go out by the way of the same."
It is scarcely possible to doubt that this passage is the
origin of the Mohammedan tradition: and it adds a strong

352 JERUSALEM. [chap.
additional interest to the always significant suggestion
of an entrance thus hermetically closed: by which the
Prince of Princes has gone in, by which it may be He
came forth to His agony in the garden, and by which, in
the wonders and mysteries of a future of which we know
so little, He may yet return.
And here closes the first portion of the history of
Jerusalem, the little city on the hillside, like so many
others of the little, cities which still cover the hills of
Palestine. The small tough fortress that David took
has grown into a beautiful and splendid metropolis un
der our eyes — not vast like Babylon, or Nineveh, those
ancient centres of the world — but with a splendour of
the heart, the cradle of music, of poetry and song ; with
palace and temple, not perhaps so beautiful as those of
Greece that were yet to be, but pervaded by a meaning
far more beautiful, the presence of a God one and
supreme, the spirit of a law, unique in its tenderness as
in its justice. We have seen this city rise and fall again
with all the vicissitudes of human contrariety and
changeableness and the caprices of a specially perverse
and individual race. It has poured forth suoh paeans of
triumph and wailings of lamentation as never were
uttered from earth to heaven : and now it has fallen,
fallen from its high state- — -destroyed with a complete
ness that never overtook either Babylon or Nineveh,
those cities now altogether wiped out from human habi
tation and ken — smoking in utter ruin, all that was capa
ble in it gone, a few beggars and skilless poor left to
creep about the deserted streets, and seek a pitiful main
tenance among tbe foundations of the burnt granaries
and the fruits of gardens trampled down. And yet over
this desolate place the air thrills with promises of great
ness to come, and far away in Chaldea the prophet
measures his mystic chambers and builds with incisive

m.] THE PROPHETS. 353
lines that seem to cut the parchment, the walls and
towers of another temple more great than Solomon's.
Could it ever be that these promises should be fulfilled
and that great sanctuary once more stand dazzling under
the Eastern sun ?

PART III.— THE RETURN AND 'RESTO
RATION.
CHAPTER I.
ZERUBBABEL  EZRA.
THE captivity lasted, as Jeremiah had prophesied,
nearly seventy years, during which time the Jewish
captives had not by any means continued to sit and weep
by the waters of Babylon as in the first days. The gen
eration which was carried captive died in great measure
and passed away, though there is still mention of some,
very old men as they must have been, who had seen the
glory of the first house, yet who were still able for the
toilsome journey back again from Babylon to Jerusalem.
In the intervening interval the Jews, here first called by
that name, as they emerge from the obscurity into which
they had fallen, had found their way, in some cases, into
important offices in the government and court, and in
many others had grown rich and prospered in the exer
cise of those inalienable gifts which still, more than two
thousand years later, make them prosper and grow rich
wherever their wandering footsteps are stayed — a faculty
which has procured them much odium everywhere,
especially when attained by that habit of "taking
pledges " and exacting usury which had been one of
their special sins from the beginning of their career.

ch. i.] THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 355
The apocryphal writings, which, though without any
claim to be received into the sacred canon, are full of
valuable details of the Jewish life and history, give us
much information concerning the settlement of the little
nation among the crowds of Babylon, and of many rich
and prosperous families living such a peaceful life among
their captors as strangers may enjoy who have no special
patriotic interest in the adventures and misadventures of
the country in which they have their habitation, uncon
cerned whether it is a great Nebuchadnezzar or a feeble
Belshazzar who occupies the throne. Such strangers
unaffected by the vicissitudes of local feeling or fortune
may thrive and prosper whatever happens in the alien
land where they have full freedom of movement' and
occupation. It is, indeed, the same manner of life which
that wonderful race has continued to live throughout the
whole civilised world.
And it was not only the least distinguished of the
Jews who contented themselves with this fate. Daniel
the princely boy " of the king's seed," well-favoured and
well-educated and full of that charm which seems to have
dwelt with the house of David even in its downfall, not
withstanding his great genius, and wonderful adventures,
and the mystic visions, more strange, even than those of
Ezekiel, which were vouchsafed to him, never seems to
have struggled against his circumstances, or attempted
any change. He stands a mystic yet most real figure
full of vigour and courage in the very court and palace
of the conqueror, never swerving from his faith, always
respected, full of honour and of honours. During most
of his life he occupied the highest positions, one of the
chief men of the kingdom : but he was obedient to the
doom of his people, accepting all its humiliations and
never attempting to throw off that yoke which had been
,, imposed upon himself individually in his childhood.
aa2

356 JERUSALEM. [chap.
Mordecai or Mordocheus, the Jew, the foster-father of
Esther, though not so great, was a person about the
court, sitting in the king's gate, and sufficiently well
known to incur the jealous hatred of the vizier Haman.
But it is unnecessary to multiply examples. The calm
settlement of the majority of the exiles, combined with
their never-failing enthusiasm for Jerusalem and their
. ancient home, is as remarkable as any other feature in
their history. Daniel prayed with his face towards
Jerusalem bewailing the sins which had banished his
race from that beloved city, as still the far-off descendants
of that wonderful people, coming on pilgrimages from all
the ends of the earth, wail and pray with their heads
against the ancient wall, older than all revolutions, which
banks up the slope of Moriah, enclosing the area where
once the Temple stood, and where now they are not per
mitted to set foot. Strange constancy of faith, strange
inability of action ! In Babylon they fondly computed
the hours of the day by the old divisions, speaking of
"the time of the evening oblation," though neither
oblation nor sacrifice existed. But yet still lived on and
throve and prospered, and fulfilled great offices of trust
and government in the strange land : and neither then
nor at the moment when the national penance was accom
plished and return was possible, attempted to go back.
Almost as extraordinary as the determination of the race
to restore their holy places and keep their distinct
nationality, is their acceptance everywhere of the exile
which has become their general fate. They are now the
richest and one of the most numerous of races. Could
they be moved by the Crusaders' spirit what an astonish
ing intervention in the Eastern question might be made
by an army of Jews, countless, interminable, from all
the countries under heaven, with all the capitalists of
Europe at their back ! How soon might little Palestine,

i.] THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 357
the beloved birthplace which would not contain one
thousandth part of them, fall into their hands ! And
something still of the old enthusiasm, the old heroism,
the desperate valour of their ancestors, must surely
remain among them. What is it, stronger than ambition,
more powerful than wealth, that holds them back?
The time came, however, when so far as regarded the
ancient Jews in Babylon this spell was broken. The
fall of the great empire which had been foretold by their
prophets, the opening of the great gates, the two-leaved
gates, the gates of the rivers, let in the Mede into the
careless city lost in banqueting and mirth, and Cyrus
strong and great took the place of Belshazzar. What
movement then took place among the Jews, or how was
the attention of the conqueror attracted to them? By
what incident or series of incidents was a special inter
est aroused in the mind of Cyrus for these exiles? No
historical problem could be more interesting to solve
than this, but there is absolutely no information on the
subject. " The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus King
of Persia": that is all: and we know no more. There
were many subject races in his new kingdom, relics of
Nebuchadnezzar's conquests, but it was not the skilful
Phoenicians, masters of all the arts, nor the shipmen and
merchants of the seaports, which are always so valuable
to an inland empire, whom Cyrus restored. None of
these, indeed, had been swept into such complete de
struction as that which had overwhelmed Jerusalem.
But it is vain to seek for any authentic information
as to the reasons which directed the eyes of the new
emperor towards the scattered people, who had been,
more than any other, rooted out and torn away from
their country. They had not even any remarkable
leader to attract his attention, for their great men were
old and secluded from the occupations and influences of

358 JERUSALEM. [chap.
life. Was it the aged Daniel from his retirement who
came forth, with perhaps a roll of old parchment carried
after him in its case, to show the monarch his own very
name in the fading lines a century and a half old?
"Cyrus, my shepherd," of whom God said "I guided
thee though thou hast not known me." In the criticism
of recent times the mere fact that Cyrus is named is
evidence enough that the writer cannot have been Isaiah
but another man, the contemporary of the great con
queror : but that would be an exceedingly poor argument
if Daniel or some other influential Jew actually pos
sessed the roll of Isaiah's prophecy in which these words
appeared. It is, we believe, a tradition that this was
the way in which the attention of Cyrus was secured,
and that in so effectual a manner, that he not only per
mitted but sent the Jews, or at least such portion of
them as were ready to shake themselves loose of all their
surroundings, and give up the comforts they had gathered
about them and the protection and established security
of the great empire for that visionary journey full of
trouble and fatigue, to the Jerusalem which very few
could remember. The act of Cyrus was all the more
extraordinary, that his decree was accompanied by the
gift of the valuable sacred vessels, "thirty chargers of
gold, a thousand chargers of silver, thirty basons of gold,
silver basons of a second sort four hundred and ten"
and much more, a small treasure as well as trophy of
past conquests. It might, indeed, have had a certain
political effect as humiliating the already crushed Baby
lonians, but few kings are ready to part with bullion
even on such an argument.
This decree, so wonderful and beyond all hope, must
have thrown an extraordinary excitement through all the
scattered colonies of the Jews. A return from captivity
sounds like something joyful and triumphant. The

i.] THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 359
people had sown in tears, but would return joyful carry
ing their sheaves with them. Such is the aspect in
whicn it appears to us ; but that could scarcely be the
view which presented itself to the devoted chiefs and
priests, who conducted the expedition, a venture almost
as great as that of the first expedition from Egypt to
Canaan. It is difficult to form from our own experience
any idea of what such an undertaking meant. No doubt
the Jewish children had been brought up to call the
distant Jerusalem fondly by the name of "home," to
hear continual accounts of its glory, fondly exaggerated
in the recollection of the fathers and mothers who had
passed away with that name upon their lips. So do our
Canadian or Australian grandchildren think of the
Imperial little island lying far away in the dimness of
the seas; but they come and go with ease and without
danger to a civilisation more advanced than their own,
to a perfectly secure and highly organised life — although
we have little doubt with some disenchantment and sense
of having fallen from the ideal to the real, when they
accomplish that pilgrimage. But the Jewish captives
had before them a city in ruins, a country which had
fallen out of cultivation, almost into the condition of a
desert, full, no doubt, of predatory nomads, and with
vexatious neighbours on every side, hostile little peoples
looking out for every occasion of offence. That deso
late and devastated land was home to them only in
name. And between them and it, lay one of those long
journeys of the ancient world, journeys almost incon
ceivable to us, when the monotonous jog of the camel or
tramp of the ass go on for long weeks, till the lines of
the endless road whirl round the passenger, in feverish
endings and diminishings of long perspective, and all
life becomes a confused and weary movement which
seems as if it never could reach any definite end.

360 JERUSALEM. [chap.
That some forty-two thousand of the captives (as
stated by Ezra : the summing of the items does not come
to this, but to somewhere about thirty thousand; it
is very possible, however, that the children of the many
families made up the larger number) had tbe courage to
set out, and to take upon themselves the task of building
up that great Temple which had occupied Solomon in its
first construction for years, and so many other kings in
constant reparation and restoration — is a proof of the
great vitality and earnestness of the national life among
them. The very old and the very young were in the
vast party which moved slowly off from Babylon, and
from all the villages and cities in which they dwelt, the
entire community of their countrymen, no doubt, coining
forth to see them start, watching with eyes, half wistful,-
half ashamed, the heroic remnant which was giving up
everything for home. Many must have thus looked on
who had not the courage to go with them, or who were
so bound with the engagements of life, the cares of
wealth, or those of poverty, as to be unable to join the
train. Many, no doubt, had compounded for their want
of energy by buying back captives from their masters,
as is afterwai'ds stated, and by undertaking the expenses
of the journey for their poorer countrymen. The prince
Zerubbabel and the high priest Jeshua have left little
sign of their personality upon the record: perhaps
because they did not possess the gift of expression which
such an incisive writer as the scribe Ezra exercised with
so much effect. They are voiceless, devoting themselves
as the pioneers of the nation, saying never a word, yet '
not less important in the story, leading the forlorn hope
not only of Juclah but of Israel. They had their little
band of priests about them, thirty-six members of well-
known families, and a number more who could not prove
their lineage, a small contingent of Levites and Nethin-

DOME OP THE ROCK, SITPATED ON THE SITE OF THE ANCIENT TEMPLE. T° ¦fUCe Page 36°'

i.J THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 363
ims, servants of the Temple, and a larger number of
musicians, " children of Asaph, " besides the laymen rich
and poor who formed the main body. "Two hundred
singing men and women" are mentioned among the
servants, in addition to these sacred singers of Asaph's
race, of whom there were a hundred and twenty-eight —
so that the great' caravans must have had a sufficient
choir of performers, for those songs with which they
beguiled the way.
By the waters of Chebar where Ezekiel lived and
sighed for Jerusalem, where the captives sat under the
willows — and from many another colony beside, knot
after knot of people would take their way, a camel con
veying the baggage, perhaps another camel with the
women and children, an ass for the servant, a horse for
the man, riding at the head of the party. Their way
lay chiefly through the vast empire all indeed under the
Babylonian sway, enjoined by the royal letters to aid
and afford supplies; but where perhaps, in the outlying
regions, it wrould scarcely be yet known that Babylon
had fallen, that the kingdom of the Medes and Persians
had begun, and that the king was Cyrus and not Bel
shazzar. And among so many different satrapies and
peoples there must have been endless risks of encounter
with the lawless on the way, in distant regions out of
the reach of authority, and among the predatory bands
roving about the plains such as held the travelling cara
vans in terror. Arabs and Bedouins as yet were not,
but there were, no doubt, relics of Ammon and Moab,
who would look on with angry wonder as they approached,
besides the half savage aborigines to whom they were
only a succession of huge and straggling parties very
open to robbing. They took four and a half months to
the journey whicli seems a long time even with their
primitive methods: but there must have been endless

364 JERUSALEM. [chap.
delays incident to such a crowd, and difficulties in the
supply of food, besides the opposition of here and there
an irate commune to their passage, the enmity which the
very friendship of one town would raise in another, as
well as the constant risk of sickness among the family
groups, those swift epidemics of the East smiting down
the travellers. And when they arrived on the northern
heights from which they could first see Jerusalem, that
point where the mailed warriors of the Middle Ages
shouted and wept in the transport of their end attained,,
what cries, what wailings must have burst from the
expectant crowd ! That heap of ruins on the two hills,
calm Olivet standing like a sentinel over them, the val
ley of the Tyropoeon cutting like the jagged stroke of
an axe between the upper and the lower city, the low
lines of humble roofs hid among the heaps of destruc
tion, what a sight to meet the eyes of the exiles ! Was
this the Mount Zion which was the joy of the whole
earth, compactly built, beautiful for situation, the city
of the great King ?
It would appear that after the perils and fatigue of
their journey a period of rest ensued. The people
"dwelt in their cities," each forlorn household returning
to where its settlement was, the home of its fathers;
where the young Assyrians, brought up among the lux
uries of Babylon, must have learnt to put up with the
homely rock-hewn chambers of Bethlehem, the huts of
Anathoth, the ruined dwellings of Bethel and Michmash,
there being many families from the ten tribes in the
train, as well as those of Judah and Benjamin. They
dispersed " every one to his city " to form some sort of
economy of possible life amid those unknown surround
ings with which their acquaintance was only tradition
ary: while Zerubbabel and Jeshua would, no doubt,
push their way on to the ruins of Jerusalem which

i.] THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 365
offered them so sad a welcome, standing up roofless and
desolate under the blazing Eastern skies.
How long a time was allowed for these preliminaries
we are not informed, but it was in October, the seventh
month of the Jewish year, that the people were
called together to Jerusalem for the first act of restora
tion. In the meantime the elementary difficulties of the
position had been overcome, so far, at least, that the
charred relics of the Temple had been partially cleared
away, and the sites of the holy places identified, so that
it was possible to restore the altar for the daily sacri
fices in its place in the porch of the ruined building:
" for fear was upon them because of the people of these
countries," says the record. Probably they were anx
ious not only to be able to resume the characteristic rites
of sacrifice which the existing generation had never seen,
but also to make it instantly plain to the surrounding
and not friendly people that their object was a religious
one, and not an endeavour to found a new kingdom or
raise any standard of rebellion against the great central
power at Babylon which all obeyed or professed to obey.
"They set the altar upon his bases," building up the
foundations out of the fallen stones, the material that
lay ready to their hand, perhaps laying upon them the
sheets of ancient brass torn from their place, injured
and useless, which had lain in some corner of the royal
chapel of Nebuchadnezzar and his sons, and had been
delivered back again to the captives along with so many
other more valuable things. It is a picturesque detail
that the people kept the Eeast of Tabernacles during
this first assembly. It must have simplified matters
greatly that the time of year at which they were called
was that of this feast, for it is evident that the booths
or little erections of green branches which are still built
everywhere in Palestine, perched high upon a wall, or

366 JERUSALEM. [chap.
supported by piles as summer dwellings, would be much
more wholesome, as well as pleasant, than any kind of
encampment among the ruins, extensive enough to have
lodged the people in strength. We remember to have
been told that these summer tabernacles were not only
for coolness but to escape the scorpions which swarmed
among the ruins of older and greater buildings surround
ing a little modern town of Palestine. The tabernacles
of Jerusalem in that blazing autumn weather, perched
high over the broken walls and heaps of indiscriminate
ruin, would, no doubt, have this reason too.
Prom that time forth the smoke of the evening and the
morning sacrifice began to rise again over Moriah, never
to be wholly extinguished save for a brief interval, until
the great sacrifice, of which these rites were but the
shadow, had been accomplished there.
It was not, however, till the second year that Zerub
babel and Jeshua found themselves in a position to begin
the rebuilding of the Temple. They had not only to
clear the site, during the course of which they would,
no doubt, find much valuable material in those stones in
which, as sings a poet of the captivity, God's people
found pleasure, and in the very dust which was dear,
but to provide the finer material of the interior, the
cedar which Solomon had procured from Tyre, and for
which the new restorers of his Temple made a bargain
similar to his, exchanging the crops, which must have
been abundant since they became thus at once an article
of barter, for the precious wood. What a stirring once
more in those dry bones ! Solomon's foundations, no
doubt, still stood, fast in the rock, as some portion of
them do now, Cyclopean blocks, marked with the sign
of their Phoenician builders : and many of the great
courses of stone must have withstood the axes of the
destroyer, and offered at once guidance and material for

i.J THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 367
the rebuilding; while all about the valleys of Hinnom
must have been heard the shoutings and strainings of
the workmen who had dragged the great logs across the
plain of Sharon and by all the mountain ways towards
the city. The Levites were appointed to the charge of
the work, and as soon as the area was cleared and the
masons, no doubt also supplied by Tyre, that home of
industry, were ready to begin, a great solemnity was
held once more upon Moriah. The people flocked again
from their villages, the consecrated overseers were all
in their places, the builders clustered about the great
foundation stone. Something of the glory of old must
have been about the sacred mount where " the priests in
their apparel with trumpets," glowing in their purple
and fine linen, the bells on the high priest's tunic
tinkling as he moved, "and the Levites, the sons of
Asaph with cymbals " stood all around: and once more
the song of consecration, the song of David, floated forth
on all the winds. "Praise ye the Lord.
0 give thanks unto the Lord ;
For He is good :
For His mercy endureth for ever."
' ' And all the people shouted with a great shout when the founda
tion of the house of the Lord was laid.
" But many of the priests and Levites and chief of the fathers, who
were ancient men, that had seen the first house, when the founda
tion of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud
voice ; and many shouted aloud for joy : so that the people could
not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weep
ing of the people : for the people shouted with a loud shout, and
the noise was heard afar off."
What poets, what painters were those Hebrews! how
the mass of ruin suddenly becomes coherent, with a great
soul in it, upon the mount before our eyes, and the old
men weep for all the strange things that have been and
are to be, and the young rejoice in the beginning of the

368 JERUSALEM. [chap.
work, to which they were commissioned by the great
God who had distinguished their' race through all the
years of human history, and the great king magnanimous
and powerful who was His servant though he knew Him
not. The past and the future crowded upon them as
they sang and shouted in their corner of little Palestine.
Was it not the greatest act taking place in the whole
world, though that world, like Cyrus, knew it not ?
After this joyful beginning however, the work was
soon brought to a pause. The people round had seen
the return of the Jews with envious and evil eyes.
" The adversaries of Judah and Benjamin " who now
interfered, are believed to have been the inhabitants of
Samaria, their nearest neighbours and in a sense kinsmen,
a mixed company in which a few legitimate remnants of
the ancient Israelites had so mixed themselves amongst
the successive waves of colonists that they were no
longer to be identified as of one nation or another,
the invaders with the liberality of heathenism having
adopted the God of Israel into their Olympus, willing to
share an occasional act of worship between Him and
Baal. Their jealousy of the sudden invaders who had
thus taken possession of a vacant place in which, per
haps, they now regretted not to have forestalled them,
was mingled, perhaps, with some lingering shame in their
own apostacy and desire to return to a religion which
now seemed a passport to the favour of kings. "Let us
build with you," was what they said "for we seek your
God, as you do." The Jews repulsed these deceitful
overtures with indignation. "Ye have nothing to do
with us" they replied, "we ourselves together will build
unto the Lord God of Israel, as King Cyrus, the King
of Persia has commanded us." The result was that
these uneasy neighbours delayed the building by many
devices, keeping up a constant course of disturbance

i.J THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 369
which lasted for many years. They despatched letters
to Cyrus, to Ahasuerus or Cambyses his son, and to his
successor, called in the text Artaxerxes, continuing the
process for seventeen or eighteen years until the begin
ning of the reign of Darius. The vexatious character of
this opposition, the effect it may have had upon the
supplies from Tyre, and the difficulties it would throw
in the way of securing workmen in the country round,
from among those aborigines, undisturbed by any politi
cal revolutions, who still supplied Jerusalem with
unskilled labour — must have been very harassing to
the Jews, and seriously retarded the work which for the
moment every influence seems to have combined to pre
vent. The character of the letters to the distant court
at Babylon, where these hostile neighbours hired coun
sellors to speak for them, may be perceived from the
extracts which are given in the text, addressed to Arta
xerxes: "If this city be builded, and the walls set up
again, then will they not pay toll, tribute, and custom,
and so thou shalt endamage the revenues of the kings," an
astute suggestion which made the new monarch pause.
It would appear that neither from Cyrus nor his son
could any decree against the Jews be obtained, notwith
standing the counsellors whom their enemies had bribed
to support their cause. But the Artaxerxes of the text
was a usurper, probably terrified to transgress against
precedent, or to risk any portion of the revenue. " Why
should the king come to hurt?" he says in his reply.
He caused a search to be made in the archives laid up
in his capital and discovered that Jerusalem had been
an independent and very belligerent little kingdom,
with which Nebuchadnezzar had much trouble before he
finally reduced it to ashes. The decree of Cyrus in its
favour was not in that ancient record office, nor, perhaps,
would it have had much influence upon the man who
BP.

370 JERUSALEM. [chap.
had seized his throne. Orders were accordingly sent to
stop the building, which was done by force, the Jews in
Jerusalem being too few and unwarlike to stand against
their enemies.
Many disappointments and disenchantments, during
those troubled years, must have come to the enthusiastic
band which had laid with such shouts of joy and weep
ing the foundation of the house of the Lord. No doubt
they had thought when they made the great renunciation
of their comforts and possessions and secure life at Baby
lon, that the work to which they devoted themselves
would, at least, go on to a noble completion, and the
praises of God resound in their beautiful Temple to echo
over all the world. Instead of this they found them
selves compelled to share in a specially bitter way the
common lot of humanity, deceived in their warmest
hopes, and instead of miraculous help and reward, had
to learn to serve God for nought, as it is indeed the
highest privilege of his servants to do. The work,
instead of progressing steadily from day to day, had to
be carried on as they could, a little now, a little then, as
the exigencies of a life lived among enemies, with con
stant interruptions of their supplies and materials,
permitted ; and then was brought to a sudden and com
pulsory end. The prophets upbraided them afterwards
for dwelling in their ceiled houses while the house of
the Lord lay waste, but it is easy to imagine how the
hearts of the returned exiles must have sunk at last
under so many discouragements, and how their attempt
to recover some individual comfort by betaking them
selves to the construction and ornamentation of their
own dwellings was au expedient to keep life in them,
suggested by the weariness of their hearts.
The sudden uprising of Haggai, the prophet, and his
violent call upon the people to resume the work of the

To face page 373.
IN THE TEMPLE ENCLOSURE '. THE TOMB OF ELIAS.

i.J THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 373
Temple would seem to have put an end to this disastrous
pause. Whether the news had penetrated to Jerusalem,
travelling slowly as news did in these days, that a new
revolution had happened in Babylon, and a new monarch
had been raised to the throne : or if these persecutors,
satisfied with the edict pronounced against them, had
dropped apart and ceased to trouble, it is evident that
something happened to revive the spirit of the colo
nists : and the opportunity was seized to inspire the flag
ging patriots to a completion of the great national work.
"Ye have sown much, and bring in little," cries the
prophet. " Ye looked for much, and lo ! it came to
little," words which must have penetrated into every
heart. If he attributed this fact more to. their own sins
and indifference than to any external agency, no doubt
in every man's conscience that also was true.
But the long-disused cry of prophetic reproach and
encouragement seemed to move both rulers and people
like a trumpet-blast. They resumed the work, it would
appear, with such an impulse of renewed energy that it
attracted the attention of a more important personage
than the Samaritan conspirators who had procured the
decree against them. "Tatnai, governor on this side
of the river," that is, from Euphrates southward, the
Satrap of Syria, came in person to inquire into what
they were doing. He was not a national enemy or
envious person, but an impartial official representing
imperial authority. His report to Darius has all the
calm of power in it, with no ulterior motive. He found
these men, who were too obscure and far off ever to have
attracted the attention of the great Darius, building in
the wilds "the house of the great God," evidently so
magnificent and unusual a work that it needed explana
tion. "The work," he adds, "goeth fast on, and pros-
pereth in their hands." The viceroy, with his band,

374 JERUSALEM. [chap.
had gone up the hill to inquire into this wonderful
undertaking : " Who commanded you to build this house,
and to make up these walls ? " he asked. The meeting
took place, in all probability, outside the northern gate,
as was usual unless, indeed, the satrap, in his surprise,
pushed on into the interior, into the midst of the very
courts themselves, not yet closed to Gentile feet, where
the Tyrian masons were building, and the Levite over
seers measuring and planning. Zerubbabel, of the house
of David, a prince of a dynasty which had outlived many
empires, and Jeshua the high priest, scarcely less digni
fied in descent, still more so in office, with many others
of the leaders of the Jews, heads of well-known families,
met the Syrian prince with a demeanour which he, in
high authority himself, would be able to appreciate.
" We asked their names also to certify them," he says,
reporting to his master their statement that their per
mission to rebuild the Temple of the God of heaven came
from Cyrus himself, who had given them back out of his
treasuries "the golden and silver vessels of the house of
God which Nebuchadnezzar took." "Now, therefore,"
says the Satrap, "if it seem good to the king, let
there be search made in the king's treasure-house, which
there is at Babylon, whether it be so." Tatnai must
have been impressed by the wonderful work of these
men, which was not for their own benefit but for the
house of "the great God, the God of heaven and earth,"
not the God of the Jews, it will be remarked. Nothing
so remarkable had come under his cognisance before.
This people had travelled over hills and deserts, a long
and weary journey to a ruined town, away from their
safe establishment in Babylon; for what? Eor this
house of God. It is clear that the governor had no
desire to stop the work now proceeding so happily in
the sudden new influx of earnestness and enthusiasm

i.J THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 375
roused by the exhortations of the prophets, the strong
outcry of Haggai, the happy visions of Zechariah.
There is a serious interest in all he writes, a desire to
do justice to such singular enthusiasts, and to have a
sufficient warrant for their work, with whicli he has no
inclination to interfere.
It would almost seem as if the same interest had com
municated itself to the officials of the new empire : among
whom, no doubt, were Jews, determined to leave no
stone unturned for the benefit of their brethren and the
great work, dear, even when they had not elected to take
part in it, to every Hebrew heart : for they were evidently
not content with their fruitless researches in the record
office at Babylon, the precious decree being found at
Ecbatana, " in the palace that is in the province of the
Medes." Intelligence was immediately communicated
to the Syrian satrap that the edict had been found, and
contained even more than the Jews claimed, no less than
a large contribution being promised to the expense of the
building, and a subsidy of animals and provisions to be
given day by clay without fail, " that they may offer sacri
fices of sweet savours unto the God of heaven and pray
for the life of the king and of his sons." Darius estab
lished, accordingly, all that his great predecessor had
clone, annulled the edict of the usurper, and charged his
viceroy to see that his orders were fulfilled.
There was henceforward no further opposition to the
great work. Four years more elapsed before the build
ing was completed, but in the sixth year of Darius the
new Temple was consecrated, and the Eeast of the Pass
over kept in the restored and renovated city. Whether
it was conspicuously inferior to its predecessor, as various
indirect allusions would seem to imply, or whether it
was really a greater edifice, is a point on which there is
much divergence of opinion. The measurements as or-

376 JERUSALEM. [chap.
dained by Cyrus are much larger than those of the
Temple of Solomon, but, on the other hand, " the day of
small things " mentioned by Zechariah would evidently
seem to refer to the comparative insignificance of the
building; and Haggai asks, "Who is left among you that
saw this house in her first glory? and how do you see it
now? is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as noth
ing?" This, however, was said while the work was still
incomplete, and when the two or three venerable fathers
who might survive, if any such were, had shaken their
heads in the habitual usage of old age over the possi-
"bility that such raw new walls could ever equal the
Temple which they saw, more glorious than ever reality
was, through the mists of childish remembrance faraway.
Such old men as could have seen " the house in her first
glory " must by that time have reached the extreme limit
of mortality, nearly a hundred years. It is very possi
ble, as so often happens in human affairs, that both
of the differing views on this subject may be true — that
the second Temple was larger than the old according to
the stipulations of Cyrus, but that it was very far from
being so richly and lavishly decorated, a thing almost
certain in the circumstances of its re-erection.
The record here stops, its special object being accom
plished: and the personal narrative of Ezra begins.
Whether he was the author of the previous piece of his
tory, or merely its editor, is not known nor is it of the
slightest importance. It was natural that it should be
written by one who witnessed that remarkable episode,
and there are some touches in it such as that of the min
gled sound of joy and weeping at the beginning of the
work which could only have been made by an actual
spectator : but the chief figures of Zerubbabel and Jeshua
are so wholly without character, mere names in the his
tory, that it can scarcely have been done by any imme-

'¦]

THE RETURN AND RESTORATION.

377

diate follower of theirs, and may simply have been put
together by Ezra from notes or oral report. The greater
part of the generation which had built the Temple, and
re-established the city, had passed away before he ap-

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SCULPTURED CAPITAL.

pears upon the scene. Prince and high priest were both
gone, the latter replaced by his grandson, the former, it
would appear, not replaced at all, but succeeded by a
council of nobles and rulers. Ezra was himself no
Hebrew official, but a most important visitor from Baby-

378 JERUSALEM. [chap.
Ion, apparently holding office in the government there,
although his special studies had been in the law of
Moses. But the fact that " the king granted him all his
request " shows that he had attained, as so many of the
Hebrews did, great influence and favour with the reign
ing potentate. This is calculated to have been Arta
xerxes or Xerxes Longimanus, the grandson of Darius,
so that the space of rather more than half a century oc
curred between the completion of the Temple under the
protecting edict of Darius, and the visit of Ezra. In the
meantime there had occurred in Shushan, which was
the residence of the great Persian monarch, that curious
story of Providential guidance as well as palace intrigue
which we call the book of Esther, a proof of the very
general prevalence of Jewish influence in the highest
centres of Babylon, which, no doubt, accounts for the
almost invariable protection and favour with which
Jerusalem was regarded. Ezra had, no doubt, heard
rumours of the laxity of morals in the holy city, and
that there were some points in which reformation was
most important if the independence and unity of the
nation were to be preserved. It would almost seem as if
he had laid his anxieties before the king and drawn that
monarch into a certain sympathy with them: so that
Artaxerxes himself, the husband of Esther, and naturally
as may be supposed taking an interest in her race, was
led to charge the scribe with a special imperial mission,
to visit and inquire into the spiritual state and position
towards the law of the ancient people, "to inquire con
cerning Judah and Jerusalem, according to the law of
God which is in thine hand." That this was a part only
of Ezra's charge, and that he was also an imperial com
missioner to inquire into the government of the whole
state on "this side of the river," the satrapy of Syria,
has been imagined, but it is a point on which there is no

I-]

THE RETURN AND RESTORATION.

379

information. That he had a very special mission for the
Jews is, however, evident from the fact that he was
permitted to take with him as many of the remaining
exiles as desired to go, some two thousand in all —

SCULPTURED CAPITAL.

chiefly, it would appear, of the Levitical tribe which
had held back on the previous occasion, priests, singers,
porters, etc., of a timorous mind, whose descendants were
ready to accompany the imperial emissary now that all
danger was over. Ezra also took with him a large

380 JERUSALEM. [chap.
contribution from the king and his counsellors " freely
offered" this time "unto the God of Israel," a title, no
doubt, proudly imposed by the Israelite official as claim
ing the great God of heaven to be especially his own.
The mandate is urgent and detailed, ordering a subsidy
up to " an hundred talents of silver, and to a hundred
measures of wheat, and to an hundred baths of wine,
and to an hundred baths of oil, and salt without prescrib
ing how much " which was to be supplied by the local
government "beyond the river." Ezra would be a most
welcome visitor to Jerusalem wdth all those treasures.
By this time the common tenor of life must have been
re-established there, although, no doubt, much was yet
to be desired, and little had been done towards the
"beautifying of the Temple," the purpose for which the
gifts of Artaxerxes were made.
The work of Haggai and Zechariah was long over, and
neither prophet nor poet existed to make known the
condition of affairs : silence had fallen upon the sacred
city, silence and peace and the deadening influence of
settled and quiet provincial life. The Jews never seem
for a moment to have relapsed into idolatry, that Con
tinual danger of their previous history. What was the
reason of this extraordinary and fundamental change we
are nowhere told, nor is it even commented upon by
prophet or lawgiver : but it had silently taken place, a
change more great than captivity or restoration. Though
Ezra's mission was that of a reformer he finds no high
places to destroy, no idols to cast down. That danger
was over for ever, without remark. The captivity, no
doubt, had been a powerful lesson, but even that seems
scarcely enough to account for a revolution so complete.
Was it, perhaps, the fulfilment of so many prophecies,
the unexpected favour of Cyrus, in addition to the many
practical lessons they had received ?— or had the revela-

i.J THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 381
tion to them of another conquering people whose faith
was in one great God of heaven like theirs produced a
salutary effect upon their minds and helped to settle
their faith? The state of affairs which Ezra went to set
right was, however, calculated more than anything else
could be to endanger this satisfactory change. When
the Jews found themselves established and at peace, they
had at once reverted to their old practice of marriages
with the aborigines, Canaanites, Hittites, Jebusites, and
the rest, and especially it would seem with the mixed
race of Samaritans, without consideration of the dangers
involved. These alliances had checked the progress of
the people again and again and restored idolatrous prac
tices in Jerusalem. It was necessary now to stop them
at once and with a high hand before further evil ensued.
Ezra arrived in Jerusalem in the fifth month from his
departure from Babylon. The journey had been long
and perilous, no doubt delayed by many pauses and
roundabout ways to keep out of dangerous encounters;
for the expedition was chiefly made up of men of peace,
and "I was ashamed," Ezra says, "to require of the
king a band of soldiers and horsemen to help us against
the enemy in the way : because we had spoken unto the
king, saying 'The hand of our God is upon all them for
good that seek him. ' " The danger of such a party carry
ing much treasure of silver and gold, not only the offer
ings of the king but those of the rich Jews in Babylon,
and hampered "with our little ones and all our sub
stance," as is expressly mentioned, would not be small:
but their confidence was, notwithstanding the fears of
their leader, justified, and they arrived at last in safety.
It is difficult to tell exactly what Ezra's commission from
Artaxerxes was : " to set magistrates and judges, which
may judge all the people that are beyond the river, all
such as know the laws of God, " seems a much larger

382 JERUSALEM. [chap.
commission than anything that could concern Jerusalem
and Judah. It would seem to have given him a charge
over the Samaritans also, who in a certain sense knew
the laws of God and in an imperfect way retained the sac
rificial system and the worship of the Jews ; and also over
all scattered knots of people settled on the south side of
the Euphrates who might be of Jewish origin and faith.
But Jerusalem was the chief point of the journey, and we
hear of none of his other proceedings outside its walls.
He had scarcely arrived, however, and made his sacri
fices, and paid his vows, when the princes and heads of
the restored community came to him with their state
ment of the circumstances which had alarmed the visitor
when he heard of them in distant Babylon, and which
filled the magnates of Jerusalem with anxiety and per
plexity. Not only the common people but the priests,
the Levites, the very princes themselves were involved in
this national offence. It was the beginning of a change
which they felt might bring back all the evils and the
offences of old; for who could secure the children from
following their mothers' faith, or make true Hebrews
of those who had been brought up to consider Baal as
equally sacred and powerful with the great God who
made heaven and earth ?
The genuine grief and distress of Ezra cannot be
doubted, yet his immediate actions were intended to im
press and alarm, with something of that eloquence of sign
and external type which was peculiar to the prophets,
the imagination of Jerusalem. His meeting with the
princes must have taken place either in the courts of the
Temple or in one of those chambers opening upon them,
which were open to the general view, like that in which
Baruch had read the roll of Jeremiah's prophecies to the
people. When he heard their report in the midst of
the assembly, which had gathered round, of " every one

i.J THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 383
ihat trembled at the words of the God of Israel, because
of the transgression of those that had been carried away, "
Ezra rent his garment and his mantle in the sight of all,
" and plucked off the hair of my head and beard, and sat
down astonied." The wonder of the eager crowd press
ing round to gaze at the great stranger newly arrived
with such a following, bringing such offerings, a man so
distinguished and important — when they beheld him
thus delivering himself to a transport of sorrow, was
great and overwhelming. He "sat astonied till the
evening sacrifice," like a man bowed down by grief; and
when that hour came, and the smoke arose through the
clear air towards the serene heavens veiling themselves
in the softness of the coming night, this observed of all
men rose up and once more tearing his ample robes fell
upon his knees in sight of all, and spread out his hands
to God. His prayer was one of those which are (in a
legitimate sense) addressed not only to God but to the
hearers on earth, whose sins and not his own he was con
fessing. "I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to
Thee, my God." He had been ashamed to show any
want of confidence in God's protection when he and his
band faced the dangers of the way without any escort.
But now that all these dangers were over, and he had
arrived in that dearest spot on earth to all true Hebrews,
there was no joy, no triumph on his lips. The crowd,
growing more and more silent as they listened, feeling
themselves arraigned before the bar, must have followed,
breathless, every word. " Should we again break Thy
commandments," he cried, "and join in affinity with the
people of these abominations ? . . . We who are but as a
remnant escaped. Behold we are before Thee in our
trespasses : for we cannot stand before Thee because of
this." Conviction of the terrible danger they ran, of the
probable repetition of God's judgments which this time

384 JERUSALEM. [chap.
would not leave a remnant to escape, seems at once to
have penetrated the heart of the multitude. No doubt
rumours of the special object of the great envoy had
already spread among them, quickening their apprehen
sion. Only a small portion of them had really offended
as yet, but they were all so closely related, and the sense
of their unity as a nation was so strong, that the sin
which struck at the very root of that unity and special
character as a people, affected all.
When Ezra rose from his knees he found himself sur
rounded by a very great congregation of men and women
and children: and "the people wept very sore," and from
the midst of the crowd there rose a man of the people,
not a priest or Levite, who confessed the sin of which
they had been guilty, and proposed that a covenant
should be made "according to the law " for the sending
away of the heathen women. It was not a light matter,
nor was it so treated. When the people dispersed sor
rowful and troubled, Ezra, bearing his share in their
distress, "did eat no bread nor drink water," fasting and
mourning for their transgression, and also a little, let
us hope, for the hearts that were to be wrung and the
houses that were to be made desolate by this decision.
It is clear that his management of the matter had been
conducted with the highest wisdom: for he had not him
self pronounced any judgment, notwithstanding the wide
commission, with power of life and death, that had been
put into his hands. All his proceedings were calculated
to bring home the conviction .of that astonishing folly as
well as sin to the minds of the offenders, so that the pro
posal for its rectification should proceed from themselves.
Nor was there any haste or arbitrary cruelty in the
carrying out of this stern edict. Its necessity was al
lowed by all; but the whole city seems to have felt the
inevitable misery, and sympathised with the sufferers.

i.J THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 385
" In the ninth month, on the twentieth day of the month,"
that is to say in December, the rainy season — and prob
ably a bad one from the repeated mention of it — the
people collected from every city in Judah and Benjamin
for the settlement of this sad national business. " All
the people sat in the court of the house of God, trembling
because of this matter, and for the great rain." The
combination of mental and physical suffering and the
influence of the floods pouring from those Eastern skies,
beating upon the heads and penetrating the clinging gar
ments of the crowd who could not find shelter under the
porticoes, but had to endure the deluge as they could in
the open unsheltered courts, acids a curiously graphic
touch to the narrative. Wet and cold and miserable, as
only the inhabitants of a hot climate can be, they stood
and listened to all the transactions, and gave informally
their adhesion to the great national covenant. There
were, as it appeared, but a hundred and thirteen cases
after all, nearly a quarter part of the offenders being
priests and Levites. Ezra established a sort of commis
sion of inquiry, which proceeded legally and with de
liberate care to examine every case, while the crowd,
released, stole away to their lodging under the wintry
rain, everything concurring to make the occasion pain
ful. It is very seldom that the record of bad weather
comes in in Scripture to aggravate any disaster, but it
is a very noticeable feature of the description here.
Whether in every case the individual husband consented
to make the renunciation, whether merciful constructions
were allowed of any doubtful case, or even a point
stretched if the poor women professed the faith of their
husbands, we are not told. It seldom happens in any
modern tribunal that such softening expedients do not
creep in : but judgment was more stern in the elder ages.
At least each wife would have her writing of divorce-
cc

386 JERUSALEM. [chap.
ment, and would probably consent with the patience of a
creature born to slavery, to the fate which she would
know must have come sooner or later. It was according
to all modern codes a severe act; but it was one of the
utmost necessity and wisdom for the interests of the
Jews, and for the preservation of their national life — ¦
the thing, which having learned more or less their terri
ble lesson, they now felt must be preserved at all hazards
and by any sacrifice.
Whether Ezra disappeared altogether from the scene
after this trenchant act of reformation, whether he went
back to Babylon to give in his report, and discharge
himself of the responsibility of the supervision committed
to his hands, we are not told; but many years elapse
before we find him again in the exercise of his office as
scribe and teacher in Jerusalem. A certain modern
touch is in his character and appearance altogether,
which is that of a man full of supreme earnestness for
his work, and perception of national necessities, yet capa
ble as a few reformers have been in all ages of seeing the
advantage of a startling appeal to the popular imagina
tion, a certain histrionicism, if wre may use the word, a
perhaps studied demonstration of real feeling, an outburst
having all the force of the uncontrollable, yet so to speak,
done on purpose for the sake of the impression to be
produced, although absolutely true in the emotion ex
pressed. There is no real contradiction in these words,
and nothing in the least false in the course of action. He
might have retired into his chamber, and uttered with
strong crying and tears that prayer and confession which
he made on his knees with his arms stretched out, before
the Temple gates, with all the startled people crowding
round, overwhelmed by the contagion of that passionate
sorrow and supplication. But nothing that he could have
said in the way of persuasion would probably have had

i.J THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 387
the same effect as the overmastering remorse and appeal
of that prayer, poured forth as on the impulse of the
moment in the shock of the news, by the great visitor
clothed in all the power of Babylon, who had come up
with joy to worship in the city of his fathers, and had
been there suddenly prostrated by the terrible informa
tion communicated to him. The effect upon the imagi
nation and conscience of the assembled Jews was
tremendous, as he had intended it to be ; and yet in no
way had the boundaries of truth been transgressed.
Whether the after result was as complete as Ezra
hoped may remain a question; for the same difficulty
seems to have recurred later, even in such an astonishing
instance as that of the high priest Eliashib, who is men
tioned as the son-in-law of Sanballat the-Horonite, and
in consequence showing special favour to him and his
secretary Tobiah, who was also highly connected by inter
marriage with that exalted Jewish family. This case,
however, may have been so far modified that Sanballat
had the blood of Israel in him, being a Samaritan: and
that the law might have been stretched to permit or at
least to sanction alliances already formed, with those
who though not of the special seed of Judah were still
more or less Jews, sharing many characteristics of the
chosen race.

CHAPTEB II.

nehemiah.

THE mission of Ezra was a special one of deep impor
tance to the Jewish nation as cutting off the pos
sibilities of relapse into the one master-sin which had
heretofore been their bane, and cleansing their internal
economy ; but it was brief and sudden and involved no
external advance either in the great constructions going
on on all sides, or the defence of the nation from its
outward enemies. Another personage very unlike Ezra,
but still more distinct and full of character, now appears
against that tumultuous background of the Jewish capi
tal, so full of rebellions and sudden repentances, the
rising and falling of a popular tide, more marked, per
haps, in its small stream of existence than it would have
been within more extended limits. The Jews in Baby
lon fall altogether out, in a few generations, from the
story of their nation; they had made their choice to
remain there, in some cases, no doubt, willingly, in
some with painful submission to a bondage of circum
stances which they had not strength or courage to break.
They had been on the verge of a universal massacre when
saved by the interposition of Esther ; they were subject
to all the vagaries of a monarch's caprice and the hatred
of a vizier; but at the same time they were wealthy and
safe from want and the dangers of every day, which

ch. n.] THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 389
were compensations for the want of freedom, and the,
by this time, chiefly sentimental woes of exile. At the
same time there can be no doubt that they were deeply
interested in the story of their brethren, and the prog
ress of affairs at Jerusalem, and that the travellers who
went and came, whether on imperial business, or about
their own affairs, were eagerly surrounded and ques
tioned whenever they appeared. By this means, and by
such lingering slowly-conveyed letters as were possible,
they must have heard of the successive troubles and
triumphs of their race, of the delays of the Temple-
building, consequent on the necessity of housing the
pilgrims and their families, of the slow work of clearing
the ruins, of the opposition of hostile neighbours keeping
back now a band of workmen, now a convoy of cedar, of
the sudden alarms of a threatened attack, the constant
state of harassed watchfulness in which the enemies
without kept the defenceless colony, encamped within
those broken walls whicli could not resist any systematic
assault. They must have heard, too, of the completion
at last of the great work with commemorative meetings
and sympathetic rejoicings among themselves; and of
Ezra's mission with probably less sympathy than repro
bation of the weak brethren who thus risked a new
downfall for such a perishing thing as a foreign wife.
The interest with which every detail would be received
even when the eager listeners were no more than grand
children or great-grandchildren of the captivity, is plain
enough ; they listened for every rumour with the strained
attention which was more private and personal than
public interest generally is, following their distant
brethren through stage after stage. And when the
renewed Jerusalem became an established fact, once
more a city full of people, full, at least in the Temple
treasury, of wealth, it is natural to imagine that their

390 JERUSALEM. [chap.
satisfaction and joy blinded them a . little to the dangers
still surrounding that capital of their race, replanted in
the midst of enemies, and with very ineffectual means of
defence. They had already subscribed and offered a
great deal for this vast national work : it is very prob
able that they now felt they had done enough.
This, however, was not the sentiment of one young
man, of the class of those Hebrew courtiers who had
found so much acceptance with all the monarchies in
Babylon, both of Assyrian and Persian race : and the
narrative carries us at once to the palace of the ancient
potentate, the great Xerxes, where he dwelt at Shushan
— to the vast cool courts, emblazoned with stately decora
tion, and full of a picturesque and ever-varying East
ern, crowd of courtiers and suppliants. Among these
was a group, brown and travel-worn, of messengers from
Jerusalem, to which the king's cupbearer Nehemiah, in
the rich apparel of those that dwell in kings' houses,
drew hastily near to ask what was the news. The news
was not cheerful. The population of Jerusalem, "the
remnant that was left of the captivity, " were in trouble
and alarm because of the broken walls and vacant gate
ways which left the way of access into the city free to
every enemy, doubly dangerous from the fact that the
whole surrounding country was full of hostile bands.
Nehemiah was deeply moved by these tidings: and he
was a man full of energy, little apt to content himself
with expressions of sympathy. A sudden resolution
sprang up in his breast. He wept and fasted and
mourned "certain days," praying and imploring "the
Lord God of heaven" — which seems to have been the
special title of God among the Persians — to have mercy
upon his people and to grant the prayer which he,
Nehemiah, should soon make to his master, " this man "
into whose presence he was about to be called to fulfil

ii.] THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 391
his period of service. " I had not been aforetime sad in
his presence," Nehemiah says in his autobiography ; for
he was young, a man of conscious power, doing what
ever his hand found to do with all his might. The king,
it is evident, took a kind interest in his attendants, and
he remarked at once the cupbearer's change of mien. It
was a cheerful office, and the clouded looks of him who
poured out the wine diminished the king's satisfaction in
the draught. He paused to inquire what was the mat
ter, with real interest. " This can be nothing but sorrow
of heart." Nehemiah was "very sore afraid" notwith
standing the paternal kindness of his monarch. He
answered — with an internal prayer that God would give
him favour in his master's sight : " 0 king, live for ever :
why should not my countenance be sad, when the city,
the place of my fathers' sepulchres, lieth waste, and the
gates thereof are consumed with fire ? "
Artaxerxes must have been by this time well acquainted
with the necessities of Jerusalem and her frequent
appeals to his charity. He answered indulgently as
who should say, "What is wanted now?" They must
have been good and faithful servants so unfailing was
his toleration and bounty for those Jews, of whose
allegiance, as a people having nothing to gain by any
political overthrow, he must have been certainly assured.
When Nehemiah made his prayer to be sent to Jerusalem
that he might build the ruined walls, the king would
seem to have made no objection except a flattering ques
tion as to how long the journey was, and when he might
be expected to return ; and granted him letters " to the
keepers of the king's forest " for timber, and recommen
dations to "the governors beyond the river" to further
his undertaking in every way. It would seem that
Nehemiah was also invested with the authority of gov
ernor or Tirshatha, there being at the time no sole

392 JERUSALEM. [chap.
responsible authority in the city, but only a council of
rulers, chiefly priests, with, perhaps, the advice and
help of Ezra, whom we find once more in Jerusalem
after an interval of twenty years, on the arrival of his
successor in the Scripture records. Nehemiah took with
him no such Jewish contingent as that which had fol
lowed Ezra: a significant fact as showing that the
number of those willing to undertake hardship and
unsettlement of life for the sake of their religion and
nation was now exhausted. But the new Tirshatha had
with him instead an escort of "captains of the army
and horsemen" to guard him from the danger of the
way. For three days after his arrival Nehemiah would seem
to have rested from his journey and apparently said
nothing of his special object. We may understand that
he was received and acknowledged at once as in authority
over the city, the priests being in no condition to oppose
any of his requirements, and probably having no wish
to do so : for the succour of a strong officer of the empire
backed by certain spears, would be no small comfort to
them in face of the continued strife round about, and
the machinations of enemies not powerful enough to
attack but continually threatening. After this period
of rest Nehemiah rose one night when all was still in
the city—" I and some few men with me "—and went
out to reconnoitre. His attendants followed on foot
while he rode round Jerusalem, coming out by "the
gate of the valley," a gate opening upon the valley of
Hinnom in something of the position of the present Jaffa
gate, or a little farther to the south at the extreme angle
of the city walls. This would bring him out on the
slopes of Zion below the tower of David, to the path
which skirted the south wall, leading downward across
the ravine of the Tyropoeon valley, past the pools of

ii.] THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 393
Siloam and the gardens of Ophel till he reached the
valley of the Kedron, along which he rode "in the
night," as he repeats, "and viewed the wall." We may
take it for granted that the moon shone over the well of
Job, the widening valley towards the south, and the dark
hill of evil counsel: upon the outer wall of the Temple
enclosure, where Solomon's great blocks of stone were
still fixed everlasting on their foundation of rock: and
glimmered in the pool of Siloam and the glittering thread
of Kedron, making fantastic fortifications of the rocky
village which the Phoenician builders had founded, and
throwing long shadows of the gnarled olive-trees upon
that spot, ever sacred to memory, where our Lord went
through His hour of anguish. It was probably the same
road as that which Jesus and His disciples took in the
darkening of the night from the traditionary spot where
the Last Supper was eaten, to the enclosure of Gethsem
ane. But that was still far in the future when Nehe
miah and his party stumbled among the dark hillocks
and inspected the broken walls. At this spot the outer
wall of the Temple enclosure is now the wall of Jerusa
lem, and crowns a steep bank which is in itself a forti
fication of nature : but then, it would appear, an outer
wall of defence doubled the strength of the city and the
holy place. There, it is said, he "turned back, and
entered again by the gate of the valley" by which he
had come out; the natural sense of which is that he
stopped halfway where the traditional Bethesda glim
mered black in shadow under the side wall of the Temple
and took no trouble with the other fortifications where
the wall tends towards the north. Perhaps the city
then extended but little beyond that point : and he must
have seen the state of the northern wall on his arrival
and probably did not need to repeat the investigation;
the ruins there, always the point of attack, being in all

394

JERUSALEM.

[chap.

probability so conspicuous as to require no private
examination. It was on the next morning, probably,
after this secret circuit, that he called the rulers
together and explained to them his special mission.
"Let us rise up and build," was their immediate reply.
There could be no doubt about the necessity of the work,
and probably Nehemiah' s plan which he divulged to
them, by which every man should take part in the

NORTH-EAST CORNER OP WALL, TEMPLE ENCLOSURE (HARAM-ESH-SHERIF).

labour, depending upon no slow progress of hired work
men, but carrying on the whole simultaneously, each
division of the city and every family of importance
working at its own portion, commended itself at once to
the minds of the ecclesiastics who probably, unaccus
tomed to such practical matters, had thought of nothing
but the risks and cost of a long undertaking, calling the
attention of foes outside, and perhaps drawing upon
themselves direct attack.
Here the opponents and enemies of Jersualem come

ii.] THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 395
clearly into sight, watching with jealous eyes all that
was being done. Were they actually in the city, over
flowing the chamber in the Temple itself which Eliashib,
the high priest (though no traitor), had given up to them
in consideration of relationship? or were they hanging
about the outskirts with the usual armed attendance of
Eastern chiefs, hearing everything that went on, and
ever ready for hostilities and to stop any dangerous
movement. "Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah the
servant (an Ammonite), and Geshem the Arabian," are
the three chiefs whose names are suddenly brought
before us. "They laughed us to scorn, and despised us,
and said, 'What is this thing that ye do? will ye rebel
against the king ? ' " Nehemiah, however, gave them no
light upon his plan, nor even upon the high authority
which had been committed to him, but went on quietly
organising his work. " Ye have no portion, nor right,
nor memorial in Jerusalem, " he said. The traditionary
enmity between the Jews and the Samaritans, kept up
as we know for hundreds of years, evidently originated
in the proceedings of this period and the obstinate but
fruitless attempts made by the mixed race to crush the
Jews of the captivity and prevent them from regaining
their independence ; a course of action natural enough if
we remember that, as has been seen, their daughters
were treated as heathens, and cut off from the holy city,
though they were themselves conscious and proud of an
Israelitish descent. That affront, never to be forgotten,
had, no doubt, exasperated the original jealousy which
made the Samaritans conspire against the peace of Jeru
salem, and the re-erection of the holy place : and which
now burst forth in many demonstrations of exaggerated
spite and ill-feeling — which were, however, impotent in
face of a strong man like Nehemiah, and the authority
from headquarters with which he was charged.

396 JERUSALEM. [chap.
And then the plan, which, no doubt, he had matured
in his mind during the long days and nights of his
journey, probably with the help of some rude image of
the beloved city such as that upon Ezekiel's tile, or the
detailed and often-repeated descriptions upon which the
childhood of the sons of the captivity was nourished—
was carried suddenly and at once into effect. When
the common crowd opened its eyes in the morning there
was already a murmur of activity in the city, of the
masons' mallets and the movements of the labourers,
and the sound of the great stones rolled or lifted into
place, proceeding from every quarter. If there were
any of Sanballat's or Tobiah's belongings in that large
chamber in the Temple which Eliashib had cleared out
for them of the stores for which it was properly intended
— how astonished must they have been to see Eliashib
himself superintending the building of his portion of the
wall, he and his brethren with their robes girded, if not
with trowel and mallet in their own hands, yet, no
doubt, busy in the humbler occupation of bringing up
the materials and pushing forward the work.
The high priest's portion was from the sheep gate— that
by which the animals intended for sacrifice were brought
up to the Temple, supposed to be in the eastern wall,
somewhere near and above the pool of Bethesda, where
the north wall of the Temple enclosure forms an angle
— to the tower of Meah or Hananeel, unknown to modern
topography. If it was the wall of their own special
domain which they fortified it would be towards the
south that they would labour, on that side of the Temple
square which now forms part of the external fortifica
tions: next to the priests started at the same morning
hour the men of Jericho : next to them Zaccur the son
of Imri : next to him the sons of Hassenaah who built
the fish gate, believed to be in the north wall from which

ii.] THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 397
opened the road to Galilee. Whether these indications
are to be trusted or not it is difficult to make out; the
important matter is that more than thirty groups of
labourers, each under the command of a well-known
member of the community, began at once on the great
work : each pursuing his neighbours in the emulation of
eager and patriotic toil, not a matter of words but of
independent and cheerful manual labour.
Nothing could have been better calculated to raise the
spirit of the nation, cowed by much delay and misman
agement, by the harassing treatment to which they were
subjected without, and the want of any strong ruler
within, than this outburst of activity — the very air
quickening round them with the sound of the tools, the
shouts and outcries with which men everywhere relieve
the strain of labour, the bustling of the overseers new
to such work, and, no doubt, full of anxiety and over-
care. No one was left to criticise or frame objections
save the Tirshatha making his rounds, stirring every set
of builders to renewed vigour, rewarding with a quick
glance of satisfaction, a word of praise and encourage
ment, those who made the best progress — especially
those who completed their own share and were ready to
help others, like the men of Tekoah, who, though their
nobles stood aloof, repaired not only their own portion,
but a part of the wall on the other side near Ophel,
which was the special charge of the Nethinims or ser
vants of the Temple. It was not wonderful that the
ill-disposed neighbours watching outside what was going
on in Jerusalem should be roused to a frenzy of rage
and oppositon wmen the meaning of all this stir burst
upon them. "What are the people about?" cried San
ballat, "will they fortify themselves? will they make
an end in one day ? will they revive the stones out of
the heaps oi the rubbish that was burned?" His spite-

398 JERUSALEM. [chap.
ful outcry gives us a still clearer view of what was going
on; for this, no doubt, was exactly what they were
doing, raising the great stones to which the burning had
done little harm out of the masses of broken lime and
fragments, and placing them once more in their old
courses. Tobiah the Ammonite was more spiteful still.
" That which they build, if a fox go up, he shall break
clown their stone wall," cried this enraged looker-on
whose wish was father to the thought. "Hear, 0 our
God ! " cries Nehemiah in the fervour of his indignant
earnestness, " for we are despised ! " But the rage of
disappointed malice only confirmed the resolution of the
city. " So built we the wall : for the people had a mind
to work."
When, however, Sanballat saw that his floutings had
no effect he and his friends seem to have held a consul
tation whether it would not be a wise thing to make a
raid upon Jerusalem before the fortifications were com
pleted. No doubt there were plenty of spies and
informers on both sides ready to run with a piece of
news from one to another; and Nehemiah was not long
in hearing of the intended movement against him. The
builders on the north side, which was that most open to
attack, would also be aware of the comings and goings,
the bands from different quarters drawing together,
making a brave show upon the rising ground, the little
troops of horsemen who would ride down the Kedron
valley, and point out to each other with flouts and shouts
of laughter the progress of the work, such walls! as a
fox might break down. The wall had risen to about
half its intended height by this time round the entire
town, one band of workmen meeting another: and the
labour was severe. There was "much rubbish" which,
no doubt, crumbled away under the feet of the builders
and impeded every step, and " the strength of the bearers

WESTERN WALL OF JERUSALEM, WITH JAFFA GATE.

To face page 398.

ii.] THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 401
of burdens " began to give way. Then the Jews who
had been called up from the country to aid in the work
were full of alarm for what might befall them as they
returned to their villages, especially those who dwelt
upon the north road towards Samaria — an alarm increased
by urgent messages from their homes, from timorous
wives or parents left behind, begging them to return
and escape from danger.
A movement of discouragement thus again came like a
cloud over the city, and all might have been abandoned and
the ruin left as before, had Nehemiah been less vigorous,
or less determined. He seized the pause as an oppor
tunity of re-forming the method of the labour, and rous
ing at the same time the warlike impulse which had
begun to rise with the prospect of independence. He
divided the working parties into two halves, one of
which carried on the active work while the others stood
behind, a guard ready for all emergencies, in mail coats,
fully armed with spears, shields, and bows. And every
builder girt on his sword before he took up the peaceful
trowel, and every hodman carried a weapon : and the
Tirshatha as he moved about from one part of the wall
to another, was accompanied by a trumpeter in order to
call all the forces at once to a given point if there was
any sign of attack. Wre may be sure that ever-active
Tirshatha was everywhere, seeing everything that hap
pened, riding about up and down, through half-built
street and encumbered hollows and hillocks, from the
city of David down to the northern gate, and away
again to that door of the king on the east side towards
the sunrising, by which only princes were to enter in.
High priest or learned scribe, or group of servants, or
Shallum with his daughters, or that Hananiah who was
the son of an apothecary, it mattered nothing to the
active governor. And if there was any movement visible

402 JERUSALEM. [chap.
in the encampment on the hill where the Samaritans lay
and looked on, and raged and wondered, it is clear that
the Tirshatha was there with his trumpeter ready to
sound the alarm, so that every man might throw down
his trowel or his hod and catch up his bow or draw his
sword, while he rushed towards the centre of action.
Never was a patriotic drama more strenuous, picturesque,
and spirit-stirring, with such mingled sounds of ~ labour
and war, of a strong race on the alert, valiantly and
cheerfully contending for its life. The men were inspired
at once with patriotism and strong indignation and a
sense that this was the crisis upon which the fate of
Jerusalem hung,
"So we laboured in the work," says the terse and
strong historian "and half of them held the spears from
the rising of the morning till the stars appeared; and
neither I, nor my brethren, nor my servants, nor the
men of the guard which followed me, none of us put off
our clothes." Perhaps if the labourers had not had this
watchful unwavering band to keep them at their work
the softness of use and wont might have made the tools
drop from their hands, and persuaded them of the expe
diency of yielding to Sanballat and thus keeping on
good terms with their neighbours. But Nehemiah behind,
who never rested, lying clown in his cloak to snatch an
hour's sleep like any camel-driver, he the cupbearer of
Artaxerxes the Eastern autocrat, used to perfumed baths
and silken robes — would hear of no submission. "Be-
member me, 0 my God, concerning this," he cries, when
he winds up the stirring story. He was a man of his age,
not disposed to make light of his work, or to pretend
that he did not expect a recompense ; but few men have
ever worked for worldly recompense as did Nehemiah,
every nerve in him braced, and every faculty strength
ened for the great work.

ii.] THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 403
The community within was not without its troubles
even while this work went on ; once more there arose
that cry of usury, of the pledge retained and the sons
and daughters sold into bondage which was the evil
against whicli Israel had been so specially warned, the
system of ruinous loans upon land and individual belong
ings which is the pest of every rural system in the East
— and elsewhere. The Tirshatha assailed this evil, too,
with a high hand, holding out before the richer portion of
the community, " the nobles and rulers, " his own exam
ple. "We after our ability," he said, "have redeemed
our brethren the Jews, which were sold unto the heathens ;
and will ye even sell your brethren?" The Jews in
Babylon had been very liberal. Like the modern Jews
in Europe they had sent contributions of all kinds both
for the Temple and the maintenance of the city, and, no
doubt, as Nehemiah says, had purchased the freedom of
many of the captives who returned, and borne their ex
penses for the journey, only to find these returned and
delivered slaves robbing the unprovided among them
selves. " Then held they their peace, and found nothing
to answer." His remonstrance, however, was effectual
for the time : it is evident that he was not a man accus
tomed to be resisted.
"Also I shook my lap, and said, So God shake out
every man from His house, and from His labour, that
performeth not this promise, even thus be he shaken
out, and emptied. And all the congregation said, Amen,
and praised the Lord. And the people did according
to their promise." Nehemiah again quoted his own
practice of high generosity and disinterestedness, as
an example for the future : at a later period, near
the end of his residence at Jerusalem : when he bade
the people remember how, during the twelve years in
which he held the office of governor — though it was
dd 2

404 JERUSALEM. [chap.
his right in virtue of his office to receive from those
under him an abundant revenue for his support and that
of his household — he had accepted nothing. Former
governors had been chargeable to the people, "had taken
bread and wine, besides forty shekels of silver; yea,
even their servants have rule over the people : but so did
not I, for the peace of God." He describes besides, in
this sometimes almost contemptuous summary, how he
had held a sort of royal state, an open table, entertaining
like a king, a hundred and fifty of the Jews and rulers
daily "besides those that came unto us from among the
heathen that are about us," a curious addition. Thus
he lived, always with a lofty scorn of all meanness, giv
ing freely, accepting nothing, with perhaps, we may
divine, a certain scorn as of a high official of the empire,
for the pettiness of the province, notwithstanding his
passionate devotion to the holy place and to the faith of
his fathers. Such a mingling of high enthusiasm for a
great object, with an impassioned disdain of all the small
self-interests that gather about it and the unelevated per
sons who carry it out, is not unusual in great national
movements. We need not dwell upon the devices of Sanballat and
his band who for all their jibes and boasting did not ven
ture near the half -built walls, nor had the courage to
assault the builders with that keen decisive governor
behind them, who could not be taken by surprise. They
endeavoured to inveigle Nehemiah out of the city on the
pretence of a quite unnecessary conference; then they
accused him by "an open letter" intended like that of
Babshakeh in Hezekiah's time for the ears of the popu
lace, of wishing to make himself a king, and threatened
to report to Artaxerxes that he was a rebel against the
imperial authority. Then finding their attempts unsuc
cessful and all their wiles powerless against him, they

n.] THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 405
suborned one of the priests to persuade him to take
refuge in the Temple. " For they will come to slay thee,
yea, in the night they will come to slay thee." The
Tirshatha confounded this deceitful priest with his
usual stern calm and that indignant contempt whicli
such futile temptations deserved. " Should such a man
as I flee? " he asked with noble scorn. The insignificance
of them all before him, both enemies and false friends,
and the crowd which is overawed by his greatness, but
never understands him, is more conspicuous in his simple
record than if it had been descanted upon by hosts of
eulogists. It is scarcely in nature that such a man
should not despise the rabble which trembled at his look
and promised everything — yet fell back into its unpatri
otic alliances as soon as his back was turned. It is the
never-failing experience of the rulers of men.
But in the meantime he accomplished his work and
reorganised the entire society. The most picturesque and
striking ceremony of all, that with which Nehemiah
wound up his great undertaking, was the dedication of
the walls which the people under his constant stimula
tion and care had built. The Levites were sought, out
of all the villages in which (in the intervals of their ser
vice at Jerusalem) they lived, and all the singers and
musicians with their instruments. " Then I brought up
the princes of Judah upon the wall," says the governor,
" and appointed two great companies of them that gave
thanks, whereof one went on the right hand upon the
wall . . . and the other company of them that gave
thanks went over against them, and I after them and the
half of the people." Thus they went, winding round and
round the new-built ramparts and by the gates — each
with its great lock and bar, like those, perhaps, which
are still used in Damascus and other Syrian cities, a bar
with a rudely fitted perpendicular bolt with iron projec-

406 JERUSALEM. [chap.
tions falling into certain perforations in it, which rises
and drops by means of a wooden key. The procession
was attended, each half of it by the priests with the
trumpets, and a choir of singers, singing, perhaps, those
songs of the pilgrims with which the long and dreary
way from Babylon had been lightened. They circled the
city from the great pools of Gihon in the west, and
the stairs of the city of David, that bridge that traversed
the Tyropoeon valley, and along the irregular length
of the north wall whence they could see the tents of their
Samaritan enemies on the hill of Samuel or Mount Sco
pus, so often thereafter to be crowned with the armies
of more formidable invaders: while the other party
made the round on the southern side above the valley
of Hinnom, and along the front of the Temple, both
coming together with whatever ensigns of triumph they
might carry, with the glowing colour of Eastern gala
dress, and the white robes of the Levites, and the sound
of the singing and shouts of the multitude, until the
marching lines met on the ramparts of the Temple wall,
opposite Olivet, and stood awhile to make their thanks
giving, governor and princes and priests and people:
" and the singers sang loud " : for every evil prophecy
was confounded and every fear quenched and the work
accomplished, so that all the world might see. "Also
that day they offered great sacrifices, and rejoiced : for
God had made them rejoice with great joy : their wives
also and their children rejoiced: so that the joy of Jeru
salem was heard afar off."
On another occasion, probably immediately after the
completion of the walls but before that ceremony, before
the men who had helped in the building withdrew to
their villages, they gathered " as one man in the court
before the water-gate " and a request was made to Ezra
the scribe, here re-introduced suddenly into the history,

ii.] THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 407
that he would bring out the book of the law and read it to
the people. This had been his habit according to his
own record many years before, and either he had been
absent during the troubled period before Nehemiah's
appearance in Jerusalem, or engaged, perhaps, in the
business belonging to his special profession of managing
the registers and all the laws and regulations of the city,
since no previous mention of him appears in the story
of Nehemiah: yet here at last we find him again, when
the Tirshatha's great work was over, coming forward
into the foreground in his natural position as an inter
preter of the law. He was placed in a " pulpit of wood
made for the purpose," such, probably, as the readers of
the Koran occupy at the present day in the mosques ; and
round him stood a band of priests, giving the sanction
and weight of their presence to this popular expositor.
He read from the morning till midday " before the men
and women and all that could understand; and the ears
of all the people were attentive to hear the law." When
he opened the book all the people stood up. " And Ezra
blessed the Lord, the great God. And all the people
answered, Amen, Amen, with lifting up their hands : and
they bowed their heads, and worshipped the Lord with
their faces to the ground." This scene opens upon us
like a picture in the ancient usage of instruction still
familiar in the East; it must have taken place some
where about the spot where now stands the exquisite
open-air pulpit of present use high in the midst of the
Temple enclosure. As Ezra read and paused at the end
of some difficult passage, the priests took it up in turn
and " caused the people to understand, " expounding and
explaining. And when all the laws were read in their
ears which they had transgressed without, it is possible,
in the turmoil of the time, knowing them, great com
punction and remorse arose in their hearts. " And the

408

JERUSALEM.

[CHAr.

people wept." But the Tirshatha, wise and wholesome
man, would not have his triumph spoiled. He was a
peremptory ruler, strong in his ideas of work and recom-

OPEN-AIR PULPIT IN THE TEMPLE ENCLOSURE.

pense, and much of Solomon's opinion that there was a
time for everything. He desired them to postpone their
penitence to another day. " This day is holy to the Lord
your God; mourn not, nor weep. Go your way, eat the

ii.] THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 409
fat, and divide the sweet, and send portions to those for
whom nothing is prepared : for this day is holy unto the
Lord: neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the Lord is your
strength." The insistence upon this point is curious and exhilarat
ing. The Tirshatha would have none of their lamenta
tions, even though these lamentations were for sin : and
the Levites were set to " still " the people, repeating that
exhortation "Hold your peace, neither be ye sorry." In
the end the multitude responded to this repeated injunc
tion and ate and drank and sent portions, and made
merry, "because they had understood the words that
were declared unto them " : indeed a very sufficient
reason for such a course.
The postponed penitence had its course on the twenty-
fourth day of the same month, when a fast was held as
solemn as the thanksgiving, and the people put off all
their coloured garments and put themselves in sackcloth
with earth upon their heads and " separated themselves
from all strangers " : that is, no doubt, closed the Temple
gates against every intruder, and stood as a nation con
fessing their national sins before God. The Psalm which
they sang is a confession of their shortcomings and of
the grace of God which had restored again and again His
erring people, and their services ended with a proposal,
in which is the very soul of the determined Nehemiah,
their inspiration in all national matters — that a solemn
covenant and promise now and for ever of faithfulness to
the God who had been so gracious to them, should be
signed and sealed, as a pledge that they would err no
more. The peremptory optimist who was at their head
must surely have had secret misgivings of the ever
lasting efficacy of such a covenant : but pious men and
great Reformers of far later date than Nehemiah have
tried the expedient as he did, undiscouraged by much

410 JERUSALEM. [ch. ii.
failure : and we can scarcely help thinking of Knox and
his followers and of the Covenants of Scotland, when we
read the list of " those who sealed " and " entered into a
curse and into an oath to walk in God's law " — that is,
who invoked a curse upon their own heads if they did
not keep that vow. No doubt it gave a solace to the
heart of Nehemiah to leave them so bound against all
further possibilities of transgression — bound by seal and
signature, though few of them, we may believe, could
write — signs of a bargain which would be, it was to be
hoped, more effectual than private resolution : to do all
they ought to do, to make no mixed marriages, hold no
market on the Sabbath day, and maintain the ordinances
of the Temple, the sacrifices and the tithes, the first-fruits
and offerings. When these vows were put upon parch
ment and laid up in the holy place was not all done that
could be done to bind a people at once so fickle and so
strange? But whether the Tirshatha remained to govern the city,
or whether he went back to pour out again the wine of
Artaxerxes, or to be promoted after all his labours to
some more important post in the imperial government
we know nothing. The record ends here so far as the
Scripture history is concerned, leaving Jerusalem in out
ward peace, but as yet little more than a ghost of herself,
with elaborate laws, and a hierarchy carefully arranged,
yet but half populated, with a few scattered villages alone
to keep up her prestige and her claim to be considered
among the nations. The stronghold, however, was again
safe from all but imperial arms, the sanctuary cleansed,
the race for once convinced that apart from God and his
Divine protection they had no standing or security in
the world.

CHAPTEB III.

THE MACCABEES.

"VTOTHING can be more remarkable than the differ-
-L^l ence we find in this ancient history when the guid
ing thread of Scripture fails. The Apocryphal books
are extremely interesting and full of graphic details,
but the difference between them and the canonical books
is very much like that which exists between Shake
speare and the other dramatists of the Elizabethan age.
Many of these are great writers taken by themselves,
but when they are placed beside our supreme poet they
pale and fade like the stars at midday.
" Ye common people of the sky
"What are ye when the moon is nigh? "
The difference is much of the same kind when we turn
to the history of the Maccabees after the stories of Ezra
and Nehemiah. The books of Kings and Chronicles are
full of curt passages, records from which the life has
well-nigh gone, but these are redeemed by passages glow
ing with the movement and force of existence, with
features of individual life which nothing can make anti
quated, which are as true to human nature now as they
were when the events recorded came to pass. But in
none of them do we lose our way, nor do our heads spin
round as in the fightings of the Maccabees : in none of

412 JERUSALEM. [chap.
them does the curious mixture of pure legend show itself
in mingled extravagance and subtility, as in some of the
other Apocryphal books. The narrative of Esdras, for
example, the amplified and legendary tale of which the
book of Ezra is the text, is in many parts a captivating
story. Its account of the manner in which the distresses
of the Jews were brought before King Darius is like a
chapter out of the Arabian Nights. The three young
men in the antechamber, and their emulation as to who
shall write the wisest sentence, and the recompense that
shall be given him : the ready acquiescence of the mon
arch in this competition : the success of the third com
petitor and his statement of the boon he desires, which
is not to be clothed in purple and to sleep upon a couch
of gold, or even to sit next to Darius for his wisdom and
to be called the king's cousin, but that Jerusalem may
be succoured and built up: make such a tale as Sche-
herezade might have told to her Sultan. But then the
thread of the story melts away and we know no more
of the three young men (one of them vaguely called
Zorobabel as if in some confusion of identity with the
Jewish prince of Cyrus' days) nor hear of any connec
tion they had with that extremely real, succinct, and
veritable personage — Ezra the scribe, whose account of
himself and his mission is so genuine and satisfactory.
The chronology of Scripture is often difficult, but that
of the Apocryphal books is impossible. It is Nebuchad
nezzar's captain whose head Judith carries in her bag,
notwithstanding that her time is after the captivity and
long after the very empire of that monarch has been
overthrown. De Bracy's famous description in Ivanhoe
of how the tribe of Benjamin in their difficulties sought
counsel of the Pope is scarcely more wildly astray. These
are examples of how a story is told which has gone from
one mouth to another through a few hundred years.

in-] THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 413
The critics who consider this to be the way in which
the whole Scriptural record was built up have not appar
ently remarked this real illustration of what the out
come is in such a case.
The narrative of the Maccabees, though confused, is a
more solid piece of history. By the time it was written
the world had attained the historical age, and there are
other records with which to compare and correct it. It
is another chapter of the long-continued, little-varying
story, save that in this, as- in a secular chronicle, the
connection between the sins of the people and their
punishment is not insisted upon, and the political influ
ence of situation and character is more clearly revealed.
Jerusalem is a little realm of marked and peculiar insti
tutions, many of which offend and irritate her neighbours,
as a profession of superior sanctity or enlightenment
invariably does offend and irritate. These neighbours
are always asking the world and each other, What is
she, this little mountain city to make so much commotion
about her Temple, her rites, her claim to be more wise
than other people, her Sabbaths, forsooth, as if she were
more hard worked on the other six days of the week, or
had more to show for her labour than her neighbours ?
And on the other hand, the little country of Judea, the
little obstinate wealthy town with her Temple, still
more or less lined and furnished with gold, and her
precious vessels, always a tempting prey, lay right in the
way between two strong and warlike powers, the empire
of Egypt on the one hand, the northern empire once of
Sennacherib, once of Cyrus, once of Alexander, on the
other, between which there was a continual struggle.
Nothing could be more dangerous than such a position,
especially as it would seem through all her history that
Jerusalem was most apt to take the Egyptian side, where
a race ancient and changeless as her own had stood

414 JERUSALEM. [chap
against many incursions of the continually modified and
altered empire of the north : until altered itself by that
partition of the ancient world which follows the con
quests of the Greeks. There is, however, a special
bitterness in the many wars of devastation which swept
over the devoted city, which adds something more than
the mere horrors of invasion, terrible as these were, to
her tragic history. The continual insults to her religion,
the swine sacrificed on the altar, the overthrow of all
her characteristic customs, done with a fury and ferocity
which seem special to this place alone, is very remark
able. One would imagine that the very existence of
such a stronghold of national worship folded in the hills
was an affront and offence to the world about. They
left the plains on either side, to crush that sentiment of
freedom, of individuality, and what was still more, of
unbroken immemorial faith, which stood in the middle
of the way.
At last the indignities and insults of their conquerors
roused the spirit of the victims, and for the first time in
their history the Jews rose for their city and won it
back. On other occasions they had been delivered by
miraculous interposition, chiefly by the withdrawal of
their enemies — for their struggle had been generally
defensive only, and the issue of a siege is always de
struction when there are forces enough to blockade and
shut it up completely. In the case of the Maccabees
they had the advantage of being outside the walls, with
the mountains behind them to retire to, and room to
attack as well as to defend. A valiant family of priestly
race, father and five sons, inhabiting the village of
Modin near Bethel were the leaders and inspirers of this
great patriotic movement ; Matthias, or Mattathias, the
father of Judas Maccabeus "of the sons of Joarib," was
the man who struck the first blow. According to the

in.] THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 415
narrative in the book of Maccabees the commissioner of
Antiochus had reached this little town among the hills
with authority to enforce the submission of the villagers
according to the method pursued afterwards in the per
secutions of the Christians at Bome, by requiring them
to sacrifice " according to the king's commandment "
upon an idolatrous altar : and probably the officers who
had conquered Jerusalem anticipated no difficulty with
this petty town. They called upon Matthias first as
"an honourable and great man" to perform the neces
sary test of obedience. It is quite possible that these
officials might be prepared for some show of reluctance
and opposition, for they seem to have stood parleying
with the priest long enough to permit some sycophant
eager to curry favour to rush in before and light the in
cense, or kill the victim. Matthias turned upon the
apostate with righteous indignation : " he was inflamed
with zeal and his reins trembled, neither could he for
bear to show his anger according to judgment : where
fore he ran and slew him upon the altar." This sudden
outburst of noble wrath must have roused the spirit of
the multitude, for it is evident that the proselytising
party could make no stand against the father and his
sons — " Also the king's commissioner who compelled
men to sacrifice he killed, and the altar he pulled down."
The sudden flame of an unexpected rebellion so swift
and decisive must have ended in the destruction or
flight of the strangers: and henceforward the die was
cast for Matthias and his family. He "cried through
out the city with a loud voice, saying, Whosoever is
zealous of the law and main tain eth the covenant let him
follow me." After the degradation and despair which
we have seen to steal over the Jewish race in the later
years of her unfaithful kings: after the downhearted-
ness of the captivity ; this sudden trumpet voice recalls

416 JERUSALEM. [chap.
the heroes of Judah, the mighty men of valour, David
and his captains, stout Joab who feared no face of man.
They had to form their band and flee to the mountains
forthwith, leaving their .little abandoned town to the
mercy of the invaders: but when they were protected
by the invulnerable hills the party of the patriots grew
daily. Intolerable oppression had at last roused beyond
endurance a too long-suffering race. Some, we are told,
not brave enough for open resistance, fled to the wilder
ness hoping to be safe there, but were overtaken by an
expedition from Jerusalem who assailed them on the
Sabbath day. The multitude, unwarlike, unofficered
probably, clinging with heroic weakness to their rule,
would not fight on that holy day, and were massacred
like sheep. "They answered them not, neither cast
they a stone at them, nor stopped the places where they
lay hid, but said, Let us die in our innocency : heaven
and earth shall testify for us that ye put us to death
wrongfully." " A thousand souls of men," whole fami
lies, including wives and children (who probably made
resistance impossible) thus perished without striking a
blow. These meek religious martyrs, however, raised such a
storm in Judah as carried all barriers away. "When
Matthias and his friends understood thereof they
mourned for them right sore. And one of them said to
another, 'If we all do as our brethren have done, and
fight not for- our lives and laws against the heathen,
they will now quickly root us out of the earth.' At that
time they decreed saying, ' Whosoever shall come to make
battle with us on the Sabbath day we will fight against
him : neither will we die all as our brethren that were
murdered in the secret places.' " This is the first ap
pearance, in our knowledge of the Jews, of the new
kind of idolatry which had succeeded in their strange

in.] THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 417
and perverse minds the dominion of idols. They had
now seized upon their law with all its severe conditions
and put that in the place of God. The reign of that
tremendous formalism which came to a climax in the
time of our Lord, when a breach of the Sabbath was a
capital crime and the husks and outside regulations of
devotion had taken the place of the spirit, is thus intro
duced with pathetic circumstances which silence even
the impatience of the bystander looking on at so unnec
essary a sacrifice. But Matthias was a man of sense, it
is evident, as well as a hero, and able to interpret ac
cording to the spirit, not exclusively by the letter, the
oracles of God. The book of Maccabees, however, is
full of instances of this growing dominion of the ex
ternal law, and also with supernatural appearances and
prodigies altogether unknown to the sober pages of
authentic Scripture, and affording an excellent example
of what such a record is when compiled from primitive
documents as this chronicle acknowledges itself to be.
For young men in shining armour, upon radiant steeds of
heaven, come forth to head the Jewish armies, and angels
paralyse the impious invader when he lays hands upon
the treasure of the Temple. Such occurrences never
take place in the authentic record, save in its very earli
est pages : and even then the mysterious " Captain of
the Lord's host," who appears to Joshua, is a veiled and
mystic figure quite unknown to the crowd. Neither the
ancient kings of Judah nor strenuous Nehemiah on the
city wall have any such direct succours from the skies.
It is strange to find ourselves, in this confused history
of a disturbed country full of perpetual wars, suddenly
brought face to face with classical names and the mate
rials of a wider-spreading world history, revealing the
extraordinary development which had taken place since
the wars of the Jews with the little cluster of Canaan-
EE

418 JERUSALEM. [chap.
itish nations, when Damascus and then Nineveh and
then Babylon were the homes of the conquerors, and
Greeks and Bomans were unknown. Lysimachus, Ni
canor, Gorgias, are the titles of the opposing generals,
Menelaus is an apostate priest, " Quintus Memmius and
Titus Manlius, ambassadors of the Bomans " send letters
to the Jews. All is changed from the old world, yet
there is little change in the one obstinate self-contained
people which holds the central place, though visibly sur
rounded by supernatural help as it never was in the
older authentic days.
The same thing had happened to Jerusalem which had
happened to her before. The city " lay void as a wilder
ness, the sanctuary was trodden down, and aliens kept
the stronghold':- the heathen had their habitation in the
place : and joy was taken from Jacob, and the pipe with
the harp ceased." But the people were no longer cap
tive nor languishing terrified in scattered villages. They
ranged the country outside as David's bands did, under
their bold leader "who was like a lion," always with
their eyes fixed upon the deserted domes and towers, the
silent and desolate city over which the flag of the con
queror waved from the heights of Zion. Other cities
have been dear, but none so prized, so sacred as this.
To think of the abomination of desolation in those
deserted courts and profaned sanctuaries was anguish to
every Jew. They roamed the country round always
with longing looks reverting to their holy and beautiful
place : lying in wait for every advantage, rushing down
from their mountains upon the unexpecting army of
their adversaries when the other half of it had become
involved in those rocky gorges in pursuit of them : too
rapid to await attack, taking everywhere the offensive,
in night surprises and sudden assaults, a handful of
desperate men rushing at the throat of an astonished

iii. J THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 419
host and by their daring dispersing it on every side.
Their watchword between themselves was at one time
" the help of God," and at another " the victory of God."
The Lord of Hosts was their leader, and their whole
trust in Him, so that no man took thought of the odds
against him. " They had neither armour nor swords to
their minds " : but " the camp of the heathen was strong
and well harnessed, and compassed round about by
horsemen : and these were expert in war," while as for
the Jews, their leaders were priests, and many Levites
were, no doubt, in their ranks. But what did that
matter so long as God was with them ? When the trum
pets sounded they flung themselves headlong like lions
on their prey. In the great army which Lysias led
against them were a number of merchants with " silver
and gold very much" who had come into the camp "to
buy the children of Israel for slaves," and whose flight,
when Lysias himself turned tail, with their money-bags,
it must have been good to see. Let us hope that the
Hebrew warriors overtook some of those intending pur
chasers and captured the money which was provided to
secure bargains of their flesh and blood.
The camp of the Greeks was at Emmaus, which, as we
all know, was but threescore furlongs from Jerusalem —
and when the victorious Jews, having encountered in
succession the main army, which did not look for any
such attack, and the army of Gorgias coming back,
baffled and weary, from its expedition to the mountains
in search of them : found themselves masters of the de
serted camp with all its treasures " and gold and much
silver and blue silk and purple of the sea and great
riches," they did not linger among the spoil, valuable to
them as that must have been. " Then said Judas and
his brethren, Behold our enemies are discomfited : let us
go up to cleanse and dedicate the sanctuary." They
ee 2

420 JERUSALEM. [chap.
ascended accordingly, unmolested, and took possession
of the deserted city. The little garrison in the citadel
were possibly restrained by regard for their own safety
from making any hostile demonstrations at the sight of
those Hebrew bands which they were evidently power
less to resist. The Maccabees found not only the sanc
tuary desolate as they were aware, but " shrubs growing
in the courts as in a forest," a sign of neglect which
would seem to have gone to their hearts. (The Temple
enclosure now is more than half covered with grass, and
with many fine trees, some of which look as if they
might have survived the vicissitudes of many centuries.)
This forlorn condition of the precincts called forth great
lamentations, rending of clothes and every sign of horror
and consternation. " They fell down flat upon their face,
and blew an alarm with the trumpets, and cried toward
heaven." These expressions bring forcibly and vividly
before us the character of the rude and simple army, un-
wordly bands taken from the plough and the field, with
their harsh trumpets sounding for all music, and their
minds on fire with the true passion of religion and patriot
ism. The Temple, however, seems, though profaned, to
have been left intact, only the priests' chambers being
pulled down. It was " with songs and citherns and harps
and cymbals " and with the old immemorial Psalm of
adoration to the Lord "for He is good, for His mercy
endureth for ever " that in a little while the dedication
of the newly-built altar was celebrated and all the rights
of sacred worship, the sacrifice and the incense, re-estab
lished, the mysterious veil hung up again with awe be
tween the holy of holies and the gaze of the multitude.
No doubt the singers found their instruments piled among
the ruins in some half-destroyed chamber, or dedicated
the lutes in the Greek tents to a better use than that of
those songs of love and wine which were the solace of

iii. J THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 421
their enemies. .The sequence of events is one which we
have already seen repeated over and over again in the
history of Jerusalem. The Temple is profaned, it is
desecrated, ruined, robbed, again and again in the troub
lous story : but we have but to turn the page to find the
tide of power turned, the holy place recovered, the work
of purification instantly recommenced, the altars rebuilt,
every piece of spoil or ornament that is worthy of such
high use dedicated to the decoration of that shrine at
once of religion and of race. " They decked also all the
forefront of the Temple with crowns of gold and with
shields " — the personal ornaments and works of art which
they had collected from the deserted camp. Thus had it
been done for centuries past ; during which the kingdom
had been cut to pieces, conquered, beaten, the people led
into captivity ; yet always returning to regain its stand
ing upon the sacred mount, to light again its sacrificial
fires : and when it could no longer line its holy house
with gold, at least to hang up the shining shields, the
golden circletS won from the enemy upon gate and wall :
while the song of priests and people once more and again
and yet again rang high unto heaven —
"For His mercy endureth for ever."
It is curious to find, however, how completely the royal
element had been eliminated out of this extraordinary and
always characteristic people. It would seem as if Zerub
babel had been the last of his race who occupied any post
of authority. He was not, perhaps, himself a man of
strong individuality, for the impression he makes upon
the record is very faint, and his very name fades away in
the midst of the dissensions and controversies of the
restored captivity. He had children, but they do not
seem to have succeeded to any place of authority. No
doubt it would have been dangerous for a people restored

422 JERUSALEM. [chap.
by the unexpected favour of the Persian emperors to have
set up their little royalty again in the face of Cyrus and
Cambyses — and the race of David had sunk, it would
seem, under the level of what is required for a ruler even
in a subordinate position. The race of Levi had sur
vived in greater strength. The families of the high
priests could not lose their sacred right of domination
descended to them from far antiquity — long before kings
were thought of and from the direct appointment of God.
Far more than the scattered and impoverished house of
David had they retained their traditions and their power :
and while the family of Zerubbabel sinks into the rank
of private persons that of his colleague the priest goes on
in unquestioned authority. Eliashib, though not blame
less in the matter of life and discipline, had succeeded
Jeshua in Ezra's time, while the sons of Zerubbabel had
gone back to the original pastures at Bethlehem, from
which David had been taken to be made a king. And
when we come to the time of the Maccabees it is in a
priestly family that the hero, or rather heroes, father and
sons emulating each other in valour and patriotism — and
the only real successor of the chivalrous shepherd of
Bethlehem, Judas the son of Matthias, is found. The
supreme authority remained in the hands of this Leviti
cal family till it was transmitted to those of another hero
of romance, the great triumphant and conquering Herod,
who was not even a Jew at all. For by that time the
purposes of God so long promised and determined were
working towards the birth on earth of that Son of David,
the Seed of the woman, in whom priesthood and kinghood
were combined, and whose appearance wound up the
whole economy of the ancient world, and made further
returnings from captivity, further restorations of Temple
and sacrifice of no need nor avail. The fact is full of
awe and instruction that, after the destruction of Jeru-

in.] THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 423
salem by Titus, no attempt was made on the part of the
Jews to restore the sanctuary which had been the inspira
tion and ruling thought of all the previous generations.
It had been as completely ruined by Nebuchadnezzar, as
deeply desecrated by Antiochus, not to speak of the con
tinual offences against it of its own degenerate kings. It
had been rebuilt, reconsecrated, the interrupted worship
restored more times than it is easy to reckon. But after
the great and wonderful tragedy which sums up its story,
neither priest nor hero, neither patriot nor poet ever
stirred up those dry bones again.
In the meantime, however, the family of the Maccabees
had a hard fighting~"life, recovering and losing again in
succession almost every inch of their country, although
never altogether losing their hold of Jerusalem. Once
they were shut up in the sanctuary itself which had
independent fortifications of its own, within the outer
walls, and held for their lives upon that little platform,
until dangers breaking out in other parts of the empire
made it policy on the parts of the Greeks to make peace
with these indomitable patriots. Chief after chief of
the heroic family died in battle, but was followed duly
by his heir in a succession of strong and devoted men
unknown before in the annals of Israel. Judas, Jona
than, Simon, and John, called Hyrcanus, carried on the
noble strain, never relaxing the struggle, making alliances
like kings, aiding their allies from time to time with a
Hebrew contingent which seems to have struck terror
everywhere by its prowess and valour.
At the end the great spirit of the race dropped, and the
old too well-known course of conspiracies and internal
divisions replaced the shoulder to shoulder struggle of
the devoted and united family. Then Hyrcanus, the
second of the name, fell into the hands of the Idumean
(in the olden days he would have been called the Edom-

424 JERUSALEM. [chap.
ite) Antipater the father of the great Herod. During
this later period we find ourselves as it were suddenly
brought into familiar company, among well-known names,
Seleucus, Ptolemy, Antony and Cleopatra, Caesar and
Pompey. The latter of these generals took again the
often-conquered city. " He found the walls from their
height of almost impregnable strength with a frightful
ravine in front of them," says Josephus, " while within
this the Temple was so strongly fortified that even after
the capture of the town it could afford a second refuge."
This had already been the case as we have seen; and
was to be so still more remarkably in the final and terri
ble struggle with Titus. It is difficult, however, now to
understand what is meant by a ravine on the north side
of the city, the country there being comparatively level,
with nothing more than the gentlest undulations between
it and the hills. " The prodigious depth of the ravine,"
which was filled up by Pompey's soldiers is strange to
hear of; and it is a striking detail that it was during
the Jewish Sabbath when the Jews "refrain their hands
from every work " that he erected a shelter under which
his troops could work while filling up the fosse or ravine
— and that during this siege the smoke of the morning
and evening sacrifice rose up without interruption to
heaven, notwithstanding the showers of darts directed
upon the sanctuary. The priests, Josephus informs us,
continued even when the Roman army came pouring in
" to carry forward the sacred services, and were slaugh
tered while presenting libations and burning incense."
The Boman general must have been impressed by that
wonderful sight; for though he went over all those
sacred places thus purified with the life-blood of the
ministrants at the altar, and with the keen curiosity of
his race put aside even the mysterious veil and wrent
into the holy of holies, he carried nothing away, and did

in.] THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 425
no harm to that strangely beloved and defended shrine.
He restored Hyrcanus to be chief priest, and taking from
the Jews the cities they had seized in better times, " con
fined the nation within its proper boundaries."
These continued wars, however, are far too many to
find a record here. When the feeble Hyrcanus had run
his course through the tortuous ways of a weak and
dependent ruler, Herod the son of Antipater, his cham
pion for a long time and general, ill-rewarded and often
doubted, assumed his place. Hyrcanus had borne the
title of king as well as high priest. But Herod was
a Roman general, and reigned over Jerusalem by right
of conquest and the strong hand, as Tetrarch of Judea.
It is unnecessary to enter into his history. Once more
Jerusalem was taken by the sword after a long siege and
innumerable intrigues and divisions within, Herod doing
his best to defend his subjects after he had subdued
them, and preserving the Temple from all desecration.
He restored it afterwards, as Josephus tells us, at
"incalculable expense," enlarging the area, and building
" ample colonnades around the holy place," which must
have added greatly to the dignity and splendour of its
general aspect. It was under this form that our Lord
must have beheld with human eyes His Father's house,
and no doubt, many of His conversations with the Jews
were held in those same ample cloisters, cool and shaded,
where those who spent a great part of their time in the
Temple courts would find pleasant shelter. The great
tower, called of Antonia, at the north-west angle of the
enclosure was also built by him. Of these superstruc-
tions it is needless to say no vestige now remains.
It throws some light, however, upon the magnitudes of
antique description to read the account of the Temple
which this prince built to Caesar at the sources of the
Jordan. Herod, half proselyte, half heathen, had all the
tolerance of paganism, and built many fanes of this kind

426 JERUSALEM. [chap.
while beautifying the great centreof the most intensely ex
clusive religion of the world. " Here," says Josephus, " is
a mountain whose summit lifts itself to a vast height, and
close by a hollow at its base, a gloomy cavern opens from
below, in which a yawning chasm descends abruptly to
an immeasurable depth, containing a vast collection of
still water hitherto found unfathomable by any length
of line." Thus is described the picturesque cliff and
bubbling waters of Banias, once known by the name of
Ceesarea Philippi, the most northern spot, so far as we
know, of our Lord's journeyings, where Peter's great con
fession was made. Perhaps these superlative adjectives
applied thus to a woodland dell may make it more com
prehensible that the soft slopes on the northern side of
Jerusalem should appear to Pompey's troops a "frightful
ravine." The reader knows what wonderful event happened in
the last days of Herod, and how, believing as he did,
that One was born who was sent by God to be King of
the Jews, One of whom the prophets had written, and
of whom his learned councillors could tell him even the
very place of the promised birth: this strange Eastern
potentate in his madness put forth a bloody and a dread
ful hand to nullify if he could the decree of heaven.
That such a thing should have been done by an unbeliever
would be natural enough — but the act of Herod was that
of a man who had no apparent doubt that it was' the
actual ordinance of God, long ago settled and foretold,
which he had attempted to make impossible. Such sub-
tilities of the primitive mind are beyond comprehension
— all the more as the man who did so had been a power
ful guardian and protector of the nation. Thus his was
the hand which not only tried to cut off the final and
everlasting Monarch, but, at the same time, adorned
Jerusalem like a bride to await His coining — glorious as
in all her vicissitudes she had never been before.

m.] THE RETURN AND RESTORATION. 429
The literature of this long period of disaster, captivity,
and restoration is vaguely celebrated by supposition, and
by that restless desire for a new hypothesis which is
characteristic of the criticism of the day : — but must be
left in the mist of things for which there is no evidence.
A recent authority, in so dignified a medium as the
Bampton Lectures, has attributed, with a wonderful
sweep of bold assertion, the whole, or almost the whole,
of the Psalms to the age of the Maccabees, with a hardi
hood of conjecture which is only permitted in discussions
of the canon of Scripture. That many of these sacred
songs express the feelings of the exiles no one will deny.
The "horrible pit and miry clay" of Jeremiah is evi
dence, excellent in literature, as is that utterance of
sorrow which came from the waters of Babylon. The
beautiful Songs of Degrees seem to reveal to us the habit
of those yearly journeys to Jerusalem which we find
existing in the New Testament, with a fresh and delight
ful verisimilitude. Having no other evidence, the liter
ary evidence is enough to determine these songs as the
production of a people restored to their own land, going
up periodically to keep the feast. Further than this it is
difficult to go. The genius of the Hebrews would seem
to have fallen into legendary tales and those collections
of maxims which belong to the earliest habits of the
race. Their sacred songs are the " wood notes wild,"
beautiful and sweet, of minor poets ; their histories, in
dividual and fantastical, "apocryphal," full of interest;
but only as we have said like the dramatists of Shake
speare's time in comparison with him, when placed beside
the Scripture record. Other light than what is to be
derived from themselves there is none : and this is what,
I think, those relics say.

PART IV.— THE FINAL TRAGEDY.
CHAPTER I.
THE SON OF DAVID.
THE existence of the Jewish nation after the time of
the return from Babylon until that in which it once
more stood forth as the glory of the whole earth, the
centre of history, the most wonderful and memorable of
all places in the world, was, as we have seen, little differ
ent from that of the many struggling nationalities which
were finally absorbed in the great Boman empire, except
for the romantic and striking episode of the Maccabees,
the obstinate preservation of its special customs and
worship, and the gradual development of that idolatry
of the law which replaced Baal and Astarte in the mind
of the nation, and produced the strange and rigid casu
istical science and pietism of latter years. When the
time had come for that great final tragedy which con
firmed for ever the empire of Jerusalem over the world,
the external circumstances of the nation had changed in
many respects. Instead of the narrow limits of Judah
and Benjamin, in which all sacred associations had been
enclosed, the enlarged tetrarchate of Herod was full of
faithful Jews outside these narrow boundaries, though
never extending, as at first, throughout the ancient bound-

i-J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 431
aries of Israel. The Samaritans still occupied the central
portion of Palestine, unchanged in the divergency of
faith which became conspicuous after the captivity, and
holding an attitude of hostility more or less marked,
though kept by imperial supervision from all overt acts.
The difference, always difficult to define between that
mixed race, which, if only half Jew, was yet not pagan,
and insisted upon its traditions as much as did the
orthodox Judean and its kindred of Judah, had consoli
dated into a sort of national opposition. " The Jews have
no dealings with the Samaritans." But the northern
part of the kingdom had returned to its allegiance to
Jerusalem, and was inhabited by vigorous and devout
Jews, whose habit of going up to Jerusalem to keep the
feasts was evidently quite established as one of the
rules of life. The inhabitants of " the land of Zebulon
and the land of Naphtali," and those parts which lay
"beyond Jordan in Galilee of the nations," described by
Isaiah as "people that walked in darkness," were now
among the most pious members of the commonwealth,
making their pilgrimage to the chief centre of the faith
at least once a year, while maintaining the comparatively
modern institution of the synagogue among themselves.
Jerusalem appears to us something as mediaeval Eome
did in the time when that great city was the undisputed
head of a powerful hierarchy and the undeniable centre
of Christendom — a city of ambitious ecclesiastics, of for
mal theologians and of priests, as much concerned with
politics as with devotion. The true and humble hearts
which held the spiritual part of religion dear were to be
found among the peasants and fishermen of the north,
bound to the centre of their religious economy by a bond
so strong that it neutralised distance and the great tax
upon life of one or more lingering journeys every year
for the celebration of the religious mysteries. The peo-

432 JERUSALEM. [chap.
pie that walked in darkness had already seen a great
light. True piety had found refuge among them, even
before the Light that lighteth every man had been
revealed. It was among these simple northern folk that God
found the pure and tender maiden who was to be the
instrument of His purpose. She was found in no beauti
ful mediaeval hall, half oratory, half palace, such as are
those scenes in which painters have enshrined her lowly
sweetness. Was it, perhaps in a rock-hewn chamber in
a humble dwelling of Nazareth, dim and cool and imper
vious to the blazing clay: or, perhaps, as she sat and
mused in a quiet moment with her pitcher at the well,
that the great radiance of the angel came into the quiet,
and Mary heard those strange words which have mingled
in the prayers of so many generations since then : "Hail,
Mary, full of grace ! " It was a greeting that troubled
her, so much too reverential and important as it seemed
for a humble villager, as if she were a great lady. But
when she heard the after-message, so much more wonder
ful than any that was ever given to the greatest empress
in the world, her sentiments seem to have undergone
a change. She was no longer troubled as by a greeting-
more than was her due. In the region of religion all
things are possible. As soon as she became aware of
what the real question was, the devout calm of her
nature returned to her. Behold the handmaid of the
Lord ! disturbed to be approached with external honour
that was not her due, but receiving in an awed yet
undoubting calm, of deep reverence and obedience, the
far greater and more wonderful commission communi
cated to her direct from God.
It is evident that the appearance of the angel in itself
did not alarm or disturb the sweet composure of this
village girl. Was it, perhaps, that Gabriel came with

NAZARETH.

To face page 432.

i-J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 435
no effulgence of heaven about him, but in the guise of a
human wayfarer, some wandering teacher or hakim, such
as might pass without special notice along the paths of
Galilee ? And how natural was the impulse which led
her when she had time to think, to arise, and go "in
haste " to the village in which her old cousin Elizabeth
had also received a special visitation which might throw
light upon this ! No doubt the more she thought the
more wonderful would it appear, and her heart would
burn within her till the moment came when she could
join some band of pilgrims or travelling family, and so
make her way to that hill country of Judah on the other
side of Jerusalem where the home of Zechariah and
Elizabeth was. The meeting between these women is
one of the most touching incidents in human history.
It has been selected by the instinct of art for frequent
illustration, and to women especially in their peculiar
experiences must always remain full of tender interest
and sympathetic feeling. Many a woman pilgrim has
gone with a wistful sense of fellowship to gaze at such
a picture as that of Albertinelli, the great " Visitation "
at Florence, during all the ages since that wonderful
meeting was painted — as many, many more have read
and lingered over the still more touching narrative.
But that mystery of motherhood is too internal and
profound for words. It had been, we must remember,
in all the previous ages of the Hebrews, the hope and
inspiration of that peculiar people. The deepest depriva
tion of life to a woman was that she should have no chil
dren : it was almost a personal shame. " God hath taken
away my reproach " is what Elizabeth herself and many
another Hebrew mother had said ; for was it not always
possible to every one among them that in her child the
Messiah, the great Prophet might be revealed ? There
is no appearance that Mary the daughter of David was
ef 2

436

JERUSALEM.

[chap.

disturbed by any terrible sense of the miracle to be accom
plished in her. The whole history of her race was miracu-

THE BETHLEHEM ROAD.

lous, and the entire age, reaching even to such tranquil
depths of lowly life as those of Nazareth, was moved by
the hope, the expectation of some great change and Deliv-

i.J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 437
erer about to come. Nor is it necessary to account for
her attitude and state of mind by special reference to the
temper of her time. The pure-hearted and visionary girl,
most delicate flower of human kind, is always more or less
in the same mental condition, disturbed to be greeted as
a princess, not disturbed by heavenly communication of
a great mission, embarrassed by the one, finding the other
even natural. Joan of Arc was not surprised to find her
self a captain and leader of the armies of France. A de
vout and simple acquiescence in inconceivable mysteries
is the inheritance of the spotless soul.
Then came the other journey in a less propitious
moment, under the care of the devout • and serious
Joseph, a man a little saddened, as the imagination can
not but conceive him, by the strange circumstances,
alarmed by the responsibility, with an ache in his heart
over the sacrifice required of him, and the wonder of it
all. The way to Bethlehem was long and the inn was
full. Perhaps the time of the year, and certainly the
circumstances, would make it impossible for that little
humble group from Bethlehem to spread their mats and
take their repose in the Court of the Khan, where,
doubtless, their natural place would have been ; and the
inn with its subterranean chambers and stables below,
half natural cave, half hewn and hollowed in the rock,
would have probably very little accommodation above.
No doubt the quiet of the underground nook, warm with
the soft breath of the cattle, was grateful and in no way
unusual to the young mother, not unaccustomed to such
close neighbourhood with the docile creatures, and glad
to be out of sight and disturbance of men. This cave-
chamber has been accepted by, I think, the majority of
recent investigators as the real spot of the Nativity, not
withstanding the difficulty of the fact that there is at
present no entrance save by a stair ; the universal tradi-

438

JERUSALEM.

[CHAP.

tion of Jew, Moslem, and Christian having so identified
it through all the ages. There is a recess where the
carpets and mats would be laid just opposite the rock-
hewn manger, and the other rocky chamber in which the
mild neighbours, half seen, chewing the cud in harmless

BACHEL'S TOME, ON THE WAT TO BETHLEHEM.

quiet, would stand beyond. The manger is now replaced
with one of marble, a silver star shines on the floor, the
place is full of twinkling candles in the darkness, crossed
by an intense blue ray of light from the rocky stair.
And yet it is difficult to stand in that still place and not
recognise its naturalness, the simple verification of all

i] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 439
descriptions, the possibilities of the scene. The dazzled
shepherds would probably stumble in through some cave-
doorway now filled up, seeing nothing till their eyes
were accustomed to the darkness ; and there would come
the astonished astrologers from the far Eastern plains,
who had seen his star and come to worship the Child
who was born King of the Jews. I cannot think the
traveller lives, even were he mere tourist, so lost to all
sense of sacred things or — lesser, but still potent spell
— of all respect for the long, long tradition transmitted
through the dimness of the ages, who could stand other
wise than awed and silent in that holy place.
The King of the Jews ! Thus hailed in the hour of
his birth, thus certified to earth and heaven on the day
of his death, his royal seat in one instance the manger,
in the other the Cross ; proclaimed by two foreign
voices, one the representatives of great empires past,
which had heard of the promise of his coming centuries
before, the other of that still greater empire then exist
ent, mistress of the world, which was to be transformed
by his name. Too wonderful to be, too impossible to
be believed, might any man say to whom history was
unknown; yet not so wonderful, not so impossible to
flesh and blood, as the life that lay between.
The early career of the Child born in that underground
c&amber is made known to us only by a vivid picture or
two, full of significance. His recognition in the Temple,
where he was carried, no doubt, in subdued and reveren
tial joy, with the young mother's humble offering of the
doves, and the two venerable figures of the aged saints
"waiting for the consolation of Israel," who gave that
greeting to the child who was " the Lord's Christ " : the
flight to a place of safety iu order to save him from
the murderous raid of Herod : the anxious return to the
home in Nazareth when the danger was over: are all

410

JERUSALEM.

[chap.

told in a few words. Nazareth in its little amphitheatre
of low hills, was the most tranquil home for the growing
life, not like Bethlehem with the heights and hollows of
Judah all spread around it, and the associations of its
royal race — but a humble little town hid amid its trees,
with little prospect of any kind, apart from all high
roads and channels of communication with the great
world. That yearly pilgrimage to Jerusalem would be
the great event of its village life, a wonderful incident

CONVENT OF THE NATIVITY', BETHLEHEM.

indeed breaking the homely level of every day, a thing
to be looked forward to for the whole year. It was not
till the son of Mary, the son of the carpenter, had at
tained the age of twelve, the early maturity of the East,
that He joined that jubilant throng, a great crisis in the
life of a boy, and marking a personal era. The first
time in which the pupil, the postulant, ascended the
Temple stairs and went up into the house of God, taking
upon Him the privileges and duties of his birthright,
must have been something like the confirmation, the first

f.] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 441
communion of the Christian Commonwealth. We may
easily imagine with what a tissue of miraculous events
the growing years of the wonderful Child would have
been woven had not a divine reticence and modesty of
nature restrained the biographers, who use no such ex
pedient to win our interest in the brief narratives of the
gospels. What is given us there is only what is neces
sary to our understanding of the life and death which
form the central chapter in the history of the world. In
that little town of Galilee, too remote to know any of the
tales of distant Bethlehem, there would be no special
circumstance to draw attention to the carpenter's son.
In the memory of his mother every incident was dear,
but neither did she know what was to come of them :
and, doubtless, the mystery of his birth was the secret
of the household, a remembrance of awe and wonder, but
yet in the curious composure of daily existence fallen
into abeyance, not forgotten yet put aside in that familiar
routine which makes every wonder seem natural. The
Divine Child was silent in his slow growth into man,
and probably so obedient to the laws of the humanity
which he had assumed as to present no greater divinity
to the eyes of the world than that of spotless childhood
and developing genius in the midst of the common clay.
We may partly conceive how he would take pleasure,
with a novelty of sacred joy in so strange a change of
position, in all the sights and sounds of nature, the har
mony of creation which that veil of flesh might make
him, for a time, half unconscious of having shaped and
formed : and that all the humble influences of morning
and evening, of the stars and clews would enter into his
mind, perhaps if we may say it, with a tender surprise
of changed perception from the sphere of the Maker
into that of the created. But these secrets of the ex
panding human soul, half divine even in the merest
mortal child

442 Jerusalem. [chap.
" Who by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended"
are too sacred in the silence of the record for other hand
ling. And it is not till " the Lord " came " suddenly to
his Temple " that the veil is for a moment withdrawn.
That Temple, the centre of Hebrew life, the symbol
of national greatness, so often destroyed, so often re
stored, so long and mysteriously preserved through all
the ages, takes a singular and altogether novel place in
the experiences of the man Christ Jesus who came to
abrogate it, and wind up the economy of which it formed
so great a part. He seems to have sought it during the
years of his ministry as the centre of all his own pur
suits and occupations, but not with the feeling of those
who took pleasure in the stones of Sion and to whom her
very dust was dear. From the first the Temple is doomed
in his eyes, a thing awaiting its destruction ; and, if he
gazes mournfully upon its beauty and splendour, some
thing of the holy indignation of one to whom all the lost
opportunities and divine purposes travestied and mis
taken, of which it is the embodiment, are ever present,
is in his look.
But when he came first to that historical monument,
that scene of so many revelations, the first impulse of
his mission was awakened in the young pilgrim. Was
it a desire to hear for himself, according to his human
senses, what were the things taught, and what the trifling
details discussed amid all the problems of life and death,
between heaven and earth, in that sanctuary which had
been founded in order that God might dwell with man ?
There was the high priest in all his robes of office, there
were the others in their courses, punctilious over the mi
nutest particulars of service : and the scribes and doctors
discussing sacred numerals and symbols, and how often a
certain word appeared in the law and the prophets ; and

i-] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 443
the Pharisees taxing their mint and cumin, and calcu
lating what should be the amount of the Corban which
freed a man from the law of honour to his parents.
How strangely different from those high questionings
of the ways of God with man which should have occu
pied the thoughts of a special and chosen race ! The
Evangelist has not thought it necessary to tell us what
questions the boy Jesus from Nazareth asked of these
pundits, nor how he lay down in a chamber of the Tem
ple favoured by some gentle priest whose heart burned
within him while he listened to the wonderful Child—
and rose again to pursue his inquiries from morning to
morning till the third day brought back the anxious pair
who had him in their charge.
How strange a scene ! The puzzled doctors, stopped
in their unprofitable learning, putting impossible cases
to each other by one, by two, by three, like the school
men in later ages — pausing, lifting their eyebrows, curv
ing a hand round a dull ear, to make out what that Child
was asking, some startling penetrating question — per
haps, though of higher meaning, not unlike those which
even the merest child of earth has the gift of asking, to
the confusion of many subtilities. Whose was the Child ?
Not even a young Levite, of whom it might be hoped
that his strange genius would be shaped into the service
of the hierarchy in later clays : but a peasant's son from
Galilee, almost a Gentile though some one might know
that he bore the lineage of David. When the simple
pair, anxious and displeased to be brought back so many
miles of their journey, appeared in the midst of those
crowded courts of the Temple, in the chamber by the
gate where the scribes disputed, with the throng looking
in if anything of interest was going on — one can under
stand that the learned doctors were very glad to be rid
of their youthful questioner. A young Socrates pur-

444 JERUSALEM. [chap.
suing them to the end of their futile arguments with a
cui bono? making them as fools to themselves by some
piercing interrogatory. It was his first inspection of his
Father's house, from the point of view of human intelli
gence, and, no doubt, his childhood afforded an excuse
and explanation of that one appearance, which could not
have been continued without premature revelation of
his mission in the after years, when he must have come
up with his family again and again, silent and dutiful,
fulfilling all righteousness. The boy could do what the
young man could not without betraying himself.
And who shall penetrate the mystery of these silent
years during which the Son of God grew in wisdom and
stature in the calm of the little Galilean city ? The still
greater calm of the common human folk who surrounded
that place and did not see what was the wonder that
encircled Jesus, the son of Joseph, is the most wonderful
thought of all. His brothers or cousins James and Judas
must have known every feature of his life, and, perhaps,
there is something in that familiarity of boyhood which
gives to the after-teachings of James, so concise and
practical, an air of more complete devotion to the outside
duties of the Christian life than to the contemplation of
the Divine Master. But among all who walked those
familiar paths, and passed him with a morning greeting,
and saw him take his way when the day's work was over
to the solitude of the hill, to seek the Divine society from
which he was an exile — would there be none who pene
trated that disguise and knew that Messias had come ?
" His mother kept all these sayings in her heart "—doubt
ful, too, towards what they were tending, pondering many
times we may be sure that prophecy of his earliest in
fancy "a sword shall pierce through thine own heart
also." What sword could come to her through that
perfect son, growing daily in favour with God and man ?

A STREET IN BETHLEHEM.

To face page 447

i.J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 447
Perhaps she hoped, with fond denials to herself of any
power that could harm one so divine, that the prophecy
might fail ; perhaps looked forward, with the all-submis
sion of her own youth, "Behold the handmaid of the
Lord," to the future so full of awe yet of hope, but knew
nothing of all that was to be.
" Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's busi
ness ? " It would almost seem that he was surprised that
she did not understand ; as he was surprised, notwith
standing that he knew all that was in man, at the inca
pacity of his disciples long after to know what he could
mean. It is with hesitation and faltering that we venture to
enter upon the history of this most wonderful life. It
has been put before us with such divine simplicity and
vividness, and has, thank heaven, so thoroughly per
vaded the very atmosphere of all the modern world that
it has always seemed to me a presumption to attempt to
write a " life of Christ " : as if such halting attempts at
chronological arrangement, or local illustration, as we
can give, could in any way enhance the wonder or the
beauty of that history which has no parallel. The pres
ent writer, above all, would not have made any such pre
sumptuous venture, had not the story of the sacred city
demanded that its last and greatest era should not be
passed over, even if from motives of the deepest rever
ence ; for Jerusalem would have had little meaning after
all in the ancient ages through which she held so perti
naciously her appointed way, recreated again and again
out of death and debasement like the phoenix of the
fable — but for him in whose appearance all broken
meanings became clear, the everlasting Truth; as she
would have little meaning now, a little town in Palestine,
a trifling Eastern city, to be the object of so many pil
grimages, and so much veneration, if it were not for that

448 JERUSALEM. [chap.
one chapter of history, which is of more importance to
the human race than everything beside.
I venture, therefore, to take with reverence from the
only chronicle and record of that divine life the inci
dents which occurred in Jerusalem, attempting little
further except what is necessary for the unity of the
narrative : notwithstanding that the charm is almost
greater of the Lake of Galilee and those events which
centre around that beautiful and tranquil spot, where
more than any other on earth the pilgrim feels as if he
could almost see one benignant figure walking by the
shore, and meet the group of anxious attendants bearing
their sick, of feeble sufferers creeping forth into the
divine effulgence of that look, which carried healing
wherever it shone. There, at first, were no Pharisees to
make that countenance stern, no contention of scribes,
no crowd gaping for a sign, no organized band of formal
ists and self-righteous : but only the common folk in
their needs and troubles, the fathers and mothers with
their children, the cry to him on all sides for help and
succour, the petitions of love. Pious commentators in
modern days have bidden us only to ask for spiritual
gifts, to reckon upon no answer to prayer in which per
sonal advantage is involved ; but thank God it was not
so in those old days in Galilee, where every parent
brough his sick child, and the women importuned him
if he did not seem to hear, and all that were in trouble
sought his feet, plucked at his robe, never paused to
think that it was for their advantage to get well, and for
their' happiness to have their children restored to them.
Nor did he, the Lord and Giver of life. To my own
mind there is nothing so futile in this miraculous earth
as the discussion of miracles which were a natural radi
ation from the very touch upon mortal soil of a being
transcendent in power and goodness. He is a far greater

i-J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 449
miracle than anything he did. Let it be shown how such
a one came into being, alone,' supreme, unequalled, not
only in all history, but in all poetry and the loftiest
imagination of man, which has never produced anything
that can be placed near him — any more than art has ever
produced anything beyond the divine suggestion of an
infant, which is worthy in the most remote degree to
bear his name. Let this be explained to us, we say in
the first place, and then we may be at leisure to examine
into that mystery of the swine which seems so much
more congenial to some inquirers. No learning is neces
sary to know the premisses of the inquiry. It seems
the first question to settle, the very head and front of
all investigation.
Jesus of Nazareth, as was the custom of the time and
race, waited until he had attained the full maturity of
manhood before beginning his work. It was the age at
which the priests assumed their office, an age in which
it might be supposed, according to the early development
of the East, that the period of youth had passed and that
of full manhood and competence to undertake the gravest
responsibilities had arrived. John the Baptist, whose
birth preceded that of his Lord only by a few months,
had followed the same rule, and thus appeared out of the
wilderness to fulfil his office at a corresponding age, the
work of the forerunner being of short duration though of
the most striking and indeed startling kind. The con
junction of these two figures, the wistful and expectant
prophet, not knowing from which side to expect the
appearance of the Lord, looking eagerly upon every new
neophyte to see if perhaps this was he, and the calm
sublime of him who came to fulfil all righteousness, is
one of the most wonderful of Gospel pictures. "I knew
him not ; but he that sent me to baptize with water said
to me " — the representative of all the prophets, the
GG

450 JERUSALEM. [chap.
second Elias, the voice of one crying in the wilderness,
he who had been a hermit living in solitary places out
of the way of men, had, no doubt, forgotten if in his
desert life he ever knew, the aspect of his young kins
man — until the Divine sign was given which pointed
him out as the Lamb of God. After the revelation had
been made, and his human life thus consecrated to his
mission, Jesus returned to his natural home ; or rather
it would be better to say, to the shores of the Lake of
Galilee which was a day's journey from Nazareth, but
with which he had probably some connection as so much
of his time was spent there. His mother, perceiving
that his life was now to be shaped on other lines, possi
bly as the time went on abandoned her household and
followed him there in order to care for the wants of
external necessity ; or still more probably, her husband
being dead, was naturally devoted to the care of her son
and transferred herself to the place that suited him best.
At the present moment, however, she was probably still
resident in Nazareth, and he travelling towards that lowly
dwelling-place when he paused at the village of Cana to
attend the marriage feast. " Both Jesus was called and
his disciples to the marriage," which was probably an im
portant event in the countryside, though the bridegroom
was no wealthy inhabitant, but only a kindly connection
or neighbour of the same humble position as his guests.
Perhaps it was to give his attendance at this feast, the
wedding of some one who had been a companion of his
childhood, that Jesus paused on his way from the baptism
in Jordan to his own home. Recent -researches of the
Palestine Exploration officers, most interesting of all
investigations into the past, have discovered a spot on
Jordan still bearing the name of Abarah, so like the
Bathabara of the narrative that it makes the transition
from the Baptism to the Lake of Galilee the easiest pos-

i.J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 451
sible, instead of a long journey as has been supposed,
from the scene near Jericho long identified with this
event. Perhaps after their first parting, and his assump
tion of his office, it was at Cana that the Virgin met her
son, her heart full of anxiety and insecurity, seeing that
a great change had occurred, wistful, not knowing yet
what it was. She must have been aware of this change,
or she would not have given that humble hint about the
wine. What did she know ? Had there been already
some strange blessing in the house in Nazareth upon all
that his sacred hand touched, though, perhaps, no one
had noticed except the ever watchful eyes which fol
lowed him wherever he went, never intermitting that
tender vigilance, still and always eager to know what
the secret of his birth and of himself, so different from
any other, could mean ? Was she already aware in an
awe. of unassured faith, ever wondering, of some myste
rious supply, some strange waxing of the needed stores
at home ? And it is strange to note that he did not con
sent in words, did not reply as he did to the many poor
supplicants that came after, with divine courtesy and
patience ; but almost we may imagine in his knowledge
of the clangers of the future, and the position of goddess
which was to be forced upon that humble woman, with a
little sternness forbidding her interference. And there
is no appearance that he did it as any proof or sign of his
own power, but rather out of pure kindness to the poor
cousin whose popularity must have been so much greater
than his wealth, who had asked everybody, but could
only supply a little for their entertainment. Mary must
have had some authority as of a relation or she could not
have bidden the servants to obey him. But he made no
mystic sign, said no word, awaited no thanks. The
mother saw, whose anxious eyes were never long absent
from him, and the disciples saw who had followed him,
gg2

452 JERUSALEM. [chap.
by some attraction they scarcely understood, who watched
eagerly all his movements, to justify to themselves the
step they had taken. There is no appearance that except
by those two the miracle called for anything more than
a little wonder, as to where the astonished bridegroom
could have got it, that marvellous wine.
There has been little said, I think, among the many
discussions of the supernatural, of the entire naturalness
of these miracles. The initiatory miracle of all is, of
course, the Person by whom they are performed ; and if
it can be proved that there have been others like him
in this world, and that the records of history contain
another who, according to the common judgment of
humanity, may be placed by his side or near him, then
I have no doubt the lesser argument might come in : but
granted the far greater miracle of the two, the extreme
naturalness of the others is, I think, to a simple mind,
the most wonderful thing about them. We are disposed
nowadays to smile at them as proofs, feeling that our
Lord is his own transcendent proof and that in his
great presence it is a kind of well-meant and pious blas
phemy to produce any testimonials as it were to his
character. The Christian of the nineteenth century
would probably be easier in his mind if the miracles
were put out of the question, being a man of his time,
as the writers who recorded them were men of their
time and loved every detail of every prodigy. But even
that sentiment it appears to me is wrong, and calculated
to take away something from the benignity of that Friend
who was what no other man or friend has ever been.
How could he hold his hand being what he was ? how
refuse what those helpless neighbours wanted, whether
wine for their feast or, still more, healing for their sick?
Healing could not but ray out of him as he moved, as
tenderness did, and love, and thought of everything great

i.] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 453
and small that appealed to his help. And it was such a
little time in which that was possible, in which the power
of God and the visible acts of man were to be conjoined !
I have thought often that when "Jesus wept" at the
grave of Lazarus, those tears were called forth not by
the thought of him who lay there in his cave ready to
rise, but of the many, many myriads of graves at which
women must fling themselves unsuccoured, and endure
that from which Mary and Martha were set free. We
must all recognise, and how much more he, that the laws
of Nature must go on in general, that death must be a
thing of every clay, and mourning the garb of half the
world, until the course of our dispensation is fulfilled.
But for that moment, while he was there, whose deep
sense of that great mystery brought tears to his eyes
even in the act of greatest joy ! The alms of a rich man
to the poor, whether given with the unreflecting liber
ality of ancient time or with the more cautious enthusi
asm of charity which prevails now, were not more natural, ¦
not more simple than these works of wonder — wonder
to those who crowded about him, and felt and saw, but
the natural outcome of his presence, as natural as breath
ing, as simple as the day.
It was probably the yearly period at which all Galilee
was being moved to go up to the feast when that marriage
took place, and Mary of Nazareth might have preceded
her party but a few days for the wedding, and joined the
gathering troup as they went by, with her son, and those
young men of the country who had attached themselves
to him and who followed wherever he went. Jesus had,
no doubt, gone up many times to Jerusalem in the inter
val between his appearance there as a boy and his present
journey, silent, fulfilling all righteousness, looking with
patience upon the defilements of the Temple, his time
being not yet come. And it is possible enough that the

4.34

JERUSALEM.

[CHAP.

interest awakened by that boyish apparition may have
faded away in the quiet of the years as the bystanders
perceived that the precocious boy was going no farther,
but had sunk into the stillness of life as so many promis
ing talents do. It might already be thought by some
with disappointment that they hoped it was to have been
he who should have redeemed Israel. This might prob
ably cause still a certain curiosity about his presence, a
lingering desire to know whether after all the prophecy

LAKE OF GALILEE: THE HORNS OF HATTIN, ON WHICH THE SEKMON ON THE
MOUNT "WAS PREACHED, IN THE DISTANCE.

of old Simeon was to mean anything, among the devout
frequenters of the Temple. But thirty years is a long
time, and so, indeed, is the eighteen which had elapsed
without any incident, since that Galilean boy had stood
among the scribes and asked- them questions. He had
been seen going and coining since like the others, paying
his tithe, making his offering : as now he came, but with
some rousing of popular curiosity, some rumour of new
wonders, and that band behind, closely following him,
breathlessly watching everything he did.

i- J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 455
It is very difficult to determine whether Jesus made
that scourge of small cords the first time he came to the
Temple after he had taken his ministry upon him, as
well as on a later occasion : or whether St. John's account
has got completely out of chronology as other incidents
are in that and the other gospels, from the fragmentary
character of the record. But it is evident that whether
he assailed the money-changers and sacrifice-merchants
upon that first occasion or not he greatly roused the
curiosity and interest of the people. On "the feast day"
— no doubt that which is described on other occasions as
" the great day of the feast " — when the sacrifices had
been accomplished, and the crowd of joyful pilgrims and
inhabitants had spread themselves over all the courts of
the Temple in enjoyment of the holiday, the young
prophet from the north would seem to have been the
centre of wonder. Saying little as yet, scarcely coming
out of the character of observer and spectator, he yet
could not withhold his divine hand from bestowing those
alms of healing and miracle which at last, after the long
and quiet probation of his youth, he had begun to dis
pense so liberally. " Many believed in his name when
they saw the miracles he did. But Jesus did not com
mit himself unto them, because he knew all men, and
needed not that any should testify of man : for he knew
what was in man." This is one of St. John's pregnant
sayings full of the inner knowledge which came to him
by long pondering upon the recollections of that sacred
period. It was not according to the designs of Provi
dence that He should be forced into notoriety, that the
end of the great tragedy should be hastened, as might
have been had all the passions of an urban crowd been
aroused, so different from the enthusiasm more slowly
growing, and less impassioned of the simpler peasants.
And the crowd at Jerusalem was essentially fanatic.

456 JERUSALEM. [chap.
The city lived by its sacred character, and the sale of the
sacrifices must have been like the sale of indulgences in
mediaeval Bome. It was the centre of religious agita
tions also, and there was nothing the population loved so
much as controversy and the long-drawn quibbles about
the law, and questions of form and ceremonial. Jesus of
Nazareth had many things yet to do before He came to
the concluding scene of all, and this is a strong argument
against the occurrence of a preliminary driving out of
the traffickers in the Temple which would have made a
commotion in the city, such as he does not seem to have
desired so early in his career.1
We may be allowed in all reverence to imagine the
manner of this first public visit to Jerusalem. If the full
revelation of his own mission had only been opened out
to his manhood after the Baptism, as seems to be indi
cated, the previous glimpses and intuitions of divinity
rising at once into full manifestation : our Lord must
now have begun to regard the Temple and the city which
had hitherto been to him the "Father's House" — in
which he had fulfilled all the commanded rites, and per
formed the duties incumbent upon all pious Hebrews —
in a different aspect. This wonderful Temple, the pride
of the nation, was henceforward a thing about to dissolve
and melt away. It was to be destroyed which had cost
1 1 may he permitted to add that in the attempts at chronological
arrangement that follow, I have endeavoured to place myself in the
position of one who reads that narrative for the first time, and
places the different incidents in what seems to him a natural suc
cession : not only with no authority hut with no desire to claim
any knowledge beyond that of a reader accustomed to literary
criticism, and to note the sequence of natural events. I ask the
indulgence of any Biblical critic who may read the book on this
ground alone. I have not attempted to reconcile my impressions
with those of any authoritative teaching. They are those of a
reader, not of a teacher : sometimes, perhaps, in the audacity of
ignorance over bold : but without any pretension except to the
simplest individual apprehensions of facts which are open to all.

i.J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 457
so many years in building : but in three days another
temple, the temple of his body, would be raised up ; the
temporal was about to give way to the spiritual. All
that elaborate system of types, of substitutions, of sac
rifice, the ransom by blood that had to be paid for every
Israelite, was coming to an end. The temple of his
body could only be builded by the preliminaries of his
death. As he went musing, silent, about those echoing
courts with the hum of many voices round him, he
must have already seen all the stranger, darker scenes
that were so soon to be. It was natural that he should
say little in that realisation of everything that was to
follow, the winding up of the dispensation that looked
so firmly established, the grimness of its death-struggle,
the obstinacy of its self-destruction : with, in the mean
time against that background of blood and fire, the dread
scene of his own abandonment at once by God and man,
the loneliness of the Cross, the struggle of the Agony.
All this must have appeared to him as he moved
about, followed ever by the impetuous Peter, who would
not keep silent, by John intent upon his every look, and
the strong, untutored fisher, Andrew, like some Scotch
salt-water sea-dog in London, wondering with a half
disapproval, half worship, over the splendours of the
Temple. One wonders if it may not have been now,
and not at a later period, that the disciples, probably
"those of Jerusalem," who had been attracted by the
sight of his unrecorded miracles, the droppings from
him of divine tenderness as he walked, "came to him
for to show him the buildings of the Temple." Prob
ably these men were privileged persons, able to take the
little band of strangers from Galilee into places not
always open, perhaps Nicodemus among them, whom he
had so sorely bewildered by that strange statement about
the second birth, and who would listen eagerly to hear

458 JERUSALEM. [chap.
the Master's comment on this pride of the Jewish heart.
And what strange words were those which came from
the young Babbi's lips ? " There shall not be left here
one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down."
What an incredible, impossible thing to say ! Herod's
Temple stood in all its splendour before them, with its
magnificent cloister, its beautiful gate, all the wonderful
architecture of it, strong as the rock on which it stood
— the courts full both of Jews and proselytes, every
entry to the enclosure, every gate, filled with a moving,
bright-coloured crowd. Perhaps the cicerones and eager
guides scarcely heard this sentence in the eagerness of
their explanations, and it was not till the little band of
closest friends went out to the Mount of Olives, and
sat there round him, gazing upon the shining walls
where Jerusalem lay fair in the sun, that he explained
to them what he meant. His human heart was sore
for that dreadful necessity. Far more than of what he
was himself to suffer did he think of this, returning to
it with an anguish of lamentation again and again. 0
Jerusalem ! Jerusalem ! to which every heart had turned,
of whom the captives in Babylon prayed that their
right hand might forget its cunning if ever they forgot
her, their chief joy — and which that little band of pil
grims had approached, singing as they paced along the
lingering ways, by Jordan and Jericho, from their lake
side, that Sion was the joy of the whole earth, and that
they were glad when it was said to them : '" Let us go
up into the house of the Lord." With what awe would
they hear, looking over the valley at those white pinna
cles and the great walls dazzling in the sunshine ! though
they probably soon forgot that impression with the
unconscious incredulity of nature, and felt that what
was before them must still continue to be, indefinitely,
notwithstanding that the sentence was so true.

i-J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 459
It would appear from the narrative of St. John that
Jesus and his disciples lingered in Judea for some time
after their first Passover, and that these disciples, prob
ably eager to get to work at that occupation promised
them as fishers of men, began to baptize in imitation of
John, two of them having been the companions of John,
before they were drawn, partly by his advice, partly by
the mysterious attraction of our Lord's personality, to
follow him. This is the only indication we have that
the methods of John the Baptist were ever used during
the ministry of Jesus; and it would seem that he left
the place where this was done, possibly the traditionary
spot near the Jordan, which is still pointed out, to avoid
any appearance of interference with John, whose mission
had not yet been brought to an end. " When the Lord
knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and
baptized more disciples than John (though Jesus him
self baptized not, but his disciples), he left Judea."
It is at this point that the Evangelist places the
interview with the woman of Samaria. Pursuing their
way after the slow method of those times — still the
method of any band of villagers and fishermen returning
from Jerusalem to Galilee — the travellers went through
Samaria; and Jesus, weary with the journey, sat down
upon the wall which surrounded Jacob's well, in the
height of the afternoon, when shade and quiet is spe
cially welcome. It was not an hour when the chat
tering throng of girls, with their bright kerchiefs on
their heads, would come to the fountain : for it was, no
doubt, already summer, and nobody would be about who
could help it, in the heat of the day. But the cool of the
little building over the well, the grateful damp of the
watery place, would be comfortable to the wayfarer, and
there, no doubt, it was decided to make their halt, while
the others went into the town to buy something for their

460 JERUSALEM. [chap.
meal. Thus it was that when the " woman of Samaria,"
a woman whom the other women avoided, whom the girls
would not be permitted to speak to, came out at an
unlikely time with her pitcher, she found that Pilgrim
seated there. The usual stream of pilgrims must have
all passed by some time before, returning to their homes :
so that the country had fallen back into the ordinary
quiet in which a passer-by was something to wonder at.
She had expected, no doubt, the usual scorn of the Jew,
the drawing away of mantle and robe, lest any contact
with her very unpolemical figure should sully the ortho
doxy of the Judean. But the aspect of this traveller
was not as that of other men. He asked her, to her
great astonishment, to let him drink from her pitcher,
and after he had received that simple favour sat still and
talked with her as none had ever done before ; neither
because she was a Samaritan, nor because she was a
shamed and sullied woman, did this traveller despise her.
She was, probably, no ordinary woman, or she would not
have responded to him as she did, or understood as she
seems to have done. When the disciples came back their
attitude was a very curious one. They were still, we
may believe, so little familiar with their Master, having
so recently thrown in their lot with him, that some
thing of timidity mingled with the awe which they never
ceased to feel : they did not dare to interfere in this
strange dialogue which was going on, or to ask "Why
talkest thou with her ? " Neither did they venture to
inquire afterwards what had been the cause of the con
versation. When she went away they laid their little
supply before him and begged him to eat. But again,
when he replied, " I have meat to eat ye know not of,"
the confusion of their surprise was so great that they
knew not what to say. Had any one brought the Master
food while they were absent ? What had happened to

i-J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 461
restore him from his weariness ? Again and again this
wistful wonder appears in the narrative. Even at the
end, after they have walked in his steps and listened to
his words for the three years of his public career, the
apostles still watch his looks to discover what he means,
with the same anxious bewilderment of spirit. And
when he bade them lift, up their eyes and behold the fields
which were already white to the harvest, they did so, no
doubt, wondering, looking dumbly at the waving corn,
slow to understand that these Samaritans, who were by
this time coming out from the town, full of curiosity to
see him who had told their neighbour all that ever she
did — were the harvest which he meant.
It is not till another year that we find Jesus again in
Jerusalem, and once more the record is that of St. John.
It is at "a feast" not specified, which would make it
appear that it was not the Passover. Jesus had entered
upon the wandering life of a prophet and teacher, and
was no longer bound by the homely routine of living
which kept the one great feast of the year, the common
Sacrament of the Jewish faith, but had not the means of
going to all. To him it was now desirable that he
should carry his message not only among the quiet ways
of Galilee, but wherever the people were gathered together :
and his journeys to Jerusalem were probably many. It
might be as he was entering the city that he passed
through the sheep gate at the north-eastern corner of the
Temple enclosure, the gate by which the " lambs for the
slaughter," the sheep of the daily sacrifice, were brought
in, a touching coincidence. Near to that spot lay the
pool, supplied by what is now called the fountain of the
Virgin in the vale of the Kedron, a bubbling intermittent
spring, mineral water as is now explained, a pool in which
healing was asserted to be found. It is identified by
tradition with the Birket Israel, a deep pool much choked

462 JERUSALEM. [chap.
up by rubbish, which lies close under the north-east
angle of the Temple wall; but I believe that another
situation has been suggested, near the present Church of
St. Anne, by recent explorations.
A line of arched cloisters, a little colonnade, supported
on five sets of pillars, the " five porches " of our trans
lation, was on the bank, with steps.descending to the water
—a beautiful feature of Eastern architecture, very usual
and especially necessary where so much ablution is used.
Underneath the shade of these arches lay the sick folk
who were waiting for the " troubling of the water," the
effervescence and influx, as now explained, of the spring.
Jesus and his followers passing by, strangers arriving from
Bethany or some other of the villages near, or taking the
quiet walk of a Sabbath day's journey to that favourite
olive garden on the other side of the brook, which was
so good a place of repose after the crowds of the city,
ascended into the grateful shade and coolness of the little
arcade. And there in the stillness of the Sabbath, no
cure to be hoped for on that day, lay the poor man on his
carpet, who had spent so great a part of his life awaiting
the miracle. It is impossible not to feel that he was not
a very worthy object of charity as we say, seeing that one
of the earliest uses of his restored strength was to denounce
his deliverer to the enemy. But the eye of the Lord fell
upon him as he lay in his abandonment of misery. He
might be the only sick man there, the others having been
carried home who had friends, lest they should be tempted
to shuffle clown into the water and get themselves healed
on the Sabbath day. But thirty-eight years lying there,
waiting, with no one to help him, shows a man sadly
Without friends, perhaps an altogether destitute person
— and the Divine pity is as the rain which falls upon
the just and unjust. "Rise, take up thy bed and walk,"
said the Saviour. The miracle had come to him who

i.J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 463
was unable to go to it, even so far as the descent of these
steps. This would seem to have been the beginning of the
great Sabbath controversy, if we may use the words.
The man as he hurried away with his roll of rugs, was
caught at once by the spiritual police that abounded on
every side. They might according to the rigour of the
law have stoned him for this transgression : though it
does not seem that any such tragical intention was ever
in their thoughts ; but they caught and spoke to him
roughly, reminding him what day it was, and that it was
unlawful to go into the town, as he probably was doing,
with that large buudle. A Scotch policeman would have
done much the same thing forty or fifty years ago. Jesus
had passed on his way, threading through the busy
crowds in the gate, avoiding further question, probably
for that prevailing reason that his time was not yet :
and the man did not know who the beneficent visitor was
who had bidden him to arise and go. When he met at a
later date his deliverer in the Temple, Jesus admonished
him as he never did on any other occasion of the kind :
"Sin no more lest a worse thing come unto thee." And
the ungrateful cripple used his recovered limbs to hurry
forth and tell the religious persecutors who it was who
had cured him, i.e. made him guilty of the sin of carrying
his bed on the Sabbath day.
The grave yet gentle dignity of our Lord's warning is
very remarkable. It would be hard to say whether it
was the spontaneousness of his tender charity which
had flowed forth without recollection, as we might say,
of the Sabbath ; or whether it was by intention that he
thus opened the subject. There had been an exemption
from the severe law of the Sabbath in its earliest institu
tion, for works of necessity and mercy; but the Jew
formalists had improved upon the law, knowing no bet-

464 JERUSALEM. [chap.
ter spiritual way than to bind these ceremonial restric
tions tighter, making of it, as has been already said, a
god in the place of their old idols whom they had out
grown. Most likely the apostles themselves were star
tled at the breach of the rigid bond which was one of the
most marked points of the Jewish economy; but here
there was no explanation given as of the parables that
puzzled them, no announcement of a change of plan; It
is curious to remark, in passing, that there was evidently
no objection on the part of the Jews to the dinner-parties
and entertainments of the Sabbath. These were per
mitted: it was the healing that was objected to. The
modern champions of the Sabbatic law act in a contrary
sense, and would, no doubt, permit the healing were it
possible, but not the feasts.
It would seem to have been on this occasion that Jesus
for the first time began to teach in Jerusalem. And it is
remarkable to note at once the changed tone of his dis
course. He speaks not as he spoke in Galilee, institut
ing a new economy of life, that enlarged and altered
code of the Gospel, the supreme rule for the thoughts
and the heart, which flowed from him, distilling like
the dew, in the early dawn of his ministry, a new reve
lation, full of tenderness towards men, if also of the un
failing conflict between good and evil, the choice betwixt
God and mammon. But the Jews of Jerusalem were a
very different kind of audience. In those courts of the
Temple, where he now became a familiar figure, the
eager crowd which surrounded him was essentially a
polemical crowd, defenders and champions of their faith.
Foremost among them would be the keen and subtle
faces of the doctors, ever ready to draw him into con
troversy, the scribes with their trained and critical wits,
the scornful Pharisees with their broad phylacteries.
The record at once becomes that of a prolonged argu-

i.J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 465
ment, controversy rather than teaching. No room nor
possibility here for any Sermon on the Mount, no tender
lingering of parable and similitude, of the images drawn
from that smiling nature around, the sower sowing in
the field, the white tower shining on the hill. To Nico
demus he had already abandoned that milder ground,
and spoken of a change so fundamental that it was not
too much to say, " Ye must be born again " ; and when
he takes his seat in those high places of Jerusalem, it
is without hesitation or delay to put forth his own great
claim, and assert his mission in the most uncompromis
ing tones, while the highest intelligences of Israel stood
listening round, eager to argue, to object, to prove him
wrong. " My Father worketh hitherto and I work " are
almost the first words that reach our ears from that emi
nence and centre of Israel : and it is very clear that the
Jews put no figurative interpretation upon them. It
did not occur to them, as it does to modern interpreters,
that Jesus spoke as any devout man might do who felt
God to be his Father. They charged him immediately
with blasphemy, because he said " that God was his
Father, making himself equal with God." Thus at
once the great controversy was opened, with no compro
mise on either side. He was not shocked at the imputa
tion of that blasphemy as a good man without any divine
claim would be. Such a one would not have wasted a
word on any other subject till he had cleared himself
from this. But our Lord accepts and proceeds to demon
strate the truth of his claim.
In the great confusion of the chronology it is difficult
to assign to each incident and still more to each dis
course its right place. The address which follows the
healing of the impotent man in the record of John (John
v. 19 to the end), and which would seem to be the first
address given in Jerusalem, will probably appear to the

466 JERUSALEM. [chap.
natural student from internal evidence rather to have
followed such an event as that of the raising of Lazarus.
"As the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth
them ; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will."
" The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall
hear the voice»of the Son of God." What could be more
appropriate than this had it been said after the miracle
of Bethany? It is rash for an ignorant person, unac
quainted even with the laws of Scripture criticism and
taking the history of the gospels like any other old and
irregularly constructed history, to venture upon a sug
gestion, but it seems to me that in a natural sense the
address which is given in the seventh chapter of St.
John (vii. 16, 24), as delivered on a later occasion,
would be more appropriate if it were substituted here
for the wonderful discourse which I have had the bold
ness to say appears rather to have followed such a mira
cle as that of the raising of Lazarus. When our Lord
says "I have done one work and ye all marvel," his
words seem to bear a natural reference to something just
performed of which all minds were full, rather than to
an incident which, though unique in their experience
and of the highest popular interest, had happened sev
eral months before. It is true that it was wonderful
enough to have recurred to every one upon his next
appearance, and to have raised again the former commo
tion : yet the words would be still more appropriate if it
had just occurred and was the marvel of the moment in
all men's minds. " Why are ye angry at me because I
have made a man every whit wrhole on the Sabbath
day ? " he asks, that question evidently being upper
most in the minds of his hearers. It might, no doubt,
have come back to them, in the great and sudden popu
lar excitement which blazed up on the sudden reappear
ance in the Temple of the great Sabbath-breaker, he

i.J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 467
who had so boldly set the law at defiance. I do not
know enough of Biblical criticism to be aware whether
such a suggestion has ever been made before. I venture
upon it solely from a literary and natural point of view.
It looks like a speech delivered on the moment, while
still nobody was able to forget that extraordinary act,
and the fact almost more extraordinary to the common
people, and thrust into greater importance still by the
rulers, that he had done this, a thing forbidden on the
Sabbath day.
The scene of this conversation and address was, no
doubt, one of those chambers iu the Temple to which so
many references are made, built close to the gate, open
ing probably by large archways or windows to the court,
so that the throng of worshippers or spectators going
and coining to the Temple might ptop and listen as they
passed, to the argument going on in the cool depths
within. Many of the discussions given in St. John's
narrative must have occurred so, a band of the priests
and literati, or dark-robed Pharisees who were promi
nent in the society of Jerusalem — that society which
centred in the Temple — sitting about the prophet of
Galilee whom they would fain have condemned but could
not : asking him now one, now another artful question
framed to catch him in his talk, fixing upon him the
keen attention of controversy, continually baffled and
silenced, sometimes touched to the heart like him who
acknowledged in full hearing of his fellows, that to love
God above all, and one's neighbour as one's self, was
indeed the whole law and the prophets in one. In the
absence of these pundits, the commoner crowd would
but flock round the more, throwing in the comment of
ignorance : " who goeth about to kill thee ? " while the
dark group of humble Galileans stood behind, their
. homely sunburnt faces gradually growing refined and
hh 2

468

JERUSALEM.

[chap.

expressive with all they were hearing and seeing, the
company in which they spent their lives : while outside
of all the multitude came and went, sometimes gathering
in a mass when the voices dropped, and his alone, pene
trating yet soft, would come forth upon the air thrilling
all hearts, though with an argument not addressed to
the crowd.
After this scene in which so great and startling a
departure had been made from the formal traditions of
the Jews, strained and amplified as they were by the
work of many generations of ritualists upon the original

TIBERIAS : LAKE Or GALILEE.

teachings of the law, our Lord departed from Jerusalem
as the other pilgrims would do and returned to Galilee.
It is believed that the commotion roused by this visit
was so great that he did not go up to the next Passover,
but continued his work upon the shores of his favourite
lake, and among the villages and towns of Galilee, spe
cially in the great city of Capernaum, and the district
about. The entire district of northern Palestine, indeed,
from the Mediterranean to the great inland lake, which
was of more importance to that country than the sea,
was familiar with his footsteps ; his centre of move
ment being always that lake, to the banks of which his
home would seem to have been transferred after the

i.J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 469
beginning of his ministry. But when the second year
had come round again to the Feast of Tabernacles he
would seem to have been taunted with his reluctance to
go to Jerusalem. "His brethren," relations incapable,
as relations so often are, of seeing the greatness of One
whose strange superiority it was a sort of humiliation to
acknowledge, urged him to show himself to the world.
"For there is no man that doeth anything in secret, and
he himself seeketh to be known openly." The centre
of all things was Jerusalem, and no revolution such as
that which all in Galilee must now have been aware this
great Prophet, whom they followed with so much wonder,
intended to accomplish — could be carried out elsewhere
than in the capital of the race. The disciples never
seem to have urged or even suggested any such step, for
they had seen the passions roused by his teaching, the
fierce opposition of scribe and Pharisee. It was not in
the purpose of our Lord, however, to go up again with
that cheerful band, gathering as they went with a new
group from every village, beguiling the way with song
and story, which in his earlier youth he had accompa
nied so often " to keep the feast." But when the great
caravan had departed in the gay excitement of its peri
odical holiday, and with all the commotion of the genial
expedition, Jesus and his followers took their way alone
to Jerusalem. No doubt he was so well known by this
time and caused so much excitement wherever he went,
that it would be expedient to make the journey "not
openly, but as it were in secret " that he might not be
stopped by the crowds that would gather wherever his
name was heard.
In the meantime he had been looked for among the
pilgrims in every baud that arrived from the north, curi
ous eyes, no doubt, scanning every group, and those of
Jerusalem asking each other " Where is he ? " as they

470 JERUSALEM. [chap.
met in the courts of the Temple, in the rejoicings of the
feasts, or out in those green arbours which were planted
on the housetops and in the open spaces of the streets,
watching the strangers go by and greeting their friends
from the country. " Where is he ? " " Think you, will
he come up to the feast ? " " For there was much mur
muring among the people concerning him ; " and many
discussions as to his character and claims among those
groups in the leafy tents. "Some said he is a good
man : others said, Nay ; but he deceiveth the people.
Howbeit no man spake openly of him for fear of the
Jews." The Jews here mentioned, as in all the accounts
of the subsequent story, mean, as is plain, those described
in the Old Testament as "rulers" or "princes," at this
time the Sanhedrim, the national government, a body
made up of the chief priests, the scribes, or interpreters
of the law, lawyers, or disputers on that all-prevailing
subject, and members of that strictest sect of formalists,
called Pharisees. The members of this governing body
were not all pious, though their very livelihood depended
upon the piety of the people. They contained within
themselves the lively scepticism of the cynic as well as
the obstinate formalism of bigotry : those who held all re
ligion lightly and believed neither in angel nor spirit :
and those who were bent on binding all human life in the
bondage of a detailed and exacting system to which they
added the glosses of their own interpretation, narrowing
its divinity clay by day. And they, too, no doubt, looked
with all the heat and eagerness of the polemic for the
appearance of that new and strange Teacher whom some
of them had already met in the Temple, and some seen
and questioned in Galilee : and of whom so many addi
tional rumours of mysterious teachings and still more
mysterious deeds had been heard. The writer of the
gospel did not know nor does he suggest what was pass-

i.J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 471
ing among that learned circle, the superior classes of the
city. He knew the " murmurings " of the people, the
questions from one to another, but not how they would
ask each other at the meetings of the Sanhedrim " Will
he come ? "
These expectations must have partially died away,
with, perhaps, a relieved conviction on the part of the
rulers that he would not again confront them in their
own region of the Temple with questions which no one
could answer, with replies which reduced the questioner
to confusion, when Jesus suddenly appeared in the midst
of the feast. The popular discussion which had dropped
for the moment instantly arose upon the reappearance of
our Lord in all the force of the most graphic narrative.
We seem to hear the murmur and rustle, the confusion
of many questions to which there are no answers. It is
full of nature and life and the vacillations of the popular
mind. Those who had whispered about among them
selves " Where is he ? Will he come ? " and said, some
that he was a good man, some that he was a deceiver,
now turned upon each other with another question: "Is
not this he whom they seek to kill ? But, lo, he speak
eth boldly, and they say nothing to him." - Among these
murmurs were still bolder voices. " Do the rulers know
indeed that this is the very Christ ? " and others in the
crowd who added objections. "We know this man
whence he is : but when Christ cometh, no man know-
eth whence he is." Was this, one wonders, from some
envious pilgrim of Galilee, and did our Lord catch the
familiar accent as he passed through the crowd, and
make it the subject of his address to them ? Anyhow,
whether he caught the flying word in this way, or spoke
out of the intuition in his mind and knowledge of all
thoughts, this was the theme on which he did speak,
briefly as would appear amid the turmoil and movement of

472 JERUSALEM. [chap.
the crowd. " Ye both know me, and ye know whence I
am," he cries, " in the Temple as he taught," raising his
voice one cannot but feel to still the rising murmur.
" And I am not come of myself, but he that hath sent
me is true, whom ye know not. But I know him : for
I am from him, and he hath sent me." The crowd
seethed and raged around moved by conflicting impulses
while he stood calm having thus proclaimed his high
commission so that all could hear, dominating the tumult.
"They sought to take him," those of Jerusalem who
were on the side of the authorities — "but no man laid
hands on him, for his hour was not yet come." There
is, indeed, through every line a sense at once of bewilder
ment and of awe, the surging of the throng, the opinions
as diverse as were the elements in that mingled multi
tude, the bigots with their large phylacteries, the country
folk come up for their holiday, the more serious pilgrims
not knowing what to think. " When Christ cometh, will
he do more miracles than this man doth ? " rises another
murmur in the crowd. We are told of no immediate
miracle done in Jerusalem, but the Galileans must have
brought a hundred tales of wonder, and even here there
may have been wonders untold, blessings that radiated
from him as he moved, and which penetrated the crowd
with a sense of the presence of One in the midst of
them who was not as any other teacher had ever been.
These wonderings and questionings must have risen
into all the force of a popular commotion towards
the end of the clay while the crowd was dispersing,
repeating to each other those sayings whicli they could
not understand. What did that prophet mean when he
said "Yet a little while am I with you. Ye shall seek
me and shall not find me." "WThither will he go?"
they asked among themselves ; " will he go to the dis
persed among the Gentiles ? " That, too, would be part

I.] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 473
of Messiah's mission, to gather back the lost tribes of
Israel, to bring back the scattered race and make it
one. " What manner of saying is this that he said ? "
they asked each other as they poured down across the
bridge and by the great stairs as the evening was falling,
towards their homes.
The members of the governing party heard these mur
murs with dismay. The Sanhedrim must have collected,
as many of them as were within reach, in the council-
chamber, reporting with anxious faces what one and
another had heard. The excitement of the people could
not be ignored. The multitude must have collected from
every side to that one central point where Jesus stood,
other teachings, even the office of the evening sacrifice,
neglected in their eagerness, to hear what he was saying,
to see him, to behold, perhaps, some miracle such as
they had heard of, or seen on former occasions. The
council of the priests and Pharisees were filled with rage
and terror, perhaps not wholly irreligious or unpatriotic.
An uproar among the people was of all things the most
undesirable at such a moment; for if these tolerated
festivities and rites became in any way a danger to the
public peace, there was always a fear behind — an excel
lent weapon for the hostile rulers, a continual scare for
the wavering — that the Romans might come and take
away their name and people. So at the present day,
could we imagine the appearance of a great prophet to
stir into a flame of new life the meek and pensioned
Jews of Jerusalem, would the Turks do, if permitted,
not unwilling to have such a pretext. The end of the
conclave was that officers were appointed to secure the
person of the Teacher on the next day ; and then no
doubt, the rulers, too, separated, with anxiety indeed,
yet with satisfaction, all but Nicodemus who must have
watched the progress of the man who had conveyed so

474 JERUSALEM. [chap.
strange a new knowledge to his mind, with continually
increasing interest and wonder though without any fur
ther act as yet.
Next day we may suppose, at least a day following
closely after, the last day, the great day of the feast, the
people must have assembled early in the Temple courts,
full of the same excitement and curiosity. We are told
that it was part of the ceremonial used at the morning
sacrifice to pour out libations of water brought from
Siloam for that purpose, while the accompanying choirs
sang an anthem in the words of the prophet Isaiah.
" Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells
of salvation." The procession which brought in that
water from the cold and fresh pool, in the midst of the
October heat and overwhelming sunshine : the golden
vessels of the Temple in which it was conveyed blazing
in the morning light, and the music rising and falling as
the water-bearers came up the slopes of Moriah towards
the Temple gates : must have been one of the most
striking and picturesque features of the great ceremonial,
and one which would always attract the crowd. It is
suggested that it was, perhaps, this ceremony which
brought an image he had before employed to the lips of
our Lord as he began the teachings of the second day.
He "stood" and cried, perhaps as the anthem ended, as
the sparkling flow of the water stopped, which he had
been contemplating like the crowd, pouring out like light
itself on the shining stones : " If any man thirst let him
come to me and drink." Were there, perhaps, eager
pilgrims who put forth a hollowed hand to catch some
drops of that sparkling water as it flowed, with a sense
that it was half sacramental, a holy thing ? It is only
what was, no doubt, the beginning and the ending of this
discourse which has been preserved for us, as seems the
case in all the addresses of this animated and busy time ;

i-] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 475
but we know that he had already made use of that image
of the living water, so doubly full of meaning in the
burning East, on various occasions; and the effect at
this moment would appear to have been very great, inso
much that "the people when they heard this saying"
said " of a truth this is the Prophet," while others said
" This is the Christ."
Nothing can be more vivid than these descriptions of
the crowd in the courts of the Temple which seem to
have occupied so much of the Evangelist's attention at
so critical a moment. Keenly observant of every change
in the throng of upturned faces, and every movement
and question among them, must these spectators have
been who stood behind their Lord, making what per
sonal barrier of defence they could for him amid the
surrounding pressure, and less regardful, probably, for
the moment of what he said — for could not they ask
him when they gathered about him in the evening,
under the olive-trees in the quiet of the garden ? — than
of the changes of the crowd, the looks of conviction or
of menace, the wave of feeling that passed over them,
like a breeze over the corn. These lookers-on could not
disguise from themselves that his very life might be in
danger should some sudden impulse of bigotry seize upon
the Jews, who must have formed a great part of the
crowd : or that any tumult and public uproar would
re-act upon him whom the rulers would certainly believe
to have provoked it. Perhaps, who can tell, they thought
him rash to be so open, to place his own supreme posi
tion before that multitude so clearly, instead of con
fining himself to the sublime moral instruction, the
wonderful spiritual expositions of all things in heaven
and earth to which he had given utterance in Galilee.
Why now, they might ask, where he was so much less
secure, should he put the test of doctrines so much

476 JERUSALEM. [chap.
more bold, challenging the very foundations of belief
on which the whole system of Jewish religion rested, at
the very outset of his ministry there ? And their eyes
were naturally fixed upon the multitude, as appears in
the entire narrative of John, watching intently every
change of sentiment, marking how the groups would
form and melt away, how the bearded Jews would turn
to each other, the women put forth a shriller voice of
comment, heard here and there among the murmuring
of the deeper tones. " Of a truth this is the Prophet ! "
" This is the Christ ! " mingled with the corrective com
ment which asked " Shall Christ come out of Galilee ? "
" Should he not come out of the seed of David, out of
the town of Bethlehem ? " Perhaps there were some
there who remembered that scene in the Temple so long
ago when old Simeon blessed an infant of that race,
perhaps some who never could forget the children slain
by Herod's cruel order that an infant King of the
Jews might not escape him. But this wonderful figure
in the midst of them, this voice which went to their
very hearts, were they not those of a man from Galilee ?
Thus rose the tumult, the discussions, the close con
troversy, carried on half in pantomime among the crowd,
which fixed the eyes of the beloved disciple, keen with
anxiety for his Master's safety among this mass of
excited men, and aware, perhaps, of the officers of the
Sanhedrim who were making their way through the
debating groups, yet who could not help hearing what
he said, and could not escape the magic of his influence.
The narrative is so instinct with life, so full of the
breathless interest with which the writer saw and heard
every new voice, every rising murmur, every sign of
enthusiasm or perplexity, that our attention is almost
drawn from the Divine Speaker, to watch as John did
those vicissitudes of the crowd.

*•] THE FINAL TRAGEDY.

477

All the time the council must have been sitting anx
ious, too, and gloomy in their chamber awaiting further
news, expecting, till he was brought before them to be
examined, to be confounded in his pretensions by their
superior wisdom and learning, perhaps, they may have
hoped, to be sent back quietly to his native Galilee, and
so got rid of without further trouble. One can imagine
how they remained there impatient, hearing the sound
of the great crowd, with sometimes a word or two of the
clear voice which dominated its murmurs coming in
upon the air ; and how now one and now another would
go out with a curse in his heart at the folly of the multi
tude, "this people that knoweth not the law," to see
the other courts empty and acquire the angry conscious
ness that all men were going after the new teacher.
After long suspense, in the evening when the people
had dispersed, the officers of the Sanhedrim came back
abashed to tell their tale. They had not been able
to arrest him. The men were overawed, still under
the influence of their emotion. They did not put forth
any pretext of having been stopped by the crowd,
or intimidated by the popular enthusiasm, but stood
without excuse abashed before their angry masters.
" Never man spake like this man." What an excuse to
make to those in whose minds this was the very reason
for securing him ! The exasperated rulers would seem
to have been at the end of their strength as of their
patience, and could only fling a dart of scorn at the
weakness of their servants. " Have any of the rulers or
the Pharisees believed on him ? " they asked with hot
contempt. But this speech seems to have awakened the
dormant feeling of Nicodemus, who had seen and heard
the man of whom they spoke, and whose sympathies, no
doubt, were with the shamed and silenced officials rather
than with his brethren of the Sanhedrim. He was not

478 JERUSALEM. [chap.
moved as yet to put himself entirely on the side of the
new prophet, and yet he could not hear this cheap con
demnation of him (knowing well as he did that never
man spake like this man) without protest. " Doth our
law judge any man before it hears him ? " he said. In
such a case even the claim of justice sounds like that of
a partisan. "Art thou also of Galilee? " cry the bigots,
turning upon him " Search and know ? Out of Galilee
ariseth no prophet." It was not much of an argument,
perhaps, in reply to those who had heard and seen for
themselves ; but such as it was it silenced Nicodemus,
not ripe for any great confession, as it had silenced the
police and guardians of the public peace.
Nevertheless, this hot discussion also seems to have
passed without consequence, for we find that early in the
next morning our Lord came again to the Temple, where
"all the people came to him, and he sat down and
taught them." We are warned by all commentators not
to take the wonderful and beautiful incident here in
serted as part of the authentic record. It is suggested
that the story of the woman taken in adultery is probably
a very old fragment of tradition, preserved by being
inscribed upon the margin of an early transcript of the
gospel, and from thence transferred to the text by a
succeeding copyist. It is one of the most remarkable and,
we might say, characteristic incidents in the narrative,
one of the most divine — in that austere calm of mercy,
unpunishing but all-convicting, which affords us so won
derful a view of eternal purity yet compassion. The fact
that it was not, as some say, in St. John's original gospel
is by no means an assertion that it is not true, but only
that it cannot be received as part of his witness to his
Master. It must, therefore, be set aside in the history,
though as an illustration there could be no more touch
ing or beautiful picture. We pass on accordingly to the

i-J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 479
unquestioned record, which gives a completely changed
character to the discussions and conversations of this day.
The Feast of Tabernacles was by this time over. The
pilgrims had departed on their homeward way, the popu
lace of Jerusalem had returned to its daily life. Common
work and toil replaced the exceptional attendances at
the Temple. The throng of worshippers or holiday-
makers, or both, had gone back to the loom and the
workshop, and the affairs of the house. But the work of
Jesus, which was not for the multitude alone, was far
from being accomplished, and when he came back
through the deserted courts and resumed his teaching
to the little group of the more devout who would still
assemble there, the interest does not lessen though the
scene is changed. He was in "the treasury," a place
opening into the court of the women, when he opened
his instruction : and the great golden candlestick which
stood there is supposed to have suggested the opening
words of his address, "I am the Light of the world."
The spot was close to the council-chamber of the Sanhe
drim, where his voice could be heard as he spoke, and,
no doubt, there were members of that body, or of its
close adherents, among the Pharisees who immediately
broke in upon him with their questions. " Thou bearest
record of thyself: thy record is not true," they said,
rudely interrupting his discourse. It is with perfect
calm and composure, and a lofty tranquillity, not allowing
himself to be disturbed, that Jesus replies. He had
already, in a previous discussion of the same kind, re
ferred to the witness of John the Baptist : but he does
not now recur to that. " The Father that sent me " is
now the sole witness whom he cites. The questions
which these hearers of the learned class ask are less
intelligent, as they are also less, much less, respectful
than those of the crowd. They treat the preacher with

480 JERUSALEM. [chap.
a contemptuous abruptness, breaking in continually upon
his discourse, " Where is thy Father ? " " Who art
thou?" they cried: "Does he mean to kill himself?"
— to each other, probably with a harsh laugh of angry
criticism, when he warns them, as he did the multitude,
that the time is coming when they shall seek him but
shall not be able to find him. In the midst of these
interruptions there would seem to have gathered a larger
company of the devout, who were in the constant habit
of attendance at the Temple, while he spoke with the
Pharisees : and the fragments of high exposition which
these wranglers permitted to be heard reached the judg
ment, at least, if not the heart, of the wider group, which
probably came by degrees towards the open portico to
look into the chamber where he sat, discussing his own
claim to be heard, with that unchangeable calm unmoved
by any impertinence. And " many believed on him," a
strange statement amid the opposition and angry con
tempt of the others, and the broken fragments which
were all they could hear of what he said.
The inner circle, no doubt, dissolved from time to
time, one set of questioners dispersing to betake them
selves to some more important duty than that of cross-
examining the Galilean — whom, probably, they thought
a personage without danger now that the impulsive and
easily-affected crowd had gone : while another took their
places from among the fringe of silent listeners outside,
whose faces bore signs of more sincere interest and
emotion. And there now ensued a very remarkable con
versation between these semi-converts and the teacher to
whom the hearts of all men were known. He looked at
them as they drew near to fill up the places of those who
had gone, and addressed them in words which express at
once the peradventure which was still in their hearts.
" If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples

i-J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 481
indeed ; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall
make you free." That he should have lifted that benign
yet austere countenance upon those proud Jews, strong
in the conviction that their national faith was but to be
extended and made sovereign over all by the Messiah
whom they faintly begin to see in him — and received
their first beginnings of faith with so penetrating a
speech, is very remarkable. He who would not permit
his disciples to forbid the wandering volunteers who
cast out devils in his name, but did not follow him,
appears in a new light when he thus checks the devotees
of Jerusalem. "If ye continue," the doubt might be
tolerated, but not the strange promise made, as if they
were only simple Galileans, to these men, trained from
their childhood to exercise their faculties upon the law.
It roused at once the pride of race in the bosom of those
citizens of the holy city, conservators of the law and
worship which they hoped were about to become univer
sal. They answered him with the quickness of wonder
and dawning offence. "We be Abraham's seed, and
were never in bondage to any man : how sayest thou,
Ye shall be made free ? "
The test thus put to them was one they could ill
bear. Captivities and bondage they had known many,
notwithstanding this proud assertion of independence,
and at that very moment were within the rigid bond
of Roman empire. But yet in their hearts they had
always considered themselves the reigning race, the
chosen people, sole depositaries of the truth of God,
destined to subdue the world and enforce everywhere the
law which was theirs ; and even Messiah could not be
permitted to question their superiority. " We be Abra
ham's seed" — Abraham, to whom the promise was given
that his seed should reign over the whole earth. They
must have grown more and more angry, revolting against

482 JERUSALEM. [chap.
the doctrine which proclaimed them all the servants of
sin, as other men were, as he went on; until at last
their arrogance and pretence of superiority drew from
him the tremendous accusation, " Ye are of your father
the devil." Had the Pharisees, the original controver
sialists, come back by this time to take the part of their
brethren ? The words " Now ye seek to kill me " would
seem to imply this : at all events, the Jews who were
around, notwithstanding their partial belief, took up the
challenge and threw it back upon himself.
Nothing could have been more dangerous for his own
safety than such a discussion ; for there was no longer
round him the partial protection of the multitude, the
contagion of their excitement and enthusiasm, but only
the party whose entire principle of life was struck at the
-very roots by his assumption, and whom he never for a
moment conciliates or yields to. The gentleness, the
pity, the toleration, and profound understanding of
every human difficulty which have been so conspicuous
in him here disappear. The sinner, the publican, the
beggar, all who were in misery, all who had learnt the
impossibilities of this life and their own powerlessness,
had been received by him with never-failing tender
ness. Even after the young man who was not able to
make up his mind to the sacrifice of his wealth and im
portance, Jesus had looked with an affectionate regret,
not blaming, only longing that he might learn a truer in
sight. But with these men in the Temple all his ten
derness disappears. Their confidence in themselves,
and certainty that they are not as other men : their re
sistance to the spiritual meaning of the teaching which
has compelled the acquiescence of their intellect, even
when they are forced to believe in it : their determina
tion to understand him, the great revealer of the Father,
as but a new official in the service of the Temple " re-

!•] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 483
storing Israel " to the first place in the world, and bring
ing themselves into the highest distinction — are beyond
even the tolerance of his perfect understanding. The
selfishness which is often so unconscious, of sinful
nature, can be turned into self-abnegation, the unclean
can be made clean, the demoniac sane : but what save
the utter beating down of judgment can change the
Pharisee ? Not sons of Abraham as is their boast, but
sons of the devil, doing his works, maintaining his ever
lasting lie. " Your father Abraham ! " Our Lord has
come to a time and place in which he no longer retains
any reserve upon the facts of his own wonderful being ;
but we may, perhaps, be permitted to imagine that the
high human indignation in him, and consciousness of
all the wrong that had been done in that holy and faith
ful name, a little forced his utterance. "Your father
Abraham rejoiced to see my day : he saw it and was
glad." This sudden extraordinary gleam of light into
the mystery and the unity of a world of which that was
the all-pervading ever-continued thread of story and of
interest, disclosed, in fact, the highest glory of Abra
ham's race. But the hearers may be pardoned if, be
wildered and overawed, as they evidently were, it was
the incredible fact thus suggested that struck them
most, " Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou
seen Abraham ? " It would follow naturally in the
course of the narrative that here he rose, having con
cluded his argument, to withdraw from that scene of
controversy which was so little congenial to him ; and
there standing, looking at those fanatics for Moses, those
children of Abraham, uttered the wonderful words, " Be
fore Abraham was I am."
The majesty of these brief syllables, the extraordinary
grandeur and simplicity of the assertion are beyond all
comment. " They took up stones to cast at Him," the
n 2

484 JERUSALEM. [ch. i.
record goes on, but vainly, who could doubt defeated by
their own hearts that beat and their own arms that
trembled: and "Jesus hid Himself and went out of
the Temple," concealed by the dazzling and bewilder
ment that must have come to every eye.

CHAPTER II.

MESSIAS.

IN the meantime, while these incidents had been tak
ing place in the consecrated city where all things
were to be fulfilled and accomplished, the wonderful
background of life in Galilee had gone on surrounding
and enclosing all. It is not needful for our purpose,
as has been said, nor according to our desire, to enter
fully into that history which, whatever may be the
beliefs of those who read it, must always remain the
most wonderful on earth. In Jerusalem our Lord
walks in the midst of contention and questioning, con
strained (if we may with reverence use such a word) by
the pressure of circumstances about him to answer for
himself, to maintain his high unwavering assertion of his
own office and character, to leave his adversaries no
excuse. But in Galilee the Son of God is also the Child
of Nature, moving in a harmonious circle of beneficence
and wisdom, letting no sufferer pass unheeded, no human
want unsupplied, shedding forth from him without effort,
as one who could not help it, not only acts but words of
grace, such as human breath had never uttered before.
From the shores of the lake to the summit of those
green and rounded hills, where every slope seems to
include a grassy platform for the listeners, a knoll for
the speaker, as they descend in soft circles to the

486 JERUSALEM. [chap.
water line — all is eloquent with recollections. Along
the beach with its fishing villages, now mostly swept
away, with its fishing cobbles laid up on the gleaming
shore, and the soft hills on the other side in a haze
of sunshine, the pilgrim feels as if there wants but
a little, and he might himself see that wayfarer mov
ing along, calling the sunburnt fishers from the boats,
turning round benignant to see those two following
who had been with John in the wilderness, pausing
to cast a look of kindness upon the tax-gatherer at
his bar, whom no man cared to speak to, but whom he
bid to follow too. I can never forget a Sunday morn
ing there, a rapture of light and freshness, soft waters
rippling on the beach, soft airs lifting the opened hang
ings of the tent, the lake lying calm in the great glory
of the sunshine, the distant outlines all veiled in mists
of light, and a sense of still adoration, hushed as if by
his very presence ; nor the subsequent voyage across
the lake to where the city which rejected him, that
Capernaum which was exalted unto heaven, lies dumb
in inarticulate ruin, not one stone standing on another,
upon the water's edge. All blessed was the day, the
light, the hour, even the sudden quick wind that sprang
up, so that the boatmen, like those of old, had to " toil
in rowing " against the rapid rising of the waves : all
blessed, though filled since then with other poignant
memories not to be forgotten, and the sigh never long
silent in the heart,
" For the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still."
The associations which gather round this scene are of
a different order from those which belong to Jerusalem :
not that disturbance or contention were wanting in this
more than any other human scene : but no gloomy pres-

TIBEEIAS : SEA OF GALILEE r THE ONLY CITY NOW EXISTING THERE.

To face page 486.

"•J • THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 489
ence of rigid law-perverting Pharisee, or spruce sceptic
of .a scribe in borrowed plumes of heathen philosophy,
can sully the fresh morning of divine life, the harmony
of holy teaching, the blessings of the mount, the sacred
story, fable, allegory which he told as he sat, with
drawn a little in his ship upon the silvery water's edge,
to the eager multitude, and explained as he walked
along, or rested on the way, to his wondering disciples.
In Jerusalem that great tragedy is ever tragic, and the
end never hid from the impassioned and anxious spec-
tatorship of all the ages. But the heart turns to Gali
lee with a rebound of happiness, of loving contempla
tion, and eternal hope, and we all feel again as if no
cross or agony could be : " be it far from Thee, Lord ! "
but only the spectacle of a whole world revolving about
the Sun of Righteousness, recognising its God walking
as a man among men.
Our Lord returned to his home in the north after the
controversies and the dangers of the Feast of Tabernacles.
But by this time all the privacy and sweetness of his
early life was over, and the province awaited him in a
fever of excitement, lit up by many causes. Not only
the fierce fire of opposition raging among those who found
in his teachings a contradiction of all their own rigid
system, a setting aside of the ceremonial law in which
they lived and moved and had their being: and that
responsive conflagration of enthusiasm which moved the
people whom the Lord fed and healed, to attempt to
take him by force and make him their king : but a
thousand individual hopes and expectations of deliver
ance from suffering, and salvation from death, of satis
faction of doubts and confirmation in faith: must have
been growing in every village, by every path along which
it was hoped that he might pass. The country waited
for him, alert for every signal : many a woman at her

490 JERUSALEM. .[chap.
door intent upon the way, thinking of her sick child or
ailing husband, as well as the groups in the synagogue
and the coteries of the learned and superior persons, who
even in these simple regions clustered round every centre
of teaching. It must have been felt that when he re
turned again after all those controversies and commotions
at Jerusalem, something decisive must happen, either
the revelation in power of his office as Messiah, or some
demonstration that it was not he which should restore
Israel. Emissaries had come from Jerusalem, always
with the intention of entangling him in his talk, of
finding some occasion of judgment ; and Pharisees and
Sadducees, priests and scribes, were all on the alert to
make this the final episode in a career which shook their
world to its foundations.
Jesus himself would seem to have responded in the
full force of his human nature, not less affected by fac
tious opposition than by the tenderness of belief, to this
great excitement of feeling. He had never hesitated to
pronounce his judgment upon the formalist and the hypo
crite ; but now that all the powers of evil were rising
against him, those lips which had spoken nothing but
blessing, and whose familiar language was always that
of love and charity, opened with lofty reproof, delivering
the sentence of supreme disapproval, the "Woe unto you
Pharisees and Sadducees, hypocrites," which joined to
gether the two contending sects, as far as the poles apart
from each other, but yet united in offence and bitter oppo
sition to the springing of the new life. They harassed his
steps wherever he appeared, making every detail of exis
tence into a controversy, plying him with cunning ques
tions, converting the very repast offered in seeming cour
tesy into an occasion of wrangling. The crisis was now
so near that all ordinary restraints began to be broken.
Out of doors the multitude so thronged about him "that

II.]

THE FINAL TRAGEDY.

491

they trod one upon another." When the rumour ran
that he was coming, every house was emptied of its
inhabitants, every corner filled with anxious gazers, the
sick brought out and laid in the streets in all the horrors
of primitive disease, an extraordinary feature of the
scene, hailing him with a clamour of beseeching voices,
maimed and wounded and forlorn, trembling with fever,
writhing with pain, holding up withered limbs, and

AIN-ET-TIN ' SEA OF GALILEE.

uncovering sores. Bad enough even now is the wretched
throng which crowds about the traveller from whom only
money is to be had, or the miserable shadow of money,
the infinitesimal Turkish coins of which a stranger rarely
understands the insignificance : but when it was health,
restoration, new life that was to be looked for ! And the
well-to-do of every village gathered conspicuous on the
road, the rulers of the synagogue, the lawyers who inter
preted the law, and laid many burdens on men's shoulders
which they themselves did not touch with a finger : the

492 ' JERUSALEM. [chap.
Pharisees, with all their pretences and exactions, lying in
wait, keeping an evil eye upon every movement, misin
terpreting every act and word : while the multitude closed
in around, all bent upon personal advantage, the recollec
tion of those miraculous meals, the bread of Bethsaida,
the wine of Cana, and, probably, who could tell, the hope
of other gains and other prodigies from the hands which
could command everything — filling their minds with a
passion of desire and eagerness. The morning time of
natural beneficence and harmony was over ; they were
ready to tear him in pieces, in faith as well as in opposi
tion ; on the one side in fierce acquisitiveness to get what
they wanted — on the other in hatred to sweep him out
of their path : but the one as self-seeking as the other, a
rage of belief as well as a rage of wrath. Between the
crowd, hungry for miracle, impatient to have his mission
proved by some great convulsion of nature, and his ene
mies, desiring a sign and watching his every movement,
especially on the Sabbath day, which their vigilant super
stition made anything but a day of rest — it would be
hard to tell which was worst.
It was to escape from this tumult, so disappointing to
the human heart of him, who, though he knew what
was in man, had, doubtless, in the intense longing of
his love hoped as many a reformer has done since, that
this time something different was to be looked for —
with so much more reason than any other, though with
the certainty so much stronger than any other, of the
tragic end of all : that Jesus left his favoured province
and wandered forth towards the great sea "into the
borders of Tyre and Sidon," and even farther afield
"through all the cities of Decapolis," which may have
included Damascus. It gives a new interest to that city
of enchantment to think there is even a peradventure
that " these blessed feet,

II.]

THE FINAL TRAGEDY.

493

" ' Which nineteen hundred years ago were nailed
For our advantage to the bitter cross,' "
may have walked its unchanging streets. But of this
journey there is no record except in a faint glimpse here
and there showing the wandering party in unlikely
places on that way. It is supposed to have been on
their return towards Galilee that they passed by the

PILGRIMS TENT: AIN-ET-TIN, NEAR BETHSAIDA.

fine Boman colony called Caesarea Philippi, with its tem
ples and grottoes, among the silvery intricacies of the
sources of Jordan, where still the relics of the great
Temple of Pan disturb the surface of the rocks, and the
little Syrian village of Banias stands brightly amid a re
freshing greenness of foliage familiar to Western eyes,
dearer than the gray olives, or dark pines, or palms of
Eastern vegetation. It was here that Peter's confession
of the Lord Christ was made, and rewarded by his Mas-

494 JERUSALEM. [chap.
ter's emphatic approval and promise. The same journey
has appeared to many commentators to make it likely -
that it was on some height of Hermon, under the level of
the gleaming snows, that the Transfiguration took place,
instead of upon the familiar Tabor of the home land
scape, so round and green. But these can only be regarded
as suggestions, since neither Hermon nor Damascus are
mentioned in the record. It is difficult, however, to im
agine what could have taken them to Caesarea Philippi,
unless they passed there in the course of a long journey:
but Tabor would lie in their way on their return from
"the borders of Tyre and Sidon " to Galilee, passing
close by the little Nazareth, the name of which Jesus
still bore, and where his early years were passed.
Whatever may be the fact about these details, which
are of so much inferior importance, it is evident that the
mystic incident of the Transfiguration took place about
this time. It had become necessary that those disciples,
who were soon to become apostles, the chosen witnesses
of his life, as of his death and resurrection, should be
prepared for the overwhelming revelation which awaited
them, of the end, so far different from their hopes, of
their Lord's ministry. It was while travelling by the
sea that his first intimation of what was about to hap
pen was received by his companions with incredulity
and even reproof, as the mere utterance of a fit of
depression, impossible to contemplate, a sort of gloomy
imagination not to be tolerated. Peter's exclamation
" Be it far from thee, Lord ! " was indeed the most
natural of utterances, though it called forth the strongest
expression of displeasure to which his Master ever gave
vent. "Peter took him and began to rebuke him," for
despondency, no doubt, for too dark a view of men and
their depravity. It was on the same journey that the
impetuous disciple had proclaimed his certain faith in

il] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 495
the office of his Master, the one utterance following the
other with very little interval between ; and the words of
the Lord, "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona," had
scarcely died out of the air, before he had to bid the
same eager speaker " Get thee behind me ! for thou
savourest not the things that be of God, but the things
that be of man." And it was very shortly after that he
led them up into the high mountain apart, where they
saw a glorious vision, and heard the conversation of
heaven about that which they had refused to credit, that
which their minds refused to receive, the decease to be
accomplished at Jerusalem. It seems little likely that
they derived much benefit from this at the time. The
glory was too much for their dazzled eyes. The bewil
dered suggestion of Peter about the three tabernacles,
shows how little comprehension of the real object of that
wonderful incident had penetrated his mind ; the glori
ous robes, the shining countenances, the sudden trans
portation into a new world of wonder, in which external
life disappears like a shadow, flooded his mind with
amaze ; and a shrine to shield the human eyes and make
worship possible was all his strained faculties could
think of, not the subject of that high discourse which
was intended to bring the things of God down to the
capacity of man. But they remembered afterwards, and
knew what it meant.
Many of the most pregnant sayings of our Lord, his
most wonderful addresses and touching offices of mercy,
were done at this time. The repeated announcements of
his own approaching suffering and death were too clear,
as it appears to us who have known all our lives what
followed, to be mistaken or misapprehended : but it is
evident that the disciples still continued to misappre
hend, and did not, for some time even after these antici
pations were fulfilled, perceive how distinctly they had

496

JERUSALEM.

[chap.

been warned of what was to come. It was now that he
called a little child and set him in the midst of them,
and told these eager enthusiasts, still bent upon great
place and promotion in the kingdom of Messiah, that
they must become as little children if they would so
much as enter into the kingdom of heaven ; and in
structed them that if a brother offended not seven times
but seventy times seven he should yet be forgiven;

ON THE SHORES OF THE SEA OF GALILEE.

and gathering the little ones about him, commanding
to forbid them not, blessed the little wondering group
upon the way with a tenderness never to be forgotten.
And it was now that, his divine heart more soft than
ever in the solemnity of the approaching end, he looked
upon and loved the young man who had kept all the
Commandments from his youth up, yet could not find it
in his heart to gain perfection by giving up all he had to
the poor. That it should have been at the very moment

»-] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 497
of this youth's shrinking from so great a sacrifice that
Jesus loved him, is one of the most wonderful touches of
nature and humanity, past all conceiving. The story of
the Good Samaritan (was it told upon the way as the
travellers ascended slowly the steep scarp of the rocky
road that led from Jericho to Jerusalem ?) and of the
Prodigal Son, belong to this solemn time : and it was
now that with a melancholy irony, seeing the guests
crowding up to the best places at the Pharisees' feast, at
some town where he rested, he bade them for more
honour choose the lowest room, so that they might be
advanced, and not expose themselves to the ignominy
of being made to give place to their betters. But it
would be vain to attempt to enumerate all the wonderful
words and acts either of that last season in Galilee, the
country of his predilection, while he still lingered upon
the shores of the lake, and by the pleasant greenness of
the hills, or in the lingering details of the wanderings
between Galilee and Jerusalem which followed.
His setting out upon the journey from which he was
never to return save in the mystery of resurrection, was
more than usually memorable. He had sent out some
time before seventy of his disciples, two by two "before
his face into every city, whither he himself would
come," and received their joyful report as he went on,
following in their steps, group by group coming back
to rejoin him as he proceeded on his journey. It is
recorded of one of the villages in the Samaritan country
which lay in the way to Jerusalem, that they refused to
receive him, in some access of hot local opposition, and
he had to turn aside to rest in another. That James
and John, those fiery spirits who a little time before had
desired of him that they should sit one on his right
hand and the other on his left in his kingdom, should
now, half in righteous indignation, half with the swelling
KK

498 JERUSALEM. [chap.
sense of supernatural power and desire to silence for
ever every cavilling tongue, have desired to call down
fire from heaven (in the exultation of their recent expe
rience that even devils were subject to them in his
name) to consume the churlish town — is so natural in
the extraordinary circumstances that we feel with them
the intolerable impatience which such an affront would
produce. But when he turns and rebukes them, the
higher nature is so natural, too, in supreme comprehen
sion and pity that every thought is silenced. "Ye know
not what manner of spirit ye are of." It was John, the
apostle of love, who had spoken — a man of vehement
feelings, yet whose whole teaching and doctrine merged
in his later life into the reiteration of the lessons of
brotherhood. He would have destroyed in his hasty
impulse, love of his Master being so hot in him : but he
would have been the first to quench with tears and with
horrified entreaties the ruin he had made. His Master
knew him far better than he knew himself.
That there might be a certain justification for the vil
lagers from an economical point of view in their refusal
to receive him with the multitude which followed, an
endless train — which, though no doubt it began to fall off
as the distance from Galilee increased, was still a vast
crowd of people enough to swamp any rural place — we
may also allow. That they fell off by degrees is apparent
from the broken words which came out of one band after
another as they paused, reason compelling them to per
ceive that short of the tremendous decision to leave all
and follow him, they had gone far enough. For Jesus
was not now bound to the great feast in which all Jews
were concerned, but to the Feast of the Dedication,
at which attendance was not obligatory : and it was
now winter when the roads were at their worst and the
weather uncertain. As they came to say farewell to him

n.] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 499
there must have been many a suppressed sound of weep
ing, and lingering look behind. " Lord, I will follow
thee whithersoever thou goest." "Lord, suffer me first
to go and bury my father." " Lord, let me bid farewell
to my household." These were the cries which they
uttered in their emotion, not able to tear themselves
away, yet knowing they could not go on. Our Lord
represses this cry of strained emotion with, we may
imagine, the usual smile of tender understanding on his
face. He knew when it was only the passion of tempo
rary sorrow, the pang of leave-taking which burst forth
in those cries, and in his divine toleration did not blame
them. " Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have
nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his
head," he says to him whose feelings had been too much
for him, who could not bear to go, yet probably was all
unadapted to stay : and we may imagine him looking
after them with a look never to be forgotten, as one by
one in weeping and humiliation — not able for that sacri
fice, bound by all the ties of home, yet almost equally
unable to separate themselves from his side : they turned
back to their impoverished and diminished Galilee, the
villages and rural places he had loved, yet where he
was to live and teach never more. Would that man
whom the Lord himself had bidden to follow, go too, to
bury his father, not capable of the great renunciation ?
Would they say to each other as the windings of the
road hid the band of pilgrims from their sight, drying
their eyes, recovering their voices, that they would see
him again when they went up for the Passover — the
next summer he would surely be back to bless their
fishing and console all their troubles ?
The diminished band went on, their faces steadfastly
set towards Jerusalem, held back by no obstacles, turn
ing aside to another village when rejected by the first,
kk 2

500 JERUSALEM. [chap.
and now more easily lodged in their decreased numbers,
and more intimate and near to each other than when
distracted by the requirements of the crowd ; the twelve
surrounding him most closely of all, the companions of
the seventy falling into the band from point to point
along the way, the women of Galilee attending and min
istering to him, his own mother, ever humble and rever
ent, assuming no superior place. Nothing can be more
difficult than to trace with any exactness the wanderings
of this prolonged and double journey, broken up in the
midst by a rapid visit to Jerusalem, or to define what
was done before that visit, and what after, during the
time which he spent in Judea before the final proceed
ings of the last Passover. The pilgrims would seem, at
all events, to have lingered on the way, perhaps, kept
back at first by the sweeping rains that pour down in
torrents in the wintry season ; and if we conclude -that
they maintained their course more or less directly for
Jerusalem, there is little incident to record except the
first visit to Bethany, where the sisters, afterwards so
well known, and who would seem to have been at once
numbered among the dearest friends of his lowliness,
received him into their house. These two women stand
out at once before us in the extreme brevity of the record,
in a simple episode which makes them instantly recognis
able like neighbours of our own. Martha, the thrifty
housewife, cumbered about many things, was the mis
tress of the house, and anxious with all the affection and
homely pride of a rustic hostess to serve that visitor
with her best, and entertain him like a king ; but Mary,
the younger sister, thought of nothing but himself, and
how to hear every word and catch every look. Jesus
did not blame that notable, good woman for her absorp
tion in household cares, until it became necessary to clear
the rapt listener from the charge of idleness and indiffer-

n.] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 501
ence. This is the only mention of that little privileged
household in any gospel but that of St. John : and the
brother is not named who might be the master of another
house, or absent upon his ordinary affairs, on the occasion
of this first visit.
It must have been from Bethany that Jesus and his
disciples went into the Temple, where they appeared
quietly, a little travelling band, without the multitude
that usually dogged their footsteps. There is something
in the narrative that follows which suggests the early
morning, the Sabbath day's calm, and no one near to dis
turb the quiet and devout progress of the little group,
which, no doubt, had gone up early before the world was
astir. They saw " as they passed by, a man which was
blind from his birth," sitting by the city gate, or in a
porch of the Temple in the early sunshine. Our Lord
stopped to look at him, his attention called by the
question of his disciples, " Lord, who did sin, this man
or his parents that he was born blind? " He must have
been a man well known by the frequenters of the Temple
that his circumstances were so familiar to these strangers.
Jesus paused to see the object of the question, and then
with a curious unwonted ceremony put the clay he had
made upon the blind eyes and dismissed him quietly to
wash in the pool of Siloam — perhaps in order to avoid
the tumult which so striking a miracle would have
Gaused : and proceeded — to all appearance almost with
out interruption — with his teaching as if nothing had
happened. The whole transaction bears the mark of the
utmost simplicity and naturalness. The man was not
sought out for the miracle's sake : he uttered no petition,
was, one may believe, taken by surprise altogether by
the sudden operation ; and though he had faith enough
to go down the Temple hill to the Pool of Siloam, it was
probably with no more than a wondering thrill of the

502 JERUSALEM. [chap.
strange possibility that it might come true: for he was
no believer, not a person of awakened intelligence at all :
the great prophet of Nazareth about whom all men won
dered, and whose character had been so hotly discussed
in these very precincts, being to him only " a man called
Jesus." But when he " came seeing," according to the
brief and simple narrative, meeting the worshippers
going up to the Temple, and all the neighbours who had
known him all his life, a growing commotion arose.
There is no reason to believe that he hastened back again
to thank his deliverer as would have seemed natural, nor
is there any sign about him of anything higher than a
shrewd practical intelligence, appreciating the advantage
he had gained and nothing more. He does not proclaim
the wonder to the world, but comes back soberty, a pro
saic person, pleased, no doubt, and happy in his restora
tion, but not demonstrative, nor even roused to any
enthusiasm by the wonderful gift which he had received.
And now once more the scene of popular excitement
and questioning which the Evangelist John has so special
a gift of rendering, rises before us. The startled people
collected round, growing into a crowd, as the well-known
beggar of the gate, the blind man to whom they had
given their alms as they went to worship for years, met
them, with open eyes walking back towards his usual,
post. There arose immediately a babel of voices ques
tioning and answering. "Is not this he that sat and
begged ? " some saying " it is like him," others " this is
he." The man himself, less excited it would appear
than the spectators, at once interposed to acknowledge
his identity and to explain what had happened. The
inconceivable calm of his attitude amid the excitement
of the- people is wonderful to behold. He seems as if he
might be disposed to ask what all the fuss was about ?
"A man that is called Jesus made clay and anointed

ii.] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 503
mine eyes and said unto me : go unto the Pool of Siloam
and wash : and I went and washed, and I received sight."
Then said they unto him " Where is he ? " He said
"I know not." Some zealots, it would appear, now
joined the crowd, roused by the name, scenting again a
controversy, a prosecution, a breach of the law of the
Sabbath, in this sudden reappearance of the Galilean ;
and hurried the object of the miracle off to the Pharisees,
perhaps to the office of the Sanhedrim, perhaps to some
lesser bureau of government, where he might be examined
at length. The story goes on with an extraordinary ful
ness of life and nature. Finding it impossible to deny the
fact which was before their eyes, the officials confuse him
with questions, demanding his opinion — which could have
so little to do with the matter ! finally sending for his
parents, poor bewildered people who were yet wise
enough to decline to answer compromising questions,
and to refer their examiners to the chief actor himself.
"We know that this is our son, and that he was born
blind," they reply; "but by what means he now seeth,
or who hath opened his eyes, we know not : he is of age ;
ask him : he shall speak for himself." The once-blind
man seems to have been gradually aroused by the fight
going on over him. His faculties awakened as his eye
sight had done : his shrewd natural sense saw at once
the fallacy of the angry assertions of his questioners.
"Herein is a marvellous thing," he cried at length, "that
ye know not from whence he is, and yet he hath opened
mine eyes." Among the fruitless, factious reasonings of
the- disturbed officials, striving to convince themselves
and others that what they saw was not the fact, the shrewd
untrained beggar of the Temple gates stands forth as the
representative of sound sense and reason, unbiassed even
by the gratitude which he owes, but does not seem to be
in any way strongly affected by.

504 JERUSALEM. [chap.
In the meantime, while that argument went on, all
would seem to have been quiet in the Temple above. The
most continuous discourse which has yet been reported
to us in Jerusalem, Jesus seems to have delivered with
out interruption that day : not, we may be certain, with
out an audience, but one most likely of an unpolitical
kind, the daily worshippers who never failed, with per
haps a greater leaven than usual of strangers and simple
folk bound to no official maintenance of ritual and tradi
tion. One can imagine the various committees of the
Sanhedrim occupied with the new wonder that had been
brought before them, messengers running to and fro with
one communication after another, and ever-new precau
tions to be taken to keep this fact from the knowledge of
the multitude : while all the time an act more great, the
enunciation of the great truths of the Gospel went on un
disturbed. Once more as always at Jerusalem it is his
own great and unique mission, declared in the fullest
terms, which our Lord explains to his hearers, with
out compromise or faltering. "I am the door of the
sheep," by which alone they can enter the fold. " I am
the good shepherd, I lay clown my life for the sheep. I
lay down my life, that I may take it again. No man
taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have
power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.
This commandment I have received of my Father." Such
words as these had been already said privately to the
Apostles on several occasions, but had been received only
with bewilderment and never understood until after
everything was accomplished. Now they were pro
claimed in the most public place of Jerusalem, a mystery
which was as plain as the daylight afterwards, but now,
what ? nothing but blasphemy.
All our Lord's addresses delivered at Jerusalem are,
we repeat, of the same nature. He does not repeat

n.] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 505
there the teaching of the Galilean hills. All that
he says at Jerusalem is blasphemy — or else it is true-
There is no middle course. With the rulers, the
judges, the learned of his nation he attempts no com
promise at any time. To them he does not show him
self merely as a benign instructor, the preacher of a
new and divine code of faith and practice. It is his
credentials which he places before them, the high asser
tion of his office, the claim of a position and authority
to which theirs is as nothing. The poor to whom it was
one sign of his divine mission that the Gospel was
preached were no judges in that question. The Phari
sees, the Scribes, the priests were the representatives of
the government of Israel, the only tribunal of doctrine,
the interpreters of the law and the prophets. And the
words which he addressed to them within their hearing
were emphatically what they declared them to be —
blasphemy : or else the only truth for the salvation of
Israel and of mankind.
It could not be without a purpose that this great
difference was made. And the words which he uttered
in the Temple court while all the commotion over the
blind beggar was going on in private, form the fullest
and most connected discourse in which it is presented
before us. The teaching of Jesus is never without this
great claim : but in Jerusalem it is almost the claim
alone which is his subject. He is the living water, the
light of the world, the Good Shepherd — finally, the one
and only being in the human race who lays down his
life that he may take it again. Martyrs there have been
before and since, sufferers involuntary, yet not unwilling,
consenting to God's decrees ; but never one of whom
this could be said, who would dare to say it. Blasphemy,
who could doubt it — or else : — The alternative was
plain.

506 JERUSALEM. [chap.
And who can wonder that after the uninterrupted
utterance of that Sabbath morning there should have
been " a division among the Jews for these sayings " ?
Not long could that calm last. He who did not come to
bring peace but a sword, in this special region, to that
organisation which it was his mission to replace and
transform if not to destroy, could not long be left to tell
the wondrous tale of his own being and office undis
turbed. Much he had said that was wonderful before,
but never anything so wonderful as this. "Many of
them said, he hath a devil and is mad," — what wonder ?
Take the words alone and they were more than madness,
they were blasphemy, and the most tremendous assump
tion ever made by man. Yet those who looked upon
him, who followed the discourse to its end and studied
the speaker, knew that these were not the words of him
that hath a devil, and that never man spake like this
man. And evidently by this time the news of the last
miracle had spread among the crowd and moved the
baser sort, so that even the Pharisees had begun to ask :
" Can a devil open the eyes of the blind ? "
The Apostle pauses here to give a touch of local descrip
tion. " It was winter, and Jesus walked in the Temple,
in Solomon's porch," which is believed to have been the
great cloister running along the eastern wall, which rested
upon the vast vaults still existing called Solomon's
stables, and looked towards the Mount of Olives. Like
the Greek philosophers, the Hebrew teachers walked
under the sheltering portico surrounded by their disciples,
and talked and taught and explained, the spectators about
ever ready to suggest a doubt or ask a question. There
no doubt it was that he had found the blind man in the
morning in some sheltered corner, waiting for the alms
of the passers-by who knew him and his habitual seat.
The whole scene is clear as if it had occurred yesterday.

n.] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 507
And something of the bewildered confusion of the
officials who wrangled over the beggar, incapable of
denying the wonder that was before their eyes, seems to
have filled the minds of the ruling class in the portico :
once more brought face to face with this strange Prophet
who appeared and disappeared in so sudden a way,
and whom perhaps they had hoped after so long an
interval to have been rid of : as they met and stopped
and discussed among themselves, ever eyeing him who
passed and repassed in that public walk, talking with
those about him. At length some one more impetuous
made himself the spokesman of the rest, backed up no
doubt by a band that pressed behind him. " How long
dost thou make us to doubt ? If thou be the Christ, tell
us plainly ? " The interpellation is rude and abrupt, and
no doubt many of the questioners were burning for an
answer which should justify them in seizing him then
and there. Our Lord's reply is given from a height of
divine calm which it is evident exasperated his ques
tioners beyond bearing. It would seem to have been
half addressed to them and half a continuation to his
own immediate followers of the foregoing discourse. "I
have told you, and ye believed not," he says to his angry
questioners : "the works that I do in my Father's name,
they bare witness of me. But ye believe not, because ye
are not of my sheep." And then was it ? half turning
to the more intimate band around him, that he said:
" My sheep hear my voice, and I know them and they
follow me : And I will give unto them eternal life : and
they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck
them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me,
is greater than all : and no man is able to pluck them
out of my Father's hand. I and my Father are one."
Could there be a more complete answer, a more
thorough satisfaction of their desire for a blasphemous

508 JERUSALEM. [chap.
utterance than this ? And some of them were trans
ported with rage and horror and took up stones to stone
him. These missiles must have fallen from their hands
when he turned upon them, ever calm, and asked for
which of the works he had done they stoned him ? an
expression which looks as if they had actually begun to
hurl at him the first pieces of marble or stone they could
pick up, fragments of the perpetual reparation of the
Temple. " For a good work we stone thee not : but for
blasphemy," they cry. And surely it was blasphemy, the
most unhesitating, the most assured, blasphemy, which
by no possible excuses could be explained away.
It is most curious that at the final trial when Jerusa
lem was ransacked to procure witnesses against Jesus, no
one of the men who seized those stones in their rage,
who heard him say " I and my Father are one," who
listened, scarcely able to contain themselves, to his asser
tion that he could lay down his life and take it again,
produced themselves to prove these manifest blasphe
mies. Had they become his followers ? were they so
shaken by the majestic truth in him that they dared not
bear that witness which would have been conclusive ?
Certain it is that only some trumpery accusation about
destroying the Temple to which nobody gave the least
faith was brought against him : and the hearers of these
extreme words were silent. It is one of the most
remarkable secondary details in the history.
But he had now done all that was needful in his
proclamation of his mission. He withdrew from
amidst the gathering crowd. His time was not yet:
there were still things to be done and things to be said
which made him conclude this portion of his ministry
summarily to avoid a premature end. If there was any
thing supernatural in his disappearance from among the
crowd we are not told. When they sought him to take

ii. J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 509
him he was gone : and for a few months more he
returned to the life of the wandering prophet and teacher,
with this difference that he went to his own Galilee no
more. The place to which Jesus and his disciples betook
themselves was that spot on the other side of the river
" beyond Jordan in the place where John at first bap
tized," where he remained for some time sought out by
many, and pursued by questioners, by Scribes and Phari
sees, by all the old traps and snares in conversation to
which he had been used, as well as to many touching
incidents and appeals. Many of the most remarkable of
the parables were told among the people of this region,
to whom his teaching was new, and who came out in
crowds to meet and to attend him wherever he went.
That the general interest was very great is clear from
every word. The rulers from every synagogue, the law
yers and learned classes, and those Pharisees who occu
pied the principal place in every community, seem to
have come out from every city and village to hear this
man whom so many asserted to be the Messiah, but some
an inspired demoniac casting out devils through Beelze
bub the prince of devils. The wondering crowd followed
him everywhere, pushing even into his private conver
sations with his disciples, following the pilgrim band
with a rapt attention. Sometimes he turned from those
intimate conversations, in his walks through that warm
and flowery region where the early spring began to
bloom, and the iris stood up in sheaves of snowy blossoms
about the way, to throw forth a little apologue, a story
to keep and ponder in the hearts of the common folk.
The grain of mustard-seed which grew and waxed into a
tree, the leaven which was hidden in the dry mass of
meal until it pervaded the whole, the emphatic tale of
the fig-tree which bore no fruit and was condemned, yet

510 JERUSALEM. [chap.
spared till the husbandman had dug about its roots and
given it another chance for life : all short, all full of
meaning, teaching their lesson with one vivid illustra
tion from the common objects about. His more inti
mate intercourse with his disciples seems to have been
chiefly directed to their encouragement and the strength
ening of their faith and trust in time to come. He bids
them to look at the birds twittering upon every bush,
things of no account, yet not one of them forgotten
before God. He bids them consider the lilies of the field
which toil not nor spin, yet are arrayed as never was
Solomon in all his glory : how much more value are they
than the sparrows, how much more than the flowers ?
W7hen they are brought before the magistrates and into
the synagogues to answer for themselves, he bids them
take no thought what they are to say. " For the Holy
Ghost shall teach you in that same hour what ye ought
to say." How troubled and perplexed they must have
been as they listened, not knowing what he could mean,
nor why it was necessary thus to comfort their hearts
beforehand, as for some mysterious need yet to
come : and how their excitement would be relieved
yet disappointed when he turned aside and looked at the
crowd behind and spoke his parable, leaving the germ
of Divine story to quicken and fructify in the common
soil, who may venture to describe ? They could not
shut their ears to the repeated references he made to
something that was about to be accomplished at Jerusa
lem, which would make the next Passover a great era to
them all : but, perhaps, in the dread anxiety and sense
of approaching fate, would turn their faces from it,
rather than confront that mysterious catastrophe of which
no one could tell what it was to be.
Everything seems to become more emphatic as the
stream of life thus rushes towards its end. The para-

"¦J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 511
bles, save in one or two cases, are shorter, more con
densed, cut as it were in the stone. The Pharisee and
the publican in the Temple, which stands out like a
picture, not with the soft touch of the earlier general
teaching, but such a contrast as no one could forget:
the man who bade his soul to take rest, to eat and drink
and be merry since he had stores laid up for many years —
have a character far more intense and energetic than
such allegories as that of the sowrer, the wheat and the
tares, and many which he had spoken in the early days
of his career, seated on the grassy hillside or in his
little ship. His voice is now that of one who has no
time to lose.
And yet the band must have lingered in the deep vale
of Jordan where the spring came sooner than elsewhere,
and where the people who had been the first hearers of
John the Baptist dwelt, with his revelation in their
minds, doubly eager to hear and see this man of whom
John had spoken, and to determine for themselves if
he were in truth the Messias of whom that son of the
wilderness had proclaimed himself the forerunner. There
seem to have been constant comparisons of his- preaching,
of his life and work with those of Jesus. " John did
no miracles : but all things that John spake of this man
are true." There could be no closer test of John's testi
mony than this progress through the very district that
had rung with it, and in which there would be a natural
inclination to exalt him at the expense of any rival. No
doubt, the eagerness of the crowd that followed Jesus
wherever he went, to see a miracle, must have been its
strongest general motive : but there is no sign that our
Lord did anything to satisfy, even in that accidental way
in which most of his miraculous works were done, the
curiosity of the people. Seldom or never, at any time did
he seek an occasion to show his power. It flowed from

512 JERUSALEM. [chap.
him when need was, the alms of Godhead. Here was
no wilderness to demand a miraculous meal, the thing
of all others which had moved the multitude in Galilee :
and it was only when human need appealed to him that
the Divine arm was raised.
Yet were there some exceptions to this reserve, when
the need did present itself. At the entrance of a cer
tain village on the way there stood a miserable band of
ten lepers, not approaching closely, as was forbidden to
them, but standing afar off, moved by sudden hope as
the rumour on the road that preceded him reached
their ears. It is a sight that any traveller may see at
this day in that unchanging East. I shall never forget
the thrill of horror and pity and strange realisation as
of a familiar scene, that moved my own mind at the
first sight of that line of dark figures muffled and
shrouded, yet letting a dreadful face or shapeless limb
appear to demonstrate their wretchedness — seated upon
the edge of the road outside a smiling village, with their
cry of appeal to every passer-by and the rattle of their
money-boxes. Just so these men, dark shadows with
veiled faces in the evening sunshine, must have stood
as he approached, clamouring for an alms more great ,
than any coin. " Go, show yourselves to the priest,"
was all he said, in a pause of his discourse : while
probably the others that followed were seeking out what
minute piece of money they could find to give to those
most unhappy mendicants. The shout with which they
must have started off on their hurried journey to fulfil
that ceremonial necessity which stood between them
and their return to life — scarcely pausing to see if the
good news could be true, was, as the reader knows,
interrupted by but one who, seeing, perhaps, his dis
torted hand take back some form of a human member,
changed that shout into a cry of praise to God, and fall-

n.J THE FINAL TRAGEDY.- 513
ing down upon his face gave thanks to his deliverer.
Was it, perhaps, for the more utter conviction of James
and John who had desired to call down fire from Heaven
on the hostile village that our Lord paused to remark
that this one grateful soul among so many, only eager
to prove their emancipation, was a Samaritan ? and that
the benevolent "neighbour" whose story he told them
to point the moral of perfect charity was of that de
spised people too.
When they got as far as Jericho upon their way, an
other incident followed. There must always have been
some messengers going before to provide lodging and
food for so large a party, not to speak of that intangible
rumour which goes before the travellers announcing the
coming- of any notable person, such as somehow arises
even in our own northern regions, and far more in the
East. The blind man by the wayside heard it, and
roused himself, as the lepers had done, to a new hope.
Perhaps in the fellowship of misery he might have heard
the story from one of them hurrying homewards to make
his deliverance known. We see incidentally from this
narrative that there was again a multitude accompanying
the pilgrims as they moved onward, no doubt a little
crowd from every village eager to hear, and still more to
see any prodigy, pressing upon the steps of the way
farers. The blind beggar by the way could not see who
was passing, but the hum of the multitude reached his
eager ears, and he would seem to have begun his cry
(possibly as he was in the habit of beginning his sing
song appeal for charity) before it was possible it could
be heard by the ear to which it was addressed. " Jesus,
thou Son of David ! Jesus, thou Son of David ! " He
had been told that it was Jesus of Nazareth who was
passing by, but must have had some other knowledge
that dictated that name. It would seem that the Apostles

514

JERUSALEM.

[chap.

had become weary by this time of those perpetual out
cries of the multitude, or the cynical ingratitude of the
lepers may have disgusted them — for those of them who
were in advance rebuked the blind man for his ceaseless
cry. Not so their Master, who heard no cry for mercy
unmoved ; and the train followed on to Jericho with the
once-blind man following, surrounded, we may be sure,

KHAN ON THE ROAD TO JERICHO, BY TRADITION THAT OF THE GOOD
SAMARITAN.

by the wondering and delighted crowd, straining his
opened eyes, let us hope, to follow him whose benignant
countenance had been the first thing they saw.
The wintry weather had lost all its rigour in that ever
warm and fertile plain where, deep below the level of
the ocean, summer has laid out a teeming garden of ever
lasting warmth and greenness. The dusty convoy had
wound along, seen like a moving speck across the levels
of the landscape, receiving from every hamlet its con-

ii-] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 515
tingent, growing as it proceeded, with those that followed
and with those that came out to meet the wonderful
travellers, during the whole course of the day; and
Jericho itself had by this time heard the news of the
miracle, and rushed out of all its streets scarcely more
eager to see the face of the prophet than that familiar
figure of blind Bartimseus, known to every child, the
beggar on the roadside, now marching along with the
throng of wondering attendants and eyes transfused with
light and tears, that saw. The story of the humble Zac-
cheeus, a man of so little account in his smallness of
stature and unimportance, that he would have been swept
by in the progress of the crowd, had he not climbed up
into the tree where he could see and be unseen, would
come in as a still more effective parable to the Pharisees,
who in such an important place as Jericho must have
been many, and whose indignation at the Teacher's pref
erence of the despised tax-gatherer would break all
bounds. From that city of the plain, lying in the still
heat of its low level, Jesus might look across to that
grim boundary, the weird and contorted mountains with
their convulsed pinnacles and ravines like scars in the
rock, which were the scene of that early and mysterious
episode of his life which is called the Temptation : that
was the first chapter of his career, it was meet that he
should pass by a spot full of such memories on his way
to the last.
The greatest of all the miracles, the crown and climax
of his work in this kind, was now preparing ; and it is
almost the only one in which we can suppose that there
was any predetermined intention, seeing that it did not
like all the rest spring from the necessities or occurrences
of the moment. In the case of Lazarus, our Lord did
visibly await the time in which this final act should
have its full solemnity as a sign and prodigy. In the
ll 2

516 JERUSALEM. [chap.
case of the young man at Nain, he had met the burial
procession and seen the anguish of the mother, such
anguish as, being there with that power in his hand, he
could not pass by. But in this, every circumstance was
full of meaning. He did not for once bestir himself at
the first cry of the appeal, "he whom thou lovest is sick ":
but remained quietly where he was " for two days," leav
ing the sickness to run its fatal course. Where he was
at this time we are not distinctly told, except that it was
beyond the bounds of Judea, and probably still on the
other side of Jordan, to which he returned after his
missionary journeys as for the moment his settled place
of abode. When at the end of the two days he proposed
to his disciples to go to Judea, he was surrounded at
once by anxious remonstrances, " Master, the Jews of
late sought to stone thee, and goest thou thither again ? "
This wrould seem to establish that there could have been
no intermediate visit to Jerusalem, since that attempt
to stone him is the last recorded. When they per
ceived that he would go, there is a tragic resignation in
the tone of the disciples. " Let us also go that we may
die with him," says Thomas, the sceptic, he who found-
it so hard to believe the deeper mysteries of the Gospel.
Clearly he perceived what was personal and positive with
no illusions.
It would be at once vain and presumptuous to
retell the story of that most affecting episode. " Our
friend Lazarus" was well known to the wandering
band, who probably had found rest and shelter in his
peaceful village many a night while spending the day
amid the contentions of Jerusalem. The name of Beth
any must have meant hospitality, a kind welcome, and
peaceful repose to them all, far enough off from the city
to escape all its noise and distractions, yet not beyond
the limit of a Sabbath day's journey, or an evening

JERICHO ROAD: TRADITIONAL SPOT WHERE THE MAN FELL AMONG THIEVES. To face page SiS.

"¦J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 519
walk into the grateful quiet, the rustle of the corn and
the soft shade of olive-trees. They were so much con
cerned, however, for their Master's safety, which was
their chief thought, that anxiety for Lazarus seems to
have held a very secondary place in their minds : and
it is evident that they took their way with great reluc
tance towards the country in which his far more precious
life was in danger.
It must have been with the sense of an escape, tempo
rary at least, from an ever-threatening peril, that after
all the overwhelming emotion of these scenes at Bethany,
the little band closed once more around their Lord, and
encircled him as he went down again from the pleasant
slope, where all the winds blow sweet and fresh over the
hill-country of Judea, into the valley of the Jordan and
along the northern road by which as yet no pilgrims
were coming to the feast. This time there are no further
details of a public mission. The little band goes silently
away into the obscurity and quiet, " to a city called
Ephraim," which no one has identified, but which proba
bly lay to the north-east of Jerusalem towards Samaria,
but on the edge of the wilder country about Jordan —
out of the common route, perhaps still within sight of
those rocky and awful mountains of the Quarantania with
their terrible canons and terraces, where the Temptation
had taken place. The town could have been at no great
distance from Jerusalem, as we measure distances, but
lost in the depths of an unknown region to those who
travelled everywhere on foot and who avoided dangers
by keeping to the accustomed way.
But how long Jesus remained there, or if he did any
thing but rest in solemn anticipation of all the mysteries
that were about to be accomplished, we are not told.
As it was the time of the Passover which was to be the
moment of his supreme offering, and he desired "with

520 JERUSALEM. [ch. ii.
desire," that is with all his heart, to accomplish those
rites for the last time, and eat that common supper with
his disciples, before fulfilling and abolishing the great
typical sacrifice, it was essential that he should remain
hidden and quiet until his hour had come ; for by this
time the factions of the Jews had thrown off all disguise,
and the high priests had given orders that he was to be
taken into custody wherever found. No doubt Jerusalem
had been stirred to its depths by the last and greatest
miracle which he had accomplished in that hurried and
unexpected appearance between two periods of exile,
when no one looked for him, appearing and disappearing
again before any warrant or officer could be sent after
him. And now absolute silence enveloped him around,
for a few weeks perhaps — it could scarcely be more : —
before the supreme moment came of the world's history,
and the climax of his work on earth.

CHAPTER III.
THE END OP THE JEWISH DISPENSATION.
"TT is a work beyond the necessities of this book, and
-L beyond, I am glad to think at once the powers and
the requirements of a writer of the nineteenth century,
to rewrite or to attempt to amplify or render more clear
the great story of that Divine tragedy accomplished at
Jerusalem, at once the crowning glory and condemnation
of the little Judean city, thus made into the centre of
history, a place of wonder and awe and everlasting
interest to all the world, the end of so much that is all
important to mankind, the beginning and point of
departure to so much that is more important still. We
may almost say with St. John that if all that has been
written since of commentary upon that event were col
lected together, "the whole world," certainly all its
known libraries and store-houses, would not be able to
contain them. It has been the one subject of which the
mind of Christendom has never tired. It has penetrated
the deepest darkness, and inspired the simplest and the
strongest souls. It is well for cultured persons at their
ease to speak of the criticisms that have abolished
Christianity, or the civilisations that have outgrown it,
or the supposed Service of Man that has superseded it.
These little systems have their day, rising perhaps into
a little factitious enthusiasm from time to time during

522 JERUSALEM. _ [chap.
the long centuries, dying away with every trifling gen
eration that has given them birth : but nothing can ever
obliterate the traces of that agony and passion, the
great Sufferer upon the Cross, the shining figure of the
Besurrection morning. What a mean and impoverished
world would that be from which these recollections were
driven! But such a condition is one which, happily,
the mind cannot conceive, even the very assailants of
these heavenly mysteries having their own minds and
the atmosphere they breathe so permeated by them,
that it is in the very strength of that breath of life that
they sound their little trumpets against the influence
which permits them to be.
But here no controversy can stand, no criticism find
place. Many martyrs have died, but none have done
more than approach the crucified feet of him who died
on Calvary; many great images have stood forth to men,
heroes and prophets and kings, the creations of an
inspiration little less than divine : but no poet has ever
imagined and no history has ever produced any being so
great, so noble, so pure, as to reach the level of the
supreme and awful, the tender and familiar image of
Love Incarnate. They group themselves around, behind
him, at his feet, though they may not have known him,
enveloped in a great humbleness, saying every one, We
are unprofitable servants ; while on his lips alone we feel
it no blasphemy, we acknowledge it as of right that they
should say, "I lay down my life, that I may take it
again." What are miracles, the little rays of light that
penetrate through the chinks of the cloud? He is the
great Miracle whom no theory has ever explained. When
there can be found in all the extended worlds which have
been discovered since that day, in all the planets and
systems which were but lights to rule the night in the
simple apprehensions of his contemporaries, another like

hi-] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 523
him— there may then be found a spot of ground on
which to place the lever which will move the world:
but not until then.
He would seem to have returned to Jerusalem for the
Passover, which in its full meaning was to be the last,
quietly and without observation before the time of the
ordinary pilgrims. When those who were more devout
"coming up to purify themselves " sometime before the
feast, arrived in these sacred courts, they again asked
each other in whispers and groups apart : " What think
ye, that he will come up to the feast? " Nobody could
doubt what would happen if he did so, unless he worked
some supreme miracle such as all had hoped for, and
called from lieaven ten legions of angels, all glorious in
heavenly armour, who, with the very dazzling sight of
them, should drive the cohorts of Imperial Bome out of
the rejoicing country, and make Jerusalem not only free
but triumphant over all the countries and kindreds of
the world. That was the alternative to all: to the
trembling souls who believed on him, to those whose
position was that of defying him to prove his claim : and
to the very priests and Pharisees, among whom perhaps
there would be some who, in their semi-patriotic terror
lest the Romans should take away their name and nation,
and in their more real alarm for their own power and
system of internal government, would yet have endured
personal downfall not unwillingly had they been able
thereby to obtain such a miraculous manifestation of the
Messiah. Great agitation, it is evident, there was
everywhere, the Jewish rulers having ordered that if
any one knew where he was they should give informa
tion that he might be taken.
It was under these circumstances that he appeared
suddenly " six days before the Passover " at Bethany —
where a feast was made for him. The place was no

524 JERUSALEM. [chap.
doubt ringing still with the local glory of that miracle
which is its distinction through all ages: and nothing
can be more natural than that many should come to this
entertainment not only to see Jesus, but Lazarus, the
subject of that wonderful intervention. All the person
ages, indeed, of the great drama were there, along with
the humble good man who says no word and makes no
sign of personal identity, he who had lain four days in
his grave in what wonderful suspense, or revelation of
the mystery of death, there is not a word to tell us :
" Where wert thou, brother, those four days ?
There lives no record of reply,
Whioh showing what it was to die
Had surely added praise to praise."
It was not the purpose of the Redeemer that such a
revelation should be — enough that in all mysteries we
know him who is the solution of them all. And from
Lazarus there comes no word, nor any indication what
manner of man he was : " Lazarus was one of those that
sat at the table with him " — a man known to the whole
village and all the neighbours who crowded about,
pointing out to the Sabbath day visitors from Jerusa
lem, the man who had died and was alive. And there
was Martha, the kindly soul, serving: enough for her to
follow her natural uses, to bring the bread and wine,
to see that all the needs of the guests were supplied.
Mary had another thought in her adoring soul, to do her
Lord honour, to pay him such service of gratitude as her
means permitted. Was he, perhaps, footsore with his
long travelling, the lengthened walks by rough and
stony roads, which such a pilgrim had to take? She
came behind him as he lay upon the couch, and
poured her costly ointment on his feet, refreshing and
cooling. "And the house was filled with the odour
of the ointment." A sudden pouring forth of fragrance

FROM BETHANY, LOOKING TOWARDS JBKICHO. To face page 527

ni.] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 527
is a recollection that outlasts many a more important
matter : and John remembered this vividly and, perhaps,
the start with which he himself, so near his Master's
bosom, would look round to ascertain what caused it,
and see the woman kneeling at those beloved, weary
feet, wiping them lightly with her long locks, not to
take the refreshing unguent from them, as a cloth would
have done : noticing, too, in the momentary quick flash
of observation, the alabaster box, a beautiful thing in
itself above her means, in which it had been enclosed,
and the astonishment of the poor Galileans to whom
three hundred pence was no small expenditure. Their
little chest or bag would contain no such sum, and the
first thought probably of all was that this was a waste and
extravagance, or at least an example of the costly ways
of these well-to-do people who so honoured the Master.
Judas, only coming into special revelation now, who
had been about with them all this time apparently
unsuspected, managing their simple affairs, one of
those who were sent on in advance to provide lodging
and food in the villages, was the one to break out in
indignation. Perhaps he knew that the little treasury
was running low, and could not think how to get new
supplies for it : perhaps the rage of a peculator who felt,
had he but been given that alabaster box, that he might
have made up his own deficiences and prevented the
discovery which was imminent — was in his heart. In
the latter case as he brooded over his troubles, and felt
shame and exposure to be before him — which is the most
likely explanation of the statement that he was a thief,
his defalcations, no doubt, being found out afterwards
— he may have missed those many intimations of an
approaching end which the Redeemer had made as he
walked and talked with the anxious band, who, eagerly
as they listened, understood so little : or if he compre-

528 JERUSALEM. [chap.
hended them by the light of his own trouble, the menace
of an end about to come might have made the defaulter
more and more conscious of the winding up and the
exposure before him. Something of this desperation,
so familiar to the most common modern fashions of evil,
must have stung him at the sight of that three hundred
pence which was thrown away, and driven him out in
exasperation to make his fatal bargain with the high
priests; thus covering his own crime with a universal
explosion, out of which he may have hoped the Master
would yet escape in some supernatural way.
Great agitation was in Jerusalem when it was known
what was happening in Bethany. It would have been
difficult to have seized Lazarus for no better reason than
that he had been raised from the dead : yet, no doubt, his
very existence was in itself so strong a protest against
their opposition, so perfect an answer to their seeming-
honest demand for proof of the high mission of his
Deliverer, that he was to the priests and Pharisees
almost as dangerous as his Master. And now there
surged up again agitated consultations in the Temple
how to destroy both, the disciple with the Lord. It
must have been felt by all in the city that the approach
ing feast was a crisis, every indication of which pointed
to serious national difficulty. That the claims of the
Messias might awaken such a popular tumult that the
Bomans would take away both name and nation, was
perhaps to some real alarm. The rulers might feel that
the present regime in which they themselves were
supreme was to be maintained at all hazards, even at
the risk of that great much-prophesied triumph of their
people, which had been for centuries the very reason of
their existence : just as Herod believed in the coming of
a sacred and heaven-appointed king, yet with an out
burst of his native ferocity made sure, at all events, as

I"-] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 529
he hoped, that the expected prince should not come in
his day. The circle of thought in which these anxious
rulers moved, the obstinate determination of the Sanhe
drim to maintain its own power at all costs, the extra
ordinary unintentional prophecy of the high priest, to
his understanding a simple statement of fact, that it was
better one man should die, even if he were without
blame, than that the whole nation should perish: all
these show the state of mind in the reigning class in
Jerusalem. Some of them, no doubt, were willing that
prophecy and promise should perish rather than that
their own state should be disturbed. The priests,
according to the description of St. Luke, were of the
sect of the Sadducees, whose doctrines were essentially
those of self-preservation; and the other sect of the
Pharisees believed in the rigid law alone, and nothing
else as the means of salvation — a law which Jesus of
Nazareth had at certain points determinedly set aside.
It is difficult to imagine how it could be that a race
which had been held together by this very hope should
now prove itself ready to sacrifice it entirely, in order
to secure the continuance of its own existing circum
stances — circumstances of bondage, national subjection
and humiliation : yet so it was. The extraordinary
shortsightedness of humanity, the prevailing terror of
the unknown and inclination to maintain what is exist
ing, thus acted to bring about the tragedy for which all
the world was waiting — notwithstanding the force of
expectation, of conviction, of proof almost universally
accepted, which should have bound the rulers of this
strange people to instant reception of the often-promised
and much-looked-for Messiah.
No pilgrim, I think, will ever forget the sensation,
especially if it is unexpected, which bursts upon him at
the turning of the slope of that road from Bethany to

530

JERUSALEM.

[chap.

Jerusalem. Skirting quietly along the side of the hill
without more thought probably than is always present
in the mind of a traveller who enters at all into these
sacred associations, we suddenly come round the corner
of the winding path upon a sight which takes away the

SYRIAN CHILDREN WITH PALM BRANCHES.
breath— Jerusalem lying before us fully spread out in
the sun with all her white domes and shining edifices,
from the height of Zion to the steep slope of Moriah
under the Temple wall, vaguely disappearing into dim
ness and a confusion of walls and roofs towards the

in.] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 531
north, but fully distinguishable on the south side, with
its walls following the inequalities of height and hollow,
and the broad enclosure immediately facing the eye,
where once the Temple stood, and where now stands the
Dome of the Bock, isolated and beautiful, with minaret
and dome clustering in varied groups around and behind.
The pause of startled realisation, the long-drawn breath
of an emotion too great for words, the wonderful sense
of standing there in one's own humble person where he
had certainly stood, and where the same all-affecting
sight had met his divine eyes, combine to give to such
a moment the intense consciousness as of a crisis in life
— not diminished by the words of the respectful and
serious guide, himself always grave, so that his demean
our takes nothing from the sensation, though what he
says is to him an everyday expression of an undoubted
fact. "This is sometimes called the Hosanna road."
The Hosanna road! Here were the palm branches
scattered, the garments laid down — long glistening leaves
and humble cloaks, poor, yet blazing with the many
colours of the East, with here and there a metallic
thread of gold: and the children always lovely with
their dark gleaming eyes, the little ones whom he
loved, their pretty heads enveloped in kerchief and veil
against the sun, their round limbs bare ; and behind and
around the pilgrim folk coming up to keep the feast,
some from the Judean borders where he had lately been,
some from Galilee, proud to think that he was of their
kindred, all given over to that burst of emotion and
enthusiasm, blessing him who came in the name of the
Lord, the King of Israel ! The Temple stands no longer
on Moriah, the work of the ages has crumbled into dust
upon those slopes, fire and flame and convulsion have
ravaged that city, there may not be a stone there that
ever felt his shadow or met his eye. But here he stood
mm 2

532 JERUSALEM. [chap.
whatever may be the changes that have come on all
around. He saw the Temple with its splendid cloisters
crowning the plateau of that hill where we see only the
exquisite little Moslem dome in its blue and white.
But, nevertheless, as we do now our Lord paused and
looked at Jerusalem. He saw what John, no doubt,
saw through the glories of his after-vision, the white,
shining, blessed place, like a bride arrayed for her hus
band. " 0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that stonest the proph
ets." 0 city doomed, yet deathless! The glory of
the white town expands and grows blurred and broken
in the sight of the late-coming pilgrim, child of the
modern ages, through eyes full of irrestrainable tears.
The entry into Jerusalem would thus be made in the
happy tumult of the arriving crowd, with much joyful
commotion such as accompanied the arrival of the pil
grims, thankful to reach the end of their journey, wel
comed by many friends, and adding to the general tide
of festivity and national solemnity which they had come
to share. Perhaps it was the shield of this rural com
pany pouring in to pay its vows, which gave that
immunity which is so strange considering all that had
gone before, to our Lord in his first reappearance, after
the hot discussions that had arisen about him, and the
orders to take him wherever he might be found which
had already been given to the police of the Temple.
According to the Gospel of St. Mark he confined himself
on that first afternoon to visiting once more and " look
ing round " upon the courts and holy places, retiring to
Bethany in the evening; and it was on the next day
that, having furnished himself ' with " a scourge of
small cords," he drove out the money-changers from
their booths, and overturned the stalls of the dove-
sellers, which occupied the court of the Gentiles, making,.
no doubt, a lively market and exchange, a place of

in-] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 533
gossip and levity in the very entrance to the Father's
house. There is no need for sacrifices now, but the
crowd of petty merchants in the court of the Church of
the Holy Sepulchre — and even, not to go so far, about
the precincts of every great Catholic cathedral— keeps

ON THE HILL OF EVIL COUNSEL.

still a likeness before us of that prevailing impulse to
make profit of the worshippers which probably never
reached such a height as in the ample court of the
Temple, buzzing with talk and barter, which the pil
grims had to traverse before they could reach the place
of sacrifice and instruction and prayer. It is said that
there were permanent booths established here belonging
to the. family of the high priest, from which they derived

534 JERUSALEM. [chap.
great profit — thus, with a cynical absence of precaution,
sanctioning an abuse for which there was no excuse to
be made.
Evidently the feeling of all that was most serious in
the multitude was entirely in sympathy with this bold
and sudden movement of reformation, and no one dared
to say a word for the traffickers as they were sent flying
headlong through the crowd to carry their complaint, no
doubt, to the authorities among whom neither does there
seem to have been any who dared openly to defend
them. Even the priests and scribes themselves, always
looking for an occasion of offence, who, roused by the
tumult, came crowding about the Reformer angry and
questioning, had no open objection to make to what he
had done. " By what authority doest thou these things ? "
they cried, coming hotly about him as he took his seat,
the brief commotion over, in the usual place of the
teacher, to instruct all who came to him. Perhaps there
had been already a concerted action among the superior
people to try their wits and their philosophy against the
unlearned prophet before he was seized and silenced,
which swelled the angry impulse by which they hurried
to where he sat, to inquire by what right he took upon
himself to do what they were aware they ought to have
done — an action which in itself they did not dare to
criticise. By what authority? It may be replied that
almost everything he had said in Jerusalem had been an
exposition of that authority. He had not spoken in
those Temple courts as among the flowery ways of Gali
lee, but always, as it were, in the power of his office,
with the highest claim, the most distinct announcement
of the ground on which he stood and the mission with
which he came. To ask him whose last words among
them had been the marvellous statement: "I and my
Father are one " : blasphemy beyond conception ¦ and

iu.] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 535
beyond precedent, if not that it was true, what was his
authority? was but going over a bygone question. And
whether these might be new inquirers who had not heard
that statement, whether they desired to elicit another
declaration which they could use against him, it is
equally evident that they neither ventured to object to
what he had done, nor to fulfil the duty which would
seem to have been almost demanded of them, and lay
hold upon the man against whom the rulers had already
issued their warrant. What instinctive terror or awe it
was which caused their hesitation, whether it was con
cealed under the pretence of a design to collect further
and further evidence against him, it is impossible to
tell: but that after this incident as before it no hand
was lifted to arrest him is one of the most wonderful of
details. Our Lord himself referred to this when he said
at the time of his betrayal — " I was daily with you in
the Temple and ye took me not." He was entirely in
their power, taking no precautions, exposing himself
indeed both to individual and public retaliation in this
public and vehement action: yet, it needed the aid of
the midnight darkness, the traitor disciple, the lonely
place, to put courage into the hearts of the Jewish
authorities for this act.
When these first questioners had retired confounded
by the opposing question with which he met their
inquiry, and which they dared not answer, it would
seem that others came forward, whether by a scheme
concocted beforehand, or spontaneously, it is impossi
ble to say. They meant to leave him no ground to stand
on, these clever reasoners of the sects, each persuaded,
in his turn, of his power to nonplus this unlearned
Galilean. Was it, perhaps, a piece of money dropped
upon the pavement by a terrified money-changer as he
fled with his heavy boxes, which was picked up and

536 JERUSALEM. [chap.
handed from one to another to show that effigy of Caesar
which furnished an infallible answer to the next cleverly
constructed question? Should one pay tribute to Caesar
or not? the most subtle inquiry, calculated so certainly
to embroil him with one side or another and bring him
within the sway of the secular heathen tribunal, that
secular arm to which exasperated Churchmen have
always been so ready to appeal. We know what confu
sion awaited the askers of this question. Then came
the gay and cultured scribes, with a problem at once
scornful and profane. Whose wife should that woman
be at the resurrection who had been married to one
brother after another according to a painful provision of
the Jewish law? The. mystical refinements of religion
with which we have to deal in the present day are in
nothing more obstinate than in their absorption in this
question of sex, which by some of them is forced on the
unwilling listener with a pertinacity which does its best
to make even religion indecent. The Master quenched
this flaming firebrand with celestial calm and that
authority which was "not as the scribes." He went
farther even than the immediate matter, looking upon
these sceptics, pretended teachers who soiled the spring
from which they drew, with eyes more severe than his
wont: and set forth that true doctrine of the resurrec
tion, that everlasting germ of spiritual life, which the
Jews had never expressed in their doctrine,1 and which
critics assert had never been revealed to them. What
silence fell upon the breathless assembly when these few
majestic words were said! "The God of Abraham, of
Isaac, and of Jacob," well-known title of daily use, the
1 It may, however, be remarked that the Jews had no doctrine
properly so called — no declaration of " I believe" : but only com
mands to be obeyed, the law — and prophecies to be hoped in ; no
creed expressed in any formula, but only great inferences and
things implied.

iii-J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 537
very claim of the race to special privileges and their
only standing ground in the world. " He is not the God
of the dead but of the living." What words were these,
silencing every vain speaker, filling with awe the great
Temple raised to the honour of that name, penetrating
to the farthest verge of the national history— and
unanswerable, beyond the reach of argument, leaving
every listener dumb.
Such a reply did more than silence the Sadducees; it
gained the reluctant approval of the other party, who
had never found in all its arsenals such a weapon to
confound the adversary, and who now approached him
behind their spokesman, still with their snare and trap
which they had prepared, but with hearts one cannot
but think a little touched, with a certain faltering in
the voice of the man who put the question. "Which
is the first commandment? " Nothing in all the sys
tems of the world has approached the broad and mag
nificent basis of all religion which our Lord now laid
down, the essence of that Judaism which is sup
posed to be the most narrow, formal, and harsh of all
creeds, and of that Christianity which we are told our
time has outgrown. When there has been anything else
propounded fit to take the place of this everlasting
foundation, then we may allow that our faith has been
outgrown. It was no strange thing but familiar words
which sounded in that holy place every day, words great
and splendid enough to consecrate of themselves any
temple, — "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind,
and with all thy strength; this is the first command
ment. And the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love
thy neighbour as thyself. In this, " it is added, " is all
the law and the prophets : " in this, we may add, is
heaven and earth at once, all the privileges and all the
duties of man.

538 JERUSALEM. [chap.
Is it, one wonders, sheer ignorance of this Divine
statement of faith that makes the not ill-mentioned
philosophy of our days imagine the Service of Man to
be a new revelation, superseding the service of God?
Even in those Temple courts, with all their factions,
a better inspiration existed. " Well, Master, Thou hast
said the truth," cries the speaker who had put the ques
tion, caught in his own trap, if trap there was — a candid
and honest man among those fierce disputers. But for
this voice of surprised approval the bands of objectors,
the critics and opposing doctors, seem to have been
silenced, not knowing what to say. And then Jesus in
his turn became the questioner. They were dumb when
he asked why David should call the Christ his Lord
when he was his son, as when he asked them by what
authority John had baptized? They could not and
dared not reply. Thus the first scene in which he
appeared in the Temple in the days of his childhood was
repeated at the end of his earthly career : " both hearing
and asking questions " — leaving his adversaries con
founded from their own mouths, silenced, unable to say
a word in reply.
In these points, so briefly told, filling one chapter
only in the record, the fundamental question as to who
he was and what was his work, — which was that on
which the Jews professed themselves most anxious : —
is settled with a fulness which they did not ask, and in
a sense which, perhaps — dazzled and confused as they
were, by a revelation which was too much for them —
their minds were incapable of taking in. A kingdom
which was spiritual, which had nothing to do with
Caesar's kingdom, founded not upon conquest but upon
a vast all-embracing love, the love of God, and of man:
which held eternal allegiance, not to Hades and the
memories of the dead, but to that supreme God who was

ui-J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 539
the God of the living; and which was the kingdom not
of David only or David's son, but of the Lord and
Master of David — such were the great final statements
by which he explained himself, and placed the evidence
of things not seen before their eyes. That they did not
understand them we may well allow; that such knowl
edge was too wonderful to touch their rigid minds and
the firmly fixed one-idea of the nation ; that in this sense
their eyes were holden that they could not see, and their
ears that they could not hear. Yet they ought to have
known and recognised what must have flashed upon a
thousand simple minds like the sun in its shining, the
higher meaning, the true sense of all their own economy.
That last startling confusing gleam of light, pointing
out that David's son was also David's Lord, ought to
have cleared up to them the whole situation — seeing
that the professed study and occupation of their lives
had been in that very Law and Prophets which were
threaded through from end to end with lights upon that
subject, lights which should have burst forth to meet
the revelation of his presence, showing the consistent
line of indication and of promise. But it did not do so.
That they were dazzled and confused in their intense
discomfiture we may well believe, and that accompanying
the eager and hostile curiosity which possessed them
there was an underlying determination to hold their
own place, not to be convinced of anything which should
put them aside from that authoritative position, or risk
the destruction of that superiority, which was their life
and being. Once more we are reminded of the case of
Herod, who did not, so far as is apparent, entertain the
least doubt of the coming of the Child of Bethlehem, of
what the Chaldeans told him, strengthened by what the
scribes told him; and yet deliberately set himself to
destroy the hope of Israel. So, though the Pharisees

540 JERUSALEM. [chap.
were confounded in all their arguments, though the
great constitution of the new spiritual world which their
own had foreshadowed was placed before them, so that
had they been faithful to their own inspiration they
must have recognised it, they refused to do so. They
must have turned away from that last question which
cut the ground from under their feet, silenced, con
founded, even paralysed; for not a finger was lifted
against the bold speaker, he who had warned them that
the kingdom was to be taken from them, and the stone
which they had rejected to fall upon them and crush
them to powder : and who now denounced them without
disguise, "Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees, hypo
crites!" as they stole away like a defeated army, leav
ing the eager multitude, and the disciples always circling
him about : now triumphant, no doubt, though they too
were little less dazzled and confused than the Pharisees,
in their Master's victory over his enemies.
Nothing can exceed the strength and force of the
denunciation that follows, poured forth in the very
stronghold of their sway, and in the ears of many who
no doubt would make haste to repeat to the ecclesiastical
rulers of Judea, every word of that stern anathema.
"Ye devour widows' houses and for a pretence make
long prayers. Ye compass sea and land to make one
proselyte, and when he is made ye make him tenfold
more the child of hell than yourself. Ye fools and blind !
Ye generation of vipers ! " Never before nor after were
those lips opened to utter the language of condemnation
(not damnation even here, as in our translation, which
was made when men did not mince matters and consid
ered the eternal fire the most simple thing in the world
— but judgment, and answer before a tribunal). He sat
there in the midst of their very kingdom and poured
forth divine indignation against the master vice, that

iii-J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 543
hypocrisy and pretended holiness which brought virtue
itself into disrepute: yet not one of all the officials of
the Temple interposed. It 'was well known that sen
tence had gone forth against him in the Sanhedrim, that
orders had been given to arrest him whenever he
appeared. Yet there he sat and discoursed, and set
forth the dreadful indictment against these men who had
virtually the power of life and death in their hands.
Awe seems to have seized upon both masters and ser
vants — the one shrank away confounded, baffled at every
turn; the others must have hung about helpless, not
knowing to whom to turn for their last orders, afraid of
the impassioned crowd that hung upon his lips — daunted
most of all by his own aspect, calm even in his indigna
tion, — and more than ever aware that never man spake
like this man.
That he should have been allowed to depart peace
fully out of Jerusalem, and take that grateful evening
walk across the gentle hill and through the pleasant
fields to Bethany, where no doubt the house of Martha
was full of anxiety as to what had passed during his
absence, is as wonderful as anything in the tale. It is
needless to say that the varying accounts of this last
week make little division between the days, so that it
is almost impossible to separate them and decide upon
which day certain events took place. Upon one of the
evenings after these discourses in the Temple — probably,
we may imagine on that day which has been above
recorded, with still the fire of these last words dazzling
in the air, and no man daring to interfere with his
leisurely withdrawal, he seems again to have surveyed
the great buildings of- the house of God — perhaps in his
divine courtesy at the suggestion of some new disciple
who was eager to point out an addition or restoration
executed since his last visit. That his immediate fol-

544 JERUSALEM. [chap.
lowers did not remonstrate against this lingering is
probably another indication of that excitement and con
fusion that was in the air, a bewilderment of all facul
ties, which prevented even those who loved him most
from perceiving the risk of hanging about in the midst
of danger. But he himself was not hurried, or anxious
to escape. He must have paused and looked and noted
what was pointed out to him, in the great sadness of
what he knew to be his final effort. The day was over
of possibility and hope — and now he could scarcely see
those beautiful walls and domes standing strong under
the level rays of the westering sun, for pity of the ter
rible scene when they should be beaten down, so that
not one stone should stand on another. When he left
Jerusalem, and sat down to rest upon the' way, which
rounds the slope of the Mount of Olives, opposite the
Temple, with his eyes upon the white and shining city,
so peaceful outside, so full of every unchained demon of
rage and blasphemy within, his countenance was still
sorrowful with these thoughts. The disciples gathered
round him eagerly yet full of awe, asking the explana
tion which he so often gave them. "When shall these
things be? And what shall be the sign of thy coming
and of the end of the world?" That some dim percep
tion of the approaching crisis of which they had been so
often warned, and of his separation from them, they
knew not how, had penetrated their minds is evident
from this question, as it is also evident that they asso
ciated the destruction of Jerusalem with the end of the
world. There is an extraordinary pathos in the thought that
our Lord himself in his renunciation of his divine great
ness and acceptance of the lot of mankind, had consented
to the limitations of the mortal state so far as to be
himself unaware of any distinction between these two

ni-J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 545
tremendous events. On this great subject it is too daring
to speak : yet the mingling of the two, the promise that
"this generation shall not pass away till all these things
be fulfilled," tempered with the statement which is very
clear that " Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no,
not the angels of Heaven, neither the Son, but my Father
only " seems to contain such an indication ; as afterwards
in Gethsemane we have a like but yet more wonderful
indication of this fact: when at the great crisis of his
human agony it seems for a moment to have appeared
possible to him that "this hour" (of which in another
moment he said "But for this cause came I to this
hour ") might by possibility pass away. As he sat in
his exhaustion after all the contentions of that day which
had kept his human faculties at fullest strain— and
looked over the valley at the doomed city shining all un
conscious of its approaching fate : the thought of the com
ing of the heavenly kingdom in the hearts and spirits of
men, and of the final settlement of all things, perhaps
afforded to his soul, already overshadowed by the great
cloud of mortal suffering, a welcome escape from the
intolerable anguish of that siege and destruction which
every sight of Jerusalem brought more clearly before
his eyes. But to speculate upon a mystery so profound
is not appropriate here. To imagine that our Lord in
His intense humanity had accepted the veil of imperfect
foresight, as he did those other limitations which com
pelled him to sleep for weariness, to be faint for food,
even in some sort to pray for an impossible deliverance —
is only to myself a more pathetic and overwhelming
proof of the wonderful sacrifice which was not accom
plished at Calvary alone, but by the sea-shore in Galilee,
and the streets of Jerusalem, the sacrifice of living, far
longer and more continuous than that of death.
Everything in the records of that day in the Temple

546 JERUSALEM. [chap.
points it out as the last. What more was there to be
said? He had left no stone unturned to convince, no
further exposition possible to make his mission clear.
Patiently he had heard and replied to every problem his
enemies had set before him, so that none could be in any
further doubt as to what he meant. He had cried once
more in the Temple in the midst of all " I am come a
light into the world. He that believetb on me, believeth
not on me but on him that sent me." Neither among
the Pharisees nor among the multitude could any delu
sion be left concerning him, or at least concerning the
office he claimed. No longer a prophet out of Nazareth,
no longer the Son of David alone, but the Lord of David,
the Light of the world. It cannot be maintained for a
moment that he had left Jerusalem in any doubt. He
was the Son of God, the promised Deliverer — or else his
blasphemy was proved before all men. One thing or
the other; God or an impostor; there is no midway.
And then it would seem there was a pause: making
their way softly along the side of the hill, stopping to
rest, watching the sun go down and all the meltings of
the evening light sink over Jerusalem, continuing as
strength permitted their way among the gnarled olives
and the waving corn, the little band would reach the
village where the lamps were being lighted and the
table spread for the evening meal. Some commentators
imagine that on this evening was the great supper at
which Mary anointed her Lord for his burial, and Judas,
exasperated, set out to contrive, with his Master's
enemies how to surprise him when apart from the crowd.
But that does not seem to be justified by the narrative
of St. John. And for a day or two after silence falls
upon the wonderful scene. St. Matthew records some of
the most impressive of the parables, that of the ten
virgins, that of the final judgment, which may well have

iii-J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 547
been told to the village folk of Bethany, or the stragglers
from Jerusalem who came out, as after a wonder, to
hear what he would say : and to whom the description
of those who said "Lord, Lord," but left all deeds of
goodness unaccomplished, might well apply. But the
courts of the Temple knew him no more.
It is strange to think what was going on there.
" Many of the chief rulers believed on him, " and these
courts must again have echoed with questions — Where
was he? Was he coming again? The Pharisees began
again to encourage and stimulate each other to action,
"Perceive ye not how ye prevail nothing; behold, the
world is gone after him." They had not dared for fear
of the multitude to lay a hand upon him during that
great day : but now in his absence it was more possible
to bestir themselves. How did they work in the mean
time upon the spirit of the mob to change that so
strangely? or was it the mere sight of him insulted and
dishonoured that did this, calling forth one of those
extraordinary revolutions of popular sentiment which
so often occur in human experience? No doubt every
scribe, every teacher who held by the priests and Phar
isees, was busy for these two silent days in the endeav
our to turn that popular tide. The chief argument with
those who were capable of argument would probably be
the danger to all their characteristic institutions, the
risk that the Bomans would take away their place and
nation, the peril of the Temple which had been threat
ened with destruction. Jerusalem was their pride and
glory, and this Nazarene had spoken of its ruin : their
Sabbaths and feasts were their distinction among the
nations, and he had broken one, and in the spirit of his
teaching threatened to supersede the others. Could such
things be? Would they allow themselves to be scattered
among the common world of men, deprived of their
nn 2

548 JERUSALEM. [chap.
sacred character as the people of God, they, the children
of Abraham? The rumour of such arguments might
probably reach him in the quiet of the country in which
he was, bringing ever nearer the inevitable catastrophe.
But that period of holy calm and intercourse, or else the
immunity which he had enjoyed from all persecution in
the recent days spent in the Temple, had so strengthened
the disciples that none of the desperate devotion which
made Thomas say, on an earlier occasion, "Let us go
that we may die with him," is apparent in their demean
our now. The two who were, no doubt, the usual pro
viders went into the city by his command to prepare for
their Master, the night before the Passover, probably
that all might be on the spot and ready to fulfil all
righteousness on the next day — one of them, we must
believe, being the guilty Judas with his terrible secret
in his heart, attentive to note all arrangements, that he
might betray the most favourable spot for his Master's
arrest to those who had purchased his services. Our
Lord directs them to the place as if it were one already
selected by himself. Tradition, which, however, I fear
is of little authority, fixes " the large upper room " as
having been situated in the little group of buildings
which surround what is called the tomb of David, and
which lie on the southern side of Jerusalem, a little
way outside the town. This may or may not have been ;
one point, however, in its favour, is that the little band
would be able to go there descending from the hillside
road straight down into the valley of Himmon, and by
the heights and hollows outside the wall without attract
ing observation.1
1 The pilgrim of the present day will find at the same period of
the year the lower part of this building full of picturesque wild
parties of Moslem visitors each in their corner, come up like the
Jews of old " to keep the feast," and affording, no doubt, a very
sufficient picture and reflection of the Jewish families in the course

in] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 549
Into the narrative of that holy feast it would be a
presumption to enter. It can scarcely have been but
with hearts heavy with apprehension, though they knew
not what they feared, that the disciples followed their
Lord, skirting the walls, within which Jerusalem was,
full of sound and movement and the murmur of the
multitude. There is no record of any instructive con
versation, of those discourses which had beguiled the
way on many a previous occasion, as they took this last
long walk together. It would seem that the twelve
alone accompanied their Master, the women and other
disciples who generally followed him having perhaps
joined their own families for the feast, perhaps re
mained anxious at Bethany, or gone up among the crowd
to the Temple courts to hear what was being said, and
if any steps were to be taken against him. We all know
the story of that wonderful evening meal, which the
Lord had so strongly desired to eat with his disciples
before he suffered, and the sigh with which he said,
having for the last time shared the supper, the common
human meal, with all its associations of fellowship and
mutual trustfulness with the chosen twelve, that "one
of you shall betray me." Twelve at table, and, no
doubt, a murmur of talk among themselves, it is not to be
believed that Judas heard those words. It would be too
great a wonder to believe that he could have heard them,
and understood that his object was known, and yet gone
out calmly, and been allowed by the rest to go out to
accomplish it. John, leaning upon our Lord's breast,
nearest to him at table, asked at the eager request of
of their annual pilgrimage. The Moslem feast is a very artificial
one, a pilgrimage to the tomb of Moses, intending, it is believed, to
serve the useful purpose of bringing a large number of Arabs into
the holy city to counterbalance and hold in check at once the Chris
tians and the Jews, but chiefly the former, who throng at Easter
to the sacred place.

550 JERUSALEM. [chap.
Peter who it was? and there seems to have arisen a
pained inquiry among the rest, each one echoing his
neighbour, scarcely understanding perhaps what the
question meant, "Is it I?" Perhaps it was generally
supposed among the party to be some commission to be
executed, or at least something vague in the future like
Peter's after burst of assurance, that in no circumstances
could he deny his Lord; and the piece of bread which
was given to the traitor would be but a sign of the
Master's usual tender courtesy to the one among them
who had to leave the table on his administrative busi
ness before the others. That they could have divined
what he was to do quickly is impossible, else hasty
Peter would certainly have stopped his goings for ever,
before even the Lord could interfere.
There is a haze over them all as of the very dazzle
and confusion of a great crisis uncomprehended, during
the whole of that extraordinary scene. Its wonderful
preface and accessories : — the washing of feet — .strange
and touching lesson in the midst of those contentions
who should be greatest that seem to have continued up
to this very climax — and the discourses that follow:
are all full of this strained and troubled tension of
human faculty, labouring at its utmost after the Divine,
and breaking into an almost childishness of remark and
question in its inability to catch the thread of meaning.
While he speaks, more certainly now than ever before,
" as never man spake " — they follow him like blind men
at a distance, murmuring strange questions confusedly
in the midst of his divine words : " Lord, we know not
whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?"
"Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us." "Lord,
how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us and not
unto the world?" "What is this that he saith unto us,
a little while? We cannot tell what he saith." These

in.] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 551
all seem like the expressions of listeners, addressed as
it were in an unknown tongue, straining every power to
follow, feeling themselves swept into a great current
which they can neither stem nor understand, and in the
flood of which they catch at anything that may arrest
the tide for a moment, or help them to standing ground.
Nor is the utterance of their dazed satisfaction at the
end less remarkable, "Lo, now speakest thou plainly,
and speakest no parable. Now we are sure that thou
knowest all things, and needest not that any man should
ask thee ; by this we believe that thou earnest forth from
God." Strange words of weakness, utterly overpowered
by the weight of a glory which was too much for them !
There was nothing they had not heard before in the
words which preceded this confession — and the con
fession is like the questions, almost inane in the pres
sure and strain of feeling.
But as they left the room where they had supped,
where so much that was altogether strange and incom
prehensible on any theory or wit of theirs had taken
place — and went on with him again over the dark road
outside the walls, Jerusalem on one hand flaring to the
sky with all her lights and torches, her watchmen mak
ing their round upon the ramparts, the deep valley lying
still below : and every man in the little throng crowding
upon his neighbour to hear the continuation of those
words that had been begun as they sat about the table —
their troubled questions came to a close, and they lis
tened in silence : perhaps they paused to rest when the
valley of Kedron was reached, and there heard the last
part of what he had to say to them, silent still in their
strange rapture and wonder, and sense of something
approaching which no one could divine. Was it there
in the stillness of the silent valley, by the side of the
little rivulet of water to which Kedron had fallen after

552

JERUSALEM.

[CHAP.

the rains were over, with the Paschal moon clouded in
the sky, and everything hushed and sanctified in the
coolness of the night, that they listened with heads
bowed and hearts full of awe and wonder, to the ineffa
ble majestic words of that prayer, wonderful communing
of God with God, which the silenced atmosphere of earth

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ANCIENT OLIVE-TREE IN THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE.
and the limited mortal horizon could scarce contain.
" Father, I will " — words never spoken in earthly hear
ing before, and so strangely contrasting with those
which were soon to be forced to his human lips by the
extremity of an anguish such as no man had ever borne.
The Temple wall rises sheer from that grassy slope,
the brook tinkles deep below, the old olive-trees wave
iii-J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 553
their silvery leaves in the shining of the moon. At that
time the light would fall over the high cloister, and its
arches, under which he had walked and talked surrounded
by a wondering crowd, and the heaped up stages of the
Temple buildings, tier upon tier. The pilgrim now
feels often a thrill of pain at the common uses of that
garden of Gethsemane, fenced and divided with its
homely growth of fruits and flowers: but, perhaps,
unduly — for then too it must have had its simple enclos
ure ensuring privacy, and a quiet place of rest under the
olives to these wanderers and strangers. He left the
band all overwhelmed with what they had heard, per
haps to seek for themselves resting places for the night,
perhaps to continue their way to where they were sure
of lodging and welcome at Bethany : and went himself
with the three of his closest attendants who never left
him, across the brook, to the favourite garden, which, no
doubt, belonged to some disciple and was always open
to him. They had probably often slept there on the dry
grass beneath the trees, covered with a cloak, as is still
so common in the East : and Peter and the two brethren
prepared to lie down, weary with much emotion, and
though not knowing what to-morrow might bring forth,
thinking^ of nothing but quiet for the night. How it
was that after the divine calm of that evening our Lord's
humanity asserted itself in one last hour of weakness,
who can venture to say? Flesh and blood were worn
out, and he who had just spoken with the voice of God,
was still only, in the pathos of mortal conditions, a man.
He also had to pay the penalty of the flesh (" for this
cause came I to this hour "), and bore it unsupported, as
none of his martyrs have done. He withdrew a little
from these troubled but exhausted friends, who could
only sleep "for sorrow," limited human beings all con
fused and worn out: and fell for a moment into that

554 JERUSALEM. [chap.

anguish unspeakable which sympathy could not share,
nor love help; "Father, if it be possible : all things are
possible unto Thee." He had bidden the disciples when
he left them to pray that they should not enter into
temptation: but he himself had all the brunt of the
most terrible of temptations to bear. It was not enough
that he should soar above the human as when he said,
"Father, I will": the strain, the stress, the conflict,
must be his as it was theirs of whom he was the repre
sentative. "Sore amazed and very heavy" — restless,
going and coining to see, perhaps, if any cared, if there
was one to stand by. him: and there was none: not
even of those who loved him most, not for one hour.
"Simon, sleepest thou?" Peter was the strongest, the
most eager to go with him through everything — and yet
he could not watch one hour. There was never a picture
so terrible, so wonderful, so natural — the going back
again, and again, the same words almost as if in the
depths of his anguish the human weakness of repetition,
was all that he was capable of : very man, bearing upon
him the burden of the conditions of that race from
which he would not liberate himself till the last.
The coining of the darkling procession among the
trees, in the depths of the valley: the sudden flare of a
torch or two : the momentary tumult when Peter, dazed,
starting from his sleep, snatched at the sword which in
piteous uncomprehension he had brought with him from
the chamber of the supper, and struck a hasty blow with
it in the darkness and dazzle of confusing light: the
one calm presence dominating all, stopping that clamour
with a word, healing with a touch the wound which was
so needless: the circle of the dark multitude round,
confused in the moonlight: the Temple police half
exultant, half afraid, surrounding their prisoner with
their staves: we all know these incidents too well to

m-J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 555
require that they should be recalled to us. The few
terrified disciples, those three whom he had taken with
him, and who do not seem to have been molested, fol
lowed in the distance, still with their dazed faculties
unable to understand, as the procession made its way
with as little sound no doubt as possible, perhaps by
the sheep gate at the northern end of the Temple en
closure, the gate by which the sacrifices were taken in,
to the house of the high priest. Nor do we venture to
tell again the story of that awful night, when with
those rude companions in the guardroom, perhaps suf
fered to lie down in a corner upon the pavement, per
haps standing patient, like the lamb to the slaughter,
he waited the pleasure of his captors, and endured
the questioning, first of the informal gathering of the
priests and elders who were assembled to hear what
had happened, and next — when the slow hours wore
round, and the pale dawn stole upon the tumult of that
chamber, dispersing the shadows of the sleepless night
— the more formal examination before the Sanhedrim,
hastily gathered in defiance of all law and justice to
sentence him before he could be delivered from their
hands. It would seem that even then in the midnight
watch before any formal condemnation was pronounced,
he was exposed to the rude jests and insults of the tip
staffs and officers, whose terror perhaps of what them
selves had clone, after the previous awe of his presence
which had kept them back, found expression in a sort
of desperate ferocity and mockery, a thing not unknown
in the annals of superstitious panic. He had a harder
burden still to bear, as he saw the furtive and terrified
look of his beloved John appearing and disappearing at
the open door, and Peter, ever bold yet not bold enough,
penetrating, chill with misery, to the brazier, holding
out shaking hands to the fire, shrinking back into him-

556 JERUSALEM. [chap.
self when a suspicious doorkeeper pushed him aside
with a hasty accusation " Thou also wert with him " —
"I know not the man! "
How can we explain this defection, this astonishing
failure of the heart? Even when he heard the cock
crow, and conviction came upon Peter : when the Lord
from the other side of the hall turned his head and
looked at him, — was it with a smile at the speedy real
isation of his own warning? with nothing but the
reproach of love we may be sure: — the rough Galilean
good for nothing but to die at his feet, we might suppose,
not surely to revolutionise a world — did not break
through the circle of staves and spears and fling himself
on the ground before his Master, to share whatever
might befall him, as many a lesser man has done : — but
went out into that terrible dawn, in the chill opening of
that awful day, weeping, struggling with himself, rather
in the collapse of despair than with any burst of devo
tion. To turn his back upon it, to try to ignore it, to
cry aloud to God, negligent and unheeding, for those
ten legions of angels who could change everything in a
moment, but whom the Master would not ask for : was
this all there remained to do? Did the city sleep
unthinking, when Peter burst forth into its streets, or
was it waking early to the preparation for the Passover,
and beginning to hear by flying rumours, always awake
like care before the race of mankind — that Jesus of
Nazareth had been seized, that he was before the judges,
and that no one could tell what wonderful thing might
happen that day?
The town was full of strangers and pilgrims, lying
down to snatch their night's rest in every corner, in
every khan and guest-chamber, and stirring early because
of the discomfort and crowding of their accommodation
as well as because of the solemnity of the day. And

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ni-] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 559
this new excitement thrown into it must have thrilled
the restless city from end to end. The prisoner before
the Sanhedrim, the charge of blasphemy, the eager
search of the inquisitors for evidence: every incident
would soon be known and followed with an excitement
impossible to describe. Many in those streets into
which the multitude would surge, eager for another and
another scrap of news, would no doubt look for those
ten legions of angels, for some tremendous sign to pro
claim him and his office, so that no man should be able
to gainsay : they would stand breathless in suspense, hop
ing or fearing every moment to see the heavens open and
the Son of Man vindicated. In all likelihood the mob
that rushed to Pilate's palace when it was known that
the prisoner was taken there would represent but a small
portion of the inhabitants of the thronged and astonished
city. The roughs, the wretched fellows who are ever
ripe for mischief, comrades and friends of Barabbas,
offscourings of the population, would be those who
pressed closest and shouted loudest in that ferocious
throng. The better classes, people of a milder kind, the
pious and the humble, those who knew the law and
studied the prophets without being prejudiced Pharisees,
and the vast crowd of strangers who were overawed by
the legal rulers of their people and dared not interfere
— must have been paralysed by the suddenness of the
catastrophe, and perhaps could not believe in the possi
bility of such a lawless and instant conclusion. I do
not venture to follow the Lord as he stood before judge
after judge, calm, neither resenting nor replying to the
insults addressed to him, explaining nothing. All his
explanations had been made before, and the high priests
knew it well; they had but to produce any of the thou
sands who had listened to him in the Temple to prove
their charge of blasphemy. Undoubtedly every word he
said was blasphemy— unless it was true.

560 JERUSALEM. [chap.
But Jerusalem all surging about that terrible scene is
more within the range of the modern writer. I have
little doubt that the many-coloured crowd which throngs
every street at the present day — when the little popula
tion of the city is swamped in the multitude of pil
grims, Christians to keep the Easter feast, Jews to keep
the Passover, jealous Moslems to keep the peace, and
make their own fictitious celebration at the grave of
Moses — resembles much more, perhaps, than any other
modern crowd resembles one of two thousand years ago,
the influx into Jerusalem at that great and memorable
Passover. Going along the line of street which is
known now as the Via Dolorosa, on the Good Friday
of 1890, it was impossible not to feel that just so must
the surging masses have closed upon that fatal proces
sion, the soldiers clearing the way, the wondering spec
tators gazing over each others' shoulders, pressing upon
the sufferer, as he made his way up the toilsome steep,
his bodily frame worn with the night's vigil, the exhaus
tion of the garden and all the farewell scenes neutralised
by no hour of rest, no moment of quiet: while every
new street and lane poured forth its spectators to gaze
at him, and the hoarse -shouts of the multitude rang in
his ears, and the jibes of the mocking Bomans and their
scornful laughter at the Jew criminal and his Jew per
secutors alike, rose through the tumult. Not that tears
were wanting even then. " A great company of people and
of women which also bewailed and lamented him." Not
all were joined in that hoarse shout of " Crucify him ! "
The mocking and the laughter and the cruel cries were
broken by that wail of which alone he took any notice.
And so the dreadful procession toiled by. Steep and
rough as those streets are now, they must have been still
more steep with their pavement of great stones, and
rough steps and frequent breaks nineteen hundred years

THE VIA DOLOROSA.

To face page 560,

I"-] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 563
ago. In the heat of the midday, amid the pressure of
the crowd, carrying that heavy weight under which a
weary frame exhausted by sleepless nights and laborious
days wavered and fell: with all that tumult sweeping
round and the anguish at the end which was more than
martyrdom: our Lord made his final passage through
those streets of Jerusalem, in which he had done no
violence neither had deceit been found in his mouth:
in which he had put forth his hand so often to heal and
to comfort and to bless.
It is no easy task in the dark splendour of the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre : in those dim places — now high
in a lofty chapel, now low down in a mysterious crypt
— to realise the mount that was called G°lg°tha, the new
grave which was in the garden close by, in which Joseph
of Arimathea laid the body of the Lord. And there are
many doubts and questions among the learned whether
this spot, though hallowed by the faith of centuries, is
really the place of the crucifixion and entombment.
There is a little mound to the north outside the Damas
cus gate upon which one of the late explorers, Major
Conder, has fixed the attention of many, and which, no
doubt, affords an aid to the imagination in realising that
dread and wonderful scene which no combination of
stately building can afford. It is the place where
Stephen was stoned, where Jewish executions, when the
Jews had the power of life and death, certainly took place ;
and it is evidently to the sight of all, a place of a skull,
the hillock being marked with cavities and lines which
recall in an extraordinary manner that formation. There
the cross might have stood out against the sky, against
the sweep of undulating country and low hills towards
the north, so that all the world might see: there the
crowds might have streamed, covering every slope,
standing "afar off" yet seeing every particular of the
oo 2

564 JERUSALEM. [chap.
terrible tragedy, the pierced side, the offered sponge:
there the great darkness that quenched both sun and day
would come over a vast horizon as if the whole world
was filled by it: and there would be room for all the
passers-by to pause and gaze, and for priests and fierce
Pharisees to stand around and utter that wonderful con
fession, more profound than Peter's, more all-expressive
in its enmity than the warmest utterance of enthusiasm
or faith, the very warrant and seal of earth put to the
act of salvation: "He saved others; himself he cannot
save": unconscious testimony never to be gainsaid! the
witness through all the ages, of hate to love.
And low in the side of the hill is a tomb,' cut in the
rock like all the tombs of Judea: not now a new grave
— centuries old, dark with age and the filling up of the
soil, yet still distinct, with its shelf, its couch of stone,
place made for the last relics of mortality yet never
finished, one rocky bed and one alone, having been occu
pied : — " in a garden " wild with uncultivated herbage,
yet not altogether without trace of its ancient use. Was
this Joseph's tomb, the place where the watch was set,
to whicli the women came in the morning, where the
angels sat, and the sun of the resurrection shone? This
will probably never be certainly known until we meet
in another state the witnesses of that event, and trace
with them every hallowed spot, if such an indulgence
of human feeling may be dreamed of. But the thought
that it may have been so is one to make the heart swell,
and the tears rise, as the pilgrim stands alone in the
silence outside the city, disturbed by no clamour of
contending creeds, with only heaven over him, no scent
'The description and model of this tomb, so extraordinarily
carrying out all that the tomb of our Lord must have been, and
realising with wonderful minuteness the narrative of St.' John, has
been published from special explorations by the Rev. Haskett Smith
in a recent publication.

in.] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 565
of incense or glare of lights, but the fragrance of grow
ing grass, and the sight of the sun. There is no room
for human memories in that spot where the greatest of
earthly events took place : yet the strained human soul
moved to its depths may be permitted to turn aside with
a pang of gladness, to think that this grave was discov
ered in the bowels of the earth with all its solemn pos
sibilities, by General Gordon, a tender reward and grace
from heaven, almost a sign of intimate sacred friendship
and favour, to that true servant, and brother and follower
of the Lord.
We will not attempt to dwell upon a conclusion so
sacred. Almost we think that the final scene of that
wonderful life, in the simplicity and awe of its natural
records should hold a place a little apart, to be read not
every day but with special preparation, at special times :
as indeed the instinct of Christian reverence has tacitly
ruled it should be. The history of earth holds no other
record that approaches it. It has been discoursed upon
by thousands of voices, few of them competent to the
subject, yet never lost its overwhelming interest, its awe
and wonder. Far be it from me to attempt to retrace
that amazing and unparalleled passage in the great story
of the universe. After nineteen hundred years, during
which the eyes of the race, whether in reverence or in
blasphemy, have been fixed upon it, no one has fathomed
its full significance or learned all its mysteries. " Which
things the angels desire to look into." There will be
time to understand it, to know something of the breath
of its meaning, the divineness of the sacrifice, the full
consecration of its human part, of death captive and life
triumphant, in those ages when we, too, shall have
passed through the portals of the common grave.

566 JERUSALEM. [chap.
When that great act was accomplished, the story of
Jerusalem, the chosen city, came to an end. Through
all the vicissitudes of mortal life it had survived, with
tenacity and obstinate persistence when cities much
greater mouldered into dust. Besieged, conquered,
burned, emptied of its population, trodden into dust, it
had risen again time after time, its walls and its shrines
ever renewed, its unchangeable traditions carried on.
Internal dissensions had raged in it, its sanctuary had
been desecrated again and again, its little kingdom torn
to pieces, its free-born children carried into captivity.
Through tragedy within and conquest without, and fire
and convulsion it had still continued, renewing its youth
like the eagle. But now its hour had come, and the use
for which it had been preserved was accomplished. The
brief and awful Passion of the city followed the Passion
of him whom she had rejected in about thirty-two years.
And if the fiercest stand of resistance that, perhaps, ever
was made, the most desperate and tragic valour, could
in any wray atone for the cruelty and falsehood of previ
ous history, then the Jews in that last act of their
national history might be partially forgiven — were it
not that treachery and cruelty still accompanied them
in the heroism of that terrible struggle. Finally the
fears of the high priests were realised ; the Bomans took
away both their place and people ; and for some centuries
it appeared that at last the race, the sacred places, the
memories and traditions of the city of David, and the
Mount of Zion, had been stamped out for ever. So had
thought the Assyrians five hundred years before; but
their captives had become again a nation, and long out
lived the race that carried them off in chains and weep
ing. The destruction made by the Bomans was still
more complete. Again one stone was not left upon
another in that sacred enclosure so jealously guarded and

iii-] THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 567
defended; again its people, so many as remained, were
driven like chaff before the wind : but all that had hap
pened before, and only marked an era in the history.
Now, however, the blow was final, the annals of the city
were closed, and all its emblems and its types fulfilled.
Everything in the strange and impressive silence which
now fell over it, marked the accomplishment of this
unalterable sentence. An awe of something more terri
ble than ruin enveloped the plateau upon the little hill,
so that even Bome herself withdrew trembling from any
attempt to disturb its ashes. The old order had changed,
giving place to new. History and hope all accom
plished, all misunderstood, ceased in the spot which had
been preserved by their means. " 0 Jerusalem, Jerusa
lem, thou that killedst the prophets, and stonedst them
which were sent unto thee ! If thou hadst known, even
thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong
to thy peace! " But that which had never been, and so
seldom is, in the perverse history of man, was now for
ever impossible. "Ye would not." And the long era
was accomplished and all ended for which Jerusalem had
been called into being — which she had conceived as for
her own advantage solely, and which at last by her own
fierce and bloody hands, unwitting what they did, had
been carried out, to the accomplishment of her own
doom and terrible fate.

That this wonderful city should have risen from her
ashes again in the name of him whom she crucified,
that Christian blood should have been shed in floods as
Hebrew blood had been shed before, for her deliverance ;
that every fathom of her soil and every stone should be
hallowed by the name which she scorned and rejected —

568 JERUSALEM. [chap.
yet that the city should remain in the possession of the
wild Ishmaelite, the enthusiast of the desert, are all
facts so strange and so unparalleled that we can but feel
the mystery of the future which is involved in them to
be dimly shadowing underneath, as the mysteries of the
past are all involved in the wonderful tale. When the
traveller comes round the slope of Olivet and sees sud
denly before his eyes lying white in the sunshine the
holy city over which our Lord wept: — the sacred hill
covered with shrines in which his name is not named save
in the potent inference of that denial, inscribed around the
Dome of the Mahommedan, which in its very assertion
that there is no Son of God suggests to all ignorant yet
intelligent souls that he must exist who is thus so
defiantly and solemnly denied: — with the closed and
built-up gate below through which those who thus deny
him believe that he is one day to ride triumphant into
the ancient home of his name: the mystery and wonder
and hope of that future comes upon the gazing pilgrim
in a silent rapture of indescribable emotion. For a
thousand years and more the hearts of Hebrew poets
and prophets so swelled and rose at thought of him
who was to come, the Son of David, the King of Israel,
the Prince of Peace — an event which they understood as
little as we understand any Second Coming. And my
heart, I own, acknowledges a fond superstition before
the closed arches of that Golden Gate. The old, old
trees of Gethsemane lie beyond in the valley, the little
brook he crossed so often still gathers a little rivulet
from the rains. Shall he one day come again and enter
from the valley of his deep humiliation to the lofty
courts of his Father's house? Who can tell? It is the
superstition of those who have written upon their most
sacred shrine that there is no Son of God, it is not ours :
— yet the heart fills and the eyes run over to think — If

iii. J THE FINAL TRAGEDY. 569
that might be! The prophet upon this very hill may
have stood and gazed and pondered what manner of man
that should be whom he himself had described so
minutely, he who was to come as a lamb to the
slaughter, the rejected and despised of men.

THE END.

INDEX.

Abiathar,, 37, 38, 145.
Abigail, 41.
Abishai, 45, 67, 122, 124.
Abner, 24, 46, 52, 68, 69, 140.
Abraham, 481; 483, 536.
Absalom, son of David, 98; per
sonal beauty, 101; his sheep-
shearing, 101 ; death of Amnon,
102; flight, 103; takes refuge in
Geshur, 103; recalled to Jerusa
lem, 104 ; restored to favour, 106 ;
courts populace, 107; raises re
bellion, 107 ; outrage in Jerusa
lem, 108 ; deserted by Ahithophel,
115 ; is killed, 118.
Achish, David's first visit to, 31,
32, 55 ; indulgent friendship, 56 ;
war with Saul, 58; calls David
to follow him, 59 ; compelled to
send David away, 59.
Adonijah, 137, 138, 145.
Ahaz, King of Judah, 228, 246.
Ahimelech, priest of Nob, 37.
Ahithophel, 107, 113, 115, 131.
Amasa, 116, 122.
Amnon, son of David, 98; story
of Tamar, 99; elder brother of
Absalom, 99; death of Amnon,
101.
Amon, King of Judah, 221.
Amos, prophet, 230; prophesies
captivity, 230; banished from
Bethel, 231 ; addresses people as
community, 233 ; state of Hebrew
society, 239; clothes laid to
pledge, 239; countrymen sold
into bondage, 240; his prophe
cies delivered in prosperity, 245 ;
a herdsman and untrained, 251.

Anathoth, 280, 298, 299, 310, 364.
Andrew, 457.
Apocryphal books, 411, 429.
Ark, at Kirjath-Jearim, 30, 80;
brought to Jerusalem, 82; car
ried with David in his flight, 111 ;
sent back by him, 111.
Artaxerxes, usurper, 369; Longi-
manus, 378, 391, 402.
Asahel, 67, 69.
Assyria, sudden rise, 194; threat
ens Jerusalem, 211 ; destruction
of army, 218, 283.
Babylon, prophecies concerning,
258, 260, 329, 332, 336, 342; de
scriptive images of Chaldeans,
337, 339; conquest by Cyrus, 358,
374.
Banias, 426, 493.
Bartimseus, 515.
Baruch, 289, 297, 299, 300, 301, 303.
Barzillai, chief of Gilead, 122.
Bathsheba, 95, 96, 133.
Bethany, 500, 501, 516, 523, 528.
Bethesda, 393.
Bethlehem, town of Boaz and Ruth,
11 ; Samuel's visit to, 12 ; David's
kindred leaves, 36; water from
well, 88, 89; Mary and Joseph
go up to, 437 ; cave of the Nativ
ity, 437.
Boaz, 10, 11.
Cesar, 425, 536.
Captivity, proclaimed in time of
prosperity, 231; restored, 354,
356, 358.
Chebar, 331. 571

572

INDEX.

Conder, Major, 563.
Cyrus, prophecies concerning, 225 ;
supposed contemporary prophet,
230 ; shows favour to Jews, 357,
358, 368, 369.
Damascus, 53, 90, 229, 247, 252,
254, 316, 492.
Daniel, 298, 355, 356.
Darius, 373, 375, 378, 412.
David — his family, 6; visit of
Samuel to house of Jesse, 7 ; a
shepherd and poet, 8; anointed
by Samuel, 8; his shepherd's
song, 9; he considers the heav
ens, 9; his lineage, 10-12; plays
to Saul, 12; goes to visit the
army, 12 ; sees Goliath, 13 ;
and kills him, 15 ; songs of tri
umph, 15 ; incurs anger of Saul,
17 ; beloved by Michal and
Jonathan, 17 ; his charm of man
ner, 18; Michal lets him down
from window, 19; flies to Ra
mah, 20; is pursued by Saul's
messengers, 20; by Saul him
self, 21; returns to Gibeah, 22;
talks to Jonathan, 23; story of
the feast, defended by Jonathan,
24; song of sorrow, 27; flight
to Nob, 29; priest gives him
shewbread, 30 ; the sword of
Goliath, 31; flies to Gath, 31;
is ill received, 32; feigns mad
ness, and escapes, 32; in the
wilderness, 35 ; his followers,
35 ; three " mighties," 35; "bro
ken men," 36; caves of Adul
lam, 36; delivers Keilah from
Philistines, 38 ; finds them false,
39 ; Saul in the cave, 43;
cuts off his skirt, 43; appeals
to him, 44; breaks into camp,
45 ; parley with Saul and Abner,
46 ; despair of David, 47 ; psalms
of adversity, 49 ; primitive mu
sic, 50 ; David's denunciation
of his enemies, 52; not vio
lent, 52; never shows bitterness
to Saul, 52 ; second flight to

Achish, 53; like Scots knights
flying to England, 53-54; well
received by Achish, 55 ; Ziklag
given to him, 55; his raids
on Achish's allies, 55 ; war of
Achish with Saul, 57 ; dilemma
of David, 57 ; action of Phi
listine chiefs, 58; David sent
away, 58; finds Ziklag deso
late, 59; recovers captives and
spoils, 61 ; end of his career as
outlaw, 61 ; reception of news
of Saul's death, 63; elegy on
Saul and Jonathan, 64; leaves
Ziklag, 66; settles at Hebron,
66; rewards men of Jabesh-
Gilead, 67 ; battle of Joab and
Abner, 68; seven years at He
bron, 70 ; kingship different from
Saul's, 73; union of all the
tribes, 74 ; Jerusalem the capital,
76; position of Moriah, 79; pro
poses to bring up the Ark, 80 ;
David's strong religious faith,
81 ; neglect into which Ark had
fallen, 81; brought up from
house of Abinadab, 82; acci
dent to Uzzah, 83 ; David ' ' was
displeased," 83; Ark abandoned,
83; again taken up, 84; Da
vid dances before the Lord,
85; Psalm, "Lift up your
heads," 85; Michal's anger, 86-
87 ; struggle with Philistines,
87 ; story of well of Bethlehem,
88-89; success and victory, 90;
subdues all enemies, 90; builds
palace, 91 ; desires to build Tem
ple, 91 ; offering refused, 91 ;
disappointment of David, 92;
David withdraws from war, 94;
unoccupied life and temptation,
94; Bathsheba, 95; death of
Uriah, 95; Nathan's parable, 96;
David's reputation, 97 ; death of
his child, 98; story of Amnon
and Tamar, 99 ; death of Amnon,
101 ; flight of Absalom, 103 ; the
wise woman and her parable,
104 ; Absalom's recall, 104 ; Absa-

INDEX.

573

lom out of favour, 105 ; Absalom
restored to favour, 106 ; rebellion
breaks out, 108; David's flight,
108 ; and incidents of flight, 110-
111; cause of his panic, "110; at
Mahanaim, 110 ; David's entreaty
to captains, " Deal gently with
the young man, " 117 ; waits for
news, 118; wail for Absalom,
118 ; Joab's reproof, 121 ; tri
umphant return to Jerusalem,
122; sons of Rizpah, 125; he
who first thought of Temple,
126 ; his poetry, 126 ; expressive
of his life, 127 ; his character,
128-130; preparations for build
ing Temple, 130 ; never recov
ered death of Absalom, 131 ;
songs of triumph, 132 ; choice of
Solomon, 133 ; great parliament,
133; shows them all his stones,
136 ; receives their subscriptions,
136; falls into calm of old age,
137; Adonijah's rebellion rouses
David, 139; orders Solomon to
be anointed, 139; charges Solo
mon in respect to Joab, Abiathar,
Shimei, 140; utters last song,
141; dies, 141; David's Son and
Lord, 538.
Deuteronomy, book of, 222.
Early Scottish history, 144.
Ebedmelech, eunuch, 315, 316.
Egypt, caravans from, 53 ; alliance
of Solomon with; 154; raid on
Jerusalem, 191 ; Egyptian party
in Jerusalem, 192, 271; hiero
glyphics, 237 ; other occurrences,
307, 310, 312, 336.
Eleazer, son of Dodo, 15.
Eliab, son of Jesse, 13, 24, 36.
Eliashib, high priest, 387, 395, 396.
Elizabeth, 435, 437.
Esther, 388.
Ezekiel, unlike his brethren, 327;
a seer, 329 ; captive in Babylon,
330-332 ; draws Jerusalem on tile,
332 ; vision of idolatry there,
333; lyric of the sword, 336;

images of the Chaldeans, 337 ;
death of his wife, 339; portent
fulfilled, M0, 341 ; prophesies res
toration, 342, 343 ; vision of dry
bones, 346 ; plan of new Temple,
347 ; the gate for the Prince, 351 ;
referred to, 248.
Ezra, special mission, 378 ; no es
cort on journey, 381; prayer in
Temple, 383; condemnation of
heathen wives, 384; reads book
of the law, 407.
Galilee, a Sunday morning, 503 ;
excitement in, 506; crowd seek
ing miracles, 507; departure of
our Lord, 509.
General Gordon, 565.
Geshem, an Arabian, 374.
Geshur, 99, 103.
Gibeah, 16. 19, 22, 29.
Gibeon, 146, 147.
Gilead, 30.
Goliath, 13, 15, 31.
Haggai, 370, 375, 376.
Hananiah, 308, 309.
Hebron, 69, 74.
Hermon, 510.
Herod, 422, 424, 425, 426, 528.
Hezekiah, 194, 200 ; restores Tem
ple, 201 ; addresses Levites, 203 ;
Passover, 20(1; sends posts to call
Israel, 207 ; strengthens fortifi
cations, 212; receives Assyrian
envoy, 215 ; dismay of his min
isters, 215-216 ; spreads out letter
in the Temple, 217 ; destruction of
Assyrian army, 218 ; the supposed
Pisistratus of Judah, 2111; un
willing- to die, 221 ; an Augustan
age, 226; prophets constantly
foretelling misfortune, 246.
Hilkiab, high priest. 272.
Hushai, 113.
Isaiah, his prophecies attributed
to two or more writers, 225 ; his
age an era of prosperity, 228;
addresses the nation in general.

574

INDEX.

233; state of Hebrew society
revealed by him, 239; usury,
drunkenness, 240, 241; luxury,
Polytheism, 244-245; his vision
of God, 246; his great experi
ence, 246 ; a great poet, 247 ;
proclaims Prince of Peace, 248;
in later days counsellor of king,
248; extraordinary symbol of
child's birth, 252 ; prophesies de
struction of Israel and Syria,
252; song of the vineyard, 253;
rise of Assyria, 257 ; proclaimed
an instrument in God's hand,
258; its overthrow: Hades wel
comes its king, 260-261; great
theme the Messiah, 265 ; the Man
of Sorrows, 267 ; tradition of
Isaiah's death, 269.
Ishbosheth, 69, 73.
Jabesh-Gilead, 67.
Jacob, 14, 16.
James (and John), 513.
Jehoiachin or Jeconiah, 305, 330,
336.
Jehoiakim, 296, 303, 304, 305, 306.
Jeremiah, a priest, son of high
priest, 272 ; called to be prophet
against his will, 272; office of
prophet not popular, 274; sup
posed fraudulent writer of book
of law, 277; prophecies and
warnings, 278-280; seized by
priests, 286; released by rulers,
288; the potter's vessel, 291;
seized by Pashur and beaten,
293; put in the stocks, 293; cry
of despair, 294; writes proph
ecies in a roll, 297 ; roll read
in Temple, 299; princes hear
it, 300; carry it to king, 301;
burnt by king, who orders arrest
of prophet, 303; Jeremiah es
capes, 303; by Euphrates, 303;
reappears, 307; appealed to by
Zedekiah, 307 ; prophesies the
return from captivity after
seventy years, 309; writes to
captives in Babylon, 309; in

prison, 310; emancipation of
bondmen, 311 ; repeal of enfran
chisement, 312 ; denunciations
from dungeon, 313 ; confined in
court of Temple, 314; in the
horrible pit, 315 ; delivered by
eunuch, 315 ; doom of city, 316-
317; writes Lamentations, 320;
carried to Egypt, 324 ; prophesies
restoration, 325-326.
Jericho, 11, 12, 513, 514, 515.
Jeroboam II., 228, 230, 245.
Jerusalem — Jebus, 2 ; its situa
tion, 3; defended by blind and
lame, 3; taken by David, 4;
choice of Jebus for capital, 74;
negotiation with rulers, 75 ; com
mand of army promised as re
ward for capture, 75; won by
Joab, 75 ; wonderful destiny, 76 ;
the three hills, 77; questions
about Mount Moriah, 79 ; David
strengthens and beautifies it,
80; proposes to bring up the
Ark, 80 ; Ark brought up in tri
umph, 82, 83; scenes in city:
Absalom's sheep-shearing, 101;
popularity of Absalom — rebel
lion, 107; David's flight, 108;
Absalom's entry, 114; return of
David, 122; anointing on Solo
mon, 139; Temple on Moriah
built, 153; bridges over valley,
157 ; beautiful city, 158 ; changes
in, 194, 195, 212, 215 ; Jeremiah's
addresses to people, 296, 301
grotto of Jeremiah, 297, 320
siege by Nebuchadnezzar, 304
Jehoiachin carried away and
10,000 of the people, 305; city
again defended, 308; restoration
of slaves, 312; again enthralled,
312; destruction of city, 318;
Ezekiel's picture on tile, 332;
plan of restored city, 343 ; golden
gate, 349 ; again restored by Mac
cabees, 420-421 ; city of ecclesi
astics and theologians, 431.
Jesse, 6, 24.
Jesus of Nazareth, born in Bethle-

INDEX.

575

hem, 437; first visit to Temple,
440; childhood at Nazareth, 441,
443; beginning of work, 449;
marriage of Cana, 450; natural
ness of miracles, 452; goes up
to Jerusalem, 453; followed by
disciples, 457 ; his first comment
on the Temple, 458; lingers in
Judea, 459 ; the woman of Sama
ria, 460; again in Jerusalem,
461; healing of the impotent
man, 462 ; beginning of Sabbath
controversy, 463 ; fundamental
difference of teaching in Jeru
salem and Galilee, 464 ; immedi
ate statement of divine claims,
465; great excitement arises in
the Temple, 466 ; also in Galilee,
468 ; goes up to Jerusalem at the
Feast of Tabernacles, 469; the
people ask, Will he come? 470,
471 ; address in the Temple, 472 ;
Sanhedrim officers ordered to
arrest him, 473 ; ceremonial pour
ing out of water, 474 ; proclaims
the water of life, 474; officers
unable to arrest him, 476 ; ' ' never
man spake like this man," 477;
the light of the world, 479;
strongly rebukes the seed of
Abraham, 481; "before Abra
ham was, I am," 483; in Galilee,
485; multitudes seeking mira
cles, 490 ; goes to the borders of
Tyre and Sidon, 492; is trans
figured, 494; Peter's confession,
494; Peter reproves his master,
494 ; parables, 496 ; parting with
Galilean disciples, 498; wander
ings in Judea, 500 ; first visit to
Bethany, 500 ; the man who was
born blind, 501 ; popular excite
ment, 502 ; Jesus in the Temple,
504; his utterances, blasphemy
or truth, 505 ; no other alterna
tive, 505; discourses in Solo
mon's porch, 506; all blasphe
mies or else true, 506; leaves
the Jews in no doubt, 507; re
turns to the country beyond

Judea, 509 ; the valley of Jordan,
511; the ten lepers, 512; blind
Bartimseus, 513-515; the sick
ness of Lazarus, 516; goes to
a city called Ephraim, 519; re
turns for the Passover, 523 ; sup
per at Bethany, 523; Mary's
anointing for his burial, 524;
Judas, 527; agitation of priests
and Sadducees, 529; entry into
Jerusalem, 530; drives out the
money-changers, 532; concerted
endeavour to entrap him: by
priests and scribes, 534-536; by
Sadducees, 536 ; by Pharisees,
537 ; full revelation of spiritual
kingdom, 538 ; denunciation of
scribes and Pharisees, 540; con
versation concerning fall of Jeru
salem, 544, 545; last day in the
Temple, 546; the upper cham
ber, 548; incidents of the last
supper, 549-550 ; in Gethsemane,
553; seized in the garden, 554;
the denial of Peter, 555, 556 ; the
Via Dolorosa, 560; Golgotha, 563.
Joab, joins David, 67 ; battle with
Abner, 68 ; vengeance on Abner,
69; no sympathy from David,
70; takes Jerusalem, 74; com
mission respecting Uriah, 95;
message to David, 95 ; pleads for
Absalom, 96 ; leads army against
Absalom, 117; upbraids David
on death of Absalom, 121; in
disgrace, 123; siege of Tekoah,
124; supports Adonijah, 138;
guilty of death of Abner, Absa
lom, Amasa — David's sentence,
140.
John the Baptist, 479, 509, 511.
John, evangelist, 486, 502, 555.
Jonathan, loves David, 14; his
father's confidence in him, 19;
warns David, 23; is consulted
by David, 23; with Saul at feast,
24 ; his compact with David, 26 ;
last interview, 27 ; David never
unfaithful to, 125.
Josiah, the last great kiug of

576

INDEX.

Judah, 222; finds book of the
law, 222; fate of his sons, 222;
struggle against evil, 271 ; faith
ful to Assyria, 283; killed at
Megiddo, 284.
Judah, 5, 42, 56, 61, 68, 74, 78, 80,
87, 134, 190, 191, 192, 194, 220,
223, 245, 293, 296, 297, 307, 312,
313, 378, 440.
Judas Iscariot, 527, 546, 549.
Keilah, 39.
Kirjath-Jearim, 30, 80.
Lazarus, 515, 516, 519, 524.
Maccabees, Matthias, 416, 417;
Judas, 422 ; Simon, 423 ; Jona
than, 423; John Hyrcanus, 423;
Hyrcanus, 423, 425.
Manasseh, King of Judah, 221, 222,
269, 272.
Martha, 500, 524.
Mary, a maiden of Nazareth, 432 ;
angel's greeting, 432; goes to
visit Elizabeth, 435; birth of
our Lord, 439 ; offering of doves
in the Temple, 439; goes up to
feast, 440; returns to seek her
son, 443 ; ponders these things in
her heart, 444 ; resident in Naza
reth, 449 ; at marriage feast, 450 ;
goes up to Jerusalem, 453.
Mary of Bethany, 500, 524, 546.
Mephibosheth, 113, 123, 125.
Messiah, 265, 439, 444, 509, 529.
Micah, 231, 263.
Michal, 14, 19, 86, 87.
Miracles, 452.
Moabite stone, 304.
Nabal, 37, 39, 40.
Nahum, 225.
Nathan, 91, 92, 96, 109, 138.
Nazareth, 432, 439, 443, 513.
Nebuchadnezzar, 293, 298, 299, 304,
305, 306, 307, 308, 309.
Nicodemus, 457, 473, 477.

Nob, 29.
Nethinims, 397.
Obadiah, 225.
Parables, Little Child, 496 ; Good
Samaritan, 497; Prodigal Son,
497 ; Pharisee and Publican,
510.
Pashur, son of Immur, 292, 293,
295.
Peter accompanies our Lord, 457;
confession of the Christ, 493 ; re
bukes his Lord, 494; asks who
is betrayer, 550; accompanies
our Lord to Gethsemane, 553;
denial, 556.
Pharisees, discussions with our
Lord, 478, 479, 480; in Galilee,
489; concerned with miracle of
blind man, 503; in the coun
try, 509; parable, Pharisee and
Publican, 510; semi-patriotic,
523 ; their faith in the law, 529 ;
question, "Which is First Com
mandment? 537; their blindness,
539; woe to, 540; no delusion
left to, 546 ; their action, 547.
Queen of Sheba, 163.
Queen Mary of Scotland, 180.
Rabshakeh, 211, 215, 216, 217, 248,
404.
Rahab, 4, 12.
Ramah, 7, 19, 20, 22.
Rehoboam, King of Judah, disap
pointment to father, 170; prob
ably only son, 170; kingdom
broken up, 181 ; raid of Egyp
tians, 191.
Ruth, 11, 12.
Sabbath, 462, 463.
Sadducees in Galilee, 490; their
doctrines, 529, 536.
Sanballat the Horonite, 387, 396,
397, 398, 402, 404.

INDEX.

577

Sanhedrim, 470, 471, 473, 476, 503,
543, 555, 559.
Samaritans, adversaries of Judah,
368; Samaritan wives of Jews,
put away, 381; enmity, 392, 431.
Samaria, woman of, 459-460.
Samuel, his visit to Jesse at Beth
lehem, 7 ; selects and anoints
David, 8 ; receives David at
Ramah, 19.
Saul, his troubled mood, 12 ; his
love for David, 12 ; anger at
David's triumph, 16; his career
full of mistakes, 18 ; determines
to destroy David, 18 ; prophe
sies at Ramah, 21 ; feast of the
new moon, 24 ; continual perse
cution of David, 38 ; enters cave,
43; skirt of his robe cut off,
43 ; interview with David, 43 ;
night surprise in camp, 44; his
spear, 45, 46 ; limited power, 48 ;
battle with Philistines, 63 ; death,
63 ; elegy, 65.
Sennacherib, 218, 248, 413.
Sheba, son of Bichri, 124.
Shimei, 113, 114, 122, 140.
Siloam, 269, 501, 503.
Socrates, 227, 443.
Solomon chosen to build the Tem
ple, 135 ; promise of peace in his
day, 136 : Joab and Abiathar op
posed to, 137, 138 ; anointed king,
139; his father's charge, 141;
traditionary character, 142 ; poe
try, 143; man of peace, 145;
worship and vision at Gibeon,
147; his wisdom, 147; wonder
ful works, 148; Temple founded
on Moriah, 153; bridges built,
157; promotes trade, 157, 158,
159; the Corvee, forced labour,
160; Lebanon, working parties,
161 ; ships, 162 ; receives Queen
of Sheba, 163 ; widespread fame,
164 ; song of songs, 165 ; Ecclesi
astes, 165, 168; disappointment,
169, 170; consolation, 174; un
worthy son, 173 ; errors of later

years, 173; vanity of vanities,
174; the portion of man, the
gift of God, 175.
Songs of Degrees, 429.
Tabernacles (Feast of), 365, 479.
Tabor (Mount), 494.
Tatuai, Satrap of Syria, 373, 374.
Temple, first conception by David,
90 ; David forbidden to build it,
91 ; preparations for building,
130; House of God, 136; large
contributions made, 136; Solo
mon's Temple immortal, 164;
failure in immediate object,
185 ; repeated desecration and
destruction, 192, 224; repeated
restorations, 201, 203 ; finally
destroyed by Assyrians, 224;
vision of idolatry in, 334; re
building begun, 365; arrested,
368 ; inferior to old Temple, 375 ;
or superior ? 375 ; again dese
crated by Antiochus, 418; re
stored by Judas Maccabees, 423 ;
fortified and decorated by Herod,
425; our Lord goes up to the
feast in youth, 440; Passover,
455; temple of his body, 457;
discussions in the Temple, 480;
feast of dedication, 498; our
Lord's discourse — Good Shep
herd, 504; character of dis
courses there, 504; drives out
merchants, 532; statement of
his divinity, 534 ; discussions
with Pharisees and Sadducees,
535, 536; our Lord's last day
there, 544.
Tobiah, 387, 395, 398.
Tophet, 290.
Transfiguration, 494.
Tyre, 148, 151, 164, 193, 272.
Uriah, 113.
Urijah, 295.
Uzziah, King of Judah, 201, 211,
228, 229, 231, 232, 246, 251, 333.

573

INDEX.

Zaccheus, 515.
Zedekiah, last king of Judah, 276,
304, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311,
313, 314, 316.
Zerubbabel, return from captivity,
360; Feast of Tabernacles held
among ruins, 365 ; Temple be

gun, 366; Temple consecrated,
375 ; Passover, 421, 422.
Zeruiah, sister of David, 104, 122.
Ziba, servant of Mephibosheth,
113, 123.
Ziklag, 55, 59, 60, 61, 66, 69.

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